Much of the curriculum and instruction provided to educationally disadvantaged students assumes that academic skills are hierarchical in nature. For example, it is assumed that students must learn the basics of vocabulary and phonics before they can learn to read critically or for comprehension (Means & Knapp, 1991). Yet, cognitive research on reading comprehension has shown that students can acquire comprehension skills well before they are good decoders of the printed word (Palincsar & Klenk, 1991). Supporters of such evidence argue not for eliminating basic skills instruction but for combining it with approaches that teach meaning and understanding as well (Knapp, Shields, & Turnbull, 1995).
