Borderland

Skills is a word that gets a regular workout in discussions about education. I used it in my previous post about reading instruction, making a distinction between skills and strategies. I listed what I saw as examples of each in order to amplify this statement: “Good assessment techniques provide information about the skills and strategies students need help with.” But my thinking here fell into a semantic trap that was pointed out in an article from The Reading Teacher, Clarifying Differences Between Reading Skills and Reading Strategies [abstract]. According to these authors, skills and strategies are sometimes used synonymously, and sometimes they’re used to describe complementary behaviors. In any event, everyone seems to believe that whatever they are, they’re important for kids and teachers to have and know about. Presenting them as separate things, as I did, wasn’t really accurate. So this is an update on my thinking.

The nagging question for me this week has been, What is a skill, anyway? And, how is that different from or the same as a strategy? And then, of course, why would it matter?

Why they matter
Teaching reading skills or helping kids develop reading skills, however you characterize instruction, learning, development, proficiency and such is aimed at competent performances. And in the Age of Testing and Accountability test scores are used to rationalize claims about effective schooling – which boils down to skilled performances on tests. So from a policy point of view, skills are important, and they are being heavily promoted.

The Reading First people who push the science-of-reading model see reading skills as a set of building blocks. Having a set of blocks, however, doesn’t guarantee that a person will build things. And even if they do build things, we can’t guarantee they’ll build things the way we want them to. Another problem with building block models is that some blocks are lower in the pile than others, and it’s easy to come to the conclusion that there is a proper order to their arrangement. There may be, but there may also be more than one. Skills are interdependent, and they’re acquired at different rates and for different purposes. Decoding words, for example, is a necessary but not sufficient skill for comprehending written texts. According to the National Reading Panel’s summary report: “Older children receiving phonics instruction were better able to decode and spell words and to read text orally, but their comprehension of text was not significantly improved.” So, yes, decoding is important. But how, and how much for each kid is a contentious discussion because everyone sees the role of particular skills differently.

The purpose of reading, after all, is comprehension. Mosaic of Thought described a format for strategic comprehension instruction based on several cognitive processes used by proficient readers. Strategic comprehension instruction lessons became a common feature in textbooks during the 1990’s, and were associated with constructive models of reading instruction. Researchers, however, report that these strategies (which include connecting new information to background knowledge, creating sensory images, asking questions, drawing inferences, determining what’s important, synthesizing ideas, and solving problems at the word level) are not being widely taught. Part of the reason for this may be due to the fact that they are positioned in textbooks alongside skills instruction as if they are independent of each other, which causes confusion (Afflerbach, Pearson & Paris). Also, the “scientifically based reading research” position emphasizes skills over strategies, and that view is currently in rhetorical ascendancy.

What’s the difference?
Skills and strategies have an important relationship to each other. Our understanding of skills is rooted in behavioral psychology, in which skills are routine habits which have been acquired through practice and repetition. Strategies, on the other hand, are goal-directed and deliberate. Both are necessary, and the problem with separating skills and strategies into separate features of learning is that we overlook the ways in which they are both directed to the same end, which is fluent and efficient performance. Afflerback, Pearson and Paris make a great point in noting that strategies are what we turn to when we lack the skills to accomplish something and that, “even ‘basic’ skills benefit from being taught as strategies initially,” because strategies are how we manage difficult tasks.

Strategy instruction is a means to skillful performances, and not an end in itself any more than skills themselves are. In order for kids to learn to become strategic readers, they have to learn to identify what is hard for them, and then have a repertoire of responses they can turn to. These can involve anything from decoding to making inferences, depending on the needs and purposes of the reader. Strategic comprehension instruction, then, should begin at the earliest stages of reading instruction because comprehension is the goal of all reading.

Teachers have to learn to recognize opportunities to model, describe, explain, and scaffold appropriate reading strategies so that kids can begin to see when and how to use them – when their skills won’t carry the day. Presenting isolated skills to students is as unlikely to establish an effective reading repertoire as showing them strategies for solving problems they haven’t learned to recognize. And for this, we need to see the difference between the two so that we can learn where and when to make connections between them for students.

As I think about this, the application of this view has a lot to say about skills and strategies specific to teaching itself. As a teacher, I wonder, what comes easily and automatically for me? And when things break down, what do I do? When do I model, explain, or scaffold? Watching what I’m doing a little differently now.

Source:

Afflerbach, P., Pearson, P., & Paris, S.G. (2008, February). Clarifying Differences Between Reading Skills and Reading Strategies. The Reading Teacher, 61(5), 364–373.