His research focuses on ways that middle school and high school teachers can help students to learn how to read in the context of different academic disciplines. “Even though we think that reading is reading and all reading is the same, it turns out that historians, for example, read to discover arguments in the sources that they read and evaluate those arguments in light of the writer’s biases, historical context, and interest in the issue. Skilled readers of science focus on inquiry and evidence and use the observable results of experimentation to form hypotheses that they test. Readers of literature start with the story and the characters, then look for themes. So since there are different ways to read for different disciplines, I then try to figure out what certain types of writing can offer to teachers interested in helping students to learn to understand reading within the disciplines.”
