Understanding Reading

Foundational research

Learning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print

Adams, M.J. (1990). Learning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

From Amazon.com:
Beginning to Read reconciles the debate that has divided theorists for decades over the "right" way to help children learn to read. Drawing on a rich array of research on the nature and development of reading proficiency, Adams shows educators that they need not remain trapped in the phonics versus teaching-for-meaning dilemma. She proposes that phonics can work together with the whole language approach to teaching reading and provides an integrated treatment of the knowledge and process involved in skillful reading, the issues surrounding their acquisition, and the implications for reading instruction.

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Learning to Read: The Great Debate

Chall, J.S. (1967). Learning to read: The great debate. New York: McGraw-Hill.

From Diane Ravitchs' tribute to Jeanne Chall, in the American Educator, Spring 2001:
In 1961, as the debate about how to teach reading continued, the Carnegie Corporation of New York commissioned Jeanne Chall, who was well established as a careful reading researcher, to review the controversy. Chall spent three years visiting hundreds of classrooms, analyzing research studies, and examining textbooks; she interviewed textbook authors, reading specialists, and teachers.

Chall found that studies of beginning readers over the decades clearly supported decoding. Early decoding, she found, not only produced better word recognition and spelling, but also made it easier for the child eventually to read with understanding. The code emphasis method, she wrote, was especially effective for children of lower socioeconomic status, who were not likely to live in homes surrounded with books or with adults who could help them learn to read. For a beginning reader, she found, knowledge of letters and sounds had more influence on reading achievement than the child's tested mental ability or IQ.

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Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children

Hart, B., & Risley, Todd R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company.

From Amazon.com:
This monumental book traces the complex issues involved with the intergenerational transmission of competence and unveils some astonishing predictors found in the simple interactions between parents and their 1- and 2-year-old children. Meticulously recorded data, presented in detective-like style that grabs each and every reader, provide the scientific evidence underlying an alarming gap between the vocabularies of children from educated, advantaged families and children from families of low socioeconomic status, a gap that translates into widely different academic and intellectual performances as the children grow. As its many endorsers attest, this book is an absolute requisite for professionals in psychology, child and social development, speech and language, education, and early intervention, as well as critical reading for concerned families and the nation's policy makers.

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Ways With Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms

Heath, S.B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge University Press.

From Amazon.com:
"Ways with Words is a classic study of children learning to use language at home and at school in two communities only a few miles apart in the south-eastern United States. 'Roadville' is a white working-class community of families steeped for generations in the life of textile mills; 'Trackton' is a black working-class community whose older generations grew up farming the land but whose current members work in the mills. In tracing the children's language development the author shows the deep cultural differences between the two communities, whose ways with words differ as strikingly from each other as either does from the pattern of the townspeople, the 'mainstream' blacks and whites who hold power in the schools and workplaces of the region. Employing the combined skills of ethnographer, social historian, and teacher, the author raises fundamental questions about the nature of language development, the effects of literacy on oral language habits, and the sources of communication problems in schools and workplaces."

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Learning to Read and Write: A Longitudinal Study of 54 Children From First Through Fourth Grades

Juel, C. (1988). Learning to read and write: A longitudinal study of 54 children from first through fourth grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 243-255.

From PsycINFO Database Record:
In this study, of particular concern were these questions: Do the same children remain poor readers year after year? Do the same children remain poor writers year after year? What skills do the poor readers lack? What skills do the poor writers lack? What factors seem to keep poor readers from improving? What factors seem to keep poor writers from improving? The probability that a child would remain a poor reader at the end of 4th grade if the child was a poor reader at the end of 1st grade was .88. Early writing skill did not predict later writing skill as well as early reading ability predicted later reading ability. Children who become poor readers entered 1st grade with little phonemic awareness. By the end of 4th grade, the poor readers had still not achieved the level of decoding skill that the good readers had achieved at the beginning of 2nd grade. Good readers read considerably more than the poor readers both in and out of school, which appeared to contribute to the good readers' growth in some reading and writing skills. Poor readers tended to become poor writers. The Simple View received support in accounting for reading and writing development through 4th grade.

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Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children

Snow, C.E., Burns, M.S., & Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Reading is essential to success in our society. The ability to read is highly valued and important for social and economic advancement. Of course, most children learn to read fairly well. In this report, we are most concerned with the large numbers of children in America whose educational careers are imperiled because they do not read well enough to ensure understanding and to meet the demands of an increasingly competitive economy. Current difficulties in reading largely originate from rising demands for literacy, not from declining absolute levels of literacy. In a technological society, the demands for higher literacy are ever increasing, creating more grievous consequences for those who fall short.
The importance of this problem led the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to ask the National Academy of Sciences to establish a committee to examine the prevention of reading difficulties. Our committee was charged with conducting a study of the effectiveness of interventions for young children who are at risk of having problems learning to read. The goals of the project were three: (1) to comprehend a rich but diverse research base; (2) to translate the research findings into advice and guidance for parents, educators, publishers, and others.

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Matthew Effects in Reading: Some Consequences of Individual Differences in the Acquisition of Literacy

Stanovich, Keith E. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 22, 360-407.

A framework for conceptualizing the development of individual differences in reading ability is presented that synthesizes a great deal of the research literature. The framework places special emphasis on the effects of reading on cognitive development and on "bootstrapping" relationships involving reading. Of key importance are the concepts of reciprocal relationships – situations where the causal connection between reading ability and the efficiency of a cognitive process is bidirectional – and organism-environment correlation – the fact that differentially advantaged organisms are exposed to nonrandom distributions of environmental quality. Hypotheses are then advanced to explain how these mechanisms operate to create rich-get-richer and poor-get-poorer patterns of reading achievement. The framework is used to explicate some persisting problems in the literature on reading disability and to conceptualize remediation efforts in reading.

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Romance and Reality

Stanovich, Keith E. (1993). Romance and reality. The Reading Teacher, 47, 280-291.

Stanovich reviews significant findings from his research and speculates on differential responses to his work. He argues that we must let scientific evidence answer questions about the reading process.

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Additional articles

Text Matters in Learning to Read

Heibert, E.H. (1999). Text matters in learning to read (Distinguished Educators Series). Reading Teacher, 52, 552-566. Retrieved June 28, 2005, from CIERA Rep. No. 1-001.

From the CIERA Report:
This report examines texts based on high-frequency and phonetically regular words as well as the trade books of current literature-based reading programs. It considers each type of text by examining the task it poses for beginning readers. What does a beginning reader need to know about written English to be successful with a particular type of text? What will a beginning reader learn about text if consistently presented with a particular type of text? From a task perspective, consistent reading of particular types of texts can be likened to a diet where children eat particular food groups but not others (Fisher & Hiebert, 1990). Through experiences with particular texts, children may be acquiring some nutrients (or skills) and not others. This article addresses the diets provided to beginning readers by different instructional texts. To paraphrase Allington (1994), the three sections of the paper deal with (a) the texts used, (b) the texts had, and (c) the texts needed.

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Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70

Laub, John H., & Sampson, Robert J. (2003). Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

From Amazon.com:
This book analyzes newly collected data on crime and social development up to age 70 for 500 men who were remanded to reform school in the 1940s. Born in Boston in the late 1920s and early 1930s, these men were the subjects of the classic study Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck (1950). Updating their lives at the close of the twentieth century, and connecting their adult experiences to childhood, this book is arguably the longest longitudinal study of age, crime, and the life course to date. By uniting life-history narratives with rigorous data analysis, the authors shed new light on long-term trajectories of crime and current policies of crime control.

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Developmental Steps in Learning to Read: A Longitudinal Study in Kindergarten and First Grade

Morris, D., Bloodgood, J.W., Lomax, R.G., & Perney, J. (2003). Developmental steps in learning to read: A longitudinal study in kindergarten and first grade. Reading Research Quarterly, 38, 302-328.

This study tested a hypothesis about the growth of word knowledge in kindergarten/first-grade readers. It was predicted that (a) phoneme awareness develops in phases and (b) concept of word in text (ability to finger-point read) interacts with phoneme awareness in the development of early reading skill. Structural equation modeling showed that the longitudinal data fit the hypothesized model. The data also conformed to the predicted developmental sequence in a descriptive analysis of median performance change over time. The demonstrated relationship between phoneme awareness and concept of word in text, for its pedagogical implications alone, warrants further study.

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Progress in Understanding Reading: Scientific Foundations and New Frontiers

Stanovich, Keith E. (2000). Progress in understanding reading: Scientific foundations and new frontiers. New York: Guilford Press.

The last 25 years have seen tremendous advances in the study of psychological processes in reading. Our growing body of knowledge on the reading process and reading acquisition has applications to such important problems as the prevention of reading difficulties and the identification of effective instructional practices.

This volume summarizes the gains that have been made in key areas of reading research and provides authoritative insights on current controversies and debates. From one of the most accomplished and widely cited scholars in the field, the volume is divided into seven parts. Each part begins with a new introductory chapter presenting up-to-date findings on the topic at hand, followed by one or more classic papers from the author's exemplary research program.

Significant issues covered include phonological processes and context effects in reading, the "reading wars" and how they should be resolved, the meaning of the term "dyslexia," and the cognitive effects and benefits of reading.

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