ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the conceptual, theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical foundations of reading strategies. It begins by offering a definition and clarification of what it means to have a reading comprehension strategy. The subsequent section contrasts 3 major theoretical frameworks for investigating comprehension in the fields of cognitive science and discourse processing: (a) a construction-integration model, (b) a constructionist theory, and (c) an embodied cognition view. These frameworks offer different claims and commitments with respect to computational architectures and the status of strategies in comprehension. It is recommended that researchers identify the predictions of these and other theoretical frameworks when planning their empirical research on the effectiveness of reading strategies in educational settings. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some challenges that researchers will face when moving from theory to interventions and to assessments of reading comprehension strategies.
