Middle School represents a period of transition for the students. This transition is present not only in physical change, intellectual change, and emotional change, but also in terms of the type of reading instruction these students receive. One approach to reading instruction moves from a direct approach focusing on specific skills, to a functional approach of how to apply those skills in the content area classroom. The latter approach is process oriented, and focuses on learning the content by reading and participating in relevant learning activities. The focus of this study was to examine the interaction which takes place among textbooks, instructors, and students in the area of Social Studies within selected middle schools. Three phases were involved in this study. Phase one: Grade six Social Studies textbooks were evaluated using the Singer Reading Inventory, which evaluates the areas of organization, explication, conceptual density, metadiscourse, and instructional devices within a given textbook. Phase two: Visitations to five middle school Social Studies classrooms were conducted over an eight week period in an effort to determine the types of instructional strategies employed by teachers. Phase three: Academic achievement was measured by publisher provided examinations, teacher prepared examinations, or an aggregate of daily scores. Hypothesis one: Social Studies textbooks which are more considerate will result in greater student achievement. This hypothesis was rejected. The achievement of students was inversely related to the results of the evaluation of the textbooks as determined by the Singer Reading Inventory. The rejection of this hypothesis must be qualified in terms of the content the subareas of the Singer Reading Inventory measured, and the type of information the student had to acquire in order to perform well academically. Hypothesis two: Teachers who employ more strategies which are of a functional process approach will enhance student achievement in the content areas. This hypothesis was retained. The preceeding findings may be partially explained by considering the possibility that some classroom instructors compensate for the inadequacies of textbooks by providing more effective strategies and activities which enhance the interaction of information exchange within the classroom. / Graduation date: 1990