Does Strategy Instruction Work?

I recently read an article in Ed. Week that troubled me, so I wrote a response to the editor. Unfortunately, my response was too long.... I needed to shorten it for Ed. Week but I include my full ideas here. Have any of you tried strategies that worked with adolescents? Is there one that works particularly well? Please comment...

A Response to E.D. Hirch: Reading –Comprehension Skills? What Are They Really?
In his article, Reading Comprehension Skills? What Are They Really? (Education Week, April 26, 2006) E.D. Hirsch argues that strategy instruction is not as effective in improving reading comprehension as building broad background knowledge. While I agree with him on two points, that: a)building background knowledge about a wide variety of topics helps students learn from reading and, b) practicing wide and varied reading improves reading comprehension, I disagree with his argument that teaching comprehension strategies is ineffective.

As always, it is the quality of instruction that matters, but I would like to present an alternate view of the effectiveness of advanced reading comprehension strategies for complex reading and older readers. Mr. Hirsch began his article by including an excerpt from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. He illustrated the ineffectiveness of using broad comprehension strategies commonly taught in elementary school (e.g., predicting, clarifying, finding the main idea, summarizing, questioning the author) on this passage. However, by focusing only on basic comprehension strategies, Mr. Hirsch does not acknowledge that a high school or college student, whose strategy instruction has included analyzing or marking-up text, using grammatical clues, connecting with information he or she already knows, and utilizing text structure to identify an author’s point, may be able to use comprehension strategies to understand this complex text.

Further, if prior to the excerpt, students had known that the text was from a philosopher, they would have been able to apply what they know about the text structures philosopher’s use. If they had known that the author was Kant, they might have thought about if they knew anything about him and what message he might be trying to get across. These are advanced comprehension strategies that we must teach our adolescents to know and use. (See Schoenback, Greenleaf, Cziko, & Hurwitz, 1999 and Santa, 2006).

While Mr. Hirsch is correct in saying that the more students know, the more they will understand, his argument that strategy instruction is not effective is erroneous in our current society. Today’s adolescents have access to a wider array of information than any previous generation. In addition to living in Thomas Friedman’s “flat” world where information from another country is a phone call or text message away, they also have the capacity to make their own information. My thirteen year old can listen to a podcast created by other thirteen year olds in her class. She is emotionally connected to this information because she knows and cares about the people producing this information. She is less emotionally connected to reading Pride and Prejudice although vocabulary and literary art of this work will give her rich literary information. Therefore, as teachers, it is our responsibility to understand our students and their world.

We cannot control the amount or type of information that students bring to a text. However, we can teach them tools and strategies to make meaning of any type of text that they encounter. We can use rich and varied literature and informational texts to teach these lessons, and build knowledge as we teach students how to make meaning. I would agree with Mr. Hirsch that we must use the finest literature and broadest array of informational text to teach strategies. In addition, we need to teach students to evaluate the information they are reading. The gatekeepers of information such as: newspapers, major networks, bookstores, libraries and even schools, no longer have control of the world that adolescents have access to, if they ever did. Therefore, we must also teach students how to read text critically and always evaluate the source. For that reason, strategies like questionning an author (Beck, McKeown, Hamilton, & Kucan, 1997) and the reciprocal teaching method where students clarify their confusions and use each other and outside resources to make meaning of text (Palinscar and Brown, 1984), are essential to improving the literacy of our culture. I am grateful that through his work, Mr. Hirsch has identified information that is important for citizens in our culture to know. Yet, to help them learn that information, we have to teach them strategies to help think as they read, so they will learn. Some students would like to read without thinking, as one young man at my school said, “I don’t want to think when I read, I just want to read the words.”

Comprehension strategies keep students thinking as they read. It provides opportunities for more skilled readers to make their thinking visible, so students can learn the flexible thinking skills they need as they work to make meaning of the complex texts in their world. Through reading strategies, students are empowered to interact with fine literature and important informational text so that they can develop the knowledge they need to succeed in today’s world.

References:
Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., Hamilton, R.L.,& Kucan, L. (1997). Questioning the Author: An Approach for Enhancing Student Engagement with Text. Newark,DE: International Reading Association.
Friedman, T. (2005). The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. NY, NY: Farrar, Strauss& Giroux.
Palincsar, A.S. & Brown, A. L. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension fostering and comprehension monitoring activities. Cognition and Instruction, 1, 117-175.
Santa, C. M. (2006) A vision for adolescent literacy: Ours or theirs? Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. 49:6, 466-476
Schoenback, R. Greenleaf, C. Cziko, C. Hurwitz, L. (1999). Reading for Understanding: A Guide to Improving Middle and High School Classrooms. SanFrancisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.