Framework for diagnostic assessment of reading

Előszó

The motto chosen for the volume presenting the frameworks for the diagnostic assessment of reading is a quote from the Hungárián poet Mihály Babits: '"Reading is thinking and writing is speech." If we think about the truth of this statement, it will not take long to recognise the self-evident dependence of the course of learning to read and write on these two areas of cognition, and the complexity of the development of the skills of written text comprehension and reading-based knowledge acquisition. It is hardly necessary to argue that the proper development of reading and text comprehension skills cannot be assessed without a thorough understanding of these relationships and of their evolution. While teachers' experiences of reading literacy can help us to obtain a rough estimation of the development of reading skills, there will always remain subjective factors bearing on the accuracy of the estimate. In our modern world, the methods used by schoolteachers in reading instruction, the teaching of text comprehension and the fostering of knowledge extraction skills should be based on empirical evidence gathered through reliable measurement tools and analysed using well-established methods. Somé of the problems related to reading literacy can be resolved by a skilled teacher since only a small proportion of the children underperforming in these areas have special educational needs. Subjective estimations are, however, an inadequate basis for educational activities addressing the roots of the problem since students' level of development and, therefore, the outcomes of an intervention strategy cannot be accurately assessed in the absence of the right measurement tools. Over the past decade, research efforts have intensified and produced results that - if integrated and transferred into practice - may bring about a major improvement in the efficiency of public education. The programme providing the framework for the present volume occupies the intersection of three major research trends. First, various international surveys have given a great impetus to the development of educational assessment and testing. Second, recent research results in education science and psychology have led to an increasingly refined understanding of the concept of knowledge, which allows more precise deíinitions of what should be measured at different stages of development. Third, the Vissza