Come to Light: Unveiling Reading Comprehension Practices in Indonesian Primary Schools

Reading comprehension has been a foundational course in primary education as it plays a crucial role in strengthening students’ literacy skills which are important for future education. This research aims to investigate and analyze students’ and educators’ needs and views in reading comprehension class. The research was carried out at Tangerang from September-November 2025. The subjects in this research were 440 students and 30 teachers from 7 schools selected using the purposive sampling method. Data collection techniques included questionnaires for teachers and reading comprehension tests for the students. Data analysis techniques employed qualitative descriptive analysis. These findings provide insight into the reality that the students could perform well in the criteria of “Focus on and Retrieve Explicitly Stated Information” and “Interpret and Integrate Ideas and Information” yet still lack of some skills such as “Make Straightforward Inferences” and “Evaluate and Critique Content and Textual Elements”. Students still find critical thinking skill challenging for them. Meanwhile, from teachers’ perspectives, teachers often used question and answer strategy in the classroom, utilized textbook from government, but still lack of higher order thinking strategy in the classroom. Teachers also found that students’ motivation, limited vocabulary, and difficulty in understanding main points of the text hindered them from comprehending the text.