Capin leads a team of 11 members that gathers 66 studies to observe reading teaching in real classrooms over the past 40 years. Most of the studies took place after 2000, including observations from nearly 1,800 teachers. These studies examine not only reading or English art classes, but also scientific and social studies. In some studies, researchers recorded hours of teaching and analytical transcripts.
These observations and recordings are just snapshots of what is happening in the classroom. Unfortunately, these observational studies cannot explain why teachers do not follow scientific evidence for reading comprehension, and Capin cannot determine whether new interests in reading science have recently improved comprehension teaching. But he shared some insights.
Very little time to read
The teacher spends limited time reading texts with children. “The obvious problem is that it is difficult to support reading comprehension if students are not reading,” Capin said.
The lack of reading is particularly evident in science classes, where teachers tend to prefer PowerPoint slides over text. More time is spent on reading reading or reading comprehension teaching in English classes, but that is still 23% of teaching time. Nevertheless, this is a huge improvement on the original 1978 study, which records that only 1% of the teaching time is spent on reading comprehension.
A separate survey of middle school teachers published in 2021 echoes these observational findings that are rarely read in classrooms. 70% of science teachers say they spend less than 6 minutes a day, or less than 30 minutes a week. Only 50% of social research teachers say they spend more time reading in class.
“Poor reading guidance can lead to poor reading guidance,” Capin said. “Teachers often report that their students have difficulty reading texts at a level.” Therefore, they avoid reading completely.
This seems to be capture 22. Teachers should not spend more time reading and teaching, because it is difficult for students to read. But without more time to read, students cannot improve.
Focus on decoding rather than understanding
Capin said his team found that reading guidance focused more on word reading skills, what educators call “decoding.” The researchers note that teachers are also building students’ knowledge, especially in science and social studies courses. However, this knowledge construction is mainly separated from allowing students to participate in text understanding.
“We took this approach, that reading comprehension teaching is defined by reading and understanding the text,” Capin said. This may sound obvious, but Capin said that some knowledge-building advocates criticized his analysis, saying that knowledge-building alone is beneficial for reading comprehension and that it doesn’t matter whether teachers use slides or actual texts.
Low-level guidance
Capin said evidence-based reading teaching is rare, according to recommendations from the Institute of Educational Sciences teaching guidelines.
Instead, researchers observed “low-level” reading instructions in which the teacher asked a question and the student answered with a word. Capin provides me with an example.
Teacher: We have just read about ancient Egypt. Who was the leader of ancient Egypt?
Class: Pharaoh!
The teacher continued to move forward.
A more complex approach might be to ask students about the Pharaoh’s goal, or why the ancient Egyptians built graves.
Teachers tend to confirm whether the students’ answers are “correct” or “wrong”. Capin said only 18% of teachers answered elaborating or developing students’ ideas.
Teachers tend to speak rather than encourage students to talk about their understanding or ideas, Kajin said. Teachers often read text aloud, ask a question, and then answer the question by themselves when the student does not answer correctly. He said having a discussion might help students better understand the text.
Teachers also often ask common understanding questions, such as “What are the key points?” without considering whether the question is suitable for reading the paragraph at hand. For example, in a novel, the author’s key points are not as important as determining the main character and its goals. Even evidence-based methods for improving reading comprehension may not be performed well.
Some teachers are having reading discussions in the classroom. Kajin said he visited a classroom like this a few weeks ago. But he believes that good understanding teaching is not commonplace because it is much more difficult than teaching basic reading skills. Teachers must fill gaps in student skills and background knowledge so that everyone can participate. Teacher training programs do not place enough emphasis on evidence-based approaches, and researchers are not good at introducing these methods to educators. At the same time, teachers face pressure to produce college entrance examination scores, and low-level understanding strategies can produce short-term results.
“I also don’t want to pretend that researchers know all this when teaching reading comprehension,” Capin said. “We are about 20 years behind in the science of reading comprehension teaching compared to basic reading skills.”
Interest in reading science has been exploding across the country over the past five years, especially since the podcast “Selling Stories”, highlighting the need for more pronunciation teaching. Hopefully we don’t have to wait another 50 years to get better.
