Handbook of Individual Differences in Reading

Reader, Text, and Context

Peter Afflerbach, Peter Afflerbach

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781135120924
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Lese- und Schreibfähigkeit

The central unifying theme of this state-of-the-art contribution to research on literacy is its rethinking and reconceptualization of individual differences in reading. Previous research, focused on cognitive components of reading, signaled the need for ongoing work to identify relevant individual differences in reading, to determine the relationship(s) of individual differences to reading development, and to account for interactions among individual differences. Addressing developments in each of these areas, this volume also describes affective individual differences, and the environments in which individual differences in reading may emerge, operate, interact, and change.

The scant comprehensive accounting of individual differences in reading is reflected in the nature of reading instruction programs today, the outcomes that are expected from successful teaching and learning, and the manner in which reading development is assessed. An important contribution of this volume is to provide prima facie evidence of the benefits of broad conceptualization of the ways in which readers differ. The Handbook of Individual Differences in Reading moves the field forward by encompassing cognitive, non-cognitive, contextual, and methodological concerns. Its breadth of coverage serves as both a useful summary of the current state of knowledge and a guide for future work in this area.

1
An Overview of Individual Differences in Reading

Research, Policy, and Practice

Peter Afflerbach

In this chapter I describe the promise and challenge related to individual differences in reading. The promise emanates from a continuing interest in identifying individual differences and their origins, and in describing their influence on reading development. The challenge relates to the fact that individual differences in reading are narrowly conceptualized in reading education policy, and in related testing and reading instruction programs. This chapter has two main sections. In the first, I overview central and historic themes in theory and practice related to students’ individual differences in reading. I begin with a brief overview of a century’s worth of interest in individual differences. I examine attributions made to nature, nurture, or both as sources of difference, and the influence of environments on readers’ individual differences. Following, I focus on the distinction between cognitive and affective aspects of individual differences. I then turn to the dynamic nature of individual differences—how they interact, how they influence acts of reading, and how they are influenced by acts of reading. The second section of the chapter describes the disconnection between current understanding of individual differences in reading, and educational policy, testing, and classroom instruction. I describe how individual differences in reading are narrowly conceptualized in consequential legislation and reading curriculum, and the influence of testing on reading policy and practice.

Throughout the chapter, I liberally sample from original sources: I believe the manner in which individual differences have been described across the past century adds to our understanding of the evolution of conceptualizations of these differences. These sources also illustrate the critical links between research and practice that are necessary for identifying and addressing developing student readers’ differences.

Ongoing Development of Our Understanding of Individual Differences

Individual differences in how people do things have been a focus of psychology for centuries, and accounts of variation in human behavior are richly told with an individual differences narrative. In 1868, Peirce investigated factors that are shared by “great men,” and that influence individual’s development. Peirce identifies individuals’ ancestry and birth order, family background and childhood, physical stature, peculiarities, general health, levels of education, precociousness, work habits, and motivation and drive. He uses the resulting data to theorize the relationships of individuals’ differences with their accomplishments. Peirce’s work focuses on specific individual differences, including those from the physical, cognitive, affective and social realms. Peirce presages the interest on how individual differences develop, as well as future investigations of their often-complex interactions.

In one of the first investigations of students’ individual differences in reading, Theisen (1920) reviews the use of reading test scores to identify differences:

The results of standardized tests have everywhere revealed wide differences in reading ability. They have shown decided variations in such factors as rate of reading, knowledge of vocabulary, ability to gather thought from the printed page, and ability to read orally (p. 560).

With the above observation, Theisen frames students’ individual differences in relation to factors that contribute to reading ability. From this perspective, it is possible to designate a student as different, and to specify the difference. Theisen’s observation anticipates that across the history of the construct, the conceptualization of individual differences will skew strongly towards reading strategies and skills. Following, Moore (1938) situates individual differences in the classroom, focusing on students’ reading development, specifically reading readiness:

readiness involves many different factors in which a typical pupil is unevenly advanced. At the present time we do not know what weight to give to each and every characteristic … There are certain causes of individual differences which have received less attention than they seem to deserve. These causes briefly are: (1) variation in intelligence, (2) in sensory equipment, (3) in physical equipment, (4) in language ability, (5) in rate of learning, (6) in response to motivation, (7) in sex, and (8) emotional control (p. 164).

The above list reflects Moore’s deconstruction of the reader and identification of areas in which individual differences exist. It is a preliminary proposition that individual differences in reading may result from nature, or nurture, or an interaction of the two. Moore notes that certain “causes” of individual differences receive less attention than others. His list of differences leans decidedly towards organic, “born with” differences such as sensory equipment, physical equipment, and gender. Importantly, Moore notes that individual differences may reside in both cognitive and affective realms.

Moore (1938) is also one of the first to acknowledge that as the identification of individual differences continues, and as descriptions of the array of individual differences in reading are elaborated, this knowledge should be accompanied by a theory of how to “weight” the differences. Determining the role and value of individual differences, and their centrality to reading and reading development, is a work in progress. Moore notes that the lack of theory of how to assign importance to individual differences creates challenge in conceptualizing classroom practice that effectively addresses the differences:

All teachers realize to some degree the range of abilities found in every class group. We know that we can expect to find a range of reading ability of at least three grades from the first to the third and at least five or more grades for pupils in the grades from the third through the eighth grade. Despite these general facts few of us have a definite guiding philosophy as to what should be our attitude towards the differences we know to exist (p. 165).

Attention to individual differences continues. Consider Cunningham and Stanovich’s (1998) questions, reflecting decades of inquiry into how readers develop, and how individual differences impact that development:

Given that life-long reading habits are such strong predictors of verbal cognitive growth, what is it that predicts these habits? We’ve been looking at reading volume as a predictor of reading comprehension and cognitive ability, but what predicts reading volume or avid reading? (p. 146).

The above excerpt reminds that there are many possible relationships between the particular individual differences. Cunningham and Stanovich (1998) further describe how individual differences are situated in and impacted by the instructional environment:

Further exacerbating the problem is the fact that less-skilled readers often find themselves in materials that are too difficult for them … The combination of deficient decoding skills, lack of practice, and difficult materials results in unrewarding early reading experiences that lead to less involvement in reading-related activities… unrewarding reading experiences multiply; and practice is avoided or merely tolerated without real cognitive involvement (p. 137).

Thus, the study of individual differences and the determination of their obvious or subtle influences on reading are enhanced by consideration of the environments and contexts in which individual differences develop.

The Influences of Nature and Nurture on Individual Differences

How individual differences develop, and their influence on reading, are key questions for research and practice. Artley (1981) suggests that reading development is impacted by a mixture of individual differences emanating from both nature and nurture: they are “inherited and acquired.” He describes the need for reading instruction to address these individual differences, as opposed to focusing on imaginary and elusive mean performance targets among children of the same age:

In fact, the history of elementary education during the last 75 years has been concerned in one way or another with ways to cope with the multitude of issues growing out of the fact that children of the same chronological age are different by virtue of their inherited and acquired characteristics (p. 142).

Strang (1961) shares this sentiment, suggesting that individual differences in reading derive from nature and nurture, and from the interactions of students with their reading environments. She introduces a broad array of reader characteristics that can influence both single acts of reading, and an individual’s overall reading development. In doing so, she establishes categories for inquiry into individual differences that remain valid to this day:

getting meaning from the printed page is a biopsychological process that is influenced by the individual’s ability, his experiences, his needs, his attitudes, his values, and his self-concept. Each individual interacts with the total reading situation in accord with his unique pattern of characteristics. His memory of each experience with reading further influences his perception of, and his response to, each new situation (p. 414).

Strang anticipates the paradigmatic movement from behaviorism to information processing and cognition. She even suggests that students’ metacognition (a concept not yet so-named) influences individual differences, with memory of past reading experiences influencing current and future reading acts. She also proposes the mutability of individual differences based on interactions between organisms and their environments (e.g., students in classrooms and in reading groups; Bronfenbrenner, 1979):

Thus, the psychology of reading has become more complex since the early days of the stimulus-response theory. The influence of the individual, his abilities and background, has been inserted between the stimulus and the response; the S-R bond has become the S-O-R bond, or the stimulus-organism-response bond. Moreover, we recognize that the individual does not learn in isolation but is influenced by the complex social network in which he lives and learns (p. 414).

Going forward, an important focus for research is the individual differences that are stable within individuals, and those that are influenced by factors in the reading environment. The dynamics of these differences, how they operate to influence reading and how they influence reading, are deserving of researchers’ attention. In addition, the environments in which reading occurs figure largely in how inherent individual differences are accommodated, and in how reading skills and attitudes are nurtured.

Cognition and Affect in the Conceptualization of Individual Differences

Throughout the history of research on individual differences in reading there is a focus on the cognitive (see Cunningham and Stanovich, this volume). Many studies examine individual differences in the systems that support cognition, such as attention, memory and vision. There is also considerable research on individual differences in readers’ strategies and skills that are supported by these systems, including phonemic awareness, sound–symbol correspondences, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

In contrast, the study of affect as an individual difference in reading is more recent, and less prevalent in the research literature. Motivation and engagement and self-efficacy are examples of individual differences where thick threads of affect are woven through cognitive operations. In addition, metacognition interacts with affect in reading, as readers build understandings not only of their cognitive operations, but also of their emotional states before, during, and after reading.

Moore (1938) focuses on both cognitive and affective phenomena involved in children’s reading test-taking. The following description is notable for the attention given individual differences in affect that are interwoven into the students’ experience, and the perennial concerns with the influence of testing on children:

“In testing children in this study the examiners were impressed with the intense effort put forth by most of the children in trying to name or to write letters. The efforts were often painful to observe: sustained frowning, alternate squirming and rigidity of body, pointing tensely, labored breathing, grunting, whispering, and even weeping.” Can you not visualize the great variation, the marked difference in the children studied?

(Wilson, cited in Moore, 1938, pp. 163–164)

Hunt also catalogs difference, and student attitude is considered a key individual difference. However, he maintains the focus on cognitive individual differences:

Actually, from the first day of Grade 1, the teacher meets an ever widening range of ability and background. First-grade children differ greatly in their language facility, knowledge of stories, experiences with materials, visual discrimination, general information, and attitudes towards reading and school.

(Hunt, 1952, p. 417)

The skewing of attention towards cognitive individual differences continues to this day. The long-running conversation about the roles, power, and relationships of cognition and affect in learning is often dominated by cognition (e.g., Lazarus, 1984; Zajonc, 1984). This imbalance is reflected in contemporary reading curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Thus, determining and addressing students’ individual differences in strategy and skill are common targets of educational policy and reading programs. For example, reading instructional programs contain detailed approaches to teaching sound–symbol correspondences, but lack detailed approaches to helping students develop self-efficacy as readers. Individual differences in student affect often receive less “official” notice, although attending to them is a hallmark of successful teaching (Dolezal Welsh, Pressley, & Vincent, 2003). While research on individual differences in affect is less common than research on cognitive differences, it is rarer still that affect-related research results inform reading policy and large-scale curriculum initiatives.

Individual Differences in Readers Interact and Influence Reading

Individual differences can interact, and their effects can be pronounced or muted.

Strang (1961) describes the intertwining of differences during reading diagnosis, and how these differences may interact to further influence a student’s reading development:

The child’s responses may be influenced by his anxiety in a strange situation, by his having to say “I don’t know” to many questions, and by the depressing sense of failure as the items become harder. Lapses in attention may lower the child’s score. Emotional situations and associations may throw him off the track. If he wants very much to read better immediately, he may feel annoyed at not being given instruction in reading. Other interests and sheer fatigue may also influence his responses unfavorably (p. 418).

Strang reminds us that it is not sufficient to identify and address iso...