In this conceptual essay, we offer rationales and evidence for critical components of a working model of text complexity for the early grades. In the first three sections of the article, we examine word‐level, syntax‐level, and discourse‐level features of text, posing questions for future research. In the fourth section, we address elements of text treatments—the collection of texts with which beginning readers will interact longitudinally over the course of their early literacy development. This conceptual essay produces a unified treatment of the complexities of early grade text through the introduction of a theoretical framework, assimilating the extant research into a theory of early grade text and delineating a theoretical and empirical strategy for transforming the framework into a mature model.

A t the behest of the United States Congress in 1997, the Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the U.S. Secretary of Education selected 14 persons to serve as a National Reading Panel (NRP). Most Panel members were reading researchers in various fields. All but two members held a doctorate. The Panel was charged to review and assess the research on teaching reading, with implications for both classroom practice and further research.The report of the National Reading Panel was issued in two volumes. The first volume (00-4769) is a succinct summary of how the Panel came to be, the topics it chose to investigate, its procedures and methods, and its findings. The second volume (00-4754) contains the same introductory and methodological information, but presents at great length the work of each of the topical subgroups within the Panel. It is the second volume that one must read to fully understand the findings and recommendations for classroom practice and future research.In this review, I refer to both volumes collectively as the NRP Report. Citations of the first volume contain only page numbers (e.g., p. 4); citations of the second volume contain a section number followed by page numbers because the second volume's pagination starts with 1 in each section (e.g., p. 3-13 means section 3, page 13 of the second volume). Some statements appear verbatim in both volumes. The NRPÕs philosophy of scienceThe NRP Report should be seen as a manifesto for a particular philosophy of science as much as a summary of particular research findings. Marks of the manifesto are not subtle and, indeed, begin on the cover. The subtitle of both volumes of the report asserts that the Panel has provided us with "an evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature" (covers, emphasis added).

The study examined parental perceptions of young children's literacy development and explored the relationship between parental literacy level and perceptions of the importance of literacy artifacts and events/experiences in preschoolers' literacy development. One-hundred-eight parents of beginning kindergartners were interviewed and given a test of literacy level. The interview had two open-ended items asking about why some children are successful in reading and writing in school and others are not and about what parents of preschoolers might do to help them learn to read and write better later in school. Likert items gauged views of the importance of literacy artifacts and events and interactions in the home during preschool years for later success in reading and writing. Statistical as well as interpretive analyses were used. On the whole, parents were very positive about the notion that literacy learning can begin during the preschool years. There was, however, a significant negative relationship between parental literacy level and perceptions of the importance of literacy artifacts and events; parents with lower literacy levels thought literacy artifacts and events were even more important than did parents with higher literacy levels. Further, low-literacy and high-literacy parents tended to have different perceptions of what is important for early literacy development. The purpose of this study was to examine parental perceptions of young children's literacy development and to explore the relationship between parental literacy level and perceptions of the importance of literacy artifacts and events/experiences in preschoolers' literacy development. In this study, literacy refers to reading and writing. Recent research on emergent literacy clearly indicates that literacy acquisition may begin during the preschool years, when children may acquire concepts of literacy, learn about the functions and conventions of print, and develop an interest

SEPISTEMOLOGY is the branch of philosophy that deals with what can be counted as knowledge, where knowledge is located, and how knowledge increases. In this study, the epistemology of reading theory, practice, and research was investigated. The authors derived seven main issues in epistemology. Each of the seven issues is a continuum along which important historical and current epistemologies differ. Together, the seven issues comprise a multivariate continuum along which lie the major theories of knowledge of the past and present. The authors divided this multivariate continuum into five clusters of epistemology. The seven issues, worded in the form of questions, and the five clusters then served as a tool for engaging in epistemological inquiry. The tool was primarily employed to examine the theories of knowledge implicit in two views of the reading process (Rosenblatt's and Rumelhart's). The tool was also used in a more general way to examine epistemological issues underlying reading instruction and research. It was concluded that differences between and among theories of reading, reading instructional approaches, and reading research paradigms often result from and obscure fundamental epistemological differences. Making these epistemological differences explicit may, somewhat paradoxically, foster both diversity and healthier competition. Note. Y = Yes, N = No; COR = Correspondence, COH = Coherence, PR = Pragmatic; U = Universal, PT = Particular; D = Dualism, O = Outside, B = Between, I = Inside, M=Monism, P = Pluralism; SD = Sense data, MA = Mental activity; DI = Discovered, C=Created.