The Role of Text and Text‐Reader Interactions in Young Children’s Reading Development and Achievement

One of the most rapidly developing areas of educational innovation involves the texts available to young readers and their teachers, leading to a host of new issues regarding the characteristics and roles of text that support young children’s learning. This article describes research conducted by investigators at the Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA) to increase knowledge about the role of text and text‐reader interactions in young children’s reading development and achievement. Questions driving CIERA inquiry about readers and text include: What are useful ways to characterize and evaluate the texts that young readers experience? Findings in response to this question point to the trade‐offs when publishers place differential emphases on high‐quality literature as opposed to the accessibility of the text. In response to the question, What do reading researchers know about the ways young children experience texts that can be applied to creating more meaningful texts and instructional contexts for children?, findings suggest that children learn to value and use various features characteristic of informational text when they use these texts in ways that are consistent with everyday and meaningful uses. Finally, investigations of how texts can be used to enhance subject‐matter learning suggest that efforts to integrate content‐area and reading instruction promote general literacy knowledge and skill as well as subject‐matter knowledge, even for primary‐grade students.