Text and context: A cross-sectional study of proficient school -age readers' conceptualization of reading

Research in skilled readers' reading behavior indicates that they conceptualize reading as a meaning-making process. Beyond this general characterization, little is known about how skilled readers conceptualize the process and purpose of reading. The present study characterized skilled school-age readers' conceptualization of reading specifically and comprehensively. The experimental procedure involved thirty subjects in each of grades four, eight and twelve who were identifiably proficient readers according to multiple criteria. Subjects engaged in an interview and a think-aloud protocol; a selection from a subject's content-area textbook provided the text for the protocol. The interviews and think-aloud protocols were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. Data analysis relied on grounded theory, which requires the analyst to approach a research question, data collection and analysis on the premise that the theory will emerge from the data. The interaction of researcher and data in grounded theory yielded one hundred qualitative codes for subjects' schematization of reading in a structure of two strata. The first stratum contains three components: concepts about reading, meaning-making moves, and stances toward text. The second stratum contains thirteen sub-components attached to one of the three components in the first stratum. The study offers two conclusions regarding the specific features of the general conceptualization of reading as a meaning-making process and two conclusions regarding differences across subjects' grade levels in the constituent components of a theory of reading as a meaning-making process. The first conclusion is that this meaning-making process embraces a schema of concepts about reading and a constellation of actions to construct meaning. The second conclusion is that the interaction of researcher and data in a grounded theory approach to data analysis yielded a theory of reading as a meaning-making process in two strata of constituent components. The third conclusion is that qualitative differences across grade levels correlate to developmental differences in subjects' experience as readers and in their experience of the world. The fourth conclusion of the present study is that quantitative differences across grade levels correlate to developmental differences in subjects' experience as readers.