Timeline of Scientific Research on Reading
Investigating the components of reading and investigating how to teach reading are two different areas of research. Exploring the components of reading is basic research, while exploring how to teach reading is applied research. Over time both basic and applied research continue to shed increasing insight into the complexity of reading.
Today, research continues to evolve and improve our understanding. Today, we understand that decoding is an important part of teaching people to read. However, a synthesis of the previous research and our definition of literacy from the first course suggests that there is nothing simple about learning to read. A comprehensive view of literacy necessitates attention to many elements, although not all require equal attention or instructional time.
The question remains, how much instructional time to spend on each of the elements and what instructional method to use? That is where teachers can use a developmental model of emergent, early, intermediate, and adolescent in order to vertically align what is needed as the foundations and what can be added in later grades as building blocks of active reading. In the following chapters, we will learn more about research-based instructional methods for teaching literacy within and across developmental levels.
