Judy Sheehan

Smith’s American Reading Instruction- Stahl’s Epilogue and Pearson’s Article

Epilogue by Norman A. Stahl Stahl asks:

Is Smith’s book still important in the 21st century?

American Reading Instruction is:

“a touchstone of the past” (p. 413) and

“can be a comfort while bringing wisdom to the reading profession in this time of political and pedagogical unrest” (p. 413).

Stahl’s Epilogue

Stahl’s Epilogue ContinuedThe book’s staying power

-breadth and depth without the benefit of technological research

- deserving of a dissertation award

-shows doctoral students the importance of historical research.

-has become THE source on the history of reading instruction of the masses (pp. 413-414).

Stahl’s Epilogue

Stahl’s Epilogue Continued Stahl asks: what can be gained by multiple

reading of Smith’s text? 1. History teaches us first and best.

2. Pendulum swing continues and is predictable.

Children will survive the swinging and still learn to read.

3. Reading is now really a profession now.

4. Literacy professionals have had more success than failure. (pp. 416-417)

Stahl’s Epilogue

P. David Pearson : “Setting the Scene for Reading in the 1960s”

Carry-over Developments Up to 1935 and Cont. 1965 -Readiness program- learning with a slow, easy beginning -Look-say method spread over years -Vocabulary set up in order of decreasing frequency of usage -skills lessons/practice -reading of stories -silent reading in areas of children’s interest and experiences -importance of meaning -small group instruction -teacher as mediator, students as recipients -reading as a perceptual process -translation of written to oral

Setting the Scene

Setting the Scene: 1960s Reading continued

1935-1965- Look-say approach-- revised and extended in the middle third of the century

-- 90% of students learned via this method

-consisted of: high frequency sight words, practiced in formulated stories, teach phonics based on known words

Setting the Scene

Setting the Scene: “Conventional Wisdom of the 1960s”Elaborations from 1935-1965 -controlled text difficulty continued in the 1960s -more involved skills practice -domination of the frequency principle paralleled whole-

word or look-say approach (pp. 419-422)

Influence of Jeanne Chall’s (1967) seminal work, Learning to Read: The Great Debate

Chall’s New Principles: - grade 1 goals of comprehension, interpretation, and

contextualization of phonics instruction- Skills not mentioned but still had a role.

Setting the Scene

Pearson’s “The Legacy of Scholarship of the 1960s” Debate- What is the best way to teach beginning reading? “First Grade Studies”- Empirical Research, Gov’t funded study

-studies involved comparison of different teaching methods

-findings: any alternative to traditional basals resulted in equal or greater performance; researchers could now focus on the importance of the teacher

Gov’t programs resources:-Title I-Federal Right to Read Program

OVERALL FINDING- END OF THE TRADITIONAL LOOK-SAY BASALS; HOWEVER, ALTERED BASALS DOMINATED THE MARKET IN 1970s-1980s

Legacy

Legacy of Scholarship Continued Chall’s work

- used critical review to investigate empirical research, basal readers’ content, and excellent classroom teaching practices

-Findings: importance of early attention to code in early reading instruction

Recommendations: change in method, reexamine prevalent ideas about content, reevaluate grade levels, new test development, improve reading research

Legacy

Legacy of Scholarship ContinuedCHANGES: analytic phonics moved to beginning of grade 1 change in content- adaptations of children’s literature single-component testing criterion-referenced tests curriculum-embedded assessments skills management systems basals comprised of two parallel systems:

reading/embedded skills teacher manuals= student text surrounded by teacher’s

guide- suggestions/questions

SHIFT IN THE EARLY 1970s: more difficult texts, more phonics, and a new skills development program

 

NO CHANGE: teacher still as mediator with students as recipients; reading still a perceptual process of translation (pp. 422-429)

` Legacy

Pearson’s “Developments in the Last Third of the Century” Why was reading suddenly a main topic of

inquiry for scholars in various disciplines? POSSIBILITIES:

-Reading was central to success in many areas in and out of school.

or -Scholars outside of education felt that “educationists had it all wrong” (p. 429) – sounds familiar.

Developments

Developments Continued -fundamental shifts in perspectives of reading

and writing occurred in the 1970s

-conceptual revolutions in cognition, sociolinguists, and philosophy deeply affected reading curriculum and instruction of the 1980s-1990s

Developments

OVERVIEW OF DEVELOPMENTS

LINGUISTICS- shift in the 1960s-1970s from conventional structural perspective to transformative generative grammars

PSYCHOLINGUISTICS-children = language participants and invented their own rules about oral language

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY- paradigm shift in psychology in the 1970s-1980s from behaviorist to intellectual, cognitive

-SCHEMA THEORY considers prior knowledge, interpretation differences due to various or limited background knowledge

SOCIOLINGUISTICS- Need to accommodate children’s use of dialect in reading/writing learning; expansion of literary contexts to include all settings, not just school

Developments

Linguistics/Psycholinguistics Research

Linguistics: -Charles Fries’ research- not everything needs

explicit teaching- acquired from oral language

-Chomsky- humans are born with the ability to acquire community language

Psycholinguistics: -Brown & Goodman-found that children learn

actively, infer rules, and test them

-Goodman & Smith- oral reading errors=view of reading comprehension processes

 Developments

Psycholinguistics: Smith’s Influential Text

Smith’s Understanding Reading (1971)

Reading is learned as a member of literate society.

not taught- shift from focus on teacher to student.

a constructive process with decision-making & predictions based on previous knowledge

Developments

PSYCHOLINGUISTS’ INFLUENCEON CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION:

meaning-making literacy experiences

devalue skills

the value of natural language patterns/ texts for beginning readers-using own knowledge and prediction strategies

errors as a way to understand reading process/strategies

rethinking of what needed to be taught

Developments

Cognitive Psychology: 70s-80s

-enabled psychology to expand constructs such as intention, motivation, etc. to include other phenomena: perception, attention, comprehension, learning, memory, executive control of all cognitive processes

Prominent studies in reading: -basic processes such as text comprehension, story

grammars, expository texts (text-analysis tradition)

STUDIES: FOCUSED ONLY ON STRUCTURE, NOT READERS’ KNOWLEDGE

Developments

Schema theory: Influences Related to Piaget’s developmental theories and

types of learning: assimilation and accommodation

Frederic Bartlett- cultural schemata theory predated constructivist cognition and learning models by 60 years=readers actively construct meaning, rather than receiving it

Developments

Sociolinguistics Labov, Baratz, Shuy =major contributors

Issues: Dialect (its own developed linguistic system) and reading (requires accommodating use of dialect)

Contributions: expanding the meaning of context to include all literacy experiences, knowledge and language as socially and culturally constructed, expansion of our view of language and behavior

Developments

SOCIOLINGUISTIC INFLUENCE on Reading Instruction

Holding off until oral language was standardized

recognition that children can translate a standard English text into a dialect, not making errors

recommended changes in the classroom- less competitive, learning from each other

Developments

Literary Theory Perspective: 80s

“New Criticism”- the primary tradition of literary criticism post-WWII until the 1980s

- students/teachers focused on the true meaning of text

Reader-response theory-authority to the reader=affected teaching practices

-Rosenblatt’s texts- her view=meaning is in the transaction between the reader and the text

Developments

The Pedagogical Correlates of New Perspectives

COMPREHENSION- FOCUS OF THE 70s-80s

LITERATURE-BASED READING-late 80s

PROCESS WRITING-mid 80s

INTEGRATED INSTRUCTION

WHOLE LANGUAGE (and its DEMISE)

New Perspectives

Comprehension on Center Stage

Part of reading classrooms from the 30s-70s

Chall’s influence continued

Center for the Study of Reading (federally funded study) placed nat’l attention on comprehension

-research from that study and others focused on strategies to improve comprehension through instruction, monitoring, organizers, etc. New

Perspectives

Literature-Based Reading: late 80s

Intensified greatly in the late 80s (appeared briefly and intensely after Chall’s work too)

BASALS: HAD EXCERPTS AND ADAPTATIONS- reducing vocabulary difficulty and grammatical complexity and taking out offensive material-words/themes

Literature had supplementary role in school reading programs

- children selecting and independently reading own books- occurred even in the 60s-Book clubs and literature circles-voluntary structures, teacher-influenced cultural practices (ways to interact and support each other)

New Perspectives

Literature-Based Influences Rosenblatt’s reader response theory “just plain reading” as important in elementary

programs- Anderson et al’s Becoming a Nation of Readers (1985)

Atwell’s In the Middle. . . (1987)-persuasive account of reading reluctant adolescent readers with existing literature and reading workshops

1988 CA Reading Framework- call for more challenging texts for all grade levels w/ real literature

EFFECTS ON PUBLISHING- 80s-90s: interpretative questions, little vocabulary control, skills in the appendix

New Perspectives

Process Writing

Held a strong position in elementary LA curriculum 70s-80s-Influences

Sociolinguistic -writing to real audiences/purposesPsycholinguistic- focus on quality of thinking and problem solving less on spelling and grammarConstructivist-writing most transparent of all instructional activities

Writing as a way to make sense, legitimate and revealing-new view of early writing developments (influenced by Graves and Calkins)

Reading and writing as connected

NewPerspectives

Integrated Instruction

•Two stances re: integration= 1. how to integrate reading with other LA (writing, speaking, and listening) and 2. across subject area

•Goes back to Dewey and other progressives- teaching and learning across curricula (little attn until late 80s)

•Changed perspective in the late 80s-language/reading best taught with other purposes, activities, and learning activities-sociolinguistic perspective

New Perspectives

WHOLE LANGUAGE

•MOST SIGNIFICANT MOVEMENT IN THE LAST 30 YEARS

•-THE METHOD OF THE 90s

•Whole language can be seen as the integration of comprehension, literature-based reading, integrated instruction, and process writing with the strengths and weaknesses of each area included

NewPerspectives

Whole Language Influences/Tenets/Shifts

Child-centered pedagogy of the progressive All readers make their own meanings for encountered texts Authentic activity- real texts/tasks/deeper questions Integration-w/in LA and b/t LA and other subject areas Literature was central; phonics in the background Faith and hope in the teachers Suspicion of mandates and controls beyond the classroom Questioned use of basals -however, activities and tools of whole language were

“basalized” -Publishers-backgrounded skills and foregrounded integrated LA activities

New Perspectives

WHOLE LANGUAGE OPPONENTS

resistance thru-out the country

some places never accepted it

some implementations- not matching its philosophical or curricular tenets

all kids received the same literature

differing views of skills, conventions, and strategies-inconsistent practices emerged

NewPerspectives

THE DEMISE OF WHOLE LANGUAGE

-“Unintended curriculum casualities”-Questionable applications-Dissatisfaction with any extreme views -Paradigm shift in the ideology of reading research-Increase in the politicization of reading research

and policy agenda-Increasing pressure for all educators, esp. in

reading to produce measurable results-Dramatic shift in the current model of

professional development-Now: Who Holds the High Ground?

New Perspectives

Looking Ahead: Will We Benefit From the Lessons of History?

One possibility: the paradigm of basic skills- phonics and heavy skills

-These advocates may gain ground if they can persuade governments at all levels and the educational publishing industry.

-Result would be moderate to substantial shifts: --especially in kindergarten and grade 1 with explicit instruction--Writing aligns w/ whole language: literature-based reading and process writing- similar to early 90s and some 80s perspectives-- RC=Dec* LC returns along with teacher as transmitter of knowledge

LookingAhead

ANOTHER POSSIBILITY: A Hybrid Paradigm

“ecologically balanced” approach

less shifts if this alternative dominates.

authentic texts/tasks, writing emphasis, literature, response, comprehension w/ explicit phonics instruction, word identification, comprehension, spelling, writing

most differences in the early grades highly contextualized like whole language philosophically- students as active

meaning-makers favored by the author= respects all of the research in the field,

“wisdom of practice,” and professional history of reading

-an alternative to the pendulum swinging that has infected the field for the majority of the 20th century. Looking

Ahead

References

Pearson, P.D. (2002). American reading instruction since 1967. In Smith, N.B. (2002). American reading instruction (pp. 419-486). Newark, DE. International Reading Association.

Stahl, N.A. (2002). Epilogue. In Smith, N.B. (2002). American reading instruction (pp. 413-418). Newark, DE. International Reading Association.

References