Let’s go once again into the “Way Back Machine.” This time we will go to the mid 1980’s.
What was the red hot topic in the field of reading and cognitive psychology? I will give you a hint. It wasn’t decoding or reading fluency.
The topic of the decade, the one receiving millions of dollars of grant money across the country to major university centers, was not dyslexia.
The central topic was reading comprehension, with a particular emphasis on higher-order thinking, inferential reasoning and that funky term that almost no one seemed to understand – “metacognition.”
Sadly, like most of these hot topic educational initiatives and movements (anyone out there remember Reading First), over time they are largely forgotten and put into the educational/psychological dust bin, sort of like an education psychology version of Toy Story. (“Hey, remember me, I was the toy you played with all of the time and now you’ve forgotten me.”)
Interactive Nature of Reading Process
Even though we are squarely in the era of dyslexia (is everyone “dyslexic” these days?), there are important research findings from that earlier era that are important to remember.
One of the points is the interactive nature of the reading/learning process.
We used to think about reading in more one-directional terms. That is, information was on the page and went up into our head resulting in comprehension.
The cognitive psychologists studying this stuff in the 1980s told us that the one directional view is erroneous. Reading is not a one-directional process. Instead, we have “schema,” (i.e., prior knowledge or the stuff in our head) that gets activated while reading, making the process more interactive than previously understood.
The more “stuff” (schema) we have in our head, the better will be our understanding of the material on the page.
Another big takeaway that is now in the dust bin is that in order to improve comprehension we need to interact with different types of questions that stimulate a child to seek information and find justifications in the text. In other words, just answering questions on a worksheet is not how to teach comprehension.
Inferential thinking is a skill that does not come naturally to many kids, but can be taught with good facilitated instructional practice and questions that guide this type of thought process.
Comprehension is not an easy skill to develop, but if research findings are followed, it can be improved.
Takeaway Point
Some of the toys forgotten in the toy chest may still have some value.
(More to follow next week.)