Constructions of intellectual demand in reading comprehension contexts across the curriculum in the middle and upper primary years

Constructions of intellectual demand in reading comprehension contexts across the curriculum in the middle and upper primary years

The teaching of reading has been contested over decades through what is known as the Reading Wars, with the prominent debates between proponents of phonics-first (bottom up) or meaning-first (top down) approaches. These debates have focused primarily on beginning reading and how children learn to read, with models such as the Simple View of Reading and the Reading Rope developed to represent the components that contribute to reading comprehension; the goal of all reading activity. Significantly less focus has been on the teaching of reading in the middle years or reading comprehension across disciplinary areas in the primary years. The Simple View of Reading and the Reading Rope signify only a partial representation of the complexities involved in reading comprehension across the contexts of reading within the disciplinary literacies of the middle years. This thesis examines the complexities of reading comprehension in the middle and upper primary years and advocates for explicit, discipline-specific reading instruction in the middle years, through dialogicallyrich, democratic learning environments. This qualitative study draws on Collaborative Ethnography and Classroom Discourse Analysis to examine constructions of intellectual demand in reading comprehension contexts across the curriculum in the middle years, through case studies of reading comprehension instruction in English, Studies of Society and the Environment (traditionally known as the Social Studies) and Mathematics in three middle/upper primary classrooms. The voices of teachers and students are amplified in this study through the three case studies that co-construct understandings of what constitutes intellectual demand in reading comprehension contexts across the curriculum in the middle years. As a result of this research, models representing the complexities of reading comprehension across the curriculum in the middle years are proposed to signify ‘what counts as reading comprehension’ in these contexts.

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