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This study presents a comparison between how six teachers and their 17-year-old students talked about texts in civics and nursing science during regular lessons and during two lessons where structured text talk in smaller groups was used. The majority of students were poor readers and attended vocational programmes. The text talks were videotaped. During the regular lessons, most of the teachers asked purely factual questions where the students just had to retrieve information from the text to be able to answer them. The students made few inferences and reflections. After the regular lessons, the teachers were invited to participate in seminars led by the investigator. In these seminars, a special model of structured text talk was practiced before videotaping a second and a third time. The results demonstrate that during the structured text talks the teachers' question types had undergone a change. The number of purely factual questions had decreased. Instead there was an increase in the number of inferences and half-open questions. The students read more actively during the structured text talks. They clearly made an effort to explore ideas in the text and made numerous inferences and reflections.

In educational systems without comprehensive systems for regulating textbooks, teachers can exert considerable influence on the use of textbooks. However, existing research has not yet identified the mechanisms of this use. Accordingly, the aim of this article is to examine and explain teachers’ strategic use of textbooks. I administered a questionnaire to 313 Swedish teachers of years four to twelve (for pupils of ten to eighteen years of age). The results demonstrate a pathway between reading practices and strategic textbook use, mediated by textbook satisfaction. Pupils’ reading needs had a negative impact on strategic textbook use. Finally, teachers’ experience had a positive impact on reading practices but no effect on strategic textbook use.

The aim of this pilot study was to investigate if Reciprocal Teaching (RT) could scaffold the active reading of adults with intellectual disabilities. A study was performed with a group of five intellectually disabled participants, aged 28Á42 years. The participants were able to decode words but they read very slowly and in an uncritical way. The participants were exposed to a programme for reading strategies instruction, Reciprocal Teaching. This programme is influenced by the concept of scaffolding, which is an application of Vygotsky's theory of the importance of interplay between support and challenge for development. In RT the text is read paragraph by paragraph. During the reading four reading comprehension strategies are practised: generating questions, summarizing, clarifying word meanings or confusing text, and predicting what might occur in the next paragraph. To start with, the participants (a) did not like the idea of text talks (b) did not like stopping to discuss after each paragraph (c) had a tendency to drift away from the text. However, after a few text talks they became familiar with the idea of text talks and the four strategies. The participants appreciated the text talks and said that they wanted to continue with them.