College Reading Specialists: Are They Being Short-Changed by Graduate Schools.

This paper argues that graduate schools should offer specific courses for future college reading specialists, as their problems and responsibilities differ from those of reading specialists in primary and secondary schools. As college reading is in need of more theoretical underpinnings, its practitioners need not only the facility for explaining a technique but also the understanding in some detail of how that technique is a complement to something basic in man's chemical or psychological nature. Furthermore, college reading instruction, to ensure its own future, has to develop a corpus of specialized training courses which recognize that college reading teachers are often not working in a classroom situation. The results of a recent survey of graduate programs in reading and of college reading specialists show that schools of education generally see no difference between teaching reading at various educational levels, whereas college reading specialists do see a difference. (TS)