Are We Teaching Reading Comprehension?

Part I

Tim Shanahan

Recently, Philip Capin and his colleagues published a valuable study in Scientific Studies of Reading. This research combined data from 66 observational studies of reading. Capin and company found that 23% of reading instruction was devoted to reading comprehension, and that this amount has increased since 2000. However, they also identified some unfortunate trends.

In the 1970s, Dolores Durkin shocked the reading world when she reported the results of her landmark observational study. She revealed an appalling paucity of comprehension teaching. Her team observed almost 75 hours of reading instruction in upper elementary classrooms but only found about 20 minutes of comprehension teaching.

Some of this scarcity may be attributed to narrow definitions – or more accurately to differing conceptions as to what it means to teach comprehension. This is an issue that persists with the new study, even though it is open to a more extensive buffet of teaching moves.

Prior to the 1970s, research on the teaching of reading comprehension was almost non-existent. The few existing comprehension studies focused on reading drills aimed at teaching words or increasing reading speed. It, seemingly, never occurred to the research community that it may be possible to directly teach reading comprehension.

Of course, reading programs did not ignore the issue. Basal readers usually offered “guided reading” or “directed reading” lessons which engaged groups of students in practicing their comprehension. Students read short selections – almost always stories – that were written specifically for the purpose of teaching. Each story repeated words that had appeared earlier and introduced a few additional words, too. Teachers would teach these new words prior to the reading to ensure high comprehension. 

Additionally, relevant background information was usually presented, and teachers asked certain types of questions after portions of the texts were read. These questions allowed teachers to evaluate comprehension and were thought to provide students with valuable practice in engaging in certain kinds of productive thinking (e.g., main idea questions, drawing conclusions questions).

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