Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading

Sixth Edition

Donna E. Alvermann, Norman J. Unrau, and Robert B. Ruddell, editors

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About the Editors

Contributors

Preface

Section One: Perspectives on Literacy Research and Its Application

Introduction

Chapter 1
A Historical Perspective on Reading Research and Practice, Redux
Patricia A. Alexander and Emily Fox

Alexander and Fox address three questions of central concern to reading researchers and practitioners: Where were we? Where are we? Where are we going? They survey the past 60 years of reading history and identify six perspectives beginning in the 1950s with the “Era of Conditioned Learning” and progressing to our current “Emergent Era of Goal-Directed Learning.”
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Chapter 2
Literacies and Their Investigation Through Theories and Models
Norman J. Unrau and Donna E. Alvermann

Unrau and Alvermann explore paradigms, theories, and models through which researchers have studied reading and literacies over the last half century, including constructivism, social constructionism, cognitive processing, sociocultural perspectives, structuralism, poststructuralism, pragmatism, and motivational theories. They also explore how literacy theories give rise to theoretical models and perspectives, research directions and methodologies, instructional practices, and interventions.

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Chapter 3
Synergy in Literacy Research Methodology
Marla H. Mallette, Nell K. Duke, Stephanie L. Strachan, Chad H. Waldron, and Lynne M. Watanabe

Mallette, Duke, Strachan, Waldron, and Watanabe argue that given the complexities of literacy as a topic of inquiry, researchers' use of a single methodology will not suffice. Instead, insights arising through one methodology should be used to inform the discovery of answers to questions explored through multiple methodologies, creating over time a synergy of methodology that contributes to deeper understanding and richer theory.

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Section Two: Processes of Reading and Literacy

Introduction

Part 1. Language and Cognition in Sociocultural Contexts

Chapter 4
Reading as Situated Language: A Sociocognitive Perspective
James Paul Gee

Gee adopts the view that reading is more than processing skills; it is a process embedded in a context of social interaction and culture. As we learn social languages, such as the language of classrooms, rap lyrics, or legal documents, we also are socialized into Discourses, which Gee calls identity kits.

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Chapter 5
The Place of Dialogue in Children's Construction of Meaning
M.A.K. Halliday

Acknowledging that meanings are socially constructed, Halliday looks closely at a child's developing discourse skills in language. In this chapter, he shows us how a Discourse, in Gee's sense, contributes to a child's grasp of language and formation of personal identity.

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Chapter 6
Social Talk and Imaginative Play: Curricular Basics for Young Children's Language and Literacy
Anne Haas Dyson and Celia Genishi

In this newly commissioned chapter, Dyson and Genishi explore tensions between the official school curriculum and the more natural learning that takes place through children's imaginative play and social activities. Drawing from two case studies, the authors demonstrate how everyday language and literacy practices enable children to engage cross-culturally.

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Chapter 7
Exploring Vygotskian Perspectives in Education: The Cognitive Value of Peer Interaction
Ellice A. Forman and Courtney B. Cazden

In describing how adult–child interactions differ from child–child interactions in school settings, Forman and Cazden also emphasize how these forms of communicative exchange provide opportunities to practice questioning, direction giving, and other language activities that young children rarely perform in school-situated child–teacher transactions.

Chapter 8
It's a Book! It's a Bookstore! Theories of Reading in the Worlds of Childhood and Adolescence
Shirley Brice Heath

Heath's newly commissioned chapter uses data drawn from her latest longitudinal ethnographic study of 300 working-class families' uses of reading in the decades that bridge the 20th and 21st centuries. Her analysis provides a basis for understanding shifting socioeconomic trends on literacy in the United States since the publication of her classic book Ways With Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms.

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Chapter 9
Emergent Biliteracy in Young Mexican Immigrant Children
Iliana Reyes and Patricia Azuara

Reyes and Azuara challenge deficit perspectives that devalue bilingualism and biliteracy. Rather than view them as potential hindrances to academic achievement, the authors' three case studies offer a glimpse into how daily bilingual family interactions in an immigrant population contribute to a child's sense of cultural belonging and literate development.

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Chapter 10
Revisiting Is October Brown Chinese? A Cultural Modeling Activity System for Underachieving Students
Carol D. Lee

Using a Vygotskian lens to explore a group of underachieving urban adolescents' growth in literacy and language, Lee describes how she, as a high school English teacher, involved her students in signifying—a form of culturally relevant discourse (innuendo, satire, and other forms of figurative language)—to increase their engagement with canonical texts.

Part 2. Foundations for Literacy Development

Chapter 11
Sustained Acceleration of Achievement in Reading Comprehension: The New Zealand Experience
Mei Kuin Lai, Stuart McNaughton, Meaola Amituanai-Toloa, Rolf Turner, and Selena Hsiao

Lai, McNaughton, Amitunai-Toloa, Turner, and Hsiao argue that sustaining accelerated rates of achievement for students in poor communities is dependent on the development of professional learning communities focused on analyzing the effectiveness of instruction and adjusting instruction to meet the needs of students.

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Chapter 12
Phases of Word Learning: Implications for Instruction With Delayed and Disabled Readers
Linnea C. Ehri and Sandra McCormick

Ehri and McCormick describe five phases of word learning, from pre-alphabetic (so called because in this phase, children do not use alphabetic knowledge to read words) to automatic (in which readers manifest proficient word reading). Instructional practices that contribute to delayed and disabled readers' growth in each phase are also described.

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Chapter 13
Developing Early Literacy Skills: Things We Know We Know and Things We Know We Don't Know
Christopher J. Lonigan and Timothy Shanahan

Lonigan and Shanahan address issues related to the long-standing debate about the relative emphasis that should be placed on code-breaking versus meaning-making skill development in early literacy instruction. The authors conclude that both of these skills are necessary in developing a young child's ability to comprehend written texts.
Chapter 14
Advancing Early Literacy Learning for All Children: Implications of the NELP Report for Dual-Language Learners
Kris D. Gutiérrez, Marlene Zepeda, and Dina C. Castro

Gutiérrez, Zepeda, and Castro contend that the concept of dual-language learners, as opposed to limited English-proficient learners or English learners, more accurately captures students' capacity for language use. The authors also caution against drawing policy implications from research studies that do not address variations among dual -language learners.
Chapter 15
Fluency: Developmental and Remedial Practices—Revisited
Melanie R. Kuhn and Steven A. Stahl

In this updated chapter by Kuhn on her and Stahl's earlier review of fluency's role in reading growth, she notes that although fluency instruction improves reading achievement among children in first and second grades, more classroom-based research is needed to clarify its role in helping young readers move from simple decoding tasks to comprehending connected text.
Chapter 16
A Road Map for Understanding Reading Disabilities and Other Reading Problems, Redux
Louise Spear-Swerling

In this updated chapter that includes a road map for understanding patterns of reading difficulties and disabilities, Spear-Swerling examines changes in identifying reading disabilities following the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004. With that act's elimination of IQ scores in identifying reading disabilities, schools are now adopting Response-to-Intervention criteria.

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Part 3. Comprehension Development From Words to Worlds

Chapter 17
Language Pathways Into the Community of Minds
Katherine Nelson

Nelson proposes that the "theory of mind," as it relates to cognitive development, has been constructed too narrowly. She suggests an innovative construct, which she terms the "community of minds," to describe the cognitive developmental process made possible through language. Within the community of minds construct, it is possible to theorize how language enables a preschool child to develop higher order cognitive processes.
Chapter 18
Vocabulary Processes
William E. Nagy and Judith A. Scott

Nagy and Scott offer a comprehensive review of vocabulary acquisition processes while revealing the complexities of word knowledge and the value of metalinguistic awareness in learning words. They explain, in particular, how schoolchildren add new words to their reading and writing vocabularies.
Chapter 19
Role of the Reader's Schema in Comprehension, Learning, and Memory
Richard C. Anderson

In this classic article, Anderson explains schema theory, provides examples of evi¬dence supporting the theory, and makes recommendations for its application to classroom instruction.
Chapter 20
Schema Theory Revisited
Mary B. McVee, KaiLonnie Dunsmore, and James R. Gavelek

McVee, Dunsmore, and Gavelek revisit and rethink schema theory by reinterpreting it through sociocultural perspectives. In their return to the theory, they demonstrate its resilience in the field of literacy and its usefulness in helping teachers and researchers understand how prior knowledge affects comprehension processes.
Chapter 21
To Err Is Human: Learning About Language Processes by Analyzing Miscues
Yetta M. Goodman and Kenneth S. Goodman

In this classic article, Goodman and Goodman develop the role of schema in meaning construction through their exploration of miscue analysis. They explain how a reader's linguistic and conceptual schematic background manifests itself in both miscues and the reader's conceptual understanding of texts.

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Chapter 22
Cognitive Flexibility Theory: Advanced Knowledge Acquisition in Ill-Structured Domains
Rand J. Spiro, Richard L. Coulson, Paul J. Feltovich, and Daniel K. Anderson

After exploring the learning of complex concepts and identifying cognitive elements that interfere with advanced learning, Spiro, Coulson, Feltovich, and Anderson present their cognitive flexibility theory, a view of cognition that emphasizes multiple representations of concepts, multiple linkages among knowledge structures, and the promotion of schema assembly rather than the activation of schemata as prepacked, monolithic units of knowledge in memory.

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Chapter 23
Educational Neuroscience for Reading Researchers
George G. Hruby and Usha Goswami

Hruby and Goswami review recent advances in neuroscientific research on cognitive processes involved in reading. They note that the exciting field of neuroscience offers knowledge of how brains operate when learning occurs, which could possibly upend established literacy theories. First, however, more research is needed to merge our understanding of brain, social, cognitive, and cultural perspectives that benefit reading education.

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Part 4. Motivation and Engagement

Chapter 24
Effects of Motivational and Cognitive Variables on Reading Comprehension
Ana Taboada, Stephen M. Tonks, Allan Wigfield, and John T. Guthrie

Taboada, Tonks, Wigfield, and Guthrie examine how both motivational and cognitive variables predict students' reading comprehension while controlling other variables. They found that the desire to comprehend text stimulates a reader to be metacognitive, to activate background knowledge, and to implement relevant cognitive strategies.
Chapter 25
Toward a More Anatomically Complete Model of Literacy Instruction: A Focus on African American Male Adolescents and Texts
Alfred W. Tatum

In this qualitative case study, Tatum gathered data on an African American male's motivation for reading texts and how the texts affected the ways in which the student viewed himself, in both his home and community contexts. Tatum used "enabling texts," or texts that move beyond a solely cognitive focus and include issues that are relevant to adolescents' lives.

Part 5. Instructional Effects on Literacy Development

Chapter 26
Marie M. Clay's Theoretical Perspective: A Literacy Processing Theory
Mary Anne Doyle

In this newly commissioned chapter, Doyle explores the theoretical basis for Clay's Reading Recovery approach to early literacy intervention. Of particular note is the fact that Doyle worked from primary sources to construct this first-ever attempt to trace Clay's influence on the field of reading instruction worldwide.

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Chapter 27
Instructing Comprehension-Fostering Activities in Interactive Learning Situations
Ann L. Brown, Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar, and Bonnie B. Armbruster

This historically important chapter by Brown, Palincsar, and Armbruster includes a review of reciprocal teaching's origination and three studies of the strategy's beneficial effects on students' reading comprehension. Palincsar also provides a postscript that addresses new developments in reciprocal teaching instruction.

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Section Three: Models of Reading and Writing Processes

Introduction

Part 1. Cognitive-Processing Models

Chapter 28
Toward a Theory of Automatic Information Processing in Reading, Revisited
S. Jay Samuels

In this classic article, Samuels provides a detailed explanation of automaticity theory and how the LaBarge–Samuels model of automatic information processing works. He also describes several practical and effective applications of the theory to the diagnosis of reading problems and to classroom instruction.

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Chapter 29
Toward an Interactive Model of Reading
David E. Rumelhart

In this classic article, Rumelhart first explains the limitations of earlier models of reading and then presents his interactive model with its parallel information-processing units. His model includes a message center that keeps a list of hypotheses from several knowledge sources. These hypotheses are confirmed or disconfirmed as the most likely hypothesis, or meaning of a text, emerges as the correct one.

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Chapter 30
A Theory of Reading: From Eye Fixations to Comprehension
Marcel Adam Just and Patricia A. Carpenter

Just and Carpenter present a model of reading comprehension that takes account of eye fixations and is embedded in a theoretical framework that accommodates the flexibility of reading. The model addresses the processing of words, clauses, and text units and explains that readers pause at points in their reading when processing loads are heavy.
Chapter 31
Modeling the Connections Between Word Recognition and Reading
Marilyn Jager Adams

Adams explores the relation between word recognition and literacy. Her model of the reading process includes four interacting processors: orthographic, context, meaning, and phonological. Her model affirms her belief that a reader's letter and word processes provide text-based information that enables comprehension.

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Chapter 32
Revisiting the Construction–Integration Model of Text Comprehension and Its Implications for Instruction
Walter Kintsch

Kintsch explains how texts are represented at different levels, presents his comprehension–integration model of reading, and analyzes what goes into our making of inferences as we read. While doing so, he demonstrates how comprehension serves as a powerful paradigm for cognition.

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Chapter 33
The Relative Contributions of Lower-Level Word Processes, Higher-Level Processes, and Working Memory to Reading Comprehension Performance in Proficient...
Brenda Hannon

Most theories of reading comprehension fail to account for complex relations among the sources of individual differences that form mental representations and predict reading comprehension performance. However, Hannon addresses these shortcomings by using structural equation models that examine relationships among sources of individual differences in reading comprehension and proposes a cognitive components-resource model of reading comprehension.

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Part 2. A Dual Coding Model

Chapter 34
A Dual Coding Theoretical Model of Reading
Mark Sadoski and Allan Paivio

Sadoski and Paivio have extended Dual Coding Theory (DCT) into the realms of literacy, including reading comprehension and written composition. Their DCT model, rich in explanatory power, provides an alternative to reading models based primarily on verbal processes, such as schema theory. The authors' postscript highlights several developments in DCT's application to literacy studies, such as their efforts to use DCT as a framework to unify cognitive dimensions of literacy theory.

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Part 3. A Transactional Model

Chapter 35
The Transactional Theory of Reading and Writing
Louise M. Rosenblatt

Rosenblatt lays out basic assumptions and concepts that form the foundation of her transactional theory of reading and her transactional view of the writing process. As she presents her theory, she explains the efferent–aesthetic continuum and clarifies what she means by evocation, response, and interpretation.

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Part 4. Integrated Reading and Writing Models

Chapter 36
Reading–Writing Connections: Discourse-Oriented Research
Giovanni Parodi

Parodi deepens the investigation of reading–writing processes by examining relations between reading and writing from a discourse and cognitive perspective. He found significant coefficients between the reading and writing of argumentative texts at several psycholinguistic levels, information that provides an empirical foundation for important components of future reading–writing models.
Chapter 37
Enacting Rhetorical Literacies: The Expository Reading and Writing Curriculum in Theory and Practice
Mira-Lisa Katz, Nancy Brynelson, and John R. Edlund

Katz, Brynelson, and Edlund describe the theoretical framework and curriculum of an innovative course designed to teach high school students to read and write expository prose, and to enhance academic literacy for college readiness. A template, whose basic elements include reading rhetorically, connecting reading to writing, and writing rhetorically, serves as a model for designing modules focused primarily on persuasive texts covering a range of engaging topics.

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Part 5. A Sociocognitive Model

Chapter 38
Reading as a Motivated Meaning-Construction Process: The Reader, the Text, and the Teacher
Robert B. Ruddell and Norman J. Unrau

Ruddell and Unrau present a sociocognitive model of read¬ing in which meanings are constructed during a socioculturally contextualized bottom-up/top-down reading process. Readers interpret and negotiate meanings not only for linguistically based texts but also for the classroom structure, tasks, source of authority, sociocultural factors, and classroom discourse.

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Section Four: Literacy’s New Horizons: An Emerging Agenda for Tomorrow’s Research and Practice

Introduction

Chapter 39
Adolescent Literacy Instruction and the Discourse of "Every Teacher a Teacher of Reading"
Donna E. Alvermann and Elizabeth Birr Moje

Is the long advocated discourse of "every teacher a teacher of reading" an appropriate expectation of high school teachers across the disciplines? In addressing that question, Alvermann and Moje offer a relational model of adolescent literacy instruction, one that uses both a theory of action and a theory in action.

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Chapter 40
Literacy Research in the 21st Century: From Paradigms to Pragmatism and Practicality
Deborah R. Dillon, David G. O'Brien, and Elizabeth E. Heilman

Dillon, O'Brien, and Heilman bring a fresh perspective to the endless debates surrounding paradigms that have had an impact on policies for researching literacy in the United States. Rather than focusing on the politics of research, the authors contend that a pragmatic perspective would go far in advancing literacy research.

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Chapter 41
National Reports in Literacy: Building a Scientific Base for Practice and Policy
P. David Pearson and Elfrieda H. Hiebert

In an article focused on the National Early Literacy Panel's recommendations for teaching young children how to read, Pearson and Hiebert critique what they describe as a "basic-skills conspiracy of good intentions." By that, they mean the potential for shortchanging young children's opportunities to engage in meaning-making activities with texts.
Chapter 42 FREE!
New Literacies: A Dual-Level Theory…
Donald J. Leu, Charles K. Kinzer, Julie Coiro, Jill Castek, and Laurie A. Henry

Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, Castek, and Henry contend that in order to navigate the relatively unregulated terrain of the Internet, one must have a working knowledge of multiple literacies. Specifically, they argue for a dual-level theory of new literacies in a world marked by continuously changing ways of reading and writing.

IRA no. 710.42 | doi: 10.1598/0710.42
Chapter 43
The Social Practice of Multimodal Reading: A New Literacy Studies–Multimodal Perspective on Reading
Jennifer Rowsell, Gunther Kress, Kate Pahl, and Brian Street

In a newly commissioned chapter, Rowsell, Kress, Pahl, and Street provide for the first time an integrated perspective on new literacies and a social semiotic approach to multimodality. To illustrate this perspective, the authors draw on data from their work in early childhood, youth, and adult academic literacies.

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Chapter 44
Imagined Readers and Hospitable Texts: Global Youths Connect Online
Glynda Hull, Amy Stornaiuolo, and Laura Sterponi

In this new chapter, Hull, Stornaiuolo, and Sterponi report on the taxonomy of textual strategies that specifically invite and support young people's participation in online communities. Drawing from their study of how adolescent youths read an online audience, the authors explore the ethics of literate practice in an increasingly global society.

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Chapter 45
21st-Century Skills: Cultural, Linguistic, and Motivational Perspectives
Robert Rueda

Rueda's commissioned chapter focuses on the cultural, linguistic, and motivational aspects of 21st-century literacy skills. An important insight to be gleaned is that several assumed differences among the cognitive, affective, and social dimensions of language, literacy, and learning are less pronounced and less significant than previously thought.

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Author Index

Subject Index

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