This article presents an overview of a conceptual framework designed to help reading professionals better understand what their students are facing as they learn to read in alphabetic writing systems. The US National Reading Panel (NRP) recommended five instructional components for improving reading outcomes but presented these instructional…

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of Data-Based Individualization (DBI) on the reading comprehension of high school students with intensive needs in reading; specifically, two students with specific learning disabilities in reading (RD) and one student with high functioning autism (HFA). Perceptions of social validity of DBI by a…

This paper brings together data on national policies for improving reading achievement with student reading outcomes according to the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 data. It is based on a two-step analysis. Firstly, the prevalence of national policies for improving reading achievement (i.e., specialist reading…

To meet the growing demand for teacher learning opportunities, the educational community must create scalable professional development models and study their effectiveness. In this chapter, we argue that design-based implementation research (DBIR) is ideally suited to these efforts, and we use two research projects as illustrative cases: CSR…

We tested the effects of teaching reading skills through U.S. history content for 38 eighth-grade poor readers whose reading ability ranged from second-to fourth-grade levels. Half of the students received special education services, and half of the students were English language learners. Students were taught to decode multisyllabic words, learn…

It is often argued that classroom diaries are subjective. This article explores the diary insights of a foreign language reading teacher. The inquiry was based on the following research question: What do the diary insights really evidence about the teaching practices of a foreign language reading teacher? As a research method, a case study was…

We tested the effects of teaching reading skills through U.S. History content for 38 eighth-grade poor readers whose reading ability ranged from 2nd to 4th grade levels. Half of the students received special education services and half of the students were English Language Learners. Students were taught to decode multisyllabic words, learn…

Designed to help preservice and inservice teachers use assessments to identify problems and employ appropriate strategies to help their students become better readers, this text includes 12 case studies that detail children's literacy struggles. The cases are embedded within a framework of research-based instructional interventions related to best…

Reading teachers are faced with the challenge of providing instruction to a population of diverse students with various abilities and styles of learning within local and state school districts. In an effort to improve student performance on high-stake examinations in reading, teachers continue to seek the most effective instructional strategies.…

Teacher knowledge and instructional expertise have been found in correlational and pre- and post-test studies to be related to student reading achievement. This article summarizes data presented in this special issue and additional research to address four questions: (a) What do expert reading teachers know? (b) Why do teachers need to acquire…

This report summarizes the results of the Newark, New Jersey, Striving Readers program for project Years 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. This report updates one analysis (3 years); the remainder of the impacts and implementation findings are for Year 4. The Striving Readers Grant addresses the unmet needs of middle school students reading 2 or more years below…

In face-to-face instruction of "Reciprocal Teaching (RT)", students' reading processes and dialogues with their peers are hardly observed. As a result, the teacher has few clues to identify students' learning difficulties and provide further scaffoldings. To record students' reading processes and enhance their comprehension, this study reports on…

Five articles concerning college reading instruction are included in this special interest journal. Bill Fowler and Barry M. Kroll investigate hidden factors in tests of reading comprehension, revealing that most conventional tests have question-design weaknesses allowing students to perform successfully by the use of test wisdom alone. Imogene…

This monograph is one in a series of semiannual reports on research related to reading in secondary schools. The six papers in the monograph deal with the following topics: (1) the effect of reading level on the retention of propositions by secondary school remedial reading students; (2) the ambiguity of the term "significance" in research, which…

Embodying two themes--that the computer can become an even more exciting instructional tool than it is today, and that the research necessary for developing the potential of this tool is already underway, this book explores the theoretical, research, and instructional issues concerning computers and reading. The titles of the essays and their…