With the rise of the engagement perspective on reading, the concept of engagement has been increasingly applied in reading instruction and research without seriously questioning its underlying assumptions. By probing into the intellectual roots of the engagement perspective including Dewey's notion of reflective thinking, and Freire's critical pedagogy, this paper provides a critical analysis of the theoretical tentativeness and incoherence of the engagement perspective, and argues consequently for reconceptualizing engagement in reading through miscue research which is built on a unified theory of reading. Also, the possibility of integrating ideological ingredients into a new frame of conceptualization is explored. Contains 45 references and 4 tables of data. (Author/RS)