Reading Development and Teaching

This textbook will prove invaluable to teacher educators, teachers, educational psychologists, and any professional who is involved with teaching children to read. It provides a detailed examination of the processes that are involved in achieving fluent word reading skills and ability to comprehend written texts. Understanding these processes and their development empowers teachers to select appropriate, evidence-based teaching strategies and thus teach children more effectively.

The book is in four parts:

Part 1 provides the reader with a Tutorial Review covering essential knowledge about language, and presenting the two dimensions of the Simple View of Reading.

Part 2 concentrates on the word reading dimension, with chapters on processes in skilled word reading, the development of these processes, and practical advice on research validated teaching methods to develop children’s word reading skills. 

Part 3 turns to the language comprehension dimension,  with chapters on the comprehension of oral and written language, and on teaching reading comprehension.

Part 4 introduces the reader to assessment practices and methods of identifying children with difficulties in either or both dimensions of the Simple View, and considers children with word reading difficulties and children with specific comprehension difficulties,  describing effective evidence-based interventions for each type of difficulty.

Morag Stuart is Emeritus Professor of the Psychology of Reading at UCL Institute of Education. After 16 years teaching 4- to 8-year-old children in Inner London, she gained a Psychology degree at Birkbeck College, qualified as an educational psychologist, and returned to Birkbeck to study for a doctorate, with a thesis on development of word reading skills. From 1988 she lectured in Psychology at Birkbeck, moving to the Institute of Education in 1995. Since 1983, she has conducted research into word reading processes and their development, with over 100 research publications and conference presentations. Her recent consultancy includes contributions to the Programme of Study for English in the revised National Curriculum; the Rose Report on teaching of early reading (Rose, 2006); the Rose Review of Provision for Children and Young People with Dyslexia (Rose, 2009); and work on several Primary National Strategies projects (e.g. EYFS  “Every Child a Talker”, including development of materials; Communication, Language and Literacy Development, including development of materials; Inclusion Development Programme, including redevelopment of dyslexia materials. Her ambition is to understand how children learn to read.    

Rhona Stainthorp is a research professor in the Institute of Education, University of Reading, UK.  She began her professional career teaching in a secondary school in London and turned to study psychology at Birkbeck College when confronted with the challenge of teaching young adolescent boys who could not read. 

Over the last 40 years she has worked in a number of academic departments in UK universities teaching teachers, and speech and language therapists from undergraduate to PhD level about the development of literacy.  She has also been extensively involved in providing continuing professional development across the UK. She has advised UK as well as overseas’ Governments on aspects of the development and teaching of reading and writing.

Her research focuses on the development of literacy mainly in the early years.  It includes studies of reading, writing and spelling skills, precocious reading ability, children with literacy difficulties, and effective professional practice. Her published work includes over 100 research papers, manuals for teaching programmes, literacy tests, books for students and teachers, and conference papers.

She is committed to supporting teachers to enhance their professional practice through an understanding of the best quality empirical research evidence.