Reading at a Crossroads?

The Internet is transforming the experience of reading and learning-through-reading. Is this transformation effecting a radical change in reading processes as readers synthesize understandings from fragments across multiple texts? Or, conversely, is the Internet merely a new place to use the same reading skills and processes developed through experience with traditional print-based media? Are the changes in reading processes a matter of degree, or are they fundamentally new? And if so, how must reading theory, research, and instruction adjust?
This volume brings together distinguished experts from the fields of reading research, teacher education, educational psychology, cognitive science, rhetoric and composition, digital humanities, and educational technology to address these questions. Every question is not answered in every chapter. How could they be? But every contributor has many thoughtful things to say about a subset of these important questions. Together, they add up to a comprehensive response to the issues the field faces as it approaches what may well be-or not -a crossroads. A website devoted to extending discussion around the book in creative (and disjunctive) ways [readingatacrossroads.net] moves it beyond the printed page.

Rand J. Spiro is Professor of Educational Psychology and Educational Technology, Michigan State University, USA. Michael DeSchryver is Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Professional Development, Central Michigan University, USA. Michelle Schira Hagerman is Director of Graduate Certificate Programs in Educational Technology and Online Teaching and Learning, Michigan State University, USA. Paul M. Morsink is a doctoral candidate in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology, Michigan State University, USA. Penny Thompson is Assistant Professor of Educational Technology, Oklahoma State University, USA.

Preface Part One: Setting the Stage: The Big Picture Chapter 1: A Brief History of Information Sources in the Late 20th and Early 21st Century (A Simulation), David Reinking and Jamie Colwell Chapter 2: Literacy and the Technologies of Knowing, David R. Olson Chapter 3: The Resistance to 21st-Century Reading, Mark Bauerlein Chapter 4: Three Paradigms in Reading (Really Literacy) Research and Digital Media, James Paul Gee Chapter 5: All Bets Are Off: How Certain Kinds of Reading to Learn on the Web Are Totally Different from What We Learned from Research on Traditional Text Comprehension and Learning from Text, Rand J. Spiro, Hannah Klautke, Angela K. Johnson Part Two: The Nature of Reading (and Writing) Online Chapter 6: Purposeful, Critical, and Flexible: Vital Dimensions of Online Reading and Learning, Julie Coiro Chapter 7: From Computers and the Web to Mobile Devices and e-Texts: The Transition to Digital Reading Continues, Mark Warschauer Chapter 8: Reading at a Million Crossroads: Massively Pluralized Practices and Conceptions of Reading, Douglas K. Hartman and Paul M. Morsink Chapter 9: Reading and the Web: Broadening the Need for Complex Comprehension, Susan R. Goldman Chapter 10: Building Coherence in Web-Based and Other Non-Traditional Reading Environments: Cognitive Opportunities and Challenges, Paul van den Broek and Panyiota Kendeou Chapter 11: Disequilibrium.edu: Negotiating New Relationships Between Online Reading and Writing, Gail E. Hawisher and Scott Filkins Part Three: Instruction: Reading Education in the Digital Age Chapter 12: "Now Is the Winter of Our Discontent": Shakespeare, Kuhn, and Instability in the Field of Reading Education, Donna E. Alvermann & Jennifer L. Bogdanich Chapter 13: Past, Present, and Future Conditions and Practices of Reading, Michael L. Kamil Chapter 14: Neglected Areas of Instruction: Bad for Print, Worse for the Internet, Nell K. Duke, Shenglan Zhang, and Paul M. Morsink Chapter 15: We're Closing the Digital Divide: Now Let's Work on Closing the Teleological Divide, Colin Harrison Chapter 16: The Functionality of Literacy in a Digital World, Allan Collins and Richard Halverson Index