A child’s cultural, linguistic and cognitive distance from school language can make comprehension
the critical issue in reading acquisition. Assessments of reading development tend to encounter
ceiling effects in phonological skills within the first few years of schooling; but the gap in
comprehension subsequently widens between advantaged and disadvantaged students in relation
to school literacy.
The purpose of this paper is to show what kind of pedagogy, from early grades onwards, can result
in ‘beating the odds’ for children in disadvantaged contexts. It draws on socio-linguistic theory,
comprehension research and research into literacy development in a second language to show
why the discontinuities between literate and social languages can affect the development of the
cognitions necessary for word and text-level comprehension in the early grades; and the registers
and content of academic genres from upper primary.
The development of comprehension bears on poverty reduction and access to sustainable futures
because comprehension is associated with school success. The evidence is strong that particular
home environments promote the kind of literacy that results in school success. However, research
also shows that the success practices of such homes are replicable in schools in high poverty, low
literacy contexts – not only in advanced economies but also in poor countries of Africa, Asia and
the Pacific.