Summary of "Historical Perspectives on Reading Research and Practice"

The article chronicles the changes that have undergone within the field of reading research and practice dating back to the 1950's, so it covers about 50 years of development. It is clear that reading research and practice, according to the article, does not come about on its own; it is a product of the environment and a sign of the times in which it is occurring.

For instance in the 1950's, there was a high birth rate during peacetime after World War II and an increasingly large number of young people were entering the public education system. B.F. Skinner and his theories on behaviorism (a learned stimulus and response) was the prevailing and popular psychological basis upon which reading researchers viewed how people read. Behaviorism posited that in order to improve reading skills, individuals had to receive paced training programs emphasizing phonics.

In the 1960s and mid-70's, the "natural learning" era put forth the view that language is developed through meaningful use and reading as an inherent ability, not something that you make a behavioral response. In the mid-70's to mid-80's, Immanuel Kant's theories based in cognitive psychology came to the forefront and focused on reading as how new knowledge (from a reading) was processed based on an individual's pre-existing knowledge.

From 1986-1995, Sociocultural theory, whereby the focus went away from the individual as in previous periods and moved to focusing on the person's environment and sociocultural influences. The influences of a person's environment, community and external influences was the key to understanding how they would in turn take in information from a reading.

Finally, the authors presented "Engaged Learning" as the era we are presently in, dating back to 1996. This theory firmly places the emphasis on the individual reader as an active participant in their own learning process and as an instructor, you need to engage the reader. Instructors have to consider the impact of non-traditional media and its impact on reading. Overall, the emphasis now is on engagement and reflection and their importance to reading.