Reading and Learning Strategies: Recommendations for the 21st Century

Abstract

As the landscape of developmental education and academic assistance continues to shift, both politically and economically, time-honored professionals and those new to the field consistently search for practical ideas they know are embedded in sound theory and research. Although such ideas or recommendations provide many professionals a framework and rationale for their program development, instruction, and program evaluation endeavors, such recommendations are often difficult to unearth, especially for beginners who are less aware of professional organizations and scholarly journals. Over a decade ago we published an article, Ten Recommendations from Research for Teaching High-Risk College Students, that was intended to address this issue (Stahl, Simpson, & Hayes, 1992). Given the promising research trends and best practices that have emerged since 1992, we knew it was important to update our original 10 recommendations. After reviewing the literature and discussing important trends with a variety of individuals, we identified 10 recommendations pertinent to the 21st century. In order to provide the most current and relevant research and theory, we decided to direct these recommendations toward instructors who, like ourselves, teach developmental reading and learning strategies courses. To capture that intent we refer to these individuals, our colleagues, as academic assistance professionals.The first eight recommendations focus on what the extant theory and research suggest in terms of what should be taught and how. The last two recommendations focus on issues involved in successful programs. As we noted in that first article, these recommendations, though not comprehensive, are meant to provide a starting point for discussion and reflection. Moreover, the extensive references in this second article, as they were in the first, are an intentional effort to provide credible sources for future reading. If the original reference list captured the history of the field during the 1980s, this list will serve the same function for the last years of the 20th and the first decade in the 21s1 century.The RecommendationsAdopt a Programmatic Model that Emphasizes the Cognitive Development of StudentsIn our first article we began by stressing the importance of adopting a cognitive-based philosophy that emphasizes the development of active learners who are in control of their learning. Even though a decade has passed and various models have been advocated (Farmer & Barham, 2001), this recommendation is still very important and needs to be revisited during these times of shifting philosophical boundaries and financially motivated cuts in programs. That is, a program that aligns itself exclusively to improving students standardized test scores tends to be more vulnerable to budget cuts by administrators who view remediation as superfluous and noriesseiitial.As pointed out by several different individuals, many academic assistance programs still define their delivery model and objectives around state-mandated reading tests (Bower, Caverly, Stahl, & Voge, 2003; Simpson, Hynd, Nist, & Burrell, 1997). Thus, these atheoretical programs emphasize, sometimes exclusively, goals that focus on reading skills that appear on these tests, skills such as drawing inferences, identifying main ideas, and understanding contextual clues. Students typically practice these skills in materials that decontextualize the reading experience to brief narrative or expository passages that are followed by multiple-choice questions, questions similar to the mandated exams (Nist & Holschuh, 2000b). It is acknowledged that such practice may lead to growth on tests while promoting a gate keeping function, but it must be questioned whether these activities lead students to becoming active readers and learners.Rather than emphasizing students' deficits, many academic assistance professionals have found it more advantageous to teach their students to become active, strategic learners. …

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 68 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.