Abstract
Studies of reading comprehension implicitly adopt assumptions about where textual meaning resides. The field typically frames comprehension as either the extraction of meaning encoded in the text or the construction of meaning through transaction with it. Each view secures something the other gives up: extraction enables evaluation against a shared standard but forecloses interpretive possibility. Construction allows for multiple meanings but dissolves any basis for evaluation. Following Moje's concept of “discourse communities,” we argue that the field needs closer portraits of classrooms where constructive reading is bounded by shared evaluative criteria. We offer such a portrait through an instrumental case study of a second-grade biblical literature classroom: how students comprehend biblical texts in biblical Hebrew, a textual language that they do not speak but rather encounter primarily through writing and commentary. Drawing on four months of teacher research data, we identify three observable stances through which students enacted bounded constructive reading: deference versus agency, factual versus interpretive questioning, and text as obstacle versus text as resource. A sustained student-led debate over whether the biblical characters, Rebecca and Isaac, were married demonstrates how this kind of reading became possible when meaning was anchored in the written text rather than speech. We argue that the literacy practices of the Jewish hermeneutic tradition and the features of textual languages reveal how even young readers can read constructively while remaining disciplined by community-shared criteria, with implications for how the larger field of literacy can conceptualize comprehension and its instruction.