When students enter middle school, they are confronted with the necessity of learning from complex content-area textbooks. Many students find these texts boring, and they may lack the higher-order reading comprehension skills they need to tackle complex text. Yet the ability to read informational text is essential to success in middle school and…

In our theoretical framework, reading engagement entails multiple perspectives on reading that consist of motivational dispositions, cognitive strategies, conceptual understanding, and social discourse. Possessing these attributes, engaged readers are typically higher achievers than less engaged readers, who show fewer of these qualities or less…