The Influence of Social Situation on Children's Classroom Comprehension of Text

Recent research (Borko, Shavelson, & Stern 1981; Emmer, Evertson, & Anderson 1980) has shown that how and what students learn is influenced in part by teachers. While this is commonsensical, one may note that the influence of teachers on students' learning is an often overlooked variable in reading research. Most reading researchers (e.g., Drewnowski 1981; Samuels, LaBerge, & Bremer 1978; Santa 1976-1977) describe children's acquisition of reading in terms of text variables, reader variables, or the interaction between text and reader variables (for further discussion, see Olson [1978]). In focusing on text and reader variables, reading researchers tend to describe reading acquisition in terms of one or two meaning sources: prior knowledge (Anderson & Pichert 1978) and text. As a consequence, these researchers overlook the relationship between teachers and students as a source of meaning (Brophy & Evertson 1981; Mosenthal & Na 1980a, 1980b). Furthermore, reading researchers often describe reading acquisition in terms of comprehension processes that are constrained either by prior knowledge organization (Spiro 1980) or by text organization (Frederiksen 1975; Kintsch 1974; Meyer 1977). Thus they overlook comprehension processes that are affected by the organization of teachers' lessons (Mehan 1979). The purpose of this study was to examine the influence teachers have on