Combining Concept Mapping and Adaptive Advice to Teach Reading Comprehension

When driven by simple models of information processing, reading instruction focuses on basic decoding skills centering on words and sentences. Factoring in advanced cognitive studies adds at least two more dimensions. First, readers must learn a collection of strategies for constructing meaning from text. Second, and most importantly, readers must develop enough situational awareness to diagnose a text and know which strategy to deploy. Teaching intellectual crafts that involve not only base-line performative skills but also a repertoire of problem-solving heuristics, and the metacognitive maturity to orchestrate multi-leveled activities, works well in a master-apprentice model. However, one-on-one instruction is far too laborintensive to be commonplace in the teaching of reading. This paper describes a computerized learning environment for teaching the conceptual patterns of critical literacy. While the full implementation of the software treats both reading and writing, this paper covers only the reading aspects of R-WISE (Reading and Writing in a Supportive Environment). 1 Reading Strategies and Metacognition Research into the cognitive aspects of reading has led to something of a theoretical framework to guide instructional development. For example, awareness that good readers have a repertoire of problem-solving behaviors for various types of tasks and texts launched a new pedagogy for strategy acquisition. The literature for practitioners features a number of techniques for teaching young readers to diagnose levels of understanding and to repair mistakes in comprehension. These routines vary from rather elaborate mnemonics for complicated, multi-stepped procedures (as in the well-known S4R or SQ3R protocols) to thinking frames (graphic representations that support the deconstruction of text into units of meaning). Unfortunately, strategy training has fairly low durability [Garner, 1987]. Part of the reason for this degradation may be, as suggested by Garner, that the teaching of a specific strategy becomes an end in and of itself, divorcing the skill from the multi-dimensional context of mature reading. For example, the concept diagrams advocated by Armstrong and Armbruster [Armstrong & Armbruster, 1991] require that the learner become comfortable with a sophisticated set of conventions for mapping out ideas. Additionally -at least until the learner becomes proficient at using this new visual nomenclature -the teacher must compose the empty maps for each piece of reading. The issue is that such essentially self-contained exercises seem to bear little resemblance to the dynamic, fluid process of comprehending a piece of text in the real world. The adept reader not only has a repertoire of strategies at hand but, more importantly, has the metacognitive ability both to anticipate and to detect abstract problem-types and then to deploy, adapt, combine, or abandon strategic cognitive solutions. 2 Software Components and Instructional Approach The process model of text comprehension underscores the idea that good readers know that “making meaning” from prose is an interactive process while poor (or immature) readers attempt to slavishly “extract meaning” from the text by decoding word-for-word. Characterizations of these two modes of "reading" are almost diametrical. The poor reader (1) does not vary speed or technique based on text type, (2) does not know how to exploit the "signposts" built into conventional text forms, (3) cannot glean meaning for unfamiliar words and concepts from the context, (4) cannot tell when a statement makes no sense within the confines of its presentation, and (5) has difficulty making "text connecting" inferences as well as reasoning about probable outcomes of information presented in the text. The antithesis, as practiced by good writers, is characterized by (1) guided planning and situational diagnostics, (2) rich mental representations of text possibilities for a wide Journal of Universal Computer Science, vol. 1, no. 3 (1995), 156-161 submitted: 1/3/95, accepted: 13/3/95, appeared: 28/3/95, Springer Pub. Co.