Reading Competence and Goals
Reading Competence and Reading Goals in Four Gifted Young Adolescent Readers
Emily Fox and Daniel L. Dinsmore
University of Maryland
DRAFT
Paper to be presented at EARLI Biennial Conference, August 2009, Amsterdam
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Abstract
The nature of reading competence was investigated through an exploration of the role of reading
goals in the cross-domain reading of four middle-school students identified by their school
system as highly gifted readers. Before reading, students completed knowledge tests and interest
assessments. Think-aloud protocols were collected while they read college-level reading and
history passages; after reading, participants completed open-ended questions assessing their (a)
recall of important points, (b) recall of other information, (c) version of the author’s argument,
and (d) argument evaluation. These protocols were coded for strategic and evaluative or
monitoring behaviors and re-coded for evidence of multiple, hierarchical levels of reading goals,
using a goals coding scheme developed from expert protocols for the same passages. Reading
profiles were developed, based on students’ assessed knowledge and interest, their observed
processing and levels of identified goals, and their outcome performance. An elaborated
characterization of reading competence was developed based on how these strong readers who
were yet early in their development in academic domains approached the given reading situation,
focusing particularly on their reading goals. The role of such reading competence in the
movement toward higher levels of competence or proficiency in academic domains was
discussed.
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What exactly do we mean when we talk about competence in an academic domain?
Competence carries with it a performative sense; one is competent at doing something or other,
meaning that one gets the job done properly. Competence also has the sense of being able to
handle oneself adequately or satisfactorily across a variety of situations and without need for
supervision. It thus implies some desirable level of flexibility and independence. Competence
has the further sense of achieving a necessary minimum level of functioning, while not quite
reaching the maximum. Competence is clearly to be preferred over lack of competence or
incompetence. But it can also be more dismissively labeled as mere competence, with the
implication that beyond it lies some form of more creative activity or a deeper level of
understanding supporting non-routine and superlative performance.
With regard to competence in education, one view of the enterprise of education is that it
aims to produce students who are at least competent in all of the key academic domains, while
also fostering in some students the capability for proficiency or expertise in a particular chosen
domain (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999). Reading plays a particularly critical role in the
achievement of competence or proficiency in any academic domain (Alexander, 2005);
competence in reading itself as an academic domain is thus of particular interest (e.g..,
Alexander, 2002, 2005). Thinking of the senses of competence just outlined, questions that arise
with regard to academic competence include the nature of the performances involved in
competence in academic domains, the type of situational flexibility and independence implied,
and what characterizes its specific positioning between the not-yet-competent and the masterful.
The framework presented in Alexander’s Model of Domain Learning (MDL; 1997, 1998,
2002) is well suited to support an investigation of these questions. In this framework,
competence is the middle position in a continuum of academic development. The MDL
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characterizes learners’ journey from the entry level of acclimation through competence and
possibly on to proficiency in academic domains in terms of distinctive profiles for knowledge,
interest, and strategy use at different stages of development. In this model, learners in
competence in an academic domain enter competence with increasing knowledge, rising interest
in the domain, or increasing use of deep-level processing strategies. During competence, their
domain interest may continue to grow and their knowledge may continue to broaden and deepen,
supporting their greater use of deep-level strategies and opening the possibility for further
progression toward expertise. However, another possible developmental trajectory involves a
leveling-off of this growth, in which case the learner will remain in the stage of competence.
This potential fork in the developmental path raises a further question regarding competence,
considered within the MDL framework as having its own distinctive profile: What differentiates
learners in competence who continue on toward proficiency and learners in competence who
have achieved their terminal level of development in a given domain?
A possible direction for investigating this last question is given in the work of Bereiter
and Scardamalia (1986, 1993) and that of Marton and Säljö (1986, 1997). Bereiter and
Scardamalia (1986, 1993) noted different possible frames within which competence can be
achieved. Competence can develop not only as an adaptive accommodation to typical tasks but
also as a consequence of looking beyond mere task requirements. They found that some quite
young learners have a deeper, meaning-oriented approach across learning situations that may
facilitate their progress toward expertise, while others have a more functional, passive, and taskoriented approach that may not equally foster growth beyond a certain point. Similarly, Marton
and Säljö (1986, 1997) identified two basic orientations learners may carry with them across
learning situations, but that may also reflect the learner’s level of specific relevant expertise in a
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given learning situation. They label these “deep” and “surface” approaches. With regard to
reading, the deep approach is one in which the learner aims at understanding the underlying
meaning of the text, while the surface approach aims essentially at reproducing the text. In both
of these ways of thinking about differences in how competence may be achieved and manifested,
the learner’s intentionality is key: what the learner does in any given situation and across
situations is driven in a very basic way by what the learner is trying to do.
In this study, we undertake a qualitative exploration of the nature of reading competence
within the framework of the MDL by way of readers’ intentionality, their reading goals. Reading
goals connect readers’ knowledge, interest, what they do in the way of strategic processing, and
what they achieve in the way of a reading outcome. Our investigation addresses our final
question concerning academic competence, as particularized to reading competence:
What distinguishes those competent readers whose approach to reading has the potential
to carry them on to proficiency from those who will likely not go beyond competence?
In our consideration of this question, we look in depth at the reading-related attributes,
reading behaviors, reading goals, and reading outcomes of four gifted young readers, with the
idea that each of these participants manifests in some way aspects of highly competent reading.
From the four reading profiles that are generated, we draw out key features of reading
competence as a developmental springboard or destination. Our final concern is the further
extension of this conceptualization of reading competence as it relates to learning from text and
thus to development in other academic domains.
Theoretical and Research Background
In order to address our research question, we must first lay some theoretical groundwork
by unpacking the conceptualization of reading competence upon which we will build. After that
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unpacking, we will consider briefly three introductory questions regarding academic
competence, as further preparation for addressing our research question.
Reading Competence in the MDL
Our consideration of reading competence is grounded on Alexander’s characterization of
reading competence as viewed within the MDL (2002, 2005). In her discussion of reading as
involving development beyond decoding, Alexander outlined a view of lifespan development in
reading (2002). Key characteristics of the competent reader within this framework are the nature
and levels of knowledge, interest, and strategy use (see figure 1 for a depiction of key variables
in the MDL across the developmental trajectory). The ideal competent reader has a relatively
broad store of knowledge about reading (domain knowledge) as well as a certain depth of
knowledge of relevant topics that may be addressed or invoked during typical reading tasks
(topic knowledge). In addition, this knowledge is structured and interconnected to a certain
degree, making recall and application of it more fluent. Correspondingly, the competent reader
has achieved a level of automaticity in carrying out routine processing procedures (surface-level
processing); this skillful navigation of the reading terrain enables the reader’s attention to be
possibly turned to deeper meaning-building, reflective, evaluative, and even transformational
strategic behaviors (deep-level processing). Finally, as the motive force behind the operation of
all of this reading machinery, competent readers have a certain level of interest in reading and in
learning from text (individual interest); they do not necessarily require the attention-grabbing
devices of a controversial or personally relevant topic or a colorful spread of pictures (situational
interest) to lure them into interaction with a text.
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Complexity of Competence
As can be seen in figure 1, there is potentially a great deal going on in the stage of
competence, and Alexander (2005) further addressed the complexity of this stage in
hypothesizing a set of six profiles of more or less successful readers within competence. She
positions the highly competent reader at the successful end on a continuum of reading
successfulness, the challenged reader at the unsuccessful end, and locates in between the
effortful processor, the knowledge-reliant reader, the non-strategic reader, and the resistant
reader.
These reader profiles map out patterns of reading success in terms of background
knowledge, reading-related knowledge, knowledge and use of strategies, interest in reading, and
likely engagement in a given reading situation. Highly competent readers have strong interest in
and knowledge of reading and are typically successful across reading situations, even with
difficult or unfamiliar texts. Effortful processors have high engagement in reading, but must
often exert considerable effort to build understanding due to lower levels of knowledge or less
fluent strategy use. Knowledge-reliant readers can engage successfully with texts for which they
have strong background knowledge or personal experience but struggle otherwise. Non-strategic
processors do not possess an adequate repertoire of strategies and thus are stymied when
problems arise. Challenged readers lack mastery of fundamental reading processes, while
resistant readers may have the necessary background knowledge, reading knowledge, and
repertoire of strategies, but are not willing to engage in reading. Empirical validation of these
profiles has included the identification of exemplars of each of the reading profiles in a sample of
61 undergraduates reading course texts (Fox, Dinsmore, Maggioni, & Alexander, 2009), using
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data on domain and topic knowledge, topic interest, on-line strategy use and interest, and ability
to recall important ideas from the text.
Based on this understanding of reading competence as presented in the MDL, we can
now take up our three introductory questions regarding reading competence:
1) What is the nature of the performance involved in reading competence?
2) What type of situational flexibility and independence are involved in reading
competence?
3) How is reading competence positioned in relation to reading sub-competence or
acclimation on the one hand, and reading super-competence or proficiency on the other?
Addressing these three questions will give us a foundation for consideration of our research
question regarding developmental progression from reading competence on to proficiency in
reading or in another academic domain.
Competent Reading Performance
What can competent readers do in the way of reading performance? Competent readers
should be able to read relatively difficult texts from a variety of genres and discourse types with
understanding and with interest (Chall, 1983; RAND, 2002). They should be able to focus on the
more global meaning of the text and not get bogged down in line-by-line or word-by-word
assembly. At the same time, they should be responsible and attentive to the details of the text’s
meaning; there should be good interaction between their top-down processing in developing a
situation model of the meaning of the text and their bottom-up building of a textbase
representing its propositional content (Kintsch, 1998; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1991). Competent
readers should be able to read both informational and literary text successfully for: recall of the
text, both at a gist level and for details; literal and inferential text meaning; analysis and
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evaluation of text features, text organization, author purpose, and use of language; and crosstextual comparisons (see, for example, the draft common core state standards for reading,
writing, and communication under preparation by the National Governor’s Association;
Education Week, 2009).
Situational Flexibility and Independence
What type of situational flexibility and independence are involved in competent reading?
We see two levels of such flexibility and independence as potentially operational in competent
reading. On the one hand, competent readers can adapt their reading to a variety of assigned
reading purposes, when confronted with an assortment of text types or ranges of text difficulty or
familiarity. They know how to get the job done on their own, and are generally both willing and
able to do it. On the other hand, competent readers might also exhibit flexibility and
independence beyond the bounds of an assigned reading purpose, in pursuit of self-selected
reading goals. For competent readers, the most basic level of reading goal, assigned or selfselected, would be to reproduce the text. Beyond that, readers can aim at understanding the text.
A further level of goal would be to evaluate the text, for its qualities as a piece of writing, its
credibility, fairness or balance, or its accuracy in relation to what they may already know
concerning the topic or in relation to other texts (Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995; Scardamalia &
Bereiter, 1991). These goal levels parallel, to some degree, the types of competent reading
performance outlined in the previous section.
Chall (1983) presented a stage model of reading development in which the fifth and most
mature stage involves readers becoming able to read selectively, constructively, and critically to
build their own knowledge for their own purposes. Beyond being able to use reading to
accomplish a variety of assigned tasks relatively independently, as in school, competence in
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reading also involves the potential for the reader to be able to develop his or her own reading
purposes, be able to read to learn and for enjoyment in a wide variety of text types and text
topics, and be able to develop new knowledge and new interests through reading in previously
unfamiliar topic areas.
Positioning of Competence
In the MDL-based view of reading development (Alexander, 2002), readers in
competence differ from those in the earlier stage of acclimation in having more knowledge and
more principled knowledge, in being less reliant on situational interest and more likely to have
developed some form of individual interest in reading, and in being more willing and able to use
deeper-level processing strategies when they read. They differ from those in expertise or
proficiency in their level of investment in and focus on the domain of reading. Competent
readers are able to use reading to learn and in their problem-solving activities, while experts in
reading are engaged in learning about reading, and in problem-finding activities that lead to the
creation of new knowledge about reading. Unlike in Chall’s (1983) stage model, there are no
particular ages or levels of school experience associated with particular stages in the MDL. Quite
young readers can be well into competence, and quite mature readers can be at its very
beginnings. However, the position of a young competent reader is an interesting one in terms of
what they are likely to possess in the way of domain-related knowledge of reading and of the
domains and topics about which they might read, as well as in the way of strongly motivated
purposes for reading that might guide them to select higher-level reading goals involving such
activities as criticizing or comparing texts.
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A Further View of Relevant Reader Characteristics and Performances
Turning briefly outside the theoretical framework of the MDL, there is extensive
empirical research on what differentiates good and less-good readers. A recent review
specifically focused on the characteristics of good and poor readers in both first (L1) and second
(L2) languages (Pang, 2008) aimed to synthesize findings in terms of readers’ key differences in
linguistic knowledge and processing ability, their cognitive ability, and their metacognitive
strategic competence, defined as awareness of and ability to consciously deploy appropriate
reading strategies. A profile was developed of common characteristics of good readers across
both L1 and L2. With regard to linguistic knowledge and processing ability, good readers are fast
and automatic at word recognition, unpacking of syntax, and generation of semantic
propositions. They have a large store of word knowledge, and are aware of and sensitive to
differences in text types and structure of discourse. With regard to cognitive ability, good readers
use prior knowledge and cognitive strategies effectively, including particularly the selective
allocation of attention in the service of reading goals, along with having ready access to an
extensive repertoire of appropriate strategies. And with regard to metacognitive strategic
competence, good readers actively monitor their on-going comprehension and progress toward
reading goals, and select and successfully enact appropriate strategies to achieve those goals.
A review of think-aloud studies of readers interacting with informational texts (Fox,
2009) found that readers with low levels of ability, experience, knowledge, or interest were more
likely to be engaged in local-level processing, effortful construction of a reproduction of the text
content (textbase), and less successful construction of an accurate representation of the text’s
meaning (situation model). Higher levels of these characteristics tended to co-occur with
engagement that was more geared toward a global level of understanding, that was more
Reading Competence and Goals 12
effective and more flexible and that led to more accurate and complete mental representations
and greater learning. The inclination and ability to evaluate text and author critically tended to be
reserved to readers with higher levels of experience and relevant domain expertise.
These identified reader characteristics and performances associated with different levels
of reading ability or development, and different levels of ability, experience, knowledge or
interest, not only support the MDL-based description of competent readers, but they also provide
additional aspects to consider when analyzing competent reading..
Developmental Progression
What do we know about how and why readers move through the stages of the MDL?
Alexander (2005) notes that a shift in knowledge or interest or in level of strategy use can be
enough to propel a reader from acclimation into competence. As the profiles outlined above
suggest, readers in the stage of competence may initially be strong in only one of these areas;
they may have gone beyond acclimation by dint of having effortfully or incidentally acquired
enough knowledge or experience to be able to handle relatively routine reading tasks, without yet
being capable of consistently productive independent learning from challenging text. In order to
move on to expertise in reading or in another academic domain, the conjunction of strong and
principled knowledge and deep-seated interest and deep meaning-building and evaluative
strategic behaviors would be necessary.
Of the six reader types, the highly competent reader is clearly poised for potential
continuation on to expertise in reading or through reading; such a reader is typically both very
good at and quite interested in interacting with text and learning from text. It is likely that being
a good reader is a valued identity status for such readers, and brings them both enjoyment and
gains in knowledge (Richardson & Eccles, 2007). What would be required for their progression
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to expertise would be the turning of their attention, interest, and efforts toward a specific domain
in which to pursue the honing of their strategies and the principled, transformative construction
of new knowledge. What could potentially hinder the progression of highly competent readers to
expertise might be the failure to develop strong independent regulation of their own purposes for
reading, and the tailoring of their reading goals toward a task-fulfillment stance rather than
toward a self-fulfillment stance. Although they are highly skilled at getting the job done when
presented with a reading task, they may not also think in a reflective and evaluative way about
their own reading, about the task, and about what they learned. If this is the case, their
accumulation of experience will not lead to an accumulation of knowledge about reading and an
enhancement of their own understanding and interest in reading and in learning. Further, for
some strong readers, the lack of challenge presented by typical reading tasks could lead to an
attenuation of their enjoyment and effort when reading (Walczyk & Griffith-Ross, 2007).
Reading goals thus seem to us likely to be a key element in considering what
distinguishes those competent readers whose approach to reading has the potential to carry them
on to proficiency from those who may not go beyond competence. Our investigation of this
question will focus on the reading of four young gifted readers presented with two demanding
reading situations, all of whom we would characterize as highly competent, yet whose reading
manifests some interesting differences in reading behaviors and associated reading goals.
Methods
Participants
Our participants were four middle-school students identified as highly gifted readers by
their public school system: two 12-year-old girls who had just finished sixth grade (Jessica and
Sarah), one 12-year-old boy four months into seventh grade (Sam), and one 13-year-old girl who
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had just finished seventh grade (Alexa). Three participants were of European-American
background, while one (Sarah) was of Asian-American and European-American background.
All four attended a competitive-entry specialized program for humanities and
communications for students in grades 6-8. The data used for entrance screening for this program
included: grades in 5th grade, parent and 5th grade teacher rating forms, and scores from a timed
group testing session (administered in January of 5th grade) in which applicants completed a test
of nonverbal intelligence (Raven’s Progressive Matrices), an above-level (8th-grade)
standardized reading test (passages with comprehension questions and vocabulary questions),
and an essay written in response to a writing prompt. This program, labeled as a center for the
highly gifted, serves the northwestern portion of the county in which the participants attend
school, and draws applicants from 50 elementary schools. A parallel program at a different
middle school is available for students living in the other half of the county. The public
education system in the county is highly regarded and entry to these programs is quite
competitive. The acceptance rate is typically around one in five (75 out of about 400 applicants);
more girls than boys are typically accepted.
Participants and their parents were contacted through their 6th grade reading teacher in
this program, who recommended them as likely to be willing to participate and as being strong
readers. All those contacted were willing to participate; parents completed informed consent
forms, and the students also signed assent forms indicating their awareness of what they would
be asked to do and their willingness to participate. Data collection took place in the summer
(Jessica, Sarah, and Alexa) and winter (Sam) of 2005. These data are taken from a larger study
also including undergraduates and university professors as participants.
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Measures
Demographics. Participants completed a demographics questionnaire giving background
information on gender, ethnicity, age, and current educational level.
Interest. A 20-item interest rating questionnaire assessed interest in the academic
domains of science, reading, history, and art. Responses were on a 1 to 5 scale, where 1 was
Strongly Agree and 5 was Strongly Disagree. A sample item for reading was, “The processes
underlying reading are fascinating.” There were five items for each academic domain, and items
were parallel in construction. Two items for each domain were negatively phrased and reverse
coded. Interest was further assessed by an questionnaire asking about participants’ frequency of
participation in general and professional activities related to reading and history. Data from those
responses will not be discussed here. Mean individual interest scores for reading and history and
comparisons to mean scores for other groups are given in Table 1.
. Knowledge. Participants completed four knowledge measures, assessing the breadth of
their domain knowledge and depth of their topic knowledge in reading and in history. The
knowledge measures were validated by a history and a reading expert for appropriateness of
domain and topic representation and accuracy of the ranking of answer choices. The domain
knowledge measures were 20-item multiple choice assessments in which participants were asked
to choose the response that best completed the given domain-specific (i.e., reading or history)
analogy. A graduated response scoring scheme was used. In each item, the response choices
represented four tiers related to possible knowledge status (Alexander, Murphy, & Kulikowich,
1998; Lawless & Kulikowich, 2006): the correct response that best completed the analogy (4
points), a response that was relevant to the topic of the analogy but was not the best answer (2
points), a response that related to the domain but was not related to the topic addressed by the
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analogy (1 point), and an unrelated response (0 points). A sample item for reading was: “efferent
: informational :: aesthetic : ____ “ where response choices were: experiential (4 points);
fictional (2 points); descriptive (1 point); physical (0 points).
The topic knowledge measures for both reading and history consisted of 15 multiple
choice items in which participants were asked to choose the response best completing the
sentence stem. The same graduated response scoring scheme was used here as for the domain
knowledge measures. The general topic covered by the history topic knowledge measure was
slavery, and the reading topic knowledge measure covered psycholinguistic theory. A sample
item for reading was: “According to psycholinguistic theory, efficient readers use graphophonemic information most often to ___” where response choices were: verify predictions about
words (4 points), make predictions about words (2 points), identify phonics patterns (1 point),
translate between languages (0 points).
Individual and mean knowledge scores and comparisons to means for undergraduates
(fFox, Dinsmore, & Alexander, 2007), reading experts (Fox, Maggioni, Dinsmore, & Alexander,
2008) and a history expert (Fox, Maggioni, & Riconscente, 2005) are given in Table 1. Table 2
gives the spread of scores for individual participants and also their mean score as a group across
the four possible scoring categories, highlighting instances where the level of response was
above that resulting from an even distribution of responses across each of the four categories
(.250); for comparison, the mean spread for undergraduate participants from an earlier study
(Fox et al., 2007) is also given.
Passages. The reading task involved texts from the domains of reading and history that
were selected and adapted to be as parallel as possible. The texts chosen were expected to
address relatively unfamiliar topics. Each of the passages used indirectly presents an argument.
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In the reading passage, the argument is that word identification in skilled reading does not occur
primarily through the application of graphophonemic information or decoding, presented in the
context of an explanation of the psycholinguistic model of reading. In the history passage, the
author argues that the slavery system based on race evolved partially as an attempt to address the
rising class struggle between whites in Virginia. Although this interpretation is directly stated at
the end of the passage, the passage does not explicitly present an argument for this thesis.
The selected passages were intended to present similar levels of difficulty for readers in
terms of length, structure, and reading level. The reading passage was taken from an article on
practical applications of a psycholinguistic model of reading (Pearson, 1978) that appeared in a
book targeted for reading researchers, graduate students, or teachers. In its adapted form, it is
1173 words long with two footnotes, with a Flesch-Kincaid reading level of 12.0, and a Flesch
reading ease score of 40.5 (from Microsoft Word). Although not from a textbook, the history
passage was taken from a text on U.S. history (Takaki, 1993) usually used at a college level,
professionally written and appealing also to an adult audience interested in history. In its adapted
form, it is 1393 words long with six footnotes, and had a Flesch-Kincaid reading level of 12.0
and a Flesch reading ease score of 38.5. The adaptations made were all excisions, in order to
create a self-contained passage of a reasonable length. The reading and history passages are
given in Appendix A (they do not appear here exactly as presented to participants; there were
some formatting issues in converting the documents to the appropriate format that interfered
primarily with margins and spacing).
Learning outcomes. Learning outcomes were assessed by four open-ended questions
completed from memory after reading each passage:
(1) Write down as many important points as you can remember from this passage;
Reading Competence and Goals 18
(2) Write down anything else you can remember from the passage;
(3) Write down the argument the author is making in this passage; and
(4) Write down what you think about the argument.
Participants were given a full blank sheet of paper for each question.
Procedure
The first author met participants in their homes to administer the measures, which were
completed at the kitchen or dining room table. Their parents were free to stay and watch; none
stayed more than a few minutes. Participants were told that they had been asked to participate
because they were good readers, and that what they were being asked to do were tasks that would
also be completed by college students and professors (as part of a larger study), so that the tasks
might be quite challenging, but not to get discouraged and to give it their best effort.
Participation involved two sessions. In the first session, participants were given, in order,
the demographics questionnaire, interest questionnaire, activities questionnaires, domain
knowledge and topic knowledge measure for either reading or history, and then the domain and
topic knowledge measures for the other domain. Three participants (Alexa, Jessica, and Sam)
saw the history measures first, while Sarah started with the reading measures. There were no
time limits. Participants were encouraged to respond to every item on each measure, and for the
knowledge measures, were told that guessing was okay. The average time for completing the
first part was roughly 45 minutes.
In the second session, held a few days later, participants read each passage while thinking
aloud, and then completed the outcome measures for each passage. The order of presentation of
the passages matched the order of administration of the knowledge measures in the first session.
Participants practiced thinking aloud with a short passage on mosquitoes, from a popularly
Reading Competence and Goals 19
written science article originally published in Natural History magazine (Bates, 1975). After
participants practiced and confirmed that they were ready to try the real thing, they read and
thought aloud for either the reading or history passage. This thinking aloud was audiotaped.
Participants were instructed that they could read the text aloud or not as they chose while they
were reading and thinking aloud. Participants were also told that if they remained silent for an
extended period, they would be prompted to say what they were thinking. They were told that
when they finished reading the passage, they would be asked to respond to open-ended questions
regarding what they remembered and what they thought about the passage. No other explicit
reading purpose was given.
When participants indicated that they were finished reading the passage, the passage was
taken away, and they were given the packet of outcome questions. They were told that they could
complete the questions in any order and look back and forth between their responses to the
different questions if they wished. Upon completing the outcome questions, the participants were
again reminded of the think-aloud directions and given the other passage, following the same
procedure as outlined above. There was no time limit for these tasks. Participants tended to take
very nearly the same time for each passage; the average time for the second session was again
roughly 45 minutes. The audiotaped think-alouds and hand-written outcome responses were
transcribed into text documents by the first author.
Think-aloud Coding
The eight think-alouds (two per participant) were coded for strategic and
evaluative/monitoring behaviors by the first author, starting from a set of 29 codes developed
and applied to the think-alouds of reading experts for these same passages (Fox et al., 2008).
These codes were based on the set of possible behaviors seen in verbal protocols of reading in
Reading Competence and Goals 20
Pressley and Afflerbach’s summative overview (1995). Several of the codes used for the reading
experts ended up not being applied to the reading of our middle school participants. Specifically,
the codes for rereading, reading on, skimming, predicting, connecting to discourse context,
connecting to topic knowledge test, establishing reading goal, underlining, rehearsing, using text
feature, evaluating importance, and evaluating author intent were not used here. Codes for
expressing surprise and amusement and evaluating task difficulty and task completion (which
had been used in coding undergraduate think-alouds for these passages; Fox et al., 2007) were
added. The code for questioning was broken into questioning author intent, word meaning,
mechanism, reason, text feature, and text quality. This set of 26 codes was sufficient to capture
the relevant behaviors demonstrated; a list of these codes with examples from the transcripts is
given in Appendix B. The unit of coding was flexible, and a given proposition could have
multiple codes, as when a statement posing a question also included a restatement of local
information from the text.
The second step in coding was to consider what evidence the coded think-alouds
provided of awareness or pursuit of particular levels of reading goals. A theoretically-derived
taxonomy of possible goals while reading was used (Fox et al., 2008); this appears in Appendix
C. These hierarchically ordered goals are: remembering the text, understanding the text,
evaluating the text’s message, and evaluating the text as a medium, with each being broken out
into possible sub-goals related to the local or global level of the outcome. Based on work in an
earlier study linking think-aloud codes to goal categories for expert readers (Fox et al., 2008), we
created tentative associations of types of think-aloud codes with types of reading goals. Both
authors coded all of the think-alouds independently for evidence of awareness or pursuit of
Reading Competence and Goals 21
reading goals at different levels, using both the taxonomy and the tentative linkages. There was
substantial agreement across the codings.
We summarized those goal codings in terms of the strength of the evidence they provided
that our participants were aware of or working toward particular levels of goals – we either saw
no evidence, saw a single instance of a behavior suggesting a particular level of goal, saw
multiple instances of the same type of behavior suggesting a particular level, or saw multiple
instances of a variety of behaviors suggesting a particular level of goal. Table 3 summarizes the
identified levels of goals and strength of evidence by participant, where the strongest evidence is
provided by both coders seeing multiple pieces of evidence made up of a variety of types of
behaviors as suggesting the awareness or pursuit of a particular reading goal.
Our assembled body of information for our participants thus includes: their status as a
participant in a program for the highly gifted; their gender; their age and grade level; their selfrated interest in the academic domains of reading, history, science, art, and mathematics; their
domain knowledge of reading and history, at indicated by the level of their responses in the fourtiered response scoring schema; their topic knowledge of psycholinguistics and slavery, at a
similar level; their voiced thoughts, behaviors and attitudes while reading challenging passages
from the domains of reading and history, coded for strategic and monitoring/evaluative behaviors
and for evidence of levels of reading goals; and their responses to our four outcome questions for
both passages. In addition, we can also draw upon, where helpful, comparisons to domain expert
and undergraduate data for all of these tasks and measures as well.
Reading Competence and Goals 22
Reader Profiles
An Aesthetic Reader: Jessica
Knowledge and interest. Jessica’s scores on the domain and topic knowledge measures
(see Table 1) were quite remarkably high in both domains. Her success in recognizing either the
correct answer or the closely domain-related but less appropriate answer was well above what
would be obtained by a simple even distribution of responses across response categories on all
measures, for both domains and for both types of responses, analogies in the domain knowledge
measures and sentence stem completions in the topic knowledge measures (see Table 2).
Comparisons to undergraduate and expert knowledge scores show her as below the reading
experts for reading and below the history expert for history, but also as consistently higher than
the undergraduate average (Table 1).
This type of performance on the knowledge measures could represent some combination
of a number of important aspects of reading competence. The first, of course, is that a high score
on the reading domain knowledge measures indicates strong domain knowledge about reading,
which is clearly an aspect of reading competence. Another is that those who read widely pick up
considerable incidental knowledge from reading (Stanovich & Cunningham, 1993); such
incidental knowledge could have facilitated Jessica’s identification of correct or near-correct
responses here. Another is test-wiseness, the ability to tune one’s responses to what is being
asked for and to use that tuning to narrow down the pool of likely candidate responses, even
without the support of strong knowledge in the area being assessed. Such task-adaptive tuning
can be considered to reflect a particular form of competence in reading. Jessica’s ability to focus
on surface elements of the presentation of text material, as will be described in the discussion of
Reading Competence and Goals 23
her think-alouds, suggests that she might be particularly capable at this type of tuning and
analytic thought.
Jessica’s interest showed more domain-related variation than her knowledge. Her
responses on the history interest items were uniformly at the extreme of the scale; she strongly
agreed with the negatively phrased items and strongly disagreed with the positively phrased
items. Her mean interest score in history was thus the lowest possible score, 1.0 (Table 1). No
one else came close to that low level. With reference to reading, however, Jessica reported quite
strong interest, with a mean score of 4.6, putting her well above the undergraduates (Table 1).
Behaviors and attitudes. Jessica’s think-aloud transcripts revealed a reader who had quite
well-defined expectations about what makes an enjoyable reading experience. She paid particular
attention to her own level of interest, (positive or negative), which could be sparked both by the
text content and by the author’s writing style. She was quite critical of the quality of the text for
the history passage, where she focused on Takaki’s choices in presenting her with quotations,
old-fashioned language, and foreign languages (Latin): “such a weird wording and why is Life
capitalized?”; “Wish they wouldn’t use all these words in other languages because I don’t know
what they’re talking about.”; “why is the G of growing and the C of country capitalized?” She
recognized that there was something unusual about the author’s choices in how to present the
material, but did not connect this with the particular form of historical evidence and argument at
work, the use of quotations from original documents.
Jessica’s attention was initially addressed to understanding the general concern addressed
by the history text, as she argued with Takaki (“Why wouldn’t they have been slaves?”) and
questioned his purpose in writing (“And did this have anything to do with the slavery after it?”).
However, her attention drifted to more surface-level details of the text presentation, and she was
Reading Competence and Goals 24
unable to sustain a focus on meaning that would support the building of a good understanding of
the text. By the end of the passage, her comments were primarily negative evaluations of her
interest and comprehension: “This is getting boring.”; “I don’t really get how that is connected.”;
“I don’t really know what they’re talking about.”; “What class problem?”
Jessica monitored her understanding of the texts for both passages, but without
necessarily exerting the effort to resolve comprehension difficulties when they occurred. She was
relatively active at the word level: “Don’t know what that word means”; “oh, now they are
explaining it.” She used context cues and her general knowledge to determine the meaning of
new words. “I guess ‘in concert’ means together because in a concert everything is together.”
However, Jessica tended not to pursue further understanding when she failed at successful
comprehension of more extended sections of text: “Don’t really know what they’re talking about
in the last paragraph.”
Jessica was much less critical in the reading passage than in the history passage, even
though she experienced similar difficulties in getting the more global-level meaning of the text:
“I don’t know what they’re talking about in that paragraph.”; “Okay, I don’t know what that last
sentence means.” In contrast to her negative evaluation of interest for the history passage, for the
reading passage she commented twice that what she was reading was interesting. She more than
once indicated agreement with the point Pearson was making, and made reference to her own
experience as a reader: “Yeah, I have done that, with the context.”; “Yeah, that’s right. I can read
fantasy faster than I read boring things, like non-fiction.”
Goals. Jessica’s goal codings reflect her evaluative focus and also her different
approaches to the two passages (Table 3). For the history passage, the goal with the strongest
evidence was evaluation of text quality, while there was also corroborated evidence of the goals
Reading Competence and Goals 25
of evaluating argument quality and argument content. Evidence was also seen that she
acknowledged the goal of understanding the text at a global level, and of understanding the
argument at a local level. For the reading passage, there was strong evidence that Jessica was
trying to understand the text and to evaluate the text content, both at a local level. Further goals
for the reading passage included evaluation of the text quality (local) and also building a global
understanding of the text.
Outcomes. Jessica’s outcome measures indicated that her learning experience was
considerably different in the two domains. Jessica was able to successfully pick up broad themes
from each passage, which she reported in the first outcome question asking for important points.
In response to the second outcome question, asking for anything else she could remember from
the passage, she reported instead about her evaluation of the quality of each passage, for history
noting her distaste for the use of quotations and foreign phrases (“The author used a lot of words
in different languages, which were confusing. The author quoted people who spoke in a
confusing manner, and then explained the quotes. The quotes didn’t seem necessary.”) and for
the reading passage commenting on her response in terms of interest (““It was more interesting
than the history one, because I could relate more to it!”).
Finally, for the questions asking for the author’s argument and her evaluation of the
argument, Jessica was unable to identify an argument at all for the history passage (“I didn’t
know there was an argument.”), while for the reading passage, she stated a somewhat stunted
version of the author’s argument (“That the two “s” words that I can’t remember are related but
important to everyone’s understanding of what they’re reading.”), and did not explicit
acknowledge Pearson’s minimization of the role of decoding (although she did indirectly register
it in omitting the third form of information, graphophonemic). Further, she felt confident enough
Reading Competence and Goals 26
to offer an evaluation of Pearson’s argument as she understood it, using her own experience as a
reader as a touchstone: “I think that the author is correct and the two “s” words are related and
important because, as an ‘efficient’ ‘reader, I could relate to many of the author’s examples.”
Overall. Jessica’s approach to this challenging reading situation appeared to be driven by
her aesthetic stance (Rosenblatt, 2004). She did not appear to be seeking to learn from the texts
so much as to engage in the reading of them. Although she did manage to pull out some of the
text content successfully, her efforts were not directly toward building conceptual understanding.
Her effort rather was expended on connecting to her own expectations and experience as a
reader; hence her label as an aesthetic reader. Her interest in reading as an activity appeared to
enable rather effective engagement with the reading passage, while her lack of interest in history
made it difficult for her to maintain focus on the content of the passage, shifting instead to
something she did take an interest in, which was her own reading response. Her heightened
awareness of her own experience as a reader supported her view of the author as a writer making
stylistic choices, which seems like an important step in moving toward a critical and evaluative
perspective. Without a connection of the stylistic choices to the author’s purpose and the content,
however, such criticism stays at a surface level and does not lend itself to building of deeper
understandings.
A number of aspects of Jessica’s reading appear to position her as a highly competent
reader who could potentially move on to proficiency in reading or in another academic domain
(although likely not history). As a 12-year old who had just completed her first year in middle
school, her facility at picking up broad themes from these difficult college-level texts with
relatively little apparent effort, as well as her strong knowledge scores, argue that she was
capable at building knowledge successfully from her reading. Her strong interest in reading and
Reading Competence and Goals 27
in reading about reading, even though she generally did not care for informational texts, suggest
that she could be motivated to learn even more about reading should she have further opportunity
to do so. The level of reading goals she acknowledged and pursued provide another indication
that she was inclined to read critically and evaluatively, even in this situation in which no
explicit goal for reading was given. She looked for both local and global meaning, and was
clearly beyond an understanding of the role of the reader as involving passive reception and
regurgitation of the author’s transmitted information. Her independent regulation of her own
reading goals included her awareness of the appropriateness and value of critical analysis and
evaluation of text, and her choice to do so.
A Meaning-Builder: Sarah
Knowledge and interest. Sarah approached the texts with comparatively little apparent
depth or breadth of knowledge in either domain. She scored lower than the undergraduate
average on every measure (Table 1). Looking at the spread of her responses, on the reading
measures, she showed a slight tendency to opt for the out-of-domain or off-topic responses
scored as 0 or 1. On the history measures, her responses to the domain-related analogy
completions clustered somewhat at the extremes, while for the topic-related sentence stem
completions, she was more successful at avoiding the irrelevant responses scored as 0. The
overall pattern of her responses suggests that she lacked a firm base of knowledge from which to
identify correct or more or less relevant or appropriate responses with regard to both the broader
domains of reading and history as well as in reference to the specific topics of psycholinguistics
and slavery. This is not surprising, given that she was 12 years old and had just completed sixth
grade, so she had received little explicit instruction in most of these areas.
Reading Competence and Goals 28
On the other hand, Sarah’s reported interest in both reading and history was very strong.
Her mean interest scores of 4.8 for both domains were the highest reported by the middle school
participants, and were well above those of the undergraduates (Table 1). Her interest in both
domains approached the level of the domain experts’ interest in their own domains. This does not
imply that she had the same nature of interest in the domain as the experts, but does indicate a
consistent expression of strong interest in both domains.
Behaviors and attitudes. Sarah’s think-aloud transcripts showed her to be a strong,
confident reader focused on building meaning. She made relatively few comments, but they
revealed her to be actively working at understanding and interpreting the text, and to be
monitoring her understanding. In the reading passage, she began by grounding her understanding
with a somewhat inaccurate interpretation of Pearson’s use of the phrase “listeners and readers”:
“Okay. …verbal and nonverbal.” She continued to rephrase, interpret and elaborate on what
Pearson was saying for herself as she went along: “So that would be a basic language skill.”; “So
that requires inference.”; “It’s a subconscious strategy.”; “So we all kind of possess these three
types of knowledge, but subconsciously, kind of.”; “So to be reading efficiently, we have to use
all three kinds together.” On one occasion she tested one of Pearson’s assertions by connecting to
her personal experience as a reader, and decided that his claim was valid: “I think I do that
sometimes.” At another point she disagreed with Pearson, possibly because she took him to be
focused on comprehension processes rather than word identification or syntactic processes. (“I
disagree, because if you can’t understand, then you can’t get any more information out of it.”)
Overall, however, as she monitored her level of understanding and agreement, she found that the
passage was making sense to her and that she agreed with Pearson’s statements. (“Okay, well,
that makes sense.” “Okay, well, I understand that.”)
Reading Competence and Goals 29
Sarah had less to say as she was reading the history passage. She began with a question
about the practice of indentured servitude: “How was this agreement reached in the first place?”
Her dominant behaviors again were to restate, interpret, and elaborate on what she was reading:
“So they were essentially slaves as well.”; “So, discrimination increased, to the point where only
they were slaves.”; “The only reason they decided to stop using white people as slaves is because
their population was decreasing. They just wanted workers.” She moved through the passage
with little apparent difficulty, making no comments directly related to evaluation of her own
comprehension.
After reading both passages, Sarah commented: “That was easy to understand, but
difficult to comprehend.” This insightful comment suggests that she had distinguished between a
literal-level understanding of what the text said (textbase) and a representation of what the text
meant (situation model), indicating a discerning and reflective consideration of what was going
on in her reading and in her efforts to build meaning from the text.
Goals. Sarah’s goal codings reflect her meaning-building orientation, with strongest
evidence being seen for the goals of understanding the text at a local level and evaluating the
argument content at a local level for the reading passage (Table 3). An additional identified and
corroborated goal included a local understanding of the argument in the history passage. Further
evidence was seen by one coder that Sarah was aiming at a global understanding of the reading
text, and at a local understanding of the text and global understanding of the argument for the
history passage. After discussion, both coders were in agreement that her behaviors did provide
evidence of the identified goals.
Outcomes. Sarah’s performances on the outcome measures indicate that she was was
rather successful at understanding the passages. Her responses to the first question, asking for
Reading Competence and Goals 30
important points from the passage, were accurate and extensive for both passages. She responded
in complete, well-formed, and occasionally deep, thoughts, especially in the case of the history
passage: “At the cost of becoming a biracial community, the problems with a white society were
solved; more African-Americans became slaves.” Such depth of response for this question
suggests that she had formed a relatively coherent and detailed representation of the text content;
she was not just dashing down snippets of information. When asked to report anything else she
remembered from the passage, Sarah’s responses in each case were additional complex ideas that
were relevant to the author’s gist, while subordinate in importance to those she gave for her
response to the first question.
When asked for the argument Takaki was making in the history passage, Sarah hit the
mark exactly: “The author is stating that slavery originated as indentured servantry and became
slavery through discrimination and as a way to ease problems in white society.” For the reading
passage, she produced a reasonable version of Pearson’s argument, but one in which she missed
the critical piece involving the minimization of the role of decoding for skilled readers: “The
author is stating that efficient readers must use grapho-phonetic, syntactic, and semantic
information together; to comprehend what one is reading and to also find meaning in it, all three
types of information must be used.” Interestingly, this was a common gap in the understanding
of the argument in this passage across many of our participants, including undergraduates and
even some reading experts. Her choice of words in responding to this question was interesting; in
each case she used the phrase, “the author is stating,” which suggests that she viewed the
argument itself as part of the information conveyed in the text
Finally, Sarah produced thoughtful and considered paragraphs in response to the fourth
question asking for her evaluation of the author’s argument. For the history passage, she noted
Reading Competence and Goals 31
that the only level on which she could respond was a moral one; she was well aware of her lack
of enough knowledge to support any other form of criticism: “The only thoughts I really have are
on a moral basing; I don’t know enough about slavery to make any other comments.” Rather
than engaging in any form of historical evaluation or criticism, she relied on her pre-existing
knowledge and beliefs about the foundation of our country in a nicely reasoned, although not
necessarily historically accurate, mini-essay on hypocrisy:
…after establishing a ‘free country’, a country that had been established to escape
discrimination and, essentially, exploitation, to start indentured servantry and slavery in
that country is hypocrisy. We showed hypocrisy from the start, however, in driving the
Indians off and taking their land for our own.
For the reading passage, Sarah articulated a difficulty she had identified in her
understanding of the reading passage. It was clear that she was trying to build an integrated
model of the text in which she further elaborated its content with reference to her own experience
and knowledge. Here she did feel able to evaluate the text, supported by her own reading of the
text and her own experience as a reader: “I may be misunderstanding or remembering
incorrectly, but with only syntactic, grapho-phonetic, and semantic information I think inference
and interpretation is difficult, if not impossible…” She correctly identified a difficulty with the
word-level focus of Pearson’s description of semantic-associational information, and noted here
the same distinction between different levels of understanding of a text that surfaced in her postreading comment about difficulty. However, she missed that Pearson’s main focus was on wordlevel processing rather than on comprehension and on the dominant role in psycholinguistic
theory of top-down processes as driving word identification in real reading.
Reading Competence and Goals 32
Overall. Sarah’s approach to reading in this situation was consistently oriented toward
building her own understanding of the meaning of the content. For both texts, her approach
seemed primarily to be one of determining what she thought each text meant, while for the
reading passage she additionally considered whether she agreed with the text. The level of goals
she acknowledged, aimed at building local and global understanding of the text content and the
argument, while evaluating only for the reading passage, support this interpretation of Sarah’s
approach. We have chosen the label meaning-builder for her approach, rather than knowledgebuilder (e.g., Coté & Goldman,1999) because she did not appear to be deliberately trying to build
or extend her conceptual knowledge from the texts. She did not appear to consider the texts as
authoritative or factual, but as presenting arguments for her consideration. We regard this
distinction between seeking to understand a text during processing and attempting to use that
textual content to augment one’s situation model of the topic to be highly relevant (Fox, 2009).
Although Sarah was focused on her own understanding, she was generally attentive to
and respectful of what the author had presented, as her ability to report accurately important
ideas from the text demonstrated. She also successfully identified the argument in these
challenging texts, but with greater success for the history passage than for the reading passage,
where it is possible that her own meaning-laden focus steered her toward projecting a similar
focus onto the text. It is likely that as a fluent reader, Sarah rarely had to consider word-level
processing; when she tried to connect the text to her own understanding and experience, what
shone through for her most clearly were meaning-level processes and goals.
Of our four participants, we would say that Sarah is the one most clearly positioned to
move on toward proficiency in reading or in another academic domain. Her deliberate, meaningbuilding approach and her performance on the outcome questions suggest that she chose to
Reading Competence and Goals 33
engage at a high level and that she was successful in doing so, in a manner that was remarkable
for a 12-year-old who had just completed her first year of middle school. She appears to be well
equipped to build principled knowledge via written text in almost any academic domain that
deeply interests here. Moreover, her high levels of self-reported interest suggest that motivation
is not likely to be an issue. Her approach suggests that she might take up readily the task of
transforming and building new knowledge, and her performance suggests that her strategic
processing would be more than up to the task.
An Unguided Reader: Alexa
Knowledge and interest. Alexa had much stronger domain knowledge in reading than in
history. Her domain knowledge score for reading was the highest among our middle school
participants and also above that for the history expert and the undergraduate average (Table 1).
At the time of testing, Alexa was 13-years-old, and had completed seventh grade.. She selected
some form of domain-related response for every item on this measure, and she tended to opt for
either the appropriate response or a closely related but less appropriate completion for the given
analogy (Table 2). Her history domain knowledge score, however, was lower than the
undergraduate average, and here her typical response was to choose the out-of-domain answer
option. Her topic knowledge scores were slightly stronger for history than for reading, but in
both instances she was somewhat below the average undergraduate score. On both topic
knowledge measures, she did relatively well at identifying the correct sentence stem completion,
but also tended to be drawn toward the out-of-domain or off-topic responses.
In line with her domain knowledge scores, Alexa’s self-reported interest in reading was
quite high (4.8), well above the mean for the undergraduates and the history expert (Table 1).
Her self-reported interest in history was much lower, (3.0), below the undergraduate average.
Reading Competence and Goals 34
Behaviors and attitudes. Alexa’s think-alouds were not extensive, although she
verbalized more during the processing of the reading than the history passage. For the history
passage, she started out with an expression of empathy, a personal connection to the information
being presented: “That’s gotta be pretty tough, working without any wages for your whole life.”
She went on to question the reason behind the actions or rationales being described in the
passage several times, as in this comment made early on in her reading: “I wonder why that,
black people, why black servants were separated from white servants, I don’t know why anyone
thought they were any different.” She also commented that she didn’t understand the reason for
the decision taken to increase the number of black slaves, a critical and concluding piece of the
argument presented by Takaki: “I don’t understand why they want to increase the black
population of slaves and decrease the population of white slaves, that’s not, I’m not sure why
they wanted to do that.” In each case, having raised the question or issue of non-comprehension,
she made no evident strategic moves to address the situation. When asked by the researcher if
she could say what she was thinking (after an extended period of silence), she laughed, and said,
“It’s hard to comment on just facts.”
For the reading passage, Alexa began by wondering about the meaning of Pearson’s
description of semantic-associational information: “I wonder how words are hierarch-ally
[laughs] related to one another.” Her laughter here may be linked to her statement later on that
“I’m thinking this is way over my head,” and that the vocabulary in the passage was presenting
her with some difficulties:” I’m trying to understand all the big-words.” She described the
strategy she was using to cope with this: “Looking for words that I recognize, which are very few
in this passage. But there’s just a few.” Her other comments were both expressions of agreement
with claims Pearson was making about reading and reading behaviors: “I agree with the author
Reading Competence and Goals 35
that it’s more useful for readers to know that, the main idea of the paragraph rather than, paying
so much attention to the sequence of words.”; “And I do agree with the author here,
that familiarity with reading implies, knowing more about what is in the text helps you
understand, if you’re familiar with the topic.”
Her reading thus seemed to be somewhat more engaged with the text itself for the reading
passage than for the history passage. For the reading passage, she saw it as appropriate and
possible to evaluate her own agreement with the claims being made about reading. She also took
steps to address gaps in her comprehension. For the history passage, she questioned why people
would behave in the way described, apparently assuming the description to be itself
unquestionable, a matter of facts.
Goals. In line with Alexa’s somewhat more active approach to the reading passage, her
identified goal with the strongest evidence was the local understanding of the reading text. Her
other goals for this passage were evaluation of the argument quality, and building a global
understanding of the text (Table 3). For the history passage, her identified goals included a local
understanding of the argument and of the text, and global evaluation of the quality of the
argument (where she identified the passage as being all facts).
Outcomes. Alexa’s responses to the outcome questions indicate that she had come out of
the reading situation without a clear sense of the structure of the texts as building an argument.
For the history passage, when asked in the first question to give important points, she reported
not only ideas that were important to support Takaki’s argument [“Black slaves were treated
more harshly than white slaves.” “As slave trade progressed (over time), the population of white
slaves decreased, and the population of black slaves increased.”], but also less relevant details
Reading Competence and Goals 36
that had caught her attention (“Many slaves worked for their whole lives without any wages.”
“Slaves came from several different countries.”).
When asked to report anything else she remembered, the points she listed included both
important ideas [“The slave population in Virginia began with (mostly) white slaves.” “Slaves
were often outcasts from society, or in the lowest class of society.”] and details (“Working
conditions for slaves were extremely poor.). She had been successful at pulling out and retaining
important information, but without the organizational coherence that would enable her to
hierarchically order what she had in memory.
When asked to give the argument for the history passage, Alexa focused on the behaviors
and actions that had puzzled her, and created an explanation for the increase in the population of
black slaves: “I feel that the author is trying to prove that black slaves were considered of higher
value than white slaves, but (for some reason) treated more harshly than white slaves.” She had
missed the critical element of the class struggle that would have helped connect the separate
propositions into a coherent argument. Her response to the question asking for her evaluation of
the argument was blank, despite her evident awareness that the argument (as she was
understanding it) was not clearly framed.
Her outcome performance for the reading passage displayed a similar failure to organize
her understanding of the text around a coherent structure. What she reported for important points
were precisely those ideas with which she had expressed agreement while reading (“Familiarity
with a topic enables the reader to better understand the text.” “The author feels that
understanding the main idea of a passage is more important than focusing on the literal meaning
of certain phrases within the text.”). When asked for anything else she could remember, she
accurately reported a fairly complicated subordinate idea from the passage (“The author states
Reading Competence and Goals 37
that even young children have the ability to understand some elements of grammar, such as
understanding that even though two sentences may be structured differently, they hold the same
meaning.”). However, she continued with a fabricated understanding of the purpose and content
of the passage [“The author presented several different methods to help people become better
readers.” “Some methods require discovering the main idea(s) of a passage, while others require
discovering a relationship between certain words or phrases.”] This invented understanding
became what she then offered as the author’s argument: “I think the author is trying to prove that
there are several different ways to help people become better readers, and to understand main
ideas of the text.” And once again, she failed to offer any of her own thoughts in response to the
fourth evaluative question, leaving it blank. For both passages, her choice of words in stating the
author’s argument was suggestive. Her view of an argument was that it consists in trying to
prove something. Presumably, given her description of the history passage as being just facts,
this is accomplished by lining up an arrangement of facts. Given such a view, it is perhaps not
surprising that she had nothing to offer in the way of an evaluation.
Overall. Alexa’s approach to reading in this challenging reading situation indicated that
she had difficulty in finding her footing. For both passages, her reading seemed to lack a guiding
direction or purpose, with a corresponding gap in her understanding of the overall theme in the
author’s message. For this reason, we have labeled her as an unguided reader. Although Alexa
was able to retain a few particular ideas in the reading passage and evaluate her agreement with
them, she was unable to build a coherent meaning for the passage that was faithful to the content,
but appeared rather incidental. She did not appear to be digging into the texts or going after
meaning in any systematic way, although she did take away a number of important points that
surfaced in her recall.
Reading Competence and Goals 38
Alexa is the one of the participants whom we would characterize as having the greatest
likelihood to remain in competence. Her high domain knowledge of reading and high interest in
reading, her good recall of several of the important points for both passages, her ability to
generally understand the propositional content of the text, and to use an appropriate strategy
where she encountered difficulty with the vocabulary suggest that she was well ensconced in
competence, particularly given the difficulty of the reading task and her status as a 13-year-old
entering eighth grade. She appeared to be aware of goals that would move beyond just a local
understanding of the text, and was aware that reading could involve evaluation of the text and
understanding and evaluation of the argument it was presenting. However, she was not
competent at recognizing or framing the argument in the text, and clearly was not confident
enough to evaluate the argument when prompted. The arguments she invented as having been
presented in each passage reflected her groping at an overall understanding of what she had read.
She had moved through each text without building much in the way of a connected or coherent
understanding. The author did not present his argument in a tidy package for her to pick up and
take away, and therefore when she finished reading, she was empty-handed. That she apparently
lacked a conception of what reading or argument involves that would prompt her to work at
building such an understanding on her own would present a serious obstacle to her further
progress in reading development. Alexa’s unguided approach to reading when not given a
specific purpose and her inability to position herself to view the text as coherent, connected, and
purposeful would need to be surmounted in order for her to move on to proficiency in reading, or
indeed, in any other academic domain.
Reading Competence and Goals 39
A “Gist” Reader: Sam
Knowledge and interest. Sam’s scores on the domain and topic knowledge measures (see
Table 1) were low in both domains, a little less than one standard deviation below the average for
both the domain and topic knowledge measures. Typically, Sam chose either the out-of-domain
or not closely domain-related answer in both the reading and history measures (see Table 2). The
only notable exception was the history topic knowledge measure, where Sam chose the closely
related domain answer 40% of the time. However, he still chose the out-of-domain answer about
33% of the time. Sam is well below the experts’ scores for both history and reading, and well
below the undergraduates’ scores for all but the domain reading scores, where he was on par
with the undergraduates.
From looking at Sam’s scores on the domain and topic knowledge test, it may not be
immediately evident that he is a competent reader. However, the one measure where Sam’s score
was comparable to both the middle-school mean and undergraduate mean was the reading
domain knowledge measure. This, coupled with the lower scores on the other measures, might
indicate that Sam may be reading books with either a narrower selection of domains and topics,
or may not be reading books about the domain of interest for these particular measures (i.e.,
history and reading).
Sam’s interest scores for both reading and history may help support the assumption that
these are not subjects Sam typically reads (Table 1). In fact, Sam’s interest scores were over one
standard deviation lower for reading, and a little under one standard deviation lower for history
than his middle-school counterparts. Additionally, Sam’s interest scores were substantially lower
for both reading and history than the undergraduates and the experts. To further understand how
Reading Competence and Goals 40
these knowledge and interest scores may manifest themselves in two particular reading
situations, we turn to an examination of Sam’s think-aloud transcript.
Behaviors and attitudes. Sam’s think-aloud transcript provides evidence that Sam was
highly engaged with the text in both the reading and history passages. Sam’s engagement
manifested itself primarily in his questioning of the text at two different levels. The first level of
Sam’s questioning of the text was at the word level. He frequently questioned what certain words
meant, by asking questions such as, “What does semantic associational mean?” He questioned at
the word level frequently for both texts.
The second level of Sam’s questioning involved deeper questioning of the text (and
assumingly of the author). This level of questioning was more prevalent for the history passage,
but also occurred in the reading passage to some extent as well. In the history passage, Sam
questioned why certain antecedents occurred, such as, “I wonder why the population of slaves
went up so slowly?” For the reading passage, the questions were more directly pointed toward
the author, such as, “What does this mean?” Further he evaluated the text quality frequently,
commenting on the coherence of the argument in the text, saying, “That doesn’t make sense,” as
well as the presentation of the argument, saying, “That sentence is odd.”
Not only was Sam engaged outwardly with the text, Sam also was engaged in a selfreflective manner, primarily by monitoring his own comprehension. This was particularly salient
in the history passage. As Sam was reading, he was able to monitor if he did or did not
understand the text, saying, “I don’t know what that means.” In addition to this internal
evaluation, Sam was even able to interpret the text beyond what the author was specifically
saying. For example, in the history passage Sam commented that, “That’s crazy, that the rich
people had to, make themselves better.” Sam’s questioning, monitoring, and interpreting
Reading Competence and Goals 41
activities indicate that he was indeed engaged with the text, and more specifically, the argument
the author was making.
Goals. Sam’s goal codings indicate that his primary aim in reading was to understand the
text and the argument at the local level for both passages (Table 3). For the reading passage, the
goal codings provided evidence that Sam was not only concerned with the argument being
presented, but also evaluating the quality of the text.
Outcomes. Sam’s outcome measures were similar by degrees for both the history and
reading passage. For the first question, asking about important points from the passage, Sam was
able to pick up very broad, general themes from each passage. For example, in the reading
passage, Sam wrote, “There are many types of reading.” Although this is not a nuanced
statement of Pearson’s argument, he still managed to summarize the broad theme of the passage.
Similarly, in the history passage, Sam was able to make a slightly more nuanced presentation of
points Takaki was making than for the reading passage, including, “White indentured servants
were treated much better than slaves.”
In regards to the second question that asked about anything else remembered in the
passage, Sam answered this question differently for each passage. In the history passage, Sam
pressed to remember details of the passage. For example, he incorrectly recalled from the
passage that, “Pennsylvania passed a law in 1664 that a slave was the property of the master’s
estate.” However, in the reading passage, Sam used this as an opportunity to reiterate that the
passage was full of, “a lot of big confusing words.”
Questions three and four asked the participant to write down the argument the author was
making as well as what the participant thought about the argument. As with question one, it was
clear that Sam had the general idea of the argument and could comment about what he thought
Reading Competence and Goals 42
about the argument. Again, as in question one, this was not necessarily a nuanced position, but
he clearly understood what the authors were driving at in the respective texts. For the history
passage, Sam directly acknowledged the engagement with the author by referring to the author as
“they.”
Overall. Sam is a competent reader in regards to his ability to understand the broader
argument an author is trying to make. Although he did not remember many details about the
passages, he was able to engage in the authors’ arguments and take his own point of view. In
fact, Sam did not seem able to remember specific details from the passages, which is congruent
with his relatively low topic knowledge scores for both domains. Sam did not have any
expressed goals of memorizing texts. Indeed, Sam’s think-aloud transcript illuminated his more
“gestalt” approach to understanding overarching themes and arguments in a text.
Sam’s approach and resulting outcomes very closely resemble what Marton and Saljo
(1976) described as a “deep processor.” According to Marton and Saljo, the deep processor is
interested in the underlying meaning of text. The surface processor is more concerned with “rote
memorization” of text. It is unclear in this case if Sam was able to accurately reproduce specific
sections of text (as evidenced by the incorrect segments in the outcome measures), or if it was
simply not something Sam was concerned about.
Although, Sam was not able to recall specific details and did not necessarily have the
higher knowledge and interest scores that typical of what one may consider a “competent”
reader, Sam was able to in some way understand the underlying meaning of text. As a deep
processor, Sam could use text to understand broad arguments and ideas.
Reading Competence and Goals 43
General Discussion
Here we will first briefly summarize what we saw in the way of reading competence from
our participants, highlighting noteworthy similarities and differences in their characteristics,
behaviors and attitudes, and outcome performances. We will then consider what we have learned
in relation to our overarching research question: What distinguishes those competent readers
whose approach to reading has the potential to carry them on to proficiency from those who will
likely not go beyond competence? In particular, we will highlight the value and also the
limitations of our approach to this question by way of reading goals. Finally, we will briefly
consider the role of reading competence in the development of proficiency across academic
domains, in connection with learning from text.
Observed Reading Competence
Our four young participants were highly competent, but not expert readers. However, the
nature of their competence was not uniform. Their profiles as readers manifested differing levels
of prior knowledge and interest, different focuses for their goal-directed strategic processing, and
different levels of success in terms of outcome performance. We saw them as exemplifying quite
a variety of approaches to reading, including Sarah’s meaning-building, Jessica’s aesthetic
orientation, Alexa’s unguided navigation of the texts, and Sam’s attention to the gist.
We have asserted that our participants were all highly competent readers, and there were
a number of important similarities in their characteristics, behaviors, and outcomes, that support
such a characterization. They had all been identified as gifted readers and had been selected for
participation in a competitive-entry program focused on humanities and communications. In their
reading of the passages, they were, by and large, highly fluent in reading these challenging texts.
As expected, they had few difficulties at the word or syntax level (e.g., Pang, 2008), and even
Reading Competence and Goals 44
when such difficulties arose they tended to be with domain-specific vocabulary or with text
formats they would be unlikely to have encountered. Each of them monitored their
comprehension at a variety of levels (Pang, 2008). Each of them was aware of and to some
degree appeared to be working toward construction of meaning at a more global level, while
none were engaged in the sentence-by-sentence disconnected processing more typical of readers
with less ability, knowledge, and experience (e.g., Fox, 2009).
Moreover, these students responded flexibly to the different demands of the two
passages, engaging in different forms of processing and acknowledging different levels of goals
as appropriate in these two reading situations (e.g., Fox, 2009). As far as their successful
construction of a representation of what they had read, each of them came away with some grasp
of the salient fundamental themes of the two passages: that the history passage was concerned
with explaining a critical shift in regard to the slave population, and that the reading passage was
about differences in how people read. Bearing in mind also their ages and years of school
experience, the nature of these students’ engagement in reading the demanding passages and
their post-reading responses indicated a high level of competence in reading.
Within this high competence, however, there were interesting, critical differences among
our participants. They came into this reading situation with varying degrees of knowledge and
interest related to the domains of reading and history, although there was a common tendency to
value reading above history when some preference was expressed. In their reading of the two
passages, they differed in the degree to which they engaged in or indicated awareness of the
appropriateness of the goal of evaluating the text content or quality (Table 3). They also differed
in the degree to which they balanced out a focus on global processing and more local-level
processing. Further, they differed considerably in their outcome performance, particularly with
Reading Competence and Goals 45
regard to success at identifying the author’s argument and how they approached evaluation of
that argument for the two passages. Finally, and most obviously, they differed in what we have
characterized as their overall approach to reading, in what they seemed to be oriented toward as
the purpose of reading.
We suggest that this consideration of reading competence offers strong evidence of the
importance of considering multiple aspects when describing or evaluating readers’ competence.
Just looking at knowledge, or interest, or reading behaviors is likely not to be enough. Just
looking at one passage, one topic, or one domain is certainly not likely to be enough. Although
we did not inquire about it here, out-of-school reading interests and habits would also likely be
of considerable relevance. Finally, consideration of readers’ goals appears to be highly germane
to their reading competence. Our determination of goals was relatively indirect. A post-reading
interview in which reading goals were directly queried might be a productive way to go after this
information, with regard to their understanding of reading in general as well as in respect to what
they did in this particular reading situation. Goals provided a vehicle to link readers’ strategic
processing and evaluation with their overall success. Direct measurement of goals would provide
a sense of the readers’ overall approach to each text, and the means to relate such goals to the
real-time processing.
What we did not look at here were other modes of reading competence, such as the
effortful processor or knowledge-reliant reader (Alexander, 2002; 2005). We focused on the
highly competent and on the movement into proficiency. But in understanding competence as
part of a reader’s developmental path, it would also be of great interest to consider how readers
arrive at competence, as well as how they travel on from it. Looking at how readers move from
acclimation into competence would also be of value, as the nature of the impetus for this
Reading Competence and Goals 46
movement shapes the nature of the profiles more or less successful readers exhibit as they enter
competence, and their likely progress thereafter.
We noted at the outset a distinction between two types of potentially competent reading,
identified in one framework as deep versus shallow processing (Marton & Säljö, 1986, 1997) and
in another as being between more reflectively adaptable and more passively adaptive
engagement in tasks (Bereiter & Scardamalia,1986; 1993). The implication was that growth
toward expertise or proficiency was more likely to occur for readers who aimed at and employed
deep processing and who were reflectively adaptable, not merely responding to task demands
skillfully but also constructing their own rationales for and interpretations of appropriate tasks
and ways of going about them. Readers who are shallow processors or passive performers of
assigned tasks may be quite skillful and effective at what they do, and the label of competence is
appropriate for such readers. However, they are not likely to move beyond competence in
reading, and their progress toward proficiency in other domains would depend on their ability to
transform their reading in those domains appropriately
In both of these frameworks, the nature of competence that has the potential for growth
is intimately linked to the reader’s awareness of different levels of goals, while progression to
proficiency is linked to the deliberate and successful pursuit of them. In the MDL, as well, the
path toward the sharp upturn in use of deep-level processing strategies upon entering into
proficiency is preceded by a steady growth in the use of deep-level processing (Figure 1),
presumably related to the pursuit of higher-level goals. It is important to distinguish between
awareness of goals, pursuit of those goals, and success in pursuit of the goals, however.
Although consistent awareness of higher-level goals is a critical step, it is also important to
consider whether readers also choose to dedicate effort to the pursuit of those goals in a given
Reading Competence and Goals 47
situation, and further, how successful they are in pursuing them. Our reading goal codings did
not differentiate between awareness, pursuit, and quality of pursuit of goals, reflecting simply
what we saw as readers’ acknowledgement of a given goal, which could involve acknowledging
that it had not been successfully achieved. More nuanced coding would possibly have
highlighted even more strongly important differences among our participants as readers.
Among our participants, we saw that potential roadblocks to progression beyond
competence, even for these highly competent readers, could include the need to ground
evaluations of the text in disciplinary criteria (Jessica), the need to establish and pursue meaningbased goals (Alexa), and the need to ensure that gist-level processing takes into account as well
the text’s propositional network (Sam). We suggest that the need to independently establish and
pursue meaning-based goals is the most critical. Such independence would be manifest in a
change in the reader’s epistemic orientation toward reading, resting as it does on what the reader
thinks reading is and what it involves in the way of self-direction and commitment from the
reader (Perry, 1959).
Reading Competence and Development in Academic Domains
Our final consideration pertains to reading and reading competence as bound up with
development in other academic domains. Proficiency in most academic domains is highly
contingent upon being able to read successfully, where what counts as successful reading will
involve domain-appropriate strategic tools and outcomes. On the one hand, it would appear that
the more readers are prone to awareness and successful pursuit of higher-level reading goals in
their own independent and self-regulated reading, the more prepared they would be to move
toward domain proficiency supported by reading in any domain. Chall offers a description of
reading at the highest stage of reading development that similarly connects reading competence
Reading Competence and Goals 48
or proficiency per se with knowledge development: “[at stage 5] Reading is used for one’s own
needs and purposes (professional and personal); reading serves to integrate one’s knowledge
with that of others, to synthesize it and to create new knowledge.” (1983, p. 87). Among the key
characteristics associated with maturity in reading identified by Gray and Rogers, in their work
on reading development, is the mature reader’s:
Tendency to read (a) a wide variety of material that contribute pleasure, widen horizons,
and stimulate creative thinking; (b) serious materials which promote a growing
understanding of one’s self, of others, and of problems of a social, moral, and ethical
nature; and (c) intensively in a particular field or materials relating to a central core or
radix. (1956, p. 54)
On the other hand, it would be possible to shape one’s reading toward what is required
for proficiency in a given domain without necessarily having this type of approach to reading in
any other reading situation, being carried along by knowledge and interest in the domain itself.
One could have a shallow or passively adaptive approach to the general activity of reading or in
particular reading circumstances, but nonetheless be able to read relatively proficiently in one’s
domain by virtue of one’s deep and active approach to the subject about which one was reading.
Haas (1994) offers an example of such a mode of reading development in her account of one
undergraduate’s progress in reading in the field of biology. Although her participant learned to
read biology articles critically and in accord with disciplinary purposes and criteria, she did so in
order to do biology, and without any realization of the nature of the difference in her reading that
would support her pursuit of such critical and evaluative reading to other areas.
Reading Competence and Goals 49
Concluding Thoughts
Reading competence is a complex construct. The nature of a given individual’s
competence in reading has implications for his or her further development in reading or toward
other forms of academic expertise. Learning from text in an academic domain does not happen
automatically or identically; the roles of knowledge and interest in shaping strategic processing
and supporting learning have long been recognized (James, 1992). One way to illuminate the
nature of that shaping and support is to look at reading goals. In order to understand what readers
get out of reading it seems essential to consider what they are trying to get out of reading. We
suggest that this will also hinge on what they think reading is, or their epistemic orientation
toward reading. Development of an articulated understanding of the role of self-determined
reading goals for readers at varying levels of knowledge will provide a vocabulary and structure
around which instruction can be framed. Explicit consideration of the nature and role of reading
competence and of the degree to which reading goals are and can be shaped by instruction is
clearly called for as well.
Reading Competence and Goals 50
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Reading Competence and Goals 55
Appendix A
Reading and History Passages
From: P. David Pearson, “Some practical applications of a psycholinguistic model of reading,”
pp. 84-87. In What research has to say about reading instruction, S. Jay Samuels, editor. IRA,
1978.
Receivers of language input (listeners or readers) use a variety of sources of information as they
read or listen. Most prominent and ubiquitous for the reader are semantic-associational information,
syntactic information, and grapho-phonemic (symbol sound) information.
Semantic-associational information includes our knowledge of what words refer to in the real
world and how words are hierarchically related to one another. But it also includes our knowledge of the
fact that certain sets of words appearing in the same context “fit” together nicely, while other sets of
words appearing in the same context are surprising to us. For example, the meaning of the terms whale
and horse represent semantic information, as does the knowledge that both are mammals and hence related
to man in some way. The associational aspect of this category of information is illustrated by our
smugness when we find whale occurring in the same context with the terms water, boat, and harpoon and our
surprise when it occurs in the same context with farmer, wheat, and flax.
Syntactic information refers to the ordering relationships among words in sentences. Even sixyear-olds possess a great deal of information about how words are ordered within sentences to represent
grammatically acceptable statements. In the sentences that follow, for example, they know that (1) and (2)
but not (3) and (4) “make sense.” Further they know that (1) and (2) are semantically equivalent to one
another, that is, they mean the same thing.
1 The boy kicked the ball.
2 The ball was kicked by the boy.
3 ball boy the the kicked
4 kicked the the boy ball
While syntax and semantics are surely parts of what we refer to as context, syntactic information
is, in my view, less useful as an aid to word identification and understanding while we read than is semanticassociational information. It is more useful for readers to know that the paragraph is about farm animals
than it is for them to know that “the big…” precedes the word horse if their task is to decode horse.
On the other hand, syntactic information is critical when we speak of comprehension as
product—or demonstrating to someone else that we have understood what we read. Given the
semantically meaningless statement (5), we can (as can a first grader) answer questions (6), (7), and (8),
solely on the basis of our knowledge of syntactic relations.
5 The roogle raznacked the sleefary because the sleefary had afranned his abelaide.
6 Who raznacked the sleefary…?
1
1
Most writers speak only of semantic information. I add associational to the term to emphasize the fact that the body of
information is related to experience and consequently to “sets” or expectations we have about what words are and are not
congruent with one another.
Reading Competence and Goals 56
7. What was it that the sleefary had arfranned?
8. Why did the roogle raznack the sleefary?
Further note that (8) is a why type question, one usually thought of as requiring a higher order of
understanding than what or who questions. As a matter of fact, most so called literal comprehension
questions can be answered by referring only to the syntactic relations in a sentence. All one has to do is
adopt a rule stating: “1) Read the question. 2) Scan the passage for the sentence containing the most words
in common with the question. 3) Match up word for word between question and sentence. 4) Use the
remainder as your answer.” This “search and destroy” tactic is a very effective tool for students who want
to demonstrate that they have understood what they have read. Perhaps most of us recall using it from
time to time, especially when the question was, “What are the major products of X?” We simply scanned
the text until we found a sentence beginning, “The major products of X are…”.
Grapho-phonemic (phonic, symbol-sound or, in Smith’s term, visual) information is what novice
readers learn in the phonics component of their reading program. It includes the knowledge the b
translates as buh or the b is the first sound you hear when you say bird. It also includes the reader’s
knowledge, explicit or implicit, of phonics generalizations, silent letters and letter-sound correspondence.
An important distinction exists between syntactic and semantic information on the one hand, and
phonic information on the other. Both semantic and syntactic information form a part of data base (along
with phonological—or speech sound—information) used by listeners to understand spoken language. Phonic
information is peculiar to reading. Hence, the natural tie between oral and written language is through the
base of meaning present in children’s store of syntactic and semantic relations.
The Model at Work
The psycholinguistic model of reading proposed here suggests that real reading occurs when all
three kinds of information are used in concert. Efficient readers maximize their reliance on syntactic and
semantic information in order to minimize the amount of print to speech processing (call this decoding,
phonic, or grapho-phonemic analysis) they have to do. They literally predict what is coming and get
enough grapho-phonemic information to verify their predictions. For example, it doesn’t take much
visual or grapho-phonemic information to confirm the hypothesis that telescope fits into the sentence, “The
astronomer looked through the _______________.”
Readers must vary the amount of attention they pay to the graphic information according to their
familiarity with the content. This helps to explain why one can read Time magazine much more rapidly
than a philosophic treatise. In terms of the model, familiarity with text can be translated into the degree of
congruence between the syntactic/semantic information in the text and the syntactic/semantic relations
stored in readers’ heads. In simpler terms, familiarity implies knowing more about what is in a text.
Reading Competence and Goals 57
Novice or poor readers are so bound up in their search for phonic information that they have little
chance to attend to meaning. Good readers, on the other hand, because they attend to meaning, may
often make unimportant errors in decoding words accurately.
In all of these examples of the model at work, a common thread appears: the highly active role of
the store of semantic and syntactic information already existing in readers’ knowledge. Such a model is to
be contrasted with views of reading which, even in the case of efficient readers, assign primary activity to
decoding processes and relegate the semantic and syntactic processes to the role of verifying the
phonological message. The present model will allow for situations (such as the novice or skilled reader
confronted with unfamiliar text) in which decoding processes become the primary target of the reader’s
attention. But whenever possible, the model demands that the reader’s attention focus on
semantic/syntactic (meaning) processes.
2
2
The reader who wishes a more detailed and sophisticated explication of the model I have attempted to summarize should
consult the Smith reference (1975) listed at the end of this article.
Reading Competence and Goals 58
From: Ronald T. Takaki, “The Giddy multitude,” in Takaki, R.T. (1993). A different mirror: A
history of multicultural America. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
Though they had been “sold”, the first twenty Africans might not have been slaves, persons
reduced to property and required to work without wages for life. Like many English colonists who were
also sold as indentured servants, many or possibly all of them were bound by contract to serve a master
for four to seven years in order to repay the expense of their passage.
In the early days of the Virginia colony, most workers were white indentured servants. In fact, 75
percent of the colonists came as servants during the seventeenth century. In 1664, the Council of Foreign
Plantations reported that the colony’s population had been “increased principally by sending of Servants.”
Production and the improvement of property depended on these workers.
Coming mainly from England but also from Germany and Ireland, these men and women were
the outcasts of society. As described by historian Abbot Emerson Smith, they included convicts, “rogues,
vagabonds, whores, cheats, and rabble of all descriptions, raked from the gutter,” “decoyed, deceived,
seduced, inveigled, or forcibly kidnapped and carried as servants to the plantations.” They were regarded
as the “surplus inhabitant” of England.
Coming from different shores, white and black laborers in Virginia had very limited understanding
as well as negative notions of each other, and mutual feelings of fear and hostility undoubtedly existed.
Still, both groups occupied a common social space, a terrain of racial liminality that had not yet
developed rigid caste lines. White and black, they shared a condition of class exploitation and abuse: they
were all unfree laborers.
Occasionally, perhaps often, whites and blacks ran away together. The problem of whites and
blacks absconding together became so serious that the Virginia legislature complained about “English
servants running away with Negroes.”
Increasingly, black servants were separated from white servants and singled out for special
treatment. Blacks were also serving longer time periods for indenture as punishment for running away. In
1640, for example, three runaway servants – two white men and a black man – were captured and
returned. They were each given thirty lashes. In addition, both white men were required to work for their
masters for an additional year and for the colony for three more years. But the third runaway received the
most severe punishment: “Being a Negro named John Punch shall serve his said master or his assigns for
the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere.”
What was happening was evident: Africans, unlike whites, were being degraded into a condition of
servitude for life and even the status of property. In 1645, Ralph Wormeley presented in court a certificate
of a gift to Agatha Stubbings in “Consideration of Matrimony” – “Four Negro men and Two
women…..Ten Cows, six Draft Oxen.”
Clearly, blacks were enslaved before 1660. Yet historian Oscar Handlin asserted: “The status of
Negroes was that of indentured servants and so they were identified and treated down to the
1
William W. Hening, The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, 13 vols. (Richmond, 1809-1823), vol. 2,
p.26; Helen Catterall (ed), Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro, vol. I, Cases from the Courts of England, Virginia,
West Virginia, and Kentucky (New York, 1968), p. 80.
1
Reading Competence and Goals 59
1660s” What Handlin failed to recognize was de facto slavery – chattel bondage in practice if not in law. By
the 1650s, according to Alden T. Vaughan’s count, 70 percent of the blacks in Virginia were serving as
slaves .
In 1661, the Virginia Assembly began to institutionalize slavery, to make it de jure. A law regarding
the punishment of servants referred to “those Negroes who are incapable of making satisfaction by
addition of time.” In other words, they were required to serve for life. Eight years later, the Virginia
2
3
legislature defined a slave as property, a part of the owner’s “estate.”
Yet, the African population increased very slowly. “It was not until at least a decade after the
decline in the supply of servants,” Menard observed, “that the number of blacks imported each year rose
above a trickle…” Lifetime servitude had become more profitable. But something else also happened after
4
1675 that opened the way for a switch from indentured white labor to black slave labor .
That “something” occurred within white society in Virginia. To understand race relations by
focusing on race sometimes obscures; indeed, the “hidden” origins of slavery were rooted in class.
According to Governor William Berkeley, white servants came with a “hope of bettering their
condition in a Growing Country.” They thought the American expanse offered the possibility of starting
over, creating new selves and new lives. Land in Virginia, taken from the Indians, was available and cheap,
and each freeman could claim title to fifty acres.
The very abundance of land and the profitability of tobacco production, however, unleashed a
land boom and speculation. Colonists with financial advantage quickly scrambled to possess the best lands
along the navigable rivers. Representing a landed elite, they dominated the Virginia Assembly and began to
enact legislation to advance and protect their class interests. They passed laws that extended the time of
indentured servitude for whites and increased the length of service for white runaways. In this way, they
minimized competition for lands and at the same time maximized the supply of white laborers by keeping
5
them in servitude for as long as possible .
Consequently, white freemen increasingly found it difficult to become landowners. Frustrated and
angry, many white workers felt they had been duped into coming to America. In 1649, pamphleteer
William Bullock warned planters about the men and women who, “not finding what was promised,” had
become “dejected” and recalcitrant workers. In England, they had been viewed as the “Surcharge of
necessitous people, the matter or fuel of dangerous insurrections.” In Virginia, they had become an even
greater threat to social order, forming what the planter elite fearfully called a “giddy multitude” – a
discontented class of indentured servants, slaves, and landless freemen, both white and black. Large
landowners could see that the social order would always be in danger so long as they had to depend on
white labor. They had come to a crossing. They could open
Oscar Handlin, Race and Nationality in American Life (New York, 1957), p. 7; Alden T. Vaughan, “The Origins Debate: Slavery
and Racism in Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 97, no.3 (July 1989),
p. 354. See Degler, Out of Our Past, pp. 26-39, for a refutation of the Handlin thesis as presented in Handlin, Race and
Nationality, pp. 3-22.
Hening, Statutes, vol. 2, pp.26, 270.
Menard, “From Servants to Slaves,” p. 363; Morgan, American Slavery – American Freedom, p. 299.
Morgan, American Slavery – American Freedom, p. 215-220.
2
3
4
5
Reading Competence and Goals 60
economic opportunities to white workers and extend political privileges to them. But this would erode
their own economic advantage and potentially undermine their political hegemony. Or they could try to
reorganize society on the basis of class and race. By importing and buying more slaves, they would
decrease the proportion of white indentured servants. They would then be able to exploit a group of
workers who had been enslaved and denied the right to bear arms because of their race. To increase the
black population would mean to create a biracial society. However, such a development could help the
planters control an armed white labor force and possibly solve the class problem within white society .
6
Morgan, American Slavery – American Freedom, p. 308; Breen, “Changing Labor Force,” p. 12. Morgan is reluctant to press his
analysis as far as I do. “The substitution of slaves for servants gradually eased and eventually ended the threat that the freedmen
posed,” he wrote. “As the annual number of imported servants dropped, so did the number of men turning free…..Planters
who bought slaves instead of servants did not do so with any apparent consciousness of the social stability to be gained thereby.
Perhaps not, but perhaps they did, though not apparently. See Theodore Allen, “’….They Would Have Destroyed Me”: Slavery
and the Origin of Racism,” Radical America, vol. 9, no. 3 (May-June 1975), pp. 41-63, which I read after completing my analysis
of Bacon’s Rebellion, for an argument that the planters acted deliberately and consciously.
6
Reading Competence and Goals 61
Appendix B
Codes for Think-alouds
Strategic behaviors

Reading aloud

Guessing the meaning of a word in context [“I guess “in concert” means together,
because in a concert, everything is together.” Jessica]

Questioning
-
word meaning [“What does raznack mean.” Sam]
-
reason [“I wonder why that, black people, why black servants were separated from
white servants.” Alexa]

-
mechanism [“How was this agreement reached in the first place?” Sarah]
-
author intent [“And did this have anything to do with the slavery after it?” Jessica]
-
text quality [“Shouldn’t it be surplus inhabitants, instead of inhabitant?” Jessica]
-
text feature [“Why is the G in growing and the C in country capitalized?” Jessica]
Restating (paraphrase) or repeating text information
-
local (word, phrase, sentence level) [“So to be reading efficiently, we have to use all
three kinds together.” Sarah]
-
global (paragraph, passage level) [“So we all kind of possess these three types of
knowledge…” Sarah]

Making connections
-
to background knowledge [“I never heard of the Council of Foreign Plantations.”
Jessica]
-
to personal experience [“I think I do that sometimes.” Sarah]
Reading Competence and Goals 62
-
to prior text [“I really didn’t read that part before with 70 percent of the blacks in
[NOT CLEAR] were serving as slaves but this says the same thing.” Jessica]

Interpreting/hypothesizing (a statement building upon what directly said in the text) [“Sodiscrimination increased - to the point where only they were slaves.” Sarah]

Elaborating (a statement moving away from what is directly said in the text) [“It’s a
subconscious strategy.” Sarah]

Arguing with the text [“I disagree, because if you can’t understand, then – you can’t get
any more information out of it..” Sarah]
Monitoring/Evaluative behaviors

Evaluating comprehension (positive or negative) [“I don’t quite understand that.” Sarah]

Evaluating agreement with text (positive or negative) [”I – agree with the author that it’s
more useful for readers to know that – the main idea of the paragraph rather than –
paying so much attention to the sequence of words.” Alexa]

Evaluating text quality [“That sentence is odd..” Sam]

Evaluation of interest (positive or negative) [“This is getting boring.” Jessica]

Evaluation of argument [“Isn’t that kind of obvious, ‘familiarity implies knowing’?”
Jessica]

Evaluation of task difficulty [“I’m thinking this is way over my head…” Alexa]

Evaluation of task completion [“Okay.” “You done?” “Yeah.” Sam]

Expression of empathy (sympathy or feelings felt or imputed to others) [“That’s gotta be
pretty tough, working without any wages for your whole life..” Alexa]

Expression of surprise [“That’s a lot of – indentured servants..” Sam]

Expression of amusement [laughter]
Reading Competence and Goals 63
Appendix C
Text-related Goals
A. Remembering
1. Remembering text details
2. Remembering text important points
B. Understanding
1. Understanding the text content
a. local understanding of text (word or sentence level)
b. global understanding of text (paragraph or larger level)
2. Understanding the author’s meaning – the argument
a. local understanding of argument (sentence level)
b. global understanding of argument (paragraph or larger level)
3. Understanding the argument in context – as situated in domain discourse
C. Evaluating the Message
1. Evaluating agreement with the content of the text (accuracy of text)
a. local
b. global
2. Evaluating agreement with the argument
a. local
b. global
3. Evaluating the argument in context – as situated in domain discourse
D. Evaluating the Medium
1. Evaluating text quality
a. local
b. global
2. Evaluating argument quality
a. local
b. global
Reading Competence and Goals 64
Table 1
Individual Reading and History Knowledge and Interest Scores and Mean Comparisons
Reading
Domain
knowledge
Topic
knowledge
Subject interest
History
Domain
knowledge
Topic
knowledge
Subject interest
Jessica
Sarah
Alexa
Sam
Middle School
Mean
(n = 4)
Undergraduate
Mean a
(n = 18)
Reading
Expert Mean b
(n = 7)
History
Expert c
(n = 1)
41
32
51
36
40.00
36.23
63.00
41.00
36
22
29
23
27.50
31.94
49.00
29.00
4.6
4.8
4.8
3.4
4.40
3.70
4.91
4.00
47
34
30
29
35.00
36.00
35.57
54.00
35
28
32
25
30.00
32.50
35.86
39.00
1.0
4.8
3.0
2.8
2.90
3.45
3.69
5.00
a
Data are from Fox et al., 2007.
Data are from Fox et al., 2008.
c
Data are from Fox et al., 2005.
b
Note: Maximum possible scores: domain knowledge = 80, topic knowledge = 60, subject-related interest (mean) = 5.0.
Even distribution-level score for domain knowledge = 35 (one-fourth of responses in each score category).
Even distribution-level score for topic knowledge = 26.25 (one-fourth of responses in each score category).
Reading Competence and Goals 65
Table 2
Spread of Responses on the Knowledge Measures - Individual Scores and Mean Comparisons
Jessica
R-DK
0
.200
1
.150
2
.350
4
.300
R-TK
0
.133
1
.133
2
.333
4
.400
H-DK
0
.150
1
.250
2
.150
4
.450
H-TK
0
.133
1
.200
2
.267
4
.400
a
Data are from Fox et al., 2007.
Sarah
Alexa
Sam
Middle School Mean
(n = 4)
Undergraduate Mean a
(n = 18)
.350
.200
.200
.250
.000
.250
.350
.400
.200
.300
.250
.250
.188
.225
.288
.300
.211
.275
.275
.239
.267
.267
.333
.133
.200
.333
.133
.333
.267
.333
.200
.200
.216
.267
.250
.267
.174
.203
.281
.341
.350
.200
.150
.300
.400
.200
.150
.250
.400
.150
.250
.200
.312
.212
.175
.300
.269
.255
.178
.297
.133
.400
.200
.267
.267
.133
.200
.400
.333
.067
.400
.200
.217
.200
.283
.300
.174
.218
.252
.367
Note: Even distribution of responses is .250 in each response category.
Bolded entries indicate a response level higher than the even distribution of responses.
R = Reading, H = History, DK = Domain knowledge, TK = Topic knowledge.
Reading Competence and Goals 66
Table 3
Goal Level by Participant, Passage, and Type of Evidence
Goal Level
Jessica
Reading
B1a Understand text (local)
WXYZZ
B1b Understand text (global)
X
B2a Understand argument (local)
Jessica
History
Sarah
Reading
XXXyyyz
XX
XX
WXYZZ
X
Sam
Reading
Sam
History
XXXXXYZ
XXYY
X
X
XX
XXXX
xy
B3 Understand argument in context
x
XXXYYYYY
C2a Evaluate argument content (local)
X
D1a Evaluate text quality (local)
X
XXXYYYY
D2a Evaluate argument quality (local)
x
Xy
D2b Evaluate argument quality (global)
xxxx
x
B2b Understand argument (global)
C1a Evaluate text content (local)
Sarah
Alexa
Alexa
History Reading History
XXYzz
XX
XXYY
X
KEY: Capital letters indicate codes matched across both coders. The occurrence of different types of behaviors providing evidence for
a given code is indicated by the use of different letters, while the number of repetitions of a letter indicates the number of times a
given behavior was observed. For example, WXYZZ under Jessica - Reading for goal B1a reflects the determination by both coders
that Jessica’s behaviors of questioning word meaning (once), guessing the meaning of a word in context (once), evaluating her
comprehension at a sentence level (once), and evaluating her comprehension at a word level (twice) were acknowledgements of the
goal of building a local-level understanding of the text content for the reading passage. The x under Jessica Reading for goal D2a
reflects the determination of one coder that Jessica’s behavior of evaluating the argument (once) was an acknowledgement of the goal
of evaluating argument quality at a local level for the reading passage.
Reading Competence and Goals 67
Figure 1. MDL Variables and Stages
Topic Knowledge
L
E
V
E
L
Situational Interest
Deep-Processing Strategies
Surface-Processing Strategies
Individual Interest
Domain Knowledge
Early
Acclimation
Adapted from Alexander, 2002.
Middle
Competence
Late
Proficiency