Reading, understanding and learning in secondary education: Approaches and perspectives

Abstract

In school, learning from texts is essential for achieving students' real inclusion. The Argentine educational system is described in the secondary level of education along with the linguistic-cognitive challenges in relation to the learning this context supposes. Likewise, it is conceptualized the process by which students learn from subject matter-specific texts that become increasingly more complex as they advance through their academic career. Different theoretical perspectives are developed for this purpose. First, we will present the findings of cognitive psycholinguistics that have made it possible to describe the requirements and processes involved in reading and comprehending texts. Then, a cultural-historical psychology approach is taken up, repositioning speechinteractive processes and cultural machanisms that mediate the literacy process. Finally, we will list the core academic language skills and disciplinary literacy constructs that, from a functional-cognitive viewpoint, contribute to the understanding of the linguistic demands implied in an academic context.