Chapter 7: The Assessment of Higher Order Thinking in Reading

Assessment of higher order thinking in reading has several important uses. When used formatively, the assessment can inform teachers’ understanding of students, reading instruction and reader development. When summative, assessment can report on the accomplishments of student readers, the value of instructional programs, and teacher efficacy. This chapter examines higher order thinking in reading, and describes the attributes of assessments that suitably measure it. The first section of the chapter focuses on how reading can be conceptualized as higher order thinking. We overview the development of theories that describe the complexity of reading, the most recent definition of reading from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and research on higher order thinking in general. We compare an amended version of Bloom’s Taxonomy with state-of-the-art knowledge about reading strategies with the intent of demonstrating what aspects of reading engage reliably higher order thinking.