Patricia L. Anders

The Relationship Between Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices in Reading Comprehension Instruction

This article presents the findings of a study designed to determine the relationship between teachers’ beliefs about the teaching of reading comprehension and their classroom practices. The study, dealing with teachers from grades 4, 5, and 6, uses a beliefs interview technique borrowed from anthropology. Predictions about teaching practices were made from the belief interviews of 39 teachers and were related to practices observed in their classrooms. The study demonstrates that the beliefs of teachers in this sample relate to their classroom practices in the teaching of reading comprehension. A case study explores a situation in which the teacher’s beliefs did not relate to her practices. This case suggests that the teacher was in the process of changing beliefs and practices, but that the changes in beliefs were preceding changes in practices.

Effects of Interactive Vocabulary Instruction on the Vocabulary Learning and Reading Comprehension of Junior-High Learning Disabled Students

Drawing upon theory-driven vocabulary instruction and the vocabulary-reading comprehension connection, this study compared the effectiveness of three interactive vocabulary strategies derived from the knowledge hypothesis with definition instruction derived from the access and instrumental hypotheses. Subjects were 61 learning disabled junior-high students. Using content-area texts, students participated in one of three interactive strategies — semantic mapping (SM), semantic feature analysis (SFA), and semantic / syntactic feature analysis (SSFA) — or in definition instruction (DI). Learning was measured both at short and long term by vocabulary and comprehension multiple-choice items and written recalls. Results from the multiple-choice items suggested that students participating in the interactive strategies demonstrated greater comprehension and vocabulary learning than students receiving definition instruction. Results of the written recalls indicated qualitatively and quantitatively greater recalls at long term for students in the SFA and SSFA conditions compared with the DI condition. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

The Effects of an Interactive Instructional Strategy for Enhancing Reading Comprehension and Content Area Learning for Students with Learning Disabilities

This study investigated the effectiveness of an interactive vocabulary instructional strategy, semantic-feature analysis (SFA), on the content area text comprehension of adolescents with learning disabilities. Prior to reading a social studies text, students in resource classes either completed a relationship chart as part of the SFA condition or used the dictionary to write definitions and sentences as part of the contrast condition. Passage comprehension was measured on a multiple-choice test consisting of two types of items, vocabulary and conceptual. Comprehension was measured immediately following teaching and again 6 months after teaching. Prior knowledge for the content of the passage served as a covariate. Results indicated that students in the SFA instructional condition had significantly greater measured comprehension immediately following and 6 months after initial teaching. These results are discussed in relation to concept-driven, interactive strategies for teaching content and facilitating text comprehension.

Using Interactive Teaching and Learning Strategies to Promote Text Comprehension and Content Learning for Students with Learning Disabilities

The Interactive Teaching Project, described in this paper, was designed to test an instructional model designed to help students identified as learning disabled comprehend and learn content area concepts. Reported is a description of the theoretical rationale for the model, a description of the teaching and learning strategies used, and the effects of those strategies. The conclusions are based on data collected over three years in elementary bilingual social studies and junior high science classrooms. Overall, the interactive strategies (semantic feature analysis, semantic mapping, and semantic/syntactic feature analysis) were found to be more effective than instruction emphasizing definitions for students striving to learn content area concepts.

Interactive Teaching and Learning: Instructional Practices for Teaching Content and Strategic Knowledge

Students with learning disabilities face challenging reading and learning demands as they move beyond the primary grades. While many of these students continue to encounter difficulties with basic reading skills, moving into the intermediate and secondary grades means they also need to use a cadre of cognitive and metacognitive strategies for negotiating informational text. Within the content areas, they are expected to deepen and broaden their knowledge through reading. However, with regard to reading and learning in the content areas, learning disabled students seem to be in jeopardy for several reasons. First, these students spend much of their in-school time learning how to read in materials that are either narrative or do not require purposeful learning of the content (Snider & Tarver, 1987). Second, at the elementary level it is not unusual for learning disabled students to miss content instruction within the regular classroom due to the time spent in resource rooms (Allington & McGill-Franzen, 1989; Richardson, Casanova, Placier, & Guilfoyle, 1988). Consequently, they miss opportunities to develop rich knowledge structures on which to build content knowledge and domain-specific strategies for comprehending content texts. Third, current teaching techniques used for teaching content knowledge often do not provide the scaffolding necessary for interacting with the concepts presented in texts (Durkin, 1978–79; Roth, Smith, & Anderson, 1984).

Thirty Years of JRB/JLR: A Retrospective of Reading/Literacy Research

Each volume/issue of the past 30 years of the Journal of Reading Behavior/Journal of Literacy Research, the journal of the National Reading Conference (nrc), was hand-searched to examine trends in literacy research. Perusal of research articles and special features of the journal revealed trends across decades in authorship, participants, methods, themes, and topics. Findings include that the major themes of text, tests and assessment, and instruction shifted in importance over the three decades. Unlike results of an earlier review of nrc yearbooks, the nrc journal has contained more reports of quantitative than qualitative research. Recommendations are made to conduct more integrative reviews and qualitative studies, including special populations, varied ethnic and cultural groups, and second-language learners.

A Theory-Driven Interactive Instructional Model for Text Comprehension and Content Learning

Recently there has been an increasing emphasis among researchers in the field of learning disabilities to develop instructional models for teaching and learning within content domains (Bos & Anders, 1990b; Lenz & Bulgren, in press; Mastropieri & Scruggs, 1988). Traditionally much of the instructional research in reading with learning-disabled students focused on remediation of decoding and comprehension skills with little or no attention given to the subject matter presented in the text. Yet school-based observational studies and student and teacher reports indicate that many students with learning disabilities have particular difficulty succeeding in content area classes. Instructional research in reading suggests that these students as a group oftentimes have difficulty generalizing reading skills to content area materials.

Inaugural Editorial for Volume 46

As we officially begin our tenure as the incoming editors of Journal of Literacy Research (JLR), we want to provide some background and the key principles that will guide our editorship. JLR has historically been one of the very top journals in literacy research, and we intend to continue this tradition. To accomplish this, we have developed an ambitious set of goals that include reviewing and publishing research drawing on the highest standards in education, securing an interdisciplinary space for literacy research, balancing the need for conceptual, basic, applied, and policy-related work, promoting new and diverse voices, and constructively utilizing social media and other means to raise the impact of JLR. However, before we detail these goals, we begin with some history and background to our team.

DEVELOPING HIGHER LEVEL THINKING SKILLS THROUGH INTERACTIVE TEACHING

As reading/learning disabled students enter secondary settings, they face ever‐increasing demands in terms of the higher level thinking skills associated with content area courses and textbooks. This article presents an interactive model for teaching content area concepts to students with reading/learning disabilities. It provides teachers with procedures for activating student background knowledge and for assisting students in developing the relationships among concepts that are critical for concept evaluation, synthesis, and application.

Journal of Reading Behavior Membership Survey and Results

The 1984 Board of Directors of the National Reading Conference appointed an ad hoc committee (see note 1) to review the status of the Journal of Reading Behavior. One phase of that review was the creation, distribution, collection, and analysis of a membership survey. The purpose of this paper is to report the procedures followed in developing and conducting the survey study, the results of the survey, and the recommendations emanating from the survey results (see note 2).