Looking for Evidence-Based Practice in Reading Comprehension Instruction

The inaugural issue of Topics in Language Disorders included articles by Roth and Perfetti and Pearson and Spiro that reflected the thinking of the time on reading comprehension instruction. In this article, the author reviews the general direction of those contributions in light of current thinking and offers a model for organizing the practices in reading comprehension that have an empirical base for students with reading disabilities. Components addressed include background knowledge, understanding text structures, and strategy use.