New Directions in Research
A Transactional Perspective on Reading Difficulties and Response to Intervention

John E. McEneaney, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan

Mary K. Lose, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan

Robert M. Schwartz, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan

About the authors

A Response to Intervention (RTI) model proposes identification of students with reading difficulties on the basis of a series of progressively more intensive instructional interventions over extended periods of time. Learners with serious reading difficulties are those whose difficulties are not resolved by the interventions. Three advantages of an RTI approach include that children need not wait to fail (Vaughn & Fuchs, 2003) to be eligible for support, RTI avoids problems associated with process-deficit and discrepancy models, and RTI is instructionally grounded, enhancing the ecological validity of the diagnostic process and more clearly grounding it in subsequent instruction. But RTI is not without detractors (e.g., Gerber, 2003; Scruggs & Mastropieri, 2003). We too have reservations about its assumptions related to reading difficulties, because these assumptions have implications for the ways we conduct and interpret research responding to the needs of struggling readers.

Although literacy educators and special educators draw on common historical roots, even in the mid-1970s when special educators settled on a working definition for reading disabilities based on factors internal to readers, literacy educators had begun to move toward a broader transactional perspective that views reading difficulties as situated in variable social and cognitive contexts. Whereas traditional definitions adopted by special educators locate disabilities within readers, literacy educators more commonly view disabilities within broader social and instructional contexts where reading occurs. Ultimately, although we view RTI as a generally positive step toward a more transactional perspective, it is our view that many RTI approaches do not go far enough in acknowledging chronic problems in our efforts to define and to respond to severe reading difficulties. RTI approaches may even undermine rather than support the literacy learning of students.

To explain our perspective, this essay consists of four parts. In the first part we consider views of deficit, difference, and variability that have played important roles in the thinking of both special educators and literacy educators during the previous 30 years. In the second part, we explore pedagogical implications of a natural-variability model of reading that is central to our thinking. In the third part, we explore what a perspective based on natural variability suggests about teacher education and broader issues related to implementing RTI. The final section of the essay presents conclusions and highlights some connecting themes across the four articles that make up this NDR collection.

Conceptualizing reading difficulties: Deficit, difference, and variability

In this section we review categorical, discrepancy, and transactional views of reading difficulties. Categorical and discrepancy views have long histories as conceptions of reading difficulties (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998), often founded on cognitive theories of knowledge and learning (e.g., Anderson, 1985; Haugeland, 1981; Just & Carpenter, 1987). A transactional view draws on work in situated cognition (Anderson, 2003; Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Clancey, 1997), sociocultural theories of literacy (Gee, 2001; Jiménez, 2000), and learning theory with a more instructional focus (Clay, 2001; Rosenblatt, 1994). We note as well that our review of these conceptualizations of reading difficulty is not purely descriptive, because we make evaluative judgments about the adequacy of these approaches both in accounting for empirical research and in supporting instructional practices. Ultimately we conclude that a transactional view more consistently meets our needs both as researchers and as instructional practitioners.