This article engages with recent policy on reading comprehension. It argues that the construct of inference has been treated as a single entity despite research and literature to the contrary, and this is perpetuated in the National Curriculum for 2014. It explores the limitations of conceptualising inference as a unitary construct and…

This study considers reading comprehension as a dialogic transaction of making meaning from text. The concept of text and reading is taken to include the visual and multimodal as well as written forms. Case studies of children discussing texts are analysed to explore how children engage in inter-mental and intra-mental processes of reading,…

After briefly reviewing how reading is conceptualised in the "Progress in International Reading Literacy Study" and the English National Curriculum, this article examines two unofficial reading activities in a class of 10-11-year-olds' to see how far these activities match up with the official definitions of reading, or whether they…

This qualitative case study explored the relationship between comprehension strategies and graphic novels in one Grade 4 classroom, utilising children as informants. The primary research questions related to children's applications of metacognitive reading comprehension strategies as well as the potential for graphic novels to support the…

Teachers of reading in secondary schools know how important it is for low-attaining readers to read whole narratives but time to do this in a crowded curriculum is limited and progress is more easily measured through reading smaller parts of texts. This paper reports on a longitudinal critical action research project in which three English…

Standard assessment tests have been part of the literacy practice in English primary schools for many years. While educators point to the dangers of "teaching to the test," politicians continue to believe that the best way of achieving accountability is by retaining league tables of these test results. Currently the curriculum is too readily…

This research examines the nature of comprehended meanings that do not match those of the author. These meanings were generated by two groups of fourth graders after reading a narrative or expository text. Readers read their respective texts aloud, followed by a recall and probes. Reading behaviours were examined to establish that processing…

Despite a push to develop high levels of active engagement in learning by helping students reflect, refine and extend their ideas through effective questioning strategies, evidence suggests that teacher-dominated interaction patterns permeate classroom instruction. This Initiate, Respond and Evaluate process leads students to maintain a passive…

This article investigates issues surrounding the adoption of the "simple view" of reading. While this theory of the reading process has recently been espoused as the official view of early reading instruction in England, a recent Irish study, discussed in this article, indicated that this view of reading is also widespread among Irish teachers.…

Previous experimental studies have indicated that young people's text comprehension and summarisation skills can be improved by techniques based on text concept mapping (TCM). However, these studies have done little to elucidate a practical pedagogy that can make the techniques adoptable within the context of typical secondary school classrooms.…

With the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy, England's primary school teachers were asked to replace "listening to children read"--a practice deeply embedded in UK pedagogy--with guided reading, a practice focused on interpretive and critical comprehension rather than accuracy and fluency. This small-scale research project addresses…

We review the Simple View of Reading (SVR) model and examine its nature, applicability and validity. We describe the SVR as an abstract framework for understanding the relationship between global linguistic comprehension and word-reading abilities in reading comprehension (RC). We argue that the SVR is neither a full theory of reading nor a…

Over the past decade in the United States, levelled texts, or "little books" with finely graduated levelling of text difficulty, have regained their status as a literacy staple for beginning readers. Despite their resurgence, questions remain regarding the reliability and quality of these books. In this study, we conducted a detailed analysis of…

This article is written in response to the article published in issue 39.3 of this journal, in November 2005, on the nature of the Key Stage 2 National Curriculum reading tests: "Examining England's National Curriculum assessments: an analysis of the KS2 reading test questions" by Anne Kispal of the National Foundation for Educational Research.…