COMMENTS ON THE READING PROGRAM

Isabel L. Beck

From the outset I would like to note that I view enhanced achievement of poor-prognosis children as the single most exciting outcome of research and development projects. And, since the literature is not replete with a huge number of such successes, we are required as researchers to consider very carefully the "why's" of each success reported. The preceding papers suggest that the investigators believe there are three major categories of explanations for the success of their project. The first category concerns classroom processes and classroom management, those rather content­free classroom characteristics that have been identified in the last several years by Berliner, Rosenshine, Stallings and others as factors contributing to effective classrooms. The second category believed to account for the success relates to the accommodations made to the children's cultural background. The third category bears upon the content, that is, the kind of reading instruction ptr st used with poor­prognosis readers.

I will comment very briefly on the first two ~ategories of success factors and focus most of my comments on the third category since this category is the one in which I have done the most research.

Regarding the classroom processes and management, Kim Sloat, in an article to follow, points out that many of the variables identified in recent work as components of effective classrooms are found in the

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KEEP project. KEEP classrooms are reported to have an academic environment structured by the teacher, a high rate of on-task behavior, rapid pacing, small steps, progress-monitored instruction, etc. I believe that these variables contribute to effective instruction, and that there will be enhanced achievement when they are present.

The second category, the cultural accommodations factors, is very intriguing. It is sensible. The cooperative environment in the independent work centers.is a much superior environment than the usual independent seat work situation would be for the kind of children participating in the KEEP projects. The use of the talk-story in the small group reading environment is impressive; I will comment on this area later.

Let us now turn to the third category which focuses on reading instruction. The KEEP investigators cite two comparisons: (1) KEEP students who received a phonics­oriented program, compared with KEEP students who received a comprehensive-oriented program, and (2) KEEP comprehension students compared with control students. In both comparisons there are some problems about determining what has produced the differences in achievement reported. The papers do not specify differences in environment, instructional materials, nor the actual reading programs used in these classrooms.

This information is important for the understanding of the implications of these program comparisons.

Recently, I completed a detailed analysis of some instructional dimensions among eight commercial reading programs, and noted large differences on dimensions I view as important. Very different kinds of task requirements existed in different programs under the same label and, conversely, there were similar things going on under different labels. Thus, a general recommendation I have for the KEEP investigators is that we must know, at a very detailed level of analysis, all aspects of reading instruction, both teacher-directed and independent, for both control and experimental classrooms, in order to allow us to understand what is being compared-let alone to attribute causality.

Let us now examine in some detail the KEEP comprehension lesson. From Kathy Au's paper and from a transcription of a model KEEP reading lesson, I have inferred that a story from a traditional basal program is used in the small-group teacher-directed portion of reading instruction. But the KEEP teachers do not stick to the guidance provided in the teacher's manuals. Rather, they have learned to manipulate their guidance on the basis of the five principles Au specified. I will now discuss these five principles in a way that attempts to make contact with both theory and practice. I believe some characteristics are more important than others.

The first characteristic is that two­thirds of the time is spent on the direct instruction of comprehension. The KEEP investigators have told us only in very global terms the kinds of behaviors and task responses they have designated as having a comprehension focus. Virtually all reasonable reading process models view reading as a highly-complex, interactive process; in general, reading comprehension is dependent on one's decoding accuracy, decoding fluency, vocabulary knowledge and previous experience with the concepts in the textual material. If a teacher asks a child to attempt to read something faster, it could be construed as an attempt to build decoding fluency- and hence an aspect of comprehension instruction. Or, if a teacher elicits the meaning of a word, it could indeed be viewed as building word knowledge-and hence comprehension instruction. While we have been told that asking questions, eliciting background knowledge, and relating text information with personal experiences are the foci of KEEP's view of comprehension instruction, I want to point out that it is not a simple theoretical, nor a simple methodological matter to determine what constitutes comprehension instruction. It is important, therefore, that the behaviors and task responses which are coded as comprehension are described. Furthermore, the two-thirds time allotment for comprehension is probably close to the proportion in the second and certainly in the third grade of most reading programs. Thus, the proportion in those grades may not be unusual. What may be unusual is the quality of the proportion.

The second characteristic of a KEEP directed reading lesson concerns the multiple participation structures, which resemble those in a Hawaiian talk-story. In the transcript I reviewed, the informality,

spontaneous turn-taking, and overlapping speech are clearly noticeable, as well as the teacher's acceptance of those behaviors.1 While traditional reading groups range from quite informal to rather formal, the kind of social interaction in the KEEP reading group is indeed different from others I have observed. The reading group interactional context and the rationale that the KEEP researchers present for the use of this kind of context is convincing. It is probably an important variable in accounting for the enhanced achievement reported in the KEEP evaluation, inasmuch as this familiar participatory context keeps the children attending to, rather than tuning out, the instruction at hand.

The third characteristic requires that the children's background knowledge of the text's topic be explored prior to the reading of the text itself. In virtually all reading programs, be they code or basal, children are required to interact independently with connected textual materials early in the process of learning to read. They are assigned to read connected discourse silently. At the very beginning, this may be a sentence or two, but within a short time period, the assigned silent reading becomes longer. It is while each child interacts with the text by himself that comprehension is constructed and the meaning of the text is represented in memory. The notion that the meaning of a text is conslrucltd as opposed to being tzlracltd from the textual material serves to point out that comprehension is an interactive process between previously-acquired knowledge and the content of what is read.

The importance of the role of previous knowledge on reading comprehension or the knowledge the reader brings to a text has long been acknowledged as a contributing factor. The recent work of cognitive psychologists suggests that once the decoding skills are automated the role of previous knowledge may indeed be among the most crucial

components of reading comprehension. Prior knowledge is seen as providing the framework that helps the reader to assimilate new information. For example, it provides guidelines for recognizing what is important about a given topic and it allows appropriate inferential elaboration to be made about the text. Therefore, the emphasis the KEEP people have placed on the role of background knowledge is indeed noteworthy and entirely justified.

There is evidencei that new concepts are better acquired through oral/aural presentation than through printed presentation until children are able to comprehend as efficiently by reading as they are by listening, which Sticht, et al., suggests occurs around the seventh or eighth grade.

The fourth characteristic concerns the range of questions asked, from the factual and literal to the interpretive and critical. Questioning students on what they have read is the most extensively-used form of comprehension guidance, and it has received much attention in the literature. The study of questions generally revolves around taxonomic notions of comprehension, i.e., that there are several levels of comprehension from low to high or simple to complex. Several such taxonomies of reading comprehension exist, which, though they may vary in the names and the numbers of levels of comprehension, are quite similar in overall design. Studies looking at the kinds of questions typically asked found that about half of the questions were of literal comprehension, requiring only recall or recognition of story facts. Generally, such studies recommend that more attention be given to higher levels of comprehension, i.e., questions eliciting evaluation and appreciation.

There are, however, problems with these taxonomies and the conclusions derived therefrom. An essential, yet unacknowledged idea in these taxonomies is that

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comprehension is developed by interaction with text information. Yet, questions from higher levels of the taxonomies, those considered to be "better" in the taxonomic view, do not necessarily require greater interaction with text information. For example, asking children to identify with a story character, such as, "How would you feel if you had been Goldilocks?," would be in Barrett's terms an Appreciation question, the highest category on the taxonomy. Yet a response to such a question probably requires less reliance on textual information than a question requesting a summary or a synthesis of story events, which would be included in a lower level of the taxonomy. Questions cannot be evaluated as "good" or "poor" for promoting comprehension unless we know the role of the information tapped by the question within a given text's framework. Hence, any compulsion to ask X-number of so­called higher-level questions for every text is of questionable validity.

We move now to the fifth characteristic of the KEEP reading lesson: Instruction is responsive, i.e., the teachers' questions are based on the preceding responses of the children. This feature is illustrated in the transcript I reviewed and I applaud it. The more typical approach is to rely on a set of pre­established questions that make little or no accommodation to the responses of the children. Carefully­designed, or pre-established questions should certainly be available. However, they should be used as a starting point and a returning point. In the interim, the responses the teacher obtains from the children must be used in promoting the discussion. The KEEP

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teacher in the transcript was skilled in doing this. The KEEP investigators should tell us how they develop this skill among their teachers.

The foregoing noted some problems in attributing causality of the better achievement of KEEP experimental classrooms as compared to their control classrooms and discussed the five characteristics of a KEEP directed reading lesson. I now turn to the comparison of the KEEP phonics program with the KEEP comprehension program. Roland Tharp noted that many of the same classroom characteristics present in the KEEP comprehension reading program were present during the KEEP phonics program, that is, time­structured by the teacher, an academic environment, high rate of responses, quick pace, etc. He argues that, therefore, the difference between the two programs' achievements is attributable to the phonics vs. the comprehension approaches. However, we have been told little about the phonics program in operation during those years. Hence, it is possible that a poor phonics program is being compared with a good comprehension program.

Since my own research, as well as the research literature, suggests that direct teaching of the code is helpful for poor-prognosis children, l have claimed that phonics and meaning should be viewed as mutually supportive and interdependent. Although the comprehension aspects of the KEEP reading program are positive, lam concerned about the lack of support for the direct instruction of phonics-a reduction of emphasis that may have derived from the use of a poor phonics program. Perhaps with an equal emphasis on both of these features the reading results might be even better.

In summary, here is an important project that has succeeded in enhancing the reading achievement of poor-prognosis children-that is an exciting achievement. However, the explanations for this success are not completely satisfactory. We must know much more about the programs in operation to determine whether we have been comparing a poor decoding with a good comprehension program or if there are other explanations for the increased reading scores.

footnotes

1McMillan, G., S.T. Boggs and K.H. Au. II Di$CDUF'Sf-llnnolaltd T ran$Criplion of a Madtl KEEP Strand-Gradt Rtading I.man, Kamehameha Early Education Program Technical Report No. 94; Honolulu: The Kamehameha Schools, 1979.

lSticht, T.G., L. Beck, R. Hauke, G. Kleiman and J. James. lluJing and Rti1ding: II Drotlapmtntal Mailtl; Alexandria, Virginia: Human Resources Research Organization, 1974.

lsabtl L Btrk is llssociatt Profnsor of EJucidian 1d lht Univmity of Piltsburgh and Co-Dimlar of lht RtRding ud Camprthtnsion Unit 111 tht l.tarning Rtsrarch and Dt11tlopmtnl Ctnltr. Dr, Btd:'$ wore has involvnl lht Rnalysis of inslruction1il praclius 11ssociattd with tht ltaching of dtcading 11nd comprthtnsion. lht disign and Jtt1tlopmtnl of rtRding Rnd vocabul11ry programs, anJ Stlltral trptrimtnls aimtd at tht Jrotlapmtnl of instructional procnlum th11t rtfl«t currtnl undtrsl11nding of camprthtnsion procmts.