Inquisitor, evaluator or facilitator? teachers’ use of instructional format during naturally occurring comprehension strategies instruction

Abstract

Comprehension instruction, or the lack of it, has been given considerable attention by reading researchers, policy makers, and teacher educators during the last 30 years (Pearson 2009). Researchers have made significant progress in identifying and addressing several important components and processes involved in skilled text comprehension, with active and flexible strategic processing described as a hallmark of expert reading within an academic domain (Pressley and Afflerbach 1995; Strømsø et al. 2003). Thus, a substantial amount of research effort has been put into instructional research, making it possible to give research-based recommendations on what comprehension instruction should look like in the classroom (Dewitz et al. 2009). Because the majority of the instructional research is conducted in elementary and middle-grade classrooms, less is known about comprehension instruction, particularly about instruction in comprehension strategies, as it is regularly offered adolescents in secondary schools (Conley 2009).