About Perspective Taking and Reading Comprehension

Perspective taking refers to the ability to see issues from a point of view beyond one’s own, which helps people to skillfully read the social world and to navigate relationships in sensitive ways. The ability to take perspectives develops during childhood, with reactions to perspective-taking challenges moving from egocentric, to unilateral, to reciprocal, to coordinated (Selman, 2003). At some point in middle childhood, perspective taking also shifts from deployment primarily in the personal sphere to becoming available for thinking about the public or social sphere (understanding of racism, for example, or comparing different points of view about the accessibility of medical marijuana or the appropriateness of the death penalty). Personal or social perspective taking is key to understanding characters’ motives and actions in fiction, and both personal and public perspectives may be required in reading history with deep comprehension.

In order to promote students’ perspective-taking skills, the Word Generation and STARI curricula provide students with opportunities to discuss how interpersonal, group, institutional, and social issues can be seen from the points of view of different stakeholders. For example, the Reader’s Theater in Word Generation provides opportunities to promote the various perspectival acts (acknowledge, articulate, position, interpret). Specifically, the curricula scaffolds children in the following processes: identifying the different actors that have a stake in a given situation (perspectival acknowledgement); describing the feelings, opinions, circumstances, and orientations to action of these stakeholders (perspectival articulation); understanding how someone's role affects how they see the world (perspectival positioning); explaining the reasons why they might think, feel, or behave in the way they do (perspectival interpretation); and assessing the validity of different perspectives by seeing them from a third-person point of view (critical perspective).

The Word Generation and STARI curricula also promote students’ perspective coordination skills by providing them with opportunities to coordinate their points of view (perspectival coordination) during discussions and debates. In fact, students are encouraged to express their points of view, listen to the points of view of their peers, and transform their own positions as they integrate new perspectives into their own thinking. Unlike regular course textbooks, the Word Generation curricula ramps up slowly and provides scaffolds for students to meet the increased cognitive demands of perspective taking.

Video: Perspective Taking and its Connection to CCDD

Catherine Snow explains:

how perspective taking is an important predictor of deep reading comprehension  •  the ability to understand different points of view is a prerequisite for comprehending narrative, historical, and scientific texts

Bob Selman discusses:

perspective-taking skills are necessary to make accurate inferences  •  perspective-taking skills are also essential for communication; students who are debating and discussing issues in a text must have the requisite language skills that are required to listen to others and to integrate multiple perspectives into their own points of view.

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