12 describes a four-step process for developing teachers’ expertise. In anticipation of chapter 12, each chapter contains self-rating scales for readers to assess their performance on the elements of the model. By doing this, they can determine their areas of strength and the areas in which they might want to improve relative to The New Art and Science of Teaching. All of the self-rating scales in this book have the same format for progression of development. To introduce these scales and help readers understand them, we present the general format of a self-rating scale in figure I.2.
Figure I.2: General format of the self-rating scale.
To understand this scale, it is best to start at the bottom with the Not Using row. Here the teacher is unaware of the strategies that relate to the element or knows them but doesn’t employ them. At the Beginning level, the teacher uses strategies that relate to the element, but leaves out important parts or makes significant mistakes. At the Developing level, the teacher executes strategies important to the element without significant errors or omissions but does not monitor their effect on students. At the Applying level, the teacher not only executes strategies without significant errors or omissions, but also monitors students to ensure that they are experiencing the desired effects. We consider the Applying level the level at which one can legitimately expect tangible results in students. Finally, at the Innovating level, the teacher is aware of and makes any adaptations to the strategies for students who require such an arrangement.
Each chapter also contains Guiding Questions for Curriculum Design to support planning and aid in reflection.
Appendix A provides an overview of The New Art and Science of Teaching framework. Appendix B features orthography exercises, and appendix C examines reading in the disciplines. Appendix D lists the figures and tables featured in this book. Additionally, please visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction to access the book’s three online appendices featuring phoneme charts, vocabulary games, and culturally diverse texts.
In sum, The New Art and Science of Teaching Reading is designed to present a reading-specific model of instruction within the context of The New Art and Science of Teaching framework. We address each of the forty-three elements from the general model within the context of reading instruction and provide reading-specific strategies and techniques that teachers can use to improve their effectiveness and elicit desired mental states and processes from their students.
CHAPTER 1
Reading Research and a Reading-Specific Model of Instruction
To orient readers, we begin with a brief explanation of how reading research and instruction have progressed since the middle of the 19th century, followed by a research-based description of how skilled reading develops. Then, we present our reading-specific model of instruction. In chapters 2 through 11, we situate that reading-specific model within the broader context of The New Art and Science of Teaching framework.
Reading Research
Historically, we can conceptualize reading research and instruction in four chronological phases.
1. Before the 20th century
2. From 1900 to the 1970s
3. From the 1970s to the 1990s
4. From the 1990s to the present
Here, we describe salient features and findings associated with each phase.
Before the 20th Century: Oral Reading Reigns
Before 1900, oral reading was the primary focus of reading instruction. Early reading textbooks, such as William Holmes McGuffey’s (1879), were designed to improve a student’s oral reading, and in 1892, philosopher William James stated that one could judge the quality of a teacher by the quality of his or her students’ oral reading. One reason for this instructional emphasis was a lack of widespread literacy among the American populace; most households had only one person who could read (Hyatt, 1943; Smith, 1965). Therefore, reading in the home, whether for entertainment or information, was typically done aloud.
Recitation lessons were the norm in schools; students listened to the teacher read and then tried to reproduce what they heard. Lyman Cobb (as cited in Smith, 1965) explained that students’ goals were:
Distinct articulation of words pronounced in proper tones, suitably varied to the sense, and the emotions of the mind; with due attention to accent, to emphasis, in its several gradations; to rests or pauses of the voice, in proper places.
Such practices prioritized elocution over comprehension (Hoffman, 1987; Hoffman & Segel, 1983), although teachers sometimes asked students to retell what they had read. Nevertheless, in 1891, Horace Mann claimed that 90 percent of students did not understand what they read.
From 1900 to the 1970s: Meaning Resides in the Text
As the 20th century began, the primacy of oral reading waned. According to P. David Pearson and Gina N. Cervetti (2017), rising literacy rates decreased the demand for oral reading in the home. Immigration, child labor prohibitions, and mandatory school attendance swelled public school enrollment, and an increased emphasis on scientific methods in education gave birth to the standardized testing movement. Silent reading rate and comprehension level moved to the education foreground. Pearson and Cervetti (2017) explain:
Unlike oral reading, which had to be tested individually and required that teachers judge the quality of responses, silent reading comprehension (and rate) could be tested in group settings and scored without recourse to professional judgement; only stop watches and multiple-choice questions were needed. In modern parlance, we would say that they moved from a “high-inference” assessment tool (oral reading and retelling) to a “low-inference” tool (multiple-choice tests or timed readings). Thus, it fit the demands for efficiency (spawned by the move toward more universal education for all students) and objectivity (part of the emerging scientism of the period). (p. 15)
Educators reasoned that if students could answer questions about a passage, they were able to read it and comprehend it.
Early 20th century educators typically defined comprehension as accessing the true meaning of a text. That is, they viewed the meaning of a text as an inherent property of the text itself, and the job of the student (with the teacher’s assistance) was to figure it out. Reading “was viewed as a largely bottom-up process in which readers would visually analyze the features of letters, map the sounds onto letters and then onto strings of letters to pronounce words, and listen to the output to achieve understanding” (Pearson & Cervetti, 2017, p. 40). An examination of curriculum materials from this time—William H. Elson and William S. Gray’s (1936) well-known Dick and Jane series, for instance—reveals that the dominant approach to teaching reading involved asking questions about a text after students had read it.
From the 1970s to the 1990s: Readers Construct Meaning
Although a few prescient scholars, such as Edmund B. Huey (1908) and Edward L. Thorndike (1917), articulated sophisticated descriptions of reading comprehension in the early 20th century, widespread interest in readers’
