Reading Specialists’ Perceptions and Pedagogical Practices towards Struggling Readers

Abstract

Though concentrated efforts have focused on scientifically based instructional skills compulsory for reading development, they have failed to address the relationship between reading attitude and reading performance. Literacy experts have widely acknowledged the importance of ongoing efforts towards instilling and maintaining a positive attitude and motivation for reading, especially as it pertains to struggling readers. Investigators sought to examine reading specialists' perspectives of struggling readers' attitudes towards reading and their teaching practices used to bolster students' attitudes and abilities to read. This case study investigation involved 10 reading specialists who reported explicit instruction of both decoding and comprehension skills was the most common contributor to students' negative attitudes about reading. Classroom teachers can combat this trend by implementing an array of reading strategies and providing more student-centered interventions from early grades through junior high school.

Impact of Strategies-based Instruction on Inferential, Intrapersonal, and Literacy Skills Development : A Longitudinal Study

“…The hypothesis refers to the total amount of cognitive load as the determining factor in successful understanding of the information; when working memory has to process too much information, it leads to poor comprehension and obstructs learning. As a solution, ME hypothesis advocates a meaningful learning approach, where the new information is mentally organized into a coherent cognitive structure and integrated with the relevant existing knowledge and, as a result, a mental model which allows for problem solving and critical thinking is constructed (Mayer & Moreno, 2003;Williams & Ortlieb, 2014). Meaningful learning requires that the learners, working within a rigorously limited cognitive capacity, engage in substantial cognitive processing during learning (Bradford, 2011).…”