Usable Knowledge

How Far Have We Come in Supporting Children’s Reading Comprehension?

A new paper finds “substantial gap persists” between reading comprehension research and practice, calls for greater efforts to prioritize effective instruction methods

Posted March 7, 2025
By Elizabeth M. Ross

Back in the late 1970s, literacy researcher Dolores Durkin carried out a small but influential study on reading comprehension instruction in the United States. What she discovered, through her observations of English language arts and social studies classes for children in third through sixth grade, surprised her. Teachers hardly taught reading comprehension at all — less than 1% of instructional time was devoted to it. Durkin defined comprehension instruction as when a teacher did or said something to help students grasp the meaning of what they were reading. However, what she observed was mostly comprehension assessment or testing where, after reading a text, a teacher would typically ask the entire class questions related to a few facts about the book.

A recently published study in the academic journal Scientific Studies of Reading, led by Phil Capin, an assistant professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education, assesses how much progress has been made in teaching students reading comprehension skills since Durkin’s study. The paper notes that significant knowledge has been acquired in recent decades about how to develop children’s reading for understanding, but the researchers behind the new study wanted to understand how much that knowledge, including recommended research-based practices, is made use of in K–12 schools.

Among the findings:

Capin and his team reviewed 66 existing observational studies of reading comprehension instruction in K–12 schools, between 1980 and 2023, and found:

Instruction time has increased since Durkin’s days, but it is still low. On average only 23% of instructional time was devoted to comprehension during reading/language arts, even though research shows that developing reading comprehension skills across grades should be a priority.
Students had limited time and opportunities to engage with texts and that reduced time “spent on text reading and the length of texts read may be potential barriers to the frequency of reading comprehension instruction.”
Reading comprehension strategies were not well supported by teachers. When there were conversations about texts in classrooms, they were much like the interactions observed by Durkin: “teacher-led and teacher-dominated,” said Capin.

Among the conclusions:

The researchers found that, “a substantial gap persists between the reading comprehension practices identified as research-based and those observed in typical practice,” and they call for “renewed efforts to prioritize reading comprehension instruction in policy and practice.”

What are the most effective reading comprehension instruction practices?

Recommendations from the study flagged by Capin include:

Developing word meaning knowledge. The paper highlights “explicit vocabulary instruction that provides repeated exposure to new words in varied contexts,” as well as “multiple opportunities to practice using new vocabulary while reading, writing and speaking.”
Developing background and general knowledge. Capin pointed to the work of HGSE colleagues in this area including a social studies curriculum that supports students’ reading comprehension by Professor Catherine Snow, and the Model of Reading Engagement program, developed by Professor James Kim’s READS Lab, which assists children with developing a mental framework to gain, organize and apply knowledge.
Engaging students in text-based collaborative learning. Students are arranged into small groups to discuss a text together which gives them an opportunity to learn with their peers. This method provides students with “more opportunities to practice and respond. Instead of one student answering a question, you have multiple students,” explained Capin.
Engaging students in high quality discussion of complex text. This practice involves educators immersing “students in literal and inferential questions that are relevant, interesting, and engaging,” said Capin, as opposed to simply asking a few fact-based questions about texts and moving on. While the new paper also includes teaching students to use comprehension strategies, Capin explained that this technique may be most necessary for students who struggle to find meaning from texts.

Source: Reading Comprehension Instruction: Evaluating Our Progress Since Durkin’s Seminal Study

How much time should be spent on reading comprehension?

Reading comprehension support should be available throughout the school day and across the curriculum, according to Capin. “The Common Core state standards specify that reading comprehension is an important goal in English language arts instruction, but it's also an important goal in social studies, in science and in math, particularly as it relates to word problems,” he said.

What has led to the gap between research and practice with reading comprehension instruction?

While there are many factors that have contributed to the problem, there is, “pretty good evidence to suggest that pre-service teachers are not learning what they need to learn about the reading process," said Capin. “Many of the faculty at institutions of higher education responsible for developing teachers may not have a strong understanding of how reading develops and how to teach reading,” he explained. Although well-intentioned initiatives have aimed to promote the adoption of evidence-based practices, these efforts have sometimes been perceived as "heavy-handed," making them less appealing to teachers who feel that such changes compromise their professional agency and autonomy. Capin is currently collaborating with teachers to co-develop solutions to improve reading comprehension instruction, hoping that these collaborative efforts will help bridge the gap between research and practice.