Applications of Vygotskian concepts to teaching are reviewed. Transcripts of comprehension lessons are used to illustrate how teacher questions regulate student efforts to comprehend. Examples are provided of the varieties of teacher assistance that can be embedded in teacher/student interaction to encourage higher order, self-regulated comprehension strategies. Significant gains in student comprehension were obtained in a short series of lessons. These results suggest that special education curricula which do not require higher order processing or provide appropriate teacher assistance for such processing may be unwittingly producing less than optimum performance. It is suggested that mentally retarded students can be assisted to use higher order cognitive processes in their attempts to comprehend simple texts.
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