Introduction to the Special Issue: Textbook Content and Organization—Why it Matters to Reading Comprehension in Elementary Grades?

Textbooks are a major source in supporting instruction about reading across the world. Classroom teachers and school rely on these documents to guide the scope and sequence of instruction and expect them to provide evidence-based instructional guidelines to promote comprehension. Theories of reading comprehension are synthesized to identify vocabulary, generation of main ideas, summarization, and extrapolating inferences as sound constructs that promote comprehension. A review of textbooks from multiple continents show that most do not address evidence-based practices. Until the textbooks that support instruction on comprehension change, little can be accomplished by other means.