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Paradigm Shift:
Teachers Scaffolding Student Comprehension Interactions
Ann M. Courtney, Frederick B. King, Joan Y. Pedro
Early studies of classroom practices note the lack of time and commitment to teaching comprehension strategies in the United States (Durkin, 1978). Despite a quarter of a century of research on comprehension, researchers continue to document little comprehension instruction in classrooms (Pressley, Wharton-McDonald, Mistretla-Hampton, & Echevarria, 1998a). In fact, recent research (Dole, 2000; Pressley, 2000) suggests that teachers are not aware of the steps necessary to ensure rigorous, strategic reading in classrooms.
In the United States the National Reading Panel in its RAND Report (2002) suggested a vision for proficient readers who are capable of (a) acquiring new knowledge and understanding new concepts, (b) applying textual information appropriately, and (c) being engaged in the reading process and reflecting on what is being read. The RAND Reading Study Group (RRSG) defined reading comprehension as the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement. This process consists of three elements: (a) the reader who brings his/her cognitive capabilities, motivation, and knowledge; (b) the text which consists of the surface code as well as mental models; and (c) the activity of decoding higher levels of text by processing and self-monitoring for comprehension. The National Reading Panel challenged educators to rethink comprehension instruction and recognized and confirmed the complexity of comprehension processes (RAND, 2002).
El-Dinary, Pressley, and Schuder (1992) argued that strategy instruction was too far removed from teachers' classroom practices and beliefs about comprehension instruction and therefore had no impact on classroom instruction. Pressley et al. (1998a) suggested that without a paradigm shift in teacher thinking about reading and comprehension, classroom teachers would remain unable to change their classroom practice. Thomas Kuhn (1962) defined a paradigm shift as a revolution where one conceptual world view is replaced by another. Teachers have to change from one way of thinking to a different way of thinking and organizing their teaching.
Informed by the failure of past research to provide consistent evidence that teachers have made a paradigm shift (Pressley et al., 1998a) in explicitly teaching multiple comprehension strategies, we describe the first-year results of a three-year longitudinal study in an inter-district elementary magnet school. The current study documents two district magnet school teachers' paradigm shifts in attempting to develop metacognitive awareness in first and fourth graders. Through direct, explicit instruction these two teachers worked to increase student knowledge and conscious awareness of what, how, where, and when to apply strategies in order to regulate comprehension.
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Teachers Scaffolding Student Comprehension Interactions