Active Reader

An Active Reader is a reader who is an active participant in the integration of the information within a text with their background knowledge.

References

(Dole et al., 1991) ⇒ Janice A. Dole, Gerald G. Duffy, Laura R. Roehler, and P. David Pearson. (1991). “Moving From the Old to the New: Research on Reading Comprehension Instruction.” Review of Educational Research, 61(2), 239-264. doi:10.3102/00346543061002239
- Reading is a far more complex process than what had been envisioned by early reading researchers; above all, it is not a set of skills to be mastered (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, 1984). In the traditional view, novice readers acquire a set of hierarchically ordered subskills that sequentially build toward comprehension ability. Once the skills have been mastered, readers are viewed as experts who comprehend what they read. In this view, readers are passive recipients of information in the text. Meaning resides in the text itself, and the goal of the reader is to reproduce that meaning.
- The cognitive views of reading present a different view of the reader. The traditional view assumes a passive reader who has mastered a large number of subskills and automatically and routinely applies them to all texts. The cognitive view assumes an active reader who constructs meaning through the integration of existing and new knowledge and the flexible use of strategies to foster, monitor, regulate, and maintain comprehension. The only thing that becomes automated in the newer view is the disposition to adapt strategies to the particular constraints in the act of comprehending a particular text