STRATEGIC AND ENGAGED READERS
Strategic readers are readers who have and utilize strategies at hand to navigate and make sense of text, even when the text is challenging or confusing; they utilize “the strategies and processes of good readers” (Duke & Pearson, 2002, p. 206). For example, such readers might predict, question, visualize (or use visual representations of text), summarize, or utilize their knowledge of text structure. Buehl (2014) describes processes such as inferring, determining importance, and synthesizing. I might add to these ideas I have used in my teaching: chunking information, re-reading in large and small chunks, personalized annotation strategies, and control of habits surrounding reading. In contrast to this image of a reader with a powerful and diverse toolkit to be used while making meaning from text, a less strategic reader may lack such tools and struggle to comprehend a text. I would situate each of these strategies within an awareness of one’s own comprehension; strategic readers are attentive to their own reading processes, and utilize strategies as needed to help them make sense of texts.
Across readings, particularly in Swan’s (2003) chapter, strategic reading overlaps with conceptions of engagement and motivation. It is easier to employ a strategy and work through challenges in reading when we are interested in the topic and motivated to learn more. Swan emphasizes the multifaceted aspect of engagement when she describes engaged reading as “the dynamic, recurrent process of combining motivation, strategies for reading and learning, social interaction, and knowledge about a topic” (2003, p. 1). She identifies numerous aspects of engaged reading: active learning, goal setting, asking questions, reading for information, finding answers, gaining information from others, sharing information, and using strategies, and ties engagement to both motivation and the search for conceptual knowledge, highlighting the ways in which teachers, by supporting students in their own learning goals, can help foster engaged readers.
Certainly, teachers and librarians can create environments and experiences that support engaged reading. To the extent that success in reading comprehension and self-efficacy support engaged reading, each of the pedagogies described in Duke and Pearson’s (2002) chapter: transactional reading strategies, reciprocal instruction, and questioning the author, could support engaged reading. Moreover, employing aspects of the CORI framework such as autonomy support, strategy instruction, and interesting texts, could work in overlapping ways to foster engaged reading and create a culture of engaged reading in classrooms.
Under the 3rd question heading, I have included more detailed questions and discussions about how we define both strategic and engaged reading.
CONNECTIONS
Taken together, there seems to be a common focus in discussions on reading comprehension on metacognition and control: the ability to maintain awareness of one’s own reading comprehension and take action (by employing strategies) to be able to comprehend. Moreover, while we might discuss engagement and strategic reading separately, they appear to overlap in powerful ways: it would be difficult to function as an engaged reader without the ability to comprehend text, and the teaching of strategic reading could certainly support students’ self-efficacy (Swan, 2003). This seems particularly important given the extent to which success and engagement in any learning endeavor entail an overlap between the learner’s identity and the identities that are recognized by the learning community (Gee, 2004). In considering identity in relation to engaged reading, we might ask to what extent students feel that their identities are valued and respected by the teacher, the curriculum, and the school. Feeling confident and competent (Swan, 2003) could certainly play a role here. For example, employing the types of instructional practices described in Duke and Pearson’s (2002) chapter could help support readers in developing the strategies needed to comprehend text, which could help readers feel that they place in the endeavors of the classroom. Perhaps more directly, the support for student choice, interests, and autonomy that are so important to pedagogies like the CORI framework (Swan, 2003) could create space for students’ identities and interests to drive the curriculum.
In my own classroom, I have mixed strategies pulled from research-based practitioner texts (e.g., Bomer, 2011) with instruction built on what I have observed my students doing. In the context of a reading workshop in which students’ interests and text choices drove their reading, I would lead conferences and mini-lessons focused on reading strategies. The changes I observed in my students’ reading through these pedagogies aligns with the broad conclusion of Duke and Pearson (2002): “we can help students acquire the strategies and processes of good readers...this improves their overall comprehension of text” (p. 206). As I have shifted my practice more towards comprehension and strategic reading, I have seen what I might almost be inclined to call miracles in students’ reading as they learned to slow down, monitor their awareness, and employ specific strategies to support their comprehension. At the same time, I still feel like I’m just beginning in my journey to understand a topic as complex as the ways in which students make meaning from the world.
IMPLICATIONS/QUESTIONS/CRITIQUES
What implications do these ideas have for your work in education?
While I have experience incorporating these types of pedagogies in my own classroom, my current roles with my local school district and university lead me to wonder about the best ways for supporting strategic and engaged reading while working with inservice and preservice teachers. There is a great deal of overlap between the CORI framework and two of our district’s current emphases: problem/project-based learning, which incorporates many of the same principles, and literacy across the school day (an emphasis on reading and comprehension instruction across subject areas). I work with a team of ELA and social studies educators on an ongoing PD series focused on incorporating reading and writing across disciplines; in this respect, there are places in my work to explicitly incorporate many of the ideas and texts I am learning about/with into courses and conversations with teachers. (In fact, I’ve been kicking myself for just now getting to some of these pieces that I want to share with teachers because I really would have loved to have already shared them!) Looking forward, I am interested in looking into the research not just on these pedagogies themselves, but on teachers’ experiences shifting their practice and learning new instructional paradigms, and the ways in which teacher educators have incorporated these ideas in classroom settings.
What questions do you have?
While I am passionately in support of the concepts and pedagogies described across these readings, I do have a number of questions I am interested in exploring, small itches that are highlighting for me places that I might be interested in diving into more research:
Do we need more sub-categories when we talk about reading comprehension strategies?
I wonder about the ways in which we think about the differences between some of the reading comprehension strategies described across articles. Some focus on features of texts themselves, while others involve activating mental actions or simply being aware of comprehension and attention while reading, while others emphasize physical activities or artifacts students could use to assist their comprehension. Should we consider all of these as reading comprehension strategies or should we endeavor to more specific categories as well? I’m imagining something like mental actions, collaborative activities, knowledge of text features, etc.
On the other hand, the overlap between these categories is important to recognize: perhaps the mix of activities categorized as comprehension strategies stems from the what the RAND report (2002) has categorized as the interaction between reader, text, and activity. Reading comprehension is such a complex and multifaceted activity that it is perhaps best to use one umbrella term. Similarly, if reading comprehension “relies on mental construction that assimilates what is on the page with what is already known” (Buehl, 2014, p. 7), then reading strategies would inherently involve actions across categories. In both descriptions (RAND and Buehl), comprehension comes from the interaction between different aspects of the reading situation, and so comprehension strategies might include several different kinds of activity.
Should we and/or how can we add nuance to our image of engaged reading/readers?
I’ve been thinking a lot about engagement over the last few months, particularly the extent to which we don’t always define it as well as we could. I recently read a collection of articles about multimodal writing, and while over twenty studies mentioned engagement as a key aspect in the classrooms they described, none gave definitions or were very clear about what they meant by the term. As I read Swan’s (2003) chapter, I appreciated the specificity with which she described engaged ready. At the same time, I had some questions about the ways in which she defined engaged reading and intrinsic motivation. While I am completely in agreement with the broad picture she paints of how teaching, reading, and learning can function in classrooms, I still feel that there is a lot more to explore. She lists numerous motivational features of engaged readers:
They read because it is fun and interesting
They read to learn something new
They read to find answers about a topic
They are reading for the sake of learning
They are reading just to read
They are reading for their own purposes
They participate in school activities
They put forth the effort to do a good job
They stick with a project until it is completed
This collection of descriptions paints an image of an engaged reader, but I wonder about readers who do not fit all of these descriptors or who may be engaged readers in ways that are not reflected in school settings. Readers may have multiple purposes for reading: some may engage in reading “for its own sake” (Swan, 2003, p. 5), while others may read because they want to bake the perfect cookie or beat the boss of the level on a Nintendo game, even if they don’t read just for the sake of reading. While these readers have differing purposes, I would see them both as engaged. While I understand the picture Swan paints and realize that it is a general image of what engaged reading could look like in a classroom, her elaboration on the concept still raised questions for me about how teachers can conceptualize engaged reading, particularly given the diversity of their students and the increasing diversity of texts and purposes for reading. Should we consider engaged reading as having multiple variants? And how is or should our ideas about engagement change as the way we think about classrooms changes (Ivey & Johnston, 2013)? I’m excited to continue exploring this topic this semester, both as it applies to offline and online reading.
Reading with multimodal texts
Lastly, I want to touch on the opening chapters of Denise Johnson’s (2014) text, even as her larger focus is on digital reading. He discussion of cueing systems across different textual forms raised questions for me about about how the research on reading comprehension applies to multimodal texts, even if they are analogue ones. How, for example, does the research described in Duke and Pearson’s (2002) report apply to the reading of picture books or graphic novels? Do we need to identify different strategies to support readers of these texts or do the same processes apply? What research has been done on reading comprehension in (offline) texts that include a mix of communicative forms? Of course, this question only becomes more important when we add digital texts in to the mix, but I’m curious about it even with offline reading.
Additional References
Bomer, R. (2011) Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms. Heinemann,
Portsmouth, NH.
Gee, J.P. (2004), Situated Language and Learning: A critique of Traditional Schooling,
Routledge, London, UK.
Ivey, G. & Johnston, P. H. .(2013). Engagement With Young Adult Literature: Outcomes and
Processes. Reading Research Quarterly, 48(3), 255–275.
