Abstract
Lately there has been a renewed push to base educational policy and curriculum around the “science of reading.” The theories of reading that undergird this movement have intermittently been updated, but nevertheless they are inadequate for guiding the teaching of literature. Because these theories tend to focus on meaning at the word level, they overlook text-based challenges. Additionally, they give insufficient priority to many reader-based factors such as background knowledge and strategy use. This chapter explores these shortcomings and how they obscure the ways that successful readers of literature make use of prior knowledge, affective involvement, and literature-specific reading strategies in order to overcome the special challenges presented by literary text and construct textual meaning. Implications for classroom teaching are discussed.
TopWhat Is The “Science Of Reading”?
How to define the SoR is not entirely clear. Reinking et al. (2023) write that there is no single SoR but rather a collection of findings from a wide range of disciplines that are used to craft theories about how reading proceeds. Nevertheless, there is an undeniable sense of a specific agenda and set of claims associated with the SoR. Tierney and Pearson (2023) explain that the SoR stems from a belief that learning to read is an unnatural process, and that—in contrast to a notion of fluid theories based on the ongoing generation of replicable findings—there is something like a settled SoR that should be used to inform reading instruction (cf. Reinking et al., 2023). Individuals who subscribe to this point of view often seem to overlook the process of revision that is fundamental to science (Duke & Cartwright, 2023), and they often seek to codify the putatively settled SoR in law (Allington & Woodside-Giron, 1999). Tierney and Pearson (2023) articulated several specific claims that they associate with these individuals:
- 1.
The Simple View of Reading (SVR) (Gough & Tunmer, 1986) is a valid and parsimonious account of reading that can guide instruction (although some who promote the SVR realize it needs to have more nuance added).
- 2.
Reading is identifying and understanding printed words from knowledge of spoken language.
- 3.
Explicit phonics instruction is the best way to teach early reading.
- 4.
Practicing decoding from print to speech to meaning allows students to develop a direct link from print to meaning.
- 5.
The three cueing system—which teaches students to look to word meaning, sentence context, and grammatical features as well as letters and sounds to help determine meaning—is inaccurate, ineffective and misleading.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Morpheme: Smallest unit of meaning in language (e.g., a word or a part of a word).
Think-Aloud Study/Expert Study: A study during which a participant reads a pre-selected and typically unfamiliar text, pausing to describe aloud their thought process any time they become aware of it.
Orthographic: Related to spelling and letter sequences.
Syntactic: Related to the sequencing of words, phrases, and sentences.
Grapheme: A written symbol that is used to represent speech sounds.
New Criticism: A set of ideas that gained popularity among literary experts in the 1940s and 50s; emphasized the value of literature as an art form and the necessity of deemphasizing impressionistic interpretation in favor of expert approaches to understanding literary text.
Heteronyms: Words with the same spelling but different meanings.
Phoneme: A sound or group of sounds that conveys meaning.
National Reading Panel: A panel formed by the federal government in 1997 to bring experts in reading education together to assess approaches to the teaching of reading.
Disciplinary Literacy: A theoretical framework that focuses on literacy experiences as taking place in the context of academic disciplines, including their goals, values, epistemologies, preferred genres, and language varieties.
Aesthetic Reading: Reading that is geared toward the goal of experiencing associations, feelings, and attitudes that are aroused by the text.