This is a really interesting question and, in essence, asks what reading comprehension actually is. Beck et al. (1997) argued that it has historically been viewed as the extraction of information from the text and that this was assessed by the asking of questions AFTER reading.

They suggested that this approach had led to strategies-based instruction with the major drawback being that teachers focused on the strategy rather than the meaning of what is being read - eg. 'Success For All'. More here-https://t.co/4BgmcyLsec
They posited that comprehension is the building of understanding; the construction of meaning from the text and that this takes place DURING reading. The role of teachers, therefore, was more dialogic. Queries rather than questions - https://t.co/TJgGLMCTyA
This is far more aligned to 'close reading' as articulated so gently and coherently by @Doug_Lemov in 'Reading Reconsidered' whereby students are supported by the teacher to use information to construct meaning rather than to merely collect pieces of information.
Through the articulation (through writing) of the development of understanding of meaning, students are able to express understanding and teachers are able to check that understanding, refer back to it and build upon it.
However, although close reading is essential for cognitive, semantic and vocabulary development and longer lasting memory codes(Nyberg,2002)the vast majority of reading is not supported by a pedagogue or scaffolded through collaboration. It is solitary, moment by moment activity.
It is, in fact, everything a close read is not: it is the extraction of the gist of what the author is communicating and it occurs in the moment of reading. We seldom read with the expectation that we will be questioned on the content or our understanding afterwards.
Hence, it is our top-down, global knowledge that affects our levels of understanding of written texts (Kitsch, 1998). So how do we assess what a child has understood at the moment of reading as opposed to going back over text to 'find' meaning or developing meaning with support.
Could it be that we have ignored one of the simplest ways of assessing comprehension at the moment of reading? Reading fluency is dependent on rate, accuracy AND prosody; prosody being - the ability to make oral reading sound like authentic oral speech (Rasinski et al., 2011).
So, if a reader is exhibiting high levels of prosody, the evidence of understanding is inherent. If a reader is able to make sense of a text such that they are able to read it in a way that it makes sense to others, then their understanding is evident.https://t.co/KOIJMExT2G
Clearly, reading aloud presents issues of anxiety as well as performance but we are not assessing performance, we are assessing the evidence of understanding at the point of reading and a prosody rubric makes assessment relatively simple - @TimRasinski1 - https://t.co/1X8yRGXCYQ
Of course, this does not obviate the problem that perhaps all we are assessing is the global, cultural and contextual knowledge of the reader, but it may give some sense of any knowledge deficits and hearing children read almost always furnishes us with some illuminating data.

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One of the authors of the Policy Exchange report on academic free speech thinks it is "ridiculous" to expect him to accurately portray an incident at Cardiff University in his study, both in the reporting and in a question put to a student sample.


Here is the incident Kaufmann incorporated into his study, as told by a Cardiff professor who was there. As you can see, the incident involved the university intervening to *uphold* free speech principles:


Here is the first mention of the Greer at Cardiff incident in Kaufmann's report. It refers to the "concrete case" of the "no-platforming of Germaine Greer". Any reasonable reader would assume that refers to an incident of no-platforming instead of its opposite.


Here is the next mention of Greer in the report. The text asks whether the University "should have overruled protestors" and "stepped in...and guaranteed Greer the right to speak". Again the strong implication is that this did not happen and Greer was "no platformed".


The authors could easily have added a footnote at this point explaining what actually happened in Cardiff. They did not.
I'm going to do two history threads on Ethiopia, one on its ancient history, one on its modern story (1800 to today). 🇪🇹

I'll begin with the ancient history ... and it goes way back. Because modern humans - and before that, the ancestors of humans - almost certainly originated in Ethiopia. 🇪🇹 (sub-thread):


The first likely historical reference to Ethiopia is ancient Egyptian records of trade expeditions to the "Land of Punt" in search of gold, ebony, ivory, incense, and wild animals, starting in c 2500 BC 🇪🇹


Ethiopians themselves believe that the Queen of Sheba, who visited Israel's King Solomon in the Bible (c 950 BC), came from Ethiopia (not Yemen, as others believe). Here she is meeting Solomon in a stain-glassed window in Addis Ababa's Holy Trinity Church. 🇪🇹


References to the Queen of Sheba are everywhere in Ethiopia. The national airline's frequent flier miles are even called "ShebaMiles". 🇪🇹

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This is a pretty valiant attempt to defend the "Feminist Glaciology" article, which says conventional wisdom is wrong, and this is a solid piece of scholarship. I'll beg to differ, because I think Jeffery, here, is confusing scholarship with "saying things that seem right".


The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.


Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)


There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.


At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?