The purposes of this conference panel were to suggest ways of bringing basic and applied research on reading comprehension into an interaction that would enhance both theory and practice, and to develop an approach to the design and study of instructional practice that would maximize the relevance of instructional research for both the public and the education profession. This panel report consists of outlines of three approaches to research and development in reading comprehension. These approaches involve instructional implications of current theories on language comprehension, instructional practice as the source of instructional design and theoretical model building, and psychological analysis of reading comprehension tasks. (JM)