This book started with a simple idea -- examine models of reading instruction that have emerged during the past 20 years. These models span a wide range of instruction representing a continuum from highly structured, task analytic instruction to child-centered and holistic instruction. Each model has its own epistemology or views on how reading and instruction are to be defined. The different epistemologies indicate different principles of instruction which, in turn, indicate different practices in the classroom. Each model is also supported by a different research base. In this volume, leading proponents of these different models discuss their ideas about reading instruction thereby encouraging readers to make their own comparisons and contrasts.

The chapter authors seem to adopt the editors' eclectic approach--to some greater or lesser extent--incorporating aspects of other models into their instruction as they see other goals. Thus, models of reading instruction are complex. Complicating matters further is the fact that teachers hold their own models of reading, which may or may not be congruent with those discussed here. Although academically developed models influence college preservice and in-service instruction, teachers' own models of reading filter the information that they take from what they learn from these perspectives. By carefully examining these variables, this book makes a firm contribution toward disciplined inquiry into what it means to teach reading.