Profile  

Dr. Afflerbach's reading research interests lay in three areas: reading strategies, the verbal reporting methodology, and reading assessment.  Specifically, his work examines reading comprehension strategies of accomplished and developing readers.  He uses the verbal reporting methodology to produce descriptions of readers’ on-line processing, and also uses verbal reports to investigate teachers’ decision making processes related to classroom assessment.  Dr. Afflerbach also conducts research on reading assessment.  In particular, he is interested in the influences of assessment on teaching and learning, and the suitability of reading assessment for different audiences and purposes. 

It is Dr. Afflerbach’s belief that the most pressing issue is the lack of reading development among students who achieve a "basic" level of reading ability, but then fail to progress beyond this very basic level.  Researchers have a fairly good catalog of the things that good readers do, so in charting a developmental path from basic to proficient to advanced reading ability (to borrow from NAEP) we are not dealing with unknown territory.  Rather, it appears that researchers need to better understand the contextual variables that influence children’s movement (or stagnation) as readers.  These would include curriculum, instruction, family, community, motivation, and other factors.

Selected Recent Publications            

            Afflerbach, P., & VanSledright, B.  (in press).  The challenges middle school students face when reading innovative history text. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy.

            VanSledright, B., & Afflerbach, P.  (in press).  "But the pale faces knew it not": Using revisionist history texts to challenge traditional views of America’s past. Theory and Research in Social Education.

            Afflerbach, P.  (1999).  Verbal reports and protocol analysis.  In Pearson, P., Kamil, M., Barr, R., & Mosenthal, P. (Eds.)  Handbook of reading research, pp.163‑179.  Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

            Pressley, M., & Afflerbach, P.  (1995).  Verbal protocols of reading: The nature of constructively responsive reading.  Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

            Afflerbach, P.  (1998).  Reading assessment and learning to read.  In R. Anderson, J. Osborn, & P. Pearson (Eds.) Learning to read, pp. 239-263. New York: Guilford Press.