In the late 1970s, Dolores Durkin, a literacy researcher, conducted a small but influential study on reading comprehension instruction practices in the United States. She examined English language arts and social studies classes for third through sixth graders, and she found that less than 1% of the teachers’ instructional time was devoted to learning how to understand text.
Durkin defined comprehension instruction as when the teacher actively did or said something to help students learn the meaning of the material. What she observed, though, was mostly comprehension assessments, where, after the children read, the teacher would ask the entire class some questions about a few facts in the book.
A recently published study in the journal Scientific Studies of Reading, led by Phil Capin of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, assessed how much progress has been made in reading comprehension instruction since Durkin’s study. The team reviewed 66 existing observational studies of instruction in K–12 schools between 1980 and 2023.
The researchers acknowledge that educators have acquired significant knowledge over that time period about how to develop children’s reading for understanding, but they wanted to understand how much of that knowledge, especially research-based practices, is being used in K–12 schools.
In their review, they found three things:
- While instruction time has increased since Durkin’s original study, it’s still low, with an average of only 23% of instructional time devoted to comprehension during reading/language arts.
2. Students had limited time and opportunities to engage with the texts. The researchers believe that reduced time “spent on text reading and the length of texts read may be potential barriers to the frequency of reading comprehension instruction.”[1]
3. Teachers didn’t fully support reading comprehension strategies. When there were conversations about texts in classrooms, they were usually “teacher-led and teacher-dominated.”
As a result, the researchers concluded that, “a substantial gap persists between the reading comprehension practices identified as research-based and those observed in typical practice,” and, as a result, they call for “renewed efforts to prioritize reading comprehension instruction in policy and practice.”[1]
The researchers propose that reading comprehension support should be available to students throughout the school day and across the curriculum: “The Common Core state standards specify that reading comprehension is an important goal in English language arts instruction, but it’s also an important goal in social studies, in science, and in math, particularly as it relates to word problems.”[1]
The paper recommends the following strategies to improve student reading comprehension:
- Developing word meaning knowledge, which includes “explicit vocabulary instruction that provides repeated exposure to new words in varied contexts,” as well as “multiple opportunities to practice using new vocabulary while reading, writing and speaking.”
- Developing background and general knowledge.
- Engaging students in text-based collaborative learning, where students engage with each other in small groups to discuss a text and learn with their peers.
- Engaging students in high-quality discussions of complex text, which immerses students “in literal and inferential questions that are relevant, interesting, and engaging.”
Capin is currently collaborating with teachers to co-develop solutions that will improve reading comprehension instruction in an attempt to bridge the gap between research and practice.
Citation:
[1] Ross, Elizabeth M. (March 7, 2025). “How Far Have We Come in Supporting Children’s Reading Comprehension?” Harvard Graduate School of Education. Retrieved from https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/25/03/how-far-have-we-come-supporting-childrens-reading-comprehension.
