Literacy Beyond Text Comprehension

Book excerpt: Literacy Beyond Text Comprehension aims to systematically investigate how readers interpret reading tasks within a situation, and how that interpretation influences reading behavior and comprehension. Presenting a new model of REading as problem SOLVing (RESOLV), the authors describe reading comprehension in terms of how a reader adopts goals within a particular situation that then guide what is read, when, and how. By applying the RESOLV model to a range of reading situations, this book provides evidence to suggest that there is no unitary understanding of a task, because individuals bring their own goals and characteristics to the situation; as such, it demonstrates the importance of understanding how a reader (e.g., student, test-taker, employee completing a work task) represents the context and the specific assignment. Written by internationally recognized learning sciences scholars, Literacy Beyond Text Comprehension advances the state of the art in reading research, but also seeks to inform a broader range of audiences, including those interested in the teaching and the assessment of reading.