Advances in Reading Models

Advances in the Science of Reading: Beyond the Simple View

The simple view of reading (SVR) is widely used to explain the science of reading to educators and guide instructional practice.
The SVR posits that reading is the product of two independent components: decoding and listening comprehension.
Research has shown that reading difficulties have multiple causes beyond decoding and listening comprehension.
Decoding and listening comprehension overlap in important ways and share considerable variance in predicting reading.
Many contributors to reading are not named in the SVR, such as active, self-regulatory processes, and cultural and other content knowledge.
Instruction aligned with these advances can improve students' reading.
The authors propose an expansion of the SVR called the active view of reading that reflects these three advances.
The cognitive foundations framework is an expansion of the SVR that uses the broader terms word recognition and language comprehension.
There are individuals who can both decode and listen who cannot read, individuals who can do one but not the other and still read, or even individuals who can neither decode nor listen yet still read with understanding, which falsifies the simple view.
Reading difficulties can have causes beyond word recognition and language comprehension, and many different profiles of reading difficulty exist within word recognition and language comprehension.
There is considerable variance shared (overlap) between word recognition/decoding and listening/language comprehension in the prediction of reading.
Attention to bridging factors may be necessary for word recognition and language comprehension interventions to be sufficiently effective for developing readers.The Importance of Updating Models of Reading for Practitioners
The current model of Simple View of Reading (SVR) does not accurately reflect the complex interrelations among constructs that influence reading.
Practitioners should be presented with a model of reading that includes important factors that bridge word recognition and language comprehension, such as vocabulary, reading fluency, and morphological awareness.
Vocabulary knowledge is related to both word recognition and language comprehension and contributes directly to word recognition and reading through word recognition.
Reading fluency is a bridge between word recognition and language comprehension and involves not only word recognition ability but also semantic and syntactic knowledge.
Morphological awareness is related to both word recognition and language comprehension and is important in written text.
Skilled readers are highly active, strategic, and engaged, deploying executive skills to manage the reading process.
Executive function (EF) skills contribute directly to reading and indirectly through both word recognition and language comprehension processes.
Domain-specific EF tasks, such as graphophonological-semantic cognitive flexibility (GSF), can be taught to address EF difficulties that negatively impact reading.
Motivation and engagement reflect active, self-regulated reading and predict reading ability above and beyond word recognition and language comprehension.
Efforts to implement practices for fostering reading motivation have been shown to improve reading achievement.
Practitioners guided by the SVR might miss students' difficulties in EF skills, which are amenable to intervention and are the primary cause of reading difficulty for some students.
Models of reading presented to practitioners should reflect the updated science of reading and explicitly address active self-regulation, including EF skills, motivation, and engagement.The Active View of Reading: A Model for Practitioners
McBreen & Savage (2020) conducted a meta-analysis of 49 studies and found that instruction in self-regulation, fostering reading interests, and shifting mindsets had positive effects on reading.
Reading strategies, such as chunking words and using sentential context, can improve word recognition and comprehension.
Comprehension strategies, including asking questions and generating mental images, predict reading ability even beyond word recognition and language comprehension.
A model of reading for practitioners should include active self-regulation, motivation and engagement, and strategy use as these impact reading and can be improved through instruction.
The Active View of Reading model explicitly lists contributors to reading, including potential causes of reading difficulty beyond word recognition and language comprehension.
Word recognition and language comprehension are depicted as overlapping and bridged by important processes, such as vocabulary, fluency, morphological awareness, and grammar.
The Active View of Reading model includes active self-regulation and its influence on word recognition, bridging processes, and language comprehension.
Each construct named in the model is instructionally malleable, meaning that practitioners can affect it.
The Active View of Reading model is an update to the rope model, which unpacks word recognition and language comprehension but does not reflect key research advances.
The DIME and DIER models are structural equation models that expand on the SVR and include additional contributors to skilled reading but do not fully address self-regulatory variables or the overlap between word recognition and language comprehension.
The componential model of reading includes a cognitive domain with word recognition and linguistic comprehension, a psychological domain with motivation, and an ecological domain with contextual factors.
The Active View of Reading model draws attention to factors within and outside word recognition and language comprehension as potential causes of reading disability, whereas the componential model points to the SVR's original classifications.The Active View of Reading: An Alternative to the Simple View of Reading
The Simple View of Reading (SVR) proposes that reading comprehension is the product of two separate skills: word recognition and language comprehension.
The Active View of Reading expands on the SVR by identifying bridging processes that contribute to both word recognition and language comprehension.
The Active View of Reading also includes active, self-regulatory processes that drive word recognition, language comprehension, and the bridging skills.
The Cognitive Foundations Framework is another model that retains the two broad constructs of word recognition and language comprehension, but unpacks language comprehension into two components and lists one component for word recognition.
The Active View of Reading includes all the constructs in the Cognitive Foundations Framework, but also reflects the shared variance between word recognition and language comprehension and the bridging skills that cut across and contribute to both.
The Active View of Reading has not been tested as a whole in research, but each element within the model has been tested in instructional research demonstrating positive, causal influences on reading comprehension.
The Active View of Reading includes a key role for active self-regulation, which is not included in the Cognitive Foundations Framework.
The SVR only addresses reader factors in reading, not how texts, tasks, and sociocultural context impact reading or reading development.
The Active View of Reading identifies a mechanism by which the sociocultural context and the reader's social identity impact the reading process through the reader's cultural and other content knowledge.
The lack of developmental information conveyed by the SVR continues to be the subject of critique, leaving considerable room for further explanation of variance in reading ability longitudinally.
The Active View of Reading conveys key advances from scientific research on reading not captured in the SVR and better reflects the current science of reading.
The Active View of Reading requires updating and enhancing initial and continuing professional development of teachers, literacy specialists, instructional coaches, speech and language pathologists, and others who interface with U.S. reading education.