Naturally-Occurring Comprehension Strategies Instruction in 9th-Grade Language Arts Classrooms

In this descriptive classroom study, we used video-based observations supplemented with teacher interviews to provide precise information about the instruction of comprehension strategies that naturally occurred in 4 Norwegian lower-secondary language arts classrooms while students worked with expository texts. The results showed that the teachers varied vastly with respect to the amount of comprehension strategies instruction, that the repertoire of strategies that was taught was quite narrow, that the instruction was mainly implicit and carried out with the whole class, and that the teachers lacked professional knowledge about reading comprehension and reading comprehension instruction. We discuss our methodology and findings in relation to previous descriptive work on comprehension strategies instruction.