This conceptual essay critiques reading comprehension pedagogies that are part of the current educational landscape. I argue that comprehension pedagogy generally reflects one of three differing orientations, each with its own assumptions about what comprehension is: comprehension-as-outcome pedagogies, which emphasize getting textual meaning…

Drawing on sociocultural perspectives and New Literacies Studies this study uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a tool to closely analyse one way the Common Core State Standards in the United States are being produced, disseminated and consumed. The analysis focuses on a section of the CCSS, a model lesson given by one of the primary…

The benefits of engaging with age-appropriate reading materials in classroom settings are numerous. For example, students' comprehension is developed as they acquire new vocabulary and concepts. The Common Core requires all students have daily opportunities to engage with "complex text" regardless of students' decoding levels. However,…

We evaluated the effectiveness of a stimulus pairing observation procedure to facilitate tact and listener relations in preschool children learning a second language. This procedure resulted in the establishment of most listener relations as well as some tact relations. Multiple-exemplar training resulted in the establishment of most of the…

In the past decade the proportion of school-aged children in the United States who are English language learners (ELLs) grew by 32%, compared with a 4.9% overall increase in U.S. school enrollment. This only heightens the already important challenge of providing effective, appropriate reading instruction for ELLs because all teachers can expect to…

Even as research continues to suggest the potential of assistive technology for improving student outcomes, it remains under-utilized in schools. Among numerous challenges to the effective utilization of assistive technology, research has suggested that educators are inadequately prepared to consider and implement the use of such technologies. In…

Education researchers and literacy specialists have responded to declining reading scores among high school students by calling on teachers across subject areas to teach "disciplinary literacy," which introduces students to the ways discipline-specific knowledge is produced and communicated and teaches students to apply different reading…

Because teacher-to-student ratios often make it difficult for teachers to work individually with students on skill-building activities, educators and researchers have developed and evaluated procedures in which audio-recordings are used to improve basic academic skills. In the current paper, we describe and analyze reading, math, and spelling…

The authors examine the growth and impact of guided reading, small group teaching for differentiated instruction in reading that was stimulated by their early publications. Many changes in literacy education have been observed as a result--almost as if educators had a "romance" with guided reading and leveled books. While changes have been…

The proliferation of online information has not come with a commensurate growth in students' ability to learn from that information. Today's students may be digitally native online communicators, but many lack the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate, find, and integrate online information into coherent understanding. Students who are able…

Developing silent fluent reading is an important goal to be achieved in elementary literacy instruction. This article reviews characteristics of effective silent reading fluency instruction and practice. Next, the authors make the case for four components of effective silent reading fluency practice routines. Finally, the authors describe two…

I continue here the long-standing discussion on the familiar topic of whether subconscious language acquisition is more powerful than conscious language learning, with a focus on vocabulary, adding recent studies as well as older ones I missed in previous publications on this topic (e.g. Krashen, 2004).

This randomized controlled trial examined the impacts of "Same-Language-Subtitling" ("SLS"), a karaoke-style subtitling intervention, on the reading comprehension skills of secondary school students in Kaneohe, Hawaii. Researchers randomly assigned 198 secondary school students with learning disabilities (ages 14 to 19) to…

This report examines the recommended minimum instruction time in full-time compulsory general education in 2016/17 in 42 European education systems. It includes national diagrams illustrating the data by country and by subject. The comparative overview examines the policy changes that have taken place over the last year regarding the recommended…

The medieval monastic movement preserved and developed reading practices--lectio--from ancient Greek pedagogy as a slow, mindful approach to reading for formation. This ancient way of reading, now better known as lectio divina, challenges the fast, pragmatic reading so characteristic of our time. We propose that the present moment may be ripe for…