IRA Outstanding Dissertation Award for 2006
Anything But Lazy: New Understandings About Struggling Readers, Teaching, and Text

Leigh A. Hall

According to the recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP; 2004, 2005) reading exam, struggling adolescent readers make up a significant portion of the U.S. school population. While they may have regular comprehension difficulties, adolescents are often expected to read textbooks in order to learn specific content in their math, science, and social studies classes (Bulgren & Scanlon, 1998). Researchers have considered ways teachers can provide instruction to improve students' comprehension of expository text (Guastello, Beasley, & Sinatra, 2000; Spence, Yore, & Williams, 1999). However, little attention has been given to the ways in which individual teachers and students make decisions about how to work with text and one another. Researchers have suggested that (a) struggling readers are likely to avoid reading or behave helplessly with text (Brozo, 1991; Johnston & Winograd, 1985) and (b) content area teachers may not provide students with reading instruction and thus may ignore the needs of struggling readers (Hall, 2005).

The present yearlong case study was framed by theories of sociocognition (Ruddell & Unrau, 2004) and transaction (Dewey & Bentley, 1949). Theories on sociocognition posit that how students and teachers approach text will be influenced by their individual cognitive abilities as well as the social and cultural contexts of the classroom (Ruddell & Unrau). A transactional lens (Dewey & Bentley) acknowledges that students and teachers cannot be separated from their school context. The factors that influence their observed behaviors can be static or may change over time. In order to understand these factors, I examined the following questions:

1. How does a middle school struggling reader in (a) a sixth-grade social studies class, (b) a seventh-grade mathematics class, and (c) an eighth-grade science class transact with the reading task demands of his or her respective classroom?

2. How does each student's teacher transact with the student's reading/task challenges?

I used a descriptive, case-study approach (Yin, 2003). I conducted an average of 50 visits, each lasting 50 minutes, per classroom over one academic year. Field notes were taken at each observation. Participants completed a questionnaire at the beginning of the study and were interviewed at the beginning, middle, and end of the data-collection period. Informal comprehension assessments (Reading and Language Inventory, 4th ed., 2002; Analytical Reading Inventory, 7th ed., 2003) were administered to students in October, January, and May as a way to determine their growth, or lack of, as readers in the content area in which they were being studied. Students were also asked to read passages and answer questions from their classroom text at each assessment period. The task was modeled after the assessments designed by Woods and Moe (2003).

Each student/teacher case was analyzed separately. I followed similar procedures for analyzing each case. Data analysis procedures followed methods recommended by Miles and Huberman (1994). First, I identified initial themes in the data. Next, I generated pattern codes as a way to group the themes. I identified the ways in which each student transacted with the reading task demands of the classroom and how the teachers worked with/responded to the students around issues of reading and comprehension.

Conclusions

The ways in which each student transacted with the reading task demands of his or her classroom were influenced by (a) his or her perception of his or her abilities as a reader, (b) how he or she wanted to be seen as a reader, and (c) his or her desire to comprehend and learn from text. Students explained that they tried to find ways to comprehend and learn from text. They said, however, that some of the behaviors their teachers expected them to engage in, such as applying comprehension strategies, could reveal their weaknesses as readers to other students. Therefore, students explained, they attempted to comprehend though other means, which included (a) listening to discussions about text, (b) asking friends for assistance, and (c) watching how others gained information.