Reading and Making Visible Layers of Context

Reading is crucial for students to become educated; however, reading isn’t just reading, i.e., reading is not an autonomous practice (Street) floating about waiting for people to engage in it. Reading is situated in particular layers of context: people approach texts to read for particular purposes, within particular communities that encourage certain norms and expectations for reading, and to assess or respond to the text for particular reasons; and others in that community(s) expect particular types of responses and assessments because of the norms and expectations of that community. Reading does not mean simply scanning a printed page left to right, top to bottom (in English); reading includes interpretive lenses of a reader (or community of readers) and response(s).

Today with the evolving changes to how we understand text as multimodal, reading becomes a metaphor for viewing and hearing visual and audio texts, which may also appear as a package with print (of course, printed texts has a visual component to it).

Researcher and teachers have examined how people read (physically and psychologically), under what social and political conditions, for what purposes (academic, pleasure, etc.) and for what desired outcomes (understanding of a topic, engaging aesthetically with a text, etc.). Therefore, if reading includes layers of complexity, how can teachers engage students in assigned texts (even when teachers provide choices) for the purposes of reading in particular ways, for particular purposes, under particular conditions and for particular outcomes? Furthermore, how can teachers make visible to students how to read the layers of context expected in classrooms and beyond?