Reading Comprehension as Intertextual Practice

Reviews / Votes

"Metaphors are particularly powerful when they capture not just ideas, but also feelings and the essence of experiences. In Reading Comprehension as Intertextual Practice: Building Meaning Together, Bloome and colleagues masterfully invoke the full power of metaphor by comparing reading comprehension to the improvisatory and personal nature of jazz music. Moving away from an over-reliance on cognitive strategizing, the authors describe making sense with text as deeply personal, intertextual, and always social. By recognizing the constructive, creative, and deeply human processes that accompany meaning-making, this book will extend and enhance how reading scholars and educators understand and address reading comprehension for generations to come."

- Catherine Compton-Lilly, John C. Hungerpiller Professor, University of South Carolina

"If you read one book on reading comprehension, make it this one! Despite decades of scholarship demonstrating that literacy is a social practice, reading comprehension-as typically taught and assessed in schools-has remained stubbornly individualized and autonomous. In Reading Comprehension as Intertextual Practice, the authors methodically argue that reading comprehension is embedded within a dynamic network of social interactions, meanings, identities, and cultural ideologies-networks that are constructed, interconnected, and reshaped over time in both classroom events and broader contexts. The authors truly walk their talk. Rather than treating familiar terms such as "social" or "intertextual" as self-evident, they carefully reframe these concepts, enabling readers to see them anew. In doing so, they demonstrate that such reframing is itself at the heart of reading comprehension. They offer practical heuristics that help educators and researchers rethink what we mean when we talk about, teach, and study comprehension. Drawing skillfully on the metaphor of jazz-and pairing it with analytic tools adapted from interactional sociolinguistics-the authors illuminate what unfolds within comprehension events, both in and out of classrooms, and how meaning is collaboratively accomplished. Transforming entrenched beliefs and practices around comprehension is no small undertaking. Bloome, Brown, Hong, and Pinto rise to the challenge, and readers are fortunate to be invited into this generative reimagining of the field."

- Cynthia Lewis, Professor Emerita of Education, University of California, Santa Cruz

"Reading Comprehension as Intertextual Practice: Building Meaning Together is a much-needed book. It offers a thoroughly researched challenge to the narrow but sadly dominant conceptions of reading comprehension in schools today. This is important because mainstream understandings of reading comprehension often fail to acknowledge and value the various ways in which children and young people engage with and interpret texts. Using jazz as a metaphor not only makes for accessible and pleasant reading but also allows Bloome and his colleagues to skillfully examine and, one might say, deconstruct the misconceptions that underpin reading comprehension as it is too often practiced in too many lessons and schools. Drawing on their extensive experience of working with teachers and children, the authors offer a powerful reinterpretation of reading comprehension as a socially situated, collective, political and embodied practice. This will be invaluable to teachers and researchers campaigning for more inclusive and meaningful literacy pedagogies."

- Uta Papen, PhD, Professor of Literacy Studies, School of Social Sciences, Lancaster University, UK

"This book exemplifies intellectual vitality and collaborative spirit. It is refreshingly original and deeply thought-provoking, advancing the field of education in significant ways. Importantly, its relevance extends beyond literacy specialists to all scholars and practitioners committed to ethical, political, and emancipatory research and practice.

The authors compellingly challenge us to reconceptualize 'reading comprehension' not as a purely individual cognitive skill taught and learnt in schools, but as an intertextual social practice. Their arguments are incisive, and they navigate the debate with remarkable mastery. In doing so, they continue a tradition-uniquely and memorably-that situates 'reading comprehension' within broader cultural, historical, and ideological contexts.

The book demonstrates how meaning is collaboratively constructed around written texts through intertextual practices that connect diverse sources and modalities, reflecting and refracting diverse cultural contexts. Its language flows with elegance, reminiscent of a finely played jazz composition- a metaphor woven into the theoretical fabric of the text, enriching readers' critical understanding of the ideational, relational, aesthetic, and ideological meanings of 'reading comprehension.'

This work is a source of wonder and inspiration. It is a book that deserves careful reading and study by undergraduate and graduate students, educators, and researchers alike."

- Vanessa Neves, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil

"The teaching and learning of reading are the most contested and mysterious topics in American educational enterprise. What works? Do illustrations help or are they a distraction? Do questions at the end of a text make sure that students "understand" what they've read? The answers to these questions have been debated for decades with pendulum swings in one direction or the other depending on the political landscape and quite literally, who is in the White House. The beauty of this book by Bloome, et. al., is not only is it a groundbreaking intellectual journey into both the beauty and mystery of reading comprehension, but the situatedness of reading as a reflection of cultural production and aesthetic. While this sounds lofty and elitist, the authors skillfully make the notion of reading comprehension accessible in ways that have been previously challenging for the non-academic. Even more beautiful, is their use of jazz as a metaphor for how readers construct of meaning of texts. Selfishly, I agree that the meaning making process is like jazz: it's at once a collective process that is dependent on the skill and insight of an individual. This sonority is what can and should lead readers to a complex and nuanced understanding of texts. The authors deftly make this point and have opened up for all of us a new way of thinking and understanding reading comprehension as practice and art."

- Adrienne Dixson, Department Head of the Department of Education Policy Studies, Penn State University