Do College Reading Skills Textbooks Prepare Students to Read Difficult Textbooks?
Schumm, Haager, and Leavell (1991) content-analyzed 46 college textbooks to determine the extent to which postsecondary reading textbooks provide an awareness of and strategies for the use of both considerate and inconsiderate text features. Considerate or “friendly” textbooks are defined as those that possess text-based features such as elements of text organization, explication of ideas, control of conceptual density, incorporation of instructional devices that facilitate information gathering. Inconsiderate texts do not have these features. The results show that substantially more strategies in reading texts concern considerate textbooks than inconsiderate text features and concludes that college reading textbooks are providing strategies for reading text that is easy, but not for reading difficult text. In other words, we’re not teaching students how to read difficult textbooks. Effects of Beliefs about the Nature of Knowledge on Comprehension.
