Teacher Acceptance of Reading Comprehension Strategy Instruction

Abstract

Ontario teachers rated the acceptability of 7 basic reading comprehension strategies, reciprocal instruction, and 6 sets of published materials aimed at promoting use of comprehension strategies. They did so in response to a questionnaire consisting of 21 numerically rated items. In addition, open-ended follow-up comments were solicited for 11 of these items. There were clear differences in the acceptability of the various interventions. Among the basic strategies, prior-knowledge activation, representational imagery, and question generation were favored over other procedures. All basic strategies were rated well within the acceptable range, however. That one reading series received a very high acceptability rating makes obvious that publishers can create acceptable products, and 4 of the 6 publications studied were rated in the acceptable range. Qualitative analyses of the open-ended responses were especially revealing about teachers' reservations concerning the published materials. This investigation ma...