Defying Convention, Inventing the Future in Literary Research and Practice: Essays in Tribute to Ken and Yetta Goodman

Defying Convention, Inventing the Future in Literacy Research and Practice

Ken and Yetta Goodman have seen their work outlawed by official government bodies, refuted by ideologically driven junk science, and denigrated by reporters who know no other template for reporting about reading than the linear pre-Copernican-like story: turn letters into sounds to get words to get the meaning in the print. As this volume attests, Ken and Yetta—and the field of literacy studies—have also had the good fortune to see the Goodman model of reading enjoy accelerating support from converging lines of inquiry . . . As we read these essays written to pay tribute to Ken and Yetta Goodman, it might be a good idea not only to visualize a future, but also to do the hard work of creating that future. Carole Edelsky, From the Foreword Ken and Yetta Goodman are renowned and revered worldwide for their pioneering, influential work in the field of reading/literacy education. In Defying Convention, Inventing the Future in Literacy Research and Practice major literacy scholars from around the world pay tribute to their work and offer glimpses of what the future of literacy research and practice might be. The book is structured around several themes related to research, practice, and theories of reading and literacy processes that characterize the Goodmans’ scholarship. Each chapter reveals how the author’s scholarship connects to one or both of the Goodmans’ work and projects that applies to the future—what are the implications for future research, theory, practice, and/or assessment? This milestone volume marking the hugely significant work of the Goodmans will be welcomed across the field of literacy education. Patricia L. Anders is Jewell M. Lewis Distinguished Professor of Reading, Department of Language, Reading and Culture, College of Education, University of Arizona.

Defying Convention, Inventing the Future in Literacy Research and Practice Essays in Tribute to Ken and Yetta Goodman Edited by Patricia L. Anders

First published 2010 by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2010 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-84471-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 10: 0–8058–6341–9 (hbk) ISBN 10: 1–4106–8021–1 (ebk) ISBN 13: 978–0–8058–6341–3 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978–1–4106–1802–3 (ebk)

Contents

Foreword

vii

CAROLE EDELSKY

Preface: The Landscape of Invention and Convention Acknowledgments 1 The Goodman Legacy: Forty Years of Literacy Research, Pedagogy and Profundity

x xvi

1

W. DORSEY HAMMOND

2 Towards a Sociopsychoneurolinguistic Model of Reading

17

STEVEN L. STRAUSS

3 All Language Understanding is a Psycholinguistic Guessing Game

37

T. G. BEVER

4 The Goodman/Smith Hypothesis, the Input Hypothesis, the Comprehension Hypothesis, and the (Even Stronger) Case for Free Voluntary Reading

46

STEPHEN KRASHEN

5 23 Notes in Search of Growing Up An Author—Or Not

61

DAVID BLOOME AND GEORGE NEWELL

6 Reading and Reigning: Theories of Learning to Read as Political Objects

76

RAY MCDERMOTT AND PERRY GILMORE

7 Coffee Cups, Frogs, and Lived Experience BERTRAM C. BRUCE

96

vi

Contents

8 From Learning as Habit-Formation to Learning as MeaningMaking: How Harry Pope Changed My (Professional) Life

116

BRIAN CAMBOURNE

9 Creating Curriculum

126

JEROME C. HARSTE AND KATHY G. SHORT

10 Is “Coaching” a Dangerous Metaphor for Teaching and Reading Teacher Education?

136

JAMES V. HOFFMAN AND GERALD L. DUFFY

11 Learning from Young Bilingual Children’s Explorations of Language and Literacy at Home

144

ILIANA REYES

12 The Sociopsychogenesis of Literacy and Biliteracy: How Goodman’s Transactional Theory of Reading Proficiency Impacts Biliteracy Development and Pedagogy

160

BARBARA M. FLORES

13 Knowing and Doing Well in the Creation and Interpretation of Reading Assessments: Towards Epistemic Responsibility

173

SHARON MURPHY

14 Miscue Analysis as a Tool for Advancing Literacy Policy and Practice

188

BESS ALTWERGER AND NANCY RANKIE SHELTON

15 Perspectives on Assessment: Reflections on and Directions from Goodman

204

ROBERT J. TIERNEY

16 We’ve Always Considered Our Work Political

214

PATRICK SHANNON

17 An Endangered Species Act for Literacy Education

228

P. DAVID PEARSON

18 Essay Review: Revolutionary Reading

245

HENRIETTA DOMBEY

Notes on Contributors Index

259 264

Foreword Carole Edelsky

Crystals aren’t really my thing. Nor are vortexes. Maybe it’s just living down the road from Sedona, Arizona, site of the great Harmonic Convergence replete with crystals and energy vortexes (in Sedona, it’s vortexes, not vortices) that puts me in mind of convergence as I read Defying Convention, Inventing the Future in Literacy Research and Practice: Essays in Tribute to Ken and Yetta Goodman. But geography alone can’t account for it. The chapters themselves reverberate with convergences with Ken and Yetta’s work. Of course, this is a festschrift and that’s the nature of festschrifts—to show the ways chapter authors’ work reflects, relies on, and generally relates to that of those being honored. But, as represented in this volume, the lines of inquiry converging on the Goodmans’ work go beyond genre requirements. Some of the convergences are long-established. As McDermott and Gilmore discuss in Chapter 6, Ken Goodman’s theoretical model of reading was aligned from the start with guiding assumptions in ethnography about learners as sensemakers, about learning as ubiquitous, and about the need to observe learners learning in context. In Chapter 4, Krashen’s theory of comprehensible input (actually, “i + 1”—just a bit beyond “complete” comprehensibility) as necessary for acquiring a second language and his claims about the second language learning benefits of free voluntary reading along with one of its major entailments—that people learn to read by reading—have long been known to support Goodman’s model of reading. Constructivism, appearing centrally or peripherally in many of the chapters herein, has been connected for many years with the Goodman theoretical model of reading and the pedagogy encouraged by both Ken and Yetta, as has Dombey’s explication of the difference between comprehension (a static product) and comprehending (the constructive activity of the agentive reader). The newer convergences come from both inside and outside the field of reading. Several contributors to this volume mention the overwhelming agreement among reading researchers, regardless of their other theoretical disagreements, as to the profound folly of DIBELS. The field at large may not make the same arguments against DIBELS that Ken Goodman has made at length. Nor may it agree that DIBELS grew from a particular Petri dish—one bubbling with policies for pushing forward a political agenda that, while spotlighting reading, was

viii

Foreword

actually about privatizing institutions (e.g., schools) in the public domain. But at least—and at last—the broad consensus in the field of reading research is that the test is a disaster for young readers, teachers, and education. Concurrently, the field is finally catching up with and on to a basic premise shared by Shannon and the Goodmans: reading, reading instruction (pedagogy, materials, assessment), and reading research are political. Some psychologists and psycholinguists are now arguing, as Bever does in Chapter 3, that the processing of all language—oral or written—is a (re)constructive act wherein a sequence of letters does not in fact map onto a linguistic world of sound to be then translated into meaning, that “top down” and “bottom up” fail to capture the interactivity of (re)constructing. Intriguing lines of inquiry in neuroscience and evolutionary biology (Deacon, 1997) have led Cambourne, in Chapter 8 in this volume, and others elsewhere (e.g., Edelsky, 2006) to extend Goodman’s focus on meaning-making to all learning and, in the process, to shift views on the genetic capabilities of humans. Deacon’s argument about what the brain is actually hardwired for—not for syntax through a language acquisition device but for symbolic reference, for making meaning with symbol systems—supports Goodman’s model regarding how readers use symbols in reading. Another stunning convergence, as presented by Strauss in Chapter 2, also comes from neuroscience, this time neuroanatomy. Recent research in this field turns upside down the old bottom-up, information-processing view of how the brain makes sense of sensory input. Instead of the thalamus taking in impulses and then sending them to the cortex for an interpretation (a neuroanatomical counterpart of “decode first, comprehend later”), the new evidence shows that it is the meaning-maker—the cortex—that directs the thalamus. This development in neuroscience seriously undercuts the research exploiting new technology (i.e., functional magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI]) to “prove” that reading is based on phonological processing and, instead, offers powerful support for the primacy of meaning-making. What makes the convergences that appear in this volume so intellectually gratifying as well as politically and personally (to me, at least) satisfying is that they not only support but, in a sense, vindicate a revolutionary theory that has been under attack. Few whose life’s work has been significant enough to warrant a festschrift have been subjected to outright campaigns to demonize them and their work. Few festschrift honorees have seen their work outlawed. But the Goodmans have been “treated” to both. So was Galileo. He not only took up Copernicus’ heliocentric theory that displaced the earth from the center of the universe, but he championed that theory as fact. Copernicus’ calculations had directly contradicted the prevailing common sense as well as the Church-authorized, Scripture-congruent geocentric theory, but Copernicus had avoided censure. He managed this in part by dedicating his definitive published work to the Pope, and in part by dying (his death came soon after his work was published). But Galileo wasn’t spared. While his work was not lambasted on the pages of the 16th-century’s version of Time and Newsweek as was the Goodmans’ theory and pedagogy, Galileo was severely

Foreword

ix

punished for trying to convert the Catholic Church to heliocentrism; he had to publicly recant his ideas and he spent the rest of his life under house arrest on order of the Roman Inquisition. What is pertinent—and poignant—in this Galileo/Goodman comparison is convergences and lack thereof. It took 150 years for the Copernican Revolution to be completed. Galileo’s observational astronomy gave a mighty push to Copernicus’ ideas, as did convergent discoveries by other astronomers and mathematicians. But it wasn’t until Sir Isaac Newton showed that gravity is what kept the planets orbiting around the sun that heliocentrism won out. During those 150 years, while scientific discoveries were converging in support of the revolution Copernicus started, Church opposition was dissolving and formal education was changing. All over the world, students began to be taught heliocentrism, including daily rotation of the earth on its axis, and they continue to be taught that theory to this day. But what might be seen as disheartening but I believe is also hopeful for readers of this volume is the following paradox: sitting right alongside formal knowledge gained from education, subjective experience and everyday language had it then and still has it now that the earth stands still while the sun does the rising and the setting. Ken and Yetta Goodman have seen their work outlawed by official government bodies, refuted by ideologically driven junk science, and denigrated by reporters who know no other template for reporting about reading than the linear pre-Copernican-like story: turn letters into sounds to get words to get the meaning in the print. As this volume attests, Ken and Yetta—and the field of literacy studies—have also had the good fortune to see the Goodman model of reading enjoy accelerating support from converging lines of inquiry. Nevertheless, like the ordinary felt experience that contradicts now-established science about sunrises and sunsets, the current common sense about reading (decode first, comprehend later) that contradicts the increasingly wellsupported Goodman model may well persist far into the future. Still—and here’s the hopeful part— as convergence piles upon convergence, that common sense could come to be recognized as mythical, could diminish, that is, to the status of a mere cliché. As we read these essays written to pay tribute to Ken and Yetta Goodman, it might be a good idea not only to visualize a future, as was intoned at the Harmonic Convergence, but also—as was omitted in Sedona, Arizona— to do the hard work of creating that future. It is a future in which the current erroneous common sense about reading could become reduced to simply a “way of saying it,” just as “the sun rises in the east” is a way of saying it that co-exists with academic knowledge. Quick to the tongue but nothing to build a pedagogy on, nothing to base an assessment on, nothing to make a profit from.

References Deacon, T. (1997). The symbolic species: Co-evolution of language and brain. New York: Norton. Edelsky, C. (2006). With literacy and justice for all (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Preface The Landscape of Invention and Convention

Upon the occasion of Ken and Yetta Goodman’s retirement from the Department of Language, Reading and Culture at the University of Arizona, we faculty and students asked what we could do that would pay tribute to Ken and Yetta. We decided the best idea was to hold a conference with presentations to be compiled in a volume to share with the world. Naomi Silverman, editor of this volume at Routledge, willingly took on the project and this book is the result. We are pleased that you have chosen to spend some time with this volume—our humble tribute to our mentors and colleagues, Ken and Yetta Goodman. We assume that you are a knowledgeable reader—a scholar who knows most of the backstory in these chapters and if you don’t, you know how to find out. We suggest this volume might be useful in doctoral seminars such as those on the history of literacy, the politics of reading, or theories of the reading process. Ken and Yetta have been mileposts in the establishment and development of the Department of Language, Reading and Culture (LRC) at the University of Arizona for the past 25 years. Upon their retirement, it seemed fitting to dedicate intellectual energy on their behalf. In doing so, we strive to demonstrate our deep gratitude for their leadership, friendship, and generosity. It is a timely project: Our University is undergoing severe financial constraints and, as a result, the department we have lovingly nurtured over the years is being morphed with another and we will become a program rather than a department. LRC was invented when faculty from four conventional departments (Elementary Education, Reading, Secondary English Education, and Educational Foundations and Leadership) met to possibly reorganize and create a new department (a new dean had been hired whose task was to reorganize the college from 13 departments to 5). Ken often refers to LRC as the result of a “shotgun wedding,” and while that might seem to be the case, the individuals worked and learned together to invent a unique academic union dedicated to literacy and social justice. Do you remember the first Goodman authored book or article you read? For me, and I imagine others of my generation (beginner in academe in the late 1960s and early 1970s), it was Ken’s article “Reading a Psycholinguistic Guessing Game.” I recall my professors carrying it from office to office, asking each other,

Preface

xi

“Have you read this yet?,” “Who is this guy from Wayne State?,” “Does anyone know him?” The article was soon required reading in every graduate class and the ideas were “debated.” As I was a student in what was infamously referred to by some as a “skill and drill bootcamp,” you might imagine the stir Ken’s article caused. If you have a limited imagination, let me assure you, the debate was lively. My next encounter with Ken in the literature was when I read the book coauthored with E. Brooks Smith and Robert Meredith, Language and Thinking in School (2nd ed.). That book and becoming intimately knowledgeable about miscue analysis changed my notions of the reading process and therefore my career. And that was true for many of my generation (see Hammond and Cambourne, in this volume). Maybe not those particular readings, but Ken’s publications contributed to the radical swing of the theoretical pendulum from behavioral psychology’s domination of explanations of the reading act (e.g., Holmes, 1965; Holmes & Singer, 1964) to considerations of linguistic and cognitive theories of the reading process. Indeed, Flurkey and Xu (2003) call it a revolution. Academic revolutions were described in Kuhn’s (1970 [1962]) treatise of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Until Ken’s 1967 article, “Reading a Psycholinguistic Guessing Game,” researchers were creating and testing lists of skills believed to be necessary for being able to read and attempting to predict which of those were salient. There were two problems: (a) despite sophisticated statistical designs and tests, a scope and sequence of reading skills could not be arrived at; and (b) many of us, as reading teachers, knew from experience that reading was greater than the sum of the skills we taught. The confluence of this scientific finding and the observations of frustrated teachers set the stage for a new view, a revised explanation of the reading process. As described by Kuhn (1970 [1962], pp. 4–7), a paradigmatic revolution was launched. If you were to ask those of us who lived and worked in the field of reading since the late 1960s and early 1970s to take a trip down memory lane, you would learn that this paradigm shift challenged many of us to rethink graduate programs, teacher education curricula, professional development programs, and indeed our teaching and research. Suffice it to say that no revolution is easy and I don’t use the term revolution lightly, these were turbulent times. Of course, as Kuhn (1970 [1962]) explains, some were not persuaded by the arguments put forth by the Goodmans and others; hence, the pursuit of a better explanation of the reading process and the teaching of reading continues. Ken explains how this connection to a paradigm happens in an interview of Ken and Yetta that Kathy Short and Jerry Harste (1996) published in Language Arts: Recently on the Vygotsky listserv, people were challenging a physicist who teaches physics by discovery. They said, “Come on, you don’t believe that students could discover physics on their own, do you?” What I began to realize is nobody teaches somebody to be a Newtonian physicist. What

xii

Preface happens is that you’re inducted into a Newtonian physics community, and you begin to talk like them and use their language and their examples. You never make a decision by saying, “I’m going to study the six physics paradigms that are available to me and choose one.” In fact, you never make that decision at all. The only choice you have is either to join the paradigm or not, and not joining a paradigm is exactly what I did with the psychologists at UCLA. I either had to join their paradigm or reject it. Rejecting it was a powerful process for me because I had to think through what I believed in relation to behaviorism, which was what I was being offered. (pp. 514– 515)

Given this backdrop, the LRC senior faculty (Kathy Short, Luis Moll, Perry Gilmore, Richard Ruiz, David Yaden, and Patty Anders) decided to sample those whom we have known through our professional lives, inviting them to come to Tucson for a conference in Ken and Yetta’s honor, and to submit chapters for this volume to express the ways they had built on or been influenced by Goodmans’ ideas. We were not necessarily looking for students of Goodmans, although a couple of former students are included in this volume; rather we wanted to invite those who had been inducted into the language and ideas brought about by this paradigm shift. We considered scholars who we believe to be members of our “thought collective” (Fleck, 1981). Our list was long, and not everyone we invited could participate. Others whom we should have invited were unwittingly neglected; nonetheless, this volume embodies a good sampling of a generation of scholars who have participated in the revolutionary thought collective. In addition, as is customarily requested by publishers, we looked at the already published volumes that pay tribute to both Ken and Yetta’s life’s work. We found volumes that focused on Ken, but not on the two of them. Most particularly, we noted Ann Marek’s and Carole Edelsky’s (1999) volume, Reflections and Connections: Essays in Honor of Kenneth S. Goodman’s Influence on Language Education. In that volume, 24 contributors paid tribute to Ken’s scholarship in 21 chapters. The contributors include Ken and Yetta’s former students, colleagues, and their eldest daughter. Although Yetta is cited in this volume, it is clearly aimed at Ken’s contributions to language and literacy education. Similarly, Alan Flurkey and Jingguo Xu (2003) selected and edited Ken’s writings, framing the writings in terms of The Revolution of Reading. The volume we planned filled a gap in the literature, a book to be a tribute to both Ken and Yetta. Community has always been an integral part of Ken and Yetta’s life’s work. Yetta attributes this value to her mentor E. Brooks Smith at Wayne State University (where Yetta got her doctorate and where Ken was a professor). Yetta says: Brooks Smith always wanted us to talk about ideas. He loved people to come together and talk. We had a lot of social activities. We formed a musical group, and we had many academic discussions. And then we had the SALE

Preface

xiii

group, Society for the Application of Linguistics in Education . . . I remember that when Carol Burke, David Allen, Rudine Sims Bishop, and Dorothy Menosky left [Wayne State University] they kept calling us [from their new academic positions] and saying, “There’s nobody to talk to. Who are we going to talk to? We have to do something.” So we organized . . . the Center for the Expansion of Language and Thinking (CELT) [a group of over 100 language and literacy scholars who meet regularly and exchange ideas over a listserv on the internet]. (Harste & Short, 1996, p. 514) An example of Ken and Yetta’s community building modus operandi is part of my own story. In the fall of 1976, I ventured from the Midwest where I’d lived in Michigan and Wisconsin my whole life to begin my academic career at the University of Arizona. One of the first events I attended was the fall gathering of the Tucson Area Reading Council where Ken Goodman was the featured speaker. I’d met Ken and Yetta at the annual conference of the International Reading Association in May, but had not seen them in my first couple weeks in Arizona. It just so happened that Ken arrived at the conference the same time I did and so we walked in together. As we walked in, Ken said, “Come over for brunch tomorrow [Sunday] morning. Some of our newly arrived students will be there.” I said I would, and the next morning I drove to a neighborhood built in the 1960s and up the short driveway of a brick ranch-style home. Frankly, I was pretty excited to be at their home. Ken and Yetta’s office was just inside the back door with two typical university-type metal desks facing each other and floor-to-ceiling fully packed book shelves. The new students of whom Ken spoke and who I met that day were Barbara Flores and Bess Altwerger (the two former students who have contributed to this volume). The three of us have often recounted the story of that day. We sat by the pool, eating fruit and bagels and enjoying the glorious weather, while Ken and Yetta were inside working. One would come out and talk to us for a while and then be replaced by the other as their work continued. We learned a lesson that day about the life of a professor. In the Goodman home and university office, play and work almost always went hand in hand with lots of people around. That day was the beginning of some of the most meaningful relationships of my life. Barbara, Bess and I have raised our children together, struggled through losses, and depended on each other in good times and bad. And, most importantly, thankfully, Ken and Yetta have been a steady constant. The people in our lives matter. Just a few profound threads run through my life (getting married, giving birth, raising children, and lasting childhood friendships), but as a long time member of the reading/literacy academic community, it is the men and women I have been privileged to know that has made my professional life meaningful. For the most part, these long-term relationships started as the result of chance meetings at conferences or through the literature. As I write this preface, pictures of their faces flash through my mind, along with the sounds of laughter, passionate arguments, and thoughtful, caring conversations. These are blessings. The greatest tribute any of us could make for Yetta and

xiv

Preface

Ken is to take care of relationships. They have each, in their own way, provided us a model that is unparalleled. The Goodman festschrift—a celebration of a lifetime of ideas—happened within the warm embrace of colleagues under the sparkling Arizona sun. A landscape that invites big ideas and, in the case of those of us who met that weekend, a place to consider both convention and invention. The title of this volume was not fully agreed upon, but we have stuck with it because it reflects our interest in the inventions (perhaps unwittingly) of our colleagues in response to Ken and Yetta’s work. None of the contributors to this volume have been satisfied with the status quo, each has strived to make a mark—to stretch and confront conventional ideas so as to invent new ways of thinking and doing. The structure of this volume begins with Dorsey Hammond’s construction of events during the paradigm shift. He points out the lived tensions between those who have clung to the old paradigm and those who have ventured into the new. The next three chapters, written by Steve Strauss, Tom Bever, and Steve Krashen, are theoretical. Strauss is a neurolinguist and has brought brain science to the understanding of language and literacy. Bever received his degree from MIT in linguistics and expresses a view of language and psychology that is consonant with Goodman’s model. Krashen draws a direct theoretical line between Goodman’s linguistic claims and the acquisition of second language. Next, David Bloome and his colleague George Newell invent a set of 23 notes to unpack what it means to be an author. The next two chapters turn our attention to the anthropological and philosophical. Ray McDermott and Perry Gilmore, as educational anthropologists, take us on a journey around the world and through history positioning the Goodmans in those spaces to respond to the language and literacy of those times. In sharp contrast, the next author, Chip Bruce, gets up close and personal as he tells the stories of his own intellectual journey as a reenactment of ideas central to the Goodmans’ work. Classroom teachers’ and school leader practices are the focus of the next five chapters. Brian Cambourne describes the day he shifted from being a member of the behaviorist paradigm to the new paradigm. He tells the story of a workshop led by Ken and Yetta, and he captures the changes it brought about in his theory of reading. Jerry Harste and Kathy Short then make explicit their view of curriculum and link it to precepts and assumptions each have developed as they have participated in the development of the new paradigm. In the next chapter, Jim Hoffman and Gerry Duffy provide a chapter in response to a very current issue in practice—the responsibilities of a “literacy coach”—and invite readers to consider the implications of being a coach. Next, Iliana Reyes (our only contributor who is a relative newcomer to the academy) reports on her amazing study of children’s biliterate development, and Barbara Flores follows with a chapter explaining her research in biliteracy and the ideas that informed that work. Sharon Murphy then presents a chapter laying out principles, warrants, and claims for what assessment should be, and Bess Altwerger and Nancy Rankie

Preface

xv

Shelton make those ideas explicit when they discuss issues of assessment around the concept of fluency. Rob Tierney’s chapter on assessment reminds readers of the principles articulated by Ken Goodman in his writings. The Goodmans have recognized that because reading/literacy is political, their work is tied to policies and policy-makers. Pat Shannon articulates this clearly in his chapter, “We’ve Always Considered Our Work Political.” David Pearson, in an article that Shannon would probably like to argue about, points out that unless specific issues of literacy research are addressed, literacy researchers are an “endangered species.” Henrietta Dombey, the author who closes this volume, was unable to attend the conference, but her contribution is a fitting way to conclude this celebration. She summarizes the incredible influence of the Goodmans in a review of On the Revolution of Reading (Flurkey & Xu, 2003). We hope as you read the ideas herein that you feel the draw of educators and scholars who work toward understanding literacy and its power to make the world a place where all may thrive. To do so, we are all challenged to defy convention and invent the future. Patricia Anders May, 2009

References Fleck, L. (1981). Genesis and development of a scientific fact. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Flurkey, A. D., & Xu, J. (Eds.) (2003). On the revolution of reading: The selected writings of Kenneth S. Goodman. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Harste, J. C., & Short, K. G. (1996). Ken and Yetta Goodman: Exploring the roots of whole language. Language Arts, 73, 508–519. Holmes, J. A. (1965). Basic assumptions underlying the substrata-factor theory of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 1(1), 5–28. Holmes, J. A., & Singer, H. (1964). Theoretical models and trends toward more basic research in reading. Review of Educational Research, 34(2), 127–153. Kuhn, T. S. (1970 [1962]). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Acknowledgments

First, thank you to the faculty and students who contributed to the success of the Festschrift. Faculty served as facilitators and students served as recorders. Facilitators include professors Mary Carol Combs, David Yaden, Robert Wortman, Kathy Short, David Betts, and Luis Moll. Students who recorded the proceedings, the scribes, included Kerry McArthur, Stephanie Lehrer, Ellen Spitler, Amanda Sox, Sri Ramakrishnan, and Deborah Demmitt. Extra special thanks go to student organizers Mary Fahrenbruck with Ellen Spitler. The Provost of the University of Arizona, George Davis, brought gifts to Ken and Yetta and greeted those in participation. Provost Davis is a structural geologist with particular emphasis on the study of faults, folds, shear zones, and fracture systems within mountain belts and plateau provinces. The connection between his work in the wonders of geology and the contributions of Ken and Yetta to the paradigm shift in literacy theory and education was not lost on George. He spoke admiringly of their scholarly contributions as well as the role they have played at the university through their committed and valued service. Special thanks are owed to others as well. David Betts handled all matters technological, Eliane Rubinstein-Avila served as hostess at the dinner Thursday night, Marie Ruiz helped to hostess a champagne tea party, Luis and Ana Moll opened their home for a grand gala, Yvonne Gonzalez Lewis, our departmental administrative associate, managed paperwork and financials, and numerous students chipped in to chauffeur folks, assemble notebooks, and numerous other behind-the-scenes responsibilities. Other students, particularly Heidi Bacon, contributed in various sundry ways to get the manuscript off to the publisher. Thank you all very much for helping to make this a very memorable event and a worthwhile contribution to the literature. The authors and publisher wish to thank those who have generously given permission to reprint borrowed material: Chapter 7—Bruce, Bertram C. (2008). “Coffee Cups, Frogs, and Lived Experience” was originally published in International Journal of Progressive Education, 42(2) June. Reprinted with permission. Chapter 17—Pearson, P. David, “An Endangered Species Act for Literacy Education” was originally published in Journal of Literacy Research, 39(2),

Acknowledgments

xvii

145–162. Copyright © 2007. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of the National Reading Conference and P. David Pearson. Chapter 18—Dombey, Henrietta, “Essay Review: Revolutionary Reading” was originally published in Journal of Curriculum Studies, 37(2), 209–221. Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group Ltd. Reprinted with permission.

1

The Goodman Legacy Forty Years of Literacy Research, Pedagogy and Profundity W. Dorsey Hammond

The past four decades have been a particularly interesting journey for those in the field of literacy. It has been an uneven trip with major breakthroughs, often based on the work of the giants who came before us, such as Edmund Burke Huey, Edward Thorndike, Sir Frederic Bartlett, David Russell, Ruth Strickland, Walter Loban, and the early work of Louise Rosenblatt, to name just a few. There have been setbacks and regressions, depending on from whose lens we are viewing this literacy work in progress. The history of research and pedagogy in literacy has been more like a rollercoaster ride, with ups and downs, twists and turns, accompanied by doubts and concerns as well as periods of celebration and exhilaration. It is in this context that we address the contributions of our colleagues and scholars Ken and Yetta Goodman. Since 1965, there appear to have been three major shifts in our conversations about literacy. Each has had a major impact on how we view the nature of literacy, how it is learned and how teachers facilitate this learning.

Three major shifts The first of these major shifts in our thinking is miscue analysis and the models of reading that grew out of this important research. Even Goodman could not have foreseen in 1962, prior to his first attempts at listening to students read text and analyzing what readers were doing, that this research would yield such rich data and have such a major impact on our profession. He writes: There really was an “Aha” moment of discovery with miscue analysis. It happened within the first naïve analysis of the first subject of the first pilot study . . . I had not expected that the evidence I was looking for would be richly abundant in their reading errors and not nearly so evident when they read accurately. (1996, p. v) From this beginning of Goodman’s investigations of a single individual reading text, a search of the literature yields well over a thousand studies of miscue analysis. The studies, many of which appear in refereed journals, cover a range

2

W. Dorsey Hammond

of topics and issues. The reading performance of beginning readers, bilingual readers, underachieving readers, readers in middle school, high school readers, college readers, adult readers, Native American readers, African American readers, handicapped readers, and learning disabled readers as well as native speakers of other languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, French, and Spanish have been studied. The research in miscue analysis has been tied directly to almost every aspect of literacy including but not limited to: literacy assessment, background experience and schema, curriculum and instruction, reading materials, phonics, word learning, rate of reading, comprehension, dialect, writing and revision, eye–voice span, perception, prediction, readability, strategy instruction, text analysis, and teacher education. Miscue analysis has been used extensively in research as both an independent and dependent variable in more than a thousand studies. Arguably, miscue analysis may be the most referenced concept in the professional journals and at professional literacy conferences over the past 40 years. And yet surprisingly, in the National Reading Panel (2000) report which is ostensibly the most comprehensive metaanalysis of historical and contemporary literacy research, miscue analysis is not mentioned nor referenced. It is difficult to overstate the impact of miscue analysis on the literacy community. Though difficult to conceptualize today, prior to miscue analysis, reading teachers talked about reading errors. Any departure from text was seen as a mistake or signaled a deficit in reading skill. After studying and applying miscue analysis, most of us in the profession claim to listen quite differently as readers process written text. Miscue analysis gives us critical insights into the process of reading. It is often referred to as the window into the brain. It is through miscue analysis that Goodman and colleagues have been able to define and refine their model of reading. Miscue analysis raises fundamental issues about instruction and curriculum. Because of the multiple cueing systems that emergent readers engage in, instruction in early reading instruction is comprehensive, involving attention to meaning from the very beginning. A reading curriculum based on the Goodman model is less word-focused and more language-focused. Context is critical. In a language model of literacy, writing becomes an important complementary process to learning to read. Materials used to promote growth in learning to read are dramatically changed based upon Goodman’s study of miscues. The refinement of his model rejects vocabulary-controlled text so prevalent in schools of the 1960s and 1970s as well as the text represented by so-called linguistic readers of 30 years ago or the decodable texts prevalent in many schools today. Miscue analysis demonstrates the importance of natural text within the dialect system of the individual reader, which in turn adds an element of predictability to enhance text processing. Predictable texts as characterized by Bill Martin’s (1967) Brown Bear, Brown Bear or Eric Carle’s (1969) The Very Hungry Caterpillar, with engaging language patterns, strategic repetition of sentences and ideas supported by clever illustrations are representative of thousand of books currently available to young readers that allow them to read at the earliest stages of literacy development. Miscue analysis

The Goodman Legacy

3

and the psycholinguistic perspective of reading provide the theoretical foundation for these engaging texts. Teacher language is modified because of miscue analysis and the insights it provides into the reading process. Teachers are urged to ask children to think about their reading and ask “What would make sense?” as a first cue when encountering unknown words. Teachers encourage young learners to take risks in both reading and writing. The role of the teacher is to scaffold and support the children’s natural language and cognitive ability and to minimize teacher telling and teacher corrections. Unfortunately, this teacher role has often been confused as minimizing instruction, when quite the opposite is true. Thus, in the areas of literacy assessment, insight into the reading process, literacy materials, curriculum and instruction, and into the critical role of teachers, miscue analysis and a language-based model of reading has fundamentally changed reading instruction. The second major shift in our thinking over the past four-decade period was the work at the Center for the Study of Reading (CSR) directed by Richard C. Anderson from the late 1970s to the late 1980s (see Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, 1985). Anderson helped us rediscover Sir Frederic Bartlett (1932) and his work on remembering and schema theory. Soon we began to see scores of Tech Reports on comprehension and metacognition, the effects of background knowledge, and reader perspective. The Center for the Study of Reading shifted and expanded our focus on reading, particularly in the area of reading comprehension across the curriculum and through the grades. Instead of competing with the contributions of Goodman and colleagues, the work of the CSR complemented Goodman’s work. The third major shift in our thinking about literacy was the work of Donald Graves (1983) and his colleagues on the writing process. Even though there were pockets of educators in different areas of the country who had discovered that young children could write well, when the emphasis was placed on ideas and content and not merely on spelling and mechanics, it was Graves more than anyone who gave this movement momentum. It was Graves who highlighted the process of revision: even multiple revisions by very young writers. It was Graves who reminded us to “Have children write about what they know” rather than focus on contrived topics which seemed to be the prevalent instruction at the time. As with the work of Ken and Yetta Goodman and colleagues, it was a celebration of what children could do when supported strategically by languagecentered teachers. All three of these major paradigm shifts, miscue analysis and the psycholinguistic model of reading, the work of the Center for the Study of Reading, and Graves’ contributions to the writing process are interrelated. The presence of each helps provide a context for the other two. Several common threads are woven across all three. All three recognize and build on the strength that learners bring to the literacy encounter. Each begins with the learner. All three embrace a constructivist philosophy. All three promote learner engagement, risk taking and self-reflection. All three are characterized by a comprehensive

4

W. Dorsey Hammond

and interactive nature of learning to read and write as contrasted from a linear or sequential nature of learning to read and write.

The shifts are challenged All three of these major paradigm shifts of the past 40 years seem to be under serious scrutiny in the early part of this century. The reemergence of a Chall (1967) stage model of learning to read where comprehension is relegated to the last stage of literacy development, is unfortunately alive and well in many parts of the US, although less so in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. In stage models, little or no attention is paid to meaning construction in the early school grades. Interestingly the old platitude, “First you learn to read and then you read to learn” has reemerged in numerous presentations and conversations at state and national levels. Reading comprehension seems to have been relegated to the position of last in the views of literacy promoted by No Child Left Behind legislation and the National Reading Panel (NRP) (2000). Limiting the five major components of reading to phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, the NRP appears to dismiss 70 years of important research literature from Bartlett (1932) to Bransford, Brown and Cocking (2000)—a rich history of literally hundreds of carefully done empirical studies in cognition, learning theory, language development, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and related fields. In fact, the National Reading Panel so limited the type of research that they would consider that they reached the conclusion that there was very little research in reading comprehension available. The situation is somewhat akin to children killing their parents and subsequently lamenting that they were unfortunate orphans and grew up without knowing their parents. Significantly, not one of the more than one thousand studies on miscue analysis addressing such issues as the nature of the reading process, the role of language and meaning in learning to read, comprehension, reading by second language learners, the effects of text characteristics on word and language processing, characteristics of effective readers, etc. is referenced in the National Reading Panel report! Ostensibly these studies were not included because they lacked control groups and were descriptive analytic studies or were done as doctoral dissertation research. To exclude these studies is to exclude important work that provides us critical insights into how real children read real text in real-life situations. Much of what the Goodmans and colleagues have helped us to discover is under intense political and scientific pressure, including but not limited to the following: the concept of multiple cueing systems in text processing, the inextricable tie between language and reading, the qualitative analysis, by miscue analysis, of the reader’s process of reading, the facilitative effects of contexts on emerging readers, and the view of learning to read and write as a natural extension of language growth. Today, in contrast, it seems that the loudest voices proclaim that “reading is an unnatural act” (Lyon, 1998), that a word is either right or wrong, that the use of

The Goodman Legacy

5

context is what “poor readers” do, that fluency must precede comprehension, and that the best scientific measures of human reading development are the rapid recognition of nonsense words and the rapid reading of connected text with a mere counting of the number of words produced in a retelling (see Good & Kaminski, 2002). In this present-day world, the use of meaning to facilitate text processing does not appear to be in the equation of national mandates under No Child Left Behind legislation. One might speculate that the attack in recent years on Reading Recovery (see Reading Recovery of North America) by a subgroup of reading researchers may be driven not only by their opposition to a successful intervention model that is counter to their own model of literacy, but also a rejection of the language used by reading recovery teachers when they ask young readers who have encountered an unknown word in the text to ask themselves, “What would make sense?” Making sense in the early stages of learning to read appears to have little place in the world of Reading First advocates. As for the third important literacy movement and dialogue shift in modern times, the writing process, my evidence is only anecdotal and observational. There appears to be less attention to writing in our elementary and middle schools than we have seen in previous years. Today’s teachers often lament that they simply don’t have time for students to write as much because of the emphasis on reading assessments. Additional observations of university course syllabi seem to indicate less attention to instructing teacher candidates on how to nurture and promote mature writing of their students when they become teachers in America’s classrooms. All three of the trends identified in this chapter, the work of Ken and Yetta Goodman and colleagues, the work of the Center for the Study of Reading, and the celebration of writing and revision as represented by Donald Graves, seem to be of very low priority on the national literacy scene.

Toward gaining perspective Recent history of literacy research and practice When reviewing the literature on reading research and practice over the last half century there appears to be one constant, namely that predominant views about literacy are in a constant state of flux. Sometimes characterized as pendulum swings, a more apt description might be a culture of competing views and theories, with some theories dominating for a period only to be supplanted by competing theories in a subsequent period. At no time is there any particular view of literacy that does not have its critics along with its advocates. Often views that seem to have been abandoned will resurface years or decades later. In some instances, the old views resurface in their original form and in other cases the theories or practices have been repackaged or modified, although the basic premise may remain the same. Witness, for example, the Linguistic Readers published by Bloomfield and Barnhart (1961) and the reemergence of decodable texts in the late 1990s

6

W. Dorsey Hammond

available through most major publishers of reading materials for young readers. Though the package has been modified, the basic premise is the same, namely that young readers need to read phonetically regular words in sentence form, with minimal exposure to phonetically irregular words in order to establish generalization about letter–sound correspondences and word recognition. On the theoretical side, we are reminded of the aforementioned stage theory of reading promoted by Chall (1967), which a decade later was not a well-accepted theory and yet now appears to have reemerged in the theories of Moats (1999) and others. The decade of the 1970s saw an increased recognition and use of miscue analysis, as well as recognition of the multiple cueing systems involved in the reading process. Children’s writing was viewed as a complementary process to learning to read. More attention was being paid to comprehension and metacognition. Meaning and comprehension were seen not only as an end product but a means by which young people learned to read. The importance of high quality literature for children and adolescents began to receive its rightful attention. Predictable text supplanted the vocabulary-controlled readers of previous decades. There was a movement away from isolated and synthetic phonics. Whole Language emerged as a grass-roots movement. These trends continued and gained even more momentum during the 1980s and early 1990s. Shifts began to occur in the 1990s as stage theory models reappeared and the promotion of phonemic awareness as the major prerequisite for learning to read. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development was instrumental in redirecting reading initiatives to a more phonics-first approach. Adams’ (1990) book on Beginning Reading, with its orientation to bottom-up approaches to reading was read and quoted extensively. Reading research was redefined as having to be based on the clinical trial as the gold standard, thus eliminating a great body of research that used methodologies such as case study, descriptive analytic and qualitative research. These initiatives culminated in No Child Left Behind mandates and the Reading First programs. The history of literacy instruction is replete with texts and subtexts. This phenomenon leads to two conclusions. First, as scholars and interested parties, it is critical to know this history and to know it from several perspectives. Second, the history of literacy teaches us that we are in a constant state of change. There is no final word: no final answer, although some answers seem far better than others. What we can be assured of is that in the next decade, literacy research and literacy practices will be different than they are today. It is in this context I want to address four issues that directly relate to the work of Ken and Yetta Goodman and their colleagues, namely, the extent to which learning to read is a natural act, the relationship of language and reading, contextual effects of word processing and finally, the Whole Language movement. Is learning to read a natural act? Over the years, Ken Goodman and his Whole Language colleagues have made a consistent case that learning to read is a natural act. In the past decade, selected

The Goodman Legacy

7

individuals have been critical of this notion of learning to read as natural (Lyon, 1998). Thus, the question, “Is learning to read a natural or an unnatural act?” The answer is, “It depends.” It depends on how one defines reading. It depends on what one means by the word “natural.” It depends on how teachers go about teaching children to read, and finally, closely related to the instructional issue, is the issue of the types of materials used to facilitate and support this instruction. Obviously, reading is viewed differently by different individuals within the literacy community. If one views reading as a process of constructing meaning, and that this process involves the readers applying their knowledge of language or syntactic structures as well as semantics in order to process text, then it seems natural to infer that learning to read is to a large degree a natural act. In other words, if reading is a language process and language is acquired naturally, given the appropriate linguistic environment, then it follows that learning to read is fundamentally a natural process. Children learn language naturally without direct instruction. This learning of language is highly contextualized and driven by the young child’s quest for meaning and making sense of their world. In the beginning stages of learning a language most children appear to be learning individual words but that is only the surface behavior. What young children are really doing is learning language as a rule-governed system. As that system begins to fall into place, children generate language and meaningful language combinations that they may have never heard before. Goodman (1996), reflecting on his earliest encounters of listening to children read, saw this same process occurring. He writes, “Just as young children learning to speak show their growing control over the grammar of their language by their ‘errors,’ such as ‘I taked it ’or ‘me wanna dink,’ readers use the same process for producing their ‘errors’ as they do for their accurate reading” (p. v.). What Goodman was seeing was a common behavior between learning to talk and learning to read. If it is natural in the first instance of learning to talk, why would it not be natural in the second instance of learning to read? In fact, there are many such common behaviors between learning to talk and learning to read. However, if one sees reading primarily or at least initially as the mapping of sounds onto individual letters or individual words, then it is not surprising that reading would be viewed as an unnatural act. The surface code is arbitrary and in many cases unpredictable and thus difficult when taught outside the context of language and meaning. How we view or conceptualize reading determines the extent to which we see reading as natural or unnatural. The issue of the naturalness of learning to read is not addressed easily. Cambourne (1988) takes an interesting perspective that speaks to the issue of naturalness. He writes, “Learning to read, write spell, punctuate, etc., (learning to become literate) ought to be as uncomplicated and barrier-free as possible” (p. 4). Whether natural or unnatural, Cambourne seems to get to the very crux of the matter. To what extent can we make learning to read, though challenging, a productive struggle without making it artificially or unnecessarily more difficult than it needs to be?

8

W. Dorsey Hammond

How reading is taught will determine the naturalness of the act. It is natural for children to share ideas and experiences that are personally relevant to them through their writing or dictation. It is natural for young children to be able to capitalize on their knowledge of language as they read text that is consistent with their language patterns. It seems natural for children to wonder what will happen next in their story. It is natural that children make sense of their immediate world. They have been striving to make sense of their world from the earliest months of life. It is also natural for students to share. They need to engage in literacy activities that are worth sharing. All of this speaks to a literacy curriculum that engages students in real stories, personally relevant activities and the construction of meaning from the earliest stages of literacy instruction. We should hasten to add, that this is not a romantic view of learning to read. Neither is it a view that minimizes teaching: quite the contrary. Another consideration in this “learning to read as natural issue” deals with the type of materials we use to facilitate literacy growth. Contrast the reading of a text written on the basis of controlling certain phoneme–grapheme patterns as, for example, “Ben went to the shed to get his sled,” with the reading of a patterned Bill Martin book such as Brown Bear, Brown Bear or Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Contrast children working on the segmentation of sounds or the rapid recognition of nonsense words with children reading their own personally constructed stories using invented or temporary spellings. One only has to observe these processes in real classrooms to see how hard children will work and how much they will struggle and persevere when the literacy activities are personally relevant and meaningful to the learner. Some have argued that learning to read is not natural because of the fact that all societies had an oral language system long before a written language system and that even today some societies do not have a written language system (Lyon, 1998). Though their data may be accurate the interpretation requires an intellectual leap that seems simplistic. Many human activities come relatively naturally to individuals in the right context or with appropriate scaffolding and support. Moreover, early cultures may not have had a need for communicating over time or distance. When that need arose, written language tended to emerge. From an ontological perspective, we now know that learning to write can occur very early in human development as witnessed by written symbols produced by 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds (Graves, 1983). Additionally these young writers are able to “read back” what they have written. To argue that learning to read is not natural because it develops later for the individual as well as for societies is not as simple and persuasive as it may seem at first glance. Whether or not learning to read is natural or unnatural is an interesting issue and will likely continue to be debated. What we do know is that reading and writing are language processes as are speaking and listening. We also know that there are very common characteristics of how oral language and written language develop in the individual as communication with a focus on being meaningdriven, contextualized, and involving risk-taking, generalizations, and overgeneralizations, as individuals gain control over language as a system. It is well to

The Goodman Legacy

9

remember that language, be it oral or written is not learned at the word level. Though we may not reach agreement on whether or not learning to read and write are natural, the issue is not an either/or paradigm. As Cambourne (1988) has suggested, we want to make learning to read as uncomplicated and barrierfree as possible. On that issue we should agree. Reading as a language process Historically, we have always viewed reading and writing as two of the language arts along with speaking and listening. It is miscue analysis, however, that provides much of the empirical evidence for how reading and language are inextricably tied together. Major miscues at the word level are substitutions with much smaller occurrences of omissions and insertions (Goodman, 1976). The fact that with substitution miscues, the readers produce a word with the same grammatical function a significant percentage of the time makes a persuasive case that readers are using their knowledge and facility with language as they read. Otherwise the grammatical characteristics of substitutions would be far more random. Additionally insertion and omission miscues seldom distort the syntactic or semantic nature of the sentence (D’Angelo & Mahlois, 1983). I confess to being an amateur in miscue analysis even though I have analyzed the miscues of hundreds of students over a 25-year period, often discussing at length whether a particular miscue was syntactically acceptable, semantically acceptable, both or neither syntactically and semantically acceptable, or partially syntactically acceptable, etc. Along with colleagues, we would also analyze graphic and sound similarity, self-corrections and attempts at self-correction as well as meaning change miscues. In the coding of thousands of miscues, the evidence is consistent and overwhelming that reading truly is a language and meaning act. In the reading performance of 14-year-old David struggling with a sentence in the Houghton Mifflin reading series, And, I, me, myself, I want a place of my own. David read. “And I . . . me . . . my-self, And myself . . ., And . . . I . . . me. . . , I want a place of my own.” David’s knowledge of the syntactic structure of language would not allow him to read fluently four pronouns in succession. If David were given these words in isolation, he would have readily recognized each word, but as a unit of language this structure was simply syntactically unacceptable. As Frank Smith (1973, p. 8) would remind us, “Reading doesn’t happen at the eye level. Reading is not primarily visual.” Later, in that same passage David struggles with the sentence “I was let off of work early.” He attempted two or three times, regressed, tried to self-correct and finally transposed fluently into the phrase “I got out of work early” which is what people said in this bluecollar town where David’s family resided. What is noteworthy here is that David constructed the meaning before reading the words. Later in another sentence “Soon, his three sisters and two brothers . . . ” David read, “Son, his third sister and two brothers . . . ” What David appears to have done in this sentence is to place the word Son in apposition, as the subject of the sentence and then his

10

W. Dorsey Hammond

knowledge of language trumped his visual input by substituting third for three. As soon as he did this, sisters became the singular form, sister, thus preserving the grammatical integrity of the sentence. One could argue that it would have been better for David to have been word accurate with the first word in the sentence, and to some extent I agree. However, if we look long term, David was doing what good early readers do, namely apply his intuitive knowledge of language, which bodes well for David over the long term. Two types of miscues have fascinated me the most: insertions and what I refer to as “anticipation miscues.” Insertions occur far less frequently than substitution miscue or even omissions (Goodman, 1976). Insertions are made by both good and poor readers but appear to increase as readers develop proficiency. Insertions seldom distort the semantics or syntax of the sentence. Where do insertions come from? At one level this seems like a simple question, but at another level it seems a more profound question and speaks to the nature of the reading process. Obviously insertions do not originate from visual input. Bottom-up models of reading that begin with visual input as described by Adams (1990) seem not to be able to accommodate for insertion miscues. Some have argued that insertion miscues may not be worthy of coding (D’Angelo & Mahlois, 1983). That seems to be a question worthy of consideration, especially from the perspective of assessing an individual’s reading performance. However, insertions appear to provide insights into the process of reading and remind us again and again of the inextricable tie between language, thought, and reading. The second type of miscue is what I refer to as “anticipation miscues.” These are miscues where the reader’s mind is ahead of the eye. For example, in the following text from our reader David, “Evan walked down the street. He crossed the noisy busy road. He waited for the light to change” David read “He went for the light to . . . (paused, self-corrected waited for went) and continued reading. In David’s mind, Evan was going places, down the street, across the noisy street and David was anticipating that the next portion of text was going to tell where Evan “went” next. Thus the override of went for waited. This is a simple example but a relatively common occurrence when readers read text. They anticipate text at both the idea and language level. It is important to add that skilled readers often do this, even highly skilled adult readers. Anticipation miscues often occur at the end of a line of print before the eye returns to the beginning of the next line at the left margin. For example, in the text He liked it when she got home ahead of him David read the word him as time. It is unlikely that David misread the word him. A more likely explanation is that he was producing the word time, before his eyes saw it, or he used minimal visual cues to produce the word time, because he had already anticipated based upon semantics and syntax that the word was time. It reminds us that reading really is a “psycholinguistic guessing game.” As Smith (1982) points out, the brain is often ahead of the voice as we read.

The Goodman Legacy

11

With every encounter with miscue analysis as a diagnostic tool, I am reminded by the empirical evidence that reading and learning to read is first and foremost a language process. No alternative explanation satisfies me. Almost four decades ago, Ken (Goodman, 1968) wrote: Theories in reading have been thinly built on partial views of the process of reading. Notably missing has been any awareness of the nature of language and language use. Recent attempts by Chall and others to justify the separation of “code breaking” from reading for meaning has been based on misunderstanding of how the linguistic code operates and is used in reading. A language is not only a set of symbols, phonemes and graphemes. It is a system of communication. (pp. 15–16) This quote is as relevant and necessary now as it was 40 years ago. Moreover, it will, I submit, be just as important 40 years into the future. The contextual effects of word processing Again, we see a major rift within the profession. Most reading researchers and theoreticians would agree that young emerging readers use context in order to facilitate word processing. The central issue here is how we interpret the use of context. One interpretation is that skilled readers are highly skilled at recognizing words instantly and accurately and don’t need context. In other words, the use of context is a temporary accommodation to the immature stages of the beginning reader. It is a stage we want to get beyond, so readers don’t need to rely on context anymore. Stanovich (1980) would argue that students compensate for their less well-developed word recognition skills by using context; thus the interactive compensatory model of reading. A position closer to Goodman’s psycholinguistic view is that reading is very much about multiple cueing systems working in an interactive and complementary fashion to process text. The issue centers on our interpretation of emerging readers employing context to help them along. The fact of the matter is that young or emerging readers use context because they need to and they appear to be smart enough to know that. We should not view this as deficit or compensatory behavior. Rather, it is to be celebrated, for it builds and establishes good habits of reading from the earliest stages, namely thinking about what you are reading as well as drawing on one’s knowledge of their language system. It may be noteworthy that a segment of the literacy community who embrace a “phonics first” agenda and provide materials designed for student to decode or more specifically recode language, often lament the phenomenon of “the fourth grade slump.” It seems to parallel the stage theories of reading (see Chall, 1967) whereby reading for meaning is not seriously addressed until the last stage. Should it surprise us that learners, who are asked primarily to focus at the letter and the individual word level for two, three years or more, are going to “slump” when they are asked at fourth grade level to read for meaning?

12

W. Dorsey Hammond

Context in reading is fundamentally about meaning and language cues, but it is also about schema and prior experiences and culture. Young children are skilled in meaning making and as users of their language. They bring this incredible strength with them to school. One has to ask why we would deprive them of using the skills they already have to learn or continue to learn a related behavior, namely learning to read and write. Thus, the use of context by emergent readers is a good thing and to be celebrated: a good thing both for the short term and the long term. This is not to deny the obvious fact that good readers are often very good at recognizing words in isolation. They are both accurate and rapid. Less mature readers are not as skilled yet. It does not logically follow, however, that the use of context is merely to be tolerated on an interim basis. Whole Language: Its history and current status in the context of No Child Left Behind A discussion of the Goodmans’ legacy is not complete without a discussion of the Whole Language movement which was so prevalent beginning in the late 1970s. It seems fair to refer to Whole Language as a movement: both pedagogical and political. Goodman has stated that, “He and his colleagues did not found Whole Language, Whole Language found [us].” To some extent, this is true. Whole Language was and is very much of a grass-roots classroom teacher movement. Nevertheless, it is difficult to envision Whole Language as a significant movement without the Goodman influence and support. To a great extent, the Whole Language movement was a defining focus of literacy, at least early literacy, during a period of three decades or more. Much has been written about Whole Language, from what it is to what it isn’t (see for example, Y. Goodman, 1989; Newman & Church, 1990; Watson, 1989; Weaver, 1991). It is neither possible nor necessary to examine all of these issues in this contribution. However, it is helpful to be reminded of the following seven selected issues. First, the title of this theory of literacy informs us of its foundation: Whole Language. It is built on the concept that literacy and literacy learning are a process of language and thinking. The basic unit of language is the thought unit and language encompasses semantics, syntax or grammar as well as phonology. To understand Whole Language is to understand language and how it is acquired. Second, children bring tremendous assets to the learning to read and write process. They are skilled in language learning. They have interests and ideas. They are curious. They have lots of questions as any parent of a 4- or 5-year-old can attest to. They want their world to make sense to them. All of these characteristics can be effectively utilized to help them acquire skills in reading and writing. Third, in a Whole Language framework, all of the processes and components of literacy are engaged from the beginning of literacy instruction. Children read

The Goodman Legacy

13

from the first day of school through carefully scaffolded activities such as shared reading, the use of predictable books, experience stories and environmental print activities. Children engage in writing from the earliest days of school. The focus is on constructing meaningful ideas in stories and text. Children use their best spelling approximations in these early stages very similar to the approximations they used in successfully learning to talk. There is no delay until “phonics is learned.” They learn phonics while they are learning to read and write, not as an unnatural prerequisite. Children learn to read by reading and learn to write by writing. Fourth, skills and strategies are taught at the point of need when they are meaningful to the learner. Sometimes these skills are taught directly and at other times indirectly. Fifth, the Whole Language classroom is a highly engaged environment. Young learners work very hard and struggle at times to figure things out. Learners are more willing to struggle because they are interested in what they are doing. Sixth, a Whole Language classroom is learner-centered, with risk-taking and error tolerance. The curriculum is relevant to the learner, thus positively affecting motivation and productivity. Seventh, successful Whole Language classrooms create young learners who are disposed to continue to read and write and think critically as they mature and move through the grades. To visit a Whole Language classroom is to visit a classroom that the vast majority of parents and grandparents would want their own children to attend. Of course, some Whole Language classrooms are better than others. In some instances, teachers or schools claim to be doing Whole Language when they are not. For example, Whole Language is far more than eliminating a basal reader program. Whole Language is not synonymous with whole class teaching. Quite the opposite is true. Whole Language is not a classroom where children are merely surrounded by books, no matter how good the quality of those books. Whole Language is not using a commercial program that happens to have “Whole Language” in its title. Although all Whole Language classrooms are different, Whole Language classrooms must have necessary characteristics in order to be designated a Whole Language classroom. Not surprisingly, most any literacy professional who is sympathetic to the positions and philosophies of Whole Language find the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Reading First legislation particularly troubling. The focus on the five components of reading of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, as outlined in the National Reading Panel (2000) report serves to narrow the curriculum in a manner simply unimaginable just a few years ago. Tierney (2006) reminds us of the danger of narrowing the curriculum when he says, By focusing only on phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension, richer approaches to literacy have been diminished.

14

W. Dorsey Hammond Students’ early oral language experiences, writing and various other modes of representation, including dynamic forms of meaning making have been pushed aside—even banned from the classroom. (p. 35)

In addition, the five components imply a sequence to literacy learning, with comprehension and meaning construction occurring last in this sequence. This model represents the antithesis of how language is learned. It is also a model that has been tried previously and found to be inadequate. In addition to the pedagogical implications of NCLB, its Reading First programs and the National Reading Panel report, these federal initiatives represent a political intrusion into individual classrooms and local school districts. More and more, at least in the US, we move toward state curricula, sometimes camouflaged under terminology such as the Voluntary State Curriculum, but it is a state curriculum nonetheless. Is a national curriculum far behind? The great strength of education not only in the US, but in our sister nations of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and England has been the dedication and expertise of hundreds of thousands of teachers making informed decisions about the best instruction for their students in their classrooms. All teaching is local. This is not to acknowledge that every teacher is highly competent, but the vast majority of teachers are competent and dedicated. Indeed, it has been classroom teachers who have been the least susceptible to the vagaries of our profession and less prone to trendiness which has haunted our profession for as long as we can remember. Today, teachers lament the scripted programs and DIBELS (2002) type assessments that take away their professional judgments and their instructional time. Over and over we hear classroom teachers frustrated by the allegiance to program fidelity and their inability in some instances to use quality literature and alternate instructional interventions readily available to them. The mandating of scripted programs, pacing charts and specific assessments will eventually influence the quality of individuals who enter and remain in the teaching profession. If the monetary compensation is not adequate and if teachers no longer feel that they can be decision-makers in their classrooms or within the professional community of their local school and district, we will attract fewer and fewer of those competent individuals we need to teach our children. It is in this political context that we honor the scholarship and work of Ken and Yetta Goodman. Their work on miscue analysis will prevail as will the Whole Language movement. Whole Language, in addition to being deeply rooted in our knowledge of language and literacy, celebrates the strengths of both teachers and students. What will also prevail is the nature of the research methodology used by Goodman and colleagues, namely studying what happens when real readers read real texts. In multiple ways, Ken and Yetta Goodman and colleagues have changed the face of literacy instruction in the English-speaking world and beyond. Those changes are lasting and profound.

The Goodman Legacy

15

References Adams, M. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Anderson, R. C., Hiebert, E., Scott, J. A., & Wilkinson, I. A. (1985). Becoming a nation of readers. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois, Center for the Study of Reading. Bartlett, F. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. London: Cambridge University Press. Bloomfield, L., & Barnhart, C. L. (1961). Let’s read: A linguistic approach. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Brown, J., Goodman, K. S., & Marek, A. (1996). Studies in miscue analysis: An annotated bibliography. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Cambourne, B. (1988). The whole story: Natural learning and the acquisition of literacy in the classroom. Auckland: Ashton Scholastic. Carle, E. (1969). The very hungry caterpillar. New York: Penguin Putnam. Chall, J. S. (1967). Learning to read: The great debate. New York: McGraw-Hill. D’Angelo, K., & Mahlois, M. (1983). Insertions and omission miscues of good and poor readers. The Reading Teacher, 36(8), 778–782. Good, R., & Kaminski, R. A. (2002). Dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills (6th ed.). Eugene, OR: Institute for the Development of Educational Achievement. Goodman, K. S. (1968). The psycholinguistic nature of the reading process. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Goodman, K. S. (1976). From the straw man to the tin woodman: A response to Mosenthal. Reading Research Quarterly, 12(4), 575–585. Goodman, K. S. (1992). I didn’t found Whole Language. The Reading Teacher, 46(3), 188–199. Goodman, K. S. (1996). Ken Goodman on reading. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Goodman, Y. (1989). Roots of the Whole Language movement. The Elementary School Journal, 90(2), 113–127. Goodman, Y., & Burke, C. (1970). Reading miscue inventory manual. New York: The Macmillan Co. Graves, D. (1983). Writing: Teachers and children at work. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Lyon, G. R. (1998). Why reading is not a natural process. Educational Leadership, 55(6): 1–8. Martin, B. (1967). Brown bear, brown bear. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Moats, L. (1999). Stages of reading. Online. Available at: www.scholastic/red. National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Newman, J., & Church, S. (1990). Myths of whole language. The Reading Teacher, 44(1), 20–26. Smith, F. (1973). Psycholinguistics and reading. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Smith, F. (1982). Understanding reading. New York: CBS College Publishing. Stanovich, K. (1980). Towards an inter-active, compensatory model of individual differences in the development of reading fluency. Reading Research Quarterly, 15(4), 32–71.

16

W. Dorsey Hammond

Tierney, R., & Thome, C. (2006). Is DIBELS leading us down the wrong path? In K. Goodman, (Ed.), The truth about DIBELS: What it is, what it does (pp. 50–60). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Watson, D. (1989). Defining and describing Whole Language. The Elementary School Journal, 90(2), 129–141. Weaver, C. (1991). Understanding Whole Language. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

2

Towards a Sociopsychoneurolinguistic Model of Reading Steven L. Strauss

In 1978, Ken and Yetta Goodman wrote: The brain is always anticipating and predicting as it seeks order and significance in sensory inputs . . . If the brain predicts, it must also seek to verify its predictions. So it monitors to confirm or disconfirm with subsequent input what it expected . . . The brain reprocesses when it finds inconsistencies or its predictions are disconfirmed . . . These processes have an intrinsic sequence. Prediction precedes confirmation which precedes correction. Yet the same information may be used to confirm a prior prediction and make a new one. (pp. 2–6) At the time the Goodmans penned these words, there was precious little they could have cited as supportive evidence from our understanding of brain structure and function. True, there was a wealth of information about the localization of discrete cognitive functions to different parts of the cerebral cortex, about how distinct sensory modalities merged together across the brain, and about the parts of the brain that played a key role in attentiveness and emotion. But the anatomy and physiology of predicting and confirming were not even on the horizon. Therefore, the Goodmans’ comment could only have been interpreted as a prediction about the kinds of discoveries that awaited researchers in the neurosciences—a prediction about prediction. Four decades later, their prediction is beginning to be confirmed. Up against a stone wall built from the mortar of behaviorism and information processing, some leading neuroscientists are now chipping away at the wall’s foundation. They are reinterpreting much known anatomical and physiological data, and adding new data as well, to make the argument that a fundamental activity of the human brain is to first activate its highest centers to create propositions, plans, and goals, and only then to recruit its lower regions to find sensory and other evidence that support or refute the propositions, monitor and revise the plans, and verify and assess the goals. Neuroscientists are dissecting out those parts of the brain that construct predictions and other parts that confirm and disconfirm predictions.

18

Steven L. Strauss

This exciting area of neuroscience offers the profoundest nod to the sociopsycholinguistic model of reading developed by the Goodmans. That model views reading as the process by which a reader makes sense of print. It is based firmly on empirical findings that demonstrate that good readers utilize a variety of linguistic and other cuing systems to confirm or disconfirm their meaning hypotheses, which they are formulating, revising, and even discarding as they read. The discovery that the brain has component parts that first predict and then confirm or disconfirm predictions refutes the already baseless charge that “self-appointed opinion makers . . . ascribe children’s reading problems entirely to sociological or educational factors and totally deny the biology” (Shaywitz, 2004, p. 4). The Goodman model of reading is not only supported by biology, but, unlike pseudoscientific “decoding” models, is also supported by linguistics and psychology. We are entering the stage of reading theory where the appropriate descriptor of the most explanatory model is no longer sociopsycholinguistic, but rather sociopsychoneurolinguistic.

Behaviorist psychology, neuroscience, and reading The emerging neuroscience of prediction, confirmation, and disconfirmation is best understood against the backdrop of historical developments in the relationship between psychology and neuroscience. Historically, all psychological paradigms have sought support by invoking the workings of the nervous system. The Goodman model of reading, along with the larger psychological paradigm in which it is embedded, is no different. Seeking such support is an empirical strategy based on the notion that psychology is one of the functions of the brain. According to philosopher John Searle, “Mental phenomena, all mental phenomena whether conscious or unconscious, visual or auditory, pains, tickles, itches, thoughts, indeed, all of our mental life, are caused by processes going on in the brain” (1984, p. 18). He advises students of psychology to “[t]hink of the mind and mental processes as biological phenomena which are as biologically based as growth or digestion or the secretion of bile” (p. 54). Thus, as a long-term perspective, we expect to discover the biological bases of all psychological phenomena. Different psychological paradigms have approached this problem in their own unique fashion. Classical behaviorism, for example, took the extreme position of altogether denying the existence of unobservable mental phenomena. It was extreme because it interpreted the inability to measure unobservable phenomena as indicative of their nonexistence. This had the effect of reducing psychology to the study of observable phenomena, i.e., to behavior. On this account, the study of proficient silent reading would be nothing more than understanding how the stimulus of print comes to be associated with certain patterns of eye movement. Behaviorists pointed to a well-known aspect of neuroscience as a way to buttress their perspective. Since unobservable mental phenomena do not exist, there really is no way to distinguish observable behaviors that might otherwise

A Sociopsychoneurolinguistic Reading Model

19

be taken to reflect prior thought and deliberation from those that do not. Therefore, the action of reaching for a sandwich is no different, in principle, from the observable contraction of pharyngeal muscles involved in swallowing once the food touches the pharyngeal wall. This means that the known biology of swallowing can provide insight, support, and, ultimately, explanation to psychology now regarded as the science of behavior. Swallowing occurs as a motor response mediated by the nervous system. The fundamental neuroanatomic structure that affects this stimulus–response event is the reflex arc. In a reflex arc, a material action on the body stimulates a motor reaction. A hot iron induces a quick withdrawal of the limb. A minute particle flying to the eye induces an automatic closure of the eyelid. Stretching of the bladder muscle induces the urge to urinate. The biological basis of this is a simple neural circuit, the reflex arc, depicted in Figure 2.1. The patellar reflex, or “knee jerk,” is a typical example of a reflex-mediated action. Stretching of the patellar tendon excites the sensory (afferent) neuron, which transmits an electrical impulse to the spinal cord, which it enters at the dorsal root region. The nerve then makes a chemical connection (synapse) to a motor (efferent) neuron. The electrical impulse excites the quadriceps muscle that overlies the femur bone, leading to its contraction, and to extension at the knee, i.e., straightening of the leg. Cerebral cortex (left hemisphere) Brain

Cerebellum Brain stem 1. Reflex hammer hits and stretches patellar (knee) tendon and attached quadriceps muscle.

Spinal cord 3. Efferent (Motor) neuron receives information from the afferent neuron (2) and responds by inducing the quadriceps muscle to contract – the leg straightens.

Dorsal root ganglion

Figure 2.1 The reflex arc (“knee jerk”)

2. Aferent (Sensory) neuron tra vels through dorsal root ganglion to the spinal cord, transmitting information about the tendon and muscle stretching.

20

Steven L. Strauss

The appeal of the reflex arc for behaviorism was not merely in the connection it made between an observable stimulus and an equally observable response. Its most prized characteristic was that it could operate without any intervening mentalist psychology from allegedly higher centers of the nervous system. Or, as Karl Lashley observed in a critical discussion of behaviorism’s mental phobia and its origins in the attempt to refute psychological introspectionism, “The whole concept of neural integration and the detailed accounts of spinal mechanisms which are now possible have been derived without recourse to introspection” (1923, p. 237). Ultimately, behaviorism fell because it could not adequately explain even observable behavior. The decisive blow came from linguistics and the arguments of Noam Chomsky (1959). But behaviorism had never been unanimously accepted anyway. John Dewey, while acknowledging that “The idea of the reflex arc has upon the whole come nearer to meeting this demand for a general working hypothesis than any other single concept” (1896, p. 1), complained that “What is wanted is that sensory stimulus, central connections and motor responses shall be viewed, not as separate and complete entities in themselves, but as divisions of labor, function factors, within the single concrete whole, now designated the reflex arc” (para. 3). Lashley (1951) observed that the “serial order of behavior” could not be explained adequately by simple associative links. Jean Piaget (1954 [1937]) focused on the learner’s construction of knowledge. And Freudians like Erich Fromm (1973) accused behaviorism of overextending an ideology that, at best, could only explain “primitive behavior.” The decisive blow came from Noam Chomsky’s (1959) famous critique of the inability of behaviorist theory to explain linguistic behavior. Behaviorist linguists viewed the ordering of words in an utterance as a manifestation of the stimulus–response phenomenon, so that a spoken word was not only a response to the immediately preceding word, but also the stimulus to the next word. Chomsky showed how this principle could not provide a simple and straightforward explanation for the phenomenon of discontinuous dependencies, in which two words were clearly associated with each other, yet where intervening material of arbitrary size and complexity could come between them: The man I saw left. The man from Washington left. The man who was being looked at left. The man I saw from Washington who was being looked at left. In all these sentences, the word man is bound up with the word left. Yet intervening linguistic material can be of variable length and complexity, making any behavioral, stimulus–response connection between man and left extremely difficult to justify. The problem is easily solved, however, if we attribute to the language user knowledge of a grammatical system that allows sentences and prepositional phrases to intervene between the subject and verb:

A Sociopsychoneurolinguistic Reading Model

21

The man [I saw]Sentence left. The man [from Washington] Prepositional Phrase left. The man [who was being looked at] Sentence left. The man [I saw from Washington who was being looked at] Sentence left. But the notion of a grammar as an unobservable, internalized mental reality that constitutes an aspect of human knowledge, and that cannot be explained by simple stimulus–response associations, fundamentally contradicts the behaviorist paradigm. Behaviorism was the soup out of which emerged the first attempts to promote phonics as a scientific enterprise. Leonard Bloomfield (1961 [1942]), the leading linguist of his day, and a staunch advocate of behaviorism, defined word meaning accordingly. Utterly non-mentalistic, he wrote that the meaning of a word is the combination of all the observable stimuli that triggers its utterance and all the observable responses that the word triggers in turn. Bloomfield collaborated with C.L. Barnhart on a volume called Let’s Read: A Linguistic Approach (1961), which theorized about the behavioral nature of reading and offered practical lessons on letter–sound connections. In that volume, Bloomfield wrote that “to read alphabetic writing one must have an ingrained habit of producing the phonemes of one’s language when one sees the written marks which conventionally represent these phonemes” (p. 26). According to this view, writing is not its own form of language, but merely a visual representation of real language, i.e. spoken language. “Compared to speech, the use of writing is something artificial and relatively modern” (p. 20), wrote Bloomfield. He added that “writing is merely a device for recording speech” (p. 20), and that alphabetic writing merely directs the reader to produce certain speech sounds. A person who cannot produce these sounds cannot get the message of a piece of alphabetic writing. If a child has not learned to utter the speech sounds of our language, the only sensible course is to postpone reading until he has learned to speak. (p. 27) Without reminding her readers of Bloomfield’s philosophical stance, Sally Shaywitz (2004), in her popular book Overcoming Dyslexia, echoes him approvingly. She writes: The essential distinction between written and spoken language was best captured by linguist Leonard Bloomfield: “Writing is not language, but merely a way of recording language by visible marks.” The written symbols have no meaning of their own but, rather, stand as surrogates for speech or, to be more exact, for the sounds of speech. (p. 50). Shaywitz gives a contemporary neurobiological paint job to the behaviorist model by claiming, entirely without evidence, that

22

Steven L. Strauss For the object of the reader’s attention (print) to gain entry into the language module (of the brain, SLS), a truly extraordinary transformation must occur. The reader must somehow convert the print on a page into a linguistic code—the phonetic code, the only code recognized and accepted by the language system. (p. 50)

Completing the Bloomfieldian thesis, she adds: However, unlike the particles of spoken language, the letters of the alphabet have no inherent linguistic connotation. Unless the reader-to-be can convert the printed characters on the page into the phonetic code, these letters remain just a bunch of lines and circles totally devoid of linguistic meaning. (p. 50) Despite an overt appeal to cognitive psychology, with particular emphasis on what she calls “phonological processing,” Shaywitz’s enterprise depends ultimately on Bloomfieldian behaviorist assumptions. One could tentatively indulge these assumptions with the understanding that they are remnants of a paradigm that, though largely misguided, still identified some truths about writing and language, including the truth about the stimulus–response relationship between letters and sounds. Alternatively, one could argue that, despite the cognitive revolution in psychology, behaviorism was not completely overturned because it found sanctuary in areas still not well understood, such as reading. As Jerome Bruner noted, “Even the old S-R learning theorist and associationist student of memory could come right back into the fold of the cognitive revolution so long as they wrapped their old concepts in the new terms of information processing” (1990, p. 7). The revolution was arrested and incomplete, like the retention of a figurehead monarchy in a land where feudal relations have otherwise been overthrown. Covert behaviorist phonics serves overt advocates of cognitivism insofar as it provides an illusion of filling in gaps that cognitivism cannot explain. It has the added effect of keeping alive the notion that there is something scientifically legitimate about ignoring progress and going “back to the basics.” Like the monarchy’s relationship to the new economic system, though, it ultimately plays no productive role.

Cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and reading The serious empirical problems that confronted behaviorism, especially in the area of language, led to the important understanding that it is not possible to do research in psychology and advance our understanding of mental life without utilizing theoretical categories that are only indirectly observable, through their effects, for example, on motor activity and behavior. Inferring scientific laws by analyzing empirical patterns that reflect their effects is standard operating procedure even in the natural sciences. As a famous

A Sociopsychoneurolinguistic Reading Model

23

social philosopher wrote: “The law of gravity thus asserts itself when a house falls about our ears” (Marx, 1974 [1867], p. 80). In the case of mental constructs not directly observable, the laws that explain their nature and their relations to one another are, for all their unobservable qualities, no less scientific. Within the broad field of cognitive psychology, one branch in particular has been described as its most powerful exponent. This is the branch commonly referred to as “information processing.” Some have even claimed that cognitive science is “[r]ooted in the idea of mind as an information processing device” (LeDoux, 1996, p. 29). Information processing views cognition as consisting of mental operations that turn specific, formally defined inputs into equally well-defined outputs. The operations apply automatically, as long as the input conditions are met. There is no “thought” involved, and a properly engineered computer could, in principle, carry out the same task. According to Bruner: Information is indifferent with respect to meaning. In computational terms, information comprises an already precoded message in the system. Meaning is preassigned to messages. It is not an outcome of computation nor is it relevant to computation save in the arbitrary sense of assignment. (1990, p. 4) However, in an effort to keep meaning in the model, Searle (1984) argues that the information processing of meaningful propositions is not the same kind of operation as the information processing of meaningless symbols. The first, which involves mental states, he calls “psychological information processing.” The second, “in which there are no mental states at all,” he calls “as if ” information processing (p. 49). But even though he criticizes cognitive psychology for conflating the two, he nevertheless maintains that there is no harm at all in thinking of both the level of mental states and the level of neuropysiology as information-processing, provided we do not make the confusion of supposing that the real psychological form of information processing is the same as the “as if.” (p. 55) There is therefore a theoretically interesting parallel between behaviorism and information processing cognitive psychology. Where behaviorists connect an initial stimulus to a final response by means of learned network of stimulusresponse associations, information processing connects an initial input to a final output via a complex system of formal operations that leads from the former to the latter: “In place of stimuli and responses, there was input and output” (Bruner, 1990, p. 7). However, unlike the classical behaviorist notions, inputs and outputs, and the machinery that connects them, there may be complex mental structures not necessarily learned by operant conditioning or patterns of reinforcement. Still, the parallel reflects a view of human thought and action as the object of

24

Steven L. Strauss

environmental triggers, whether these are called stimuli or inputs. The human agent is not the subject of its own thoughts and actions, initiating them in “stimulus-free” (Chomsky, 1972) fashion. This explains the deep affinity that exists between behaviorist accounts of reading and information processing accounts, such as is evident, for example, in the earlier discussion of the writings of Sally Shaywitz. So whereas Bloomfield describes the “necessary habit that must be formed” in order to turn letters into sounds, which is a step in the larger process of converting print to speech, advocates of information processing describe sounding out via operations they refer to as “phonological processing.” Phonological processing is the initial step in the larger information processing machinery whose final output is word identification and word meaning. Even the typical theoretical rationales for phonological processing bear a striking parallel to behaviorist accounts. Indeed, they are at times nearly indistinguishable. Consider the following statement from David Caplan, a leading advocate of an information processing approach to reading: There are several basic facts about language that favor the view that reading and writing involve mapping written forms onto phonological representations. These facts amount to the observation that orthographies are man-made forms that are involved in auditory-oral language use. Though all normal humans exposed to spoken language learn to speak and comprehend auditory language, many people do not learn to write or read, and many languages have never developed a written form. Normal children learn to use spoken language before they learn to use written language, and clearly map written language onto spoken language (i.e., a child learns that the printed word DOG sounds like the spoken word /dog/ and discovers its meaning via its sound, rather than mapping the printed form DOG onto the concept of a dog directly). These facts [sic] favor the view that processing of written language is phonologically mediated. (1992, p. 163) Unfortunately, not all of Caplan’s “facts” are correct. For example, print awareness studies have clearly shown that in literate societies, imbued as they are with a highly print-laden environment, children have already mastered a surprisingly large print vocabulary before entering school. Without any formal instruction, yet through the medium of contextually rich linguistic experiences, they have figured out how to read many of the common visual logos, signs, and other environmental print they routinely encounter (Owocki & Goodman, 2002). The significance of this finding has remained either unacknowledged or ignored among researchers who insist on time-worn platitudes about the alleged linguistic primacy of oral language over written language. Also unacknowledged is the serious empirical conundrum that arises for the phonological processing viewpoint insofar as it makes it impossible to read a word that has no spoken counterpart in the reader’s mental lexicon. In such a case, it is impossible for

A Sociopsychoneurolinguistic Reading Model

25

phonological processing to retrieve the meaning of the word, since it has no phonological address. But every proficient reader can point out a portion of the lexicon that is quite familiar from reading, yet entirely unfamiliar in the oral setting. And, finally, the argument that written language appeared historically after the emergence of spoken language, and that it is therefore “man-made,” is without much force. By itself, the later appearance means nothing more than that it is an equivalent representation of language. Concluding that it is an equivalent representation of speech requires the further demonstration that writing encodes nothing more than speech. This has only been done by appealing to an alleged alphabetic principle (Lyon, 1998; Shaywitz, 2004), which focuses on letters, and utterly ignores visual features of text, such as spacing, punctuation, and stylistic devices like paragraphing and sectioning. Yet even the alphabetic principle is flawed and untenable (Strauss, 2005). The neuroscience typically invoked to support information processing also resembles the neuroscience of behaviorism, though it is also much more complex than reflex arcs. Both invoke sensory triggers that initiate neural activity. Information processing cognitive psychology is supported by demonstrable neural connections, which together constitute a complex circuitry, and which lead from a sensory input to a conceptual or perceptual output. The component elements of the neuroanatomy of information processing are depicted in Figure 2.2a and Figure 2.2b. The processing begins, for example, with the eyes receiving visible electromagnetic radiation, the ears receiving audible sound waves, or the skin responding to pressure, pain, and other tactile triggers. These specialized sensory cells connect to a deep part of the brain, called the thalamus. Each sensory modality connects to its own thalamic center. The optic nerve connects to the lateral geniculate body of the thalamus. The auditory nerve connects to the medial geniculate body of the thalamus. And the tactile nerve connects to the medial dorsal, ventral posterior lateral, and ventral medial posterior nuclei in the thalamus. From its respective thalamic relay station, the incoming nerve connects to a special thalamic relay neuron. Each of these then heads off to a dedicated area of the cortex. The visual relay goes to the occipital lobe. The auditory relay goes to the temporal lobe. And the tactile relay goes to the parietal lobe. These are the primary sensory areas of the cortex. From these primary sensory areas, information is fed to secondary and then tertiary areas, where the different sensory modalities are integrated, leading, ultimately, to a complex concept or percept. A leading neuroanatomist summarizes the complex process this way: Sensory information undergoes extensive associative elaboration and attentional modulation as it becomes incorporated into the texture of cognition. This process occurs along a core synaptic hierarchy which

26

Steven L. Strauss

Parietal lobe

Occipital lobe Frontal lobe

Cerebellum

Thalamus Brain stem

Figure 2.2a Location of the thalamus (sagittal view of the right hemisphere of the brain) and visual relay from the optic nerve to the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus

Parietal Lobe tactile processing Frontal Lobe motor processing

Occipital Lobe visual processing Temporal Lobe auditory processing

Figure 2.2b The outer cortex and lobes of the brain (left hemisphere)

includes the primary sensory, upstream unimodal, downstream unimodal, heteromodal, paralimbic and limbic zones of the cerebral cortex. Connections from one zone to another are reciprocal and allow higher synaptic levels to exert a feedback (top-down) influence upon earlier levels of processing. (Mesulam, 1998, p. 1013)

A Sociopsychoneurolinguistic Reading Model

27

Mesulam then reveals the object-centeredness of this understanding of neuroanatomy in his comment that “All cognitive processes arise from analogous associative transformations of similar sets of sensory inputs” (p. 1014). But if “all cognitive processes” are immediately dependent on prior sensory inputs, then none are stimulus-free. So, whereas behaviorism had its neural reflex arc, information processing has its neural circuits or neural pathways. In both cases, a sensory stimulus initiates a chain reaction leading ultimately to either a behavioral response or a cognitive output, depending on the paradigmatic viewpoint. In both scenarios, the nervous system is acted upon by a stimulus. It is the object of nervous activity, not the subject. For Bruner, this is a serious problem for cognitive psychology: Cognitive science in its new mood, despite all hospitality toward goaldirected behavior, is still chary of a concept of agency. For “agency” implies the conduct of action under the sway of intentional states. So action based on belief, desire, and moral commitment . . . is now regarded as something to be eschewed by right-minded cognitive scientists. (1990, p. 9) In other words, no matter how much cognitive psychology in its information processing “mood” may discover important principles of human mental life, its attachment to an initial input necessitates that it will fall short of explaining the subjecthood of human experience, which Bruner calls “human agency.” And it is precisely around this common problem that neither behaviorism nor information processing can explain the facts of reading. In both paradigms, the reader is acted upon by written language. Yet we know from the work of the Goodmans and others that the proficient reader acts on written language. In the end, a different psychological paradigm is needed.

Constructivism, neuroscience, and reading Of the extant psychological paradigms, the one that best addresses the needs of a theory and model of reading is constructivism. The core of constructivism is that knowledge and meanings are constructed by the active mind, not merely represented in stagnant form waiting to be identified by a set of processing mechanisms that act on equally inert input. With its roots in the epistemological psychology of Jean Piaget (1954 [1937]) and the “zones of proximal development” of Lev Vygotsky (1978), and developed further by Jerome Bruner (1990) and others, constructivism goes beyond information processing in giving greater degrees of freedom to the subjective agent in fashioning the meanings associated with experiencing, as opposed to just processing. Constructivism as it applies to language in general receives support from the commonplace observation that the form of language—whether oral or written or sign—is inherently meaningless (de Saussure, 1966 [1922]), so that what

28

Steven L. Strauss

emerges from a person’s mouth or pen or hand can never be actual meanings, but only clues to meaning. This means that the fundamental task of the listener or reader or sign interpreter is neither to decode nor process the clues, but to use them to solve the problem of what the speaker’s or writer’s or signer’s intended meaning was. This is, as Goodman (1967) described it for reading, but which holds for all modalities of language use, a psycholinguistic guessing game, that is, a creative process in which the language recipient uses the clues emitted by the language producer to create a meaning that is both internally coherent and a plausible explanation of the producer’s clues to meaning. (See Strauss, 2005, for further discussion.) Constructivism, as it applies more specifically to reading, is supported by Louise Rosenblatt’s (1978) insight that reading is an event, and that this event is heralded by the reader’s construction of meaning. But within the field of reading, its greatest support certainly has come from miscue analyses and related studies. This research has elucidated how a proficient reader constructs his or her own text alongside the one provided by the author. The reader’s text parallels, but is typically distinct from the author’s text. Like the author’s text, the reader’s parallel text is also the product of linguistic creativity. As a psychological paradigm, constructivism also has neuroanatomic facts it can point to for support. These facts are newly emerging within the neurosciences. And just as neural pathways improve upon the characterization of reflex arcs, without discarding them, so too does the emerging neuroscience improve upon neural pathways, without discarding them. In fact, at both the psychological and physical levels, human mentation integrates automatic processes within the larger framework of purposeful, nonautomatic, stimulusfree acts. The key facts that are leading some neuroscientists to question the classical teachings in neuroanatomy have to do with the relationship between the thalamus and the cortex. As noted earlier, the traditional view of this relationship is that the thalamus is the brain’s “gatekeeper,” controlling which sensory inputs from the outer and inner environments can pass on through to the cortex for further processing, and especially for integration into complex mental structures. But experts on thalamocortical circuitry are now pointing out that the facts of the matter demand a different interpretation. There is now a convergence of evidence that the fundamental relationship between the thalamus and the cortex is just the opposite of what is traditionally taught. The cortex formulates mental structures—plans, propositions, goals, predictions—that are not dependent on the presence of specific sensory or other inputs gated through the thalamus. But the thalamic function is then recruited by the cortex in order to find sensory data that is either consistent or inconsistent with the mental structures. From this viewpoint, the cortex is, among other things, the “organ of prediction” (Hawkins, 2004), while the thalamocortical connections are the organ of confirmation/disconfirmation. The relevance of this neuroanatomic finding for reading theory hardly requires further comment.

A Sociopsychoneurolinguistic Reading Model

29

In recent work, Sherman and Guillery (2006) characterize the “classical” view of the thalamus as “the major relay to the cerebral cortex” and “the gateway to the cortex.” According to this view, “[a]lmost everything we can know about the outside world or about ourselves is based on messages that have had to pass through the thalamus.” But, as Destexhe (2000) and others have noted, whereas it is both well known and traditionally emphasized that sensory neurons headed for the thalamus synapse upon their arrival there with relay neurons that will then head towards the cortex, it turns out that there are actually ten times as many neurons that start out in the cortex and head towards the thalamus, where they then also synapse on the relay cells (Figure 2.3). In other words, there are far more corticothalamic neurons than thalamocortical neurons. So even though a sense organ may be sending its information to the thalamus, from which point it will be relayed to the cortex, the cortex itself is sending its own information to the thalamus. And there is a lot more information headed to the thalamus from the cortex than from the sense organ. Furthermore, the cortical neurons headed towards the relay cells of the thalamus synapse on areas complementary to the synapses formed by neurons coming from the primary sense organs (Figure 2.4). These intricately positioned connections can either excite or inhibit the action of the thalamic relay cell. Among other things, the corticothalamic neurons have the effect of synchronizing the electrical pacemakers of distinct thalamic cell bodies, which, if experimentally disconnected from the cortex, exhibit independent, unsynchronized electrical activity.

Cortex

Parietal lobe Occipital lobe

Frontal lobe

Corticothalamic neuron

Cerebellum

Thalamus

Brain stem

Thalamic relay neuron (Thalamocortical neuron) Thalamus Sensory neuron from periphery to thalamus

Figure 2.3 Corticothalamic neurons (thick gray arrows) far outnumber thalamocortical neurons (thin black arrows)

Figure 2.4 Corticothalamic neurons and sensory neuron from periphery synapse on complementary parts of the thalamic relay neuron

30

Steven L. Strauss

All of these facts turn the traditional understanding of the thalamus–cortex relationship on its head. Not only can the thalamus control the activity of the cortex, but the cortex can also control the activity of the thalamus. Destexhe (2000) draws the following conclusions. First, since “corticothalamic synapses largely outnumber afferent synapses, . . . the notion of the thalamus as a relay station, linking the periphery to the cerebral cortex, should clearly be revised.” Second, whereas “early studies have most often considered the cortex as passively driven by a ‘thalamic pacemaker’,” the synchronized electrical activity of the thalamus, under the influence of the cortex, demonstrates that “rather than providing an autonomous, independent drive, the thalamic pacemakers are controlled and co-ordinated by the cortex.” Third, because “corticothalamic inputs seem capable of complementing the sensory information at the level of relay cells,” this “corticothalamic information could therefore be a ‘prediction’ of the sensory input” (p. 405). Sherman and Guillery’s (2006) observations are no less damaging to the classical view. Indeed, they note that the classical view is “beginning to be less useful than it was in the past” (p. 4). The complex “thalamic circuitry allows transmission to be modified in relation to current behavioral needs or constraints” (p. 6). It does this by being a relay station not just from the periphery to the cortex, but “from one cortical area to another.” They point out that [the] importance of this pathway, which allows one cortical area to receive inputs from another cortical area through a thalamic relay that can be modulated in accordance with behavioral constraints, is not widely appreciated and has been but poorly explored. (p. 6) Like Destexhe, Sherman and Guillery describe the role of the thalamus in the brain’s ongoing formulation and monitoring of plans and predictions. Some of the cortical connections to the thalamus are from “lower cortical areas” involved in “initiating” actions.” The thalamus then sends to “higher cortical areas . . . copies of outputs from lower cortical areas.” In this way, “the higher levels can be informed about the actions likely to occur at lower levels, rather than merely receiving reports about lower levels from intermediaries” (p. 392). In a popularized account of these exciting neuroscientific advances, Hawkins (2004) defines the biological basis of prediction and confirmation as a process in which “the neurons involved in sensing . . . become active in advance of them actually receiving sensory input. When the sensory input does arrive, it is compared with what was expected” (p. 89). In the traditional account, connections from the thalamus to the cortex are called “feedforward,” while those from the cortex to the thalamus are called “feedback.” Earlier it was observed that, according to Mesulam (1998), feedback connections from the cortex to deeper structures allow incoming input to be “influenced” by the higher centers. Without abandoning the terms “feedback” and “feedforward,” Hawkins (2004) goes even further in asserting that

A Sociopsychoneurolinguistic Reading Model

31

feedback connections are not merely a device to influence incoming information. Since “[f]eedback dominates most connections” (p. 25), they represent the key to understanding the neural basis of prediction and confirmation. But it should be clear that the very terms “feedforward” and “feedback” express an inherent bias. The feedforward part of the loop is the dominant, primary, more important part. The feedback part is subordinate, secondary, less crucial. It influences, but does not initiate. But if the cortex can initiate mental life, then what was previously called “feedback” is really “feedforward.” And if the thalamocortical connections influence the corticothalamic connections, then what was previously called “feedforward” is really “feedback.” The terminological bias has been sustained by the information processing model of cognitive psychology, which views the thalamus as the crucial portal to the world of higher cortical function. But constructivism is a psychology that welcomes the possibility of the roles being reversed, in which the cortex itself can be the initiator and subject of mental life, with the thalamus and other subcortical structures playing a supportive role. Indeed, to the extent that the traditional feedforward neural pathways predominate in brain anatomy and physiology, information processing is supported. But to the extent that the traditionally described feedback pathways are appreciated as the driving force behind mental life, constructivist psychology is supported. On the latter view, the information processing connections are subordinate to and incorporated into the fundamentally stimulus-free, creative life of the mind.

Conclusion: prospects for a constructivist neuroscience It will not be enough for neuroscience to continue providing evidence in support of constructivist psychology if its superiority over both behaviorism and information processing cognitivism is to be demonstrated. It must stand or fall on its own internal arguments and merits. While constructivism benefits from the emerging neuroscience of corticothalamic circuits, this neuroscience does not automatically entail the particulars of constructivism. The superiority of a sociopsycholinguistic model of reading, for example, requires, in the end, evidence from studies of real reading. Yet even with internally cogent arguments, constructivism faces two serious obstacles. This first is utterly nonscientific, and has to do with the political context in which current scientific debate about reading and psychology is taking place. It is no secret that authoritarian political forces have aligned themselves against constructivism in order to invade the classroom with an educationally suffocating agenda, replete with mindlessly intensive phonics, psychologically abusive high-stakes testing, and punitive accountability. The second obstacle has to do with science itself, more specifically, with our embarrassingly limited sense of what counts as legitimately scientific. Like behaviorism, information processing lends itself to experimental design. Yet constructivism demands studies that do not take apart the phenomenon of

32

Steven L. Strauss

interest and divide it up into bits and pieces that no longer resemble what we were trying to understand in the first place. In other words, it requires a scientific methodology that allows the phenomenon of interest to be studied in its natural setting. But nonexperimental research has historically had to defend itself against charges of being inexact, or subjective, or unverifiable, or, simply, unscientific. This is an unfortunate state of affairs, because it stands in the way of any hope of achieving an adequate, empirically based understanding of the workings of the human mind. The problem can perhaps be better appreciated by considering how the information processing paradigm itself achieved an exalted and privileged status within the larger paradigm of cognitive psychology. This is a fascinating phenomenon in contemporary psychology, because, on a theoretical level, information processing is no more interesting than other non-information processing components of cognitive life, such as epistemological structures and belief systems. The origins of the privileged status of information within the cognitive psychology paradigm can be discerned by noting its distinctive features as compared to other components of the cognitive paradigm. As opposed to grammars of ideal speaker-hearers or axiomatized deductive logics, information processing can take place in real time. It is commonplace that experiments testing hypotheses about information processing mechanisms typically look at real-time dependent variables, such as the response latencies seen in various decision tasks. But in grammatical analyses or mathematical solutions, the question of how much time it takes for a noun phrase to be rewritten as a noun followed by a prepositional phrase, or how much time it takes for a theorem to follow logically from a set of axioms, is entirely irrelevant: these are timeneutral phenomena. Because information processing occurs in real time, a temporally-based quantitative measure can be assigned to the various steps involved. Taking longer to press the Yes or No button has been taken as a measure of the complexity of the processing itself. It may also reflect the proficiency of the processor. In any case, it is precisely the capacity to obtain such measurements that provides a veneer of greater scientific character to studies of information processing over studies of abstract epistemological and logical systems. Indeed, insofar as collecting, tallying, and analyzing quantitative parameters resembles the methodology of the “hard sciences,” the experimental design that typically accompanies studies of information processing has been proclaimed by many to be precisely what holds such studies up as scientific, as compared to studies that rely on introspective or descriptive methodology (for example, see Lyon, 1998). Overall, however, this perspective reflects an odd understanding of science, because it reduces science to a method, the experimental method, without recognizing that experimentalism contains serious drawbacks when applied to the study of the mind. Indeed, it is far from the ideal method when it comes to advancing our understanding of mental life.

A Sociopsychoneurolinguistic Reading Model

33

Situating a real-time cognitive act within an experimental task fundamentally changes the intentionality of the act as compared to its intentionality when performed in a more authentic setting. That is, being asked to decide whether a sequence of letters constitutes a real word, and to so indicate by pressing a Yes or No button, is hardly the same mental event as being asked to read that word when it appears as part of an ordinary, authentic text. The mental goal of the first is to answer a yes–no question. The mental goal of the second is to make sense of print. This simple observation, the driving force behind the Goodmans’ approach to understanding reading, has been made numerous times by linguists and philosophers of language. There is a whole discipline devoted to understanding precisely how human acts are situated in larger, purposeful and meaning-laden contexts. It has even been demonstrated that the nature of an act’s intentionality affects the way an information processing machinery treats that act. So, to the extent that the nature of the intentionality plays a role in the processing itself, an experiment cannot automatically generalize to cases involving a different intentionality. Indeed, we can expect seriously erroneous conclusions if we attempt to make this kind of generalization. So word recognition tasks, for example, provide little, if any useful information about reading a word in context. But what gives the experimental design an apparent edge over nonexperimental methods, such as the introspection that is typical of grammatical and mathematical analyses, or the descriptive, nonquantitative observations characteristic of studies in cultural anthropology or animal behavior, is the quantitative measurability of its variables. As opposed to nonquantitative and nonexperimental methods, the numerical value assigned to some theoretical phenomenon makes it easier for a number of observers to agree on the results. If one young reader needs 2.8 seconds to decide whether a sequence of letters constitutes a real word of English, and another young reader needs 5.9 seconds, then clearly the first reader is faster, and presumably more proficient. Such razor sharp assessments are not possible with nonexperimental and nonquantitative methods. But why should the characterization of a methodology as more or less scientific depend on the capacity of that methodology to be agreed upon by a greater number of researchers? This criterion in no way entails that the methodology is any better at discovering empirically testable truths about the universe. If introspective and descriptive methods were unscientific, it would not be possible to point to advances in our understanding of grammars, logics, mathematical systems, the social functions of religion, the cultural interpretations of dance, or the courtship behavior of primates. Since knowledge and theoretical understanding advance only by scientific method, quantitative assessment of experimental events stands no taller than empirically-based introspection or description. Indeed, experimental studies of language require prior introspective studies of grammatical systems. Measuring how much time it takes for a young child to read through a noun phrase or a negated predicate or an inverted

34

Steven L. Strauss

subject–verb in question sentences presupposes a grammatical theory, itself built on the basis of introspective judgments of well-formedness and acceptability, that has noun phrases, negated predicates, and subject–verb inversion among its theoretical categories. Quantitative experimentation, descriptive analyses, and introspective judgments all have in common the requirement that, if they are to be scientific, the hypotheses formulated within their frameworks must be empirically testable and, in principle, susceptible to empirical refutation. A hypothesis is accepted, in all three frameworks, when the evidence supports it, and discarded when the evidence refutes it. This is clearly in contrast to the unscientific, nontestable mode of thought characteristic of doctrines that invoke supernatural entities. No matter how fervently someone may believe that an “intelligent designer” constructed the universe as we see it, this proposition can be no more than empirically unsupported faith, since the same “intelligent designer” would be invoked to explain a universe inhabited by four-legged birds or animals with hearts but no kidneys, were that the universe we encountered, with no way to explain why the “intelligent designer” chose one world over another. The concept of an “intelligent designer” is empirically irrefutable, in principle, and is therefore not scientific. But the capacity to refute an empirically based hypothesis does not require that hypothesis to be quantitative in nature. And that is why experimental methodology is no more scientific than introspection or qualitative description. Science is concerned with discovering the nonrandom structures of the universe. An empirically falsifiable hypothesis that withstands attempts at falsification, no matter what the methodology, is a scientifically defensible claim about this universe. Based on these considerations, therefore, the study of information processing systems holds no greater scientific status than the study of knowledge systems and systems of belief. There is a sense of greater controversy in studies of knowledge systems, like human grammars. But experimentally studied information processing systems should be no less controversial, since the cost of altering the intentionality in order to have quantifiably measurable variables is the introduction of a degree of invalidity into the experiment. Traditionally, experimental cognitive psychologists obscure the fact that what they are studying is not really the phenomenon of interest by invoking the notion of validity. A study of some phenomenon is more or less valid, depending on how closely the phenomenon of study matches the phenomenon of interest. This notion of course is theory-dependent. An advocate of intensive phonics and a skills-based approach to reading theory and practice will view experiments on sounding out nonsense words as fairly valid. A Whole Language advocate will regard it as not very valid at all. But the notion of validity might just as well be called invalidity. If a study variable is 63% valid, then it is 37% invalid. If it is 21% valid, it is 79% invalid. The bottom line is that the experimental study does not directly investigate the

A Sociopsychoneurolinguistic Reading Model

35

phenomenon of interest. A study of response time in a word-recognition task is taken as a measure of reading proficiency. We therefore need to leave aside any unwarranted prejudices regarding the scientific accessibility of components of cognition, and consider as open to investigation whatever we identify as mental activity. In doing so, we can observe that just as principles of abstract knowledge structures and information processing offered better explanations of observable behavior than behaviorism did, so too must we go beyond the generally accepted confines of cognitive psychology in order to both study and explain certain mental phenomena. The inability of behaviorist stimulus–response theory to adequately explain the fundamental structural principles of sentences was one of a number of the more conspicuous failures of the paradigm. Cognitive psychology offered a solution in terms of abstract mental representations of knowledge, belief, and information processing. But cognitive psychology has its own limitations as well. And because of this, there is a need for a paradigm that goes beyond representations of knowledge, belief, and information processing. If limited to these structural components, cognitive psychology cannot adequately account for the creative element in mentation. Formulating plans, anticipating events, even imagining alternative solutions to a problem cannot simply be the result of information processing mechanisms applied to bits of knowledge and belief. The creative element in human mentation constructs new meanings. Their content and intentionality may characterize them as plans, anticipations, and imaginings, or as desires, wishes, and goals. But these are the final products of a system that creates new semantic value out of the raw materials and machinery of the mind. To paraphrase Bruner (see earlier), information processing presupposes an already established meaning, and adds no new meaning. But the deeper question is where meaning itself originates. This, of course, is far from a new idea. It is the essence of Chomsky’s notion of “stimulus-free” linguistic creativity. But the study of the source of conscious ideas will have to balance Chomsky’s stimulus-free notion against the obvious fact that not all ideas are equally likely. At the very least, a subject’s ideas, at the conscious level, will take a particular linguistic form and will be connected to both conscious tasks and unconscious influences. Still, the apparent difficulty of the enterprise in no way argues against it being within the scope of empirical investigation. Ultimately, the groundbreaking achievements of miscue analysis and the development of the constructivist-based sociopsycholinguistic model of reading challenge far more than just behaviorist and information processing models of reading. Also challenged are their respective psychological paradigms. The Goodman model of reading provides profound support for a psychological paradigm, itself now also finding support in the neurosciences, which holds the promise of advancing our scientific understanding of the human mind, without turning away from its most fundamental features—creativity and subjecthood.

36

Steven L. Strauss

References Bloomfield, L. (1961 [1942]). Teaching children to read. In L. Bloomfield, & C. L. Barnhart (Eds.), Let’s read: A linguistic approach (pp. 19–42). Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Bloomfield, L., & Barnhart, C. L. (Eds). (1961). Let’s read: A linguistic approach. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Caplan, D. (1992). Language: Structure, processing, and disorders. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, N. (1959). A review of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior, Language, 35, 26–58. Chomsky, N. (1972). Language and mind (enlarged ed.). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. de Saussure, F. (1966 [1922]). A course in general linguistics. New York: McGraw-Hill. Destexhe, A. (2000). Modeling corticothalamic feedback and the gating of the thalamus by the cerebral cortex. Journal of Physiology, 94, 394–410. Dewey, J. (1896). The reflex arc concept in psychology. Psychological Review, 3, 357–370. Available at: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Dewey/reflex.htm. Fromm, E. (1973). Anatomy of human destructiveness. New York: Holt, Rinehart. Goodman, K. S. (1967). Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game. Journal of the Reading Specialist, 6, 126–135. Goodman, K. S., & Goodman, Y. M. (1978). Reading of American children whose language is a stable rural dialect of English or a language other than English. Project NIE-C-00–3– 0087, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare: Washington, DC. Hawkins, J. (2004). On intelligence. New York: Henry Holt. Lashley, K. (1923). The behavioristic interpretation of consciousness. Psychological Bulletin, 30, 237–272. Lashley, K. S. (1951). The problem of serial order in behavior. In L. A. Jeffress (Ed.), Cerebral mechanisms in behavior (pp. 287–301). New York: Wiley. LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. New York: Touchstone. Lyon, G. R. (1998). Testimony before the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, U.S. Senate, entitled: Overview of reading and literacy initiatives, April 28. Available at: www.readbygrade3.com Marx, K. (1974 [1867]). Capital (Vol. 1). Moscow: Progress Publishers. Mesulam, M.-K. (1998). From sensation to cognition. Brain, 121, 1013–1052. Owocki, G., & Goodman, Y. (2002). Kidwatching: Documenting children’s literacy development. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Piaget, J. (1954 [1937]). The construction of reality in the child. New York: Basic Books. Rosenblatt, L. (1978). The reader, the text, the poem. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press. Searle, J. (1984). Minds, brains and science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Shaywitz, S. (2004). Overcoming dyslexia: A new and complete science-based program for reading problems at any level. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Sherman, S. M., & Guillery, R. W. (2006). Exploring the thalamus and its role in cortical function (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Strauss, S. L. (2005). The linguistics, neurology, and politics of phonics: Silent “e” speaks out. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

3

All Language Understanding is a Psycholinguistic Guessing Game T. G. Bever

The problem of reading seems straightforward: readers learn to “decode” the visual input into a linguistic representation, and “then” use that representation as input to normal mechanisms of spoken language understanding. So, to teach effective reading, all we need to do is inculcate an initial linguistic representation of the visual symbols, and language understanding mechanisms will do the rest. Phonics and “whole word” training are examples of this teaching paradigm: teach a kid the sounds of letters or of whole words, and his/her knowledge of auditory sentence processing will do the rest. Simple support for this view is the common idea that as we read, we “hear” an internal rendering of what we are reading. That is, reading involves first decoding what we see into sounds and then applying our normal mechanisms of speech comprehension to those internally generated sound sequences. Four decades ago, Ken Goodman published a short article that sparked a revolution in this kind of thinking about reading education and research (Goodman, 1967). The main point was that reading proceeds by the simultaneous integration of all of the reader’s linguistic knowledge in ways that affect even the perceived input. That is, there is no single level of representation with a necessarily complete mapping from the visual to the imagined acoustic/linguistic world. Letter sequences do not literally force an interpretation; rather, letters and bits of letters are input cues to a reconstructive process, which creates linguistic representations of words, phrases, sentences and their meanings. At first, this view does not seem radical: it is superficially consistent with the view that information flows upward so that information at each level triggers an organization at the next: /t,h,e, ,d,o,g, ,b,a,r,k,s, ,l,o,u,d,l,y/ –> the, dog, barks, loudly, –> (the)det (dog)Noun (barked)verb (loudly)adv –> ((the)d (dog)N)np ((barked)v (loudly)adv)vp –> (((the)d (dog)N)np ((barked)v (loudly)adv)vp)s WOOF! Such models allow for the possibility that information at a given level is incomplete, but just complete enough to trigger the correct interpretation at the next

38

T.G. Bever

level. For example, with rapid reading the input at the level of letters might be initially incompletely perceived as: /t,x,e, ,d,x,g, ,x,a,r,k,e,d, ,l,o,x,x,l,y/ This deficient representation would seem still to have enough information to trigger the right words most of the time. Thus, the idea that reading involves accessing multiple levels of linguistic knowledge was not in itself radical. Ken’s radical idea was that the flow of literary information is not uniformly upward: rather, it is cyclic such that information at each level can inform processes at levels below it. Thus, the following choice of words could have been triggered by the deficient letter sequence representation: /toe dig marked lovely/ This in turn could trigger a syntactic representation: (toe dig) (marked lovely) But, assuming this rather odd syntactic structure, the next level would block the interpretation, because in fact it makes no sense. Again, this seems unremarkable on a traditional view—of course, a word sequence that makes no sense is not going to be the one that readers tend to arrive at. But the critical idea is that even the decision about what the reader is “seeing” at the level of letters is itself modified by higher levels such as the associated meaning that can be built. That is, in the limiting case, the reader is using the meaning to modify the perception of the input. The reader is “guessing” what the meaning will be, even when incomplete, and is using the guesses to influence what s/he sees in the letters. In the same paper, Ken illustrates how powerful the process is by examples of “miscue analysis” (developed over many years with Yetta Goodman), analysis of errors in young readers that reveal the process as it is building. Examples of such errors show that readers indeed project expectations ahead when they are reading, expectations so strong sometimes that they replace some of what is actually written with different words. But what is striking is that generally the replacement maintains the general meaning of the original: in our example, a young reader might utter: the dog was barking loudly or the dog barked aloud or the dog barked a lot The mere observation of such top-down effects might also seem unremarkable, since they maintain most aspects of the letters, and the meaning of the errors is consistent with the input. But the significant mystery on a bottom-up view of

All Language Understanding is a Guessing Game 39 processing, once one notices it, is that the meaning is being projected ahead of the reading utterances—how can that be? Noticing a problem becomes scientifically important when one also notices a possible solution to it. Ken’s solution was to invoke an “analysis by synthesis” model of reading comprehension, outlined below. On this model, readers use the literal input to trigger an initial “guess” about the representation of the sentence at least at an inner level of linguistic representation: that representation then triggers a mapping onto a likely expected surface sequence: the reader matches the expectation to cues from the input. This explains why the misreadings tend to maintain some of the letter sequences, while also maintaining the meaning. The reader does not hallucinate the entire input based on built-up guesses: rather, s/he uses the guesses to make sure that enough of the letters are accounted for in a coherent meaning. This interpretation of fluent reading of course has had many implications for reading education and related research. It also explains the phenomenology of silent reading for most of us (St. Augustine’s famous discovery): most people “hear” or imagine a ghostly voice that tracks the input. It has always been a mystery how the talking ghost can speak so fast (easily 300 wpm for many readers, far faster than any normal speaker) elide over whole phrases, then suddenly alight on the careful internal pronunciation of a single word, and speak with proper phrasing and intonation. Ken was aware even of this conundrum and noted the relevance of the fact that we can understand acoustically compressed speech. But the fact remained that the internal speech is not real, yet has the muttered cloak of rapid and linguistically organized reality. How can this be?

ALL language comprehension is reconstructive One answer is that normal comprehension of spoken language also involves reconstructive formation of mental representations of what we are hearing. That is, even when we are listening to an acoustic speech input, we recreate our own mental representation of it, even at the acoustic level—we don’t notice it as a ghostly echoic voice (most of the time) in part because the actual acoustics of the input shapes it, and in part, because our automatic reconstruction of the input directly influences what we think we hear. The reconstructive aspect of language comprehension starts at the ground level. Consider the perceptual recognition of simple sounds like /ap/, /at/, /ack/. Say these to yourself or ask a neighbor to do so, without releasing an aspirated consonant at the end, just a sudden stop with the mouth forming the silent /p/, /t/ or /k/. What is remarkable is that each silence is rendered as an internal “sound” that you believe you (or your neighbor) actually uttered aloud: yet what you “hear” corresponds to physical silence. What differentiates the ghostly internal image of the silence is not the silence itself, but the physically present vowel transition that leads up to it. That transition tells you that the silence is being produced in a particular location of the oral cavity system, which is automatically rendered as a

40

T.G. Bever

representation of the sound as though it had been actively and independently produced. This example illustrates three related points about the relation of the most basic input level (the acoustic stream) and the perceived output level (the phone sequence): (a) It is nonlinear: information about what you perceive at the physical point P, can be based on the acoustic shape at some other point. (b) It is reconstructive: e.g., what you perceive to have occurred at point P can actually be missing entirely in the acoustic stream. (c) The reconstruction reshapes the acoustic phenomenology of what you think you “hear.” Such facts as these lead to an early version of reconstructive theory—the motor theory of speech perception (Liberman, Cooper, Shankweiler, & StuddertKennedy, 1967). On this view, listeners use scattered acoustic cues as an input template, and then reconstruct the vocal motor gestures that would have produced those cues, filling in the missing information, and giving the acoustic sequence an intentional interpretation—the speaker produced the particular initial acoustic features, by moving his/her vocal system in this particular way, uttering a particular sequence of phones to do so. That is, the initial stage of decoding input acoustic features into phonetic segments involves a derivation, a model of what phones the speaker was expressing to create those acoustic features. We perceive what the speaker intended, reconstructing it by regenerating it from the few cues we initially detect. The process of the derivational reconstruction of speakers’ intentions exists at the interface of every level of linguistic representation. For example, the correct decoding of the phonemes underlying a phonetic sequence itself involves a series of computational operations. In this case the operations do not directly govern the articulatory gestures, but rather govern the organization of phonemic features. Consider the easy and correct recognition of the two phonetic sequences below as the phonemic sequences on the right (in conventional spelling for convenience). Pa~Dr panter Paa~Dr pander (D = tongue flap which neutralizes the t/d distinction) Several remarkable facts obtain about the phonetic instantiation of the phonemes. First, the /n/ has disappeared from both words, second the t/d distinction has disappeared. Yet, we “hear” those features as though they were physically present. Somehow the perceptual system reconstitutes the underlying forms, even though the phones do not correspond in direct serial order to the phonemes. The decoding process has to somehow reflect a series of ordered operations that are part of English phonology, which define the derivation of the phonetic sequences:

All Language Understanding is a Guessing Game 41 1 2 3 4

Nasalize a vowel before a nasal. Drop a nasal between a nasalized vowel and a following homorganic consonant. Lengthen a vowel before a voiced stop consonant. Change a /t/ or /d/ to /D/ following a stressed vowel and preceding an unstressed vowel.

Again, we see that the input/output relation is nonlinear, reconstructive, and downward-flowing: in this case, it is based on a set of derivational rules that are language specific. Again, the best solution is a model on which the listener recapitulates the sequence of computational rules to derive the surface form, given some input cues. This is the sort of model proposed by Halle and Stevens (1962) in their groundbreaking formulation of the analysis by synthesis architecture. The broadest example of such analysis by synthesis is at the level of syntax and semantics. In the classic transformational derivational model the formal computation of a sentence ‘starts’ with a deep structure and semantic representation, which is then transformed by a set of language specific rules into a surface form. Thus similar surface forms can have different intentional deep structures: They are eager to eat They are easy to eat Different surface forms can have the same intentional inner structure: The dogs were chased by the cats The cats chased the dogs The cats happened to chase the dogs It’s the dogs the cats chased And a single surface form can have different inner forms: The lobsters were ready to eat. The architecture of grammatical knowledge represents such facts in terms of computational derivations from inner to outer sentence forms, via a series of ordered transformational rules. (Note that the current architectural model of syntax, so-called “minimalism” does not change this picture in the relevant respects.) The problem for a model of sentence level comprehension is how to map such “vertical” derivations onto the manifest “seriality” of sentences. Recently, Dave Townsend and I corralled the current evidence for an analysis by synthesis answer to this problem (Townsend & Bever, 2001). The essence of this model is similar to Ken’s formulation for reading. The listener grasps cues at various levels of representations, and at each level reconstructs the speaker’s intentions by trying out a potential derivation based on the most effective initial

42

T.G. Bever

cues at the output level in each case—gestural, phonemic, syntactic, semantic. There is considerable evidence for this view and essentially no counter evidence, in the behavioral, acquisition and neurolinguistic literature. Thus, the model that Ken arrived at to explain many puzzling and creative facts about reading actually explains the fundamental processes of all language comprehension. It is useful to emphasize a point about the input stage of this model, since that is where we can expect initial comparison to reading. Ken noted that the background assumptions of Reading presupposed that the input is a clear visual stream, letter by letter, assigned to words as the first stage of reading comprehension. There is a corresponding background discussion today for spoken comprehension: listeners assign syntax first and then derive semantics from that. This commonsense view rests on the empiricist logic that without a syntactic organization of a sentence the meaning cannot be extracted. That is true, but there is no reason that the syntactic organization either has to be complete or even correct. Townsend and I adduced evidence that in fact the completely correct syntax is assigned LAST, not first. On our view, the process goes something like this: 1 2 3 4

Apply statistically grounded patterns to the input (e.g., in English, the almost universal central pattern is: NpV(Np) = agent predicate patient). Use those patterns to assign a likely initial meaning (meaning-1). Use the patterns and the likely meaning to trigger a syntactic derivation. Check the derivation against the input. If it matches, assign the meaning associated with the full syntactic analysis (meaning-2).

That is, as we put it, we understand everything twice. The reason we don’t ordinarily notice this is that the processes, drawn out sequentially above, actually can operate in parallel (by projection ahead): in that view, meaning-2 ordinarily wipes out the consciousness of meaning-1. Many experimental facts are consistent with a model which presupposes two phases of assigning structure and assigning meaning. Here is a simple one with implications for reading. It is well known that very brief interruptions of a sentence (aka “clicks”) a#re misperceived as occurring at the boundaries of phrases. Thus a click objectively in the previous sentence at the point marked by a # will tend to be misperceived as occurring before the word /are/. Numerous studies have shown that this phenomenon is truly perceptual, not a response bias, not responsive to serial probabilities, and so on. It shows that an early stage of comprehension involves assigning a surface phrase structure, just as the classic syntax-first model would assume. But in fact, the misperception is limited to those phrases that are frequently ea*sily identified in the surface sequence, and that play a role in the initial pattern identification. Thus, the word /are/ in the above sentence is a characteristic initial word of a predicate, one of the small set of closed class function words, and the perceptual system can respond to that quickly. But in the sentence before the preceding one, the position marked by * is not near an easily identified phrase marker. If the complete phrase structure

All Language Understanding is a Guessing Game 43 were available, a click in /ea*sily/ should be misperceived as occurring before the word rather than after it, because of the bracketing: (are (frequently) ((easily identified) . . . . But this level of detailed bracketing has no effect on click mislocations. One interpretation is that it is simply too small a phrase to have a detectable effect. But there is a significant fact: if listeners are forced to wait a second after the sentence before indicating where the click occurred, then minor phrase boundaries have a significant effect. On our view, this is because the initial segmentation is based only on superficial patterns: but the ultimate representation derives from a complete assignment of the syntactic structure, with all of the phrase structure details generated as part of the reconstructive derivational process. This relatively small point has interesting implications for ways to improve reading, outlined in the next section.

Improving reading by prompting the initial organization Ken’s idea that reading is reconstructive has had an enormous impact on research and educational programs, which everyone [at this conference] knows far better than I. But our detailed experimental analysis of how the reconstructive process works for spoken language has further specific implications for the improvement of reading by control of formatting. Writing systems in general (but not always historically) have specific ways of indicating segmentation in words, thereby solving a major problem of speech comprehension. Today, we take it as obvious that putting a space between words is a good idea. We also rely on punctuation conventions that can mark major phrases from each other. But what about smaller phrasing such as in the previous sentence, as broken up below?: We also rely on punctuation conventions that can mark major phrases from each other Numerous published studies, starting in the 1960s, have shown that indicating phrase boundaries by some marker improves text comprehension (see Bever, Jandreau, Burwell, Kaplan, & Zaenen 1990, for a review). This fact remained a laboratory curiosity for many years without practical value, for three reasons: identifying “phrases” had to be done by actual people; implementing the boundary markers was limited to actual characters or extra whole space, which looked odd if not downright ugly; the notion of what counted as a relevant “phrase” was not well understood or uniform. Modern computer and printing techniques have offered solutions to each of these problems. Printers can be controlled to modify spaces and characters in very small increments that do not result in

44

T.G. Bever

aesthetic disturbance; “phrases” can be automatically identified by many algorithms; the algorithms themselves provide precise definition of the phrases. We have been testing the efficacy of a series of automatic programs we have written, which incrementally increase space size between phrases (several of the most recent procedures have been patented). We have shown that comprehension and reading speed of phrase-spaced texts formatted by such a program improve by roughly 15% each, even more for poor readers (e.g., Jandreau & Bever, 1992). We have also found that the texts are enjoyed more by readers and found to be more convincing. Why should phrase spacing improve reading? On the traditional view, it is because it reveals to the reader how to segment words together and build the correct surface phrase structure as an initial step in comprehension: this follows from the traditional view that the first step in comprehension is to determine the correct syntactic structure. But our phrase-formatting algorithms in fact do not find the syntactically correct phrase structure—rather, they isolate those kinds of phrases that are easily detected, based on distributional patterns of words and phrases in actual texts. For example, our algorithm phrases the two sentences below differently, as shown by extra spaces in them. Yet, from a linguistic standpoint, they have identical phrase structures as shown by the bracketed examples: The large dog was barking at the small cat The large dog barked loudly at the small cat (the (large dog)) ((was barking) (at (the (small cat))))) (the (large dog)) ((barked loudly) (at (the (small cat))))) The different analyses assigned by our algorithms follow from the fact that function words such as /was/ and /at/ are easily learned as beginning phrases, while /barked/ is infrequent and will not be recognized by a model that learns phrase boundary cues from texts. This raises a question of theoretical interest: which kind of phrase boundaries are the best to use for implementing segmentation, syntactically correct ones, or those assigned by ReadSmart? With linguistic colleagues to help us assign a correct surface phrase structure to standard fonttesting texts, we examined this question carefully. We contrasted the comprehension of phrase-spaced formats based on syntactic vs ReadSmart phrases. The results (published) astounded even us: the ReadSmart-phrased texts were far easier to comprehend; in fact, the syntactic-phrased texts were harder to understand than normal untreated texts. This follows from the reconstructive view of reading comprehension, as refined by our consideration of details of the analysis by synthesis model of spoken language. That model involves two phases of structure assignment: an initial one based on readily available cues and patterns, and a later one based on a full syntactic analysis. Our results show that basing visually salient phrase information on readily available cues leads to the best comprehension, thereby giving empirical support to our claims about initial phases of reading comprehension

All Language Understanding is a Guessing Game 45 itself. It also gives support to the larger claim that like speech comprehension, reading involves several stages of extracting structure and assigning meaning.

Conclusion: the voice within and without These considerations offer some perspective on how readers rapidly create a linguistic representation along with the ghostly voice offering an internal rendering of the text. We have undermined the superficial view that the role of the voice is to implement the low-level transfer of the print to audition. Rather, it reflects the output of the linguistic system, after reconstruction of the text. Ken’s was an early voice without in the lingering behaviorist wilderness, proclaiming and demonstrating the computational complexity of even an apparently simple mapping task such as reading. His insightful idea that reading is reconstructive has been a major factor in reading education. This perspective is further supported by 40 years of concentrated research on the comprehension of spoken language.

References Bever, T. G., Jandreau, S., Burwell, R., Kaplan, R., & Zaenen, A. (1990). Spacing printed text to isolate major phrases improves readability. Visible Language, 25, 74–87. Goodman, K. (1967). Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game. Journal of the Reading Specialist, 6, 126–135. Halle, M., & Stevens, K. (1962). Speech recognition: A model and a program for research. Information Theory, IR Transactions, 8(2), 155–159. Jandreau, S., & Bever, T. G. (1992). Phrase-spaced formats improve comprehension in average readers. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77, 143–146. Liberman, A. M., Cooper, F. S., Shankweiler, D. P., & Studdert-Kennedy, M. (1967). Perception of the speech code. Psychological Review, 74, 431–461. Townsend, D. J., & Bever, T. G. (2001). Sentence comprehension. Boston: MIT Press.

4

The Goodman/Smith Hypothesis, the Input Hypothesis, the Comprehension Hypothesis, and the (Even Stronger) Case for Free Voluntary Reading Stephen Krashen

Historians of science are very interested in famous “doubles,” cases in which two independent workers appear to have come up with very similar breakthroughs at about the same time. Famous cases include the discovery of calculus (Newton & Leibnitz) and evolution (Darwin & Wallace). For language and literacy education, our famous double is the hypothesis that we “learn to read by reading,” presented to the world by both Kenneth Goodman and Frank Smith in the 1960s. (Many of Goodman’s works, including earlier papers, are collected in Flurkey & Xu, 2003; see also the collection in Smith, 1972, for early statements of this hypothesis.) The Goodman/Smith Hypothesis claims that we do not learn to read by first learning to isolate sounds, then learning to pronounce letters, then pronounce words, and then move on to larger units. Rather, we learn to read by making sense of what is on the page, and our knowledge of phonemic awareness, phonics, and the ability to read lists of words in isolation is the result of learning to read by reading. As Frank Smith (2004) has pointed out, there has been a confusion between cause and effect: We don’t need an extensive knowledge of phonics to learn to read; rather, a (subconscious) mastery of phonics is the result of reading. As we will see below, reading is also the source of most of our competence in literacy: It is the source of our reading ability, most of our vocabulary beyond the basics, our ability to handle complex aspects of grammar, much of our spelling ability, and our ability to write with an acceptable writing style. Note that the Goodman/Smith Hypothesis predicts that some kinds of information can help literacy development by making texts more comprehensible. This includes background knowledge, and some aspects of language. Occasionally, some consciously learned phonics rules can help by making texts more comprehensible. There are, however, severe limits on how much phonics can be consciously learned (Smith, 2004). The “learn to read by reading” hypothesis is very similar to the Input Hypothesis, the claim that we acquire language, in general, when we understand it, that is, when we get “comprehensible input” (Krashen, 1981). Comprehensible input results in language acquisition, an unconscious “feel for correctness” in language, and the foundation for fluent language production.

Hypotheses and Free Voluntary Reading 47 It has also been hypothesized that there are affective prerequisites to language acquisition: for input to enter the “language acquisition device,” the acquirer needs to be in a low anxiety state, and needs to consider himself or herself to be a potential member of the group that speaks the language. Similarly, Smith (1988) has hypothesized that full development of literacy requires that the reader consider himself or herself to be the kind of person who reads and write: A member of “the literacy club.”

The Comprehension Hypothesis In recent years I have been referring to the Input Hypothesis and the Goodman/ Smith Hypothesis as one, as the Comprehension Hypothesis. Unifying the two makes explicit Kenneth Goodman’s suggestion that “learning to read is natural.” The process of learning to read is the same process used to acquire language in general. Current approaches: anything but . . . The Comprehension Hypothesis makes the obvious prediction that actual reading is good for you. It is the only way to improve your reading and become literate. This view appears to be inconsistent with most approaches to literacy education today, approaches that seem, in fact, to say the opposite, with little time devoted (sometimes none) to reading itself, little effort made to encourage reading (e.g., read-alouds), and little effort made to make books available. Curricula are instead filled with exercises designed to teach aspects of literacy that the Comprehension Hypothesis says are the results of reading. There is, in fact, excitement about approaches that are very far removed from actual reading. I was once contacted by an elementary school principal in California who had the idea that roller skating might be a good way to improve literacy: He had read a report that claimed that poor readers did poorly on a movement test requiring balance, and thought that a full period devoted to roller skating might improve balance and thereby improve reading. I asked him if he had ever considered improving school and classroom libraries in his school, especially relevant in his situation because his school was in a high poverty area. He had never thought of this, but thought it was an interesting idea.

Free voluntary reading (FVR) I will devote the rest of this chapter to discussing what I am convinced is the most exciting area of research in language education: Free voluntary reading (FVR). The evidence I will review provides strong confirmation of the Comprehension Hypothesis and is of enormous practical importance. Free voluntary reading is the kind of reading readers of this paper do all the time: Reading because you want to. Research showing the benefits of FVR is extensive, and is growing rapidly.

48

Stephen Krashen

I will mention here some of the “classic” studies demonstrating the “power of reading,” and present some of the new wave, studies of the impact of self-selected reading done by students of English as a foreign language in Asia, and the impact of reading on the development of the heritage language. This is followed by a brief review of studies showing what everybody seems to agree with, but few curricula take advantage of: wide recreational reading makes you smarter. And times being what they are, it is important to add one more section: The effects of the computer on reading. Self-selected reading research: the classic studies I have reviewed the research on in-school free reading programs in several places (Krashen, 2001, 2004) and have concluded that students participating in sustained silent reading and similar programs did as well as comparisons or better on tests of reading comprehension in 51 out of 53 comparisons. Studies that showed no difference between readers and comparisons were typically shortterm studies; in those lasting longer than an academic year, those in reading group nearly always made better progress. I present here just a few studies that demonstrate not only the validity of this approach, but also its universality—self-selected reading has been shown to be effective in a wide variety of situations. Hooked on Books A seminal study that should be mentioned whenever free reading programs are discussed is the one that popularized free reading in the United States: Daniel Fader and Elton McNeil’s Hooked on Books: Program & Proof. Fader and McNeil (1968) encouraged adolescent boys in reform school to read newspapers, magazines, and paperback books and to talk about their readings in class. After one year, the researchers discovered that the boys’ reading comprehension scores on the Scholastic Achievement Test had increased by more than an entire grade level (1.3 years), twice as much as the scores of those students who didn’t read for pleasure. Fader also observed the boys’ behavior outside of class, noting that some of boys were reading their books while in the stands at basketball games. The Fiji Island Study Elley and Mangubhai (1983) showed that in-school free reading has a powerful effect on second language acquirers. They studied fourth- and fifth-grade students of English as a foreign language in the Fiji Islands, where English is a required subject beginning at kindergarten and is taught for 30 minutes a day. The students were divided into three groups: one had the “audio-lingual method,” a traditional language teaching method that emphasizes drill and repetition and heavy grammar instruction. A second group did only free reading for the entire 30 minutes period, and a third group did “shared reading . . . a method

Hypotheses and Free Voluntary Reading 49 Table 4.1 Number of subjects in the Fiji Island Study Pretest

2 yrs later

% Attrition

Cohort 1 shared book silent reading audio-lingual

81 98 121

66 70 91

81 71 75

Cohort 2 shared book silent reading audio-lingual

105 96 113

91 91 91

87 95 80.5

Note: Cohort 1: began in grade 4; Cohort 2: began in grade 5. Data from: Elley and Mangubhai (1983), Elley (1998).

of sharing a good book with a class, several times, in such a way that the students are read to by the teacher, as in a bedtime story. They then talk about the book, read it together, act out the story, draw parts of it and write their own caption, they rewrite the story with different characters or events” (Elley, 1998, pp. 1–2). After two years, the free reading group and the shared reading group were far superior to the traditional group in tests of reading comprehension, writing, and grammar. Shanahan and Beck (2006) have contested these results, pointing out that there was attrition over the two years of the study, “but the author does not report what was done, if anything, to account for it” (p. 441). Table 4.1 presents the attrition data from the Fiji Island Study. Chi-square analysis confirms that the three groups did not differ significantly with respect to attrition (for grade 4, chi-square = .337, for grade 5, chi-square = .575, df = 2, ns; to reach significance for df = 2, a chi square of 5.99 is needed). Also, the attrition rate is not high; it could easily be the result of mobility or may simply be the result of some children being absent on the day the tests were given two years later. The important fact is that attrition was similar in all three groups. Shanahan and Beck (2006) also fault the Fiji Island Study because “the tests were designed specifically for the study, and no evidence of their validity or reliability is reported” (p. 441). In Elley (1991), the article Shanahan cited, it is stated that the tests were “newly developed” and some were “tailor-made.” But in the longer and more detailed paper (Elley & Mangubhai, 1983, not cited by Shanahan and Beck), reliability and validity data are reported for these tests, and the levels are obviously acceptable. In 1991, Elley replicated these findings in Singapore. In three studies involving a total of approximately 3,000 children and lasting from one to three years, children who followed a program that was a combination of shared book experience, language experience, and free reading (“book flood”) outperformed traditionally taught students on tests of reading comprehension and vocabulary, as well as on other measures of literacy.

50

Stephen Krashen

The “Singapore” paper also discusses the reactions of adults to the reading program. There were two concerns: Some adults worried how well the readers would do on tests. The results of the study, however, confirm that they do very well on tests, better than comparison students who did traditional instruction. I think they do well on tests because they can’t help it: Because they have read so much, many of the conventions of writing, the grammar and the vocabulary have been “acquired,” that is, subconsciously absorbed. When this happens, using this competence is automatic and involuntary. In fact, I think it is fair to say that well-read people nearly always write acceptably well, and find it very difficult to write poorly. (Teachers can only write poorly after they read a pile of student papers, which confirms that writing style comes from reading.) Another concern was that the children in the reading sections were “merely enjoying themselves.” The attitude that acquisition of language and the development of literacy must be painful is unfortunately widespread. Goosebumps summer We turn now to California and the San Joaquin Valley, where Fay Shin (2001) examined the impact of a summer free reading program among sixth graders with low reading proficiency. Shin devoted a great deal of her grant money to two items: Comic books and Goosebumps. The participants did self-selected reading for two hours a day, had time to discuss books with peers, had individual conferences with teachers, and participated in group discussion of selected novels, such as The Island of the Blue Dolphins. Comparison children followed a standard language arts curriculum during the summer. The groups made equivalent gains over the summer on a vocabulary test, but the children in the reading group did far better on the reading comprehension measure, gaining well over one year after only five and a half weeks of reading. They also gained about five months on the Altos test of reading comprehension and vocabulary. The retakers study Beniko Mason deserves a great deal of the credit for introducing in-class free reading in English as a foreign language classes in Japan. In one study (included in Mason & Krashen, 1997), Mason was asked to teach a required first-year university English class consisting of extremely reluctant students, students who had previously failed English. After a very short time, Mason concluded that the regular curriculum was not going to work with these “retakers”: She discarded the standard syllabus and introduced “extensive reading” instead. The entire class was devoted to reading graded readers, both in class and as homework. (By the end of the semester, some students had reached the point where easy authentic reading was comprehensible for them.) Students were asked only to write short synopses of what they read and keep a diary in Japanese, recording their reactions to the reading they were doing. Students in comparison classes followed the traditional grammar and translation-based curriculum.

Hypotheses and Free Voluntary Reading 51 Even though the extensive readers started the semester with much lower test scores in English reading, they made larger gains than the traditional group and nearly caught up with them by the end of the semester, moving from 22.6 points on a cloze test to 30, while the comparisons moved from 31.4 to 33.1. Also, they liked this English class much better than those they had taken before, and many of the once reluctant students became eager readers. The new wave We turn now to the “new wave” of studies from Asia. These studies, like Mason’s retaker study and the Elley studies, deal with English as a foreign language, situations in which little English is encountered outside of the classroom, which makes for a better controlled study. The TOEFL study Mason’s most recent study (Mason, 2006) has profound practical implications for thousands of international students. In this study, six second language acquirers in Japan, all former students of Mason who had studied English as a foreign language in classes that included free voluntary reading of graded readers, agreed to engage in a recreational reading program to prepare for the TOEFL, a test of English that students interested in studying at American universities take. Each of the six chose somewhat different reading material, according to their own interests, with favorite authors including Sidney Sheldon, Paulo Coelho, Judy Blume, and Bertice Berry. In addition, several continued to read graded readers. Subjects read for different lengths of time, between one to four months, and took alternate forms of the TOEFL test before and after doing the reading. The average gain was 3.5 points per week on the overall test, and improvement was seen on all three components, listening (2.2 points), grammar (3.6 points), and reading (4.6 points). This gain is about the same as one sees with a fulltime TOEFL preparation class given in the United States and is consistent with Gradman and Hanania’s results, showing that reading is an excellent predictor of TOEFL performance (see also Gradman & Hanania, 1991; Constantino, Lee, Cho, & Krashen, 1997). University students in Taiwan Several scholars in Taiwan have contributed to this area of research, publishing both correlational and experimental studies. S.Y. Lee (2005a) used structural equation modeling to see which of several activities was the best predictor of scores on a test of English writing for university students in Taiwan. Lee examined the amount of free reading in English the students said they did, the amount of English writing they said they did outside of school, and how intently they believed that reading and writing instruction

52

Stephen Krashen

was helpful. Reading was the clear winner. In fact, it was the only significant predictor of writing scores. Witton-Davies (2006) used multiple regression to see which were the best predictors of English reading and writing for college freshmen in Taiwan. The amount of reading students reported having done, and the amount of interaction in English were significant predictors (time spent abroad came close to statistical significance) for both measures. It must, however, be mentioned that the amount of writing in English students reported having done came close to significance on the writing test, which is contrary to the predictions of the Comprehension Hypothesis, as well as previous research (reviewed in Krashen, 2004). The other predictors, however, all reflect input, and reading was the strongest predictor in both cases. In two different studies each lasting one academic year, students in classes that set aside time for reading or that encouraged reading outside of class did better than those in several different comparison classes (Lee, 2005b, 2006; Liu, 2005; Smith, 2006). The results of Lee (2005b, 2006) are presented in Table 4.2, comparing the impact of three different treatments: regular instruction (the required Freshman English classes all college freshmen take in Taiwan), a reading experience in which students read mostly assigned readings during the second semester, novels selected by the instructor, and a treatment in which students had free choice. Those doing assigned reading did better than comparisons in vocabulary; free choice, however, resulted in better gains in both vocabulary and reading comprehension, as measured by a cloze test. In Liu’s study, students in the reading class did their free reading outside of class: class-time was largely devoted to the study of rhetoric and linguistics, with lectures presented in the students’ first language, Mandarin, with some time set aside for reading and book selection. Table 4.3 presents data from two different years and three different reading groups. Liu’s study has the advantage of multiple comparison groups, important because Freshman English is taught in different ways, depending on the instructor. The reading groups are typically better; at worst, they do just as well as comparisons (in only one case, Year 2 cloze test performance). Smith (2006) is a one-year study of high school students in Taiwan who were divided into three groups: One group simply did self-selected reading in English, a “pure” reading group. A second group had to write extra book reports (ER): The report consisted of a summary and evaluation of the book,

Table 4.2 Gains after one year of extensive reading (Lee, 2005b, 2006)

Vocab Cloze

Comparison

Assigned

Self-selected

7.3 4.9

14.4 5

17 14.5

Source: Lee (2005b, 2006)

Hypotheses and Free Voluntary Reading 53 Table 4.3 Gains after one year of extensive reading (Liu, 2005) Comp 1

Comp 2

Comp 3

Reading1

Reading 2

5.8 4.1

11.2 17.4

23.3 13.7

Year 1 vocab cloze

9.6 5

6.8 4.9

Year 2 vocab cloze

11.1 1.7

4.6 3.4

13.2 4.3

Source: Liu (2005)

and recommendations for future readers. Students had to write one report every two weeks. A third group did the regular “intensive reading” (IR) course in which they read short paragraphs, answered comprehension questions, and studied grammar and vocabulary. The pure reading group did the best, and the extra book reports clearly didn’t help (Tables 4.4 and 4.5). Smith also provided data on the gains made each semester (see Table 4.6). Interestingly, the pure reading group’s superior progress came only in the first semester, which is an unusual finding—previous research has shown that longer-term programs (more than one academic year) are more successful than short-term programs (Krashen, 2004).

Table 4.4 Results of the College Students English Proficiency Test

pre post gain scores

Intensive reading

Reading + book report

Reading only

135.1 (31.8) 185.8 (40.3) 50.7 (30.5)

132.6 (32.8) 181.5 (40.4) 49 (26.2)

129.5 (32.9) 192.8 (45.1) 63.3 (33.4)

Source: Smith (2006) Note: Mean scores (standard deviation in parentheses). Test covers listening, reading, and “usage.”

Table 4.5 Cloze test results of the College Students English Proficiency Test

pre post gain scores

Intensive reading

Reading + book report

Reading only

23.9 (8.5) 34.8 (7.9) 11.1 (6.6)

23.0 (9.1) 33.7 (9.7) 10.7 (6.3)

22.3 (8) 36.7 (7.8) 14.2 (6.7)

Source: Smith (2006) Note: Mean scores (standard deviation in parentheses).

54

Stephen Krashen

Table 4.6 Gains after the first and second semesters

IR ER+ ER ONLY

First semester gain

Second semester gain

3.3 (7.4) 3.9 (7.1) 7.56 (6.8)

7.68 (4.9) 6.74 (5.2) 6.68 (5.4)

Source: Smith (2006) Note: IR = intensive reading; ER = extra book report.

EFL for children in Korea In studies done in Korea, children in EFL classes that included reading interesting stories from the internet gained significantly more in English than comparisons did (Cho & Kim, 2004). These results are remarkable, considering that the study lasted only 14 weeks. In another, EFL elementary school children did classroom activities related to reading newspapers written for EFL students. Nearly all those in the newspaper class voluntarily read the newspapers in their free time at school, and the class made significantly better gains in English than a comparison group (Cho & Kim, 2005). In both studies, readers were more enthusiastic about English than were comparison students in traditional classes, which may be the most important result, because it suggests that the children will continue to read in English. A brief case history Clearly in agreement with the research reported here, Richard Wright (1966) credits reading with providing his development as a writer: “I wanted to write and I did not even know the English language. I bought English grammars and found them dull. I felt I was getting a better sense of the language from novels than from grammars” (p. 275).

Reading in the heritage language For those who grow up in homes in which another language is used, there are well-established benefits for developing the language of the home, or heritage language, in addition to acquiring high levels of proficiency in English. The benefits include practical, job-related advantages, better communication with elders (Wong-Fillmore, 1991; Cho, 2001), as well as cognitive advantages: bilinguals are better at solving problems that require ignoring irrelevant information and that require focusing just on important information; they have, in other words, superior “executive control” (Bialystok, Craik, Klein, & Viswanathan, 2004). Several studies suggest that a clear path to high levels of bilingualism is reading for pleasure in the heritage language. Tse (2001) studied those who maintained unusually high levels of competence in their heritage language, despite spending

Hypotheses and Free Voluntary Reading 55 very little time in the country where the heritage language was spoken. All had access to reading materials in the heritage language, and nearly all developed an interest in reading in the language for pleasure. Cho and Krashen (2000) found four independent predictors of heritage language competence among second generation Korean heritage language speakers, all related to comprehensible input: parental use of the language, trips to Korea, TV watching, and, of great interest to us here, reading. McQuillan (1998) reported that Spanish for native speaker classes at the university level that emphasized pleasure reading and other forms of comprehensible input resulted in more interest in reading in Spanish after the semester ended, as well as greater development of Spanish vocabulary.

Reading makes you smarter A scattered but impressive range of studies confirms that reading makes you smarter: those who read more, know more about a wide range of topics. Simonton (1988) summarized a number of studies of the development of creativity and concluded that “omnivorous reading in childhood and adolescence correlates positively with ultimate adult success” (Simonton, 1988, p. 11). Emery and Csikszentmihalyi (1982) compared 15 men of blue-collar background who became college professors with 15 men of very similar background who grew up to become blue-collar workers. The future professors lived in a much more print-rich environment and did far more reading when they were young. A good example of the impact of reading is Malcolm X, who specifically gave reading the credit for his education: “Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, ‘What’s your alma mater?’ I told him, ‘Books’” (El-Shabbaz, 1964, p. 179). Stanovich and colleagues measured reading volume using the Author Recognition Test, in which subjects indicate whether they recognize the names of authors on a list. Their studies have confirmed that those who do better on these tests have read more, and show higher performance on tests of literacy. They also know more about literature and history (Stanovich & Cunningham, 1992), science and social studies (Stanovich & Cunningham, 1993), have more “cultural literacy” (West, Stanovich, & Mitchell, 1993) and even have more “practical knowledge” (Stanovich & Cunningham, 1993). A recent contribution to this area of research is Filback and Krashen (2002), who reported that among Christians, those who reported more self-initiated reading of the Bible had more knowledge of the Bible than those who did less reading. More formal Bible study, however, was not related to more knowledge of the Bible.

What about the computer? Efforts to use the computer to improve reading ability have not been successful (Krashen, 1996). For example, children enjoy reading interactive books of the

56

Stephen Krashen

screen, books in which readers can click to characteristics to talk, to turn pages, and to have the story read, but the thrill wears off quickly. After five books, children click only to turn pages (Chu, 1995). Despite aggressive promotion, IBM’s Write to Read did not produce results better than typical language arts programs (Krendl & Williams, 1990). Hurd, Dixon and Oldham (2006) evaluated the impact of money spent on books and money spent on technology on performance on national tests (English, Math and Science combined) taken by 11-year-olds in England, controlling for socio-economic status, teacher/pupil ratio, and percentage of students with special educational needs. The best predictor of test score performance was the amount of money the school spent on books per pupil (this includes all books, including classroom and school libraries). For each £100 spent per pupil on books, Hurd et al.’s analysis predicted a 1.5% increase in test scores (the average spent currently is £16 per pupil). In contrast, the effect of spending money on computers is only half as effective in raising test scores. Hurd et al. note that according to current school budgets, twice as much is spent on technology as is spent on books. For achievement in general, however, books appear to be a better investment than technology. Free voluntary web-surfing? The computer may, nevertheless, be of value in boosting literacy, depending on how it is used, and the best way of using it may be the most obvious. A recent study suggests that “free voluntary web-surfing” may be good for literacy development. Jackson, von Eye, Biocca, Barbatsis, Zhao and Fitzgerald (2006) provided computers with internet access to 140 children (ages 10–18, but mostly between 12–14) from low-income families. Jackson et al. reported that more internet use resulted in improved reading, as reflected by grades and standardized tests. The improvements were present after six months of internet use for test scores and after one year for grades. There was no impact on mathematics test scores, and the data did not support the hypothesis that better readers used the internet more; rather, internet use improved reading. Jackson et al. point out that “web pages are heavily text based” (p. 433), and suggest that it was the self-motivated reading of these texts that was the cause of the gains in reading. De Haan and Huysmans (2004) reported, however, that for adolescents in the Netherlands, greater use of the internet is modestly positively correlated with use of print media (r = .31), suggesting that internet use leads to more reading off the computer, which in turn may be responsible for growth in reading. A logical study would be to determine the existence of the relationships (regression coefficients) in the model presented in Figure 4.1. Both reading from the internet and free voluntary reading stimulated by internet use may be directly related to reading achievement or the effect of internet use might be indirect, with only reading print media directly relating to reading achievement.

Hypotheses and Free Voluntary Reading 57 Reading achievemen t

Internet use

Use of print media

Figure 4.1 Hypothesized relationships among internet use, free reading (use of print media), and reading achievement

An obvious gap in the research, as Jackson and colleagues note, is that only “time on the internet” was considered as a predictor, with no attempt made to determine the impact of different kinds of internet use (e.g., blogs, reading the news, games, etc.).

Conclusion The Comprehension Hypothesis (Figure 4.2) unites the Input Hypothesis, developed originally for language acquisition, and the Goodman/Smith Hypothesis that we learn to read by reading. The Comprehension Hypothesis claims that both language and literacy development are the result of the comprehension of messages. Full acquisition, in both cases, requires that the acquirer considers himself or herself to be a potential member of the group that uses the language or writing style. My claim is that Comprehension Hypothesis holds for first and second language acquisition, oral and written language, children, teenagers, and adults. Thus, “learning to read is natural” (Goodman & Goodman, 1979). Perhaps the most common counterargument to the claim that learning to read is natural is the fact that not all cultures have literacy. True. But the Comprehension Hypothesis states only that given comprehensible and interesting text, all children will learn to read. The very high levels of literacy seen in many countries is testimony that this prediction is correct; when reading material is available, nearly everybody learns to read at least a basic level. Consequences of comprehensible input The “other side” of the Comprehension Hypothesis is that the components of language, vocabulary, grammar, spelling, phonics, etc. are the result of language Comprehension hypothesis

Input hypothesis

Figure 4.2 The Comprehension Hypothesis

Goodman/Smith hypothesis

58

Stephen Krashen

acquisition, the result of getting comprehensible input. As noted earlier, there is a profound difference between the Comprehension Hypothesis and “skillbuilding” views of language and literacy development, a completely opposite view of cause and effect. Skill-builders assume that we must first consciously learn the components of language, and only after they are mastered can we actually use language, i.e. have conversations and read books. Thus, skill-building is a delayed gratification approach to learning. The Comprehension Hypothesis offers pleasure now, the pleasure of having conversations, reading good books, and hearing stories. The Comprehension Hypothesis says that we don’t have to wait: we deserve pleasure now, and in accepting the pleasure in reading and in using language, we are taking the optimal path, in fact, the only path, to language acquisition and literacy development. The path of pain does not work in language and literacy development: There is only the path of pleasure. Postscript: This is not to say that “if it feels good it is good for you.” The Comprehension Hypothesis says, rather, that if an activity is good for literacy, it will be perceived to be pleasant, a more conservative position.

References Bialystok, E., Craik, P., Klein, F., & Viswanathan, R. (2004). Bilingualism, aging, and cognitive control: Evidence from the Simon task. Psychology and Aging, 19(2), 290–303. Cho, G. (2001). The role of HL in social interactions and relationships: Reflections from a language minority group. Bilingual Research Journal, 24(4), 369–384. Cho, G., & Krashen, S. (2000). The role of voluntary factors in heritage language development: How speakers can develop the heritage language on their own. ITL: Review of Applied Linguistics, Online, 127–128. Available at: /wwwling. arts.kuleuven.ac.be/itl. Cho, K. S., & Kim, H. J. (2004). Recreational reading in English as a foreign language in Korea: Positive effects of a sixteen-week program. Knowledge Quest, 32(4), 36–38. Cho, K.S., & Kim, H. J. (2005). Using the newspaper in an English as a foreign language class. Knowledge Quest, 34(4), 47–49. Chu, M. (1995). Reader response to interactive computer books: Examining literary responses in a non-traditional reading setting. Reading Research and Instruction, 34, 352–366. Constantino, R., Lee, S. Y., Cho, K. S., & Krashen, S. (1997). Free voluntary reading as a predictor of TOEFL scores. Applied Language Learning, 8, 111–118. De Haan, J., & Huysmans, F. (2004). IT/Media use and psychological development among Dutch youth. IT & Society, 1(7), 44–58. Elley, W. (1991). Acquiring literacy in a second language: The effect of bookbased programs. Language Learning, 41, 375–411. Elley, W. (1998). Raising literacy levels in third world countries: A method that works. Culver City, CA: Language Education Associates.

Hypotheses and Free Voluntary Reading 59 Elley, W., & Mangubhai, F. (1983). The impact of reading on second language learning. Reading Research Quarterly, 19, 53–67. El-Shabbaz, E. (1964). The autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Ballantine Books. Emery, C., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1982). The socialization effects of cultural role models in ontogenetic development and upward mobility. Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 12, 3–19. Fader, D., & McNeill, E. B. (1968). Hooked on books: Program and proof. Petaluma, CA: Berkeley Paperbacks. Filback, R., & Krashen, S. (2002). The impact of reading the Bible and studying the Bible on biblical knowledge. Knowledge Quest, 31(2), 50–51. Flurkey, A., & Xu, J. (Eds.). (2003). On the revolution of reading: The selected writings of Kenneth S. Goodman. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Goodman, K. S., & Goodman, Y. M. (1979). Learning to read is natural. In L. B. Resnick, & P. A. Weaver (Eds.), Theory and practice of early reading (Vol.1, pp. 137–154). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Gradman, H., & Hanania, E. (1991). Language learning background factors and ESL proficiency. Modern Language Journal, 75, 39–51. Hurd, S., Dixon, M., & Oldham, J. (2006). Are low levels of book spending in primary schools jeopardizing the National Literacy Strategy? The Curriculum Journal, 17(1), 73–88. Jackson, L., von Eye, A., Biocca, F., Barbatsis, G., Zhao, Y., & Fitzgerald, H. (2006). Does home internet use influence the academic performance of lowincome children? Developmental Psychology, 42(3), 429–433. Krashen, S. (1981). Second language acquisition and second language learning. New York: Prentice Hall. (Out of print: Available at: http: www.sdkrashen. com.) Krashen, S. (1996). Every person a reader: An alternative to the California Task Force Report on Reading. Culver City, CA: Language Education Associates. Krashen, S. (2001). More smoke and mirrors: A critique of the National Reading Panel report on fluency. Phi Delta Kappan, 83, 119–123. Krashen, S. (2003). Explorations in language acquisition and use: The Taipei lectures. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Krashen, S. (2004). The power of reading (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, and Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited. Krendl, K. A., & Williams, R. B. (1990). The importance of being rigorous: Research on writing to read. Journal of Computer-Based Instruction, 17(3), 81–86. Lee, S. Y. (2005a) Facilitating and inhibiting factors in English as a foreign language writing performance: A model test with structural equation modeling. Language Learning, 55(2), 335–374. Lee, S. Y. (2005b) Sustained silent reading using assigned reading: Is comprehensible input enough? International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, Online, 1(4), 10–12. Available at: www.tprstories.com/ijflt. Lee, S. Y. (2006). A one-year study of SSR: University level EFL students in

60

Stephen Krashen

Taiwan. International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, Online, 2(1), 6–8. Available at: www.tprstories.com/ijflt. Liu, C-K. (2005). Self-selected reading effects significant gains in vocabulary size and reading comprehension. Paper presented at The 14th International Symposium on English Teaching, Chien Tan: Taiwan, November, Mason, B. (2006). Free voluntary reading and autonomy in second language acquisition: Improving TOEFL scores from reading alone. International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 2(1), 2–5. Mason, B., & Krashen, S. (1997). Extensive reading in English as a foreign language. System, 25, 91–102. McQuillan, J. (1998). The use of self-selected and free voluntary reading in heritage language programs: A review of research. In S. Krashen, L. Tse, & J. McQuillan (Eds.), Heritage language development (pp. 73–87). Culver City, CA: Language Education Associates. Shanahan, T., & Beck, I. (2006). Effective literacy teaching for English-language learners. In D. August, & T. Shanahan (Eds.), Developing literacy in secondlanguage learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on language-minority children and youth (pp. 415–488). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Shin, F. (2001). Motivating students with Goosebumps and other popular books. CSLA Journal (California School Library Association), 25(1), 15–19. Simonton, D. (1988). Scientific genius: A psychology of science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Smith, F. (Ed.). (1972). Psycholinguistics and reading. New York: Holt. Smith, F. (1988). Joining the literacy club. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Smith, F. (2004). Understanding reading (6th ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Smith, K. (2006). A comparison of “pure” extensive reading with intensive reading and extensive reading with supplementary activities. International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, Online, 2(2), 12016. Available at: www. tprstories.com/ijflt. Stanovich, K., & Cunningham, A. (1992). Studying the consequences of literacy within a literate society: The cognitive correlates of print exposure. Memory and Cognition, 20(1), 51–68. Stanovich, K., & Cunningham, A. (1993). Where does knowledge come from? Specific associations between print exposure and information acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85(2), 211–229. Tse, L. (2001). Resisting and reversing language shift: Heritage-language resilience among U.S. native bilinguals. Harvard Educational Review, 71(4), 676–705. West, R., Stanovich, K., & Mitchell, H. (1993). Reading in the real world and its correlates. Reading Research Quarterly, 28, 35–50. Witton-Davies, G. (2006). What does it take to acquire English? International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, Online, 2(2), 2–9. Available at: www. tprstories.com/ijflt. Wong-Fillmore, L. (1991). When learning a second language means losing the first. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 6, 323–346. Wright, R. (1966). Black boy. New York: Harper and Row.

5

23 Notes in Search of Growing Up An Author—Or Not David Bloome and George Newell

We are interested in those uses of language, including written language, through which people, including children, create a world (or worlds) for their lives. More specifically, we are interested in how children learn to use language in such ways—how they grow up an author, or not. What follows are notes toward re-imagining writing development as growing up an author. We have used the genre of notes as an invitation to readers to think along with us. We view the notes as a generative argument, a search for a language for theorizing writing development as growing up an author.

Note 1 What might we mean by authorship? How might authoring differ from writing? How might the differences between authoring and writing be used to construct a definition of writing development as growing up an author?

Note 2 Being a writer is not the same as being an author. Authors act on the world. Even the act of maintaining the status quo is to act on the world. Writers compose inert texts. What makes a text inert or active is not whether its reading enthralls the reader but whether the enthralled reader acts on the world.

Note 3 It is a well-rehearsed axiom of sociolinguistic ethnography that language is influenced by social context and language influences social context. Yet, in our reading of the educational research on how children use language emphasis is placed primarily on the first part of the axiom; how language is influenced by social context. How do children’s ways of speaking and using written language reflect their cultural background or reflect the local context and situation? What historical traces can be found in their language? How does their language reflect power relations, gender, and class? Even when attention is focused on children’s

62

David Bloome and George Newell

assertions of social identity, such assertions are often described as taking up the social identities made available by the social institution or by the social practices extant in a particular setting. Thus, attention is focused on how the language of identity claims and assignments reflect the social context of institutional structuration of available social identities.

Note 4 Dennis Wolf and Martha Perry (1988) write: Becoming a student is almost synonymous with literacy learning. But what is learned is not just the rules of the letter–sound correspondences or classroom routines for reading aloud without stumbling. Children in kindergarten, first, and second grades are learning a definition of literacy as surely as they are learning to write left to right. In some classrooms children are taught what we call the “literacy of scribes and clerks.” There, literacy means mastering the technologies of inscription of decoding. In other settings, children acquire the “literacy of authors and thinkers,” coming to understand scripts and rules simply as a means to recording and reflecting on experience. (p. 44) Although Wolf and Perry make an important distinction among types of writers, there is also the literacy of those who author (and co-author) the worlds in which they live. Not just “the literacy of authors and thinkers” for recording and reflecting but the literacy of authors who act on and build worlds with and through language.

Note 5 No one authors a text or a world in a vacuum. They must do so in terms of what already exists, how things are already changing, the efforts of others to assert their authorship, and in terms of extant categories of writing and authorship and the constraints and affordances given by the cultural institutions of writing and authorship. Geertz (1983) writes: The primary question, for any cultural institution anywhere, now that nobody is leaving anybody else alone and isn’t ever again going to, is not whether everything is going to come seamlessly together or whether, contrariwise, we are all going to persist sequestered in our separate prejudices. It is whether human beings are going to continue to be able, in Java or Connecticut, through law, anthropology, or anything else, to imagine principled lives they can practically lead. (p. 234) Is it also so for authors and authorship?

23 Notes in Search of An Author 63

Note 6 What is the role of originality and invention in authorship? Do originality and invention define authorship? Is originality synonymous with invention? Can an author construct a text or a world only through the use of convention and still be authoring? If Goodman (1989) is correct that “invention is present in all aspects of linguistic and cognitive development” (p. 217), then what must have occurred to have the production of a text lacking invention and originality? On the other hand, can there be originality and invention without convention? Wertsch (1998) writes: [W]e have come to give authors and other creative artists more credit than they deserve for the aesthetic objects they produce. This is so because in our understanding of creative activity the role of convention has receded into the background. (p. 17) Invention may be given a great deal of undue credit in conceptions of authorship as it is linked to the individual’s contribution rather than how he or she has invented with convention and collaborated with others; Bakhtin’s (1981 [1935]) centripetal and centrifugal forces, inherent heteroglossia. The valorization of individual invention is particularly strong in regard to “creative writing,” the teaching of which often assumes a romanticized vision of being an author: a lone writer, visited by a muse or struggling alone with a tortured soul, eventually producing a new poem in a special act of creation. Is the creative writing process no less strong with other writing practices including descriptions, directions, reportings, taxonomies, and algebraic formulas? Is it merely the stripping of the romanticism of creative writing? Regardless of genre, is creative writing synonymous with authorship?

Note 7 Much of the attention in the study of written language use has focused on “texts” and how texts represent. Part of the attention to texts involves texts as material objects—newspaper articles, essays, web pages, short stories, poems, etc., as well as the translation of social events and social practices into texts through transcripts and the promulgation of cultural models. Looking across various disciplinary approaches to the study of texts—linguistic, critical discourse analysis, social semiotic, cognitive, literary—questions can be asked about the implications of the centrality of “text” to constructs such as writing and authoring as well as to the accompanying constructs of personhood, social interaction, social identity, continuity, change, discourse, and context itself. Even in some discussions of education and social and political change, text is a central construct. Consider critical literacy approaches to reading pedagogy; written texts and the world as text are reframed as part of a meaning making process. The texts may be different and the frames in which the texts are understood and interrogated may be different, but text is nonetheless the central construct.

64

David Bloome and George Newell

Note 8 Discussions of language use and acting upon the word, re-creating it, would appear to be, with few exceptions, more so about the creation of texts and the use of texts and heads to mediate action on the world (see Figure 5.1). A person (or group of people) create a text, perhaps a narrative, that influences how people think about the world (perhaps providing them with a shared cultural model or narrative) and that text/cultural model/narrative guides the social actions that people take with regard to each other and the environments in which they live. The process can be a recursive one such that one of the actions people take is the creation of a new text (or, the re-creation and maintenance of an extant text); and, there are numerous processes that mediate the relationship of these components. For those of us interested in how language (and in particular written language) can be used to act on the world, let us call the model in Figure 5.1 the “texts and heads” model. From the perspective of interest in how children learn to use language to act on the world, based on the “texts and heads” model, questions can be asked about how children learn to create texts that influence the cultural models that guide what people do and how they value and respond to what each other does.

Note 9 Does anything happen as simply, linearly, unmediated, uncontested, and as coherently as the social and intellectual processes assumed in Figure 5.1?

Note 10 If text is a nominalization of social actions taken through spoken and written language, does the nominalization obscure those actions, the agents who took the actions, and the evolving social relationships among participants? Does it obscure the messiness and tentativeness of everyday life? And if so, to what effect?

Note 11 In preparing to read the short story, “A Visit to Grandmother” by William Melvin Kelley, Ms. Kay engages her 10th graders in role playing a scene in which

Text

Figure 5.1 The “texts and heads” model

23 Notes in Search of An Author 65 a family with long-standing tensions and misunderstandings tries to resolve key issues. Just after the enactment, they discuss what they have taken from their impromptu drama: Ms. Kay: Student 1: Student 2:

Ms. Kay: Student 3: Ms. Kay: Student 4:

What seemed to bring about change? They talked it out. They tried to understand what was going on. I like how the mother tried, but she wasn’t perfect or something. She was still finding it hard. Being the mother was a new idea for me. How did the family try to work this out? Well, I noticed that the mother was calmer and the daughter tried to figure out why she was mad at her friend. Do you think the mother has changed? It’ll be hard; it’s not easy to do.

As this discussion ends, Ms. Kay shifts the focus to the short story about a long, unspoken misunderstanding that has complicated family relationships across generations. Through the dramatic improvisation and discussion of family matters Ms. Kay situates her students in an imaginary world to understand how characters make choices and then live out the implications of those choices. In her own words, Ms. Kay wanted Students to make sense out of what we are reading and learning in terms of their own experiences, even when those experiences represent conflicts and clashes. This is one way that I can ensure that when the students begin writing about the story or whatever we are reading, they bring a wealth of their own experiences, including what they have learned from people such as parents and neighbors who are not teachers in a school-sense. What makes writing interesting is what they bring of their own, even when that is not comfortable. The students say, “Role playing can be embarrassing but we can think about situations where there can be bad feelings without really getting in trouble or hurt.” But more, the students believed that Ms. Kay was concerned about their ideas. “Lots of teachers don’t seem to know we leave school, go home, and live with our families. [Ms. Kay] wants us to think about that part.” From another student, “When we are doing these [dramatic] activities, we sort of create things by ourselves; we aren’t just trying to perform someone’s play, but we are taking problems we face every day and examining them.” When asked about connections to reading and writing, a student commented that, “Oh, we are learning language arts stuff and all that. But it’s like the language arts stuff is just part of what we doing and learning. [Ms. Kay’s] class is like studying what we do and how think about things, not just going through pages in a book.”

66

David Bloome and George Newell

Note 12 Early in the school year, Ms. Kay’s approach to teaching writing about literature was grounded in students’ presentation of responses to their readings in thesis and support structures. Ms. Kay commented in an interview that, “They are clearly regurgitating some of the things I mention during discussion and some of the things they read in our textbook. It’s not their thinking and it’s not their ideas.” When Ms. Kay began to reformulate her 10th grade curriculum around the theme of “Choices and Dilemmas,” the writing assignments shifted also. At one point in the school year, for example, after Ms. Kay had read Pratt’s (1991) essay on “Arts of the Contact Zone,” she redefined her classroom as a “place where students are in a contact zone and a safe house. I want to change things just a bit and get into a discussion of how larger social and institutional forces also shape ethical decisions.” She developed an instructional unit that had a distinctively social and political edge that had her students raising questions about race, cultural differences, power, authority, and compassion, as demonstrated in the following interview with one of her students. Student:

One thing that I changed my mind about was that [Ms. Kay] was not doing serious school work with us. I couldn’t figure out why we talked about what we believe and how we think about things. This didn’t seem to be getting me ready for really for the hard writing that my sister said I will have to do next year [in 11th grade]. But now I think she [Ms. Kay] gets us ready for teachers who make English really hard, but she also gets us talking about our lives and the choices we have to make. I never had a class that was so much about me and about English at the same time. GN: Tell me about how she taught writing. Student: Well, for one thing she does not teach like I was used to—the stuff we write is different from last year. We did a paper on stereotyping and prejudice. That is a different topic [compared to last school year]. What we had to do is read some stories about prejudice and then think about that in our own lives, like what we do after school or something like that. But the big thing about [Ms. Kay’s] writing work is that you can write about things that actually happened to you. She is not like, “Okay. You can’t say that or you shouldn’t say that.” But with her writing is what happened to me. Like on this paper on prejudice, I was surprised at what I really do think [about the topic]. GN: Tell me about your essay. Student: Well, my title is “Ending Racism,” but it is really more about my own experiences with coming to this mostly black high school. This was kind of tricky. GN: What do you mean? Student: When you write for teachers, it’s usually a good idea to play it cool . . . not say stuff that they may not like or even feel, like, “What does this have to do with what I am teaching?”

23 Notes in Search of An Author 67 GN: Student:

GN: Student:

GN: Student:

GN: Student:

GN: Student:

Tell me more about the paper. You see, I am not like the other black students—I have parents from different races and my parents raised me to do good work in school. Points to a section of the paper. Here I describe that. What I am saying is that black students have stereotypes and prejudices about being black. Can you read that part? Reads from and comments on her essays. “In my life I’ve had many situations where I’ve been put down by my race for talking a certain way or doing my hair a certain way. I’d have to say that at first I didn’t want to come to this high school.” Now I see that seems mean. “I’ve had a chance to mingle with people of my own race and end some of my own stereotyping.” I want to read this one part though. “There’s a little bit of freedom here to be myself and express the kind of black person that I am.” So the writing clarifies your own thinking? Yes. I am not saying that the paper changed my mind about stereotyping, but it was like, when I wrote the essay I wondered, “Should I be thinking this way?” It was weird. I think it gave me a kind of an open mind maybe seeing our society and seeing how I see it. That make sense? Sure. How did you get your ideas for your paper? I listened to the discussions, I did the readings . . . And how she does readings is different too. She sort of adds the readings to keep us going on what we are working on. Like right in the middle of our discussion of stereotyping and how it might hurt people, she had us do this reading assignment—it was sort of a back-up method. What do you mean? Something else that she adds to her lesson plan, I guess. It’s something to help us see our ideas from a different view. Like, say we are talking about prejudice and you have your ideas all set about then. So she has us read a story from someone from a different culture, like African or something. All of a sudden it’s not a black and white issue; it’s about how Africans treat each other.

Note 13 Seeing things from another view does not necessarily make it a better view or the only view. But learning to compose texts that open up the possibilities of other views, would that be writing or authoring or would it depend on the degree to which the opening up to other views was acted upon?

Note 14 Performatives constitute a class of actions through language that are material. The performative of pronouncing a couple “married” is a use of language by one

68

David Bloome and George Newell

group to act upon another; by most social, cultural, economic, and political institutions in the United States and elsewhere on couples. California’s Proposition 8 is a performative, too. These written language actions are material in the sense that the performative is enforced by the actions of others and by social, political, and economic institutions. The actions of others and of the institutions they embody are material conditions to which people must respond. This may seem like a pedantic difference with the texts and heads model, but what is at stake is what it means to be a human being. It is to construct a world in which some are more human than others. The weight of these actions seems much more than a texts and heads model can carry. In brief, is there a difference between acting on the world and constructing a text? And is this difference reflected in language ideologies which are themselves ways of discoursing people in and out of time and space?

Note 15 Sheila came to the front of the kindergarten classroom taking up the teacher’s invitation to tell a story to the class.1 01 DB: 02 TEACHER: 03 Sh: 04 DB&TEACHER: 05 Sh: 06 DB: 07 Sh: 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Sx: 23 Sh: 24 25 26

Shxxxx you’ve got a story for us is it a happy one (nonverbal head movement) oh good me and Ms. Mxxxxxxx [the teacher] uh huh Ms. Mxxxxxx buy me a necklace (extended silence) and then I said her tree looked pretty (extended silence) and Ms. Mxxxxx took me to the park (extended silence) and (extended silence) ummmm (extended silence) Nxxxx came over my house (extended silence) Ms. Mxxxxx came over my house Jxxxxx came over my house (nonverbal pointing to another student in the class) I already got her (extended silence) Fxxxx coming over my house (extended silence)

23 Notes in Search of An Author 69 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 Ss: 38 TEACHER: 39 Sh: 40 Ss: 41 Sx: 42 Sh: 43 Sx: 44 Sh: 45 46 Sx: 47 48 TEACHER: 49 Sh: 50 51 52 53 54 55 Sx: 56 Sx: 57 Sh: 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 TEACHER: 66 67 68 69 Ss: 70 Sh:

Kxxxx came over my house Sxxxx coming over my house (extended silence) Mr. Bloome came over my house (extended silence) my mama looked downstairs and saw all of us she saw us making a pallet he was playing downstairs (giggling from students) Mxxxxx was sleeping with Jxxxxxx ooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo [undecipherable] a soap opera Nxxxxx was sleeping down the [undecipherable] ooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooo I sleep with a girl Jxxxxx was sleeping up top oooooo ooooo I was I was sleeping by my own self (giggling from students) (undecipherable) sleep with a boy (giggling from students) (undecipherable) Sxxxxxx was sleeping on the top bed (giggling from students) and Mr. Bloome was sleeping downstairs on the couch (giggling from students) Ms. Mxxxxxx was sleeping on the other couch so she can sleep (undecipherable) (undecipherable) Txxxxx and Jxxxxx was making them a (undecipherable) (giggling from students and various undecipherable comments) and I was sleeping on the the bottom bed (various undecipherable comments) and I was sleeping and momma woke up and saw all of us sleep my momma woke up and took us to school quit coughing and get off of me Dxxxxx (undecipherable comment) (extended silence and background whispering) and Dxxxxx was playing to the park my momma gave us a dollar ooooooo oooooooo my momma gave us two dollars

70

David Bloome and George Newell

71 Ss: 72 73 Sh: 74 Ss: 75 Sh: 76 Ss: 77 Sh: 78 Ss: 79 Sx: 80 Sh: 81 82 83 Ss: 84 Sx: 85 Sh: 86 87 Sx: 88 Sh: 89 TEACHER: 90 91 TEACHER: 92 Sh: 93 94 Ss: 95 DB: 96 Sx:

ooooooo (extended silence) then my momma gave us three dollars ooooooo and then my momma gave us four dollars ooooooo all of my kids came over my house and got em four four dollars ooooooo ooooooooo (undecipherable comment) and and (undecipherable) five dollars ooooooo ooooooooo (undecipherable whispered comment) no (extended silence) (undecipherable whispered comment) can’t tell you what to do This is Sxxxxx Sxxxx’s story (extended silence) Does your story have a happy ending what happens at the end of your story we all came back to school you took us to the dollar store the end ooooooooo ooooooooo very good story yes yes

Note 16 There are a series of extended silences in Sheila’s storytelling from line 8 to 19. One might interpret those silences as a transition between the event of constructing a narrative text to the event of constructing a storytelling event. Sheila begins by including different people who come over to her house. As she is standing in front of students who now are focused upon her and attending to her (as opposed to having wandering eye gaze and a series of side conversations)—they want to be included in coming over to her house—Sheila is confronted by their participation in the storytelling event. Sheila plays to the audience, first with references to sex and then with ever increasing references to money. What we want to claim is that part of what Sheila and her classmates have done is change what is happening, who is involved, and what it means; they have re-contextualized the event. At the same time, Sheila and her classmates have invoked a different language ideology. The quality of her storytelling is not to be evaluated by how well it incorporates the designated features of story grammar or whether it has

23 Notes in Search of An Author 71 a high point—but rather by how well it engages the audience in the storytelling event, the social relationships it establishes within the storytelling event, how well it entertains storyteller and audience, and its moral centeredness.

Note 17 Although we find the terminology problematic, we can characterize some uses of language and some language events as “performance oriented.” It is a problematic label because any language event involves performances and because it suggests that in events such as Sheila’s storytelling it is the storyteller alone that is oriented to performing. The audience is also performing. They are performing “audience” and doing so in a manner evoked by the nature of Sheila’s performance (her storytelling would appear to have indexed a particular storytelling practice involving a type of call and response). Even so, Sheila’s storytelling is not just about performance. It is also the construction of a well-structured text (although organized in a manner unfamiliar to those who expect a single plot line with a beginning, middle, and end) (see Champion, 2002, on the structuring of narratives produced by AfricanAmerican children). A careful examination of her story shows that there are a series of morals that constitute the center of her story. These are the morals of appropriate sexual behavior (being proper), friendship, of going to school, expressing love and care of children, and of having a loving mother. In order to understand the coherence of a narrative—whether articulated by a single speaker or constructed by a group in verbal interaction with each other, as might occur at a dinner table or at a church service—one has to know or at least assume the moral being indexed as an organizing principle for coherence. Thus, part of what can be claimed about Sheila’s storytelling is that she has re-contextualized the event. It is no longer about doing school nor is the active ideological language context that of pedagogized literacy; it is not primarily about the production of a text or a performance; but rather the event is contextualized as collective performance (the audience as performers, too) and as community-based storytelling. Is Sheila an author? If so, is she an author because of the imagined events of her story? Or, is she an author because she has re-contextualized the storytelling event? Would just one of these qualities be enough to be considered an author? Or, are both required?

Note 18 The invoking of contexts/cultural models/interpretive frames can be an act of re-contextualization, an act of contextual maintenance, an act of contesting contexts, or an act of interpellation/interdiscoursivity (cf., Fairclough, 1992). Each of these acts is an attempt to use language to act upon the world; though each act is different. Re-contextualization is an effort to change the assumed definition of what is happening, what it means, and who is involved. Contextual maintenance is an effort to remind people of what is happening, what it means,

72

David Bloome and George Newell

and who is involved. Contesting contexts involves disagreements over what is happening, who is involved, and what it means while at the same time creating another level of context, namely that “contesting” is going on and that there is a need to orient to the “contesting.” Interpellation/interdiscoursivity is the act of attempting to impose a context from another social institution either in an effort to supplant or to create additional layers of framing. For example, the use of business metaphors in discussions of education may supplant the educational context with a business context, and the business context then frames interpretation of what is happening, who is involved, and what it means. This seems far too personal (and interpersonal), material, embodied, dynamic, and potentially violent to make texts central. But it is at least some of what we do with texts. What would thus appear to be central is the doing.

Note 19 In Ms. Willis’s seventh grade classroom the students are reading Sterling Brown’s poem “After Winter” aloud. They then get in groups to address the task of describing the characters in the poem.2 One of the features of this poem is the use of African-American language: Butter beans fo’ Clara Sugar corn fo’ Grace An’ fo’ de little feller Runnin’ space. After the students make several comments about the characters, the teacher turns the discussion to the topic of African-American language. 01. Tw: 02. SS: 03. Tw: 04. SS: 05. Tw: 06. SS: 07. S?: 08. 09. Tw: 10. S?: 11. Tw: 12.

13. SS:

We’re talkin’ about 1865. / And we’re talkin’ about a period of time when slavery was still instituted K Yes Was slavery still instituted? K Yes Were blacks allowed the same type of education as whites? K No XXXXXXXX no that’s why. ╗. ╚ [Holds up hand] I’m still making my point OK, go ahead. / Just go ahead OK So if we know that slavery was still instituted / If we know that African Americans were not afforded the same education as other people / Is it a matter that they don’t *quote unquote* know any better / or they never had the opportunity to get an education K XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

23 Notes in Search of An Author 73 14. Tw: 15. St: 16. Tw:

17. S?: 18. Tw: 19. S?: 20. Tw:

I’m not asking you Directed to students calling out responses / I’m asking the person who made comment They didn’t have the opportunity Now. / Over a period of time / 1865 all the way to 1997 / there are still people who use terms and phrases / *de, fo’, folks* / that are similar to what we read in the poem ┌ Yea but.. └ Is that by choice K Choice Or is that because *quote unquote* a lack of knowledge / We’re not saying they don’t know any better because it’s very clear that many people speak this way / Outside of African Americans

The discussion continues for 40 minutes. Both the teacher and the students tell stories about events in which issues of “talking white” or “talking black” or prominent; they struggle with what it means to use African-American language not so much in the poem but in their own lives. At the end of the lesson, just before the bell rings, the teacher tells the students to apply any statement they are going to make about others first to themselves, to marinate on that, and only then make claims about what it means. The discussion of African-American language did not happen by chance or by taking advantage of a “teachable moment.” This had been Ms. Willis’s plan from the beginning. She had planned to use Sterling Brown’s poem as a prop for engaging in a discussion—an interrogation—of the students’ own worlds.

Note 20 Ms. Willis did not engage her students in a traditional explication of the poem; at least not within the framework of so-called “new criticism” or “reader response.” She did not engage in the text-oriented practices associated with Critical Literacy. They did not, for example, examine the poem for power relations, erasures, etc. Perhaps one way to understand what Ms. Willis and her students did is to focus on how they re-contextualized classroom literacy learning by redefining “literacy.” They appear to have shifted from defining literacy as text centered to literacy as the use of written language as a prop for interrogating, acting upon, and rebuilding the world(s) in which the teacher and students live. It is neither the ideology of language as text construction nor the ideology of language as collective performance; it is a language ideology centered on interrogation of social circumstances and social action.

Note 21 There are various definitions of “discourse.” Some of those definitions treat discourse as an object, as a set of related concepts or ways of using language. Thus, one can talk about the discourse of education, the discourse

74

David Bloome and George Newell

of globalization, or the discourse of an academic discipline such as science. Learning science is the learning of the discourse of science. In some cases, discourse has been treated as if it is an agent and can act upon the world. For example, “The discourse of the school marginalized the student” or “The discourse captured the student.” By contrast, if discourse is defined as a transitive verb, requiring both an actor/agent and an object, then a question can be asked about what kind or kinds of actions discourses are; or, more simply put, in terms of conceptualizing research a shift needs to be made from “discourse” to “discoursing.” Or said yet another way, who is doing what to whom with language; when, where and how? Thus, when we talk about “discoursing,” we are not referring to the construction of a “discourse” but rather to what people are doing to and with each other through the use of language, and we can ask such a question with regard to spoken language, written language and with regard to other modes of language. The difference between Figure 5.1 and Figure 5.2 is that Figure 5.2 does not automatically assume that acting on the world is mediated by text or by heads. It does not exclude texts and heads; but it does not require texts and heads. Indeed, it opens up the possibility of problematizing the concept of text and of heads. It leads us to ask questions about how language could constitute material action. No separation between language and doing.

Note 22 The pedagogization of writing is also an act, a doing. It can be what teachers and students do together in a classroom; they can discourse the pedagogization of writing. What is done with writing is the creation of texts for evaluation of their metalinguistic aspects; form, grammar, spelling, argument structure (see Street & Street, 1991). What they do—the positioning of the students as having differing levels of literacy (writing skills)—is made invisible by the foregrounding of the texts themselves as the objects of evaluation. Though there is doing, the doing is stripped from the writing. Regardless of the creativity and imagination of the content and form of a pedagogized writing, can writing in such a context ever be authoring? Does all writing need to be authoring for classrooms to facilitate writing development as growing up an author?

Discoursing

Figure 5.2 No separation between language and doing

23 Notes in Search of An Author 75

Note 23 There is a need to be cautious about valorizing authoring. The actions people take on the world as an author are not inherently good, liberatory, or constructive. They can be destructive, pernicious, violent, constraining, and hurtful. A theory of writing development as growing up an author gives no guarantees for social justice.

Notes 1 Sheila’s narrative comes from a research project conducted by Tempii Champion, Laurie Katz, and David Bloome funded by the National Council of Teachers of English Research Foundation. The analysis and interpretation here do not necessarily reflect those of the original study or the NCTE Research Foundation. 2 The transcript comes from Bloome, Carter, Christian, Otto, and Shuart-Faris (2005).

References Bakhtin, M. (1981 [1935]). The dialogic imagination. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bloome, D., Carter, S., Christian, M., Otto, S., & Shuart-Faris, N. (2005). Discourse analysis and the study of classroom language and literacy events: A microethnographic perspective. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Champion, T. (2002). Understanding storytelling among African American children: A journey from Africa to America. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity. Geertz, C. (1983). Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Goodman, K. (1989). Whole Language research: Foundations and development. The Elementary School Journal, 90(2), 207–221. Kelley, W. M. (1989). A visit to grandmother. In H. McDonnell, J. E. Miller, & R. J. Hogan (Eds.), Traditions in literature: America reads (pp. 47–52). Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, and Company. Pratt, M. L. (1991). Arts of the contact zone. Profession, 91, 33–40. Street, B., & Street, J. (1991). The schooling of literacy. In D. Barton & R. Ivanic (Eds.), Writing in the community (pp. 143–166). London: Sage. Wertsch, J. V. (1998). Mind as action. New York: Oxford University Press. Wolf, D., & Perry, M. (1988). Becoming literate: Beyond scribes and clerks. Theory into Practice, 27(1), 44–52.

6

Reading and Reigning Theories of Learning to Read as Political Objects Ray McDermott and Perry Gilmore

We open with an important passage from the anthropologist, Claude LéviStrauss (1992): The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes . . . it seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment . . . The use of writing for disinterested purposes, and as a source of intellectual and aesthetic pleasure, is a secondary result, and more often than not it may even be turned into a means of strengthening, justifying, and concealing the other. (p. 299) Our goal is to invite a cultural and political theory of how literacy systems acquire children. To this end, with examples from three field sites (real and imagined), we align the work of Ken and Yetta Goodman with a cultural and sociolinguistic theory of literacy. Since the 1950s, strong descriptive work has theorized apparently autonomous psychological and linguistic phenomena, like learning to read and write, as part of wider social and cultural patterns with which they actively and reflexively engage. By this turn of interpretative frames, as Lévi-Strauss suggested, learning to read has become more about culture and politics than about psychology. Reading research must focus on, as the real-world politics of reading are symptomatic of, the demands of those in power more than on the problems of individual children. The Goodmans have contributed to this turn. They have transformed the learning of children into a unit of concern and inquiry, and the cultural politics of theories of learning into units of analysis. Social structure and its reigning injustices must catch the attention of reading researchers and activists if there is to be a strategic defense of the rights of all individuals to read, write, and otherwise engage the body politic. We proceed in two parts. First, we suggest similarities between the Goodmans’ work and the anthropology of speaking, reading, writing, learning, and schooling as they have developed over the past five decades. Although there are points of contact between the Goodmans and anthropologists, they have proceeded mostly along independent paths in a wider set of developments. The Goodmans

Reading and Reigning

77

share anthropological assumptions about methods of inquiry, rhetorical strands, and political agendas. We explore how they have relied for theory and practice on cultural, historical, and political premises as well as psycholinguistic ones. Their efforts converge with an anthropology of education in confronting the problems of teaching and learning in a class- and race-divided society. A second section offers three thought experiments inspired by anthropological fieldwork. Participant observation and the significance of context are at the core of anthropological research. Anthropologists are relentless in seeking “an understanding of the larger context . . . Context becomes not just the place one goes to find the answer to questions, but where the important research questions themselves, as well as the answers, are located” (D. M. Smith, 1987, p. 264). Anthropologists seek a theory of literacy built up from a careful examination of the learning, uses, and meanings of people reading and writing in disparate social, political and educational contexts. If the Goodmans have developed their methods and arguments while worrying about children and teachers in American classrooms, we can in turn imagine them in different cultural circumstances, still every bit themselves, but working on new problems. So we drop them, like time-traveling anthropologists, into Korea after the great language reform of 1446, into a traditional and literate Philippine society in the 1950s, and lastly into an almost make-believe subculture governed by the behaviorism of B. F. Skinner circa 1970. The field sites are real, and so too the scripts and the reading behavior, but the Goodmans’ visit to each one relies on our imagination. In each social world, in each new assemblage of details and desires, the Goodmans would have to change as they make changes in the local idiom of problems and solutions. The anthropological thought experiments put their core concerns, and ours, into high-relief. Upon return to here and now, where the particulars rarely shift as dramatically as in a thought experiment, the Goodmans’ work will remain directly relevant to the struggles of our children’s children and their teachers. In a concluding discussion, we target usual ways of doing reading research. The Goodmans are often at odds with mainstream methods and so are educational anthropologists. To enrich the argument, and because Ken Goodman (1994) has invoked John Dewey in a call for “a transactional sociopsycholinguistics,” we invoke Dewey’s version of learning to read in a functioning democracy. Dewey’s remarks from a century ago critique a system much less competitive and geared to failure than required by current American arrangements (Varenne & McDermott, 1998). Dewey would have been upset at the odds against which the Goodmans have been struggling.

Literacy research in the context of anthropological principles At first, the Goodmans borrowed Chomskian (Ken) and Piagetian (Yetta) psycholinguistics to study children learning to read. Then they used M. A. K. Halliday and Lev Vygotsky to build a more “sociopsycholinguistic” and “sociotransactional” theory (K. Goodman, 1992; Y. Goodman, 1996). Across

78

Ray McDermott and Perry Gilmore

decades, they have developed four commitments that correspond roughly to four assumptions guiding ethnographic work on talk and thought: one, all learners, whatever their long-term limitations, can be seen as both momentarily competent and making sense of their world; two, learning must be observed closely and in context; three, learning is ubiquitous and manifests itself in many ways; and, four, learning is political. We take each one in turn. Assumed competence That all learners can be seen as both competent and making sense of their world is the central position for the Goodmans and for anthropology. This is not to deny individual differences among learners, but aptitude and attitude differences are rarely as relevant to the kinds of learning children have to do as the adult insistence on making small differences monumental. The great danger is to confuse limits imposed by social structure with differences across individual children. The Goodmans see all learners—children, adults, students, and teachers, all whether rich, poor, privileged, and underserved—as competent and inventive inside the particulars of their situation. They have insisted that children and teachers are more knowledgeable and capable than is appreciated and that our educational job is to build institutions, curriculum, and pedagogy that respect and build on their desires and skills. Learning is neither incidental, nor a matter of choice. As Ken Goodman says, “We don’t develop language because we can, we develop it because we must” (1991, p. 23). Similarly, a basic premise of anthropology is that learning is the sine qua non of being human and that, in accordance with the dynamics of access and the demands of their specific social situations, all humans are competent learners. The species has been defined by a unique language capacity. Language and communication are irrepressible and basic to the human situation. Further, anthropologists see all humans as behaving in ways that make sense— even if their good sense is not immediately apparent to an outside observer. Human survival is dependent on these characteristics. Beginning with the early work of Franz Boas (1911), anthropologists have long celebrated the power of intelligence among ordinary people. Good ethnography begins with the words and accounts of the people studied. Anthropologists entered the education scene 50 years ago largely in response to the pernicious deficit arguments about missing cognitive and language skills of minoritized kids. With rich verbal data documenting the learning and mastery of complex skills, linguistic anthropologists and sociolinguists debunked prevailing myths and demonstrated instances of the virtuosity of underserved minoritized populations where others saw deprivation and disability (for early collections, see Cazden, John, & Hymes, 1972; Gilmore & Glatthorn, 1982; Labov, 1972). Close observation That learning must be observed closely and in context is the most pressing task for the Goodmans and for anthropology. The Goodmans have insisted that

Reading and Reigning

79

the way to know what children know (about language, reading, themselves as readers, etc.) is to look at them carefully while they are actually engaged in the production of understanding and learning. They have closely observed learners individually and in social interaction with peers and teachers. While urging researchers to pay attention to the power of context, Yetta Goodman (1991, p. 386) has claimed that anyone using language—children, teachers, and researchers—are “learning from language, learning through language, and learning about language.” Participant observation is the cornerstone of ethnographic fieldwork and requires close, direct, systematic, and sustained long-term observation. The ethnographer has to participate to gain a hands-on insight into the meaning of things. The “emic” mandate—to understand behavior from the participants’ perspective—as difficult as it is to operate on, distinguishes most ethnographic descriptions from the “etic” accounts of behavior celebrated in other disciplines. The ethnographic impulse extends to diagnostic situations. In their analyses of reading behavior, Ken and Yetta Goodman (1994) have searched for the good sense in children’s miscues and found a lively world of competencies, sensible guesses, and rich estimates of what is offered by a text. Ethnographic in spirit, if not scope, miscue analysis searches for the “meanings” of the text as the intelligent reader actually engages them. In anthropology, observation of a particular behavioral complex is usually focused on and exploits a range of contexts, say, literacy in and out of school, for critical interpretation and analysis. In this spirit, literacy studies have drawn on the ethnography of communication across speech and literacy events to move the field of reading research gradually to a broader study of literacy in social context (for early texts, see Goody, 1968; Scribner & Cole, 1981; Schieffelin & Gilmore, 1986; Street 1985). The research raises questions about what counts (and is counted) as literacy, access to literacy, the politics of literacy, reigning literacies, and the social consequences of literacy in various contexts and cultures (see Harste and Short, Chapter 9, this volume). Various and ubiquitous That learning is ubiquitous and manifests itself in many ways is the rhetorical message of both the Goodmans and most anthropologists. They assume that individuals are learning all the time and everywhere, that learning is constant and continuous, whether formal or informal, conscious or unconscious, visible or hidden. Learning to read occurs in many ways and often in ways that neither require, nor benefit from, a teacher or classroom. Numerous studies (some in the next section) now document other ways of learning to read in other languages, other scripts, other cultures, and in an array of American situations across generations. Marilyn Cochran-Smith (1984) has shown how affluent academic parents at an urban preschool 30 years ago could afford to send their children to socialize and not to learn to read. Their children became competent readers on the side. A follow-up study would likely show that under current competitive

80

Ray McDermott and Perry Gilmore

pressures, parents would resist a deliberate lack of literacy instruction. In either case, the children learn to read; what they have to do to look learned may have changed. Anthropology does not automatically embrace a direct relationship between teaching and learning. Learning is better conceived as unintentional, in passing, on the spot, and emergent. There is no inherent attachment between ways of reading and writing, ways of teaching reading and writing, and individuals actually learning to read and write. So say American slave literacies (Gundaker, 2007), Southeast Asian pleasure scripts (Reid, 1988), the women’s script in China (Chiang, 1995), American Indian cultural identity scripts (Basso & Anderson, 1973), and so on. Teaching “reading” can overlap with teaching what Jules Henry (1963) calls fear of failure. He cautions, in anthropological fashion, that lessons are not what they seem. Most societies do not have a separate category for learning independent of the situations in which life is lived and everyone asked to lend a hand. Hierarchical societies—Imperial China being the source and for a millennium the champion of tests of homeless and detached knowledge as the measure of a people in rank order (Elman, 2000)—fit closer to Lévi-Strauss’s reading of history in which what has been written and read can be used on tests that divide, on tests that “have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment” (1992, p. 299). This message and its implications are difficult for anthropologists to convey to the educational community and similarly difficult for educators, often caught in narrow and misguided curricular demands and restrictions, to address directly; it is crucial if we are to educate in wise, equitable, and socially just ways. Political message That learning is political is the pressing political message to literacy researchers. The Goodmans have been courageous political advocates of all learners and teachers. They have engaged what on the surface has appeared to be a battle over a technical difference in pedagogy and instructional methods in the so-called “phonics” controversy. From an anthropological perspective, and from their perspective, they have been championing a political rather than a pedagogical agenda. In the past two decades, a critical ethnography has emerged with a strong social justice agenda. Much of this work documents, and sometimes interrupts, institutional arrangements that in various ways allow and constrain literacy. Most of the findings underscore the educational reality that literacy has more to do with access than instruction, more to do with power than pedagogy. In the next section, we provide three literacy contexts (one from long ago and far away, one from less long ago, but still far away, and one from a 1960s psychology laboratory), and we speculate on the Goodmans’ responses to each site. Aside from the delight of a thought experiment, we present each example to demonstrate the value of an anthropology of literacy for rethinking and interrupting reigning literacies.

Reading and Reigning

81

Reading research under different conditions of reigning The Goodmans in Korea in 1450 Difficulty of reading has been overemphasized by educational psychology as a cause of learning problems. Occasionally, usually under colonial conditions by which a script invented to serve one language is forced on a people with a quite different language, script difficulty can make life challenging for learners. One such case is the use of Chinese characters by writers of Korean for about 1,500 years. In any given sentence, a single Chinese character could signal various difficult-to-predict functions: semantic meanings, Chinese sounds, Korean sounds, or grammatical markers. Linguistic form and linguistic sense were distributed in ways so complex that for Korean readers and writers it was easier, for those with the means to do so, to learn Chinese. For the most part, Korean literati of the millennium before the announcement of the Korean alphabet in 1446, and, strangely, for 450 years after, used Chinese characters to read and write Korean, much as, for example, non-Arabic-speaking Muslims have struggled with the Koran or Catholic priests continued with Latin for centuries after it was a spoken tongue. This is not an easy path to universal literacy, and from early in their struggles with Chinese writing, Koreans began to take shortcuts. In a masterful study, Ledyard (1966) has shown four reading strategies used in one four-line poem written over 1000 years ago. Each line has seven Chinese characters, but in a Korean word order. Any character can potentially serve any of the four strategies. First we offer the poem transliterated into a roman script (in four fonts) and translated into English. Then we list the four strategies and use the four fonts to represent them (capitals, lower case, both with and without italics). Finally, we include an English-relevant (if not Korean-precise) illustration of each strategy as if Chinese characters were being used to represent English. The strategies make sense, but they are complex. The Korean reader had to decode each Chinese character by sound and/or meaning and identify its strategic function in the sentence. Even a glance at the strategies, here represented in Western scripts, attest to the difficulty of reading Korean with Chinese characters: The Song of Ch’oyong (first stanza) tunggyeng POLgi TOra In Tunggyeng’s bright moon, PAM TORi NULNIDAga Caroused into the night, TOre sa TSARoi PUgun Came in and lo, looking at the bed, KARori NEH’Iere Four legs! Strategy 1. Chinese characters used for their Chinese meaning, but pronounced in Korean, what Ledyard calls a glossogram (represented in italic

82

Ray McDermott and Perry Gilmore CAPITALS in the poem); consider English readers with access to 5,000 Chinese characters, each with a fixed semantic value, being able to pronounce a Chinese version of “I 心 (heart) NY” as “I LOVE NY”. Strategy 2. Chinese characters borrowed for their Chinese sound, what Ledyard calls a phonogram (represented in lower case letters in the poem); consider the character, 心, independent of its meaning and pronounced /shin/ in Chinese, being used to represent the sound /shin/ in Korean or the name in English for a part of the leg bone between the ankle and knee. Strategy 3. Chinese characters borrowed for their Korean sound, what Ledyard calls a glossophone (represented in CAPITALS); consider the character, 可, independent of both its meaning (can, may) and its sound (ke) in Chinese, but used to represent the Korean sound GA to Korean readers, just as it could be used by English readers to represent the first syllable of the word Galileo.1 Strategy 4. Chinese characters read for sound and meaning in both Chinese and Korean, that is, loanwords from Chinese that had become, with minor phonological shifts, part of the Korean language (represented in italic lower case letters); consider the character, 心, taken from the Chinese for meaning (heart) and sound (shin), and pronounced shim or sim in Korean.

Even for readers knowing both Chinese and Korean, learning the decoding strategies might be discouraging. Only the elite of the society became fluent with texts. To remedy the problem, King Sejong founded his famous “College of Assembled Worthies” with a handful of laboratories, including a cartographic team to map the country, a botanical team to translate the Chinese medical classics into Korean floral equivalents, and one of the world’s great phonics laboratories to work on a Korean script. After years of work, his linguists invented the world’s easiest and perhaps most linguistically sophisticated script. They used the syllable for the basic unit, as in Chinese, but built it up, perhaps with some stimulation from an eastern Indic script, likely Mongolian, from a small number of lines and circles marking consonant and vowel sounds in Korean. The result, called Hangul, requires only 28 letters, or features,2 in constant recombination to represent all 1096 syllables (of six types: v, cv, vc, vcc, cvc, cvcc)3 in the Korean language (DeFrancis, 1989, 191). One can learn the features in about an hour and the rules of combination almost as easily. Amazingly, some of the features partially represent the articulatory phonetics of the language. The King was so impressed that, in the last entry of his annals of 1443–44, he wrote an enthusiastic report on the achievement: This month, His Highness personally created the 28 letters of the Vulgar Script. Its letters imitate the old seal, and are divided into initial, medial, and terminal sounds. Once one combines them, they form a syllable. All sounds in both Chinese characters and in the rustic language of this country may be written. Although they are simple and fine, they shift and change [in function] without end. These are called the “Correct Sounds for the Instruction of the People.” (quoted in Ledyard, 1966, pp. 97–98)

Reading and Reigning

83

Two years later, the Correct Sounds for the Instruction of the People were published for all to see, and King Sejong offered a strong proclamation of support: The language of this country is different from that of China, so that it is impossible (for us Koreans) to communicate by means of Chinese characters. Therefore, among the unlearned people, there have been many who, having something to put into words, have in the end been unable to express themselves. Feeling sorry for this, I have newly made 28 letters only because I wish them to be easy for everyone to learn and convenient for use in daily life. (quoted in Shin, Lee, & Lee, 1990, p. 1) Next he presented each feature with an account of why it was so formed, for example: Each of the twenty-eight letters of the correct sounds is made according to the shape of the speech organs . . . The molar sound „ [k] is the shape of the tongue root closing the throat; the lingual sound „ [n] is the shape of the tongue attached to the upper jaw; the labial sound „ [m] the shape of the mouth; the glottal sound „ [s] the shape of the teeth, and the glottal sound „ [o] the shape of the throat. (pp. 5–6) And so on, although some of the features are less modeled on the shape of the mouth than on the contours of Korean cosmology. Not everyone was pleased with the promise, and resistance grew quickly. The major complaint was that Korea should be in a Chinese cultural orbit. One official wrote a memorial of complaint: Only types like the Mongolians, Tanguts, Jurchen, Japanese and Tibetans have their own graphs. But these are matters of the barbarians, and not worth talking about. It has been traditionally said, “Change the barbarians using Chinese ways; we have never heard of changing toward barbarousness” . . . If you put the Vulgar script into practice, then it will be the Vulgar script that clerks will exclusively study. They will have no regard for learning. (quoted in Ledyard, 1966, pp. 104–105) The opposition won. King Sejong retired and died in 1450. For the next 450 years, the elites continued to work in the Chinese script, and Hangul was used mostly for military secrets and writing low prestige fiction, particularly among women.4 Not until the 20th century and the rise of schooling did the simple script take its place. Reigning, not reading, was the issue. Ledyard agrees: “Sejong’s language plans involved much more than reform; they required a social revolution. But he lived about four and a half centuries before the conditions necessary for such a revolution could come into being” (1966, p. 113). Imagine now the Goodmans in Korea for the 450 years Hangul was kept from the people. What would they be working for and why? What mix of reading

84

Ray McDermott and Perry Gilmore

and reigning would they require? It is fun to think of the Goodmans founding an Imperial Phonics Association (yes, IPA, of course) to protect the right of all children to use the simple script building syllables one phoneme at a time rather than memorizing Chinese characters and their varied puzzling uses in Korean texts. The thought was funny but not accurate. After all, King Sejong was not offering a horribly incomplete solution, like the simplicities of American phonics for the complexities of reading English, to the difficulties of learning to read the native language. Nor was the claim for the efficiency of phonics supported by a cynical academic market pitting all children against each other. King Sejong was not pushing the sound-based script as part of an invidious No Child Left Behind program—make that No Child of Privilege Left Behind—that promises only a faster documentation of those who are doing less well than others. The Goodmans among the Hanunóo in 1950 At the opposite extreme of the Korean example sits the Hanunóo, a small group of people living on Mindoro, a small mountainous island southwest of Manila. The Hanunóo script was not imposed upon, but neither did it fit well, to an outside eye anyway, the demands of the Hanunóo language. The earliest version of the script took shape about 1500 BCE on the Levant with simplified Egyptian letters in a Cuneiform ordered alphabet (aleph, bet, gimel) called Proto-Canaanite. Over the next 1500 years, it divided into two, one northwest to Greece and Rome, the other southeast into Aramaic and then Sanskrit before dividing again: northeast to Tibet and Mongolia and southeast until it reached the Philippines around 600 years ago (for the last leg of this amazing journey, see Conklin, 1949; Damais, 1955; Holle, 1999; Kuipers & McDermott, 1996; Scott, 1985). The earliest missionaries to the central Philippines reported universal literacy, both male and female. In 1593, about 3000 years after Proto-Canaanite started its two-way walk around the world, the PhoenicianGreek-Roman script continued West and met the Indic script on the pages of the first book published in the Philippines, a Doctrina Christiana, written in Spanish with Roman (Gothic Italic) letters and in Tagalog with Indic letters (Conklin, 2007; Gonzalez, 1985; Wolf, 1947). At the same time, Spanish missionaries erased the old script and its poetic traditions. In 1946, the anthropologist, Harold Conklin, went to work with the Hanunóo, because they were one of only three groups, all of them peripheral to modernization pressures, still using the script (Conklin, 1949, 2007; Postma, 1988). The Hanunóo script consists of 17 graphs: three for stand-alone vowels (a, i, u) and 14 for consonant-vowel pairs (see Figure 6.1). Two diacritic lines, when placed over or under a c-v syllable ending in a, change the vowel to a syllable final i or u. The written syllables are all open (c-v), but about one-third of Hanunóo spoken vocabulary and about two-thirds of the vocabulary appearing in the poetry, an older and more formal register, require a final consonant. Imagine in English that all syllables beginning with a bu—bus, bug, bum, but, butt, bunt, bunk, and so on—are written simply as bu. Hanunóo readers apparently fill

Reading and Reigning

85

in the missing information by using contexts cues. Other complications would confuse American reading theorists, but seem not to inhibit the Hanunóo: first, no fixed conventions for orienting graphs, as long as they are all written in the same direction in a given piece of work (left-handers write in a mirror script); and second, no fixed conventions for moving to a next line, whether to the left or right, or even, although they generally write from the bottom to the top of a

Figure 6.1 Sample of Hanunóo By permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.

86

Ray McDermott and Perry Gilmore

piece of bamboo, to the top or bottom of the next line. The Hanunóo offer no reading or writing instruction to children and make no demands that everyone read or write, only that one person in each compound should be able to handle the literacy needs of others, and still the Hanunóo had a 70% literacy rate. Mostly the script is used to write poetry, mostly love poetry designed for courtship (or in following the courtship of others). Although famous for their vast botanical and agricultural knowledge (Conklin, 2007), the Hanunóo do not use the script to record scientific work. Lists and records of obligations and debt, the stuff, as Lévi-Strauss said, of early literacy in the rise of most ancient states, are also rare. Written usually by scratching a knife point onto the surface of a bamboo tube, the script could be found on other objects, particularly leaves for letters sent to people far away. The script was used mostly to record thousands of poems (and used often, as bamboo is not durable in the tropical environment). Enter the Goodmans. They are incapable of doing nothing, but learning to read is not a problem among the Hanunóo. The pedagogy is invisible, and there is no price for non-participation. No one is getting hurt, no children forced to read, no phonic merchants pushing an easier script. No one getting hurt is like having nothing to do. The Hanunóo have a fairly egalitarian society, without enough injustice to keep the Goodmans busy tracking the hectic Hanunóo schedule of difficult labor and ritual rounds. For real injustice, the Goodmans would have to look outside, to the arrival within decades of the capital investments that could make the mountains of the Hanunóo possible hotel sites. With the real estate market comes a new kind of reading. In the late 16th century, when missionaries first encountered the lowland Philippine scripts, they dealt directly with their problem of having to read open written syllables (c-v) standing for closed spoken syllables (c-v-c) in Tagalog. The missionaries thought the problem could be relieved by using a cross (“+”) to close each open syllable missing a final consonant. No problem that it wasn’t a problem for indigenous literates! Later by 350 years, about the time when we have the Goodmans on assignment, imagine new visitors making the same suggestion to the highland Hanunóo. Another non-problem solved, but the unnecessary solution arrived both times at the behest of newcomers backed by market and military powers. The Hanunóo could handle a cross closed syllable as something new to play with, just as American kids can handle teacher-taught and school-tested phonics if they have to, but it is much harder to deal with the soldiers and the cash that accompany the changed texts. Reigning, not reading, is the major issue, and the Goodmans would still have a job to do. The first time round, the lowland scripts were destroyed, and 50 years after the second time round, Hanunóo children are in schoolrooms learning Tagalog written in a roman script. Bring back the old script. Bring back the contexts, what Dewey called the purposes, of the old script. Methods of teaching reading might be a point of focus for getting organized, but the real villain, as in American grade schools, as in the Korean language reform of 1446, is a social structure that has turned reading, even Hanunóo children learning to read, into a political act.

Reading and Reigning

87

The Goodmans in a behaviorist laboratory circa 1970 In the 1960s, the argument that all speakers were competent users of language was carried by Noam Chomsky (1957; see Lenneberg, 1967, with a strong Appendix by Chomsky). If they—any they: all children—could speak a grammatical sentence, and they almost always could, they already knew more than their teachers could ever teach them. They could already anticipate, plan, and bring propositions to the fore. There was a deep competence behind every version of performance. In a stunning paper, Ken Goodman (1967) used Chomsky to help describe reading as a “psycholinguistic guessing game.” The reader, no less than the writer, has to plan, to anticipate, and bring propositions to the fore. Behind every reader, there is a language competence that needs only to be unleashed; seemingly inadequate reading performances could not hide, not forever, the capacity of children to learn to read and write. Reading does not have to be taught as much as it has to be engaged. Reading can be nurtured, of course, but it might be better to say that it cannot be taught (although people can make believe it is being taught, that being what schools do). Reading cannot be taught, for it would be too difficult to teach or to learn except at its own pace. Language comes to us as a species right. Already known in some deep way, it is in people’s lives on its own terms and only then to be encouraged, performed, and used to complex ends. The arch-alternative to Chomsky was B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (1957), a book that tried to explain the complexities of language by accounting for the contingencies of reinforcement that could guide one to say the right things at the right time. Chomsky (1959) reviewed Skinner’s book and destroyed it. In hindsight, Skinner looks half right for what he could see in how things work (especially on self-editing) and half wrong for what he had to say about it. Chomsky turns out to be the mirror image of this diagnosis, but in 1959, after 50 years of a thoughtless and brainless behaviorism choking the psychological and social sciences, Chomsky’s critique was devastating. Now, after 50 years of a bloodless, environment-less focus on cognition, we still need Chomsky, and Skinner, and more. In the 1960s, the Goodmans had to confront educational research for seeing children, if they were learning too slowly, as empty-headed, and so too today. At the same time, the Goodmans had to confront behaviorist approaches that reduced reading to sets of isolated skills, as if, with proper reinforcement, they could be accumulated and turned into skilled reading, as if kids could be tricked into competence. Again, this must still get done today—one gimmicky and costly self-promoting save-the-world reading program at a time. In the first two thought experiments, dropping the Goodmans into a new environment revealed their stable instinct of social goodwill. Dropping the Goodmans into a behaviorist laboratory is a more outrageous switch. King Sejong’s court or the swidden rice fields of the Hanunóo would be intrinsically interesting to the Goodmans, but a behaviorist’s approach to reading might well have them running from the building. Let’s stay with it. Enter Donald Smith, behaviorist researcher and teacher of reading, whose laboratory broke reading into sets of hierarchically ordered skills and then built

88

Ray McDermott and Perry Gilmore

task environments for training children to competence. His approach could make the most chaotic reading programs look like elegant simplifications. He estimated that training a child from letter discrimination to reading full sentences would engage 18,000 isolatable and necessary tasks (1976, p. 7). Would readers have to master all 18,000 skills? Would they really start with the first and move forward? Would the new skills include knowing the purpose of reading? Smith thankfully doesn’t give the full list. A behaviorist could easily plunge into such a position. We repeat one of Smith’s stories, and then consider how much his solution, despite its theoretical baggage, might invite the Goodmans to roll up their sleeves to help. Belinda was a special child in need of special help. Reading seemed beyond possible. She consistently scored in the low 50s on IQ tests and displayed limited language resources. Smith went to work on her auditory skills, but after four sessions, she was still unable to sort out simple word differences and similarities: To groups of three words each such as /cake cake cake/ and /cake rake cake/, she was to respond by circling a picture of a cake if the words were the same, or by circling [no] if the middle word was different. She had received systematic training in the words same and different and in circling. (p. 72) On the chance she knew more than she was showing, and based on information about her usual demands for confirmation, the experimenters started to give her direct feedback every two minutes. Her performance skyrocketed. She became more confident and started to talk more with her peers. Within a year, she was a special reader in her classroom of special children. Despite the behaviorist technology and task minutia (but not in contradiction of behaviorist principles), Smith operated on assumptions that would make the Goodmans feel at home: first, that “any child who speaks English can learn to read what he says”; and second, that “any learning task failed by the child must be viewed as an inappropriate task rather than as a deficiency of the child” (p. 5). These assumptions allow for kids to come first. All children have specific skills and aptitudes—if only their adults would make good use of them. Chomsky could guide a teacher to this position, and so too Skinner. The Goodmans could guide a teacher to this position, and so too Smith. If adults are willing to look and listen, all children, in whatever sense of special, can guide a teacher to this position. The Goodmans would not have to run from a behaviorist classroom if all children—even low IQ—children learn to read there, but eventually they would have to leave because helping one child at a time would not be enough. Next questions would emerge: How can I help this child? What kind of society would leave children so easily without confidence, without resources to learn what is available to them? Why do American educators have to work so hard to arrange what the Hanunóo and even King Sejong (albeit 450 years later) seemed to arrange so easily? The second line of questions helps to situate the Goodmans’ project as more than a desire to help children. Their analytic concern is the social world invidiously organized to make children the site for structural reproduction.

Reading and Reigning

89

Among the Hanunóo, the Goodmans would worry about the children’s learning if it helped keep state militia and hotels at bay. Back in the US, it is more difficult to keep reading and reigning analytically separate. Our schools focus in individual differences, on children dispositionally ready for differential effort and achievement. Such variation could be fodder for building a diverse and potent democracy. Or the diversity could be used to slot children permanently on the periphery of American democracy. Imagine what Adam Smith (1994) would have said about such interference in the free market; actually, don’t imagine, for the market, said Smith in 1776, must have free access to a fully educated thinking population (see especially the rarely read sections on why governments should pay for education, pp. 818–876). Why did Donald Smith’s laboratory have to come between Belinda and her classroom to insure what was available to her with a little reinforcement, namely, reading, writing, conversation, and a life without fear of institutionally backed degradation? This question does not require a theory of learning, but a theory of politics. The theories of learning presently available, if believed literally and procedurally enforced by a regime of tests and measures, function more in the service of reigning than reading. Faced with this problem, the Goodmans have searched for a theory of learning and teaching that would produce readers ready to disrupt the current social structure.

Conclusions Almost all research on reading offers three levels of analysis and interpretation: first, a description of how persons, usually children, read texts under experimental conditions; second, almost always the results are applied, sometimes with precision, more often not, to a theory of what might be wrong with persons who cannot proceed in the same way; and third, both data and theory are applied, sometimes, and increasingly, with political backing and corporate investment, to a specific way of teaching reading, particularly to children in schools. This paper has offered nothing of the kind. We seek no false solutions to false problems. For a false problem, consider: being forced to read too early in life and to read materials of no interest on demand, and with little connection to the rest of life; for a correspondingly false solution, consider ways to jam skills, ala phonics, into young children while ever ready to place them, if they do not perform better and more quickly than others, into diagnostic slots from which few recover. We have three strong and, for American educators, counterintuitive impressions about learning to read. An impression is not a proof, but neither sustained inquiry into patterns of learning to read across many societies nor decades of research by the Goodmans and many others in the United States has diminished our impressions. In this last section of the paper, we summarize our impressions and support them with three small texts from John Dewey over a century ago. On their own, the texts suggest that a triangle of anthropology, the Goodmans, and Dewey is not random.5 Rather than press lineage connections, we use Dewey simply to display an affinity between his commonsense and our impressions

90

Ray McDermott and Perry Gilmore

about learning to reading; what Dewey could say easily has become controversial and, were it not for anthropologists and researchers like the Goodmans, difficult to imagine. We might be better off fighting against premature and competitive literacy and making our way back to Dewey’s assumptions about the place of children and learning in a democracy. First, reading is likely easier learned in a society in which children are not forced to read before they are interested or ready (nine is the good age when almost anyone can learn to read with ease; see Rohwer, 1971). It was not unusual for early 20th-century theories of education to plan the onset of reading years later than current practice. Although for different reasons, Dewey, Maria Montessori, and Rudolf Steiner were one on this issue.6 Dewey typically invokes the purpose of knowledge in a community: Books and the ability to read are regarded strictly as tools. The child must learn to use these, just as he would any other tools. This implies that he shall have arrived at some conception of what they are for, and have some end in view or motive for using them, and that the actual learning to read shall grow out of this motive . . . The premature teaching of reading in the present school system involves undue strain on the eyes and the nervous system, takes away time from subjects which have a positive content, and devotes it to a purely formal study which the child can master with much less strain and in shorter time when he is ready for it. Moreover, after the child has learned to read, there is very little material to put before him which is worthwhile. (MW1.330)7 Second, reading is likely easier learned in a society in which it is not taught. Historically, learning to read has rarely been made as difficult as in the United States today. Something easy-to-do has been made somehow difficult-to-do. The somehow is key. Learning to read has not been made more difficult as much as getting labeled for not learning to read has been made easier for the half of kids going less quickly than the other half. Competitive political conditions have American educators focused on what is wrong with children and documenting with precision every child’s every failure. File cabinets in American schools are filled with records of what children do not know as measured by tests with high predictive and low productive pedagogical powers. Political and institutional change requires more than new techniques for word processing by individual children modeled on the behavior of subjects—nice word, subjects, those subjected—in experimentally controlled, reality disconnected environments put together by adults with little regard for the real worlds in which and for which kids are asked to learn. Learning to read does not have to be a problem; nor do researchers have to limit their procedures of inquiry to experiments and tests. Most cultures have successfully raised literate next generations without stereotyping and probing individual minds, and we can look to them for guidance on doing the same. Misplaced emphasis on the mechanics of reading has given short shrift to the purposes of reading and writing. Consider Dewey:

Reading and Reigning

91

One reason why reading aloud in school is as poor as it is is that the real motive for the use of language—the desire to communicate and to learn—is not utilized. The child knows perfectly well that the teacher and all his fellow pupils have exactly the same facts and ideas before them that he has; he is not giving them anything at all new. But it may be questioned whether the moral lack is not as great as the intellectual. The child is born with a natural desire to give out, to do, and that means to serve. When this tendency is not made use of, when conditions are such that other motives are substituted, the reaction against the social spirit is much larger than we have any idea of. (EW5.63–64) Misplaced emphasis on the mechanics of reading has also hidden the social structural uses of failure, or, more consequentially, the social structural uses of the attribution of failure. Reigning, not reading, is the more likely site of the problem. And third, reading is most easily learned in a society without constant measures, tests, diagnoses, and labels that record who is reading better than whom. Dewey worried about the consequences of tests on teacher–student relations: If some scheme had been intentionally devised in order to prevent the teacher from assuming the full responsibility he ought to feel for keeping constant watch and ward over the life of the child, for relating the child’s work to his temperament, capacities, and to totality of influences operating him—if the scheme, I say, had been intentionally devised for relieving the teacher of the necessity of the most intimate and unremitting acquaintance with the child, nothing better could have been found. (MW3.243) Dewey unfortunately has described what gets done today to our children and teachers in school, but more so. Teachers do not like the spate of tests they must administer to children, and children have always known better. These emotional stands are symptoms of a larger problem. When matched to the course of things, tests can be helpful to organizing necessities, learning included, and we should use them often to see how things are going. The larger problem turns tests from a potentially helpful learning tool to a way of getting tracked in comparison to others, from keeping track of progress to keeping track of regress. The larger problem feeds on historical and institutional conditions that have educators focusing more intently on what might be wrong with kids and their teachers than what might be right. Noto bene: When Dewey complained about children being forced to read too early in life, he meant before the sixth or seventh year of school. In the century since, that age has been moved down to the earliest grades. Children inserted in the bottom reading groups and classes in the early grades wind up overwhelmingly in the lowest achievement groups a decade later. Smart—make that, savvy—parents have started delaying their children’s march through school hoping that they can gain a competitive edge on their peers with an extra six months

92

Ray McDermott and Perry Gilmore

of preparation. They have also started to pay for tutors at exorbitant rates, anything that can help make a difference. Only a generation ago, Americans rolled their eyes at stories of the examination hell faced by Japanese children giving up their childhood to memorize useless facts in after-school schools to gain a competitive edge on national exams. Now we are moving in the same direction. Dewey would be saddened by the outcome: democracy made less possible by schools that should be its finest tool. Anthropologists are less surprised, which means perhaps less sadness and more anger. Cultural analysts see in the rise of an education system relentlessly geared for the expression and documentation of failure a powerful cultural game of hiding the bald facts of economic and racial stratification behind the apparent facts of measured individual differences in ability and intelligence. Ken and Yetta Goodman see in this development, as rampant as it is, what they have always seen: an endless willingness of adults to see children as less than they are and another opportunity for them to set things right, to show what kids can do, and to help teachers fight more for children than against them.

Acknowledgments Kihyun Ryoo was enormously helpful with the details of the Korean example. The Hanunóo example simplifies on the hard-won details of Harold C. Conklin’s (2007) ethnographic work; we appreciate using his materials in Figure 6.1.

Notes 1 The last Chinese character of the second line in Ledyard’s transliteration, PAM TORi NULNIDAga, is an instance of a GA form. Ledyard’s use of lower case letters renders it a strategic use of a Chinese character for its Chinese sound. To a contemporary Korean reader, it can be capitalized as a strategic use a Chinese character for its Korean sound. Ledyard’s account may be more sensitive to 9th century Chinese and Korean phonology. 2 On reasons for calling them features rather than letters, see Sampson (1985); for the opposite argument, see DeFrancis (1989). 3 By the usual abbreviation, “v” is for vowel and “c” is for consonant. It is difficult to use a syllabary to represent a language with 1,096 syllables, likely impossible for one with 4,800 (Vietnamese) or 8,000 (English) syllables, and easier for one with about 100 (Japanese) or 400 (Yi, Mandarin Chinese) syllables (DeFrancis, 1989). A language with a small number of syllables demands less memory work for readers using a syllabary, but creates a homophone problem that has to be solved in other ways (and so the Japanese use of Chinese characters along with their syllabaries). Nyikos (1988) has noted that written English, courtesy of cumbersome spelling conventions, requires over 2,000 visual displays to represent its 42 phonemes in the words listed in a collegiate dictionary; this does not make written English a syllabary, but it certainly means it is more complex and nuanced than any system of phonics. 4 See Chiang (1995) for a comparable 19th century Chinese case; see Horodeck (1987) and DeFrancis (1977) for Japanese and Vietnamese solutions and struggles with similar problems in using Chinese characters to represent different languages. Much American reading research focuses on problems that tell more about alphabetic biases

Reading and Reigning

93

than about problems faced by learners. Familiarity with various scripts, their uses, and their ideologies should be essential to the field (for surveys, see Coulmas, 1989, 2003; DeFrancis, 1989; Sampson, 1985; for range and detail, see Daniels & Bright, 1996; and for a three-volume bibliography, see Ehlich, Coulmas, & Graefen, 1996). Taxonomies of writing systems have been available for centuries. For a stunning example from the French Enlightenment, see the reproduction of Diderot & d’Alembert (2001); for diverse Western ideas about writing systems, see Drucker (1999). 5 We could also point to numerous anthropologists returning to classic American philosophy (C.S. Peirce, W. James, Dewey, and G.H. Mead) for guidance and inspiration and to the place of Dewey in American educational theory (but not, as far as we know, the texts we cite on reading). 6 Jean Piaget also argued for late reading instruction. In lectures and discussions at the Piaget Society Meetings in Philadelphia in the late 1970s, Piaget, in resistance to the misuse of his own developmental theory, condescendingly identified “the American question”: How fast can we get them through the stages? He noted that Americans (and Parisians), to their detriment, were too concerned with early reading and fast learning. He instead insisted that children, especially boys, should not be forced to learn to read until the age of nine. 7 Dewey references are keyed to his Early Works (EW) and Middle Works (MW), in each case followed by volume and page numbers.

References Basso, K., & Anderson, N. (1973). The Western Apache writing system: The symbols of Silas John. Science, 180, 1013–1021. Boas, F. (1911). The mind of primitive man. New York: Macmillan. Boodberg, P. (1979). Selected works of Peter A. Boodberg. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cazden, C., John, V., & Hymes, D. (Eds.) (1972). Functions of language in the classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. Chiang, W. W. (1995). “We two know the script; we have become good friends”: Linguistic and social aspects of the women’s script literacy in Southern Hunan, China. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton. Chomsky, N. (1959). Review of B.F. Skinner, Verbal behavior. Language, 35, 6–58. Cochran-Smith, M. (1984). The making of a reader. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Conklin, H. C. (1949). Bamboo literacy on Mindoro. Pacific Discovery, 2(4), 4–11. Conklin, H. C. (2007). Fine description: Ethnographic and linguistic essays of Harold C. Conklin. In J. Kuipers & R. McDermott (Eds.), Monograph 56. New Haven, CT: Yale Southeast Asia Studies. Coulmas, F. (1989). Writing systems of the world. London: Basil Blackwell. Coulmas, F. (2003). Writing systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Damais, L-C. (1955). Les écritures d’origine indienne en Indonesie et dans le Sud-Est asiatique continentale. Bulletin de la Société des Études indo-chinoises, 30(4), 365–382. Daniels, P. T., & Bright, W. (Eds.). (1996). The world’s writing systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DeFrancis, J. (1977). Colonialism and language policy in Vietnam. The Hague: Mouton. DeFrancis, J. (1984). The Chinese language. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. DeFrancis, J. (1989). Visible language. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.

94

Ray McDermott and Perry Gilmore

Dewey, J. (1969–1972). The collected works of John Dewey: Early works, 1882–1899 (5 vols.). J.A. Boydston (Ed.). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, J. (1976–1983). The collected works of John Dewey: Middle works, 1900–1924 (15 vols.). J.A. Boydston (Ed.). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Diderot, D., & d’Alembert, J. (2001). L’art de l’écriture. Paris: Inter-Livres. (Original publication as a part of the L’Éncyclopédie from 1759–1772.) Drucker, J. (1999). The alphabetic labyrinth: The letters in history and imagination. London: Thames and Hudson. Ehlich, K., Coulmas, F., & Graefen, G. (1996). Bibliography on writing and written language (3 vols.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyer. Elman, B. (2000). A cultural history of civil examinations in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gilmore, P. (1983). Spelling Mississippi: Recontextualizing a literacy related speech event. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 14, 234–255. Gilmore, P., & Glatthorn, A. (Eds.). (1982). Children in and out of school. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Gonzalez, A. (1985). The sixteenth century Tagalog of the Doctrina Christiana (1593). Likha (Manila), 2, 1–36. Goodman, K. (1967). Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game. Journal of the Reading Specialist, 4, 126–135. Goodman, K. (1991). Whole Language learners. In K. Goodman, L. Bird, & Y. Goodman (Eds.), The Whole Language catalogue (p. 23). Santa Rosa, CA: American School Publishers. Goodman, K. (1992). Language and literacy: Selected essays of Kenneth S. Goodman (2 vols.). New York: Routledge. Goodman, K. (1994). Reading, writing and written texts: A transactional sociopsycholinguistic view. In R. Ruddell, M. Ruddell, & H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (4th ed., pp. 1093–1130). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Goodman, Y. (1991). History of Whole Language. In K. Goodman, L. Bird, & Y. Goodman (Eds.), The Whole Language catalogue (pp. 386–387). Santa Rosa, CA: American School Publishers. Goodman, Y. (1996). Notes from a kidwatcher. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Goodman, Y., & Goodman, K. (1990). Vygotsky in a Whole Language perspective. In L. Moll (Ed.), Vygotsky and education (pp. 223–250). London: Cambridge University Press. Goodman, Y., & Goodman, K. (1994). To err is human: Learning about language processes by analyzing miscues. In R. Ruddell, M. Ruddell, & H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (4th vol., pp. 104–123). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Goody, J. (Ed.). (1968). Literacy in traditional societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gundaker, G. (2007). Hidden education among African Americans during slavery. Teachers College Record, 109(7), 1591–1612. Henry, J. (1963). Culture against man. New York: Vintage. Holle, K. F. (1999). Table of old and new Indic alphabets: Contribution to the paleography of the Dutch Indies. Written Language and Literacy, 2, 167–246. (Original publication in two parts in 1882 and 1884.)

Reading and Reigning

95

Horodeck, R. (1987). The role of sound in reading and writing kanji. Unpublished dissertation, Cornell University. Kuipers, J., & McDermott, R. (1996). Insular Southeast Asian scripts. In P. Daniels & W. Bright (Eds.), The world’s writing systems (pp. 474–484). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Labov, W. (1972). Language in the inner city. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Ledyard, G. (1966). The Korean language reform of 1446: The origin, background, and early history of the Korean alphabet. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. Lenneberg, E. (1967). Biological foundations of language. New York: John Wiley. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1992 [1955]). Tristes tropiques. New York: Penguin. McDermott, R. (1993). Acquisition of a child by a Learning Disability. In S. Chaiklin & J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding practice (pp. 269–305). London: Cambridge University Press. McDermott, R., Goldman, S., & Varenne, H. (2006). The cultural work of Learning Disabilities. Educational Researcher, 36(6), 12–17. Nyikos, J. (1988). A linguistic perspective of illiteracy. In S. Empleton (Ed.), The Fourteenth LACUS Forum 1987 (pp. 146–163). Lake Bluff: Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States. Postma, A. (1988). Ambahan Mangyan. Manila: Arnoldus Press. Reid, A. (1988). Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, Vol. 1: The lands beneath the winds. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Rohwer, W. (1971). Prime time for learning. Harvard Educational Review, 41, 316–341. Sampson, G. (1985). Writing systems. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Schieffelin, B., & Gilmore, P. (Eds.). (1986). The acquisition of literacy: Anthropological approaches. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Scott, W. H. (1985). Prehispanic source materials for the study of Philippine history (2nd ed.). Quezon City: New Day Publisher. Scribner, S., & Cole, M. (1981). Psychology of literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Shin, S-S., Lee, D-J., & Lee, H-M. (Eds.) (1990). Understanding Hunmin-jong.um. Seoul: Hanshun Publishing. Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Smith, A. (1994 [1776]). On the origin and causes of the wealth of nations. New York: Modern Library. Smith, D. E. (1976). A technology of reading and writing, Vol. 1: Learning to read and write: A task analysis. New York: Academic Press. Smith, D. M. (1986). The anthropology of literacy acquisition. In B. Schieffelin & P. Gilmore (Eds.), The acquisition of literacy (pp. 261–275). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Smith, D. M. (1987). Illiteracy as a social fault. In D. Bloome (Ed.), Literacy, language and schooling (pp. 55–64). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Street, B. (1985). Literacy in theory and practice. New York: Cambridge University Press. Varenne, H., & McDermott, R. (1998). Successful failure: The school America builds. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Wolf, E. (1947). Doctrina Christiana: The first book published in the Philippines, Manila 1593. Washington, DC: Library of Congress.

7

Coffee Cups, Frogs, and Lived Experience Bertram C. Bruce

Prologue In this chapter, I follow a winding path through my own conception of wholeness. These are personal stories. I start with one about conversation (the coffee cups), then segue into another about teaching (the frogs), and conclude with one about learning in the Paseo Boricua community in Chicago (the lived experience). When I think of Yetta and Ken Goodman’s work, I might focus on miscue analysis, sociolinguistics, bilingual education and biliteracy, the Center for the Expansion of Language and Thinking, or many other lines of research and arenas of action. Or, I might envision their central role in debates about the teaching of reading. But I don’t. As important as those activities may be, the most salient image for me is of research and teaching integrated in life. There is a wholeness to their work, which goes far beyond many of the well-known particulars. As George Eliot says, I’ve been made better by their presence. Stories of conversation, teaching, and learning are of course central to Ken and Yetta’s work. Ken’s conversations with Noam Chomsky played an important role in the development of the psycholinguistics approach to reading; further conversations influenced the Center for the Study of Reading at the University of Illinois. And their work with Teachers Applying Whole Language exemplifies all of these themes.

Coffee cups Things are not objects. In fact, things are precisely the opposite of objects. When we are focused on things, we are actually also focused on ourselves. When I am focusing on the attachment of this coffee cup, I am actually getting back to myself quite fast, as well as to the entire history of Italian coffee-making, the people who are harvesting the coffee, etc. This cup of coffee is an assembly (Latour interview, Prieto & Youn, 2004).

Coffee Cups, Frogs, and Lived Experience 97 Jeanne Connell has been secretary/treasurer of the John Dewey Society as well as an active scholar of the work of Dewey and Louise Rosenblatt (Connell, 1996, 2005). She recently found a previously unpublished photo of Dewey in the archives of the John Dewey Center and had it printed on coffee cups (actually more of a mug). She then gave these to fellow officers of the society. Somewhat later, while we were having coffee together, I was very pleased when she gave me a Dewey cup as well. As she did, she hesitated slightly, and laughed, wondering aloud what Dewey might think of his image moving into the realm of “crass commercialism.” I was of course pleased with the gift, and said that I thought he’d be pleased, that he wouldn’t mind at all being associated with such a basic tool of ordinary life. I couldn’t have known then how much was about to flow from that simple cup. As I poured the coffee I was drinking at that time into the cup, I reflected on Dewey’s call to value the ordinary in human experience, in fact to see it as the core of all we think and do. We talked about that notion a bit, and then things began to take off. As Latour says, when we focus on a thing, like a coffee cup, we actually focus on ourselves, and the organic wholes in which we participate. For me, there is no better symbol of conversation than a coffee cup. I know people who say “let’s have coffee” meaning that they want to talk, but would be perfectly content to have the coffee turn into an ice cream cone, a glass of wine, or just a time to be together. That thought led quickly to what Dewey supposedly said when asked to sum up his vast life’s work in one sentence. To that impossible task, he replied “democracy is conversation.” Was there a more appropriate object for his image? If there were to be a wrong place to place him, wouldn’t it be inside a thick academic book instead? A few minutes after our coffee, I walked by an undergraduate class, in which they happened to be discussing a paper I had written on the need for dialectical reading of the web. The professor, a colleague and friend, called out to me to stop and introduce myself to the class. After I recovered from the shock, seeking frantically to recall what I had actually said in that paper, I was able to get into a conversation with the students. We made connections between ways of interpreting the web, interpretations in other media, dialectical reading, and conversation. Someone then asked about the cup I was still carrying. I asked if anyone recognized the picture, which was not the same as any published photograph, and I feared it would be a somewhat obscure subject in any case. But several students knew it was Dewey, and contributed helpful accounts of pragmatism and Dewey’s work. I, of course, couldn’t resist talking about Dewey’s view of ordinary life and conversation, which I felt was occurring in its best sense at that very moment. As I continued to experience life with the cup, my story grew, which in turn enabled it to grow further, exactly what Dewey means when he says that making sense of experience prepares us for enlarged experiences in the future:

98

Bertram C. Bruce The ideal of using the present simply to get ready for the future contradicts itself. It omits, and even shuts out, the very conditions by which a person can be prepared for his future. We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future. This is the only preparation which in the long run amounts to anything. (Dewey, 1938, p. 51)

I then recalled a conversation with another colleague, Betsy Hearne. We were talking with a doctoral student who was having trouble focusing her research. We asked her to say one word that felt most central to her way of thinking. But she was too clever for us and asked each of us to do the same. After some hesitation, Betsy said “story” and I said “inquiry.” Two different words, but as we tried to elaborate, we realized that for us story and inquiry meant the same thing. Later, I read Betsy’s own story about frogs, in which she concluded that “every frog is different” and “dead frogs are considerably less appealing than live ones” (Hearne, 1990, p. 41). Stories are how we make sense of experiences, thus providing the historical sense of life. To paraphrase Dewey, extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience enables us to do the same for our pasts. The continual reconstruction of the past in the light of the present is integral to full engagement with the present time. When we tell stories over a cup of coffee, we participate in the wholeness of language, which is itself a means of enacting the wholeness of life.

Dewey’s theory of inquiry As Louis Menand (2001) shows, the pragmatist movement of the late-19th century was in part a response to the massive destruction of lives during the US Civil War, and the inability of people to find ways to move forward without violence. Even worse, that violence was a pyrrhic victory. While it accomplished the end of legal slavery and maintained the formal structure of the nation, near-slavery conditions persisted for years, the nation stayed divided, and the problems of racism and injustice remained unresolved (Ladson-Billings, 2006). The violence of the war exacerbated rather than solved the problems, just as violence does in the present. As Martin Luther King Jr (1967) says: The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate . . . Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Coffee Cups, Frogs, and Lived Experience 99 John Dewey was born in 1859, just before the war. Throughout his writings we can see his insistence on a moral dimension to life and learning. Moral growth is to be achieved through reflection on experience and on dialogue with others, something we do when we “have coffee.” The year 1859 was also the year that Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species was published. Those are not entirely coincidental occurrences. While acutely aware of the moral challenges of racism and industrialization, pragmatists saw a promise in the developing sciences, especially in biology and statistics, and later, physics. Dewey in particular was deeply influenced by Darwin and what later fully emerged as the grand evolutionary synthesis. He saw the phenomenon of life as crucial to his theory of inquiry, and especially his theory of education: “The primary ineluctable facts of the birth and death of each one of the constituent members in a social group determine the necessity of education.” He also saw that life implies growth, thus “education is all one with growing; it has no end beyond itself.” These ideas became central in the development of the whole language movement and other progressive pedagogy (Y. Goodman, 1989).

Becoming a unified whole For many people, notably those in universities, the value of learning is to allow us to rise above our baser instincts, to elevate thinking above feeling, theory above practice, abstraction over concreteness. Many others, perhaps most people, do the opposite, placing “what works” above ideas and frameworks. Dewey and his colleagues rejected both of these views. They saw instead that the problems with both intellectual life and the practical world lay in the breakdown of connections between the two, the severing of mind from body: Thus the question of integration of mind–body in action is the most practical of all questions we can ask of our civilization. It is not just a speculative question, it is a demand—a demand that the labor of multitudes now too predominantly physical in character be inspirited by purpose and emotion and informed by knowledge and understanding. It is a demand that what now pass for highly intellectual and spiritual functions shall be integrated with the ultimate conditions and means of all achievement, namely the physical, and thereby accomplish something beyond themselves. Until the integration is effected in the only place where it can be carried out, in action itself, we shall continue to live in a society in which a soulless and heartless materialism is compensated for by soulful but futile idealism and spiritualism. (Dewey, 1928, p. 29) I see the coffee cup as manifesting the coming together in action of the physical and the mental. It is an ordinary thing, which may be hot or cold, and provide sensual pleasure. But it also marks a coming together of minds. For Dewey, it was exactly in the ordinary experiences of life that we would find the core of

100

Bertram C. Bruce

our intellectual, moral, and social being. As McDermott says, “He believed that ordinary experience is seeded with possibilities for surprises and possibilities for enhancement if we but allow it to bathe over us in its own terms” (1981, p. x). Humans are living organisms, but human life adds a dimension not present in the lives of other living things. Or, do other creatures pause to reflect on their lives over their own version of a cup of coffee? At least in principle, we can learn from others, communicating our experiences across space and time: Society exists through a process of transmission quite as much as biological life. This transmission occurs by means of communication of habits of doing, thinking, and feeling from the older to the younger. Without this communication of ideals, hopes, expectations, standards, opinions, from those members of society who are passing out of the group life to those who are coming into it, social life could not survive. (Dewey, 1916, pp. 3–4) Dewey’s educational theory elaborates on this idea, going far beyond what is often meant today by hands-on learning or learning by doing. He sees the learner as a unified whole, in which the hands are as much an organ of thought as the brain. Moreover, he sees society as an organic union of individuals. Sharing life over a cup of coffee is one way in which we seek that unified whole.

Frogs It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. (Darwin, 1859, p. 489) Many years ago, on a beautiful fall day, I found myself, as a high-school student, walking across the Rice University campus with one of Rice’s bestloved professors. He had the lanky frame of Bertrand Russell, completed with a shock of longish, white hair. His field was biology, which was not on my list of possible major areas to study. But instead of discussing his field, or the intricacies of college application, we began to talk about internationalism and world government. This was heady stuff, especially for me, coming as I did from a family with conservative political views. Professor Joseph Ilott Davies and I engaged in genuine conversation. Although he shared his passion and deeply-held beliefs, he also wanted to know what I thought and why, and cared about my questions. I may not have asked, though I did wonder, how a biologist came to care so much about democracy, and to see it as an idea to discuss so intently with one

Coffee Cups, Frogs, and Lived Experience 101 of the many high school and college students he must see. How was it central to his life? This question arose all the more so, given what I had learned in school about putting things into simple categories. Shouldn’t we discuss plants and animals in biology class, democracy in government class? I learned later that Davies had come to Rice in 1914 to serve as Julian Huxley’s lab assistant. At that time, he had essentially a working-class occupation, cleaning lab equipment and preparing animals for dissection. But Huxley, who was chair of biology at Rice, and who interacted with Nobel Prize winners and international scholars in many fields, became a mentor for him. At one point, Davies wrote a “poignant six-page letter acknowledging Huxley’s mentoring.” He says Huxley has “made twice the man of me and has put thoughts in my head that I had never dreamed of before; would it surprise you if I thought of trying for a degree at Rice!!!” (Boothe, 1997, p. 5). While working full time, Davies enrolled as a student at Rice, receiving his BA, Masters, and PhD degrees there. Some time later, he took over both the classroom teaching and the lab for the introductory course [Biology 100]. In that role, he became renowned for his captivating teaching style. (Meredith, 1966a) It’s worth noting that Huxley himself was an ardent internationalist, after his experiences in Germany leading up to WWI. Huxley’s role as a caring mentor undoubtedly played a role in Davies’s thinking, but I believe now that his internationalist views were much deeper and more integrated with both his biology and his teaching than I had understood on that fine fall day. Frogs, alive and dead The first lecture in Biology 100 was a memorable one. Professor Davies entered the large auditorium and greeted the 200 or so students, all of whom he would soon come to know by name. He then asked,1 What is this course about? It’s about you. You are many things, and you are each different from one another, but one inescapable fact is that you are all alive. You move, you breathe, you talk. But what does it mean to be alive? How is life possible? Davies then brought out a large bucket. He reached in a pulled out a living frog: Look at this beautiful creature. It, too, is alive, but it is so different from each of you. And there is a vast diversity of life you may only dimly understand. How can there be this incredible diversity? What accounts for the common features of life? What accounts for the variations? Davies then placed the frog on the lab table in front of him:

102

Bertram C. Bruce Look at how the frog hops. That’s one characteristic of its being alive. In this class we will dissect animals and plants to study their systems and organization. But whenever possible, we will study living, breathing organisms, because our goal is to learn more about life, not the parts of life.

He then picked up the frog and tossed it into the seating area. There were predictable screams, followed by more screams and laughter, as one student would toss it towards another. Then he pulled out a second frog and tossed it, then a third, and so on, each time asking his questions about life. Finally he pulled out the last frog, and along with it a knife. With students watching intently, he chopped through the frog’s neck with a single, quick blow. He then released the frog, and it too began to hop, without its head. Look at this. You saw me kill the frog. We all know that it’s dead and that nothing can revive it. Yet, it too will hop for a short while. Clearly, hopping alone is not what makes something alive, even though most living things do move. As I said earlier, we usually won’t kill organisms, but in order to understand life, we will also seek to understand death. Whatever else one might say about Davies’s teaching approach or whether such a performance would be possible or even desirable today, it must be granted that he had engaged the students’ attention. Students who thought they couldn’t or didn’t want to learn science found themselves asking questions and engaging in ways they didn’t expect. Davies showed in many ways how much he cared for both biology and the living organisms who were his students. Although he was an ardent proponent of biology and a scientific view of the world, his humanism stood out as part of, not in opposition to, his understanding of the physical and biological world. That was reflected in the way his lectures ranged across art, literature, history, and philosophy. It was also shown in the way he talked about and exemplified a concern for moral values, which he, just like the pragmatists before him, saw as integral to his view of life. His teaching prefigured Noddings’s (1998) care theory: We do not have to construct elaborate rationales to explain why human beings ought to treat one another as positively as our situation permits. Ethical life is not separate from and alien to the physical world. Because we human beings are in the world, not mere spectators watching from outside it, our social instincts and the reflective elaboration of them are also in the world. Pragmatists and care theorists agree on this. The ought—better, the “I ought”—arises directly in lived experience. “Oughtness,” one might say, is part of our “isness.” (pp. 186–187) I don’t know whether Davies described himself as a pragmatist, and given his time, he would not have encountered care theory per se, but he exemplified the

Coffee Cups, Frogs, and Lived Experience 103 idea that “ethical life is not separate from and alien to the physical world.” His work was a search for the wholeness that connected these realms and entailed life for the frogs and the students he loved. Three grand questions for living organisms The most important impact of that initial lecture was not to convey a set of ideas, but rather to raise one of the grand questions of biology. It fits well with Dewey’s theory of inquiry, which rests on the transformation of problematic situations: How do the various systems of an organism come together into a unified whole to produce life? Much of the course then explored the diversity of living organisms and the different ways their systems integrated to produce successful life, for with all their variation and different ways of being in the world, every living organism represents a successful adaptation. Toward the end of the course, Davies focused more and more on other large questions, including what biology had to say about religion, the human soul, and moral codes. His manner of addressing them drew as much from poetry and art as it did from biological theory. He even quotes Cardinal Newman in an admiring way in his Lecture on [Human] Evolution. A key theme in the course was the interdependence of living things. Frogs need ponds; we cannot understand one organism without an understanding of the ecology in which it participates. That ecology includes much more than simple competition for resources, but complex and varied means of association. Margulis and Sagan (1997) said as much when they pointed out that life does not take over the globe by combat but by networking. Processes of symbiosis, cooperation, and mutual construction of the environment may be more important than competition for limited resources. Along these lines, a second grand question became more central as the course neared its end: How does an individual organism relate to other organisms, and to its physical environment? In The Triple Helix, Richard Lewontin (2000) explores this question, noting that environments do not exist independently of living organisms. The features that change a physical space into an environment are often constructed by organisms, the most obvious case being the creation of an oxygen-rich atmosphere by plants. Even more fundamentally, what counts as significant cannot be disentangled from the needs and activities of the organism. Instead, a view of organic evolution as a constructive process is called for: “the actual process of evolution seems best captured by the process of construction. Just as there can be no organism without an environment, so there can be no environment without an organism” (Lewontin, 2000, p. 48). The idea of the continuity of life points to a third grand question: How does an individual organism relate to its history? Histories are individual, as we see in the processes of development and aging. But they are also properties of the community and the population. Every living thing is a product of its parents and

104

Bertram C. Bruce

those who went before. Moreover, it shapes those who are to come. Vertical (or what Dewey calls, longitudinal) relations through time complement horizontal (or lateral) relations of organisms to the physical world and to that of other organisms. This idea was reflected in the course through investigations of the histories of organisms. Together these grand questions about the wholeness of individuals, the ecology, and continuity opened up a complex inquiry into the variety and processes of life. Darwin (1859) had presented these ideas a century earlier, seeing through them the beauty and wonder of life: There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. (p. 490) Professor Davies at the end Two years after I first met him, Davies announced his retirement. In May of 1966, he delivered the last lecture for Biology 100 that year, and what was to be his last lecture after a lifetime of learning and teaching biology. Former students, colleagues, and people from all over could not stay away. It’s difficult to say how many people attended. I’m certain that there was double the approved capacity of the already large auditorium, and that many were disappointed not to get inside. Davies spoke with his familiar passion for learning and exhibited his continual caring for students. Although he had aged, he seemed to stride across the stage and speak with more energy than ever before. At the end there was a thunderous, standing ovation for a man who had risen from lab assistant to professor and had devoted his life to learning and community. There was only one question: What will you do now? Davies paused, then replied that he didn’t know, perhaps he would travel some. A short time later, Davies died while grading final exams. During his life he had diverse interests, including photography, literature, architecture, and philosophy. But he was devoted to biology and to helping his students grow. Thinking about what made his life a unified whole, about its ecology and its history, I can’t help but feel that the end of teaching meant that his life was severed, and that he had lost some of the essential wholeness of life. Some small solace may be found in the George Eliot quote he shared during his Lecture on Evolution: Oh, may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence.

Coffee Cups, Frogs, and Lived Experience 105 Davies interpreted this opening of “The Choir Invisible” as follows: To me, these are grand thoughts, They take some of the sting out of death by recognizing nobility of character during the life of the individual, They lessen the void of death by accentuating and perpetuating through new lives those virtues for which the individual was revered while he lived. Davies definitely influenced me, and I’d like to think that my mind was “made better” by his presence. In part, because of his course, I chose to major in biology, even though it meant (in the beautiful logic of universities) that I had to drop it because it was for non-majors, and to take chemistry and physics instead. Later, I chose not to go past the BA in biology, because I missed the holistic understanding that he offered and that had appealed to me in the first place about the field. Most of all I didn’t like to chop off the heads of frogs. Nevertheless, I still continue to work with biology education projects. Perhaps more surprisingly, continuing to think about biology accentuates and enriches my understanding of education, democracy, and lived experience.

Connecting coffee cups and frogs These ideas, particularly Lewontin’s characterization of environment, are remarkably similar to Dewey’s notion of situation. Both emphasize a crucial entanglement of each individual with both the physical and biological world around it. Experience does not go on simply inside a person. It does go on there, for it influences the formation of attitudes of desire and purpose. But this is not the whole of the story. Every genuine experience has an active side which changes in some degree the objective conditions under which experiences are had. (Dewey, 1916, p. 6) In Experience and Education, Dewey lays out what he calls the criteria of experience, continuity and interaction. It is striking to see how similar these are to the grand principles of evolution. He describes continuity as the longitudinal aspect of experience and interaction as the lateral aspect. Late in his life Dewey began to talk about ecology, which was just becoming more current in the discourse of the 1940s. In Knowing and the Known, he moves away from “interaction” to “transaction,” which was later elaborated by Louise Rosenblatt (1978). But I believe that if he were writing today, he might choose a term such as “ecology,” which does appear a couple of times in Knowing and the Known. That would foreground his view of society as an organic union (cf. Latour’s assembly), not simply a system of interacting parts. The grand questions of biology are relevant for people as living organisms. But humans also have special reflective and communicative capacities. To

106

Bertram C. Bruce

do justice to the full range of human experience, we need to reformulate the biology questions: Unified whole: How does an individual grow as a unified whole? Ecology/Community: How does an individual participate with the physical, biological, and social world? Continuity: How does an individual participate with the history of lived experiences?

Lived experience Conversation is a good name for what is needed at those points where people employing different final vocabularies reach a momentary impasse . . . The political discourse of a pluralistic democracy, as it turns out, needs to be a mixture of normal discourse and conversational improvisation. In the discussion of some issues, straightforward argument on the basis of commonly held standards carries us only so far. Beyond that, we must be either silent or conversational. (Stout, 2004, p. 9) Wholeness is essential to life in the relatively constrained arenas of the coffee shop or the biology lab, but what happens in the larger world? In the context of a pluralistic democracy, how do we achieve that wholeness? What and how can we learn when the commonly-held standards are themselves in question? This last section explores one place in which those questions are central to community life. The neighborhood around Humboldt Park in Chicago has a rich and varied history. Once it was a home for Jewish immigrants, including Saul Bellow’s Augie March and Elaine Soloway’s Division Street princess. Later it was home to Polish Catholics. Many other immigrant groups, religions, languages, and ethnicities have been represented over the years, and today it is home to Asian-, Mexican-, African-, and European-Americans. It is best known for Paseo Boricua, a half-mile stretch of Division Street, demarcated by two 59-foot-tall steel Puerto Rican flags. The neighborhood contains many Puerto Rican stores and restaurants, and is currently adding iron balconies and streetlights in the style of old San Juan, along with mosaics representing the 78 municipalities of Puerto Rico. As the community works to promote a safer and more vibrant neighborhood, it actively resists the gentrification that had forced it out to West Town, Wicker Park, and Ukrainian Village. In a context of urban poverty and discrimination, with issues of gang violence, drug abuse, school dropouts, unhealthy lifestyles, and other urban social ills, Paseo Boricua has taken action to build a strong community. Community building there goes beyond familiar remedies such as economic enterprise zones or dropout prevention programs, to include active transformation of the lived environment. Moreover, that transformation

Coffee Cups, Frogs, and Lived Experience 107 has begun and continues to be defined by participation and ownership by community members. Puerto Rican identity is affirmed and renegotiated in relation to that of other members of a quite diverse neighborhood, to that of Puerto Rico, and to a variety of others, including university partners. The process exemplifies Maxine Greene’s call for both opening and transforming public spaces: It is not only a matter of admission and inclusion in predefined public spaces; it is . . . a matter of transformation of our institutions and public spaces . . . We need to make audible and visible the diverse ways in which identity is negotiated in our country and the manner in which it is affected by fairness, equity opportunities for free expression, and by the existence or the nonexistence of democracy. (Greene, 1998, p. 19) Residents of Paseo Boricua have engaged in that transformative process themselves, building upon community funds of knowledge, but also upon community self-empowerment. Initially, much of the discourse focused on resistance. The Puerto Rican Cultural Center (PRCC) website http://www. prcc-chgo.org/pachs.htm quotes Buddist monk Thich Nhat Nahn’s call for a community of resistance: [R]esistance, at root, must mean more than resistance against war. It is resistance against all kinds of things that are like war . . . so perhaps, resistance means opposition to being invaded, occupied, assaulted and destroyed by the system. The purpose of resistance, here, is to seek the healing of yourself in order to be able to see clearly . . . I think that communities of resistance should be places where people can return to themselves more easily, where the conditions are such that they can heal themselves and recover their wholeness. Increasingly, the discourse has moved from community resistance to community building. Among many community organizations (see Ocasio, 2006) are the following: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Juan Antonio Corretjer Puerto Rican Cultural Center. La Voz de Paseo Boricua, a community newspaper. Consuelo Lee Corretjer Day Care. Lolita Lebrón Family Learning Center. Andrés Figueroa Cordero Library and Community Information and Technology Center. 6. Community Organizing for Obesity Prevention in Humboldt Park, a healthy lifestyles program. 7. La Casita de Don Pedro, a community museum. 8. Vida/SIDA AIDS Education & Prevention Program, a health center and programs.

108

Bertram C. Bruce

9. Café Teatro Batey Urbano, a club/study center for young people and a venue for social action, where they present poetry with a purpose, hip hop, and other cultural expressions. 10. Development of economic and commercial projects including a Puerto Rican-focused restaurant district. Many of these activities are designed and run by young people in the community and all are conceived as sites for learning for community members of all ages and visitors. The activities build on ideas of Paolo Freire, who spent time there, and in many ways represent a modern version of the work of Hull House (Addams, 1910). Throughout, there is an emphasis on the wholeness of both individuals and community (the frog) and dialogue across differences (the coffee cup). The Pedro Albizu Campos High School (PACHS) After realizing that only one in four of their young people were completing high school, Paseo Boricua established an alternative high school called Pedro Albizu Campos High School (PACHS), which is housed within the Puerto Rican Cultural Center. Although community leaders would speak of Puerto Rican independence, community resistance against violence, and solidarity with Puerto Ricans and other oppressed people, they realized that the young people above all need a nurturing environment for learning. In an ethnographic study, Rene Antrop-González (2003) found that teachers are very aware of these multiple goals: Our students don’t come here because they are consciously seeking a liberating education or because they support Puerto Rican independence. They come here because they know that this school will work hard not to neglect them and because they’ll find out who they are. Hopefully, they will want to come back and continue their work in the community. (Iván, a teacher and principal of the high school) The results at PACHS have been impressive. Today, three out of four students complete high school, some have gone on to college, and some have now entered our Masters program in Library and Information Science. There is also a successful Family Learning Center for young mothers and their children. Both programs build instruction around students’ lives and experiences, thus moving from a deficit model to an assets model. There are many other factors in their success, including dedicated teachers and a curriculum relevant to students’ lives. Most of all is the sense of a school community connected to a neighborhood community, with an opportunity to grow in socially-meaningful ways: That’s why I’m always at this school. This school is my sanctuary. I know this because once I step outside these doors my problems come back.

Coffee Cups, Frogs, and Lived Experience 109 They’re just waiting outside the doors to smack me in my face and start all over again. I stay at this school because I don’t have to worry about my problems. I got my mind set on other things. It’s hard to describe but it’s like a load is taken off me when I’m here. (Damien, a PACHS student, quoted in Antrop-González, 2003, p. 13) The success of the program has attracted non-Puerto Rican students. In some other circumstances, the diversity of backgrounds might be considered as a problem. One might predict even more of a problem in Paseo Boricua, given the emphasis on strengthening Puerto Rican identity and community. But PACHS seems to thrive on diverse interest: Although the high school was initially founded as a site of Puerto Rican pedagogical resistance, it has now also come to fulfill the affective and cultural needs of the Puerto Rican, Mexican, and African-American students that call it their school. (Antrop-González, 2003) PACHS encourages students to think critically about their learning experiences and to participate actively in their communities. In an unconventional setting, it is the comprehensive high school vision (Goodman, 2006). The curriculum is articulated on the PRCC website in terms of three major curricular areas. The first involves “the development of cognitive skills in the areas of Natural and Social Science, Mathematics, Communications, and the Arts.” In a sense, this is the goal of any high school, but there is an emphasis at PACHS on a unified whole, both across disciplines and between the school and the students. Literacy at PACHS means learning to read the word and to read the world (Freire, 1993 [1970]; Freire & Macedo, 1987). It means actively participating in that world as both critic and creator. This philosophy positions each student and each teacher as whole, living beings. One never hears talk of deficits, but rather of strengths and potentials for growth (Johnson, 2006; Valenzuela, 1999). The second area focuses on “the development of self-identity and self-worth by analyzing the Puerto Rican and Latino reality.” Students learn how to act responsibly in the world, by first understanding themselves and their Latino heritage. This area ensures that the continuity of lived experiences is a present reality for students, that their daily challenges can be conceived in relation to the larger world and the experiences of others. “The third area is designed to provide students with hands-on experience. Classes included are video, bomba y plena, typing, dance, guitar and journalism.” Students learn how to transform the world, to give back to their community. Recently, for example, students have been making podcasts about their school and community. Across disciplines of history, biology, English, mathematics, and others, students learn about themselves as participants in physical, biological, and sociocultural ecologies. It is an example of the social justice youth development model, in which self, social, and global awareness guide growth (Ginwright, Noguera, & Cammarota, 2006).

110

Bertram C. Bruce

The activities at PACHS are based on the premise that students need to use language to solve problems that are meaningful in their daily lives in order to take charge of their own learning (cf. Goodman, Smith, Meredith, & Goodman, 1987). They write and share reflections about work in the community as a way of learning language, but also as a way of learning how to participate actively in community building. It is commonplace nowadays to think of the classroom or the school as a learning community, even if that is more often achieved in name than in fact. Some have argued for extending to the community beyond, bringing neighborhood experiences into the classroom, as with funds of knowledge approaches (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & González, 1992), or taking classroom learning out into the neighborhood, as with service learning. All of these ideas have merit, and may be considerably better than what we see in many schools oppressed by the No Child Left Behind regime today. But the Paseo Boricua learning goes a step further. Rather than seeing the community as simply a resource, or as an application area for learning, it puts community first. In this approach, the community is the curriculum. The mutual constitution of community life and education is thus evident in everything the community undertakes. And all of those activities build upon genuine conversation. Connecting the university and the community Recently, in collaboration with the Paseo Boricua community, my department has inaugurated a new Masters program in Library and Information Science. The aim of the program, known as the Community Informatics Corps (http://www.lis. uiuc.edu/programs/ms/cic.html),2 is to recruit and mentor a cohort of Latina/o, African-American, and other students who are interested in a career enabling them to contribute to communities especially of groups underserved in society. Students focus their coursework on social entrepreneurship and community library and information services, so that they are prepared to apply what they’ve learned to the creation of innovative information services implemented within and across a range of community-based and public interest organizations. The curriculum combines Saturday and summer courses offered at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago, online courses, and summer courses at the Urbana-Champaign campus. Students have a blended experience that emphasizes service learning in Chicago neighborhoods yet offers them experience with online learning and integrates them with the on-campus program. Campus-based students have an opportunity to experience and learn from neighborhood life. One hope is that we can learn from Paseo Boricua and help make the university itself a place for wholeness, a healthy ecology, and continuity. A characterization, which is at one and the same time modest and daunting, is that we seek to establish a conversation between a large, elite, and increasingly remote university and the communities around it. The model for my own Fall 2006 course on Inquiry-Based Learning (www. uiuc.edu/goto/ibo) originated to accommodate students in the CI Corps, and

Coffee Cups, Frogs, and Lived Experience 111 to benefit from the resources offered by Paseo Boricua, and the Puerto Rican Cultural Center. Students worked with community members on projects such as a Puerto Rican Digital Archive, a literacy program for the high school, a hydroponics garden, violence reduction, and a community wellness program. The aim was to see how our developing understandings of learning, research, literacy, community, technology, and social justice could be integrated through action in the community. As Migdalia Jimenez, a student in the course, said: I’ve always been passionate about literacy and social justice. I also have always loved libraries. I just didn’t know that those seemingly disparate interests could be joined. Growing up in inner-city Chicago as a child of immigrants, I spent most of my time at my neighborhood public library. Although my mother only made it to 6th grade in her native land of Mexico, she imbued us with a love for books. Reading opened up so many possibilities in my life because it provides access to information. For me it has meant the end of ignorance and the beginning of independent thinking. There is no neat conclusion to this process, no simple formula for replication. We have encountered many challenges in working across divides of geography, language, institutions, and perhaps most importantly, the mundane realities of everyone’s over-scheduled lives. Nevertheless, nearly everyone involved would find it difficult to go back to a curriculum in which the parts are dismembered like Davies’s frog.

Conclusion When I think about frogs, a disturbing thought comes to mind, one more frightening than Professor Davies’s demonstration. Frogs have become one of the best quality of environment indicators. As human activity continues to damage the world around us, we can measure the destruction of our living world by the extinction of frog and toad species and by the appearance of malformations: Malformed amphibians are now documented in 44 states, in 38 species of frogs and 19 species of toads, with estimates of deformities as high as 60 percent in some local populations. Scientists now agree that current numbers of reported malformations significantly exceed the normal statistical variation. (U. S. Geological Survey, 2002) The wholeness of individual frogs is dependent upon the wholeness of their environments, and those environments are being chopped up as surely as the poor frog was by Professor Davies. We need to understand how the wholeness of the individual is inextricable from the wholeness of community and environment. And none of that can be understood without understanding

112

Bertram C. Bruce

the continuity of life. That lesson has not been learned on the larger scale of life on earth; we see the consequences not just in the loss of frogs, but in the destruction of young people. Paseo Boricua seeks to maintain a wholeness of its environment, because community members realize that it is essential for the growth of each community member, and in turn for the continued vitality of the community. Recently, the community produced a brochure about its many activities (Ocasio, 2006). On the inside cover there is a quote about the Coquí, a tree frog, which is the unofficial symbol of Puerto Rico: Dicen que el Coquí no puede cantar ni vivir fuera de la isla. Aquí, el Coquí canta a su isla con amor, sobreviviendo a la ciudad de los vientos aun en temperaturas bajo cero.3 (Luis Padial Doble) The page continues with thanks to contributors, then ends with this appreciation: La taza de café puertorriqueña4 that kept us going through the process. Can we dream of an environment in which frogs sing, and people learn together over a cup of café? It’s clear that the process forward at Paseo Boricua will not be trouble-free. But what provides hope for community members and visitors is an understanding of learning integrated in life. The life of the community and the individuals within depends upon a shared commitment to the wholeness of each individual, to that of the community, and to the continuity of their experiences. As Professor Davies had shown, the frog is more than the sum of its parts; it survives because of its wholeness, and the wholeness of its environment. This brings us back to Dewey, who saw that neither democracy nor education could be reduced to procedures and piecemeal steps: Democracy has many meanings, but if it has a moral meaning, it is found in resolving that the supreme test of all political institutions and industrial arrangements shall be the contribution they make to the all-around growth of every member of society. (Dewey, 1920, p. 186) Unfortunately, most political institutions and industrial arrangements in our modern world do not fare well on Dewey’s supreme test. Rather than fostering growth for each member of society, they operate as if dissecting those members is what we need to do, and will tell us all we need to know about life, growth, community, and moral commitment. Fortunately, there are alternative visions of wholeness to give us hope.

Coffee Cups, Frogs, and Lived Experience 113

Epilogue The wholeness in Yetta and Ken’s work may be expressed as whole language, but the idea extends to whole life in all its aspects, including art, friendships, passion, and joy. It’s reflected in at least three important ways: One is an appreciation of dialogue, and behind that the idea that everyone has something to contribute, if we but stop to listen. Kidwatching (Goodman, 1978) is an example of this, as is the meeting that fostered this volume. Miscue analysis was based on the essential idea that listening to what children do as whole beings is intrinsic to teaching and learning. Rich dialogue can be as ordinary as sharing a cup of coffee, yet it provides an historical sense of life, and is also the foundation of learning. Second is the recognition that the essence of meaning lies not in objects, but in the relations among them. Whether we focus on a child reading or a teacher helping a group of children learn how to learn from each other, their work consistently reminds us that we need to look at the whole picture, not just the individual pixels. Third is a view that knowledge cannot be divorced from moral commitments and political struggle, that the integration of mind and body in action is prerequisite for progress on the problems before us.

Notes 1 The four quotes from Davies to follow are not exact, but instead are reconstructions intended to communicate the sense of dialogue he conveyed, albeit in a lecture format. 2 Community informatics (CI) is the field of study and practice devoted to understanding how information processes and technologies are used to help communities achieve their goals. CI is an option within the masters program offered by the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. Ann Bishop has been the lead person in making this program come into being, with active participation from Alejandro Luis Molina and others in Paseo Boricua. 3 They say that the Coquí can neither sing nor live away from the island. Here, the Coquí sings to its island with love, surviving in the Windy City in temperatures below zero. 4 The cup of Puerto Rican coffee . . .

References Addams, J. (1910). Twenty years at Hull-House. New York: Macmillan. Antrop-González, R. (2003). This school is my sanctuary: The Pedro Albizu Campos Alternative High School. Centro Journal, XV(2). Boothe, N. (1997). New Huxley archive provides unique documents. News from Fondren, 7(1), 4–5. Connell, J. M. (1996). Assessing the influence of Dewey’s concept of transaction on Rosenblatt’s reader response theory. Educational Theory, 46(4), 395–413. Connell, J. M. (2005). Continue to explore: In memory of Louise Rosenblatt (1904– 2005). Education and Culture, 21(2), 63–79.

114

Bertram C. Bruce

Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of species. London: John Murray. Davies, J. I. (1966). “Last Lecture” of Davies (incomplete transcript), Biology 100 Lecture on Evolution, July, The Flyleaf, XVI, no. 4. In Joseph I. Davies Papers, 1924 –1966, MS 286, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan. Dewey, J. (1920). Reconstruction in philosophy. New York: Holt. Dewey, J. (1928). Body and mind. First published in the Bulletin of the NY Academy of Medicine. In The Collected Works of John Dewey: Later Works, Vol. 3: 1927–1928 Essays, Reviews, Miscellany, (pp. 25–40). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Macmillan. Flores-Gonzalez, N., Rodriguez, M., & Rodriguez-Muniz, M. (2006). From hip-hop to humanization: Batey Urbano as a space for Latino youth culture and community action. In S. Ginwright, P. Noguera, & J. Cammarota (Eds.), Beyond resistance! Youth activism and community change (pp. 175–196). New York: Routledge. Freire, P. (1993 [1970]). Pedagogy of the oppressed (Rev. ed.). New York: Continuum. Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Ginwright, S., Noguera, P., & Cammarota, J. (Eds.). (2006). Beyond resistance! Youth activism and community change. New York: Routledge. Goodman, K. S. (2006). Education for a diverse society: Whatever happened to the comprehensive high school? September 20. Available at: http://www. districtadministration.com.pulse/commentpost.aspx?news=no&postid=17141 (accessed December 29, 2006). Goodman, K. S., Smith, E. B., Meredith, R., & Goodman, Y. M. (1987). Language and thinking in school: A whole-language curriculum. New York: Richard C. Owen. Goodman, Y. M. (1978). Kidwatching: An alternative to testing. National Elementary School Principal, 57, 41–45. Goodman, Y. M. (1989). Roots of the whole-language movement. The Elementary School Journal, 90(2), 113–127. Greene, M. (1998). Moral and political perspectives: The tensions of choice. Educational Researcher, 27(9), 18–20. Hearne, B. (1990). Choosing books for children: A commonsense guide (revised, expanded, and updated). New York: Dell. Johnson, L. R. (2006). History in our hands: Identity development, cultural ideologies of motherhood, and the critical practice of family literacy in Puerto Rican Chicago. ProQuest. King, M. L. (1967). Speech delivered at Ohio Northern University, Ada, Ohio. Available at: http://www.onu.edu/library/onuhistory/king/. Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). From achievement gap to educational debt: Understanding achievement in schools. Educational Researcher, 35(7), 3–12. Lewontin, R. (2000). The triple helix: Gene, organism, and environment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Margulis, L., & Sagan, D. (1997). Microcosmos: Four billion years of evolution from our microbial ancestors. Berkeley: University of California Press. McDermott, J. J. (1981 [1973]). The philosophy of John Dewey: Two volumes in one. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Menand, L. (2001). The Metaphysical Club: A story of ideas in America. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux.

Coffee Cups, Frogs, and Lived Experience 115 Meredith, S. (1966a). Unforgettable Joseph Davies. Rice University Review, 1(2). Meredith, S. (1966b). Dr. Joseph I. Davies. The Flyleaf, XVI(4) (includes Dr. Davies’s Biology 100: Lecture on Evolution). Miller, R. E. (1998). The arts of complicity: Pragmatism and the culture of schooling. College English, 61(1), 10–28. Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & González, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31(2), 132–141. Noddings, N. (1998). Philosophy of education. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Ocasio, Billy (2006). Puerto Rican Chicago: A holistic approach to community building. Chicago: 26th Ward, City of Chicago. Olds, H. F., Schwartz, J. L., & Willie, N. A. (1980). People and computers: Who teaches whom? Newton, MA: Education Development Center. Prieto, M. J., & Youn, E. S. (2004). Interview with Bruno Latour: Decoding the collective experiment. agglutinations.com. Available at: http://agglutinations.com/ archives/000040.html. Rosenblatt, L. (1978). The reader, the text, the poem: The transactional theory of the literary work. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press. Smith, M. K. (2004). Nel Noddings, the ethics of care and education. In The encyclopaedia of informal education. Available at: www.infed.org/thinkers/noddings.htm. Last updated: April 17, 2005. Stout, J. L. (2004). What’s beyond politics. First Things, 148, 8–9. U. S. Geological Survey (2002). Where have all the frogs gone? Research may solve the puzzle. Available at: http://www.usgs.gov/amphibian_faq.html (accessed December 29, 2006). Valenzuela, A. (1999). Subtractive schooling: U.S.-Mexican youth and the politics of caring. Albany: State University of New York Press.

8

From Learning as Habit-Formation to Learning as Meaning-Making How Harry Pope Changed My (Professional) Life Brian Cambourne

I took up my first teaching appointment in January 1956. I remember the time vividly. Australia was about to host the Melbourne Olympics. The first commercial television broadcast in Australia would be made later that year. In the decade or so before I completed my teaching diploma scientists had split the atom, invented the ballpoint pen, developed Cinemascope (with stereophonic sound), produced the 45 rpm vinyl record, created a vaccine for polio and tuberculosis, invented bubble-gum, the battery-operated portable radio, and the chocolate-coated ice cream. It was a time when science was changing the world at a rapid rate. My generation had been raised to believe that science was going to produce modern utopias; disease would be conquered; mundane domestic and work-related chores were going to be taken over by technology, and mankind would move a step closer creating the conditions for the good life for all. Like other western democracies, Australia was applying scientific principles to just about everything. So-called scientific training methods were producing amazing athletic and swimming performances in our sportsmen and women, and world records were continually being broken in the lead-up to the Games. Similar training methods were also being applied to industry where the processes of production were being reorganized to maximize the productivity of each worker. The epitome of the application of these scientific principles to industry was time management. Time management engineers dismantled the specific processes of production used by workers into elemental parts, timed each part to remove non-essential movements and then reassembled the streamlined procedures into sub-goals to be performed repeatedly by groups of workers. It wasn’t a huge leap to apply similar scientific principles to the education and thus ensure that (so-called) best practices would result in effective and productive learning. In Australia, we were not immune from these pressures. In order to be considered “hard-nosed” and “scientific,” university-based education researchers of the time consciously applied the methods and procedures of the so-called “hard” sciences to pre-service teacher education. As a young teacher I was a product of such a pre-service program. At the core of this program was a “scientifically derived” learning theory which I and my peers were expected to apply to our teaching to ensure that scientific

Learning as Meaning-Making 117 instruction would be implemented in schools which would ultimately employ us. This learning theory was called behaviorism. The behaviorist theory of learning I majored in during my teacher preparation argued that learning could be carefully controlled and manipulated (i.e. be scientific) if certain principles of stimulus presentation were followed. At the core of the behaviorist theory was the notion that if a correct sequence of individual stimuli could be identified and then presented in ways that produced mastery, this would result in the successful learning of whatever complex learning was being attempted. The key concept was the concept of “reinforcement.” Whereas pleasant consequences to any stimulus increased the probability that such behavior would be maintained and repeated, unpleasant consequences resulted in behavior being extinguished. The stronger or more frequent the pleasant stimulus, the stronger the learning. The stronger the negative consequences, the more likely the behavior would drop out of the learner’s repertoire. I must have been well taught by my professors. When I graduated, I believed that the core of effective teaching was first of all to identify the correct sequence of individual stimuli and then to use constant repetition of correct responses to these stimuli, followed by some form of reinforcement. The corollary of this was the avoidance of and/or ruthless extinction of incorrect responses so that faulty or wrong behavior would drop out of (be extinguished from) the learner’s repertoire. In 1956, I was ready to apply these scientific principles with all the zeal, energy, and enthusiasm of a young graduate—especially with respect to the teaching of reading.

How I taught reading before I met Harry Pope The state-mandated syllabus (a 2-inch-thick hard-covered document) I was expected to apply reflected the behaviorist principles inherent in my teacher training (Department of Education, NSW, 1961). This syllabus organized the teaching of reading into discrete segments especially in the early grades. These segments were labeled: phonics, comprehension, supplementary reading, and reading appreciation.1 The skills of spelling, handwriting, and grammar were considered to be quite discrete (but essential) skills and were therefore supposed to be taught as self-contained “subjects.” The pedagogy during this era reflected the belief that children must have control of the individual skills before they could “put the pieces together” and read or write. The Director General of Education for NSW, in his opening section of the curriculum, Statement of Guiding Aims and Underlying Principles (Department of Education, NSW, 1978) stated, “Careful planning and grading of basic skills and knowledge are essential . . . Learning takes place more efficiently when there are prompt and regular reinforcements” (p. xi). The predominant teaching method of the time was based on the (scientifically derived) pattern of teach–practice–test, which was consistent with the theories and methods promulgated by the experimental psychologists of the day. Accordingly, I did flash card drills (recognition of whole word), phonic drills

118

Brian Cambourne

(recognition of individual sounds and their blends), spelling drills, grammar drills, punctuation drills, etc., and then forced my students to complete worksheet after worksheet so they could practice, practice, practice and I could check to see if they had mastered the required skills. Reading and writing were viewed as quite separate curriculum subjects. In fact, the term ‘writing’ referred to handwriting or penmanship. The act of composing texts was referred to as composition or written expression. Children were required to compose complete sentences with correct spelling, handwriting, and grammar in one draft, on prescribed topics. The general expectation was children would be able to write correctly one sentence in Grade 1 and two in Grade 2. By the time the child entered Grade 3, it was expected that “the average child [could] compose and write three consecutive sentences” (Department of Education NSW, 1961, p. 89). Assessment was very quantitative (and relatively easy). Each worksheet or teacher-made test could provide a numerical grade for each child. The statemandated syllabus explicitly stated that: Evaluation at regular intervals is essential to ascertain the progress being made towards achieving the objectives of the curriculum. A variety of procedures will be followed: teachers’ own brief, informal classroom tests; more formal examinations at regular intervals; diagnostic and standardized tests. (p. xi) Here’s something I wrote as my “Credendum” (belief statement) on the “Foreword” page of the mandatory “Program (of Planned Lessons)” I was expected to prepare for my principal to approve before I took control of the class: Learning is essentially habit formation. Effective learning is the establishment of “good” or “desirable” habits and the prevention of and/or elimination of “bad” or “undesirable” habits. Habits are formed through association between stimuli and responses. The degree to which something is learned is a function of the strength of the association between stimulus and response. Repetition strengthens the associative bond between stimulus and response. Although I applied these principles with zeal and vigor, I soon made an observation that surprised, confused, and frustrated me. It was this: Some of the children to whom I applied these principles didn’t seem to make any progress. The scientific principles I’d worked so hard at learning and applying while at college, didn’t seem to work for between 10% and 20% of the students, not only in the first class I taught in 1956, but also in the classes I subsequently taught. No matter how strictly I seemed to apply these principles, how carefully I sequenced the sub-skills, how many worksheets I designed for them to practice these skills, no matter how enthusiastically I reinforced their correct responses and punished their mistakes, they didn’t seem to be able to learn the simplest concepts associated with reading, writing, spelling (or math).

Learning as Meaning-Making 119 Despite this, many of these same students seemed to be able to learn and apply much more complex knowledge and skills in the world outside of school. When it came to things like understanding and mastering the skills, tactics, and knowledge of complex sports like cricket, or sight reading music, or running a successful after-school lawn-mowing business, or reading and understanding the racing guide, or calculating odds and probabilities associated with card games, or speaking and translating across two or three languages, these students had few peers. Although these contradictions caused me some intellectual unrest, I was too young and inexperienced to know how to resolve them. I struggled with them for many years. Then I met Harry Pope.

Enter Harry Pope Two American reading researchers, Ken and Yetta Goodman, introduced me to Harry Pope at one of the many workshops they conducted in their initial visit to Australia in the 1970s. The workshop proceeded along these lines: 1.

This extract from one of Roald Dahl’s short stories (Dahl, 1950) was projected by an overhead projector: It must have been around midnight when I drove home, and as I approached the gates of the bungalow I switched off the headlamps of the car so the beam wouldn’t swing in through the window of the side bedroom and wake Harry Pope.

2.

3.

4.

Participants were asked to read this passage silently so that they “really comprehended it and could visualise it in their minds.” The slide was visible for about 90 seconds. After about 90 seconds the overhead projector was turned off and participants were instructed to “try to recall and then write as much of the extract as possible.” We were given about 90 seconds to complete this task. We were then asked to share what we’d written. The Goodmans took our different responses and explored them.

On this day, about one-third of the group recalled (and wrote) “It must have been AROUND midnight,” about one-third wrote “It must have been ABOUT midnight,” and about one-third had responses like “AT midnight,” “It WAS midnight,” and so on. The Goodmans asked, who was right? They playfully invited the audience to bet on which was the correct version. After allowing some banter between the different “about/ around/ at” protagonists, one of them asked “Does it really matter in terms of the meaning which the author is trying to communicate whether it was ‘around’ or ‘about’ or ‘at’?” We agreed that it didn’t and continued in similar fashion to other differences in our recall of the

120

Brian Cambourne

words used in this extract. I remember we had a great deal of fun arguing over whether or not the original text was: “SWITCHED off” or “TURNED off” or “DIPPED” (the headlamps) “headLAMPS” or “headLIGHTS” “SWING in” or “SHINE in (through)” “HARRY Pope” or “HENRY Pope” or even “THE Pope”. (There were a couple of nuns representing the Catholic school system among the participants.) This workshop had a profound impact on me. What the group of fluent adult readers (including myself) who participated in the workshop actually did as they read and tried to comprehend this text belied many of the behaviorist principles with which I’d been imbued in my pre-service teaching program. It began what I now realize was the “reframing” (Lakoff, 2006) of what I thought and believed about the reading process.

How Harry Pope forced me to reframe my views of reading Fundamentally, Harry Pope forced me to reframe reading as a process of accurately matching meanings rather than matching words. If my peers at this workshop were effective readers (and it would be difficult to argue otherwise), how come they were so sloppy in recalling the exact words in the text of such a short piece of text? Could it mean that when reading silently (the most common form of reading in today’s world), effective readers focused on matching the meanings rather than the individual words? Or was it, as one of the special education experts in the workshop group wanted to argue, those who substituted “about” for “around”, or “lights” for “lamps” or “Henry” for “Harry” simply had visual discrimination problems? We quickly realized it would be difficult to argue that within this group of university professors, classroom teachers, and educational bureaucrats, that up to one-third of them had perceptual discrimination problems and this had caused them to fail to discriminate between these words. At this point in the workshop I privately concluded that a “weak visual discrimination hypothesis” could not account for these discrepancies. At the conclusion of this workshop my head was swirling with a multiplicity of “ahas.” The realization that these differently recalled words did NOT interfere with our interpretations of the meanings the author (Roald Dahl) intended helped me understand what the Goodmans meant by “semantically appropriate miscues.” These semantically appropriate miscues also had the same grammatical function. This clarified (for me) the concept of “syntactic appropriateness.” Perhaps this meant that the meaning of a word was a function of the linguistic company it kept? Perhaps this was why some of those students I taught as a young teacher would demonstrate little difficulty in recognizing the word “light” when it was used as a noun in a text (the light shone brightly), but struggled over it when it was used as a verb (“Light up your life”)? What did this imply for all the

Learning as Meaning-Making 121 worksheets I’d designed so that my students could practice recognizing words in isolation? If the meaning of a word could change according to the linguistic context in which it occurred, what did this mean for all the flash card drills I had forced on my students as a young teacher? There were more “ahas.” During the workshop we noted that “ABOUT ” and “AROUND” looked and sounded similar. It was then I understood what was meant by graphic/phonic similarity. The Goodmans also asked us to speculate as to why some of us substituted “turned off/dipped/dimmed the headlights” for “switched off the headlamps” in our written recall. While a range of different explanations were offered, the general consensus was that it had something to do with the meanings we were predicting, which in turn was based on the background knowledge and linguistic expectations we brought to the reading task. In some parts of Australia we “turn on/off ” electric appliances, rather than “switch” them on/off. With respect to car lights, we tended to “dip/dim/turn down” rather than “switch” them “on/off ” in order to avoid temporarily blinding an on-coming driver. In Australia we tend to call them headlights and “tail lights” rather than head/tail “lamps.” If we were engaged in silent reading, then these would be the meanings we would store away in long-term memory and would ultimately retrieve when asked to recall in writing. The need to question (and ultimately reject) the behaviorist model I’d been taught as a young teacher was further reinforced when I began using the Goodmans’ miscue paradigm in my own research. I actually used the same Harry Pope passage with hundreds of Australian-born students and, when the opportunity presented itself during my visits to the USA, with dozens of American students. The miscue patterns around the phrase “switched off the headlamps” became extremely predictable. A statistically significant percentage of Australian students would substitute “headlights” for “headlamps.” Of this group, more than half of them would not bother to self-correct, and would just continue reading aloud. Those who did self-correct usually read something like this: “. . . switched off the headlights, uh, er, lamps,” and continued reading aloud. On the other hand, not many US students made the same substitution. They read the word (“headlamps”) as it was written. The behaviorist model with which I’d been imbued would argue that these results strongly suggested that more than half the Australian students with whom I used this passage had perceptual discrimination problems, and therefore needed massive amounts of visual discrimination practice. I also knew that these same Australian students never exhibited the same difficulties when reading aloud sentences such as “I thought no more about it though, and continued walking through the room.” My experiences with Harry Pope seriously challenged how I’d always thought about (and talked about) the act of reading. The realization that there was a subtle but significant distinction between “meaning” per se and “clues to meaning,” especially when it came to communication involving both written and oral language, began to seep into my consciousness. (I’m a slow learner.) The Goodmans’ use of the phrase “linguistic clues” (semantic, syntactic, grapho, phonic), as they talked about the reading process, began to take on new meaning for me. These “clues” were not “stimuli” in the behaviorist sense I’d been taught. “Meanings”

122

Brian Cambourne

were not immutably embedded in the visual and/or acoustic “shape” of such stimuli, automatically appearing in some Pavlovian-like response to some overt stimulus like a flash card. Rather they were “constructed” (i.e. “figured out”) by thought processes, which “used” these clues. Strauss (2005) recently used a form of words which helped me understand (in hindsight) the issues the Harry Pope experiences raised for me. He explains that while some of these clues are overt and observable (sounds and gestures), in the main, they are tacit and unstated, and comprise shared mutual knowledge and beliefs. He goes on to describe linguistic communication thus: “the exchange of meanings via the selective production and perception of clues from a variety of overt and covert cuing systems” (p. 49).

From meaning-making as the core of reading to meaningmaking as the core of thinking, knowing, and learning I can trace my current intellectual and professional stance about learning in general, and literacy learning in particular, to the intellectual unrest caused by my first meeting with Harry Pope. As a consequence I analyzed the miscue paradigm in great depth, and published what I had discovered,2 as writing about the miscue paradigm helped me realize three things. First, that reading researchers needed to stop striving to emulate the randomized controlled trials used by medical researchers. Second, that they needed to apply the canons of a different form of inquiry if they wanted to develop powerful, practitioner-friendly, educationally relevant grounded theories of teaching and learning reading. And, finally, that there was a paradigm of inquiry which did conform to the canons of respectable scientific research which they could employ. It was called Naturalistic Inquiry, and miscue research was an ideal exemplar of how this paradigm should be applied. Those familiar with my work will know that I’ve been engaged in applying this paradigm to my own research interests for at least thirty years. Harry Pope and miscue analysis set in train my search for an educationally relevant theory of learning. By “educationally relevant” I meant a theory which could inform K–> University teachers about creating learning settings which enable ALL students to learn and apply complex abstract knowledge. In the course of this search I’ve reviewed thirty years of (so-called) “scientific” research evidence underpinning dozens of learning theories and the hundreds of variants they’ve spawned. I’ve complemented these reviews by conducting my own naturalistic inquiries across K–>University classrooms. I’ve also collected data from homes, backyards, parks, cafés, supermarkets, churches, indeed, from any setting in which complex learning can be observed in action. These incursions into the literature of “evidence-based” learning theories, together with my own naturalistic inquiries, served to emphasize the discrepancies between theory and practice, which teachers constantly experience. After more than thirty years of conducting these reviews and inquiries, it has become obvious (to me) that the multiplicity of theories which educational researchers produce in tightly controlled laboratory

Learning as Meaning-Making 123 settings have always been (and will continue to be) too simplistic to be relevant to practitioners. Not only did the Goodmans help me to challenge the assumption that the randomized controlled experiment is the only scientifically valid way of identifying and establishing immutable educational “truths,” but more importantly their focus on meaning resonated deeply with me. In turn, these provided me with the basis of framework for establishing a scientifically credible theory of learning.

It’s “meaning-at-the-core,” stupid! (using the Goodmans’ work to frame an educationally relevant theory of learning) What distinguishes homo sapiens from all other forms of life on our planet? The Goodmans’ focus on meaning helped me understand that there are two related abilities with which evolution has equipped humans over the past 3.8 million years, viz: 1

The ability to create complex meanings using abstract symbol systems.

AND 2

The ability to apply these complex meanings to the problems of species’ survival.

Learning one’s native language is the most obvious universal exemplar of this ability. Learning how to control the oral language of the culture into which one has been born is a stunning intellectual achievement of incredible complexity. It involves fine degrees of perceptual discrimination. It depends upon abstract levels of transfer and generalization being continually made. It demands that incredible amounts be stored in memory for instant retrieval. It necessitates high degrees of automaticity of very complex processes. Despite this complexity, as a learning enterprise, it is almost universally successful, extremely rapid, usually effortless, painless, and furthermore, it’s extremely durable. A hundred or so years of empirically derived learning theories cannot account for this amazing learning feat. Instead the educational research community has been forced to invoke a neurological or genetic “hard-wiring,” “preprogramming” explanation to explain first language learning. This argues that pre-knowledge of the complex grammar of all past and future human languages (!!!) must be hard-wired into our genetic structure if we are to explain language learning in terms of currently available learning theories (Chomsky, 1964). Evolution theory strongly suggests that there’s more to it than a simplistic, innate “language acquisition device.” It argues that the ability to construct complex meanings using abstract symbols is part of the process of natural selection (Deacon, 1997; Donald, 1991). The notion that some miraculous genetic mutation at some time in the distant past fortuitously produced a gene containing the grammatical blueprint of all past, present, and future human languages just doesn’t stand up to evolutionary scrutiny. It makes much more sense to argue that what IS hard-wired is the neurological equipment necessary for

124

Brian Cambourne

the construction of meaning using all symbol systems (not just oral language). Furthermore, Deacon’s concept of “co-evolution” (Deacon, 1997) has significantly more theoretical support than an innate “language acquisition device.” For the past 3.8 million years our neurological hardware has been shaped, refined, and extended by the environmental conditions that best supported homo sapiens’ survival. This “shaping” has not been unidirectional. Our evolving neurological hardware has simultaneously “shaped” the culturally appropriate social conditions which nurtured our species’ meaning-making behavior. The end product of this process is a species (us), which despite its puny body, its lack of speed, teeth, and claws, is currently the most powerful species on the planet. Why? I believe it’s because we can create and apply complex meanings. We are capable of creating and applying the most complex things, if (and only if) the environmental conditions which make such complex learning possible are present in the learning setting. Nature has already worked out what social, cultural, and physical factors need to be present in an effective learning setting. I have

Cambourne’s Conditions for Learning (Adapted from

Immersion in all kinds of texts.

The Whole Story 198 p33)

IMMERSION ENGAGEMENT

(Must be accompanied by:)

. of how texts are constructed and used.

DEMONSTRATION

Expectations . are powerful coercers of behaviour.

EXPECTATION

Probability of engagement is increased if these conditions are also optimally present.

occurs when learner is convinced that: 1. I am a potential ‘doer’.

Learners need to make their own decisions about . . time and opportunity to use, employ and practise . ‘. mistakes are essential for learning to occur.’ Learners need feedback from ‘knowledgeable others’.

RESPONSIBILITY

USE

2.

Engaging with the demos will further the purpose of my life. 3.

I can engage and try to emulate without fear of physical or psychological hurt if my attempt is not ‘fully correct’

APPROXIMATION

RESPONSE

Figure 8.1 Cambourne’s conditions for learning

. ‘It is dificult for teachers who don’t like children.’

Learning as Meaning-Making 125 elaborated on these during the last several years of my scholarship as elaborated in Figure 8.1 and explained in the book, The Whole Story: Natural Learning and Acquisition of Literacy in the Classroom (Cambourne, 1988).

End Piece My first meeting with Harry Pope caused a multiplicity of “ahas”: “Aha” experiences are always more memorable and longer lasting than the more mundane learning experiences we have in the course of our daily lives. Some change our lives so dramatically we can never go back to the ways of thinking, knowing, understanding, or behaving in the ways we did before such an experience. Meeting Harry Pope did this for me.

Notes 1 “Supplementary reading” referred to the providing of time and resources for students to read texts other than the basal-like texts prescribed by the syllabus. “Reading appreciation” referred to what is today called “Teacher ReadAloud” followed by a series of catechistic questions encouraging children to explain if they “liked it,” and what their feelings were toward different events or characters in the text. 2 I was very fortunate to have Reading Research Quarterly accept this piece for publication, which was a great boost to my career (Cambourne, 1976).

References Cambourne, B. L. (1976). Getting to Goodman: An analysis of the Goodman model of reading with some suggestions for evaluation. Reading Research Quarterly, 12(4), 605–636, 676–677. Cambourne, B. L. (1988). The whole story: Natural learning and the acquisition of literacy in the classroom. Sydney, Australia: Ashton Scholastic. Chomsky, N. (1964). Formal discussion of W. Miller and Susan Ervin, “The development of grammar in child language”. In U. Bellugi & R. Brown (Eds.), The acquisition of language (vol. 29, no. 1, Monographs of the Society for Research, in Child Development) (pp. 35–39). West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University. Dahl, R. (1950). Poison. In R. B. Inglis & J. Spear (Eds.) (1958). Adventures in English literature (pp. 604–611). New York: Harcourt, Brace, & Co. Deacon, T. W. (1997). The symbolic species: The co-evolution of language and the brain. New York: W.H. Norton. Department of Education, NSW (1961). Curriculum for primary schools. Sydney: V.C.N. Blight, Government Printer. Department of Education, NSW (1978). Reading K-12: Curriculum policy statement. Sydney: NSW Department of Education. Donald , M. (1991). Origins of the mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lakoff, G. (2006). Thinking points: Communicating our American values and vision. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. Strauss, S. (2005). The linguistics, neurology, and politics of phonics: Silent “e” speaks out. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

9

Creating Curriculum Jerome C. Harste and Kathy G. Short

There is something about a good teacher that simply takes one’s breath away. The first thing one notices is the quality of the engagements. Kids are involved in thoughtful literature discussions, writing about critical life issues, and inquiring into topics of significance to them personally and socially. The second thing one notices is the quality of the relationships. Not only the relationship that the teacher has with the children, but the relationship that the children have with each other and with the topics they are studying. Curriculum reforms typically put their major emphasis on changing instruction. While the quality of an engagement is directly linked to the quality of the relationships which develop, we know that unless relationships change, nothing much, curriculum-wise, has changed. Instead we simply “run the course” as educators until the next curriculum reform effort comes along. We have been fortunate to not only rub shoulders with some of the best teachers in the world, but to have struggled with them in thinking about how to act on our beliefs in their classrooms and in our teacher education courses. In this chapter, we share what it takes to “think curricularly” based on the frame of teachers as curricular thinkers. As such, this work builds from, but extends, the work of Kenneth and Yetta Goodman as exemplified in such articles as “Bridging the Gaps: Respect and Communication” (K. Goodman, 1979) and “Kidwatching: An Alternative to Testing” (Y. Goodman, 1978). Like the Goodmans, we see the process of curriculum development as one of putting a system of beliefs into action and the function of curriculum as providing perspective—a perspective not only for teachers but for children. Curriculum and curriculum development are much too important to be left in the hands of those who rarely come in contact with children. We believe that the ability of teachers to think curricularly is the key to creating more effective learning contexts for children.

Thinking through our system of beliefs Education, too often, is perceived as a matter of indoctrination and method. Decide what to teach, set clear objectives, and transmit this information to children in the most efficient and effective way possible. By this sort of logic, it’s all

Creating Curriculum

127

very simple. Educational problems arise when the delivery system breaks down (hence, teacherproof materials) or when the recipients have trouble learning (hence, remedial reading and special education). From a curriculum planning perspective, when education is perceived as indoctrination and method is made formulaic, the most important curricular question that gets asked is, “What knowledge should be taught?” Ignored is the fundamentally more profound and democratic question, “Whose knowledge should be taught?” This shift in thinking is transformative. In fact, we would go so far as to say that as long as the first question crossing the minds of those wishing to create curriculum is “What knowledge should be taught?,” the likelihood of a massive shift in the nature of schooling appears unlikely. This question leads us to consider the systems of beliefs that need to be considered in order to think curricularly, particularly in developing a critically literate curriculum for the 21st century. Given our definition of curriculum as putting a system of beliefs into action, we need to first consider our beliefs about: (1) what is to be learned; (2) how it is to be learned; and (3) who is to be learned. We then turn our attention to how teachers take these beliefs and successfully put them into practice.

What is to be learned? Unfortunately, for way too many people, the answer is already determined and not open to the debate; the question itself is no longer even asked. For E. D. Hirsch (1987), the answer is simple—education is about transmitting our cultural heritage. Although he wrote several books outlining the cultural knowledge to be transmitted, Hirsch never asked, “Whose knowledge is this?” When we consider who owns the knowledge Hirsch identified as “cultural knowledge,” it clearly isn’t the cultural knowledge of African-Americans, Hispanics, AsianAmericans and other disenfranchised groups. Hirsch sanctifies EuropeanAmerican heritage and culture through his curriculum. His recommendation that schools transmit this cultural heritage is a case of the dominant discourse, the talking and thinking of the dominant group, running rough-shod over the discourses of less powerful groups. It is more than unfortunate to have your cultural heritage ignored in school. Our experience would lead us to say that in order to become literate, you need to see yourself in literacy. Children need to not only see people like themselves in the books they read but also have their life experiences honored. We have found that one of the first criteria in creating a dynamic reading and writing program is getting children to express what’s on their minds, but children often spend more time worrying about what it is that the teacher wants to hear than valuing their own responses. Once children trust that teachers really do want to hear “what’s on their minds,” lots of what we want to see happening in the curriculum begins to take care of itself—grand conversations, compelling inquiries, a sense of agency, a new identity. Curriculum, too often, is built from memory rather than through inquiry.

128

Jerome C. Harste and Kathy G. Short

One of the options in organizing schools is to organize curriculum around the inquiries of learners rather than around the disciplines (Harste, 1994; Short, Harste, & Burke, 1996). In an inquiry-based curriculum the disciplines are still important but, rather than being the center of curriculum, they are positioned as perspectives that learners can take in researching topics of interest. What makes an inquiry-based curriculum so powerful is that children are invited to the forefront of knowledge production rather than relegated to the sidelines. In a discipline-centered curriculum the implicit message to children is, “You have to learn all of this before you can make a significant contribution to understanding.” Although children in an inquiry-based curriculum often ask questions that others may have asked before them, our experience is that they usually add something new—a new twist to an old question—and even when they don’t, their stance of inquiry remains essential to creating the possibility for true discovery. Even more importantly, inquiry supports agency. Children are no longer merely recipients of knowledge but creators of knowledge. Rather than putting their issues and concerns on hold, what’s on their mind becomes the focus of curriculum. Often, we would argue, when curriculum and teachers operate too much in the past, they think too little in the future. How is it to be learned? Schools are first and foremost about learning, not discipline, testing, costeffectiveness, or any of a host of other topics that seem to vie for public attention. While we can’t speak for everyone, few of us joined the teaching profession to see how orderly we could march a group of kids down a hallway. The same can be said for testing or for seeing how cheaply we can educate the masses. Public officials often argue that throwing money at schools doesn’t work, yet, as Kozol (1991) points out, money seems to be working in rich school districts to create “savage inequalities” with poorer districts. Although learning, as Frank Smith (1975) has argued, may differ in its specific detail, the evidence indicates that there is but one learning process. E. Brooks Smith (1970) saw learning as a process of “perceiving, ideating, and presenting.” According to Gregory Bateson (1979), what is perceived in learning is “difference” and “the difference that difference makes.” This difference is the source of the tension that propels the learning process (Peirce, 1955). Said differently, if what is being perceived doesn’t fit with the knowledge and expectations of the learner, then that learner experiences tension that, in turn, leads to inquiry and adjustment. Jean Piaget (1971) argues that “ideating” involves assimilation and accommodation. In assimilation, we fit the new into our existing cognitive frames; in accommodation, we alter those frames so that what is new makes sense given what we already know. This may involve throwing out some of what we once thought we knew. Wolfgang Iser (1978) sees “a search for unity” as driving the reading as well as the learning process. “Presenting” involves sharing what we have learned with others. As every

Creating Curriculum

129

teacher knows, one never really knows something until you have tried to teach it. Somehow, in presenting, the loose ends become obvious. Because presenting makes blatant the difference between what is new, what is known and what is still unknown, the very process of presenting sets up a new round of learning. Knowledge of the learner is central to any description of the learning process. As a result of extensive studies of young children learning to read and write, Marie Clay (1985) argued that knowledge of the learner involves building from what the child already knows. She called this phase of instruction, “working in the known.” Similarly, Yetta Goodman (1978) believed that “kidwatching” is the key to good teaching and assessment, and we refer to this process as “the child as curricular informant” (Harste, Woodward, & Burke, 1984). What all of these concepts have in common is the belief that what makes a quality learning experience for one child is not the same as for another child. Just because you know something doesn’t give you a right to teach it. What matters is the quality of the fit and whether or not you have evidence that the child needs what it is that you invite him or her to experience. The issue isn’t “once over lightly” or even “practice makes perfect.” Children learn more from one quality language encounter than from several trips through a less than authentic language encounter. Who is to be learned? For the 21st century the goal in curriculum planning ought to be the creation of children who are agents of text rather than victims of text. Agency entails interrogating the taken-for-granted, looking at things from multiple perspectives, asking our own inquiry questions, assuming the responsibility to inquire, and taking social action (Lewison, Leland, & Harste, 2007). There is no neutral ground. The decisions we make about what to teach give us an identity as well as give the students we work with an identity. Both they and we are positioned in particular ways by our teaching and we must assume responsibility for this positioning. In the final analysis the decisions we make about literacy are moral decisions. The literacies we value make a moral difference. Said differently, literacy cuts both ways—it cuts people in as well as out. By sticking with the canon we continue to give voice to those whom that canon serves. By defining literacy traditionally in terms of reading and writing, we deny the kinds of new literacies that our students bring with them and at which they may be more expert than we. It is important to remember Wayne Booth’s (1988) statement that “ultimate readings” (in this case, final decisions about what to teach) are always a matter of morality and ethics. To be critically literate is not to assume the high ground by pointing the finger at others who are not living up to our expectations. We, too, have had and continue to have our hand in the cookie jar. By way of example, let us take and accept as a given the critical race theorist’s premise that we live in a racist society. This isn’t so just because of someone else’s doing. By not being more proactive we are both inadvertently and consciously participating in racism. By condoning the racism

130

Jerome C. Harste and Kathy G. Short

that exists through our silence and inaction, we are part of the problem. This isn’t all bad. Barbara Kamler (1999) says that catching ourselves in contradictory and incongruent behavior is a sign that we are engaged in the struggle of trying on new identities and discourses. Alastair Pennycook (1999) asks us to consider, “To what extent does the work [of curriculum] question common assumptions, including our own?” Dennis Sumara and Brent Davis (1999) argue that when planning curriculum, it is best to see what one is doing as creating a “counter-narrative.” In their words, “curriculum has an obligation to interrupt heteronormative thinking—not only to promote social justice, but to broaden possibilities for perceiving, interpreting, and representing experience” (p. 191).

Putting our beliefs into action Creating curriculum that produces critically literate learners is not a matter of starting over or walking away from everything we know or have already been doing. It does involve searching for ways to put our beliefs into practice and not being satisfied to stay at the point of simply reflecting on new insights. Regardless of good intentions, without the specifics of practice, teachers fail to bring these beliefs to life in the classroom. The three questions we find ourselves asking in order to move from belief to practice are: (1) What do we do?; (2) How do we plan?; and (3) How do we organize? What do we do? Two relatively recent insights into literacy have been the notions of “multiple literacies” (Street, 1995) and “literacy as social practice” (Luke & Freebody, 1997). The focus on multiple literacies grows out of the recognition that different cultural groups value different forms of literacy. Not only do various cultural groups have different “ways with words” (Heath, 1983), but also different ways of knowing and making meaning. There is no single definition of what it means to be literate. Even further, different cultural groups have different ways of inducting their children into literacy because there is no one way of becoming literate. Literacy as social practice is based on the recognition that, while various cultural groups value different forms of literacy, what keeps a particular form of literacy in place are the social practices that are operating in the society. Researchers, such as Brian Street, Allen Luke, and Peter Freebody, study the systems of meaning that operate in various societies, providing implications for teachers to consider when creating curriculum. For example, if critical book discussions are valued, it is not enough to provide time and space for such discussions. A set of social practices must be put into place so that these critical discussions actually happen. This can be done by routinely asking students to consider whose story is being told, what the story might have been like if it had been written by a member of another cultural group, and whether the story is told with accuracy and authenticity. Lewison, Leland, and Harste (2007) see disrupting the commonplace, taking multiple perspectives, focusing on the socio-political, and

Creating Curriculum

131

taking social action as key social practices which need to be in place. Their book, Creating Critical Classrooms, suggests a variety of strategies that teachers might use to support these social practices in their classrooms. Needless to say, the most effective strategy is for teachers to demonstrate these social practices by living the curriculum they want their students to engage with. When curriculum is seen as a metaphor for the kinds of lives we wish to live and the kinds of people we wish to be, then the social practices or “lived-through experiences” we put in place are important. Over time, such social practices raise conscious awareness of issues, invite students to look at ideas from multiple perspectives, instill the need and responsibility to inquire, and support reflection, re-theorizing, and the re-design of their world. Hillary Janks (2000) sees redesign as an important component of classrooms as it is the one social practice within a critical literacy curriculum that has hope as its focus. She argues that a model of critical literacy must address issues of dominance, diversity, access, and re-design. How do we plan? Curricular frameworks connect theory and practice and thus provide the basis for putting our beliefs into action in classrooms. These frameworks are conceptually-based and so use visual models to uncover and make explicit the theoretical relationships that underlie practices. The most familiar curricular framework used in mandated programs are scope and sequence charts, based on the theoretical belief that learning is composed of discrete skills, procedures, facts, and concepts that need to be learned one at a time in a particular order or sequence. Ken Goodman has pointed out that the major problem with these frameworks is that they are instructional models—how we think kids should be taught—rather than how we actually learn. Scope and sequence reading frameworks, for example, are the result of asking, “How should we teach kids to read?” rather than asking, “What are the processes we use to read?” These frameworks tend to be procedural, based on a list of topics or lessons that are to be implemented according to a particular set of procedures within a program. We are interested in curriculum frameworks that support teachers and students in thinking about and planning curriculum conceptually, rather than procedurally. Since the framework is a visual model, each engagement is viewed within a broader theoretical whole or picture of the learning process. An effective framework is self-generating and has a flow that reflects the complexity of learning while still providing space for teacher and student inquiries. It also supports multiple interpretations and different organizational possibilities so that there is no one way to organize or structure time and space within classrooms. The focus is not on imposing a particular set of standardized procedures across classrooms, but on understanding the conceptual relationships between the different aspects of the learning process in order to create curriculum with students. Frameworks provide the basis for thinking with students as a shared point of reference for understanding the broader picture within

132

Jerome C. Harste and Kathy G. Short

which a given engagement or learning event occurs. Once a framework is in place in a classroom, students are able to take a much more active role in thinking curricularly with teachers, rather than being relegated to being receivers of curriculum. There are a variety of ways to conceptualize the curriculum, the most powerful being in terms of the learning process. The learning process can be visualized in different ways, thus leading to a range of curriculum frameworks based in similar theoretical beliefs. Each framework uncovers and makes visible certain relationships, while obscuring others. One important function of a framework therefore is to provide perspective on our work as educators and enable us to create and critique the learning events occurring within a classroom context. Each framework provides a different perspective as a tool for planning, evaluating, establishing priorities, and adjusting our teaching. The framework that we have most frequently used within our work is that of the authoring cycle, which focuses on learning as a process of inquiry (Short, Harste, & Burke, 1996). The cycle begins with connection, highlighting engagements that support children in making connections to their own experiences and conceptions. These connections become the basis for offering a range of invitations to encourage children to expand their perspectives, knowledge, and understandings. Out of these connections and invitations, we believe that compelling tensions will arise for children to pursue in focused investigations. In turn, opportunities for presenting their new understandings and for taking action will arise out of these investigations. We find that when teachers try to fit innovative instructional engagements into the linear frameworks of mandates and textbook programs, they experience constant conflict and frustration. This frustration often results in a return to traditional teaching practices. However, when they develop their own curricular frameworks, they can figure out ways to address those mandates within their frameworks as well as to challenge the mandates themselves. Dewey (1934) argued that those who adhere to established systems only need a few finesounding words to justify existing practice, but those who want to create new systems have to have an articulated coherent theory and philosophy of education to support their practices. Operating within an explicit curriculum framework supports teachers in articulating the connections between practice and theory in their classrooms and to maintain the possibility of real change within the system. The process of creating and teaching within explicit curricular frameworks has been so generative for our teaching that we are exploring how to support teachers in creating their own frameworks. Although we always build from each other’s conceptions as educators, using someone else’s framework, no matter how sound theoretically, is not as powerful as creating your own framework. It’s the process of thinking that underlies the process of creating a framework that we find most generative and transformative, and so we are searching for ways to share our process of thinking through frameworks, not just the framework itself.

Creating Curriculum

133

How do we organize? Organization for instruction is framed by our response to three key parameters: the use of time and space and who gets to do what. In schools, how we use time indicates what we value. Time is always in short supply and the decisions we make about time open up or close down potentials (e.g. if we do a rushed read aloud and how that may close down the possibility of making thoughtful connections or for thinking deeply). Students and teachers alike need long sustained periods of time to really engage. Our use of space suggests whether we are arranging to maintain control or to encourage social interactions and dialogue. The use of space provides structures that support imagination and creativity. We need to consider the opportunities for agency that students are provided. Do students have access to the materials they need when they need them or do they have to go through us to ask permission to get what they need as learners? We need to establish routines that allow students to function effectively independently.

Conclusion We see the language arts curriculum as composed of three major components: meaning-making, language study, and inquiry. There is one caveat, however, and that is that meaning-making, language study, and inquiry must be done with a critical edge (Harste, 2003; Harste & Leland, 2007). Practically, what this means is that in addition to reading a story and enjoying it, space needs to be created so that children can question the taken-for-granted, look at the story from multiple perspectives, question underlying assumptions, speculate about what might be, and try on different ways of being and acting in the world. Instead of reducing language study to phonics and spelling, children need to study how issues are framed (Lakoff, 2004) and how that framing positions them and creates an identity they may or may not wish to take on. Further, it is important to think of language study broadly. For example, we see “language study” metaphorically as the study of all of the ways that humans have learned to communicate with one another, including not only such things as art, music, and drama, but also such mixed media vehicles as the internet. As if reading our minds as to why such a broader definition is necessary, Gunter Kress (2004) argues that the screen is overtaking the page in terms of its importance in today’s world. James Gee (2003) goes a step further, arguing that kids are learning more about literacy outside of school than inside of school. Whether you totally agree with these authors’ conclusions or not, there is little doubt that visual and media literacy needs to be part of the language arts curriculum for the 21st century. We see inquiry as the child’s opportunity to use reading and writing as tools and toys for learning. Because the world isn’t fixed, what was once known is often no longer so. Charles Sanders Peirce (1955) said it best, “Facts are best thought of as beliefs at rest” (p. 192). How often haven’t the facts that we learned

134

Jerome C. Harste and Kathy G. Short

in school, when they have come under further investigation, turned out not to be true? In reference to political rhetoric, Colin Lankshear and Michelle Knobel (2006) go so far as to argue that truth no longer exists, what seems to matter these days is what narrative you spin. To the extent that their observation is true, all the more reason that students need to understand that no matter the topic and no matter how much they like or dislike the conclusion, they have a responsibility to interrogate and to inquire for themselves.

References Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and nature: A necessary unity. New York: Dutton. Booth, W. (1988). The company we keep: An ethics of fiction. Berkeley: University of California Press. Clay, M. M. (1985). The early detection of reading difficulties (3rd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Clay, M. M. (1987). Writing begins at home: Preparing children for writing before they go to school. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Dewey, J. (1934). Education and experience. New York: Basic Books. Gee, J. (2003). What video games have to teach us about literacy and learning. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Goodman, K. (1979). Bridging the gaps in reading: Respect and communication. In J. C. Harste & R. F. Carey (Eds.), New perspectives on comprehension (Monographs in Teaching and Learning, No. 3). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, Language Education. Goodman, Y. (1978). Kidwatching: An alternative to testing. National Elementary School Principal, 57(4), 41–45. Harste, J. C. (1994). Literacy as curricular conversations around knowledge, inquiry, and morality. In R. B. Ruddell, M. R. Ruddell, & H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (4th ed.) (pp. 1220–1242). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Harste, J. C. (2003). What do we mean by literacy now? Voices in the Middle, 10(3), 8– 12. Harste, J. C., & Leland, C. (2007). On getting lost, finding one’s direction, and teacher research. Voices in the Middle, 14(3), 7–11. Harste, J. C., Short, K. G., & Burke, C. L. (1988). Creating classrooms for authors. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Harste, J. C., Woodward, V. A., & Burke, C. L. (1984). Language stories and literacy lessons. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Heath, B. S. (1983). Ways with words. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hirsch Jr., E. D. (1987). Cultural literacy: What every American needs to know. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Iser, W. (1978). The act of reading: A theory of aesthetic response. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Janks, H. (2000). Dominance, access, diversity and design: A synthesis for critical literacy education. Educational Review, 52(1), 15–30. Kamler, B. (1999). The lovely doll who’s come to school: Morning meeting talk as gendered language practice. In B. Kamler (Ed.), Constructing gender and difference: Critical research perspectives on early childhood (pp. 191–213). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Creating Curriculum

135

Kozol, J. (1991). Savage inequalities: Children in America’s schools. New York: Crown/ Random House. Kress, G. (2004). Literacy in the new media age. London: Routledge. Lakoff, G. (2004). Don’t think of an elephant. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green. Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2006). New literacies. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Lewison, M., Leland, C., & Harste, J. C. (2007). Creating critical classrooms: Reading and writing with an edge. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Luke, A., & Freebody, P. (1997). Shaping the social practices of reading. In S. Muspratt, A. Luke, & P. Freebody (Eds.), Constructing critical literacies (pp. 185–223). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Piaget, J. (1971). Psychology and epistemology. New York: Grossman. Peirce, C. S. (1955). Philosophical writings of C. S. Peirce (J. Buchler, Ed.). New York: Dover. Peirce, C. S. (1958). Charles S. Peirce: Selected writings (P. P. Wiener, Ed.). New York: Dover. Pennycook, A. (1999). Introduction: Critical approaches to TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 33(8), 329–348. Short, K. G., Harste, J. C., & Burke, C. L. (1996). Creating classrooms for authors and inquirers (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Smith, E. B. (1970). Language and thinking in the elementary school. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Smith, F. (1975). Comprehension and learning: A conceptual framework for teachers. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Street, B. (1995). Social literacies: Critical approaches to literacy, development, ethnography and education. Boston: Addison-Wesley. Sumara, D., & Davis, B. (1999). Interrupting heteronormativity: Toward a queer curriculum theory. Curriculum Inquiry, 29(2), 191–208.

10 Is “Coaching” a Dangerous Metaphor for Teaching and Reading Teacher Education? James V. Hoffman and Gerald L. Duffy

Ken and Yetta Goodman have dedicated their lives as researchers and teacher educators to the improvement of teaching in schools. They have been advocates for over five decades for the reading profession and the reading professional. They alert us constantly to the threats associated with policy initiatives that are wrong-headed and have the potential to harm the profession and children. They provoke us to engage in public dialogue about our concerns and to not accept anything as a given. It is in this spirit that we raise attention to the rise of “coaches” in the reading profession. David Pearson once bragged to us that he could get from “coach” to “teach” in just two words changing only one letter at a time. He demonstrated with, “Coach, roach, reach, teach.” David’s word game makes it appear that coaching and teaching are closely related. But are they really? Apparently the literacy community thinks so. For instance, we “Googled” the term “reading coaches” and came up with 49,300 direct links (and one “sponsored link” to “Teach your Children to Read. 60 Day Money-Back Guarantee from Frontier Phonics”). Most of the sites were linked in some way to “Reading First” initiatives or the “No Child Left Behind” legislation. It seems that everywhere you look in the professional literature, people are talking about “literacy coaches” (e.g., Bacon, 2005; Pilulski & Chard, 2005; Toll, 2005). Even the International Reading Association has appropriated the term “coaching” into its promotional materials, as evidenced by recent publications and position papers (e.g., IRA, 2004; 2006). The coaching metaphor is widely (if not wildly) popular, not just in reading but also with today’s business “consultant” often being called a business “coach” and with the rise of new “professional” communities engaged in “life coaching.” As long-time teachers and teacher educators, we are concerned. Our worry is rooted in our secret lives—our lives as coaches. Gerry coached junior boys’ hockey for years (and even had two of his players end up playing in the National Hockey League, one of whom played on a Stanley Cup winner); Jim coached women’s junior volleyball for years (and had over fifty of his players go on to play at the Division 1 collegiate level). As professional colleagues and personal friends, we have often engaged in conversations about what teachers “do” and what coaches “do.” We would often agree that teachers and teacher educators

Is “Coaching” a Dangerous Metaphor? 137 could learn a lot from what coaches do. Many of these conversations took place in the context of Gerry coaching Jim to fly-fish—with little success we both agree. We use to laugh a lot in these conversations, but we are not laughing now. In fact, the theme of our conversation has shifted a full 180 degrees from the “positives” of a coaching connection to focus on concerns over teachers and teacher educators “doing what coaches do.” While we applaud the trend to move reading specialists out of the traditional role of remedial reading teachers and into the role of supporting teachers in classrooms, we view with caution the use of coaching as a metaphor to guide reading teacher educators. Metaphors are tricky. They can empower, but they can also limit. This is particularly so with the coaching metaphor. While coaching and teaching have some important connections in their traditional usage, other aspects of coaching may be counter-productive or at least counterintuitive to what we would hope to see literacy professionals do as they work with teachers. Consequently, in encouraging reading specialists to be coaches, we may inadvertently encourage them to promote aspects of teaching that are less than professional.

Positives of the coaching metaphor The word “coach” has traditionally been associated with sports, such as hockey or volleyball. Indeed, most of the literature on coaching (voluminous in nature and often autobiographical) relates to sports. An effective coach is expected to: • • • •

develop athletes’ technical skills and strategic abilities; motivate athletes to perform at peak levels; promote a spirit of teamwork and selflessness (in team sports); and plan for, prepare for, and adapt tactics suited to win (defeat others) in particular contexts.

Some of these characteristics apply to both to coaching and teaching. We want teachers to develop technical skills and strategies, to motivate, to promote teamwork and to plan and adapt tactics. Coaching is also an effective metaphor in other ways. Good coaching relies heavily on explicit explanation. Some of the best coaches in sports have not been the best players. In fact, many of the best coaches had to struggle to be just good. They became great coaches because they had an ability to break what they are teaching down into steps that can be described, modeled, and practiced. “Telling” has received some deserved criticism as a teaching model, but we would argue that there are times for good “telling” in teaching, and coaching provides a model for this. Effective coaching relies heavily on temporary adjustments or accommodations that build to success—in particular in work with the very young. In volleyball, this might take the form of a lowered net at early age levels; in hockey, 5-year-olds learn to skate holding onto a chair. Such accommodations offer a kind of temporary scaffolding embraced within all forms of teaching and

138

James V. Hoffman and Gerald L. Duffy

supported by the theoretical work of Vygotsky, Piaget, and Bruner. In reading instruction, we see such accommodations (e.g., in the use of leveled text and in guided reading strategies). Coaches provide a good model for accommodations and scaffolding. Additionally, effective coaching, in team sports, relies heavily on building a team concept and on the importance of individuals working with others. It promotes the notion that teamwork results in greater success. In teaching, we see the enormous power of such teamwork in learning communities. These communities not only accomplish more than working in isolation, they help students move beyond the moment and to take control of their future. It is evident in effective teachers’ ability to create and sustain a productive learning environment as well as in cooperative learning, collaborative project work, and other student communities. The sense of “team” is another positive aspect of the coaching metaphor. Finally, effective coaching relies heavily on real-time engagements with instruction inserted at “points of use.” In coaching, such instruction occurs in the context of scrimmages or real games. The new actions are learned more quickly and more effectively when assimilated into real contexts than when confined to artificial settings such as isolated drills. This, too, is something that good teachers do, so once again coaching is an appropriate metaphor. In sum, and in some ways, coaching DOES work as a metaphor for teacher education. The question we pose, however, is whether the above advantages outweigh other images and messages associated with coaching.

What’s “wrong” with the coaching metaphor? Here we highlight five major areas of concern in the application of coaching to reading teacher education in general and the role of the literacy specialists in particular. We take inspiration from and frame our concerns around the comments of some famous (and sometimes infamous) coaches. We also include some recent, personal (not so positive) experiences we have had with reading coaches in schools. Extending the sports metaphor we would refer to these as “fouls” deserving of penalties. For the purposes of this essay, we will label these as “red flags” that should serve as a warning of something wrong in the system. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word fear, but then again, he doesn’t know the meaning of most words. (Abe Lemons) First, the extreme, athletic coaching brings to all our minds the image of the hard driving, self-serving, defacing individual who leads by threat and intimidation. Whether the images come from television (e.g. Bobby Knight throwing chairs; Woody Hayes cuffing an opposing player) or from the movies (e.g., Friday Night Lights), we are often exposed to the more mean-spirited aspects of “coach.” While in the movies the hard-hearted coach often reveals a softer side

Is “Coaching” a Dangerous Metaphor? 139 in the closing scenes, we suspect this is not always representative of reality in the tough and direct world of athletic coaching. A “reading coach” from the District is conducting classroom “dropin” visit in a “low-performing” school. She enters the classroom and immediately interrupts a child writing (a child she has never met before). She says: “Take out a clean sheet of paper and start over. You should know by now how to format your paper properly. And, please spell the words correctly.” The words are directed at the child but in a loud enough voice for all of the other students in the class and most importantly (and intentionally) for the teacher to hear. There are really only two plays: Romeo and Juliet, and put the darn ball in the basket. (Abe Lemons) Second, the coaching metaphor tends to work best in contexts that are focused on “training.” Volleyball coaches train their players to react in certain ways in certain situations; hockey coaches train their players to break out of the defensive zone in certain ways in certain situations. The key is repetition and drill. This characteristic of coaching tends to encourage teachers to emphasize mechanical rather than thoughtful aspects of teaching, a phenomenon we see in today’s growing use of scripts to follow and hoops to jump through. There are not only scripts for the teachers and scripts for the coaches, there are scripts for the training of coaches. But training and teaching are two different things. We worry that the emphasis on coaching blurs those distinctions to a point where the difference is obscured. A reading coach is presenting a “reading academy” course for inservice teachers. The coach is required to read from a script in the presentation and use the prepared PowerPoints and overheads. A teacher asks a question regarding one of the classroom instructional procedures that is being recommended. The question poses “why” and “what if” kinds of concerns. The reading coach responds: “I am sorry, I can’t answer questions like that, nor can I allow any discussion of that kind of question in this session. I am required to present the information as given to me without variation—no more and no less.” If winning isn’t everything; then why do they keep score? (Vince Lombardi) Third, the coaching metaphor tends to work best when learning outcomes are easily measured and identified. In coaching, success is measured by the won– lost record. This is true even though we give lip service to the idea that what’s really important is what athletes learn about sportsmanship and how to be effective under pressure. We see a similar “win or else” phenomenon developing

140

James V. Hoffman and Gerald L. Duffy

in literacy. Programs that rely on easily measured outcomes (e.g,. reading rate/ “fluency” progress on DIBELS) are “winners,” as are schools that score well on high stakes tests and on “reducing the gap.” Are these the measures that count? That we should be held accountable for? If the answers are “yes,” then coaching is taking us in the right direction. However, if we aspire to the goal of developing literate persons—coaching will always leave us short of the mark. We worry that the coaching metaphor displaces the deeper and richer aspects of the curriculum, if not for all kids, then at least for the learners who need the most support. A school has been targeted as low-performing. The district has sent in reading coaches to help the school focus and raise scores. The teachers are trained to train their students in successful comprehension strategies: “When students are getting ready to read, they should clear their minds and try to forget everything they already know about the topic of the text they are reading. This will help them focus just on the information that is presented. Test scores on comprehension will go up.” The coach should be the absolute boss, but he still should maintain an open mind. (Red Auerbach) Fourth, the coaching metaphor tends to work best when there are clear lines of authority. Coaches tend to be authoritarians. But we know from several important learning theorists (e.g., Olson, Piaget) that it is more effective if learners have room to seek or explore the environment that surrounds them. Social mediation of the kind Gee (2004) describes can support learners by situating learning in the child’s domain. We worry that the authoritarian aspects of coaching encourage teachers to be too directive, to minimize dialog, to encourage kids to be compliant followers instead of critical thinkers and to abandon their responsibility to make autonomous decisions in the interest of individual children. Teachers in a low-performing district are required to read from a scripted lesson each day for reading instruction. The scripted lesson lasts between 45 and 90 minutes. Teachers are not allowed to vary from the script. Reading coaches visit classrooms on a random basis to monitor implementation of this policy. Teachers who are not in compliance are “written-up” by the reading coach and this record becomes part of the permanent file. Win any way as long as you can get away with it. Nice guys finish last. (Leo Durocher) Fifth, coaching lives within the “rules” of the game. Without rules there is no game and there are no coaches. In our interactions with literacy coaches we have been inundated with questions of: “Can we do that?”; “Can we use that

Is “Coaching” a Dangerous Metaphor? 141 material?”; “Do we have to follow this script exactly?”; “Can we attend this session at a conference or do we have to go to one of the approved sessions?” These are not the kinds of questions a literacy specialist asks about their work or their professional lives. Literacy specialists are guided by what the learner needs or the teacher needs to become successful. Literacy coaches are surrounded by rules that have taken their focus off the learner and placed it on the bureaucracy that controls activity. The state has contracted for “external” evaluators to monitor the work of coaches in schools as well as the “learning” of coaches. When coaches are attending a professional conference, they are required to attend only those sessions that have been approved for content. Monitors attend these sessions to confirm that the session has focused on approved procedures. Of course, these “red flag” examples do not represent the work of all “reading coaches.” To their credit, there are coaches subverting and working around this system of control. They are supporting teachers who need support. But, we would argue that anyone who has spent considerable time in schools, “lowperforming” schools in particular, will recognize the “red flag” examples are real and becoming pervasive.

What are the alternatives? Teacher educators are learners. They learn from and sometimes with teachers. Every opportunity to visit in a classroom is an opportunity to learn for a teacher educator. Teacher educators grow and share their knowledge with other teachers. If coaches are constantly engaged in “telling” and not learning, they will fail and the system will fail. We have the lessons from three decades of classroom research in teaching to illustrate this point. The professional knowledge base grows from the inspection of teaching, not from ideological mandates. Literacy specialists must enter every classroom open to learning new things. Teacher educators recognize the importance of a collaborative, collegial relationship with those they support—one that is set on equal footing. Teacher educators work with other professionals (teachers) who have a far greater depth of understanding of the learners they work with (their students) than the teacher educator will ever have. There is no room for “power” moves in this relationship. Trust and confidence are far more crucial elements of effective collaboration than authority and control. Teacher educators and literacy specialists want to help teachers operate in more cognitive and less physical spaces than athletic coaches. The learning outcomes we want literacy specialists to address are outcomes that are inherently less visible and more ambiguous than those addressed by athletic coaches. Teachers of reading emphasize cognitive flexibility, adaptive strategies, metacognitive abilities, and reflection. The really great athletic coaches use some

142

James V. Hoffman and Gerald L. Duffy

of these same strategies. These are the individuals you hear referred to as the great “teachers” not just coaches. In a teaching world in which the pressures to become “technicians” who transmit knowledge and skills through highly prescriptive programs is already all too evident, the coaching metaphor further encourages the deprofessionalization of teaching. Consequently, we recommend a simple prescription for literacy specialists: be extremely cautious in using “coaching” to describe your role in working with other teachers. Yes, the legal terms associated with funding may require the use of such terms in specific times and places. But as literacy specialists, we know that language drives action. In that sense, substituting “coach” for “teacher” is not a minor issue. The term “coach” carries meanings that have the potential to reinforce undesirable aspects of teaching, with the result that we may not accomplish our most important literacy goals. To help avoid this eventuality, we suggest that literacy specialists be guided by this “code”: • • • • • • •

Literacy specialists will learn from and with teachers. Literacy specialists don’t command; they inspire. Literacy specialists don’t demand; they collaborate. Literacy specialists don’t promote programs; they promote thoughtful teaching. Literacy specialists are not trainers; they are teacher educators. Literacy specialists success is not measured by how many students pass the test; it is measured by how many students become literate; and Literacy specialists don’t look for instant change; they look for gradual change.

The politics of coaching There is a sinister explanation for the rise of “coaching” related to NCLB and, in particular, to Reading First. Coaching was introduced to leverage away the position of reading specialists—including Reading Recovery Teachers—in schools. Reading coaches were to become the trainers and monitors for implementation of “research-based” materials, approaches and programs. Reading coaches, in this role, could be trained quickly and circumvent any professional certifications or standards that existed nationally or at state levels. It has not been uncommon over the past several years to see Reading Recovery Teachers, for example, taken from their support role in a school and put back as classroom teachers while classroom teachers were pulled out of the classroom and trained as reading coaches. While the standards for preparation of Reading Recovery Teachers are extremely high, as are the standards and certification of reading specialists in most states, there are no standards for coaches—at least not yet. This kind of action subverts the professional base for reading. Literacy specialists must also demand support from the professional organizations that represent them. The

Is “Coaching” a Dangerous Metaphor? 143 IRA must walk a careful line that accommodates the reality of public policy, but never to the point of relinquishing its responsibility to promote good literacy instruction and good support for teachers.

Conclusion Is “coaching” a dangerous metaphor for teaching and reading teacher education? We think the answer is “yes,” and if not “yes,” then at least deserving of a conversation. We hope that our brief essay and the issues we raise are not read as a bashing of all those literacy specialists who have been “hired” to work as reading coaches. This is not a label they have chosen and the vast majority of these individuals are working hard to support children and teachers in highly professional ways. Nor do we want our essay read as a bashing of athletic coaches. We have the highest respect for these coaches—and in particular those who take on the qualities of “teacher” in their work. Our goal here is to provoke reflection and conversation within the professional community of literacy educators. “Coach” and “teach” may be closely related in David’s word game. But the metaphor must be applied with caution in helping teachers approach excellence in the teaching of literacy. We must remember that we are teachers of children and teachers of reading. We are not just trainers, and the literacy we seek to develop can never be achieved through training. We view “coaching” as one role that a Reading Specialist can assume as they engage in professional development. We take note of the fact that the coaching role is prominent in the new International Reading Association (IRA) Standards for Professionals (currently under revision). In the revised standards, the role is used to describe a range of strategies that a Reading Specialist can use under certain conditions. We applaud this effort as both politically astute and practically sound.

References Bacon, S. (2005). Reading coaches: Adapting an intervention model for upper elementary and middle school readers. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 48(5), 416–427. International Reading Association (2004). The role and qualifications of the reading coach in the United States. Available at: www.reading.org. Pikulski, J., & Chard, D. (2005). Fluency: Bridge between decoding and reading comprehension. Reading Teacher, 58(6), 510–519. Toll, C. A. (2005). The literacy coach’s survival guide: Essential questions and practical answers. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

11 Learning from Young Bilingual Children’s Explorations of Language and Literacy at Home Iliana Reyes

Our view is that language is both personal and social invention. Both the individual and the society never lose the ability to create language. (Ken and Yetta Goodman, 1979)

Children’s exploration of language and literacy reveals that they actively think about and make meaning of print and language everywhere around them. They participate actively in social events and interactions with adults and peers, thereby not only gaining linguistic knowledge themselves, but influencing their families’ knowledge as well. From these everyday social experiences and interactions with their parents, siblings, community members, and the media, young children begin developing emergent literacy (Moll, Saez, & Dworin, 2001; Reyes & Moll, 2008). Among the under-studied factors in young children’s early literacy development are family and home interactions. The effect of family practices at home before children begin formal schooling must be explored to further our understanding of children’s early literacy development. It is particularly important to understand the early biliteracy development of children who are exposed to more than one language in order to effectively educate the linguistically and culturally diverse student population present in classrooms across the United States and in many countries around the world (Brisk & Harrington, 1999; Goodman, Goodman, & Flores, 1979). In this chapter, I review the role family interactions play in the literacy development of young emergent bilinguals; that is, preschool children who are learning two languages at an early age (4-year-olds), and who are developing literacy in two languages simultaneously. The examples come from my work in a predominantly Mexican community in the U.S. Southwest, where I have been conducting a longitudinal study since 2003.1 My formal training as a developmental psychologist intertwined with my early professional experience as a preschool teacher to influence my view on how children learn; from a Vygotskian sociocultural perspective, I learned to view children as learners creating and re-creating knowledge within their social context; from a Piagetian perspective, I learned to view children as young theorists and explorers who

Bilingual Children’s Language and Literacy

145

make sense of the world they experience through their day-to-day routines and through their interactions with print as a cultural object (Ferreiro, 2007; Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982). My views have also been influenced by the Goodmans’ work on how children acquire language and literacy in natural ways as they participate with their families in everyday literacy transactions and routines. The chapter begins with a review of previous research on early childhood literacy and the impact of Yetta and Ken Goodman’s work on the field and on my own ideas as I began making connections from my early work on bilingualism and emergent literacy. Second, I review significant studies on bilingualism and biliteracy across multiple social contexts (i.e., family, school, community). Third, I explore the development of emergent biliteracy in young bilingual children by sharing examples from children and families in my longitudinal study. I follow a socio-psycholinguistic and transactional theoretical perspective to describe factors influencing their early literacy development.

Literacy development in early childhood Children are active seekers of knowledge and not simply willing or unwilling to acquire a particular skill. (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982)

Studies of young children have documented that early language experiences are crucial for supporting literacy development. For example, language input from primary caregivers and exposure to environmental print influence young children’s literacy development (Barbarin & Aikins, 2006; Neuman & Celano, 2001). Other factors, such as vocabulary development and phonological awareness, contribute positively to literacy development as well (Vernon & Ferreiro, 1999). Moreover, Ken Goodman’s and Yetta Goodman’s focus on how children begin developing and exploring reading and writing abilities as part of their natural learning has helped researchers, teachers, and families to understand children’s overall literacy development. An important contribution of the Goodmans is the understanding that children can learn to read only when function and its communicative purpose play key roles in their early experiences (K. Goodman & Y. Goodman, 1979). The Goodmans’ early work on the development of literacy emphasized that children learn literacy in a natural way. That is, children growing up in literate societies encounter written language long before they begin formal schooling. Children begin noticing print by being exposed to it at home and in their community (e.g., on food packages, street signs, community flyers; Y. Goodman & Altwerger, 1981), thereby becoming aware of written language and participating in literacy activities to some extent. The Goodmans’ early work indicated that the roots of the reading process are established at a very young age (K. Goodman & Y. Goodman, 1979). Ferreiro and colleagues have explored how children actively attempt to understand print in their environment, and eventually different writing systems, by

146

Iliana Reyes

making discoveries about writing on their own and revising their ideas about writing in response to input from people around them (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982; Y. Goodman, Reyes, & McArthur, 2005). Yetta Goodman (1984) emphasizes that the process of learning to read and write begins when children develop the awareness that written language carries meaning. They actively participate in the process of learning to read and write by making hypotheses, constructing knowledge, and attaching meaning to the writing systems they interact with in their communities (Ferreiro, 2007). According to Y. Goodman (1986), children interact with print by constructing, organizing, and analyzing its meaning, and connecting it with their own personal experiences within specific contexts and social experiences. She coined the metaphor “roots of literacy” to describe the foundations of literacy, which include: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

the development of print awareness in situational contexts; the development of print awareness in connected discourse; an understanding of the functions and forms of writing; the use of oral language to talk about written language; and metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness of written language.

Children plant the first root of literacy when they make use of print and other symbol systems as cues to comprehend environmental print. When provided with writing tools and opportunities to experiment with writing during play at home and in school, children also create scribbles that they identify as writing. At first, young children use scribbles, drawings, and strings of letters to represent meaning. Later on, in the second root of literacy, children develop awareness of print in connected discourse and texts (e.g., newspapers, books). They begin to understand that the marks on a page carry the meaning and the message of the text. In the third root, children learn to distinguish between the functions and forms of writing. Moreover, although reading and writing develop hand in hand, children conceive of them as two different activities. The fourth root refers to children’s use of oral language to talk about written language. They use labels and terminology (which might not be conventional) to talk about principles and concepts of written language. Finally, in the fifth root, they develop metalinguistic awareness about written language; that is, the ability to talk about language and thinking. This last root is particularly important for emergent bilinguals, who early on become aware of their two different linguistic systems and how they are used in their bilingual literacy environments.

Emergent literacy in bilingual children How does a young child exposed to two or more languages develop literacy in these languages? Many immigrant children in the United States who speak a native language other than English learn to read their two languages simultaneously, but more commonly, they learn to read one language at a time (Baker, 2000). In order to have some understanding of the impact of

Bilingual Children’s Language and Literacy

147

bilingualism on the literacy developmental process, we must examine young children’s learning experiences not only during formal instruction in the classroom, but also during interactions at home. Most of the studies undertaken on emergent literacy have focused on monolingual children (Clay, 1975; Dyson, 1983; Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982; Y. Goodman, 1990; Harste, Woodward, & Burke, 1984; Taylor, 1983; Tolchinsky, 2003). There is still a great need for more research on literacy development among young children who speak more than one language, and who have the linguistic resources to develop biliteracy (Goodman, Goodman, & Flores, 1979; Perez, 1998; Reyes & Moll, 2008). For example, findings from some studies with young Spanish-dominant bilinguals suggest that these children develop a variety of abilities in their two languages across different tasks (e.g., producing narratives, reading books) in collaboration with their primary caregivers. This talk between young Latino children and their primary caregivers contributes to their learning of language and of the ways of the society into which they are born (Schecter & Bayley, 2002). Adults and children who live in the same community draw upon a range of linguistic and cultural resources to meet various challenges in their day-to-day activities (Reyes & Moll, 2008). One important factor in children’s linguistic and literacy development is parents’ language ideologies and, in particular, their language practices at home. The analysis of early parent–child interactions should help teachers and educators understand key elements that foster children’s language and literacy development before they enter the classroom (Valdés, 1996; Vásquez, Pease-Alvarez, & Shannon, 1994).

Emergent literacy in “Los Agaves” community Since 2003, I have been working in Los Agaves,2 a community neighborhood in Tucson, Arizona, collecting data and learning about family traditions and cultural practices there, how these are conveyed in language and print, and how they relate to young children’s development and maintenance of bilingualism and biliteracy. The data I share in this chapter are part of this longitudinal study and were collected during home visits made in the first and second years of the project. The children attended a public preschool and later kindergarten in a local Tucson school district (Reyes, Alexandra, & Azuara, 2007). As part of the full longitudinal study, we collected additional data in the school context, which I discuss here only when relevant to amplify the home observations (Reyes & Soltero, 2007). Los Agaves community is more than 80% Latino, predominantly first- and second-generation Mexican immigrant families. Many community members are bilingual and bicultural, a fact reflected throughout the environment. Signs, advertisements, and notices are typically printed in English and Spanish (e.g., at the supermarket, local library, tax office, clothing store), and in some contexts language use and print are predominantly in Spanish (e.g., abarrote, a small food store). Families often use Spanish among themselves and switch to English when interacting with English-dominant speakers.

148

Iliana Reyes

Here I share examples from case studies of Jazlynn and Jimena, two girls who attended the public preschool at age 4 then continued into the Structured English Immersion3 (SEI) kindergarten classroom at age 5. Although they both learned Spanish as their first language, Jimena had been exposed to English at home because she had a bilingual older cousin living in the house at the time of the project and her mother spoke English while at work in a local store. In contrast, Jazlynn was exposed almost exclusively to Spanish at home, since both of her parents and her sister were Spanish monolinguals. I selected these two case studies because they illustrate the children’s development of biliteracy through their simultaneous exposure to print in English and Spanish. In particular, I was interested in exploring how these girls’ biliteracy development was influenced and mediated in particular ways during peer and family interactions. In the next section, I present examples of the children’s interactions that show how they are naturally developing biliteracy at home.

Learning biliteracy the “natural way” Jazlynn Jazlynn was a Spanish monolingual at the onset of the study (at age 4). She was the elder of two siblings and had a younger sister, Berenice (age 3). Jazlynn was born in a small town in Sonora, northern Mexico, near the border town of Douglas, AZ. She migrated to the United States with her family only a few years earlier, at age 2. Both her parents were monolingual Spanish speakers; her father worked in various seasonal construction jobs, while her mom worked as a janitorial assistant for a company that served several downtown offices. Both parents, Ilda and Gerardo, previously worked at a factory in Mexico. Ilda studied two years of accounting in Mexico, but discontinued her studies when she migrated north. Jazlynn’s family lived in a mobile home community where there was a large concentration of residents of Mexican heritage. A bilingual-bicultural environment surrounded the family, with elements of Anglo and Hispanic culture and the use of both oral and written Spanish and English. During the first year of the study, when Jazlynn was in preschool, the family communicated in Spanish, and the interaction between the sisters was mainly in Spanish. This situation shifted during the second year, when Jazlynn went into kindergarten and Berenice started attending preschool. The girls started codeswitching in their conversations, including words and short phrases in English that they had learned at preschool, where English was the dominant language of instruction. During my home visits with Jazlynn’s family, I observed that her parents very strongly and actively supported the development and maintenance of Spanish literacy by reading books in Spanish with the children and visiting the local library for Spanish-language events. Supporting their children’s development of Spanish and English was a priority for these parents; consequently, they supported emergent biliteracy in a natural environment. Even though the parents

Bilingual Children’s Language and Literacy

149

did not talk directly about “biliteracy,” they developed and fostered it naturally through the different activities in their daily routine. Jazlynn’s home contained plenty of literacy tools and materials, including pens, markers, crayons, scissors, coloring books, letter magnets, and storybooks in Spanish that the family checked out from the local library. Jazlynn’s mother, Ilda, brought home various magazines and paper materials collected from the offices she cleaned, using them to promote educational play. Ilda was also an avid crafter, constantly making use of recycled material for art projects with the girls. For example, during one afternoon visit, Mom guided both Jazlynn and Berenice in crafting origami figures from recycled paper, and they also worked with stencils of different shapes (e.g., ice-cream cone, cat, butterfly) while they discussed in Spanish what figures to draw on a piece of paper (field notes, November 5, 2005). At the end of my home visit, Jazlynn handed me a small paper treasure box she had made containing many shapes she had colored. Mom asked Jazlynn how I would know who had given the present to me, and Jazlynn took the treasure box, got a purple marker, wrote her name on the front of the box, and added two flowers after it (see Figure 11.1). During another home visit, Jazlynn was writing on a small white board posted on the refrigerator. She first wrote the word “mom,” and then “ma,” then ran to her mom and asked for help. Mom scaffolded and assisted Jazlynn in writing the rest of the word mamá in Spanish. Jazlynn erased those words and began

Figure 11.1 Jazlynn’s gift box From field notes, November 5, 2005.

150

Iliana Reyes

Figure 11.2 Jazlynn reading the word “CAT” From home visit video, February 8, 2006.

writing another word, “CAT”; Mom asked Jazlynn to show me what she had written (see Figure 11.2). Jazlynn said gato (Spanish for “cat”), but when I asked her to read the word, she pointed to and sounded out the letters c-a-t then read the word “cat.” M: R: J: R: J:

R: J: R: J:

Enseñaselo y dile que dice (show it to her and tell her what it says) A ver ¿Qué escribiste? (Let me see; what did you write?) Gato (cat) A ver, leelo, donde dice gato (Look, read where it says “gato.”) c-a-t, cat (Jazlynn sounds out each letter of the word “cat” using English letter names, and then reads the word.) Y está en español o en inglés? (and is it [written] in Spanish or in English?) En inglés (in English) ¿Cómo sabes? (How do you know?) Porque así se dice (because that’s how you say it) (Home visit video, February 8, 2006)

Jazlynn initially responded in Spanish because that was the language she used with that particular interlocutor (Mom) and in that context (home). Immediately after saying gato in Spanish, however, she sounded out the word letter-by-letter and realized that it said “cat.” When I asked her what language she had written

Bilingual Children’s Language and Literacy

151

in, she correctly said en inglés (in English). Two important observations can be made here in reference to Jazlynn’s biliteracy development. She initially “read” the word in Spanish, but when she sounded it out letter-by-letter, she automatically did so using English letter names, helping her recognize that the word was actually written in English. When I asked her how she knew that the word was in English, she hypothesized that was the way one reads it. Second, Jazlynn’s metalinguistic and phonological awareness assisted her in distinguishing one language from the other. During my home visits I also learned that Jazlynn, her sister, and her mother enjoyed reading and retelling cuentos (stories) in Spanish. An interesting observation I made during the first year of my home visits was Ilda’s deliberate choice to speak and read to her children exclusively in Spanish. At the beginning of the project I learned that Mom would read only in Spanish and allow the children to check out only Spanish-language library books. She said that she wanted both Jazlynn and Berenice to learn how to read in their native language. During the second year of the study, when Jazlynn was in kindergarten, Mom said that she preferred not to help the girls too much with their English reading because her English pronunciation was not “perfect”; instead, she and her husband relied on the girls’ teachers to help with pronunciation. She did continue reading in Spanish and helping the girls learn to read in that language, however. She explained that she didn’t want to confuse Jazlynn with her English pronunciation, but she did want her to become literate in both languages. The children read books in both Spanish and English next to Mom and Dad and asked Mom to help them read words they did not know. One evening, I observed Jazlynn and Berenice reading a book in English to each other. Particularly interesting was their hybrid literacy practice, which was reflected at the end of the story, when Berenice announced in Spanish: Colorín Colorado este cuento se ha acabado. This is a popular phrase in Latin America for ending children’s stories. Even though the two sisters were reading the book in English, they ended the story in Spanish the way Mom and Dad always did. Jazlynn and her sister have developed syncretic literacy practices that integrate their family and community literacy resources (Gregory, Long, & Volk, 2004). Jimena Jimena was predominantly a Spanish speaker at the beginning of the preschool year, but she had already developed some bilingual competence because her older cousins, who spoke English, lived in her home. In addition, Jimena’s mother had immigrated from northern Mexico more than 10 years earlier at a young age, and had graduated from a local Tucson high school; hence, the family used some English at home. Throughout my observations at home and in school, Jimena demonstrated high levels of metalinguistic and phonological awareness around text. At home, I observed Jimena interacting with her bilingual mother and cousins, and with her grandparents, who were Spanish monolinguals. They all lived

152

Iliana Reyes

together at Jimena’s grandparents’ house during the first year of the study; the next year Mom and Jimena moved to a two-bedroom home near the grandparents, which allowed them to baby-sit on some afternoons. On one home visit, I observed Jimena to “write” her name in Spanish and then continue to draw some figures; when I asked Jimena what they were, she replied “son shapes” (they are shapes). I observed her drawing some more, then Jimena turned around and said “estoy haciendo un pattern” (I’m making a pattern), while she showed her notebook to me (see Figure 11.3). In these two examples, we can see that Jimena had integrated as part of her literacy knowledge such competencies as writing her name, drawing shapes, and making math shape patterns. At home she learned to spell her name in Spanish with her mom’s assistance, while at school she learned the alphabet letters in English; consequently, she could spell her name in both languages (field notes, March 7, 2005). Most important, she has learned the function of writing her name to indicate to others that her work belonged to her. For many children, their first name is the first word they are motivated to write (Clay, 1975). One literacy skill Jimena had transferred from school to home was that of drawing patterns of shapes. Jimena learned to draw the shapes and name some of them as part of math activities at school. For example, her teacher presented a worksheet that required her to make patterns of two or

Figure 11.3 Jimena’s notebook From field notes, March 7, 2005.

Bilingual Children’s Language and Literacy

153

three shapes. While learning to draw these shapes, Jimena also learned to label them and write their names in English; meanwhile, her bilingual mother was also teaching her the Spanish names of the shapes (field notes, April 3, 2005). Bilingualism and biliteracy were being fostered in Jimena’s home in a natural way because Spanish and English were both valued and used as linguistic resources for teaching and learning. Jimena had also developed some theories about how to tell whether print was in Spanish or English. When asked whether certain words in a bilingual book were in Spanish or English, she responded that particular words were in Spanish “porque están las letras chiquitas” (because the letters are small), and that the other words on the top were in English because “están las letras grandes” (the letters are big). How did she develop this theory? One possibility is that Jimena had observed that in many bilingual books, the two languages differ in font size or line spacing, to distinguish the languages and give English relatively greater status (Ernst-Slavit & Mulhern, 2003). In terms of her reading ability and motivation, during the first year of my home visits Jimena enjoyed pretending to read in both English and Spanish, regardless of the language of the print in the book. Her mom encouraged and mediated Jimena’s reading of books in both Spanish and English. By the second year, when Jimena had started to learn to read conventionally in kindergarten, I noticed a change in her attitude toward reading. She would often say “I don’t know how to read” when prompted to read a story. She had internalized from her school experiences that she did not know how to read conventionally, and unfortunately, became unwilling to participate as a reader in either Spanish or English for a brief period of time. Mom assured her that she was a great reader and that she could continue practicing her reading at home. Over the two years, I observed Mom’s persistence in motivating Jimena to read in both languages by making bilingual books available at home. It was interesting to observe mother and daughter participating in these literacy exchanges, where they learned from each other in both Spanish and English. An important finding was that Jimena’s mom, and sometimes her cousins, mediated her learning through scaffolding; simultaneously, Jimena mediated her mother’s learning by offering knowledge and helping to pronounce words they were not sure of throughout various literacy events.

Discussion Through these case studies we can observe Jazlynn and Jimena developing their own theories about language and literacy through active social participation in everyday activities with family and community members. By analyzing Jazlynn’s and Jimena’s participation and engagement in literacy activities from an emergent bilingual and a transactional perspective, we can understand how other bilingual children make sense of their languages and biliteracy as they bring together their knowledge from their two linguistic worlds and organize it in a meaningful way (Kenner, 2004; Owocki & Goodman, 2002).

154

Iliana Reyes

Emergent bilingual children draw from their multiple linguistic resources (Perez, 1998; Reyes, 2006; Reyes & Azuara, 2008). Specifically, children’s development of biliteracy is mediated by the guidance and scaffolding of adults around them (parents, grandparents) and more advanced peers (friends, siblings) at home. Moreover, they create opportunities for language and literacy development in two languages because of their own personal and social motivation to participate in different literacy events at home with family members. In the cases of Jazlynn and Jimena, who are emergent bilinguals, their zones of proximal development are expanded through opportunities to interact and explore with others in their two languages (Dworin, 2003a; Moll & Dworin, 1996; Vygotsky, 1978). From these longitudinal case studies, I have learned that parents and siblings are among the most significant influences that support and determine children’s emergent bilingualism and biliteracy. I have observed how parents’ willingness and efforts to use Spanish help their children develop competence in Spanish and become bilingual in a natural environment where the use of Spanish is unmarked. I also learned during the second year of the study that unfortunately the school context is sometimes negatively influencing the children’s attitude toward their emergent bilingualism and biliteracy due to the strong English-only policy and SEI practices mandated by law in the kindergarten classroom (see Combs, Evans, Fletcher, Parra, & Jimenez, 2005, for further discussion on this issue). Children become less willing to take risks in reading material in Spanish or English when they become aware that they do not know yet how to read in a “conventional” manner like the teacher does. Despite the SEI approach to classroom instruction, I did observe the children spontaneously making use of their home language while developing competencies in English, their second language (L2), during classroom activities. The classroom practices contrast with children’s experiences at home, where they participate in family literacy activities mainly in their dominant language, Spanish (L1; Reese, 2002). Because of their learning experiences at home and school, their language and literacy acquisition in their L2 is influenced by their L1, and vice versa, as proposed by Dworin (2003b). An additional important finding regards the impact that the children’s learning process is having on their parents’ and siblings’ own learning experiences. While parents and older peers shape the children’s language and literacy learning, these interactions simultaneously influence the parents’ and siblings’ linguistic knowledge and interactions with each other. During this study I also noted the various efforts parents make to involve their children in community activities that help maintain their native language and literacy in a natural way. Finally, children cannot develop biliteracy until they become aware of the purpose of written language (K. Goodman & Y. Goodman, 1979). Children’s metalinguistic awareness and concepts of writing begin to emerge when they learn to use symbols in their “writing” for meaningful activities in the context of social interactions with their families (e.g., writing a letter to their grandmother in Spanish, or a Christmas card for their teacher in English).

Bilingual Children’s Language and Literacy

155

Why learning about and understanding children’s home language and literacy is important for teachers and parents Studies in the 1980s indicated the need to study and understand diverse communities in order to learn about the wealth of literacy knowledge that exists in them (Heath, 1983; Taylor & Dorsey-Gaines, 1988). In particular, identifying literacy activities and how they help young Latino children develop awareness of the ways they can use their knowledge of Spanish and English at home and in the classroom and school-related activities is important for both parents and teachers. A continuing challenge for teachers is how best to help students from diverse linguistic backgrounds become literate. I hope that highlighting the kinds of home activities and literacy events the families in these case studies participated in can help parents and teachers foster students’ native languages and multiple literacies. Teachers and educators may not recognize certain literacy practices because they do not match those used in the classroom (e.g., doing worksheets or reading books vs. making origami animals). Literacy practices must be put into a social-cultural context when making basic decisions about instruction. At a time when English-only laws restrict our options for providing native language instruction to bilingual children in our classrooms (as is the case in Arizona), we must make continuous efforts to create spaces for children to explore language and literacy in natural ways by doing the following: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Understanding that literacy development has diverse pathways. For example, some children might learn best by doing and participating in specific literacy activities, while other children might learn best through engaged observation (Long, Volk, Romero-Little, & Gregory, 2007). Understanding that, when provided with optimal environments, emergent bilingual children are fast, efficient, and spontaneous learners of one, two, or more languages (Moll & Dworin, 1996; Moll, Saez, & Dworin, 2001; Reyes de la Luz, 2001). Understanding that learning to read in English can be facilitated by drawing on bilingual children’s familiarity with and linguistic foundations in their native language, for example, children can use their syntactic and semantic knowledge to predict the meaning of written words (Goodman, Goodman, & Flores, 1979). Viewing literacy development from a longitudinal perspective in order to gain the richest possible insights into and understanding of how literacy learning happens within children’s natural environment at home and in their communities. Doing “kidwatching”: listening to children’s voices, reading their emergent biliteracy messages, and in particular, looking closely for “critical lessons” that connect to and build on their bilingual and biliterate development (Owocki & Goodman, 2002; Whitmore, Martens, Goodman, & Owocki, 2004).

An important finding from this study is that when children have access to writing systems and to various literacy activities in both their languages, they are

156

Iliana Reyes

more likely to become biliterate rather than literate only in the dominant language. Most important, if children continue to have access to and opportunities to function in both languages and writing systems, they will be more likely to maintain and continue to develop their bilingualism and biliteracy, providing them the tools they can draw on for various activities at home, at school, and in the community (Reyes & Moll, 2008). The role and effect of family and community experiences on children’s emergent biliteracy, and how these experiences relate to spontaneous learning and formal education, need to be explored further in order to make appropriate recommendations from a perspective of building on students’ strengths rather than remediating their deficits. In this chapter, I have presented case examples of two children who are developing emergent biliteracy spontaneously at home. Since an increasing number of children in our communities, like Jazlynn and Jimena, come into the classroom with a wealth of linguistic diversity that teachers may overlook, it is imperative to learn more about how bilingualism influences young children’s early literacy development. Moreover, researchers and educators have the responsibility to recognize and make “visible” in the classroom the wealth of learning resources that exist within children’s families (Long, Volk, Romero-Little, & Gregory, 2007). By documenting and understanding different ways to connect knowledge from home to school activities, we can help teachers become comfortable with the linguistic diversity children bring to the classroom instead of expecting students to follow a “one size fits all” pathway to learning (Gregory, Long & Volk, 2004; Reyes, Alexandra, & Azuara, 2007; Schwarzer, 2007). Then perhaps teachers will make an effort to create additive conditions for children by according both languages comparable status in the classroom, and in afterschool activities, despite a generalized subtractive climate that has permeated US educational practices for most of its history.

Notes 1 This study is part of the Emergent Literacy and Language Development (ELLD) longitudinal research project in which we explore language and biliteracy development and literacy practices in preschool children born to first- and second-generation Mexican immigrant parents in the United States. 2 All names of children, parents, schools, and neighborhoods are pseudonyms. 3 In 2000, Arizonans passed an English-only ballot that eliminated most bilingual programs in the state. See Combs, Evans, Fletcher, Parra, & Jimenez (2005) for a recent discussion of this issue.

References Baker, C. (2001). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism (3rd ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Barbarin, O., & Aikins, N. (2006). Parental involvement and development of reading skills: Effects of SES and ethnicity. Unpublished manuscript. Brisk, M. E., & Harrington, M. M. (1999). Handbook of literacy and bilingualism. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Bilingual Children’s Language and Literacy

157

Bus, A. G., & van Ijzendoorn, M. H. (1988). Mother–child interactions, attachment and emergent literacy: A cross-sectional study. Child Development, 59, 1262–1272. Clay, M. (1975). What did I write? Beginning writing behavior. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books. Combs, M. C., Evans, C., Fletcher, T., Parra, E., & Jimenez, A. (2005). Bilingualism for the children: Implementing a dual-language program in an English-only state. Educational Policy, 19, 701–728. Dworin, J. (2003a). Examining children’s biliteracy in the classroom. In A. I. Willis, G.E. Garcia, R. Barrera, & V.J. Harris (Eds.), Multicultural issues in literacy research and practice, pp. 29–49. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Dworin, J. (2003b). Insights into biliteracy development: Toward a bidirectional theory of bilingual pedagogy. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 2(2), 171–186. Dyson, A. H. (1983). The role of oral language in early writing. Research in the Teaching of English, 17, 1–30. Edelsky, C. (1982). Writing in a bilingual program: Había una vez. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Ernst-Slavit, G., & Mulhern, M. (2003). Bilingual books: Promoting literacy and biliteracy in the second-language and mainstream classroom. Reading Online, 7(2). Available at: www.readingonline.org/articles/art_index.asp?HREF=ernst-slavit/index.html. Ferreiro, E. (1990). Literacy development: Psychogenesis. In Y. Goodman (Ed.), How children construct literacy: Piagetian perspectives (pp. 12–25). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Ferreiro, E. (2007). Letters and numbers in early literacy. In Y. Goodman, & P. Martens (Eds.), Critical issues in early literacy (pp. 59–77). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Ferreiro, E., & Teberosky, A. (1982). Literacy before schooling. Exeter, NH: Heinemann Educational Books. Goodman, K., & Goodman, Y. (1979). Learning to read is natural. In L. B. Resnick & P. A. Weaver (Eds.), Theory and practice of early reading (pp. 137–155). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Goodman, K., Goodman, Y., & Flores, B. (1979). Reading in the bilingual classroom: Literacy and biliteracy. Rosslyn, VA: National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education. Goodman, Y. (1984). The development of initial literacy. In H. Goelman, A. Oberg, & F. Smith (Eds.), Awakening to literacy (pp.102–109). Exeter, NH: Heinemann Educational Books. Goodman, Y. (1986). The roots of literacy. In W. Teale & E. Sulzby (Eds.), Emergent literacy: Writing and reading (pp. 1–14). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Goodman, Y. (Ed.). (1990). How children construct literacy: Piagetian perspectives. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Goodman, Y., & Altwerger, B. (1981). Print awareness in pre-school children: A study of the development of literacy in pre-school children. Occasional Paper No. 4, Program in Language and Literacy, Arizona Center for Research and Development, College of Education. Tucson: University of Arizona. Goodman, Y., Reyes, I., & McArthur, K. (2005). Emilia Ferreiro: Searching for children’s understandings about literacy as a cultural object. Language Arts, 2(4), 318–322. Gregory, E., Long, S., and Volk, D. (2004). Many pathways to literacy: Learning with siblings, peers, grandparents, and in community settings. New York: Routledge. Harste, J., Woodward, V., & Burke, C. (1984). Language stories and literacy lessons. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books.

158

Iliana Reyes

Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kenner, C. (2004). Becoming biliterate: Young children learning different writing systems. Trent, UK: Trentham. Long, S., Volk, D., Romero-Little, M. E., & Gregory, E. (2007). Invisible mediators of literacy: Learning in multicultural communities. In Y. Goodman & P. Martens (Eds.), Critical issues in early literacy (pp. 203–214). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Moll, L. C., & Dworin, J. E. (1996). Biliteracy development in classrooms: Social dynamics and cultural possibilities. In D. Hicks (Ed.), Child discourse and social learning: An interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 221–246). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moll, L. C., Saez, R., & Dworin, J. (2001). Exploring biliteracy: Two student case examples of writing as a social practice. Elementary School Journal, 100, 435–450. Neuman, S. B., & Celano, D. (2001). Access to print in low- and middle-income communities: An ecological study of 4 neighborhoods. Reading Research Quarterly, 36, 8–26. Available at: www.personal.umich.edu~sbneuman.pdf/AccessToPrint.pdf. Owocki, G., & Goodman, Y. (2002). Kidwatching. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books. Perez, B. (1998). Creating a classroom for literacy. In B. Perez (Ed.), Sociocultural contexts of language and literacy (pp. 277–303). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Reese, L. (2002). Parental strategies in contrasting cultural settings: Families in Mexico and “El Norte.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 33(1), 30–59. Reyes, I. (2006). Exploring connections between emergent biliteracy and bilingualism. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 6(3), 267–292. Reyes, I., Alexandra, D., & Azuara, P. (2007). Home literacy practices in Mexican households. Cultura y Educación, 19(4), 395–407. Reyes, I., & Azuara, P. (2008). Emergent biliteracy in young Mexican immigrant children. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(4), 374–398. Reyes, I., & Moll, L. (2008). Bilingual and biliterate practices at home and school. In B. Spolsky & F. Hult (Eds.), The handbook of educational linguistics (pp. 147–160). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Reyes, I., & Soltero, L. (2007). Classroom literacy practices by preschool bilingual children. Manuscript submitted for publication. Reyes de la Luz, M. (2001). Unleashing possibilities: Biliteracy in the primary grades. In M. Reyes de la Luz & J. J. Halcón (Eds.), Best for our children: Critical perspectives on literacy for Latino students (pp. 96–121). New York: Teachers College Press. Schecter, S. R., & Bayley, R. (2002). Language as cultural practice: Mexicanos en El Norte. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Schwarzer, D. (2007). Monolingual teachers fostering students’ native literacies. In Y. Goodman & P. Martens (Eds.), Critical issues in early literacy (pp. 111–121). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Taylor, D. (1983). Family literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books. Taylor, D., & Dorsey-Gaines, C. (1988). Growing up literate. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books. Teale, W., & Sulzby, E. (Eds.). (1986). Emergent literacy: Writing and reading. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Tolchinsky, L. (2003). The cradle of culture: What children know about writing and numbers before being taught. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Bilingual Children’s Language and Literacy

159

Valdés, G. (1996). Con respeto: Bridging the distances between culturally diverse families and schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Vásquez, O. A., Pease-Alvarez., L., & Shannon, S. (1994). Pushing boundaries: Language and culture in a Mexicano community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vernon, S. A., & Ferreiro, E. (1999). Writing development: A neglected variable in the consideration of phonological awareness. Harvard Educational Review, 69(4), 395–415. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Whitmore, K. F., Martens, P., Goodman, Y., & Owocki, G. (2004). Critical lessons from the transactional perspective on early literacy research. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 4(3), 291–325.

12 The Sociopsychogenesis of Literacy and Biliteracy How Goodman’s Transactional Theory of Reading Proficiency Impacts Biliteracy Development and Pedagogy Barbara M. Flores1 Goodman’s Transactional Sociopsycholinguistic Theory of the Reading process is an integral theory of proficient reading that has been developed, refined, and continuously updated during the last 40 years. It has been controversial because it challenges common sense perceptions of reading that are centuries old. In this chapter I do not directly deal with the political or controversial aspects; instead I relate how his theory has positively informed, influenced, and impacted the development of literacy and biliteracy pedagogy, thereby creating proficient biliterate children. This chapter’s goals are threefold: (1) To show how Goodman’s transactional sociopsycholinguistic theory of proficient reading is connected to how children “come to know” proficient reading through writing/reading in bilingual contexts; (2) To make visible children’s interpretation of written language as they are “coming to know” how the parts (cueing systems and universal strategies) work within the whole (proficient meaning making) in two languages; and (3) To link sociocultural theory to Goodman’s sociopsycholinguistic reading theory and bilingual children’s psychogenesis of written language to literacy and biliteracy pedagogy.

Background The three complementary theories that form the foundation for a sociopsychogenesis explanation of biliterate development and pedagogy were published during the relatively same time period. In the early 1980s, miscue analysis research had a 12-year track record. Its findings across languages, age groups, and dialects clearly demonstrated that the reading process was indeed a unitary process. At that time three miscue analysis dissertations had been conducted with Spanishspeaking children (Hudelson, 1984). Likewise, eight dialect miscue studies by Goodman and Goodman (1978) had been published with findings in support of Goodman’s proficient reading theory. This miscue analysis research led to the refinement of the sociopsycholinguistic theory of the reading process. Since that time, many other groundbreaking miscue studies have been conducted not only to reaffirm Goodman’s theory and model, but to also refine it and expand its scope (Flurkey, Paulson, & Goodman, 2007). According to Goodman (1994),

Sociopsychogenesis of Literacy and Biliteracy 161 a proficient reader simultaneously and integrally uses all the cueing systems (semantic-pragmatic, lexico-grammatical, graphophonic, and orthographic) along with the universal strategies (initiating, sampling, inferring, predicting, confirming/disconfirming, correcting, and terminating), the cycles (visual, perceptual, syntactic, and semantic), and the reader’s background knowledge to construct meaning and to make sense of written language. Likewise, Ferrerio and Teberosky’s (1979) volume, Los sistemas de escritura en el desarrollo de los ninos (Literacy Before Schooling), was translated by Karen Goodman in 1982. Ferreiro and Teberosky’s constructivist research posited that young children interpret written language from their own perspectives. This psychogenesis theory posited that as children are “coming to know” how written language works as a cultural object, they exhibit general interpretations and behaviors that can be categorized into four conceptual interpretations: presyllabic, syllabic, syllabic/alphabetic, and alphabetic. These conceptual interpretations are remarkably related to the cueing systems, universal strategies, cycles and prior knowledge assumptions within Goodman’s sociopsycholinguistic theory of the reading process (Flurkey & Xu, 2003). The relationships stem from the long journey children embark upon epistemologically as they figure out the adult’s proficient reading schema. In other words, along the way children are conceptually using all the cueing systems, but interpreting them from their perspectives. Their strategies are interrelated by the act of representing meaning through written language and then in how they read as they write and reread their written texts. Also during this time period, Vygotsky’s (1978) Mind in Society was published. His sociocultural theoretical framework explained how teaching/learning need to be organized so as to take advantage of learners potential. This perspective greatly influenced my work in creating biliteracy pedagogy. His distinction between development, learning, and teaching at first boggled my mind, but then provided guideposts for the pathway my colleagues and I took toward creating pedagogy. For example, his basic premise that “knowledge is socially constructed through social interactions” questioned the individualistic perception that the learner solely constructs his/her schema and became a powerful guiding light in our work. Similarly, the concept of the zone of proximal development helped to organize and create pedagogy that took advantage of the learner’s knowledge of language. We were further led by Vygotsky’s concept that knowledge appears on two planes, first on social, and then on the psychological. We came to understand the importance and power of social networks and relations especially with emergent writers and readers who were bilingual, working class, and commonly depicted as culturally and linguistic deficient. Almost three decades later, and hundreds of longitudinal case studies later, we can confidently state that biliteracy (reading and writing in L1 and L2) proficiency can be taught successfully in public schools to poor workingclass, bilingual children when teachers have and use this powerful pedagogical knowledge—Goodman’s sociopsycholinguistic theory of proficient reading, the psychogenesis theory of “coming to know” written language across

162

Barbara M. Flores

different socioeducational contexts, and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theoretical framework. In what follows, I present children’s language behaviors that are manifested along the way when collected in what I believe to be authentic writing/reading contexts because doing so demonstrates children’s development and progress across time. To capture the genius of children’s logic, I first describe in a very general way the characteristics of each conceptual interpretation and then interweave it with Goodman’s sociopsycholinguistic reading theory of proficient reading and considerations from Vygotsky’s theory.

Children’s conceptual interpretation of written language: Psychogenesis According to Ferreiro and Teberosky (1979), children’s conceptual interpretation of written language evolves through predictable patterns. In a preliminary study of preschool children in Argentina, they documented seven levels of interpretation. The next study involved not only preschoolers but also kindergarten and first grade students in Monterrey, Mexico. In the Monterrey study, five levels of children’s conceptual interpretation of written language were documented. Finally, Ferreiro and Gomez Palacios (1982) collapsed the children’s observed conceptual interpretations into four general areas: (1) Pre-syllabic writing system; (2) Syllabic writing system; (3) Syllabic/Alphabetic writing system; and (4) Alphabetic writing system. In the examples provided below, interactive dialogue journals were used to engage children in an authentic use of written language for real purposes and needs (Halliday, 1978). This is in contrast to the methods employed by Ferreiro and her colleagues in that they asked children to simply draw and label an object. I theorized, however, that the social context created by the interactive journal provided a pedagogical opportunity “to teach to the potential.” That is, use of the interactive journal organizes teaching/learning in such a way that children are engaged in the act of “proficient reading” through their writing. In addition, the interactive journal provided opportunities for the teacher to share knowledge about how written language works at the potential and in an integral way and it respects the generative nature of the children’s epistemological journey (Freire, 1970; Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982). Presyllabic writing system Initially the main characteristic representative of this level is reflected in the children’s inability to differentiate between written language and drawing. In other words, children view drawing and written language as indistinguishable. However, as they progress within this conceptual interpretation, the children then begin to differentiate between drawing and written language. In other words, when asked to point to where something is written, the children point to the print. When asked to point to where something is drawn, they point to the picture drawn.

Sociopsychogenesis of Literacy and Biliteracy 163 During interactive dialogue journal time (Flores, 1990; 2007; Flores & Garcia, 1984), the children know that their written language (strings of letters, garabatos, sticks and o’s) represents meaning (the pragmatic/semantic system). Because the child wrote the symbols, s/he is the only one that knows the meaning; thus, the only one that can “read” it. His or her oral mediation of the written text demonstrates that s/he understands that it is a representation of meaning (the use of the pragmatic/semantic cueing system). A bilingual kindergartner The following is from a case study (Flores & Hernandez, 1988) of a balanced bilingual kindergartener, Jesus, who wrote daily in his interactive dialogue journal. Jesus comes from a poor, bilingual working-class family who speaks both Spanish and English at home. His first journal entry (Figure 12.1) demonstrates that Jesus has knowledge of right-to-left directionality, letter formation, linearity, and the arbitrariness of letter/symbols, and an adequate repertoire of letters to represent his meaning. He reads in Spanish that he is playing with his brother and that they had fun. Notice that he uses a lot of symbols with curves and circles which is one of the macro features of our alphabetic languages of Spanish and English. Ferreiro & Teberosky (1982) found that during this level of conceptualization the children’s written language is characterized by a number of conceptual representations, e.g.:

Figure 12.1 Jesus’ first interactive journal entry From Flores and Hernandez (1988).

164 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Barbara M. Flores Length of word is determined by utterance and intended meaning. Reversals may appear. Graphic characters are varied and numbers are constant. The reading strand is global. Each letter may stand for a whole word. The children produce graphic characters that approximate numbers or letters, curved, straight, or wavy. The more, larger, longer the character to represent bigger, longer, older object referred to. The picture can be read to ensure meaning. Linear order almost always present. The central hypothesis the children use is that they use a certain number of characters and always the same number of characters are needed to write something.

Jesus’ journal entry in September demonstrates a number of these characteristics. And, of course, is evidence of his knowledge that these symbols represent meaning, the use of the pragmatic-semantic cueing system. His strings of symbols approximate or are a facsimile of society’s written language (lexico-grammatical, graphophonic, and orthographic). That is, they are his interpretations. Jesus’ October entry (Figure 12.2) demonstrates more sophistication of the presyllabic conceptual interpretation as evidenced by his use of more refined letter formations, better control of the pencil, and more variety of letters used.

Figure 12.2 Jesus’ October interactive journal entry From Flores and Hernandez (1988).

Sociopsychogenesis of Literacy and Biliteracy 165 Notice that Mr. Moraga, his teacher, has begun to respond authentically to Jesus’ written language. Remember that after Jesus writes his entry, he then reads it to his teacher. His teacher, in turn, responds authentically in front of Jesus. As the teacher responds, he is saying/reading what he is writing in a syllabic cadence as Jesus watches and listens. Jesus had read in English that he had seen a BIG SPIDER at his house the other day. So, Mr. Moraga responded by writing, “I have a lot of spiders at home. I don’t know what to do.” It must be noted that every time Mr. Moraga responds to Jesus and the other children, he is mediating, demonstrating, and showing the children how all the parts (cueing systems, strategies, cycles, and prior knowledge) function and work within the whole (proficient writing/reading act). In other words, he is teaching to the potential (proficient reading/writing act) every time he writes/reads in front of each child. Within this zone of proximal development, the teacher sees Jesus’ daily writing and is able to name that he is using the presyllabic conceptual interpretation. In spite of his developmental level, his teacher stills responds at the potential by using oral language to mediate his writing. Thus, we advocate teaching to the potential via deliberate mediation and not at the developmental level of the children. We posit that if we teach at the perceived developmental level of the children, they will never grow or develop beyond that level. Also, we do not want to organize the teaching/learning to a negative zone, i.e., failure. If indeed, knowledge is socially constructed through social interactions; then, it behooves us to orchestrate this symphony. Ferreiro and Teberosky (1982) also found that: (1) the most evident graphic progress is that the graphic form of the characters is more defined and more similar to conventional letter forms; (2) children may have knowledge of letter names but do not apply them consistently; (3) children continue to use hypothesis of minimum quantity and a variety of characters to represent something, i.e. 2–3 characters/letters are used; and (4) acquisition of fixed forms is subject to cultural and personal influences. This acquisition of stable forms, i.e. the possibility of producing a certain number of stable graphic strings, leads to two opposite kinds of reactions: blockage or using the acquired models to generate other written representations. From our use of interactive dialogue journals over the past 30 years, we have found that blockage occurs when the child learns to write by copying the writing of others. Children who have accepted this alternative refuse to write anything because they now believe that they do not know how to write. The child believes “the teacher knows better than me because I have to copy her/his writing”; thus, the child then internalizes that s/he is not capable of generating his/her own text. This blockage may be deep-rooted in a manifestation of adult dependency, insecurity in one’s ability, or a fear of taking a risk. Syllabic writing system At this level of conceptual interpretation the children begin to consistently use one symbol per syllable heard in a spoken word. This is the beginning of the

166

Barbara M. Flores

approximation and segmentation of the lexico-grammatical and graphophonic cueing systems. Granted, it is the child’s interpretation but the segmentation of one letter per syllable is a major breakthrough. From our studies (Flores & Garcia, 1984), we found that children did not exclusively use just the syllabic hypothesis, i.e. they may have used a number of hypotheses. Jesus did not exhibit this hypothesis, but we may have missed it because we were not present when the child generated the text. Many times we have mistaken a string of letters for the presyllabic interpretation that could have been representative of the syllabic conceptual interpretation. According to Ferreiro and Teberosky (1982), the types of characteristics during the syllabic phase include: 1 2

3

4 5

The child begins to realize that there is a relationship between oral and written language. The child’s global view of written and oral language is changed as he/she realizes the parts of written language are related to syllables in oral language. Symbols representing the syllables are not necessarily conventional letters. The child may or may not take into consideration the sound of the letters chosen, e.g. AO = sapo or PA = oso. Sometimes the symbols used in this hypothesis are identical, e.g. mono = ao or sapo = ao. Two characteristics of early writing disappear. The first is the demand for variation and, second, the minimum quantity of letters.

Sometimes children will write too many symbols in a word to fit his/her syllabic hypothesis because of the belief in the minimum quantity hypothesis. When the child tries to explain what the leftover symbols stand for, the child will say it represents another word that is related to the first, i.e., a child may write AEIO for carro/car, then reads AE as car-ro and IO as mo-tor. The syllabic hypothesis can coexist with words the child has already learned to write. Even when a child begins to compose sentences, he may still use this hypothesis. How the child breaks down a sentence is individual. Some break it into subject and predicate, e.g., OA = mi nena/tomando sol. Some children may break a sentence into three parts: the subject, verb, and complement, e.g. MTS = mi nena/tomando/sol (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982). When children encounter the problem of conflict between minimum quantity of characters and the syllabic hypothesis, it is even more interesting in view of its consequences. Working with the syllabic hypothesis, the children are obliged to write two-syllable words with only two characters. This conflicts with the minimum quantity hypothesis; consequently, it is abandoned. The syllabic hypothesis should only be attributed as an original construction by the children and cannot be attributed to adult transmission or direct teaching. In other words, it does not come from teaching mi, ma, me, mo, mu, el método sílabico.

Sociopsychogenesis of Literacy and Biliteracy 167 Syllabic/alphabetic writing system At this particular evolutionary moment the children are faced with the decision to abandon the syllabic hypothesis and the minimum quantity of graphic characters that have worked rather effectively for them so far. The conflict between the syllabic hypothesis and the demand for minimum quantity of characters becomes more evident when the children attempt to write names for which they have no stable image, e.g., “esa” for “mesa” or “MAP” for “mapa.” This particular conceptual interpretation of written language serves as a transition between the syllabic hypothesis and the alphabetic hypothesis. When the syllabic hypothesis no longer works in certain instances, the children have to construct a new one that will permit them to understand the alphabetic characteristics of our written system. From our observations, children discover during this time that there exists a certain graphophonic (letter/sound) correspondence and little by little they come to know and attribute stable sound values to the graphemes (letters). At this time we begin to see combinations of vowels and consonants (our labels), e.g., “PO” for “pato” or “PLA” for “pelota.” When we are authentically responding in our interactive journals, the children are faced with a dilemma now because their syllabic hypothesis no longer provides an effective interpretation for them. They see that the syllabic hypothesis is no longer adequate; it doesn’t apply to their attempts to read the message because there are leftover “letters.” There comes a time when the teacher knows that the child commands knowledge of the letter/sound relationship. Sometimes, during the syllabic hypothesis, the transition to syllabic/alphabetic can be facilitated by the teacher “slowing the process down” in order to mediate and coordinate the mind with the oral language and the hand. We do this by asking the child to tell us what s/he wants to write. We then hold in our memory their thoughts, so s/he can write it as they hear us say it slowly. We call this deliberate mediation. We have noticed that by themselves, they stay stuck or are comfortable just using the syllabic hypothesis even though they know all their letter/sound correspondences. During this transitional conceptual interpretation, the children “come to know” the basis for our alphabetic system, i.e., that each phoneme is represented by a letter, the phonetic hypothesis. Supposedly this was the basis of our alphabetic languages (Spanish and English); however, we know that this indeed is not the case in every instance given the evidence generated by the children’s invented spellings, e.g. DA for “the,” TUF for “tough,” in English and in Spanish MECA for “mesa,” KAZA for “casa.” In other words, if English and Spanish were one hundred percent phonetic, then spelling correctly would not be an issue. However, both languages are not so phonetic as we have been led to believe. It is just an illusion. Alphabetic writing system When children use the alphabetic conceptual interpretation or writing system, they have integrated all the systems (pragmatic-semantic, lexicogrammatical, and graphophonic, and orthographic) along with the strategies

168

Barbara M. Flores

(initiation, sampling, prediction, inferencing, correction, disconfirmation/ confirmation, and terminating), the cycles, and their prior knowledge simultaneously to construct meaning and thus, use proficient reading during authentic uses of written language. Jesus revisited Jesus’ journal entry (as shown in Figure 12.3) toward the end of kindergarten shows that he indeed is engaged in proficient writing and reading in Spanish. He writes “LA CHACA TBO 1 GATO” [Chaca had 1 cat.] And his teacher responds, “Tu abuelita me dijo que la chaca estaba muy triste y no queria comer” [Your grandma told me that Chaca was very sad and did not want to eat.”] At this point in Jesus’ epistemological journey, he has figured out the alphabetic writing system in two languages! In other words, he is now consistently demonstrating the results of the social sharing of written language as knowledge. Jesus’ use of the alphabetic hypothesis is evidenced by the integration of all the cueing systems and strategies that proficient readers and writers use. Even though he only uses capitals to represent his meaning and the number one (1), the teacher no longer needs Jesus to read his text nor does Jesus need the teacher to read his text! His spacing between words is also conventional. Not only is Jesus, a balanced bilingual child, proficient in Spanish, but also in English. In one of his journal entries in May of kindergarten, he writes in English: AI HAV A WALT AV RABO [I have a wallet of Rambo] (Figure 12.4). “AI” is the Spanish phonetics for the English “I.” This 5-year-old going on 6 is linguistically very savvy because he is applying his knowledge from one language to another. The “H” in Spanish is silent, but not in English; so, we can surmise

Figure 12.3 Jesus’ journal entry toward the end of kindergarten From Flores and Hernandez (1988).

Sociopsychogenesis of Literacy and Biliteracy 169

Figure 12.4 Jesus’ May interactive journal entry From Flores and Hernandez (1988).

that he knows that in English it is not because he uses it. “AV” for “of” is also very sophisticated. His teacher responds: “Cesar has a wallet too. So, do I but it’s not of Rambo.” By the end of kindergarten, Jesus has made tremendous growth in literacy and biliteracy. From his teacher’s daily transactions within the communicative context of interactive dialogue journals, Jesus learned to read and write proficiently in both Spanish and English. Both his teacher and parents were amazed. Yes, it is amazing what children can learn if we, their teachers, know how to socially organize the teaching/learning to the potential, mediate deliberately, and use the pedagogical knowledge related to Goodman’s sociopsycholinguistic theory of proficient reading, psychogenesis, sociocultural theories, and ideological clarity. Therefore, it is vitally important for us to learn more about how children learn and develop languages in school (both oral and written, first and second) so that we, teachers, can organize, deliberately facilitate, mediate, monitor, and document our children’s sociopsychogenesis of literacy and biliteracy.

Conclusion In this chapter I presented how three theoretical frameworks inform pedagogical practice for bilingual children’s literacy and biliteracy proficiency within a writing/reading social context, interactive dialogue journals. By examining all three theories interlocking knowledge, we have seen how children have broken our “code,” i.e., they have figured out how the alphabetic sign system works to represent meaning using conventional linguistic cueing systems through interactive dialogue journals. In other words, the children have learned how the cueing systems (pragmatic-semantic, lexico-grammatical, graphophonic, and orthographic) transact with each other. In Jesus’ case, he did it in two languages

170

Barbara M. Flores

simultaneously. This knowledge has profound implications pedagogically, ideologically, and professionally. An interesting insight that also must be noted is that the graphophonic cueing system is the penultimate system to be integrated into the whole. The children hypothesize that each written character corresponds to a sound value smaller than a syllable. In other words, they are using the phonetic hypothesis to represent the graphophonic cueing system. They can systematically analyze the phonemes of the words they are writing. One must realize that this evolution of knowledge does not happen through osmosis. The teacher still teaches about letters and sound correspondences but in the context of their use and across many social contexts. We actually tell the children to write all the letters that they hear. Teaching phonics in isolation, we argue, is organizing a negative zone because it doesn’t make sense. In Whole Language we do teach about letter/sound correspondences. The differences is in the “How” and “When” (Mills, O’Keefe, & Stephens, 1992). The orthographic system is the last challenge along this developmental pathway. The children now face difficulties specific to orthography, i.e., orthographic conventions such as letters which correspond to more than one sound value or sets of letters which correspond to the same sound value. The children understand the internal mechanisms of the alphabetic sign system. At this point, the children are not afraid of making mistakes in spelling. The children know that there is a “customary” way of spelling each word. We call it “standard” or “conventional” spelling. Initially, the children don’t necessarily space between words. They may smoosh them together. I believe it took 16 centuries before we segmented between what we call words today. The children often separate (segment) subject from predicate which is analogous to 16th-century Spanish “conventional” orthography. The next challenge facing teachers is the paradigm shift from the last eight years of pedagogic domestication, standardized testing mania, textbook domination, and punitive policies. Goodman’s sociopsycholinguistic theory of reading proficiency is revolutionary and refreshing; a pearl in the rough waiting to be prized and used; a way of knowing how proficient reading/writing works; an integral theory that works when linked to psychogenesis and sociocultural theories. It also challenges us to question our deficit thinking, beliefs, ideology, and schooling practices. I am reminded of Bartolomé’s (2004) call for ideological clarity. He challenges teachers to discard deficit beliefs, thinking, and actions in everyday teaching. In other words, if literacy and biliteracy development is possible with poor working-class bilingual students whose parents do not read/write with them in their homes because they have two jobs, can’t afford books, or believe it’s the school’s responsibility, then we, as teachers, need to revalue, rethink, and shift our deficit ideologies regarding language, culture, and learning in school and at home. Jesus’ amazing simultaneous biliteracy journey makes me think, wonder, and dream about a world where all children can be successful in public schooling because it is possible if we will JUST DO IT!

Sociopsychogenesis of Literacy and Biliteracy 171

Note 1 This Festschrift chapter is dedicated to both Kenneth and Yetta Goodman for not only their scholarly contributions to children and teachers worldwide, but also for all of their unselfish mentorship, valiant leadership to the field, and untiring dedication to us all for a better way of teaching and learning in democratic societies and sustaining a critical citizenry through critical literacies. I have not only personally gained as a teacher of teachers, leader, scholar, and person, but so too has everyone whose life I have touched.

References Barrera, R. (1984). Bilingual reading in the primary grades: Some questions about questionable views and practices. In T. H. Escobedo (Ed.), Early childhood bilingual education: A Hispanic perspective (pp. 164–184). New York: Teachers College Press. Bartolomé, L. (2004). Critical pedagogy and teacher education: Radicalizing prospective teachers. Teacher Education Quarterly, 39(1), 97–122. Dávila de Silva, A. (2004). Emergent Spanish writing of a second grader in a whole language classroom. In B. Perez (Ed.), Sociocultural contexts of language and literacy (2nd ed.), (pp. 223–250). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Edelsky, C. (1986). Writing in a bilingual classroom: Había una vez. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Ferreiro, E., & Gomez Palacios, M. (1982). Nuevas perspectives sobre los procesos de lectura y escritura. Mexico: Siglo XXI. Ferreiro, E., & Teberosky, A. (1979). Los sistemas de escritura en el desarrollo de los niños. Mexico: Siglo XXI. Ferreiro, E., & Teberosky, A. (1982). Literacy before schooling (K. Goodman, Trans.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Flores, B. (1990). The sociopsychogenesis of literacy and biliteracy. In Proceedings of the First Research Symposium of the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Language Affairs (pp. 281–320). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. Flores, B., & Garcia, E. (1984). A collaborative learning and teaching experience using journal writing. National Association of Bilingual Education Journal, 8(3), 67–83. Flores, B., & Hernandez, E. (1988). A bilingual kindergartner’s sociopsychogenesis of literacy and biliteracy. Dialogue, v(3), 2–3. Flurkey, A., Paulson, E., & Goodman, K. (Eds.). (2007). Scientific realism in studies of reading. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Flurkey, A., & Xu, J. (Eds.). (2003). On the revolution of reading. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder. Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word and the world (Critical studies in education series). South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey Publishers. Goodman, K. (1994). Reading, writing, and written texts; A transactional sociopsycholinguistic view. In R. B. Ruddell, M. R. Ruddell, & H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (4th ed.), (pp. 1093–1130). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Goodman, K. (1996). On reading. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Goodman, K., & Goodman, Y. (1978). Reading of American children whose language is a stable rural dialect of English or a language other than English (NIE-C-00-3-0087). Washington, DC: National Institute of Education, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

172

Barbara M. Flores

Goodman, K., & Goodman, Y. (1979). Learning to read is natural. In L. B. Resnick & P. Weaver (Eds.), Theory and practice of early reading (pp. 137–155). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Goodman, K., Goodman, Y., & Flores, B. (1979). Reading in a bilingual classroom: Literacy and biliteracy. Rosslyn, VA: National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education. Goodman, Y. (1980). The roots of literacy. In M. P. Douglass (Ed.), Claremont Reading Conference forty-fourth yearbook (pp. 1–32), Claremont, CA: Claremont Reading Conference. Goodman, Y. (1990). How children construct literacy: Piagetian perspectives. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as social semiotic. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press. Hudelson, S. (Ed.). (1981). Learning to read in different languages (Linguistics and Literacy Series No. 1). Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Mills, H., O’Keefe, M., & Stephens, D. (1992). Looking closely: Exploring the role of phonics in one whole language classroom. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological process. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

13 Knowing and Doing Well in the Creation and Interpretation of Reading Assessments Towards Epistemic Responsibility Sharon Murphy When Kenneth Goodman introduced miscue analysis in the 1960s, he often contextualized his essays on the topic by situating miscue analysis against the backdrop of scientific change and fundamental shifts in the knowledge base for the field of reading (e.g., Goodman, [1967] 1982; [1975] 1982). In short, Goodman was arguing for epistemic change in the field of reading and used miscue analysis and the findings from it as evidence for his arguments. Over 40 years later, there is no doubt of the impact of miscue analysis on the field of reading and on reading assessment in particular. Not only did miscue analysis become so widely used that, within a relatively short period of time (in 1974), the ERIC database introduced it as a descriptor, but its pervasiveness is now such that even those who hold theoretically different views than Goodman’s talk about reading with language that is permeated with the language of miscue analysis (e.g., Hall, 2003). Miscue analysis created a new sensibility in the relatively stagnant and undertheorized field of reading assessment, a field that was at the time dominated by reading tests made of vocabulary and comprehension items, word lists, and or oral reading inventories. In doing so, Goodman began the work of developing epistemically responsible literacy assessments—assessments in which those engaged in the field of reading education conduct responsible warrantable reading assessments given the knowledge that exists about reading and about assessment. Although Goodman made a strong beginning, there is much to be done in the field of reading assessment. Some of the forms of assessment that existed at the time of Goodman’s early work continue despite their limited or sometimes non-existent warrants for the claims made as a result of these assessments. To move forward on epistemically responsible assessment, I believe that the types of knowledges that are at play in reading assessment must be delineated. Only then can the question be raised as to whether/how the field of reading assessment might conduct itself in an epistemically responsible fashion. To begin my discussion of these questions, I start with an assumption drawn from the work of the philosopher, Lorraine Code (1987): “most so-called knowledge is really well-warranted belief” (p. 47). Code shares this view with philosophers such as Fleck (1979) who through illustration and argumentation convincingly makes the case that today’s scientific fact is tomorrow’s superstition, as well as with those

174

Sharon Murphy

who argue that science, like other knowledge endeavors, exists in contexts which may make either fact or superstition of insights derived from data.1 Because what counts as knowledge is constantly shifting, the idea of warrantability in relation to knowledge, the idea of providing arguments and evidence to support a claim’s merits within a specific context, is paramount (Code, 1987). The language of warrantability bears some attention. The idea behind warrantability is one of situated claim-making. Knowledge claims are not warranted once and for all but are warranted in relation to specific contexts. Situated knowledge claims demand that one conduct oneself well in relation to both claim making and in considering the reasonableness of claims made. This reasonableness of conduct is at the heart of epistemic responsibility because, as Code argues, “In some sense, ethical responsibility is founded upon epistemic responsibility, even if it is not identifiable with it. One who has not been scrupulous in knowing cannot be scrupulous in doing” (1987, p. 95). We must not only know well but do well; one process informs the other.

Knowing well: what are the knowledge sets of reading assessment and are they warrantable? I believe that developers and users of reading assessments probably would claim a seemingly simple interest: that interest is in whether someone reads well in relation to the conventions of a particular social community. However, this simple interest raises several epistemically based questions: (1) What is reading?; (2) How can we find out about reading?; (3) How do we think about what we find?; and (4) How does an assessment work in the service of knowing? Developers and users of reading assessments make epistemic choices when they answer each of these questions even though they may not be aware explicitly of the choices they have made. What is reading? The processes and content matter assessed The processes and content matter being assessed in any single assessment of reading provide an answer to how the assessment developer views reading. Examples of the processes of reading found in reading assessments include the reader’s ability to identify sounds and parts of words, identify pictures quickly (e.g., the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills—DIBELS, Elliott, Lee, & Tollefson, 2001), to identify individual words (e.g., basic sight vocabulary as found in Dolch, 1970; the Ohio Word Test found in Clay, 1993), to produce accurate readings of connected discourse (e.g., Clay, 1972; 1993), to produce semantically acceptable oral readings that result in little or no meaning change (e.g., the miscue analysis system of Goodman, 1973 or Goodman, Watson, & Burke, 2005), to answer questions about a text (e.g., any one of a number of multiple-choice or short-answer commercial tests), to retell what has been read (e.g., Goodman, Watson, & Burke, 2005). When reading assessments focus on the processes of reading, the reader is involved in generating or producing

Towards Epistemic Responsibility

175

readings, understandings or interpretations of text. In contrast, when reading assessments focus on the content 2 of reading, they consider how readily the reader uses meta-knowledge of reading—the interest is whether an individual controls the language used to talk about reading or writing. In such assessments, knowledge of the language of textual features such as “initial letter sound” or “diphthong” are used and the reader must demonstrate an understanding of this meta-knowledge of reading even though the reader may well be able to read texts containing the textual features of interest. As the examples above illustrate, there is considerable variety in the answer to the question, “What is reading?” This variation is found not only in the educational community but in the community at large. For instance, while many see text as something to be interpreted in many different ways, Fishman’s (1988) research illustrates that for some social communities, literal interpretation of text is the only acceptable interpretation. Even though participants from Fishman’s research may obtain good results on literacy assessments requiring literal interpretations, this approach to texts is ineffective when more nuanced or creative interpretations of text are demanded. Within the community of reading educators, there is some agreement on the text features and strategies readers use in reading. However, strong disagreement exists on things such as how much emphasis should be given to specific text features and strategies, or whether less experienced readers and writers use text features and reading strategies in the same way as more experienced readers. For instance, Goodman (1985a), Adams (1990), and Stanovich (1992) all agree that readers use graphophonic, semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic knowledge, but they don’t agree on how or when the cues are used. The relative differences among these positions are differences in epistemological stances. Once there is a move from theorizing about reading toward implementing reading assessment, issues about the warrantability of claims come to the fore in a way that they might not in other contexts. For instance, fluency is a key element in the design of DIBELS suggesting that fluency is a key element in reading (Elliott, Lee, & Tollefson, 2001). On the Kindergarten Benchmark Assessment, initial sounds, letter names, the segmentation of phonemes, nonsense words, and word use are all assessed in terms of fluency (Good & Kaminski, 2002). The conceptualization of fluency embedded within this and other DIBELS tests is that fluency equals speed. As many of the original technical documents are no longer available on the website associated with DIBELS, it is difficult to determine the warrants offered for this view, especially given that there are alternate and well-warranted conceptualizations of fluency (e.g., Flurkey, 1997; in press) that would challenge the approach taken. In adaptations of the DIBELS, such as the DIBELS-M (Elliott, Lee, & Tollefson, 2001), no explanation is offered for why certain time cut-offs are utilized and why different time cut-offs exist across subtests. Layered on top of the issue of time is whether the material in an instrument like the DIBELS Kindergarten Benchmark Assessment can be called reading. Even though officials in states such as Maryland (Maryland Reading First, 2003) appear to make the inference that reading is assessed by DIBELS, it

176

Sharon Murphy

is unlikely that strong warrants for calling the test a reading test can be provided particularly since there are no English words or sentences to be read. How do we find out about reading? The methodology of assessment Another knowledge set drawn upon in any assessment, whether it is of reading or of some other area, is that of the methodology of assessment. In reading, assessment methodology may include a range of things such as: procedures for the conduct of oral or silent readings of texts; directions given; text lengths; texts chosen; the construction and administration of types of tasks such as forcedchoice tasks, open-ended tasks, short answer tasks, tasks with prompts, oral response tasks, visual-media response tasks, dramatic performance tasks, and so on. The knowledge base for the methodology of an assessment can be broken down into two components: (1) the design of the assessment—what I call the architecture or structure of the assessment (Murphy, 2003); and (2) the processes involved in administering the assessment. The architecture of an assessment refers to the design of the assessment tasks for the assessment. Like the architecture of a building, the architecture of an assessment may reveal, conceal, or simply not deal with aspects of reading knowledge. Design elements may make a difference to what is revealed about a reader’s reading. Let me illustrate with some examples of task types. Take, for instance, two design elements in cloze tests: the length of lines and placement of response lines in cloze passages. Hartley and Trueman (1986) reported that up to six months difference in reading achievement comprehension scores could be accounted for by line length and whether the response line was placed within the passage or at the side of the passage. The differences that such design elements make are, in part, accounted for by the view the assessment developers have of people and their relationship to the world: Are people knowing subjects who look upon the world as a place about which they draw from the potential informational cues and make inferences about the meaning of those cues or are people relatively passive or naïve in the face of such cues? The answer to these questions provides the epistemological basis from which many assessment developers proceed. Consider Goodman’s ([1973] 1982) position on miscues. Goodman gestured toward the design limitations of miscue analysis when he described miscues as “windows on the reading process” ([italics added], p. 93). In addition, his program of research relating to miscue analysis positioned the reader’s interaction with text as quite complex. For instance, the research that has resulted from miscue analysis work has been seminal in identifying the importance of many different text features (e.g., Goodman & Gollasch, 1982; Goodman, 1983; Goodman & Gespass, 1983; Goodman & Bird, 1984) and how the text features interact with readings of those texts. Contrast the positioning of reading complexity with the simplistic assumptions underlying multiple-choice test design. One design element is that of the options test-takers are provided with as possible responses to each question—

Towards Epistemic Responsibility

177

one option is the correct response and the other options are foils or plausible responses (Haladyna, 1994) which often contain some, but not all, of the information needed for the correct response. Here, test-takers, for any number of reasons (distractibility, lack of understanding, different world perspective) who choose a foil containing partial information are treated as ignorant since a score of zero is awarded for incorrect responses. Multiple-choice items present one of the few assessment designs in which having some knowledge is equated to ignorance. The epistemological grounding or warrantability of such a design feature seems problematic. The positioning of assessment participants as knowing or naïve subjects extends to another aspect of assessment, that of the administration processes of the assessment. Administration processes, in some senses, can be considered a subset of the architecture of assessment; however, these elements are often so under-emphasized I am singling them out for discussion to highlight the potential ways in which they might contribute to what gets named as reading and for the assumptions that underlie them. For instance, consider the design element of the oral instructions given as part of an assessment and whether motivational statements are included in those instructions. Brown and Walberg (1993) did just that and found that students who were given instructions to do well for themselves, their parents, and their teachers, performed better, as a group, than those who did not receive such specialized instructions. Human beings are complex creatures and if someone tells them that their behavior really counts and is vital, then they may well extend extra effort. This affective component of the attachment one has to the task at hand further complicates how one thinks of reading or of any task. Yet, many administration processes are based on two simple operational design premises: (1) by keeping the process of assessment administration the same across all administrations of the test, competing explanations for the performance of participants is minimized; and (2) if there are problems in the administration processes of an assessment, all participants are equally affected because the administration processes have been kept the same. But both these premises have their problems. First of all it is difficult to keep the process of administration the same. Can administration processes account for the kind word from a school principal, who, in passing tells a class to do well because it is important for the school? Or for the parent who promises a lusted-after toy as a reward for performance? Further, as several studies illustrate, treating all cases similarly does not necessarily achieve the goal of having the same impact on all students (e.g., Anderson & Flynn, 1976; Bauer, 1971). While there has been some research on these matters in multiple-choice assessment, less is known about administration processes in more complex contexts such as performancebased or portfolio assessments. However, epistemological assumptions about knowledge and controlling it are built into assessments and must be discussed candidly in order to consider the full merits of the assessment. A final issue to consider in relation to assessment methodologies is the interaction between specific methodologies and what is being assessed. In other words,

178

Sharon Murphy

how well do specific assessment methodologies lend themselves to obtaining information about specific processes/practices or context? The architecture of an assessment, like the architecture of a building, has a limited number of rooms which, though they may often be used for varied purposes, are nevertheless limited. So, for instance, the silent reading of a passage followed by an unaided retelling provides some insight into the reader’s cue and strategy use, but does not lend itself as well to the assessment of these processes as does the oral reading of a passage. These interactional effects add further complexities to understanding the epistemic foundations of assessment methodologies. How do we think about what we find? Interpretation practices Another knowledge set that must be engaged as part of any reading assessment is that of the interpretive practices that occur in assessment. Some of these practices are based on folk wisdom (the way we’ve always done something), while others are associated with theory or research from the field of reading education. Some interpretive practices in reading assessments occur before the assessment is administered. For instance, for all reading assessments, the selection of a text for reading is a type of interpretive moment since it suggests some a priori conception of the goodness of that text in relation to the task of reading for the reader. Goodman (1982 [1967]), when talking about text selection, indicates that the texts of reading be slightly difficult for the reader, thereby requiring that some consideration needs to be given to the relationship between the reader and text, something that had not been done for the oral reading inventories at the time. Greater elaboration of the issues relating to text selection have occurred in more recent writings (e.g., Goodman, Watson, & Burke, 2005). Another example of a priori interpretation is embedded in the architecture of multiple choice standardized tests with their typical architecture3 of a question followed by one correct answer and three or four foils or distractors (Haladyna, 1994). In essence, a level of interpretation has occurred prior to the test administration since one item has been determined to be the correct response. Yet this interpretive move, with its seeming definitiveness, is questionable. In reviews of standardized reading tests, Murphy, Shannon, Johnston, and Hansen (1998) and Hill and Larsen (2000) raise questions about the “correct” response. For instance, Hill and Larsen conducted a discourse analysis of a pilot edition of Gates–MacGinitie test items as well as item-by-item interviews about their answers with 8-year-old children. Hill and Larsen reported, among many other things, that children had identified the “correct” response on the test but when probed about it had answered correctly for the wrong reasons; in other instances, children had selected a foil or distracter (the “wrong” choice) that proved quite a reasonable response when contextualized by the children’s explanations for their choice. Both the selection of texts and the selection of the “correct” interpretation of texts are epistemological decisions grounded in conceptions of how knowledge works in reading, what knowledge people hold in common, and whether people

Towards Epistemic Responsibility

179

interpret the world in identical ways. As a consequence, claims made in relation to reading assessments must be situated in ways that recognize the tentativeness or fragility of the claims especially when it comes to epistemological commonalities. Once reading assessments have been administered, different interpretive moments occur. For instance, in standardized oral reading tests, after the oral reading of a passage has occurred, examiners count up reading “errors” and as a result of the procedures governing the pattern analysis of “errors” categorize the reading as being at either the Independent, Instructional, or Frustration level (typically based on word recognition accuracy). This practice remains in wide use. Yet Allington’s (1984) review of the literature on oral reading reveals that there is little research upon which to base these interpretive practices, a large epistemological gap indeed. A different type of interpretive moment occurs for norm-referenced or criterion-referenced assessment. Typically, in these assessments, performance is compared against a normative scale or a rating/grade scale, or rubrics are used to assess a free oral, visual, written of performance response. Additionally, correlations between these assessments and other indicators of reading are often described. Each of these moments is the result of social or disciplinary conventions about how to think about the assessment activity and, as such, draws upon assumptions about how behavior occurs, when it occurs, and how to aggregate descriptions of such behavior. Ironically, the more controlled the design structure of an assessment, the better the assessment cloaks constitutive interpretive decisions relating to its design, while the less controlled the design structure, the more visible and contentious interpretive moments become.4 For example, in miscue analysis procedures such as those described by Goodman, Watson, & Burke (2005), which has a relatively delineated, but not standardized, set of routines for administration, still offers a multitude of interpretive moments: conversation with the reader before or during the gathering of an oral reading sample, miscue marking, miscue coding, and the summarization of miscues either by written description, categorization, or quantification.5 In portfolio assessments, there is much room for interpretation ranging from what is selected for inclusion in the portfolio, to assessment participants’ participation in the selection of work, to the tools called upon to judge the work contained within the portfolio (Murphy, 1995). The challenge in assessment is to identify the possible interpretive opportunities available in any assessment and to account for them in the context of any one assessment. How does an assessment work in the service of knowing? Interpretive contexts for interpretation practices The last knowledge set relating to reading assessment is that of the knowledge of the impact of context on the interpretation of an assessment. Knowledge of context is important as context can influence how assessments are interpreted. Immediate contexts might include factors like the physical environment in which

180

Sharon Murphy

the assessment occurs, the attentiveness of the participant to the tasks at hand, or the psychological influences at play (such as task familiarity, or ability to identify with the person administering the assessment). For instance, Carlson (1998) considers the impact of test givers so significant that she calls test administrators assessment instruments in their own right. Participant familiarity with the form of an assessment may have a significant impact on performance. Scruggs, White, and Bennion (1985), in a meta-analysis of the research, report an 0.10 of a standard deviation can be gained from very short test preparation sessions. Knowledge that one group had such preparation and another didn’t should affect the sense that is made of an assessment. Enveloping the immediate contexts are local contexts such as classroom, school, or school district policies or stances which might mean the assessment is given more or less weight in decision making. So, for instance, if the assessment is a high stakes one in which the results have implications for teacher salaries, funding to schools, reputational standing, and so on, the interpretation of the assessment is different than one which does not have such implications. Numerous recent studies (see, e.g., Amrein & Berliner, 2003; Firestone, Schorr, & Monfils, 2004; Hillocks, 2002; Koretz, 2002; Lipman, 2004; Thomas, 2005) examine elements of high-stakes assessment and its consequences. Alternatively, if the assessment is a “low stakes”6 one in which the goal is to think about instruction or to understand what a reader is doing in reading, as might be the case in a miscue analysis (Goodman, Watson, & Burke, 2005), then the impact of the assessment plays out in a different way. Enveloping the immediate and local contexts are sociocultural contexts which influence how the society at large attributes significance to the assessment and its results. For instance, Rudman (1993), well before the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), lamented the dangerous use of test results by politicians. Tests are used so much and across so many different aspects of society in the United States (schools, workplaces, sporting events, and so on) that the anthropologist F. Allan Hanson (1993) suggests that the United States has a “testing culture.” McDonnell’s (2004) analysis of the socio-politics of the pre-NCLB testing in some states amplifies Hanson’s (1993) statement. How assessment results are taken up in such a culture might differ from cultures which are not as heavily influenced by tests and may explain why non-test measures have difficulty gaining a foothold. Knowledge about these contextual effects would certainly impact on interpretations given to an assessment and on the sense one might make of that assessment.

Doing well: towards epistemic responsibility If knowing well asks assessment developers and users to pause and consider the knowledges that might be involved in any single assessment, doing well asks those same people to think about the question of what they must do as a result. In my brief sketch of the knowledges involved in reading assessments, I have included positive and negative examples relating to the warrantability of

Towards Epistemic Responsibility

181

particular assessments or assessment architectures. However, the warranting of claims is not sufficient for the wise conduct of assessment and, to some extent, it never has been. Rightness or wrongness is not necessarily the issue, according to Code (1987), but, rather, reasonableness of conduct is, and one can only judge the reasonableness of conduct by understanding context. Reasonableness of conduct is framed by an ethical lens. This “responsibility” part of epistemic responsibility is about ethical obligation in relation to knowledge and its effects. The demands of epistemic responsibility require reading educators not to speak of good and bad assessments in absolute terms, as is so often the case in much that is written about assessment. Instead, to engage in “epistemically responsible” assessment is to assess the significance of each assessment by considering its reasonableness (both for content and interpretation) in a specific context. In such a model, the warrantability of an assessment is both epistemically and ethically based. In some senses, Code’s (1987) ethical challenge mirrors the challenge to ethical action that Samuel Messick (1988) raises when he argues that consequential validity—the value implications and social consequences of an assessment—form part of the validity argument in assessment theory. Messick claims that validity is never fixed once and for all, but must be established in situ. However, invariably assessment developers as well as assessment users make claims about the validity of assessments as though the validity applies to a myriad of contexts and times (Frisbie, 2005). For instance, test manuals often have sections outlining validity warrants for a test in the form of correlational tables (see, Murphy, Shannon, Johnston, & Hansen, 1998). The rhetoric of argumentation is not often used in these manuals; rather, validation statements are asserted; the result is that validation statements appear to be statements of fact that are characteristics of the test itself rather than commentaries on particular uses in particular situations. The application to assessment theory of Code’s (1987) idea of epistemic responsibility shifts the emphasis away from the assessment instrument as the repository of what the assessment stands for and lays it squarely on the people involved in developing and using the assessment. After all, an assessment cannot be responsible or act responsibly; but people can and do (or do not as the case may stand). In this type of positioning, argumentation and judgment become fore-grounded in talking about an assessment. What are the challenges to such an approach? One challenge is that of creating a culture among assessment developers and users that asks them to squarely confront the focus of their assessment. The first step in this direction is in the naming of assessments. Names of assessment are assessment identity claims: taking on the identity of something not assessed by an assessment is unethical and amounts to identity theft. This means that phonemic awareness batteries should be called just that and should not be called literacy assessments; vocabulary and comprehension tests should be called vocabulary and comprehension tests and not reading tests, and so on. An exemplary model to follow in the regard would be that found in miscue analysis assessment procedures where identity claims have never been over- or under-stated. The procedures have always been named

182

Sharon Murphy

as miscue analysis procedures (see, e.g., Goodman & Burke, 1972; Goodman, Watson, & Burke, 1987, 2005) rather than broader more encompassing terms that, I suspect, are sometimes used in the interests of market share or academic status. Of course, there will be times when claims made about assessments are the focus of a theoretical debate. In such instances, if warrants are provided for an assessment, to some extent, they may be unintelligible to others and, as a consequence, the grounds of the reasonableness of the claims made are never tested as completely as they should be. In essence, epistemological silos exist within the field of assessment. One explanation for the tendency for epistemic communities to operate this way is offered by Code (1987) who draws on Polanyi’s concept of the “principle of mutual control.” The principle of mutual control refers to the way in which epistemic communities are self-implicated in a kind of epistemological paradox. To maintain an epistemological community, one must share a common epistemological base with others in the community; however, the problem is that epistemic agreement within these communities is secured at the expense of epistemic change. In other words, the risk of the change that comes with the allowing in of new ideas is the risk of loss of the community. The agreed-upon knowledge is familiar, comfortable, and ready for minor tune-ups but not fundamental change. Since providing therapy for communities to get over themselves isn’t an option, the only solution is that members of the assessment community become bi- or multi-dialectal when it comes to assessment—we must learn the language of the warrants we wish to challenge in order for our critique of them to be given credibility by those offering the warrants. Consider, for instance, the critique Frisbie (2005) offered to the measurement community as an insider speaking to insiders about how the term “validity” is misused: It is clear from Messick’s writing, and from the Test Standards, that validity is not about the instruments themselves, but it is about score interpretations and uses. To speak of a “valid test” begs the question about what such an instrument is. If we quickly say that such a test is one that measures what the test maker intended, that response begs another question . . . can a “good test” be used to give us “bad” information, or can the information from a “good test” be used in “bad” ways? Surely the answers to both questions are affirmative. Consequently failure to realize that well-developed instruments can give us meaningless scores, and therefore, scores that should not be used as originally intended, is a certain indication of misunderstanding on the user’s part about what validity is. (p. 22) As an epistemological insider, Frisbie’s (2005) critique is afforded credibility, heard at the annual conference of the National Association for Measurement in Education, and printed in their flagship journal. Frisbie (2005) goes on to quote examples of poor use of the term validity in the following sources: the NCLB Act of 2002, Public Law 107–110, an examiner’s manual for a statewide

Towards Epistemic Responsibility

183

assessment program, a publication of a prominent testing organization, an introductory assessment textbook, the website of a well-known test publisher, and the technical manual of a well-known achievement test. His challenge to the warrants offered will likely be considered; whether or not it will be sufficient to initiate the pervasive change needed is an open question, but it does offer a beginning. Popham (2003) offers a more playful critique of his own assessment community in an essay entitled “Seeking Redemption for Our Psychometric Sins,” in which he outlines sins of omission which, for instance, include the problematic practice of evaluating teachers based on achievement tests. He writes, There may be scads of empirical evidence indicating that valid relative inferences can be drawn from traditionally constructed tests, but try lining up solid empirical evidence that such tests can provide valid evaluative inferences about a school staff’s instructional effectiveness. Lots of luck! (p. 47) Popham (2003) refers to curricular narrowing, “jettisoned joy” in classrooms where teachers have created “drudgery-dominated drill factories wherein students must take part in seemingly interminable test preparation practice sessions” (p. 46) and the modeled dishonesty that occurs when teachers cheat in order to improve test results. Again, an insider critique using the language of insiders is printed in an “insider” journal. Warrantability critique, when using the language of the epistemic insider, at minimum, receives a hearing, which is one step better than outright dismissal. Finally, for assessment professionals and users of assessments in the field of reading to act in epistemically responsible ways, they must ask themselves about the warrantability of the assessment in relation to specific contexts. This means that questions such as the following would be persistent in assessment practices:

• •

•

Is it warrantable and reasonable to claim that a single assessment tool assesses reading? Why or why not? Is it warrantable and reasonable to use a specific assessment tool for a specific context? What would that tool look like and how would it be contextappropriate? Is it possible to create warrantable and reasonable assessment bundles for specific contexts? What might such bundles look like? Why would they be used?

As Code (1987) argues, from an epistemically responsible position, questions about evidence, justification, and validity are persistent questions; but . . . these questions are valid only when they are framed so that they do not constrain replies to those that offer definitive, conclusive evidence or to those that provide final justification. (p. 12)

184

Sharon Murphy

Framing one’s assessment actions by proceeding in an epistemically responsible fashion opens up some possibilities to educators in reading assessment as well as in other types of assessment. The challenge is to import the demands of epistemic responsibility to larger contexts in which assessment is operationalized, enacted, interpreted, and drawn upon for educational and policy decision-making. That challenge can never be met until those of us in the field of reading assessment meet the challenge ourselves.

Notes 1 One need only consider the case of the use of leeches for bloodletting, a practice which reached its height in the mid-1800s (Rados, 2004), and which a 1980 review of the history of bloodletting relegated to “the ranks of interesting nostalgia and [it] deserve[s] to be remembered as part of colorful medical heritage” (Seigworth, [1980] 2002). Yet, leeches made a return on two fronts in recent medical publications offering contemporary evidence and argumentation as to the appropriateness of their selected use (see Johnson, 2004; Rados, 2004). 2 The content matter of reading should not be confused with content area reading. 3 Even though multiple-choice tests have been used since the early 1900s, only three books have extensively taken up the non-statistical elements of multiple-choice text design: Bormuth (1970), Haladyna (1994), and Osterlind (1980). Widespread critique of multiple-choice test design led Snow (1993) and Bennett (1993) to develop hierarchies relating to assessment design in which multiple-choice tests are ranked at the lowest level of design and the presentation of work or collections of a variety of assessment types represents the highest level. 4 Appearances here can be deceiving because in designs with greater control of the structure, interpretation has often occurred prior to the administration of the test (see earlier discussion about multiple-choice tests). 5 For a discussion of some of these elements, see Murphy (1999). 6 I hesitate to use the term low stakes because it is hardly low stakes to talk about a child’s reading instruction; I use it merely in contrast to high stakes which has a relatively established meaning.

References Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Allington, R. K. (1984). Oral reading. In P. D. Pearson (Ed.), Handbook of reading research (pp. 829–864). New York: Longman. Amrein, A. L., & Berliner, D.C. (2003). The effects of high-stakes testing on student motivation and learning. Educational Leadership, 60(5), 32–38. Anderson, B. E., & Flynn, J. T. (1976). The effect of test administration on test achievement performance. Journal of Negro Education, 45(1), 37–45. Bauer, D. H. (1971). The effect of test instructions, test anxiety, defensiveness, and confidence in judgment on guessing behavior in multiple-choice situations. Psychology in the Schools, 8(3), 208–215. Bormuth, J. (1970). On a theory of achievement test items. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brown, S. M., & Walberg, H. J. (1993). Motivational effects on test scores of elementary students. Journal of Educational Research, 86(3), 133–136.

Towards Epistemic Responsibility

185

Carlson, J. F. (1998). A psychometric view of those who administer standardized tests: Are test givers instruments too? Educational Research Quarterly, 22(1), 58–71. Clay, M. (1972). The early detection of reading difficulties. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Clay, M. (1993). An observation survey of early literacy achievement. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Code, L. (1987). Epistemic responsibility. London: University Press of New England. Dolch, E. M. (1970). Psychology and teaching of reading. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Elliott, J., Lee, S. W., & Tollefson, N. (2001). A reliability and validity study of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills-Modified. School Psychology Review, 30(1). (Accessed via Expanded Academic ASAP. Thomson Gale. York University Library, Canada, Sept. 28, 2006.) Firestone, W. A., Schorr, R. Y., & Monfils, L. F. (2004). The ambiguity of teaching to the test: Standards, assessment and educational reform. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Fishman, A. (1988). Amish literacy: What and how it means. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Fleck, L. (1979). Genesis and development of a scientific fact. (T.J. Treun, & Robert K. Merton, Eds.; F. Bradley, & T.J. Treun, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Flurkey, A. D. (1997). Reading as flow: A linguistic alternative to fluency. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Arizona. Flurkey, A. D. (2008). Reading flow. In A. D. Flurkey, E. J. Paulson, & K. S. Goodman (Eds.), Scientific realism in studies of reading, (pp. 267–304). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Frisbie, D. A. (2005). Measurement 101: Some fundamentals revisited. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 24(3), 21–28. Good, R. H., & Kaminski, R. A. (Eds.). (2002). Dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills (6th ed.). Eugene, OR: Institute for the Development of Educational Achievement. Goodman, K. S. ([1967] 1982). Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game. In F. V. Gollasch (Ed.), Language and literacy: The selected writings of Kenneth S. Goodman. Vol. 1: Process, theory and research (pp. 33–43). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Goodman, K. S. (1973). Analysis of oral reading miscues: Applied psycholinguistics. In F. Smith (Ed.), Psycholinguistics and reading (pp. 158–176). Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Goodman, K. S. ([1973] 1982). Miscues: Windows on the reading process. In F. V. Gollasch (Ed.), Language and literacy: The selected writings of Kenneth S. Goodman. Vol. 1: Process, theory and research (pp. 93–101). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Goodman, K. S. (1985a). Text features as they relate to miscues: Determiners. A research report. Program in Language and Literacy. Occasional Paper No. 8. University of Arizona. ERIC Document reproduction Service Number ED 297 260. Goodman, K. S. (1985b). Unity in reading. In H. Singer & R. B. Ruddell (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (pp. 813–840). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Goodman, K. S., & Bird, L. (1984). On the wording of texts: A study of intra-text word frequency. Research in the Teaching of English, 18(2), 119–145. Goodman, K. S., & Gollasch, F. (1982). Word omissions in reading: Deliberate and nondeliberate. Program in Language and Literacy Occasional Paper No. 2. University of Arizona. ERIC Document Services Reproduction Number ED 2120–631. Goodman, Y. M., & Burke, C. (1972). Reading miscue inventory manual: Procedure for diagnosis and evaluation. New York: Macmillan.

186

Sharon Murphy

Goodman, Y. M., Watson, D. J., & Burke, C. L. (1987). Reading miscue inventory: Alternative procedures. Katoneh, NY: Richard C. Owen. Goodman, Y. M., Watson, D. J., & Burke, C. L. (2005). Reading miscue inventory: From evaluation to instruction. Katoneh, NY: Richard C. Owen. Haladyna, T. M. (1994). Developing and validating multiple-choice tests. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Hall, K. (2003). Listening to Stephen read: Multiple perspectives on literacy. London: Open University Press. Hanson, F. A. (1993). Testing testing: Social consequences of the examined life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hartley, J., & Trueman, M. (1986). The effects of the typographic layout of cloze-type tests on reading comprehension scores. Journal of Research in Reading, 9, 116–124. Hill, C., & Larsen, E. (2000). Children and reading tests (Vol. LXV). London: JAI Press. Hillocks, Jr., G. (2002). The testing trap: How state writing assessments control learning. New York: Teachers College Press. Howie, S. (2005). Contextual factors at the school and classroom level related to pupils’ performance in mathematics in South Africa. Educational Research and Evaluation, 1(2), 1232–1240. Johnson, C. Y. (2004). Blood letting: A long-discredited cure may hold a promising secret. Boston Globe (October 5). Available at: www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/ articles/2004/10/05/bloodletting/. Koretz, D. (2002). Limitations in the use of achievement tests as measures of educators’ productivity. Journal of Human Resources, 37(4), 752–777. Lipman, P. (2004). High stakes education: Inequality, globalization, and urban school reform. New York: Routledge. McDonnell, L. M. (2004). Politics, persuasion, and educational testing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Messick, S. (1988). The one and future issues of validity: Assessing the meaning and consequences of measurement. In H. Wainer & H. I. Braun (Eds.), Test validity (pp. 33–45). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Murphy, S. (1995). Revisioning reading assessment: Remembering to learn from the legacy of reading tests. Clearing House, 68, 235–239. Murphy, S. (1999). The validity and reliability of miscue analysis. In A. Marek & C. Edelsky (Eds.), Reflections and connections: Essays on the influence of Kenneth S. Goodman (pp. 95–122). New York: Hampden Press. Murphy, S. (2003). Finding literacy: A review of the research on literacy assessment in early childhood education. In N. Hall, J. Larson, & J. Marsh (Eds.), Handbook of early childhood literacy (pp. 369–378). London: Sage. Murphy, S., with Shannon, P., Johnston, P., & Hansen, J. (1998). Fragile evidence: A critique of reading assessment. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Osterlind, S. J. (1989). Constructing test items. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publications. Popham, W. J. (2003). Seeking redemption for our psychometric sins. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 22(1), 45–48. Rados, C. (2004). Beyond bloodletting: FDA gives leeches a medical makeover. FDA Consumer Magazine (September/October). U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Available at: www.fda/gov/fdac/features/2004/504_leech.html. Rudman, H. C. (1993). National testing or political testing: Is there a difference? Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 12(3), 5–9, 30.

Towards Epistemic Responsibility

187

Scruggs, T. E., White, K. R., & Bennion, K. (1985). Teaching test-taking skills to elementary-grade students: A meta-analysis. The Elementary School Journal, 87, 69–82. Seigworth, G. ([1980] 2002). Bloodletting over the centuries. In red gold: The early story of blood—Blood basics: Early practices. PBS. [Reprinted from the New York State Journal of Medicine.] Available at: www.pbs.org/wnet/redgold/basice/ bloodlettinghistory.html. Snow, R. E. (1991). Construct validity and constructed-response sets. In R. E. Bennett & W. C. Ward (Eds.), Construction versus choice in cognitive measurement: Issues in constructed response, performance testing, and portfolio assessment (pp. 45–60). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Thomas, M. (2005). High stakes testing: Coping with collateral damage. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

14 Miscue Analysis as a Tool for Advancing Literacy Policy and Practice Bess Altwerger and Nancy Rankie Shelton

Miscue analysis has come to be regarded as one of the most effective research tools available to reveal the complexities of the reading process. The use of this tool in its earliest form was instrumental to the development of Goodman’s psycholinguistic model of the reading process (Goodman, 1976, 1979, 1994). More abbreviated versions of the full miscue taxonomy were also developed (Y. Goodman & Burke, 1972; Y. Goodman, Watson, & Burke, 2005) to be used by classroom professionals to reveal the reading strengths and needs of students and plan appropriate instruction. Miscue analysis was predicated upon revolutionary advances in psychology and linguistics led by Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky along with their colleagues and students (Goodman, 1994; Edelsky, 1999; Marek, 1999). Arguably, miscue analysis was the first reading research tool that incorporated and applied new conceptualizations of the learner as a competent language user and active meaning seeker. As a result of Goodman’s early miscue analysis research, a new conceptualization of reading as an active, readerdriven process bore holes into long-held theories of reading as a passive act of decoding and meaning transmission. Over the years, miscue analysis was utilized in a wide range of studies, advancing our understandings of various intricacies of the reading process, including the impact of textual and linguistic complexity on reading and the relationship of processing strategies to meaning construction (Flurkey & Xu, 2003). Most recently, the utilization of miscue analysis in conjunction with advanced eyetracking and digitized voice analysis software has generated new discoveries about the nature of the reading process that both confirm and extend Goodman’s model (Flurkey, Paulson, & Goodman, 2008). The magnitude of the contribution of miscue analysis to the building of a multifaceted, nuanced, scientific understanding of the reading process clearly cannot be underestimated. But in order to fully appreciate the power of miscue analysis, one must consider the social-political context within which miscue analysis has survived and thrived from its inception to the current NCLB world. Seen from this vantage point, miscue analysis is clearly more than just an elegant research tool; it is a powerful instrument for examining some of the most politically charged issues in literacy, such as assumptions regarding the role of readers’ native language and culture in reading, and the validity of commercially produced and federally

Miscue Analysis as a Tool

189

sanctioned reading programs. In demonstrating the active role of the reader in transaction with the text, miscue analysis has challenged not only contemporary theories of the reading process, but perhaps most importantly, the underlying ideologies that position readers, particularly marginalized and oppressed minorities, as passive and powerless. Through a long history of socially and politically responsive miscue analysis studies, researchers have challenged: deficit views regarding urban, rural, and other low status dialect speakers (Goodman & Buck, 1973; Goodman & Goodman, 1978), bilingual and second language learners (Coll & Osuna, 1990; Francis, 1999; Goodman, Goodman, & Flores, 1979; Yamashita, 2005), “disabled” readers (Martens & Cousin, 1998; Rhodes & Dudley-Marling, 1996), and hearing and visually impaired readers (Chaleff & Ritter, 2001; Ewoldt, 1981; Vakali & Evans, 2007); and the use of commercial programs that utilize phonics-based and decodable texts for reading instruction (Arya, Martens, Wilson, et al., 2005; Goodman, Goodman, & Martens, 2002). Over time, miscue analysis has played an important role in responding to literacy issues that emerge from the changing sociopolitical landscape, and it remains a highly relevant research tool in our current educational context. Over the last decade, the political climate surrounding literacy has been driven by a highly influential corporate agenda (Allington, 2002; Altwerger, 2005; Altwerger & Strauss, 2002; Poyner & Wolfe, 2005), a series of policy reports including those produced by the National Research Council (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998) and National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000), and landmark legislation which set a new precedent for federal intrusion into reading research, reading curriculum and assessment (Reading Excellence Act; NCLB, 2001). Borrowing liberally from the findings of the NRP Report, the Reading First section of NCLB went as far as to officially specify phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension as the “pillars” of reading. And through unlawful and unethical practices carried out by both the National Reading First Office in reviewing state grant proposals and the National What Works Clearinghouse in reviewing programs for official approval (Office of Inspector General United States Department of Education 2006, 2007), the NCLB legislation succeeded in rolling back many of the advances previously achieved in the theory and practice of reading. After decades of progress toward meaning-centered, literature-based curriculum, states were pressured to mandate federally approved, but arguably unproven programs such as Open Court and SRA Reading Mastery (both McGraw-Hill products), consequently reinstating a heavy focus on isolated phonics-based instruction and controlled (decodable) texts. Worse yet, the new practice of policing teachers’ compliance through insistence on “fidelity to program,” made it all but impossible for teachers to maintain any level of linguistic and cultural responsiveness that had become a hallmark of critical literature-based, Whole Language practices. While the renewed focus on isolated phonics instruction and meaningless texts stood in contradiction to miscue analysis research on the limited role of graphophonics in the reading process, its potentially harmful effect on developing readers was further exacerbated by a concurrent emphasis

190

Bess Altwerger and Nancy Rankie Shelton

on fluency, another “pillar” of reading (Altwerger, Jordan, & Shelton, 2007). From the perspective of automatic processing and neurocognitive models of reading (Samuels, 1994; Shaywitz, 2004), the pairing of phonics and fluency instruction makes sense: it produces readers who can both automatically decode words and accurately and swiftly render the text. Theoretically, fluency frees readers to devote their full store of attention to comprehension. Given Reading First’s unequivocal embrace of this theory and its bold prescription for phonics and fluency instruction, one would assume that ample scientific support could be found in the fluency section of the National Reading Panel report, its authoritative source. It is, therefore, imperative to ascertain whether the NRP report provides adequate justification for identifying fluency as a pillar of reading and driving instruction and assessment toward speed and accuracy. The National Reading Panel defines fluency as “the ability to read a text quickly, accurately, and with proper expression” (2000, pp. 3–5). The NRP report devotes an entire section to fluency based on the assertion “that fluency is a critical component of skilled reading” (pp. 3–11). Yet, as astonishing as it may seem, the report never offers a scientific examination of the claim that reading fluency, as defined above, is in fact a critical indicator of comprehension or overall reading proficiency. It is implicit in the NRP report that these relationships are established by prior research, so the panel instead focused their metaanalysis on studies that point to the various instructional strategies that would best promote children’s reading fluency. The panel centers its report on studies of: (1) repeated reading and repeated guided oral reading; and (2) encouraging children to read. Even in this regard, it failed to identify a large enough number of articles to reach any conclusions about the effect of various instructional approaches on fluency, however it is defined. So despite the enormous influence of the NRP report on schools’ current attention to fluency, it actually leaves us with a rather weak understanding of the role of fluency in proficient reading. In what follows, we review research that is frequently cited as demonstrating a relationship of reading fluency to comprehension and overall proficiency. We question whether this body of research provides an adequate justification for the wide use of grade level fluency benchmarks to evaluate students’ reading competency and progress. We then discuss the groundbreaking miscue analysis research conducted by Alan Flurkey (1998, 2008) that challenges standard notions of fluency and the role of rate in proficient reading. Finally, we offer a description of our own large-scale miscue analysis research that assessed the relationship of accurate and rapid reading to text processing and comprehension for 108 second graders. These studies provide clear examples of the durability of miscue analysis for addressing an issue of paramount importance for contemporary reading theory and practice within the current political context; the drive toward fluency.

Measuring fluency Until the NRP focused attention on fluency, reading rate studies were most often conducted on populations of “disabled readers” and published in

Miscue Analysis as a Tool

191

professional journals and reports directed primarily toward audiences concerned with special education. Hasbrouck and Tindal’s (1992) work was foundational for establishing the reading rates currently used as benchmarks for grade level performance in many basal reading programs. Despite assumptions to the contrary, the techniques Hasbrouck and Tindal used to establish these rates, also drawn from research on special populations, actually did not include assessment of comprehension. In 2006, Hasbrouck and Tindal conducted a second norming study to address some of the weaknesses of the first study, including the limited sample population participating in the 1992 study. They caution against using a fluency scale to make instructional decisions; “fluency is only one of the essential skills involved in reading” (p. 642). Nonetheless, support for the continued use of benchmarks for assessment can be found by those researchers who argue that there is, in fact, a relationship between reading rate, automaticity in decoding, and comprehension. Pikulski and Chard (2005) contend that such an established link between fluency and reading comprehension does exist, though they offer little in the way of scientific evidence to support that claim. Based upon their critique of past definitions of fluency that linked it only to oral reading, but not silent reading, they offer a new, “comprehensive” definition of fluency: Reading fluency refers to efficient, effective word-recognition skills that permit a reader to construct the meaning of text. Fluency is manifested in accurate, rapid, expressive oral reading and is applied during, and makes possible, silent reading comprehension. (p. 510) Pikulski and Chard (2005) further argue that in order for students to be able to attend to comprehension, they must develop “automaticity of decoding” (p. 511). This presumed relationship between automaticity, decoding, and comprehension led them to argue for an increased focus on systematic fluency instruction. They offer a nine-step program that teaches decoding out of the context of reading, delays “reading” until students are successful decoders, and recommends regular assessment of fluency of readers beyond the second grade level. Rasinski (2000) argues that slow reading is unacceptable, whether or not a student is comprehending. His claim is based upon correlational research using National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading scores. However, comprehension measured by NAEP cannot be regarded as an accurate measure of comprehension outside of the context of a standardized, timed assessment. Rasinski’s results are compromised by an inability to measure comprehension and fluency independently of each other. In fact, a direct connection between fluency and comprehension has yet to be documented by research. Despite this, researchers and theoreticians continue to claim that it “exerts an important influence on comprehension” (Samuels, 2002, p. 167). Thus, fluency is often used as a measure of reading progress (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). The National Reading Panel Report suggests a variety

192

Bess Altwerger and Nancy Rankie Shelton

of assessment procedures that can be used to index fluency, including informal reading inventories, miscue analysis, pausing indices, running records, and reading speed calculations. Although some of these assessment procedures require attention to comprehension (IRI, Oral Grey Reading test, and pausing indices) and others do not (reading of single words), the report does seem to encourage the practice of measuring fluency while readers are attending to comprehension. The report states that “competent reading requires skills that extend beyond the single-word level to contextual reading, and this skill can best be acquired by practicing reading in which words are in a meaningful context” (pp. 3–11). In school settings, it is common to group students for overall reading instruction by measuring reading rates and comparing those rates to grade level benchmarks. As an alternative to this common practice, Samuels (2002) recommends a two-step process that first treats listening comprehension as if it were actually reading comprehension, by having students listen to a passage and then answer comprehension questions. The second step in Samuels’ process requires that the students read aloud a passage on an unfamiliar topic and answer comprehension questions. The teacher should attend to students’ oral reading rate, word recognition errors, and expression while students are reading aloud. Samuels’ process of evaluating readers combines the recommendations of Snow, Burns and Griffin (1998) to monitor fluency progress and gives educators a way to quantify reading performance using a relatively simple procedure. Research on curriculum-based measurements of oral reading fluency attempts to establish children’s reading rates that result in the ranking of readers using Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) (Goode & Kaminski, 2002). As a result of children’s performance on the DIBELS, they are described as being readers as “at-risk,” “at some risk” and at “low risk.” These studies are generally published in non-juried publications (Good et al., 2002; Goode et al., 2003). Several technical reports attempt to connect reading rates to success on standardized tests (i.e. Buck & Torgesen, 2003; Crawford, Tindal, & Steiber, 2001). Although these technical reports do not benefit from objective peer review (Shelton, Altwerger, & Jordan, 2009), they often serve as foundational support for programs that are marketed to schools as “scientifically based” reading assessment tools (i.e. Maryland Reading First, www.msde.state.md.us/ docs/ReadingFirst.doc).

Fluency or flow? One of the most detailed and informative set of studies on the nature of readers’ reading rate and comprehension has been conducted by Alan Flurkey (1998, 2008). These studies used miscue analysis in combination with digitalized measures of reading speed to examine the dynamic relationship between readers’ strategic processing and their oral reading rate within and across different text segments (phrases, sentences, paragraphs, whole story). With technological precision and painstaking examination of readers’ oral reading and retelling of authentic literature, Flurkey (1998) has been able to achieve a deep analysis absent

Miscue Analysis as a Tool

193

from all of the previous fluency research. His findings challenge the assumptions that standard measures of fluency (such as Words Correct Per Minute or WCPM) are valid representations of readers’ rates of oral reading and reliable indicators of the ability to construct meaning and comprehend text. Drawing upon the metaphor of water streaming through a riverbed with varying constraints and bottlenecks, Flurkey uses the term “flow” to more adequately reflect the sometimes dramatic variations in oral reading speed exhibited by his subjects as they transacted with the print at different points across an entire text: By applying the interval-partitioning procedure with its precise methodology to the analysis of oral reading, it becomes clear that reading rate is not static or stable, but that it varies throughout a text in response to a reader’s transactions with text. (Flurkey, 2008, p. 277) Flurkey’s analysis reveals that while the overall rate of sentence reading for more proficient readers is somewhat more elevated than that of less proficient readers, the more proficient readers also exhibit considerably greater variability in rate within a given text. The “peaks and valleys” of reading rate for more proficient readers are much more extreme than those of less proficient readers. This finding stands in contrast to the widely held notion that due to effortless and automatic word identification, more proficient readers move through texts at a consistently rapid rate. Flurkey (2008) offers an alternative characterization of proficient reading as the flexible employment of strategies in the pursuit of meaning, resulting in variability rather than uniformity of reading rate across a text.

A large-scale study of fluency in reading Despite the weak research base on the role of fluency in meaningful reading and Flurkey’s breakthroughs regarding the variability or “flow” of proficient reading, the National Reading First program persists in mandating fluency instruction that promotes rapid and accurate reading. Equally as concerning, is the continued use of assessments for determining student placement and retention that reward speed and accuracy over reading proficiency, i.e. meaning construction and strategy flexibility. Left unchecked, the current federal reading policy poses a serious obstacle to the development of thoughtful, strategic readers; it penalizes proficient readers who do not read at a consistently high overall speed, and overestimates the competencies of readers who read rapidly without comprehension or flexibility. Clearly, the literacy community needs to address this serious situation both politically and scientifically. Once again, miscue analysis research could prove useful in challenging politically-driven literacy policies, this time in regard to fluency. By analyzing a large population of readers with varying levels of proficiency through the use of miscue analysis, we could potentially generate the information necessary to interrogate prevailing assumptions regarding the role of speed and accuracy in reading. With this goal in mind,

194

Bess Altwerger and Nancy Rankie Shelton

the following study was developed. Miscue analysis was used in conjunction with other research tools to examine the relationships between fluency (defined as rate and accuracy) and other key aspects of reading, including strategy use, comprehension and the use of graphophonics both in and out of context. More specifically, the study sought to address the following questions that are fundamental to evaluating the current positioning of fluency (speed and accuracy) at the center of reading policy and practice: 1 2 3 4

What is the relationship between fluency and the use of phonics in reading? What is the relationship between reading fluency and meaning construction during reading? What is the relationship between fluency and comprehension of text? Does fluency distinguish between more and less proficient readers?

Procedures Data for this study were drawn from a larger study (Arya, Martens, Wilson, et al., 2005) that examined the reading strategies and comprehension of 106 lowincome second grade students of various reading abilities using miscue analysis, retellings, and a standardized phonics test (Woodcock-Johnson, 1990). Subjects were drawn from four school sites using contrasting reading programs: two that utilized commercial phonics programs (Open Court and Direct Instruction), and two that were literature-based (a version of Guided Reading and a district developed Literature-based). All school sites were located in a large urban metropolitan Mid-Atlantic area, and were carefully selected to ensure that each had used their respective reading program for a minimum of two years and had a similar population based on the percentages of children receiving free and reduced lunch. To examine the role of fluency, data were additionally analyzed using several measures of miscue frequency and reading rate. First, the number of words per minute (WCPM) was computed for the first minute of reading, a common measure of fluency. Second, the WCPM was computed for the text portion in which miscues had been previously analyzed. This enabled us to examine rate and accuracy in relation to other miscue variables related to use of cuing systems. Third, WCPM was computed for the reading of the entire story, enabling us to note any discrepancies between rate results for the miscue section and the whole text. It was found that Words Correct per Minute (WCPM) for the miscue analysis section correlated significantly with WCPM for the first minute of reading (r =.76, p = .001), as well as for the reading of the story as a whole (r = .93, p = <.001) . By establishing that the reading rate for the miscue analysis portion was reflective of reading rate as a whole, we were able to confidently use this variable to assess any statistical relationships between readers’ rate and accuracy of oral reading and their use of reading strategies and comprehension as determined by the miscue analysis.

Miscue Analysis as a Tool

195

Interrater reliability was established by having two researchers time each reading, with any differences resolved by a third and joint timing. For the data analysis, Pearson Correlation coefficients were generated to examine the relationships between reading rate and accuracy and between reading rate and selected miscue analysis variables; and the MANOVA was used to examine differences among identified levels of readers, and between high and low retellers on measures of rate, accuracy, and miscue analysis variables. Findings What is the relationship between fluency and use of phonics in reading? Given the pervasive assumption that decoding skill is integrally related to fluency, and the concomitant emphasis on phonics instruction in our classrooms, we deemed it critical to identify any statistical correlations between CWPM and the use of graphic and sound cues during reading of the stories. More specifically, we were interested in identifying any correlations between CWPM and High, Some and Low Sound Similarity and between CWPM and High, Some and Low Graphic Similarity for all substitution miscues. To address the pervasive practice of teaching isolated phonic skills to increase reading accuracy and rate, we were also interested in identifying any relationship that might exist between CWPM and phonics (as determined by the mean score on the Woodcock Johnson nonsense word subtest). Several interesting findings emerged from our analysis. Despite the theoretical assumption that expert decoding leads to fluency, we found no significant correlation between WCPM and readers’ high use of sound or graphic cues during the oral reading of authentic text. This means that for our population of second graders from across both phonics and literature-based programs, faster readers do not make greater use of graphic or sound cues than slower readers while reading literature. When we looked at the group of students with the highest fluency rate and those with the lowest fluency rate, they were virtually indistinguishable in their use of graphophonics cues. In examining the relationship between WCPM and performance on the phonics task out of context, we did find a significant mild correlation (r = .43, p = .001). This seems to support the position that the ability to decode words out of context is related to the ability to read accurately and quickly. However, this conclusion must be moderated by the fact that students with the greatest rate and accuracy scores (>90 WCPM), had percentile ranks on the phonics subtest that ranged from 17 to 99. This indicates that it is certainly possible for poor decoders (out of context) to be highly fluent readers. Conversely, when looking at the group of students with the lowest fluency (<70 WCPM), their phonics percentile ranks for the phonics subtest ranged from 2 to 99.8, including the highest phonics score in the entire population. Obviously, it is possible to be a less fluent reader but be highly able to decode out of context. In fact, our findings indicate that whatever tendency might exist for more

196

Bess Altwerger and Nancy Rankie Shelton

able decoders to read more fluently, it does not apply to their actual reading of authentic stories. The above finding can be explained by the further finding that no correlation was found between High and Low Graphic and Sound Similarity and the phonics subtest scores. In fact, we found a significant mild negative correlation between phonics subtest scores and Some Graphic and Some Sound similarity. This means that for our second grade population, there seems to be little or no relationship between the ability to decode on isolated phonics tasks and their use of graphophonics cues in the context of reading, with a slight tendency for more able decoders to make less use of some graphic and sound cues while reading. Overall, our research found little support for the practice of drilling students on isolated phonics tasks to increase their use of graphophonics cues during reading, nor to increase their reading rate and accuracy. What is the relationship between reading fluency and meaning construction during reading? If rate and accuracy do not correlate with variables related to decoding during reading, then the question arises as to whether they correlate with other variables, especially those reflecting meaning construction. For miscue analysis, meaning construction during reading is determined by assessing whether miscues are completely, partially or not semantically acceptable within the sentence and text. Monitoring of meaning is revealed through readers’ unsuccessful attempts to correct, lack of correction, and successful corrections. The miscue variable of Meaning Construction (Loss, Partial Loss, and No Loss) indicates readers’ combined patterns of semantic acceptability and self-correction. We sought to identify the relationships between fluency in the reading of the texts (WCPM) and the various meaning construction variables through statistical analysis. Our findings can be stated simply: for the population as a whole, there were no statistically significant correlations between any of the meaning construction variables and WCPM, the fluency indicator. Though surprising, we must conclude that overall rate and accuracy in reading authentic texts seems unrelated to the process of meaning construction. Our caveats to this finding, however, are important to note. Flurkey (1998) posits that using a single measure of rate and accuracy for an entire text can mask the ebb and flow of reading rate within the text that is indicative of proficient reading. It is necessary to look for the range of reading rates within and across a text in order to recognize and distinguish between more and less proficient readers. Our finding that there is no correlation between WCPM and the meaning construction variables actually confirms Flurkey’s hypothesis that little can be learned about a reader’s proficiency through a single measure of fluency. It also means that the current emphasis on practices that increase fluency may not result in more thoughtful reading. Furthermore, placing readers on the basis of fluency benchmarks is not only faulty, it may label students who construct meaning successfully as poor readers, and allow students who do not focus on meaning during reading to fall through the cracks.

Miscue Analysis as a Tool

197

What is the relationship between fluency (reading rate and accuracy) and comprehension of text? It is important to draw a distinction between attention to meaning construction, or comprehending during reading, and the ability to transact with the text for overall story comprehension. As with standard miscue analysis procedure, comprehension for the text as a whole was assessed in this study through an unaided and aided retelling procedure following the oral reading of the story. Retellings scores were calculated on the basis of a retelling protocol adapted from Morrow (2001). Evidence of setting, characters, plot episodes, story cohesion, and inferences/ connections were each scored on a scale of 0 to 2, with 0 indicating no evidence and 2 indicating strong evidence. Each reader was then assigned a retelling score reflecting the percentage of their total points to the maximum points possible for the story. We looked for a relationship between fluency and comprehension through statistical analysis of readers’ retelling scores and their WCPM. Again, our findings can be easily stated: we found no correlation between our measure of fluency (WCPM) and the retelling scores for our population of second graders. In other words, as a whole, faster more accurate readers do not necessarily comprehend what they read any better than slower, less accurate readers. In fact, we ourselves were astonished to find some very slow readers who produced numerous miscues but were able to produce extremely full, coherent retellings. Conversely, we found rapid accurate readers with retellings that reflected low comprehension. To illustrate the danger in assuming that fluency is related to comprehension, the student in our study with the highest retelling (93%) only read with a rate and accuracy score of 40 WCPM, a level that would classify him according to most benchmarks as at high risk for reading failure. Of our students with the poorest comprehension of the text (retelling scores < 29%), fluency scores ranged from 35 to 118 WCPM. These findings indicate that little information about a reader’s comprehension of a text can be predicted on the basis of how rapidly and accurately they read. Based upon our understanding of the transactional nature of reading, we must look toward variables such as background knowledge, purpose and interest as better predictors of the comprehension of a given text. Fluency scores do little to enlighten teachers about their students’ comprehension, and in fact can result in serious errors in student placement.

Does fluency distinguish between more and less proficient readers? In order to determine if fluency or WCPM could distinguish between more and less proficient readers, we used three different lenses for grouping our students. First, we grouped the subjects on the basis of teachers’ identification of their own students as high, middle or low readers. We looked for any significant differences among these groups on WCPM and various miscue analysis variables.

198

Bess Altwerger and Nancy Rankie Shelton

Second, we grouped the students on the basis of the level of text (Fountas & Pinnell, 2000) students were able to read aloud for our study. We hoped to identify any relationship between book level (ranging from level 1 to level 8) and fluency scores. Lastly, although we found no relationship between measures of fluency and comprehension for the population as a whole, we looked for statistically significant differences in WCPM between the high and low retellers (groups differed significantly at a .001 level on retelling). Turning first to differences among groups of students identified by their teachers as high, middle and low readers, our findings were quite interesting. For the students in the two phonics-based programs, we found significant differences in WCPM only between the high and low readers. There was no significant difference between the middle readers and the other two groups on WCPM. Perhaps more importantly, we found no significant difference among the three groups of readers from the phonics-based schools on any other miscue analysis variables reflecting meaning construction, comprehension or even the use of graphophonic cues. The only other distinguishing variable was their scores on the phonics subtest, which were significantly different in the direction expected. We interpret these results to mean that the teachers of the phonics-based programs identify reading proficiency primarily on the basis of accuracy, rate and isolated decoding skill, rather than on the ability to construct meaning and comprehend text. Results for the students in the literature-based groups varied in important ways from those outlined above for the phonic-based groups. For these students, there was a significant difference in fluency only between the high group and all other students. Furthermore, the low, middle, and high level readers differed significantly from each other on the use of syntactic cues, as well as various meaning constructing variables, such as loss of meaning resulting from their miscues. These findings suggest a difference in the value placed on fluency vs. meaning in the two different types of programs. While teachers in the literaturebased programs seem to give some consideration to fluency in identifying the most able readers, they also seem to place a high value on meaning construction and strategic use of cues as criteria for assessing readers. On the other hand, the phonics-based teachers place a premium on rate, accuracy and decoding in their assessment of readers. These differences are not surprising given the contrasting theoretical orientations underlying phonics- vs. literature-based programs, but is cause of concern regarding the placement of students. Our findings lead us to wonder how many students deemed poor readers in phonics-based programs have unacknowledged reading strengths, and how many identified as high readers will not receive the support they need to read for meaning. In analyzing the data for readers across the entire population that read different level books, we find that fluency does seem to distinguish between more and less able readers. However, it is important to note that our statistical analysis revealed significant differences in fluency between the readers of the highest level text (a chapter book) and the readers of the lowest level books (easy picture books). On a text gradient ranging from one to eight, there were no significant differences in

Miscue Analysis as a Tool

199

fluency among levels one through four, or among levels six through eight. This means that fluency defined as rate and accuracy has only limited utility as a criterion for reading ability, distinguishing only among readers capable of reading chapter books from those reading the simplest of picture books. It is interesting to note that even some of our most capable readers of the chapter book could not meet the fluency benchmarks for fluency on any number of popular scales. To determine whether fluency distinguishes between more and less effective readers, we divided the population into high and low groups based upon the results for various meaning constructing variables and retelling scores. In analyzing the fluency rates of these two groups we found that there was a high degree of overlap. The most effective readers had fluency scores that ranged from 44 to 144 WCPM, a full 100 correct words per minute difference. For the least effective readers, the range of fluency scores ranged from 25 to 96, also indicating a wide range, but with fewer students reaching the fluency level of our most effective readers. Although differences between the ranges of these groups do differ, fluency is clearly not the best criterion for distinguishing between our more and less effective readers. The fluency range for the group of more effective readers indicates that some are not particularly efficient in their transactions with text. While they read for meaning and comprehension, they move through the text quite slowly overall. With further analysis of their reading within the text, we might find that their overall WCPM was skewed by a pattern of slower reading for only particular segments of the text. For our least effective readers, we find that some move through the text very quickly perhaps in disregard for the construction and monitoring of meaning. For these readers, their fluency scores belie their need to read for meaning. In either of these cases, reading rate and accuracy does not reliably detect the strengths and needs of our students and can lead to instructional approaches that are not appropriate or useful.

Conclusion The findings of our miscue analysis research provide us with useful information with which to re-examine theoretical and pedagogical assumptions regarding the role of fluency in reading. They also provide scientific evidence to challenge the current federal reading policy that positions fluency as a pillar of reading and the focus of undue attention in the instruction and assessment of developing readers. Through the use of miscue analysis as an inquiry tool, we found that fluency, defined as rate and accuracy, is a weak and inadequate indicator of reading effectiveness and proficiency. The fact that there is little relationship between fluency and both comprehending and comprehension variables for our sizable population of second graders should prompt us to question theories that view rapid and accurate word identification as prerequisite to comprehension. If in fact fluency is a hallmark of proficiency, we should have seen significant correlations between WCPM and variables indicating strategic use of

200

Bess Altwerger and Nancy Rankie Shelton

cues and meaning constructing. Furthermore, we should have seen significant differences between our more and less fluent readers on these same meaning constructing variables. Our findings regarding reading of varying text levels indicates that fluency is at best the crudest of tools for distinguishing among readers of widely disparate proficiencies. With regard to the proliferation of commercial phonics programs and the emphasis on isolated phonics skills promoted by Reading First, our findings also give us reason for concern. Our findings provide no support for the assumption that decoding out of context translates to the use of graphophonic cues in context, nor that greater use of graphophonic cues results in more fluent reading. In fact, we found no relationship between the use of graphophonics while reading and the speed and accuracy with which the text is read. Further, we found no significant difference between more and less fluent readers in their use of graphophonics while reading. Overall, our findings support Flurkey’s (1998) arguments for a reconceptualization of fluency as flow and his cautions against using a single measure of fluency to assess the relative proficiency of readers. It is only through combining miscue analysis and retellings with a careful analysis of variations in reading rate across a text that a reader’s strategy use and meaning construction are fully revealed. This type of qualitative assessment will never become widespread without a dramatic change in the current political climate surrounding literacy education. Educators and indeed all taxpayers should question the enormous expenditures on commercial programs and assessment protocols that promote fluent reading. State and federal pressure to produce rapid, accurate readers may appease the business community in their quest for productive workers, but it must be challenged as a policy that is wasteful, atheoretical and ultimately reckless. Under the current policy, we risk producing a generation of readers who may process text rapidly and accurately, but cannot understand what they are reading. It is time to question whether compliance with this policy is worth the risk. Following in the tradition of past miscue analysis research, it is hoped that our findings will support those in the literacy community who are willing to confront this most serious contemporary issue and demand the best possible literacy instruction for our children.

References Allington, R. L. (2002). Big brother and the National Reading Panel: How ideology trumped evidence. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Altwerger, B. (Ed.). (2005). Reading for profit: How the bottom line leaves kids behind. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Altwerger, B., Jordan, N., & Shelton, N.R. (2007). Rereading fluency: Process, practice and policy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Altwerger, B., & Strauss, S. (2002). The business behind testing. Language Arts, 79(3), 256–263. Arya, P., Martens, P., Wilson, G., Altwerger, B., Jin, L., Laster, B., & Lang, D. (2005).

Miscue Analysis as a Tool

201

Reclaiming literacy instruction: Evidence in support of literature-based programs. Language Arts, 83(1), 63–72. Buck, J., & Torgesen, J. (2003). The relationship between performance on a measure of oral reading fluency and performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. (FCRR Technical Report #1) Tallahassee: Florida Center for Reading Research. Chaleff, C., & Ritter, M. (2001). The use of miscue analysis with deaf readers. Reading Teacher, 55(2), 190. Coll, J., & Osuna, A. (1990). A comparison of reading miscue analysis between bilingual and monolingual South American third graders. Hispania, 73(3), 807–815. Crawford, L., Tindal, G., & Stieber, S. (2001). Using oral reading rate to predict student performance on statewide assessment tests. Educational Assessment, 7(4), 303–323. Edelsky, C. (1999). The psycholinguistic guessing game: A political-historical retrospective. In A. Marek & C. Edelsky (Eds.), Reflections and connections: Essays in honor of Kenneth S. Goodman’s influence on language education (pp. 3–26). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc. Ewoldt, C. (1981). Reading in sign language. Reading Research Quarterly, 16, 58–89. Flurkey, A. (1998). Reading as flow: A linguistic alternative to fluency. Occasional Paper, Program in Language and Literacy, No. 26. Tucson, Arizona. Flurkey, A. (2008). Reading flow. In A. Flurkey, E., Paulson, & K. S. Goodman (Eds.), Scientific realism in studies of reading (pp. 267–304). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Flurkey, A., Paulson, E., & Goodman, K. S. (Eds.). (2008). Scientific realism in studies of reading. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Flurkey, A., & Xu, J. (2003). On the revolution of reading. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Fountas, I., & Pinnell, G. S. (2000). Leveled books for readers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Francis, N. (1999). Self-correction patterns and metalinguistic awareness: A proposed typology for studying text-processing strategies of proficient readers. Journal of Research in Reading, 22(3), 304–310. Good, R. H., & Kaminski, R. A. (Eds.). (2002). Dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills (6th ed.). Eugene, OR: Institute for the Development of Educational Achievement. Available at: http://dibels.uoregon.edu/. Good, R., Kaminski, R., Smith, S., Simmons, D., Kame’enui, E., & Wallin, J. (2003). Reviewing outcomes: Using DIBELS to evaluate kindergarten curricula and interventions. In S. R. Vaughn & K. L. Briggs (Eds.), Reading in the classroom: Systems for observing teaching and learning. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes. Good, R., Wallin, J., Simmons, D., Kame’enui, E., & Kaminski, R. (2002). System-wide percentile ranks for DIBELS benchmark assessment. Technical Report #9. Eugene, OR: University of Oregon. Goodman, K. S. (1976). Behind the eye: What happens in reading. In H. Singer & R. B. Ruddell (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes in reading (pp. 470–496). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Goodman, K. S. (1979). Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game. In H. Singer & R. B. Ruddell (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (pp. 259–271). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Goodman, K. S. (1994). Reading, writing, and written texts: A transactional sociopsycholinguistic view. In R. B. Ruddell, M. R. Ruddell, & H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (pp. 1093–1130). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

202

Bess Altwerger and Nancy Rankie Shelton

Goodman, K. S., & Buck, C. (1973). Dialect barriers to reading comprehension revisited. The Reading Teacher, 27(1), 6–12. Goodman, K. S., & Goodman, Y. (1978). Reading of American children whose reading is a stable rural dialect of English or a language other than English. Research Report No. NIEC-00–3–0087. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Heath, Education and Welfare, National Institutes of Education. Goodman, K. S., Goodman, Y., & Flores, B. (1979). Reading in the bilingual classroom: Literacy and biliteracy. Rosslyn, VA: National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education. Goodman, K. S., Goodman, Y., & Martens, P. (2002). Text matters: Readers who learn with decodable texts. In D. Schallert, C. Fairbanks, J. Worthy, B. Malloc, & J. Hoffman (Eds.), 51st Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (pp. 186–203). Oak Creek, WI: National Reading Conference. Goodman, Y. M., & Burke, C. L. (1972). Reading miscue inventory: Manual and procedures for diagnosis and evaluation. New York: Macmillan. Goodman, Y., Watson, D., & Burke, C. (2005). Reading miscue inventory: From evaluation to instruction. Ketonah, NY: Richard Owen Publishers. Hasbrouck, J. E., & Tindal, G. (1992). Curriculum-based oral reading fluency norms for students in grades 2 through 5. Teaching Exceptional Children, 24(3), 41–44. Hasbrouck, J. E., & Tindal, G. (2006). Oral reading fluency norms: A valuable assessment tool for reading teachers. Reading Teacher, 59, 636–643. Marek, A. (1999). Making sense of Kenneth Goodman. In A. Marek & C. Edelsky (Eds.), Reflections and connections: Essays in honor of Kenneth S. Goodman’s influence on language education (pp. 27–50). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc Martens, P., & Cousin, P.T. (1998). Using retrospective miscue analysis to inquire: Learning from Michael. Reading Teacher, 52(2), 176–180. Morrow, L. (2001). Literacy development in the early years: Helping children read and write (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching children to read, an evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (H.R. 1) (2001). 107th Congress, January 8. Available at: www.thomas.loc.gov. Office of the Inspector General United States Department of Education (2006). The Reading First Program’s grant application process—final inspection report. (Publication ED-OIG/I13-F0017.) Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Office of the Inspector General United States Department of Education (2007). The department’s administration of selected aspects of the Reading First Program—final audit report. (Publication ED-OIG/A03G0006.) Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Pikulski, J., & Chard, D. (2005). Fluency: Bridge between decoding and reading comprehension. Reading Teacher, 58, 510–519. Poyner, L., & Wolfe, P. (Eds.). (2005). Marketing fear in America’s schools: The real war on literacy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Rasinski, T. (2000). Does speed matter in reading? Reading Teacher, 54, 146–151. The Reading Excellence Act (1998). United States Public Law 105–276 Available at: www. thomas.loc.gov. Rhodes, L. K., & Dudley-Marling, C. (1996). Readers and writers with a difference: A holistic approach to teaching struggling students (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books.

Miscue Analysis as a Tool

203

Samuels, S. J. (1994). Toward a theory of automatic information processing in reading, revisited. In R. Ruddell, M. R. Ruddell, & H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (4th ed., pp. 816–837). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Samuels, S. J. (2002). Reading fluency: Its development and assessment. In A. E. Farstrup & S. J. Samuels (Eds.), What research has to say about reading instruction (3rd ed.). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Shaywitz, S. (2004). Overcoming dyslexia: A new and complete science-based program for reading problems at any level. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Shelton, N. R., Altwerger, B., & Jordan, N. (2009). Does DIBELS put reading first? Literacy Research and Instruction, 48(2), 137–148. Snow. C., Burns, S., & Griffin, P. (Eds.). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, DC: National Research Council, National Academy Press. Vakali, A., & Evans, R. (2007). Reading strategies employed by Greek Braille readers: Miscue analysis. Early Child Development & Care, 177(3), 321–335. Woodcock, R., Johnson, W., & Bonner, W. (1990). Woodcock Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery—R. Riverside Publishing. Yamashita, Y. (2005). How Japanese-English bilingual children process Japanese particle Wa and Ga while reading a story: Case study of eye movement research and miscue analysis. Proceedings of the 4th international symposium on bilingualism, (CD-ROM). Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

15 Perspectives on Assessment Reflections on and Directions from Goodman Robert J. Tierney

As most are aware, Ken’s initial work was positioned as a psycholinguistic perspective on reading at a time when major developments were occurring in linguistics and notions of language acquisition and use were hotly debated. His model of the reading process built upon this work in ways that expanded or reoriented our views of reading and writing. His work represented a shift away from a view of the reader translating written language to spoken language to a view of the reader as an active participant in meaning making. Further, he cast the reader not just using a single cuing system that changed written language to spoken language, but suggested and demonstrated how readers used a full range of cuing systems—visual, syntactical, semantic, orthographic, sociosemiotic. He redirected teachers to appreciate that students were not recreating the author’s text, but developing their own meanings. Drawing upon Dewey’s and Rosenblatt’s use of the term transactional, Ken refers to his view of meaning making as a give and take between text and reader in a fashion befitting the transactional nature of the socio-psycholinguistic processes involved. Ken’s work can be viewed as socio-psycholinguistic, but it is also informed by cognitive and developmental perspectives as well as the “hands-on” needs of educators. Indeed, Ken’s work was often cited in the 1980s as cognitive psychologists and communication theorists began to use extended written text as the basis for a cognitive view of meaning making. It is noteworthy that Ken’s writings were the cornerstone of the 1970s submission by the University of Illinois and Bolt Beranek and Newman for the establishment of the federally funded Center for the Study of Reading, which was intended to focus attention on reading comprehension. As Ken has proceeded with formulating his views on meaning making, he has drawn upon the work of numerous theorists and their research, from Huey to Piaget to Halliday and others. Ken began, as other great scholars have before him, by looking at example after example of the meaning making readers do as they read and write across a range of circumstance. His initial work looked at readers’ thought and language processes as revealed by their oral reading, especially when the readers’ thought processes might surface via miscues, invented spellings, or their own retellings of what makes sense. He suggested that his view of reading as a psycholinguistic guessing game was based upon remarks by

Perspectives on Assessment

205

Chomsky about the tentativeness with which language meaning-makers proceed. In a similar vein, Ken has engaged in his own form of hypothesizing (and continues to do so) as he explored readers’ responses via oral reading, retelling, writing, conversations, drawings, and eye movements. His search for universals (Goodman, 1973) by such means has led to an unpacking of the purposes and nature of literacy processes across large numbers of readers and writers and a variety of literacy circumstances. Ken’s curiosity and respect for his own learning are consistent with the foundational tenets of the Center for Expansion of Language and Thinking which he and his colleagues established in the early 1970s and which served as a site for annual events. Scholars were invited to expand their own thinking—colleagues dating back to Wayne State (Rudine Sims, Dorothy Watson, Carolyn Burke, Peter Rousch, and Dorothy Menosky) as well as new scholars from around the States and overseas in areas such as sociolinguistics, linguistics, sociology, neurolinguistics, anthropology, psychology, and literacy acquisition. In his quest to understand literacy, Ken’s work highlights what have now become standards: the need to connect language processes with thought processes of individuals and groups; recognition that the dynamics of meaning making are not altogether or solely inside the head; the value of examining literacy processes across students of varying cultural and linguistic backgrounds and abilities; the socio-semiotics of a range of texts; and recognition of the complex developmental nature of literacy learning and the rich prowess of students to learn most effectively if supported by knowledgeable, observant, and reflective professionals. Perhaps it was a moment of suspended disbelief with regard to Ken’s model of reading that afforded what was for me a key breakthrough in my views and values around meaning making. At the time I found two articles—“On the psycholinguistic method of teaching reading” by Ken and Frank Smith as well as Smith’s immensely popular article entitled, “Twelve easy ways to make learning to read difficult and one difficult way to make it easy.” As I chatted with Ken, I heard the same refrain: begin with the student and what s/he is trying to do—lead from behind not with prepackaged materials—use responses, experiences and resources that build from the reader’s interests and meaning-making prowess as they pursue various purposes for reading. There is far more to this yoda-like advice than simply a refrain. Ken has offered example after example of children reading and writing whether it is reading or writing signs or cereal boxes, or engaging with extended text such as informational books, stories, or other material. Ken’s inquisitive attitude involves a combination of a psycholinguist’s disposition and interest in analyzing language development, a social anthropologist’s intent on trying to understand the construction of the world of others and, above all, an educator’s trust in the learner’s own propensity and prowess for learning. I was and still am attracted to Ken’s questioning and his research endeavor to develop and refine his understanding of how readers read, how learners learn to read and, in turn, how teachers might support learning. Many have tried to pigeon-hole Ken or subject his views to a

206

Robert J. Tierney

form of essentialism especially in terms of what Ken might advocate as practices for teaching reading. Over the past fifteen years there have been several attacks on Ken’s and similar views on reading. The politics of the Reading Excellence Act, No Child Left Behind, the National Reading Panel and some of its extensions (e.g., Reading First), involved the privileging of a rather narrow code of emphasis to beginning of reading and an emphasis on more reductionist and prescriptive approaches to teaching and testing. Within this political climate Ken repeatedly expressed his concerns about the agenda imposed upon students, teachers, and schools. Ken’s approach has not been to advocate a single approach but to call for a shift toward teaching and learning informed by a fuller range of research as well as perspectives on learning. He has spoken out strongly about teacher professionalism and assessment matters in hope of redirecting policymakers and teachers from forms of decision-making that limit what is seen, taught, and learned. Perhaps among Ken’s more focused discussion has been his review of the nature and roles of DIBELS. He has remarked that there is a lot that we need to rebuild, given the absurdities that schools have been facing as a result of tests such as DIBELS. As he has demonstrated, despite its limitations including the failure to measure real reading, DIBELS has become the sole or dominant basis for testing, teaching, and judging the merits of literacy learning. I suspect that Ken’s original reservation around the coined term Whole Language is consistent with his wariness of prescribing or standardizing teaching methods. As a teacher educator, Ken was an ardent advocate for teacher professionalism and he expected teachers to be decision-makers who designed support and curriculum based upon reflection of the needs of different students and understanding of literacy development. He viewed his work as informing rather than dictating teacher observations and practices in a generative, discerning, fashion versus prescription and script. His closing paragraph in his contribution to the Theoretical models and processes of reading (4th edition) describes how he viewed his contributions in relation to the position of teachers. He stated: In the 25 years since I began building a model of the reading process a lot has been learned. Those concerned with literacy and the development of written language have an integrated and increasingly powerful knowledge base about reading, text and writing to draw upon. All of this is meaningless, however, if the knowledge is not shared and used by the professionals whose job it is to help people—particularly young people—become literate. Fortunately, teaching as a profession is coming of age. Not only are teachers aware of and making use of the knowledge base, but they are also taking responsibility for translating it into practical pedagogy and authentic literacy experiences for their pupils . . . Knowledge is being produced at the chalk-face of education, where teachers and pupils confront the realities of teaching and learning. (p. 1128)

Perspectives on Assessment

207

Despite the political winds that have blown in during the past fifteen years, Ken’s engagement in literacy research and advocacy for teacher professionalism has not declined. Most recently, Ken helped organize a brief to Obama’s government that detailed the cronyism which advanced the attacks of the detrimental single-minded agendas of the last 15 years. In this brief he suggests that a new federal program should fund various kinds of research: literacy processes (how do people make sense through written languages?); reading development (how do people become literate?); and studies of reading instruction. In his brief, he argued for studies of reading instruction which make use of the research on literacy processes and development. He argued for instructional studies involving collaborations between schools and university-based researchers but with the support of on-going third party evaluators. Finally, he called for the production of a state-of-the-art system of evaluations. He suggested the need for the literacy field “to come together to design an evaluation system that goes beyond paper and pencil tests and could be used to compare very different instructional programs, being fair to each.” Further, he explained: The knowledge exists. It needs to be brought together and applied. While the evaluations could be used to compare programs, the purpose would not be to choose a winner which everybody must switch to but to provide useful information for school decision makers to use in making choices and for developers to produce better programs. I posit that measurement of literacy has been a central interest of Ken’s for almost three decades and especially tied to his interest in understanding the nature of literacy and learning including curriculum development, teaching practices, and student development or searching for alternatives ways of assessing literacy development. Essentially, Ken’s interest in assessment has been driven by two themes: (1) to uncover literacy processes; (2) to better support teaching and learning. As with many of us, Ken has been aware for some time that traditional methods of assessment (traditional tests, many forms of questioning, even oral reading) do not capture literacy processes or literacy development fully or well. Just as Ken has used various lenses to refocus and understand literacy processes, many of us in the field have focused our attentions away from published tests. Our approaches to assessment have ranged from extensive probes of readers’ and writers’ views of their own reading and writing processes, to having students produce think aloud or offer various forms of retrospective accounts of their reading and writing as they engage in reading or writing. As many of us peel away the layers of meaning making, we examine the following dimensions: •

•

The nature of readers’ and writers’ engagements across different texts and circumstances—interests, attitudes, intertext relevance, sense of readership or authorship. The readers’ and writers’ purposes, plans and predictions, manner of connecting ideas, engagement with and construction of plot, character, setting and time and their manner of self-checking.

208 •

Robert J. Tierney The nature of the readers’ and writers’ developing understandings of topics, themes, and possibilities.

For research purposes and as a basis for understanding literacy, our examinations of literacies have been extensive, detailed, and regimented. For purposes of assessing students’ literacies in the context of teaching and learning we have tended to recommend that they are enlisted in a fashion which is more selective, customized, and discerning—often informally, opportunistically, and selectively. For purposes of classrooms and more learner-centered assessment, we have advocated assessment procedures that are intertwined with classroom learning and teaching (e.g., incidental checks on understanding or progress) or occasional probes on students strategies, goal-setting or forward inferences and awareness of selected resources. And enlist the support of practices that have emanated from Ken’s efforts and those of his colleagues directed at connecting assessment to learning, including retrospective miscue analysis (Y. Goodman, 1996; Y. Goodman & Marek, 1996), the development of portfolios, the use of rubrics, etc. We downgrade the emphasis upon using test results either as the end goal or to constantly monitor progress and, instead, upgrade a teacher’s observations and integration of assessment and self-assessment in their own teaching. As Ken has posited, literacy involves a form of composing and creation that one cannot judge except somewhat on its own terms. Literacy development is not as hierarchical, predictable or mastery driven as our testing or monitoring practices and leveling of texts and readers pretend. As Ken has, so do many of us question the reverence for assessments that are summative, standardized, definitive, simple, and impositional rather than generative, formative, suggestive, complex, multilayered, and learner-centered. Many of us are cynical about the pursuit of truer scores or more efficient ways of measuring literacy. In contrast, we would advocate the need for a more tentative view of assessment akin to the tentative or hypothesis generation that undergirds Ken’s earliest renditions of his model of reading. As Ken has suggested, literacy learning involves engaging with a variety of texts for a range of purposes. To measure literacy requires an approach that may allow for such to unfold or be explored rather than imposed, but only if we can agree that there may be some purposes and texts that some or all share. Some would argue that there is a canon—perhaps of great works—or a set of materials that could represent what individuals or different readers need to enlist. Others would argue for a much broader and open-ended reconceptualization of shared texts to which there is a range of reasonable responses depending upon purposes for reading or writing as well as the backgrounds, interests, and engagements of the readers and writers. Further complicating our attempt to measure reading or writing is that many of us fear we may be trying to construe our reading and writing development as more uniform than they are; we should expect that our reading abilities and writing abilities will fluctuate from one text to another or from one

Perspectives on Assessment

209

situation to another, etc. Unfortunately, there has been a tendency to assume (or impose the idea) that reading and writing are homogeneous. When the National Assessment of Educational Progress was run by the Education Commission in the States, complex descriptions of variation were embraced. The goal was to include representative passages not to exclude them if they did not correlate well with one another. When ETS took control of NAEP, they were keen to adopt an overall score akin to a Dow Jones average, and sampling techniques based upon the assumption of homogeneity of variance criteria thereby excluding certain passages which might expose what many consider to be interesting differences/ particularities. Instead, ETS excluded passages whenever students’ engagements varied in a fashion that was not consistent. It was as if ETS settled on a technical standard (tied to item-test difficulty correlations) which overrode what many would argue is a more reliable and valid assessment of students’ reading and writing abilities. Erratic performances may not be a sign of a technical flaw, but a result of individual variability (intra and inter) used as a basis of informing teaching and learning. We can be informed by difference and capitalize upon an understanding of what is more or less likely to foster success. In particular, we can spur or diminish the quality of different readers’ compositions or comprehension by considering or dismissing factors such as cultural relevance or background of experience. Simply including a range of texts representing the changing worlds of texts that students encounter, or simply adjusting the probes or making subtle shifts in the text itself (e.g., authorship or perspective, narrative, or informational text or layout) can create such differences or lead to fluctuations in performance of an individual reader. As a discipline, we should question practices which dismiss differences by filtering or hiding them by aggregated versus differential results. In the area of reading comprehension, some of our past assessment practices represent notions of literacy which are either now refuted by research or incompatible with current thinking. For example, it has been accepted for some time that an assessment of reading comprehension should include detail questions, inferential questions, and a main idea question; that such sets of questions could be used to assess whether students adequately comprehend a passage. It has been commonly accepted that students are handling material within “their reading level” or at their “instructional level” if they comprehend the material with 75% comprehension on a set of questions that included two detail, two inferential, and one main idea. However, when put to the test, this notion is far less predictable than most assume. Depending on the questions used, students may or may not be placed at the same level. Predictably, studies comparing probes find major differences in how individual readers will appear to perform or respond depending upon the approach enlisted for assessing comprehension (e.g., free versus probed retelling, on-line think aloud versus retrospective account, error detection tasks versus debriefing, etc.). Adding to the complexity is the notion that comprehension should be viewed as either an accurate or inaccurate recounting of the ideas of the authors. In

210

Robert J. Tierney

accordance with socio-constructivist theory, meaning making does not involve reconstructing what was stated rather what the reader constructs for him or herself. Meanings are made in a fashion which involves a form of progressive refinement of the meanings that the reader creates. If we are to understand or assess the readers’ construction of meaning, we need to be more conscious of their own meaning making rather than what we might impose. Also in accordance with socio-constructivist theory and observations of readers is that the act of reading is essentially inferential. It is within such a framework that readers enlist various resources especially their own background understandings together with text and other resources, including collaborators, to achieve their purposes. As an aside, I find myself differing somewhat with Ken’s view of meaning making as it may pertain to judging comprehension and miscues. I find readers understandings shift as they read material and rethink about what they read. Hence, their miscues may be difficult to judge unless one is tapping into these changing understandings. In addition, their retellings may vary from moment to moment as their understandings develop or change midstream, post hoc, or at the point of retelling. David Pearson (2006) has argued that the role of research and teacher assessments is to expand rather than limit the tools that teachers might use. Among the questions one must ask relative to any assessment are the following: Do our assessments foster an enriched definition of literacy and empower teachers and learners?, Do our teachers have a tendency to over-rely upon test results rather than have an adequate understanding of literacy and literacy development along with an acquired understanding of their students to make discerning judgments of reading and writing development? Kris Gutiérrez (2004), a professor at UCLA, related the following encounter after she moved to Los Angeles and her son was in one of the schools near UCLA: When my son, Scott, entered the second grade, he was a confident and fluent reader and writer. Several months after his entry to the school, I received an urgent call from his teacher requesting an immediate meeting with me. I sat nervously in his classroom trying to imagine what had prompted this urgency. I was concerned, as the school and its participants had had some difficulty adjusting to its first Latino (he is Chicano/AfricanAmerican) to ever enroll in the school. Our meeting began. Leaning forward, her voice in a whisper as if to not embarrass me, the teacher shared her concern that Scott might not make it through the second grade: he didn’t know phonics. I was puzzled and relieved. After all, he excelled in reading, and his literacy skills were sophisticated for his age, a fact verified by their own standardized tests. It turned out that what he didn’t know how to do (or more likely didn’t want to do) were the sets of repetitive phonics exercises that he had been assigned for the past several weeks . . . I asked how she would assess my son’s ability to read and, without hesitation, she replied, “Oh, he’s probably the best reader in the class.” (pp. 101–102)

Perspectives on Assessment

211

Gutiérrez suggests a number of concerns. She states: What is implicated in this very brief narrative is a set of complex issues that defines schooling for so many students today . . . It is an account of the consequences of narrow views of literacy and how a teacher’s understanding of literacy is complicated and constrained by mandated school curriculum that was conceptualized and implemented for the knowledge and practices of its students. It is an account of the ways that we understand the competence across racial, ethnic, and class lines. It is an account of the consequences of the ways we measure what counts as literacy, especially, if we only see it in snapshots in discrete moments in time disconnected from the laminated, multimodal reality of literacy activity. And it is an account of how parents can mediate school policy and practices. The challenges my son faced are all too common, but they are particularly so from non-dominant groups, especially English learners. However, unlike poor and immigrant parents unfamiliar with the institutions of our country, I could mediate, vigilantly and persistently, the effects of discrimination and of policies gone awry. I knew that I was the school’s worse nightmare: I was more than a meddling, middle-class mother, I was a meddling, middle-class, Latina mother! This is no insignificant point, however, it is a point misunderstood (or not taken up) by policy makers. (p. 102) For Kris Gutiérrez, a teacher is not a mere technician, but someone with an adequate knowledge of literacy and literacy development to understand and circumvent the limitations and impact of the tools that are available. A teacher is also someone who develops an understanding of the cultural worlds of students and their communities and who also has the ability to help improvise within and across these spaces for the betterment of individuals and groups.

In closing What makes literacy difficult to measure? Measuring literacy is as complex as literacy itself and so there is always a tentativeness with which educators need to proceed as they enlist assessment tools whether prescribed, teacher or student generated. Measuring reading like reading itself involves a form of transaction and guessing game along with hypothesis generation and uncertainty that are designed to open up possibilities. Among Ken’s contribution is the provocation for educators to use various lenses to reflect upon and expand our thinking about language, thought, society, and learning communities—not to indoctrinate us, but to be used in a fashion which is discerning and selective—in the service of learners that are generative, transactional and above all educative. The effectiveness of any measurement is dependent upon the knowledge and skill of the teacher not the reverse.

212

Robert J. Tierney

Postscript I had benefit of working with Ken. He and Yetta Goodman were appointed to the University of Arizona in the mid-1970s, a year or two after I had assumed an appointment as an assistant professor of reading education. I recall the appointment as quite controversial as some of my colleagues in the Reading Department appeared intent on blocking Ken and Yetta’s appointments. This sentiment, however, did not extend to the Dean and the Department of Elementary Education where selected colleagues in language arts had a home. Within a month, the presence of the Goodmans was felt as they embraced people and ideas and attracted scholars from around the world. It was a special treat for myself as many of the visiting scholars were from Australia—John Pollach, Des Ryan, Brian Cambourne, Fred Gollasch, Robert Ingles, and others. For these and other reasons, I visited their offices frequently. The Reading Department was located on a corner of the ground floor, whereas Ken and Yetta had offices in Elementary Education which was located on the 8th floor. Ken and Yetta had offices adjacent to one another a few doors away from Roach Van Allen. Their office space was a community space, a location for postdoctoral scholars and doctoral students who came to the University of Arizona to work with them; the door was always open and the conversations welcoming. During my years at Arizona I am not sure that Ken and Yetta’s office was ever their own—they always found a section where visiting scholars or doctoral colleagues could find some desk space. Ken and Yetta’s house was an extension of their office and a place where family and friends would always be welcome. It was a site for celebrations or miscellaneous gatherings where debate, song, and dance occurred inside or around their backyard pool. The kitchen, dining room, living room, and studies were the hubs; the style was Arizonan, full of First Nation’s cultural artifacts and plants that Ken carefully tended. Ken and Yetta’s embrace of family and others corresponds with their commitment to diverse learners. Their friendship of and commitment to others are sincere and do not waiver. Likewise, their view of learners is unwavering in terms of the value or trust that they have in the learners’ quest for meaning and what each learner brings in terms of understandings, backgrounds, or interests. Similarly, Ken and Yetta’s interactions with others in some ways represent a form of caring and support which has some parallels to the form of assessment that Ken and Yetta advocate and to which many of us as educators might aspire.

References Goodman, K. S. (1967). Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game. Journal of the Reading Specialist, 6, 126–135. Goodman, K. S. (1969). Analysis of reading miscues: Applied psycholinguistics. Reading Research Quarterly, 5(1), 9–13. Goodman, K. S. (1973). Psycholinguistic universals in the reading process. In F. Smith (Ed.), Psycholinguistics and reading (pp. 21–27). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Perspectives on Assessment

213

Goodman, K. S. (1994). Reading, writing and written texts: A transactional sociopsycholinguistic view. In R. Ruddell, M. Ruddell, & H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (4th ed.) (pp. 1093–1130). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Goodman, K. S., (2007). A critical review of DIBELS. In K. Goodman (Ed.), The truth about DIBELS: What it is, what it does (pp. 1–39). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Goodman, K. S. (2008). The Reading First debacle. A brief prepared for Barack Obama. Unpublished paper, June 16, 2008. Goodman, K. S., & Smith, F. (1973). On the psycholinguistic method of teaching reading. In F. Smith (Ed.), Psycholinguistics and reading (pp. 177–182). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Goodman, Y. M. (1996). Revaluing readers while readers revalue themselves: Retrospective miscue analysis. The Reading Teacher, 49, 600–609. Goodman, Y. M., & Marek, A. M. (1996). Retrospective miscue analysis: Revaluing readers and reading. Katonah, NY: Richard C. Owens. Gutiérrez, K. D. (2004). Literacy as laminated activity: Rethinking literacy for English learners. In C. M Fairbanks, J. Worthy, B. Maloch, J. V. Hoffman, & D. L. Schallert (Eds) 53rd Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (pp. 101–114). Oak Creek, WI: National Reading Conference. Pearson, P. D. (2006). Foreword. In K. Goodman (Ed.), The truth about DIBELS: What it is, what it does (pp. v–xxi). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Smith, F. (1973). Twelve easy ways to make learning to read difficult and one difficult way to make it easy. In F. Smith (Ed.), Psycholinguistics and reading (pp. 183–196). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Taylor, B., Pressley, M., & Pearson P. D. (2002). Research-supported characteristics of teachers and schools that promote teaching achievement. In B. Taylor, M. Pressley, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Teaching reading: Effective schools, accomplished teachers (pp. 361–373). Mahweh, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Tierney, R. J., & Thome, C. (2008). Is DIBELS leading us down the wrong path? In K. Goodman (Ed.), The truth about DIBELS: What it is, what it does (pp. 50–59). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

16 We’ve Always Considered Our Work Political Patrick Shannon

Education and reading are political. They are wrapped up in power relations leading us, and being led by us, to points of domestication and liberation in not always linear or complementary ways. Reading education, then, must be political as well because it serves as a site of struggle in which groups vie to realize their visions of the past, present, and future of learning to be literate. Each iteration of education, reading, and reading education presupposes not only a conception of what is real, and therefore, true, but also a set of political relations that enable the truth to become manifest. At one level, the struggles are discursive, the definitions and meanings of the terms are debated, confirmed, and debated again. At another level, bodies are in motion to secure the policies, institutions, and technologies required to put some sets of definitions in place. Against powerful forces, the Goodmans have operated on both levels of this struggle for over fifty years. In this chapter, I discuss the Goodmans’ research and pedagogical work in their attempt to reframe reading education as a democratic project. In their vision, teachers would negotiate the definitions and actions of classroom practices rather than being displaced by business, science, or government setting the one best system for all to follow. Ultimately, it was an inability to read the power of the discourses of government and business that led to the decline of the Goodmans’ influence in public schools. In order to assume a political vantage point, I categorize the Goodmans’ work into four sections: naming the project, understanding power, organizing a small core group of truly committed, and attempting to expand that base and institutionalize its definitions. I choose progressive verb forms for these categories because the Goodmans continue to work in each category. My intent is to examine their successes and miscues in reading and writing the politics of reading education in the United States during the last fifty years. It is my deep respect for the Goodmans that leads me to take their project seriously.

Before and after In 1908, Edmond Burke Huey wrote “after all we have thus far been content with trial and error, too often allowing publishers to be our jury, and a real

We’ve Always Considered Our Work Political 215 rationalization of the process of inducing the child with the practice of reading has not been made” (p. 9). In a sense, twentieth-century reading education can be understood as a series of attempts to complete Huey’s challenge by providing a real rationalization in order to direct the definition and actions within elementary school classrooms. Huey’s ridicule of trial and error was a critique of teacher autonomy, allowing teachers to develop reading education as a craft. His concern about publishers’ control rejected the notion that reading education should not be subject to a market mentality in which economic concerns determine what transpires in the name of reading education. The “we” in Huey’s remarks was directed toward psychologists, an emerging group of scientific experts at that time. In Huey’s mind, these experts should use the scientific method in order to hone children’s process of induction to reading, and then inscribe those principles within the commerce textbooks for teachers to follow. By completing the rationalization, a hierarchy of authority would be established with science and psychologists at the top and the craft of teaching and teachers on the bottom. Business and the state would serve as the conduits between the top and that bottom. Although certainly not without opposition, reading experts have worked to ensure that Huey’s challenge would dominate the debates about reading education. The National Society for the Study of Education set the stage with the Committee on the Economy of Time and its time motion studies of the teaching of reading. At regular intervals from 1914 through the 1980s, the NSSE Yearbooks chronicled the efforts of educational psychologists and reading experts to rationalize reading education from outside of the classroom. William S. Gray, Arthur Gates, Donald Durrell, David Russell, P. David Pearson, Richard Allington, and many others worked throughout their careers to realize Huey’s hierarchy. After 1980, the federal government assumed the responsibility to direct the rationalization through sponsored research and periodic state-of-reading education reports. Despite these efforts, current experts can only paraphrase Huey’s statement. “Currently, there would appear to be a lag as long as 15–20 years in getting research findings into practice. It stands to reason therefore that researchers who wish to have scholarship influence practice ought to give high priority to interacting with publishers” (Anderson, 1984). “I want to change the face of reading instruction across the country from an art to science” (Newman, 2002). In other words, despite the best efforts of science and experts, business concerns continue to trump scientific expertise in rationalization of reading education and teachers continue with what is characterized as trial and error. As will be described below, the Goodmans (and others) challenged this hierarchy directly, stating that scientific experiments could not rationalize the process of reading or teaching reading and that basal materials could not provide even the skeletal structure for the continuous decision-making required in reading education. This argument and a set of linguistic and anthropological evidence proved so persuasive during the late 1980s and 1990s that California, Pennsylvania, and other states began to move away from commercial publishers’ control of the century-old set of definitions and actions. As P. David Pearson

216

Patrick Shannon

wrote, he had “never witnessed anything like the rapid spread of the whole language movement.” Questioning Huey’s assumptions about reading and learning, the Goodmans and other advocates of Whole Language sought to reverse the hierarchy of authority in reading education in order to install teachers as the primary decision-makers within classrooms. Although publishers attempted to swallow Whole Language by marketing literature-based basals and many scientific experts challenged the validity and reliability of teachers’ knowledge, only federal intervention could stem the Whole Language tide. The legislative movement from America Reads to the Reading Excellence Act to the Reading First Initiative can be read as an official correction in reading education, returning business and science to authority and putting teachers in their proper place in Huey’s hierarchy. These government moves reveal the hubris of market ideology and liberal rhetoric of science—both of which are based on the notion that when people are free to choose, systems will work better. If the business rhetoric were true, then the good commodities would drive the bad from the market without government regulation. If the free market of ideas were true, then the government would not need to mandate scientifically based ideas as the only ones of value in classrooms. Clearly, then, the rationalization of reading education as the one best system of instruction should have driven Whole Language and the craft of teaching reading out of elementary schools without government fiat. The irony, of course, is that in the name of a market economy, the federal government regulated the markets of reading education because its favored definitions and actions were losing their market share. Note that the recent Department of Education Inspector General’s report (2006) detailed strategies that government officials used to enforce its definition and actions—federal officials bullied states and large urban districts through the threat of withdrawal of funding in order to ensure that favored sets of basals and tests would be used across the country. Despite this strategy, the test score gaps remain between able, English-speaking middle-class white students and their disabled, immigrant, poor, and minority peers. This brief overview provides the backdrop for the Goodmans as political workers within the field of reading education.

Naming the project A project is an activity based on both real and present conditions and certain conditions that have not yet been realized (Simon, 2002). In this sense, projects require a language of critique of the present and a language of hope for the future. The critique suggests that current conditions contradict the freedom and equality sought within a liberal democracy. The hope envisions the transformation of the social forms within the current conditions to ones that expand the possibilities of freedom and equality through the continuous development of its citizens. For the Goodmans, reading education is a democratic project, and they have worked for fifty years to find an inclusive pedagogy that will distribute the

We’ve Always Considered Our Work Political 217 benefits of instruction more equitably among social groups. From the beginning, they have used linguistic and psychological theories to demonstrate the inherent biases within the assumed superiority of Standard English and people who speak Standard English. As early as 1966 with “Dialect Barriers to Reading Comprehension” and again in 1969 with “Let’s Dump the Up Tight Model of English,” they explained how sociolinguists established the systematic nature of vernacular Englishes, demonstrating that dialects were not an impediment to speakers’ expression or comprehension. Because any thoughts or emotions that could be expressed in one dialect could be expressed equally in another, preferences were more matters of tastes, conventions, and exclusions. All people switch linguistic codes according to circumstances with some groups enjoying the historical advantages of greater opportunities to acquire more codes than others. Rather than insisting that all students accommodate toward one standard, the Goodmans advocated that teachers recognize the linguistic strengths of all students and treat school literacy as one set of values among many to be learned. In this way, teachers’ recognition of difference could lead to a redistribution of the benefits of schooling. The Goodmans’ “psycholinguistic guessing game” model of reading posed the same questions in psychological terms. By insisting that readers miscued instead of made mistakes, the Goodmans challenged the criteria for deciding who can be considered literate and who cannot among the students in elementary classrooms. According to their experiences in literate environments, young readers use their knowledge of language to predict, sample, and confirm or correct their continuous efforts to make sense of text. In this way, the readers act on the printed page according to the readers’ understandings of how language and text work rather than simply reacting to the print on a page. Because all children have viable languages and language strategies that they employ creatively in their attempts to make sense of texts within their lives, the Goodmans argued, the behaviorist assumptions of basal readers cannot account for people’s active construction of meaning. Rather than simply correcting errors in order to extinguish bad habits, the Goodmans suggested that teachers follow readers’ miscues systematically in order to determine their strategies for making meaning from text. By tracing readers’ efforts with text, teachers could come to understand how readers use textual cues according to their language, knowledge, and circumstances. With such information, teachers can tailor instruction to fit each child’s needs and circumstances. Accordingly, the tradition of expecting teachers to follow the basal manuals shortchanges students’ development, particularly those whose backgrounds differed most from middle-class, white norms. In “Military-Industrial Thinking Finally Captures the Schools” (1974), the Goodmans placed traditional reading education within a larger more explicitly political context for the first time. After working as a reviewer of the USOE’s regional education labs, Ken penned a data-based fantasy alerting readers to the intention to use scientific management practices to increase the predictability of school outcomes. By locking students into reading programs rationalized

218

Patrick Shannon

according to time and test scores, schools were designed to produce rightthinking and right-functioning graduates who would fit neatly into the existing structures without questions. Under such conditions, the Goodmans argued, reading education contradicts one of the original purposes of public schooling—to educate an active, literate citizenry. Both the students and the teacher suffer arrested development within such a system. At school, students must conform to expected practices and meanings, alienating their out-of-school literacies from school experiences, and teachers are positioned by teachers’ manuals and tests as enforcers of these normalized practices. Through languages of critique and hope, the Goodmans name the project for reading education—to find the conditions under which both students and teachers are free to develop continuously.

Understanding power Power is not only enforcement, but also ways of making people monitor themselves according to definitions of what is right and normal and to shy away from what is wrong and deviant (Foucault, 1977). By acquiring belief systems, or discourses, people come to accept values, practices, and language that explain the world and all that is in it. Power, then, not only prevents thoughts and behaviors; it enables thoughts and behaviors. Throughout their careers, the Goodmans have named, analyzed, and engaged power within reading education. They understand science, business, and the state as discourses, historical artifacts that set the parameters of what is considered appropriate in the name of reading education. From their standpoint, traditional educational experimentation diverted and continues to divert understandings of the complex social and linguistic structures and processes of reading toward the operational definitions of reading’s easily observable components. This traditional misunderstanding sends both teachers and students in the wrong direction in terms of realizing the potential of literacy in their lives. In order to maximize profits, basal publishers capitalize on this misunderstanding to reify (1) students’ reading as the skills tested in a basal program, and (2) teachers’ teaching as the directions in basal teachers’ manuals. Increasing state interventions tying funding to test scores prevent teachers from innovating during their teaching and students from exploring the possibilities of reading at school. The Goodmans’ work traces the ebb and flow of these powerful discourses across the last half of the twentieth century. Science In order to explain reading, educational researchers have adopted an empiricist approach to science, requiring sense data to be the foundation of the development of universal laws that predict reading behaviors with certainty. In order to conduct such research on reading, researchers assumed that text directed the reading process in a serial fashion, working from the page to complete mental

We’ve Always Considered Our Work Political 219 representation of the author’s message. Accordingly reading was analyzed to its component parts enabling experts to operationalize each element as dependent and independent variables that can be tested separately in order to determine the causal sequence of reading. Adherence to these traditions kept reading researchers’ and teachers’ attention primarily on the perceptual recognition parts as if they were the necessary building blocks of the entire process. The five categories featured in the National Reading Panel’s report (2000) demonstrate this preoccupation—alphabetics, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The Goodmans’ miscue analysis work can be understood as expressions of scientific realism—data gathering and analyses in order to invent a theory to explain reading in the real world. Working from the reading performances of adults and children in multiple settings, the Goodmans developed and modified a model of the reading process with ever unfolding layers of complexity in order to explain how linguistic, psychological, and social structures produce the event of reading in its entirety within natural settings. The Goodmans represent their model as a picture of the natural process at work with sense data used to infer the cognitive processes that direct the eye in the brain’s selective search for meaningful input to the continuous construction of a reader’s understanding. As realists, the Goodmans sought to explain literacy events rather than to simply document the sequence of behaviors in reading. Perhaps the best example of the Goodmans’ efforts to project a realist position within a traditionalist field is the exchange between and surrounding Peter Mosenthal and Ken in the twelfth volume of the Reading Research Quarterly. Mosenthal used experimental findings concerning adults’ reading of syllogisms to dispute Ken’s psycholinguistic guessing game model. The crux of Mosenthal’s argument was that the Goodmans had not pushed far enough or accurately from their miscue data to the semantic processing component of reading, settling for an empirically weak bridge through syntactic rules. In a response, Brian Cambourne reiterated the Goodman model for RRQ readers, demonstrating how miscues were a window to the reading process in action, ending with the realist statement: “Goodman’s work is not suited to an evaluative strategy which seeks to validate or invalidate a theoretical position by testing it against other empirical research findings” (1976–77, p. 636). Ken was less formal: But try, next time we discuss the value of my work to the understanding of reading, to deal with some realities—like how much research my model has generated both to support and reject it. Talk a little about Yetta Goodman and Carolyn Burke’s Reading Miscue Inventory as a widely used tool for getting teachers to reconceptualize reading. Talk about the taxonomy as a framework for studying reading in process. Talk about the continuous confrontation with reality (and intuition) that miscue analysis creates. Talk about the truth value that exists in the miscues made as real readers read real language. (1976–77, p. 604)

220

Patrick Shannon

Business Business works two ways on reading education. First, Taylor’s scientific management provided the basic operating system for reading education over the last century. Taylor sought to rationalize production by using time and motion studies to hone workers’ efforts in order to maximize profits. To accomplish this task, he separated goals and planning from implementation, developing technologies to overcome human variability among workers by providing explicit directions for workers to follow in pursuit of designated goals. Workers’ knowledge was understood as a barrier to increasing production and profits. With the advent of the teachers’ manual, reading education is perhaps the most direct application of scientific management within schools. Second, business has always understood schools as markets for its goods. And in this regard, business has been good—from construction of schools and outfitting them with large ticket items like desks, chairs, and other equipment to textbooks, tests, and now test preparation services. From their earliest writing, the Goodmans contested the scientific management of reading education. Although the explicit language only began in the mid-1970s with the military industrial complex labeling, their stance against standardization of teacher responses to students reading should be read as a direct acknowledgement of business’s power and influence in schools. With “Basal Readers: A Call to Action” (1986), the Goodmans named commercialism as a specific barrier to the conditions in reading education that facilitate students’ and teachers’ continuous development. Prior to that article, they positioned good teaching as teachers knowing language and children without explicit reference to institutional constraints imposed by compulsory commercially prepared reading programs that set the daily agenda for nearly all American classrooms. After 1986, the Goodmans were loud and clear that they thought children’s development was being sold to the highest bidder among commercial publishers. In The Report Card on Basal Readers and its sequel six years later, the Goodmans synthesized their objections to publishers’ claims that basals had scientific validity, offered high quality children’s literature, and provided complete programs for children learning to read and write. Rather the Goodmans charged that publishers changed only the labels of traditional practices in order to keep their previous customers and to attract new ones who were conscious of the terms but not the content of good teaching. This stance on business and basals is compromised by Ken’s tenure as a Scott Foresman-basal author during the 1970s. Scott Foresman, of course, is the home of Dick and Jane, which William S. Gray had built into a near monopoly over the reading education market. Similar to others who accepted offers to work for publishers, Ken thought that he could influence the direction of basals and curtail the scientific management design of the systems. His role as an author was to use miscue analysis rather than readability formulas to level the stories within the basal. The changes made in Reading Unlimited and Reading Systems editions of the basals proved unpopular within primarily traditional school markets, and

We’ve Always Considered Our Work Political 221 consequently, Scott Foresman lost a considerable percentage of its market share. When the sales department’s request to restore the features of previous editions was granted, first Charlotte Huck and then Ken resigned their authorships and their names were removed from the title page. The state Government involvement in reading education takes three primary forms. First, 22 states select the reading textbooks that can be used in elementary school classrooms. Because of their large student populations, California, Texas, and Florida exert significant influence on the contents of all basal reading series. Second, the passage of the Elementary and Secondary School Education Act to aid poor students meant that the federal government would influence reading education through Title I policies and funding. Although this funding accounts for only 8% of the average school budget, the strictures of Title I control reading instruction in most schools across the country. Finally, the federal government provides significant funding for basic and applied research on reading and reading education. Arguably, federal funding for reading education has been targeted directly against the influence of the Goodmans’ work in American classrooms. With the Open Letter to President Carter and a paper on Minimum Competencies in 1978, the Goodmans named the government as a barrier to students’ and teachers’ development through reading education. At first, their concern was not that federal officials were involved in schooling, but rather that they had made poor choices about which definitions and practices to emphasize in policies. Enforcing scientific management and experimentalism through policy ensured that standardization of behaviors would prevail within classrooms. After California sabotaged its own attempt to move away from such policies, the Goodmans began to identify systematic efforts from the government to use reading education as a system of control. Their public responses to the Center for the Study of Reading’s Becoming a Nation of Readers, the California Reading Task Force report on the need for teachers to return to basics and basals, and the federal government’s No Child Left Behind became more explicit and sharp in the critique of government interference in state and local matters. Through this writing, the Goodmans treat the field of reading education as a complex text with three cueing systems—experimental science, business ethos and commercialism, and state intervention. In order to make sense of the field, the Goodmans demonstrated that “readers” must pay close attention to how those cueing systems work together to produce and maintain the field over time. Treated as a text, the reading field becomes open to interpretation in which the values within the current text could be challenged and perhaps rewritten. And they were willing to lead the way in this rewriting by proposing and contrasting miscue analysis and teacher judgment against experimental truths and testing authorities; students as curricular informants and children’s books against commercialism; and teachers’ voices and thought collectives against scientific management and government control.

222

Patrick Shannon

Organizing a small group of truly committed The options available within the field of reading education are not distributed equally. Groups with more power can use strategies to plan and act on their goals. Less powerful groups must use tactics to contest and negotiate the norms of powerful discourses (de Certeau, 1981). Business and the state operate from material conditions of power with both enforcement and discourses at their disposal. They are separate from the field and use strategies in order to render the field more predictable in terms of profits and productive outcomes. Both make use of experts in order to use science as a strategy to reach those goals. Those without the options of enforcement must use tactics to push their way into the field of reading. These tactics are opportunistic and combine disparate elements in order to gain momentary advantages. Think guerilla tactics against entrenched powerful armies that expect all others to act in a strategically rational manner. In order to move the discursive struggle forward, Ken Goodman sought to develop a small core group of educators who would be deeply committed to the project of developing a democratic pedagogy to spread the benefits of reading education more equitably among different groups of students. At Wayne State University, that core became multiple voices with a singular message about the accuracy of the psycholinguistic guessing game model and miscue analysis practices that supported it. Yetta Goodman, Dorothy Watson, Carolyn Burke, Dorothy Menosky, William Page, and Rudine Sims were among the first members of the group—each with a strong commitment to the project. Working in teacher education programs across the Northeast and Midwest, the group projected a common message about the reading process and appropriate reading instruction and took that message directly to elementary schools in order to demonstrate how miscue data could change traditional classroom assumptions and practices. By 1972, numbers of truly committed members of the group had grown enough to warrant the formation of the Center for the Expansion of Language Teaching (CELT). This organization served two functions. First, it represented the project as more than an intellectual exercise conducted in the pages of professional journals. Rather, CELT demonstrated a growing understanding of functional linguistics and constructivist psychological theory among educators and willingness to promote that knowledge among school faculties. In order to keep the message clearly focused, CELT membership was by invitation only. Traditional reading experts seized on this element to suggest that CELT was not open to criticism, would not tolerate debate, and could not substantiate its position empirically. Second, CELT provided a forum for members to renew and extend their knowledge and commitment to the project on their own terms. Often physically separated from like-minded educators, CELT members would turn to each other to make sure that they didn’t lose sight of the goals of the project when surrounded by the contrary messages of traditional educators and experts. CELT, then, was an offensive and defensive tactic used against the

We’ve Always Considered Our Work Political 223 strategic deployment of the powerful discourses of business and science within the professional organization and professional development programs available in schools. As the early members of the truly committed became more established and their students moved to other locations, small independent support groups began to emerge across the United States and Canada. For example, Dorothy Watson began a group in Columbia, MO, during the middle 1970s. Orin Cochran and Ethel Buchanan blended the psycholinguistic model of reading with the British position at the Dartmouth Conference to organize CEL (Childcentered, Experienced-based Learning) in Winnipeg. Judith Newman, a student of Frank Smith, worked with a group of teachers in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Goodmans’ writing and their visits supported the work of these and other groups. Judith Newman explained: We were convinced that the better we understood the theoretical discussions in reading research reports, books, and relevant journal articles, the more secure we would feel each time those “Yes, buts” were raised. The study group often took on the character of a debating society; in fact, sometimes the arguments became quite heated. But we learned that conflict was an essential component of learning. It was through such conflict that our understanding of both theory and practice grew. (2002, pp. 184–185) The goal of these groups was to provide a forum for teachers who were asking questions about reading, reading instruction, and the ways in which students were or were not engaging in their classrooms. In this way, the members would operate as teacher researchers who gathered data on children’s reading and writing practices and attempted individually and collectively to make sense of those data within reading and writing process theory and models. The collectives were ways in which teachers came to change their understandings and the classroom practices, often pushing away from traditional instructional tools of textbooks, teachers’ manuals and tests. Pushing against the powers of science and business required groups and members to devise tactics that would enable new practices to emerge within those teachers’ classrooms. Within the traditional system based on standardization of tools and practices, those teachers took significant risks. “Deciding to take charge of your own classroom is an act of courage in an era of a shortage of jobs for teachers and a regressive back-to-basics curricular trend” (K. Goodman, 1986, p. 76).

Attempting to expand the base In 1990, the Goodmans led the development of the Whole Language umbrella. This organization was not meant to replace CELT or any of the local groups but to bring them together in order to further the professional development of members and to serve as a space in which Whole Language advocates could feel safe. Although Ken would write that he did not invent Whole Language,

224

Patrick Shannon

the term was clearly linked with the Goodmans’ theories of reading, teaching, and assessment. Moreover, the local small groups were clearly connected to the Goodmans’ original small group of truly committed either through personal contact or former students. The Umbrella was the Goodmans’ metaphor for how this larger organization would include and protect the smaller groups, but not merge them into one collective membership. Both Ken and John Dewey would serve as honorary presidents of the organization, connecting the present efforts for a democratic pedagogy with the past. Several organizational safeguards were included to insure the autonomy of the member groups (e.g., rotation of leadership, equal representation on the executive board for Canadian members, and nonbinding position statements from the central organization). The Umbrella created a broader network that would enable the free exchange of knowledge with educators working reflexively between practice and theory: In the ascendancy of whole language, literature-based reading and process writing as cornerstones of the elementary school language arts curriculum, the forum for promoting these new views and their accompanying teaching tools was the marketplace of ideas. Part of the momentum of the movement was to find any and every way possible to “get the information out” so that teachers would have access to it. The other part of the logic was to create forums such as Teachers Applying Whole Language groups and teacher research networks, to sustain teachers who had begun to make these changes and to assume the curricular authority to which they were entitled. (Pearson, 1997, p. 8) With the growing enthusiasm for Whole Language, business and state governments began to employ strategies for the spread of Whole Language within schools. Established publishing companies adapted the language of the movement for the traditional elements of their commodities, labeling textbooks as anthologies and workbooks as journals. They began to hire Whole Language experts as basal authors and to sell alternative assessments while continuing to market their standardized tests as well. Whole Language publishing houses were established in order to supply the market as it developed beyond the small groups. State departments of education hired Whole Language advocates to help them consider possibilities of new social forms for reading education— reduction of basals, standardized tests, and government standardization and an increase in the authority of the classroom teacher over goals, planning, teaching, and assessment within the field. Although the Goodmans never participated within these discourses, they criticized only the basal attempts to corrupt Whole Language, recognizing that in order for Whole Language to flourish, government and school district policies had to change. In order to develop a broad coalition of educators and the public in favor of democratic pedagogy, the Goodmans and other advocates sought to co-opt the discourses of business and the state. They believed that they had created a market for Whole Language goods and a public ready for change. With those in

We’ve Always Considered Our Work Political 225 place, their previous tactics would be elevated to rational strategies for change. This changed the fundamental rationale for the democratic project. Rather than a commitment to linguistic, psychological, and democratic principles through a series of self-initiated questions about classroom practices, Whole Language could be purchased as a commodity or assumed through submission to a policy established by others. The Goodmans had not anticipated these consequences. As advocate Susan Church (1997) captured the problem, “At the heart of the difficulties we have experienced with whole language is the widespread belief that it is about reaching certainties and naming final approaches to teaching rather than about exploring doubts and asking ever-changing questions” (p. xxvi). Pulled into the arena of markets and bureaucracy, Whole Language and the democratic project were no match for the powerful norming discourses of science and business. Headlines abounded that test scores were dropping (they were not) and that teachers were incapable of understanding reading and teaching (they are not), undercutting public support for nontraditional changes. The political and research agenda from NICHD and a Republican Congress ensured that Whole Language as method could be characterized as unequal to the task of developing a nation of readers who could meet the increasing literacy demands (they are not increasing) of the global economy. This campaign to discredit Whole Language created concern among the public and undercut the soft commitment of Whole Language neophytes. In a matter of two years, the enthusiasm for Whole Language subsided, basal publishers purged the vocabulary from their pages and state departments of education its principles from policies. The federal policy of No Child Left Behind precludes any possibility that the Goodmans’ democratic vision could be entertained in public schools or teacher education programs across the United States.

What can we learn from this? Although NCLB is a decidedly authoritarian version of Huey’s call for a real rationalization of reading education, the Goodmans continue to work for democratic pedagogies that will spread the benefits of reading instruction more equally among groups of American students. They have not apologized for their version of what the future of reading education should be. They continue both a language of critique of the current conditions (Save Our Schools, 2004) and a language of hope (To Err is Human, 2004) for the possibilities of literacy and schooling in America. They speak their truth to power. And clearly, their work has influenced the practices of reading education, if not captured it entirely. The systematic tracking of oral reading miscues continues as valid assessment. Reading and writing of texts for real purposes and audiences flourish in classrooms. Students’ meaningful representations of texts figure prominently in many lessons. Many teachers continue to treat their reading instruction as inquiry about their teaching and their students’ learning. These are important outcomes of the Goodmans’ project, and American classrooms are better for these practices.

226

Patrick Shannon

There were some miscues as well. Foremost among them was the consistent misreading of the necessity to tie explicitly the application of new linguistic and psychological theories to the political theories of democratic movements. The premature assumptions of the power behind Whole Language and attempts to switch from underdog tactics to powerful strategies in order to spread Whole Language made the project vulnerable to the hegemonic discourses of science and business and the state’s power of enforcement. Most Whole Language advocates seemed unprepared when those social discourses proved to be too strong among the public and many classroom teachers to permit an effortless transition from the closed traditional system to an open one that would encourage systematically the continuous development of students and teachers through reading education. Moreover, attempts to use the old bureaucratic and market social forms of reading education in order to promote Whole Language were miscues that fundamentally altered the meaning of the project. If the struggles for the democratic project are to continue, then the Goodmans’ life work provides a good template for all interested participants. Repeated and renewed naming of the project must continue with both languages of critique and hope. Political questions must accompany the linguistic and psychological ones when teachers puzzle over their classroom practices. Why do those questionable practices persist? How are they maintained and tied to the social forms of schooling and society? Why are business and experimental science the power discourses, when business is clearly not an outgrowth of controlled experiments? Every effort should be made to understand power and how it works within reading education. The state is currently the enforcer of business and science discourses, but popular acceptance of those latter discourses makes the government’s action seem appropriate to many. Consciousness-raising groups and tactics to trouble these discourses must be nurtured, and tactical theories must become commonplace among these groups of truly committed. However, these groups must be careful about the way that they invite others to consider the definitions and practices within reading education because they must avoid the miscues of the past, employing the traditional bureaucratic and market social forms that limit students’ and teachers’ continuous development. Rather they must envision democratic projects that require both the expansion of the social forms to accommodate students’ and teachers’ development and the expansion of the concepts of development to make the realization of new forms possible. This is the legacy of the Goodmans as political workers.

References Anderson, R. (1984). Learning to read in American schools. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Cambourne, B. (1976–77). Getting to Goodman. Reading Research Quarterly, 12, 605– 636. Church, S. (1996). The future of Whole Language. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California. Foucault, M. (1977). Power/knowledge. New York: Pantheon.

We’ve Always Considered Our Work Political 227 Goodman, K. (1966). Dialect as a barrier to reading comprehension. Elementary English, 42, 852–860. Goodman, K. (1967). Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game. Journal of Reading Specialist, 6, 126–127. Goodman, K. (1969). Let’s dump the up-tight model of English. Elementary School Journal, 67, 1–13. Goodman, K. (1976–77a). From the strawman to the tin woodman: A response to Mosenthal. Reading Research Quarterly, 12, 575–585. Goodman, K. (1976–77b). And a principled view from the bridge. Reading Research Quarterly, 12, 604. Goodman, K. (1978). Open letter to President Carter. SLATE, 3, 2. Goodman, K. (1986). Basal readers: A call to action. Language Arts, 62, 372 –381. Goodman, K., & Goodman, Y. (2004). To err is human: Learning about language processes by analyzing miscues. In R. Ruddell & N. Unrau (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (pp. 620–639). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Goodman, K., Shannon, P., Freeman, Y., & Murphy, S. (1988). The report card on basal readers. Katonah, NY: Richard C. Owens. Goodman, K., Shannon, P., Goodman, Y., & Rappaport, R. (2004). Save our schools: The case for public education. Berkeley, CA: RDR Books. Huey, E. B. (1908). The psychology and pedagogy of reading. Boston, MA: MIT Press (reprinted in 1968). Mosenthal, P. (1976–77). Psycholinguistic properties of aural and visual comprehension as determined by children’s abilities to comprehend syllogisms. Reading Research Quarterly, 12, 55–92. Newman, J. (1985). Whole Language: Theory in use. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Newman, S. (2002). As quoted in J. Kozol, Still separate, still unequal. Harper’s Magazine. 311, 2005, 79. Pearson, P. D. (1989). Reading the whole language movement. Elementary School Journal, 90, 233. Pearson, P. D. (1997). The politics of reading research and practice. Council Chronicle, 24, 8. Shannon, P., & Goodman, K. (Eds.). (1994). Basal readers: A second look. Katonah, NY: Richard C. Owens. Simon, R. (2002). Empowerment as a pedagogy of possibility. In P. Shannon (Ed.), Becoming political, too. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

17 An Endangered Species Act for Literacy Education P. David Pearson

Prologue When Ken and Yetta’s Festschrift came along, I thought long and hard about what I could contribute. It had to be something that honored the influence of their work on my own thinking AND was also at the core of my professional life space. I owe Ken and Yetta a lot, both intellectually and professionally, even though there have been times, I’m sure, when they’d just as soon not have to acknowledge having ANY influence they might have had on things I’ve said and written. Yes, we have had our intellectual tussles from time to time. But through all of those tussles, we have built mutual respect and enduring friendship. Both Ken and Yetta gave me a lot of support personally when I was a new kid on the block in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They helped me get on NCTE and IRA programs, listened to my frustrations at not being able to crack the publication ceiling, and invited me into their professional community. For their collegial support, I am forever grateful. But I am also grateful for their contributions to my own world view, particularly the centrality of language in understanding reading, a commitment to constructive views of learning and teaching, and an abiding respect for learners. The Festschrift came along at a time when I was getting ready to transform the following article, which ultimately appeared in the Journal of Literacy Research in 2007, from a speech into an article. So these ideas about enduring principles of reading instruction that are endangered in the current policy environment fit right into my Festschrift contribution. And the three principles––individualizing instruction, teacher prerogative, and transfer as the gold standard of assessment—are grounded in ideas that are important to Ken and Yetta. I am proud to have them appear in this tribute to two of our greatest and most influential scholars and mentors in the field of literacy education. In our quest to move every child ahead, we have fallen behind, lost our way as a profession. In our all-out national effort to improve the quality of teaching and

An Endangered Species Act for Literacy Education

229

learning literacy, we have compromised some of our most enduring principles and practices. The time has come to reverse this trend and to restore the ecology of literacy instruction to a healthier state. In appropriating this well-worn metaphor of endangered species from the world of ecology, I mean to single out a set of long-standing values and practices of teaching literacy that are in jeopardy of disappearing. They are casualties of the presumably well-meaning cycle of reform sweeping our country. If we give the most generous reading possible to the intentions of the current reforms, we can label these casualties not as absurdities or conspiracies but as unintended consequences and conspiracies of good intentions; they are principles and practices we have compromised even though we never meant to. As I examine what is happening in our federal and state governments, in both the legislative and executive branches, I see a system in which (at least) three of these fundamental values and practices—insistence on transfer of learning, faith in teacher prerogative, and regard for individual differences as the hallmark of learning and assessment—have all but disappeared from the educational landscape; we seldom hear them in our public pedagogical conversations or see them in our curricular practices. And when we do see them, they often appear as perversions of their original constructs. I call these three constructs endangered because they are. On the assessment front, in our rush to accountability, we have created such a tight link between instruction and assessment that we have made a mockery of the whole notion of transfer of learning as the gold standard to which all students and teachers should aspire. If an assessment does not look just like the instruction that prepared kids to take it, we question its validity, and, even more pernicious, we operate in exactly the other direction by adjusting our instruction to mimic the high-stakes accountability assessments. Regarding teacher prerogative, in our quest to achieve a consistent standard of instruction for all students in all classrooms in all schools, we have reduced teachers’ professional choices to decisions about when to begin and end the reading block—and even that is predetermined in many schools and districts. Finally, in the world of No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2002) and Reading First, we have decreed that individual differences will not exist, either in the outcomes of education or in the means by which we attempt to achieve those outcomes. In this essay I address each of these endangered phenomena in turn—first transfer as the gold standard of learning and assessment, then teacher prerogative, and finally individual differences. I close each section with some suggestions about the kind of research and professional advocacy that we should undertake to fix what has become quite broken in our field.

Transfer I first learned, in any formal way, about the construct of transfer when I was in graduate school in the late 1960s. But I had at least a tacit knowledge of it even as a high school and college student in the 1950s and 1960s. What I learned was

230

P. David Pearson

this: It was one thing to demonstrate the acquisition of a skill or a body of knowledge in class—with support from the guiding hand of a thoughtful teacher or the strong pull of classroom cultural practices—but it is quite another to show that you can use that knowledge outside of class—in another class, on a consequential exam, or, to be excessively bold, in everyday life. The question of transfer, at least for me (and for lots of other educational scholars—see, for example the National Academies of Science book, How Students Learn; Committee on How People Learn, 2005) translates into answering the questions, How far will my knowledge travel? How robust is it? How far (as indexed by new context and new tasks) beyond that initial instructional context can I still apply what I acquired in that classroom? Why has it become hard to adhere to something as reasonable and highminded as transfer? Who would not want their students or children to be held accountable for applying their knowledge? The answer to the second question is captured by the infamous line from Walt Kelly’s 1953 Pogo cartoon strip, “We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us!” We, collectively, have built and/or accepted the accountability and assessment systems we have. The answer to the first question is more complicated, but it turns on a very understandable conspiracy of good intentions that we, as a field, have fallen victim to. The problem arises, the conspiracy gains its force, from the tight link that we have created between instruction and assessment. The first premise in this conspiratorial conundrum is that we should be suspicious of assessments that do not match our instruction. Many of us, in fact, point to standardized assessments as the culprits here, and we characterize them as “instructionally insensitive” if they do not pass the face validity test; we complain when they do not look just like what we taught. Think back to all of the explanations you have read about the failure to achieve a significant effect in a research study and remind yourself of how often the “insensitive outcome measure” card was played. In essence, what we are saying is that if there had been a tighter, a more transparent, link between instruction and assessment, we would have fared better. The second premise in the conspiracy works in the opposite direction—from tests to teaching—and it is propelled by high-stakes assessment—assessment in which teachers’ and students’ futures are on the line if a failing score is achieved. In an effort to meet these consequential outcomes, we scurry to find materials and activities that we think will help students do better on the test (even though we may suspect that it will not help them develop more of the cognitive attribute the test is supposed to measure). Such is the fate of desperate people when confronted with absurd but consequential barriers to their well-being. Even the most well-meaning of us enact this absurdity when we fork over $500 for a son or daughter to take a course or buy a computer program designed to help him or her achieve a higher score on the SAT or the GRE. Do we really believe that our offspring know more or are better problem solvers when they finish such a course? Probably not, but we take solace when his or her test score goes up. When we engage in this practice, we run the risk of promoting what Haladyna, Nolan, and Haas (1991) have labeled test score pollution, a phenom-

An Endangered Species Act for Literacy Education

231

enon that occurs when an individual earns a score on a test that is out of whack with his or her real level of cognitive capacity on the phenomenon that the test is designed to measure. In a developmental scenario, it might mean that a student’s test score rises without the student actually being able to read any better than earlier. My favorite example comes from a long-time colleague at Illinois who grew up in New York in the heyday of the infamous Regents’ Exam. He tested well on the Regent’s chemistry exam because his high school chemistry class consisted almost entirely of completing old Regents exams. So when he took the highstakes test for real, he scored high enough to be placed in the third chemistry course at Columbia. At the end of the first week of freshman classes, he realized that he was in way over his head and backed into a more basic course that was more commensurate with his real (not his assessed) knowledge and skill. My colleague’s example is telling because it suggests that no form of assessment, even performance assessment, is immune to this phenomenon. Even so, the impact is all the more pernicious with low level multiple-choice exams that doom certain students, particularly low achievers, to school careers of basic skills worksheets that look just like the exams they are required to pass. The work of Herman and her colleagues (Dorr-Bremme & Herman, 1983; Herman and Golan, 1991) documents exactly this differential effect for lower achievers, noting that they are much more likely to have their curricular activities determined by a score on an exam than are higher achieving students, who, by contrast, are more likely to have their activities determined by teacher creativity and judgment. These examples illustrate an important feature of the assessment dilemmas we face: If high-stakes promote test score pollution in teaching to the test, then the worst situation we can have is high-stakes (grave consequences) on tests that exhibit low challenge, for the combination will drive curriculum, teaching, and learning to the lowest common denominator. I suppose the lesson to be drawn from these examples is be careful what you wish for. On the face of it, it seems highly desirable to have assessments that match instruction to a T; is that not what we all hope for when building “curriculum-embedded” assessments. But once you have them, and once they become tools of accountability, then they take on a life of their own, becoming implicit blueprints for curriculum. And it is when they adopt this blueprint role that real damage can be done. Truth is that our assessments cannot stand the stress of being a curriculum surrogate. I am reminded of a prophetic warning by Robert Linn offered just as we crossed the threshold into high-stakes assessments in the early year part of this century (2000): I am led to conclude that in most cases the instruments and technology have not been up to the demands that have been placed on them by high-stakes accountability. Assessment systems that are useful monitors lose much of dependability and credibility for that purpose when high stakes are attached to them. The unintended negative effects of high-stakes accountability uses often outweigh the intended positive effects. (p. 14)

232

P. David Pearson

So what is to be done about this conundrum? Are we to abandon curriculumembedded assessments? Are we to limit our assessments only to applications that represent far transfer? Neither, I think. Instead we should maintain and regularly use both kinds of assessments because each tells us something the other cannot. The curriculum-embedded assessment that looks just like the instruction (in an ideal world the match is from the instruction to the assessment and not the other way around) tells us whether students learned what we taught them in pretty much the same context and format in which we taught it. (By the way, these assessments can just as easily be turned on their ear to evaluate the effectiveness of our teaching and give us some feedback about how to revamp our instruction—but we seldom use them for this purpose.) The far transfer assessments (ideally a set of increasingly distant transfer tasks) tell us how far the learning will travel—into what new domains, contexts, texts, or tasks. That information is useful, too, because it provides an index of the robustness of student learning. As such, it is much closer to the gold standard to which our students and we should aspire. Equally as important, we should not be regarded as failures if we do not always achieve the far transfer standard. Instead, we should celebrate our partial successes while redoubling our efforts to build more robust learning. Finally, this principle of transfer is even more important for evaluating research studies than it is for evaluating student learning or the everyday enactment of curriculum. When the improvement of learning is the primary goal of a research study, the investigators need an explicit theory of transfer—from the most local to the most distant index of knowledge and skill acquisition; it is a moral obligation to inform research consumers of our answer to the question, How far will the learning travel? One footnote to this discussion of assessment and transfer: Let me point out one current phenomenon that would be a less serious policy and pedagogy problem if transfer had been a part of the assessment development process. I refer to the astonishing growth of the DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills; Good & Kaminski, 2002) over the past several years. Developed by the admission of its authors (DIBELS Data System, 2006), as a “progress monitoring” assessment (an assessment that tells us whether a kid is “on track”), it has achieved, by virtue of its actual use in schools around the country, the status of a diagnostic assessment, as a blueprint for shaping instruction. Students who read, name letters, segment phonemes, or retell words in passages too slowly are sent off to remedial reading class to complete fluency, or at least improved rate, lessons on all of those skills. If the developers of DIBELS had incorporated a theory of transfer into their assessment system, they would have provided both near and far assessments of each of the key skills assessed. As a consequence, they might be assessing, and perhaps promoting, the use of these component skills in real reading rather than their narrow acquisition and fluency in a highly rarified format (rapid naming or telling) and context (mostly none). In a far transfer mode, the proof of the pudding for the acquisition of letter-sound knowledge would not be how fast you can name the sounds of the letters but how nimbly you can use your

An Endangered Species Act for Literacy Education

233

consolidated knowledge of letter-sound correspondences to unlock puzzling words when reading connected text. The DIBELS phenomenon, as astonishing as it is, is a perfect example of test score pollution—of what happens when an indicator becomes a goal. The current situation with DIBELS represents a fundamental violation of the first rule of assessment uses: Never send a test out to do a curriculum’s job.

Professional prerogative Taking responsibility for one’s professional knowledge and ensuring that it is used wisely in making difficult decisions in the face of uncertain evidence about how to respond to the widely varying needs, interests, and circumstances of individuals—or what to do next for the common good—have always been the hallmarks of any profession, including teaching. But in the current policy context, I fear that the right of teachers to exercise professional knowledge, along with the responsibility for possessing the most up-to-date knowledge possible, is threatened seriously. I am alarmed by rhetoric and policies that betray such disregard for teachers and teaching. I am equally alarmed by the seeming reluctance of the teaching profession, qua profession, to accept the baton of responsibility for guaranteeing wide distribution of the knowledge that comes with the granting of prerogative by a trusting society. Within the new rhetoric, the text is teacher quality—indeed NCLB demands that every state provide every child and parent with a “fully qualified teacher” by 2007. And there is much talk about ensuring that teachers have access to teacher education and professional development based on “scientifically based reading research.” That is all well and good. Indeed, it is hard to argue with full qualifications and evidence-based professional development. But the subtext is minimal professional standards. Only an assumption of minimal, not maximal, standards will explain why the first Bush secretary of Education, Rod Paige, characterized effective teaching as a simple combination of subject matter knowledge and verbal fluency (U.S. Department of Education, 2002). Only by an assumption of professional development as a simple matter of training rather than education can one explain the increasing popularity of “scripted programs” that dictate what teachers both do and say and the very day on which all teachers in a district teach a certain lesson. How else can one explain the flirtations with a marketplace model (Finn & Kanstoroom, 2000) to replace a professional growth model (Darling-Hammond, 1996) for determining who stays in the profession? How else can one explain the policy of championing scores on a multiple-choice test rather than program completion, portfolios of accomplishment, or performance examinations as the primary pathway to a credential? Followed to its logical conclusions, the policies we are currently implementing will lead to a generation of teachers who pay homage to externally imposed standards rather than to the needs of children and their families as the primary criterion for determining what students do in their classrooms.

234

P. David Pearson

I want to concede one point to those who control the current policy agenda: As a profession, we have not met our responsibilities to ensure that all of us as teachers, whether novice or veteran, possess the very best and most current knowledge available. We have been too ready to dismiss deep disciplinary knowledge—linguistics (from phonology to text structure to pragmatics), language development, psychology of reading and learning, orthography, literature, and culture—as too distant from the concerns of classroom teaching to merit much emphasis in our preservice and in-service programs. I know there are those among us in the teacher education community who complain that it is the external mandates imposed by laws promoting basic skills or narrow views of teacher knowledge that prevent us from holding ourselves and our teacher candidates to high standards of knowledge. My only response to that is that it was a political decision to set the bar low (or perhaps in the wrong domain); and it must be a political effort that establishes high knowledge standards (and in the right domains). In any event, and as a result of these efforts, we have become vulnerable to criticisms that we privilege a narrow sort of vocationalism in our teacher education programs. Both the teaching profession and the profession of teacher educators should redress this wrong by insisting on more rigorous standards for teacher knowledge. That point conceded, it fails to capture the real reason why we must always press for knowledge deep and broad as the hallmark of our profession. No matter how definitive our research, no matter how clear the findings from studies evaluating the relative efficacy for different interventions or approaches, no matter how transparent our policies and mandates, our schools and our society need teachers who can apply their craft with great flexibility. Why? Because of the undeniable fact that children differ from one another. They differ from one another when they walk through the classroom door as kindergarteners—and the longer they stay and the better we teach, the more they will differ from one another. They cannot easily be threaded through the same needle’s eye. Let me illustrate this point as vividly as I can, with the aid of some visual displays. The point I want to make is a point we should understand about much of human existence and social policy. It is this: What is best for the group is not always best for each individual in the group. It applies not only to education but to social policy, health, medicine, child rearing, and just about everything else. Examine Figure 17.1. It illustrates the fantasy of a researcher talking about

Control Group

Low Scores

Experimental Group

High Scores

Figure 17.1 A researcher’s fantasy about the distribution of scores between the experimental and control groups

An Endangered Species Act for Literacy Education

Control Group

Low Scores

235

Experimental Group

High Scores

Figure 17.2 A more realistic depiction of scores across the experimental and control groups

having found a significant difference between two treatments. When we get a significant result, you would think, by listening to the rhetoric, that the worst kid in the experimental group outperformed the best student in the control group. We NEVER get these results in education, and, by the way, not in medical practice either. In education we get marginal improvements like the results in Figure 17.2 where on average, one group makes greater gains than another. What a statistically significant difference means is that, on average, for any given child you might randomly select, you will obtain a slight advantage by choosing the statistically superior approach over the other. But when we look at the phenomenon, not on average, but for specific individuals, the picture is quite different. For many children, it probably would not matter much which method they receive; some might have been better off in the control group. When policies mete out instructional methods across the board, for everyone, we will never know what might have happened had teachers possessed the prerogative, the knowledge, and the skill to make differential decisions for individual students. We ask and expect no less of doctors. We want doctors who use the most upto-date knowledge of their field in concert with situated knowledge of patients’ histories and routines to determine the optimal course of action—whether exercise, diet, or drugs, or some combination of the three—is the most likely remedy for a symptom or ailment such as high cholesterol. We want doctors who look for reasons to prescribe a special treatment or combination of treatments for us, as individual patients with unique needs and profiles. Moreover, we want doctors who can use their inquiry skills to alter a treatment when the evidence tells them it is not working. Frohlich (as cited in Allington, 2005), conveyed this tension between the general case and the individual patient particularly well: In selecting appropriate therapy, choose a drug or a combination of drugs for which there is strong evidence of effectiveness in persons with the type of problem found in the patient . . . In choosing between a diuretic and an ACE inhibitor, the physician can make a reasonable selection by reviewing the patient’s history and course . . . We must remember that trials describe population averages for the purposes of developing guidelines, whereas physicians must focus on the individual patient’s clinical responses. (pp. 640–641)

236

P. David Pearson

Allington (2005) argues compellingly that teachers require the same prerogative to engage in “contingent” application of professional practices—matching a particular instructional regimen with both generic research-based knowledge and knowledge of individual learners in particular contexts. I agree. We want teachers who use their deep knowledge of subject matter—along with knowledge of individual children’s histories, routines, and dispositions—to create just the right curricular mix for each student and for all students. Moreover we want them to use their inquiry skills to alter those approaches when the evidence that passes before their eyes says the interventions they are using are not working (just as a physician changes a treatment when an individual responds negatively). And like physicians, we want teachers to adhere to the most fundamental of professional ethical standards—do no harm. We want doctors, in fact we require the medical profession, to admit the side effects of various treatments up front so we can evaluate the risks associated with alternative treatments (would that not be a novel addition to educational policy and practice—to admit side effects of particular products or interventions up front). By the way, the other caveat in the drug industry (you hear it in all their ads) is the advice that no matter how good the research on the drug is, you should always consult your personal physician. Would it not be nice if things reached the point where the educational publishing industry, in the course of advertising their products, felt compelled to say, “Oh and by the way before purchasing this product, you should, as with all educational products, consult your personal classroom teacher or neighborhood school.” Even if we have “modal” or “default” programs, we will always need to promote flexibility and versatility. Even in situations in which teacher knowledge is uneven (as it is in so many of our schools, especially urban schools where they cannot recruit enough certified teachers), we ought not to mandate methods for those who have demonstrated that they possess the knowledge required to make these sorts of differential decisions. We need also to remind ourselves that professional knowledge, deep and broad, is the only basis for being granted flexibility of this sort, as well as the only guarantee to a rightfully uneasy public. But these degrees of freedom come with strings attached. This is not a recipe for pedagogical relativism, for “anything goes in my classroom.” Teachers who aspire to professional prerogative must accept the responsibility for keeping their knowledge current, and they must be prepared to alter their practice on the basis of new knowledge—to accept the possibility that new knowledge trumps old practice, no matter how comfortably the old ways fit. In short they must possess a disposition for lifelong learning and continual inquiry. One caution as we move down this road to greater prerogative in shaping programs for individual children. It is easy, oh so easy, to move from accommodating the needs of individuals to the enactment of differential curriculum for students of different races, cultures, language backgrounds, or income levels. And we can end up doing it under the guise of the noblest of reasons—“these kids aren’t ready for that yet.” The choices we make, the prerogative we are granted, in

An Endangered Species Act for Literacy Education

237

meeting the needs of individuals must always be enacted in the name of helping all students meet the highest of standards. When we slip into the application of different standards for different groups of students, we end up amplifying rather than diminishing the differences in cultural capital and educational opportunity among us. The result may be an outcome that is equally as bad as the other bad choice—a uniform curriculum for all. So prerogative yes, but prerogative in the service of high standards and great opportunity for all students. What is not to like in this account? Who would want anything less for our profession? Unfortunately, there are some who appear to want much less, who would reduce the profession to the technocratic enactment of a carefully scripted program, one in which teachers do precisely as they are told. A few years ago I gained an unusual and unexpected audience with one of the most influential of policy makers in California. We agreed neither on reading policy nor on teacher development, and we knew that we had little common ground. But we talked anyway. I pressed the question of the highly prescriptive program adoptions for California and the equally prescriptive state-sanctioned professional development programs designed to “train” teachers to use those programs. I made the typical teacher educator comment, “but what will you do when the state adopts a new program with new features and routines? Would it not be better to invest in genuine teacher education—the kind that will travel from one program to another—rather than narrow training that loses its utility when the current program is gone?” The response was loud, clear, and straightforward: We simply retrain them to use the next program—step by step, skill by skill, and page by page. The assumption in such a view is that teachers, like fast food workers, can be trained to follow a routine that guarantees equal opportunity for all. How can we address this dilemma? How can we retain teacher education and a professional model in the face of great pressure, which might aptly be labeled the McDonaldization of teaching? A good first step would be for the teaching profession to accept, without equivocation, the bargain of greater accountability for knowledge in return for greater prerogative in responding to the inherent variability among students. A good second step would be to document the claim, so central to my thesis, that teachers teach better and students learn more when teachers (and students) have more choices. To fully meet this challenge, many more elements would need to be in place (recapturing authenticity in assessment, crafting quality texts for early readers, ensuring access to the tools of nonfiction and critical literacy to name but a few), but I would be thrilled to see these two steps (accepting professional accountability and linking teacher prerogative to effective teaching and learning) get off to a flying start. We do not have much time to get it right; those who would eliminate a professional model in favor of a marketplace model continue to press their case (Finn & Kanstoroom, 2000; Walsh & Tracy, 2006).

Individual differences Earlier I made the point that individual differences are a fact of life in schools and classrooms. Kids arrive in all sizes, shapes, levels of skill and knowledge,

238

P. David Pearson

interests, habits of mind, and so forth. And other things being equal, good teaching only increases that variability. Historically, teachers and schools have accepted, even celebrated, these differences. In fact, responding to that range of variability has become almost a “holy grail” among teachers, captured in the age-old mantra, “There is no such thing as a best method of teaching, only a best method for a particular child learning a particular body of content, skill, strategy, or disposition.” This value is captured in a common standard for National Board Certification—the assertion that accomplished teachers know their students and respond to their individuality (National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, 2006). In fact, the very first proposition of accomplished teachers is, “They treat students equitably. They recognize the individual differences that distinguish their students from one another and they take account for these differences in their practice.” If one looks at the history of educational reform over the last 100 years, it is clear that the quest for structural means of accommodating intellectual, physical, emotional, and even dispositional differences has been uppermost in our minds as educators. Our track record on this score has been spotty, with even the most well-meaning of efforts. And in the name of accommodating individual differences, we have created all manner of insidious side effects: tracking, grouping, and other means of physically separating students who differ from one another have reified and intensified differences. At the dawn of the 20th century, the notion of individual variation was just beginning to emerge in educational and psychological measurement, with seminal studies by Gallon (1865) in England; Wundt (1896–1897) in Germany; and Cattell (1906), who studied with Wundt, in America. But the idea that schools were responsible for finding ways to accommodate to the fact that not all students in a given grade were ready for materials and instruction geared to that grade level was a creation of the developmental perspective that would emerge in post-World War I psychology and incorporated into reading pedagogy by popular writers of methods texts, articles, and basal readers such as Gates (1927, 1937) and Gray (1937). The prevailing philosophy before 1915 was that it was the school’s responsibility to provide students with opportunities to learn, instantiated as the curriculum; but it was the student’s responsibility to make what he or she could of that opportunity. Individual differences in achievement were expected and accepted as a natural consequence of curriculum implementation. But there was no underlying theory about responding to those differences to “level” the playing field for students of different abilities and aptitudes, nor was there any sense of moral or ethical commitment to do so. Equity—what was “fair”—was operationally defined as providing everyone with the same opportunity to learn from the very same materials and instruction. With the rise of developmental and differential psychology, the idea that schools could and should accommodate to the individual differences students bring to the classroom door gained prominence in the 1920s, particularly in reading (see Gates, 1937). Since that time there has been a steady stream of proposals for reorganizing schools to achieve this feat. Most notable in the teaching of reading, at least until about a decade ago, has been the quest for some

An Endangered Species Act for Literacy Education

239

structural mechanism to ensure that each and every child is asked to spend the majority of reading time actually reading materials that he or she can read on his or her own (what we have dubbed the independent reading level) or with a little help from a knowledgeable and thoughtful teacher (what we call the instructional level).1 These plans usually entail some sort of grouping mechanism, such as within-class grouping, cross-class or cross-grade grouping, or schemes designed to provide each student with an “individualized” program of some sort. Nearly all plans of this sort, but especially the within- and cross-class approaches, try to ensure an appropriate level of reading materials for students by creating greater homogeneity of ability or achievement within each instructional group. One approach, individualized libraries, takes as its goal finding the right level of difficulty and topics of interest for each and every student in a class. Noble in spirit, individualized library programs, where each child had his or her own reading list and weekly one-on-one book conferences with the teacher, were in widespread use in the 1960s/1970s (see Veatch, 1960), and they were a staple of the whole language era that would gather strength in the 1980s. The next major development in the individual differences movement was a direct consequence of the “mastery learning” construct championed by Benjamin Bloom (1968) and implicit in the work of John Carroll (1963) and Robert Gagné (1965). Mastery learning is built on a different model of equity than the traditional notion of equity as equal opportunity as indexed by equal curriculum and equal instruction. Instead of holding instruction constant and allowing achievement to vary, we should do just the opposite—hold achievement constant and allow instruction to vary, thus establishing equity of outcomes rather than opportunity. The bet was that if we could just be more precise about the essential elements involved in learning any particular domain, skill, or process, we could bring most, if not all students to high levels of achievement, perhaps even levels where we could state with confidence that they had mastered the domain, skill, or process. The precision could be achieved, according to the champions of mastery learning (see Otto, 1977; Otto & Chester, 1976), by decomposing the phenomenon to be learned into essential elements. Then one could teach (and test) each of the elements to mastery, so that the learner could then assemble the parts into a functioning “whole.” A popular variant of individualized approaches driven by the logic of mastery learning was individually guided education, an outgrowth of the “continuous progress schools” of the 1970s, where fixed grade-level curriculum gave way to the goal of ensuring that each child was on the right step of the right path toward success (Klausmeier, Rossmiller, & Saily, 1977) through mechanisms such as ungraded primaries and cross-grade clusters in the intermediate grades. Mastery learning was “trumped” for about a decade by constructivist pedagogies—whole language, literature-based reading, and process writing—in the 1980s and 1990s. And with the constructivist pedagogies came a radical transformation in our approach to individual differences. This radical proposal for accommodating individual differences is implicit in the instructional logic underlying the whole language movement and is captured in Harste’s notion of

240

P. David Pearson

the child as curriculum informant (Harste, Burke, & Woodward, 1984). The idea is that in the process of learning to read and write in authentic learning environments, every student will send signals to a teacher about his or her strengths and needs; a responsive teacher will know how to read these signals (responses to the instruction and the tasks he or she is asked to do) and provide just the right book, assignment, scaffold, or form of feedback to move the student to the next step of development. But mastery learning, in repackaged form, reemerged in the middle 1990s in the standards-based reading reforms that swept the country in the wake of major changes in Title I (Clinton’s Improving America’s Schools Act, 1994, and Bush’s NCLB, 2002). If one compares the logic of the standards-based movement (specify what students should know and be able to do—measure achievement of the standards—then hold everyone accountable to the goal of 100% of the students achieving the standard), it is wholly consistent with mastery learning. Indeed, many of the state and district standards tests spawned by the standards movement assess reading at an elemental or atomistic level, in much the same spirit as the tests developed in the heyday of the mastery learning era (see Johnson & Pearson, 1975). In the first iteration of the standards movement, from the early 1990s through the early 2000s, educators essentially made a deal with policy makers: “We’ll hold ourselves accountable to the goal of all students achieving the standard. But in return, you’ll have to provide us with maximum flexibility and prerogative in achieving that goal.” In recent years, however, the terms of the bargain have changed, and it is the new bargain that has all but destroyed any hope of accommodating individual differences. In this new world of reading instruction—with pacing guides to tell us when to teach what lessons and how much time to spend on each activity, with scripts to tell us what to say when, with monitors looking over our shoulders to check on our fidelity to the intervention, with the expectation that ALL students will be exposed to the very same grade level selections whether they can actually read them or not and to grade level activities and assignments whether they can do them or not—we have created a new instructional reality. In the oldest equation—where equity meant equal opportunity—we fixed the means of instruction and allowed the ends (the outcomes) to vary. In the mastery learning and the pre-NCLB version of the standards based approach, we fixed the ends and allowed the means to vary. What we seem to be doing in the reified curricular world we have created since the enactment of NCLB is fixing both the ends (through our standards) and the means (through tightly monitored curricula), allowing nothing to vary. It is students and their teachers who must accommodate to the curriculum in this model, not the other way around. And this logic of dual fixation gets played out for older struggling readers as well as for younger readers because so many of the middle and high school interventions simply retrace the steps (re-teaching phonemic awareness and phonics) that students presumably stumbled on the first or second time around. Given my earlier arguments about the inevitability of individual differences (kids come to school with them, and if we are any good at instruction we only

An Endangered Species Act for Literacy Education

241

increase them), it should be no surprise to learn that I find our current situation hopelessly misguided and morally indefensible. It defies both logic and experience to believe that the learning of all will be enhanced by a curriculum that meets the individual needs of few if any. It strains professional judgment to think that we can maximize the growth of low achievers by dragging them through a curriculum in which they can read little of the material for themselves and perform few of the assignments without extensive scaffolding. And what little evidence we do have on this matter suggests that meeting kids where they are is more effective; for example, O’Connor et al. (2002) found that tutoring that matched the reading level of intermediate grade struggling readers promoted greater achievement growth than did tutoring that matched the grade level of the students. Perhaps even more serious is that research is not improving the matter; “research-based” practice of the sort emphasized in the surge of materials developed in the wake of the National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000) and NCLB offers little provision for meeting individual differences. As McGill-Franzen, Zmach, Solic, and Zeig (2006) have documented for the state of Florida, the materials developed for and sanctioned by Florida’s “research-based” standards promote whole class instruction and grade-level materials for everyone. But, still, approximately one third of the students fail to achieve even the minimum levels of reading proficiency needed to meet the Florida standard for promotion to the next grade. In short the scientific programs are no panacea for the enormous problems we face as a profession when it comes to closing the achievement gap. So what is to be done to restore some respect for individual differences and some curricular moves that genuinely assist student growth? Research is not a great help in deciding this question because we just have not conducted the sort of research that would give us uncontested answers. One would think, for example, that with the long tradition of IEPs (Individualized Educational Plans) in special education, we would actually know whether students taught in a manner consistent with their IEPs make greater progress than those whose instruction is guided by some random or convenient approach. We do not. By the way, nor do we have much research validating the tiered approach to intervention (moving from regular to remedial to targeted education settings) that seems to be rapidly sweeping the country as the latest solution to meeting individual needs. One would think that we would know whether it was better for students to spend most of their time reading materials that are in their zone of proximal development—somewhere between independent and instructional level depending on context and expectations. We have some hints in that direction but we do not have anything approaching conclusive evidence. We surely need evidence to test the validity of both claims, for they are cornerstone assumptions behind the approach to coping with individual differences that I would champion. We owe it to ourselves as educators and to our students and their parents to find conclusive evidence to evaluate these claims. In the interim, until that evidence is forthcoming, we should operate on the assumption that both claims are valid. Logic, experience, and moral responsibility dictate adherence to these principles of individualization in the face of no or inconclusive evidence.

242

P. David Pearson

And so . . . These, then, are my three candidates for a reading education endangered species act—transfer, professional prerogative, and individual differences. Each candidate is a less prominent feature of the reading policy and practice landscape than it was a decade ago. Each has been bullied off the policy landscape by unfortunate alternatives. I believe that some species of scholarship and some classes of educational principles deserve to be endangered, overturned, and forgotten—when they have outlived their usefulness and outstripped the evidence supporting their influence on practice. As near as I can tell, the endangerment of these three constructs does not stem from the careful analysis of research findings—findings that would call into question their efficacy or relevance to curriculum and teaching. They have been called into question, relegated to a minor role, by curricular and policy developments that lay claim to a strong research base but, on closer examination, are as driven by ideology as any movement in recent decades. It is time to take transfer, professional prerogative, and individual differences off the endangered species list. This will not be easy. Their alternatives (curriculum-embedded assessment, pedagogical consistency through scripting and pacing, and equal curricular opportunity) have attracted a great deal of political capital and credibility (not to mention the force of mandate). Nothing short of a major policy initiative to reposition these three constructs in the evolving policy conversation, combined with a focused research program to validate their efficacy, will do. For starters, I think we should return them to a prominent position in the policy conversation and the policy agenda. And they should remain there until and unless compelling evidence of their ineffectiveness is presented. How we ever let them become endangered is mystifying to me. But our past negligence should only increase our current resolve to restore them to health.

Acknowledgments Special thanks to Richard Allington, Barbara Taylor, Susie Goodin, and Helen Maniates for careful reviews of various drafts and sensible suggestions for improvement.

Notes 1 See Shanahan’s (1983) account of the evolution of these constructs stemming from the work of Betts (1946) and Kilgallon (1942).

References Allington, R. L. (2005). Federal intrusion in research and teaching and the medical model myth. In J. Carlson & J. Levin (Eds.), The case of No Child Left Behind legislation: Educational research and federal funding (pp. 37–48). Greenwich, CT: Information Age.

An Endangered Species Act for Literacy Education

243

Betts, E. A. (1946). Foundations of reading instruction. New York: American Book Co. Bloom, B. S. (1968). Learning for mastery. Evaluation Comment, I. Carroll, J. (1963). A model of school learning. Teachers College Record, 64, 723–732. Cattell, J. M. (1906). Conceptions and methods of psychology. In H. J. Rogers (Ed.), Congress of arts and science. Universal Exposition, St. Louis, 1904: Vol. 5 (pp. 593–604). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Committee on How People Learn, A Targeted Report for Teachers. (2005). In M. S. Donovan & J. D. Bransford (Eds.), How students learn: History, mathematics, and science in the classroom. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Darling-Hammond, L. (1996). What matters most: Teaching for America’s future. New York: National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future. DIBELS data system. (2006). Retrieved November 10, 2006, from https://dibels.uoregon.edu/data/index. php. Dorr-Bremme, D., & Herman, J. (1983). Assessing student achievement: A profile of classroom practices. Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles Center for the Study of Evaluation. Finn, C. E., & Kanstoroom, M. (2000). Improving, empowering, dismantling. Washington, DC: The Fordham Foundation. Retrieved November 6, 2006, from http://www. fordhamfoundation.org/institute/publication/publication.cfm?id=101 Gagné, R. M. (1965). The conditions of learning. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Galton, F. (1865). Hereditary talent and character. Macmillan’s Magazine, 12, 157–166, 318–327. Gates, A. I. (1927). The improvement of reading. New York: Macmillan. Gates, A. I. (1937). The necessary mental age for beginning reading. Elementary School Journal, 38, 497–498. Good, R. H., & Kaminski, R. A. (Eds.). (2002). Dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills (6th ed.). Eugene, OR: Institute for the Development of Educational Achievement. Available from http://dibels.uoregon.edu Gray, W. S. (1937). A review of C. R. Stone, Better primary reading: How to adapt reading instruction to the varying needs of the children. The Elementary School Journal, 38, 73–74. Haladyna, T. M., Nolan, S. B., & Haas, N. S. (1991). Raising standardized achievement test scores and the origins of test score pollution. Educational Researcher, 20, 2–7. Harste, J., Burke, C., & Woodward, V. (1984). Language stories and literacy lessons. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Herman, J., & Golan, S. (1991). Effects of standardized testing on teachers and learning—another look. (CSE Tech. Rep. No. 334). Los Angeles: Center for the Study of Evaluation. Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994. Pub. L. No. 103–382, 108 Stat. 3518 et. seq. (1994). Retrieved December 12, 2006, from http://www.ed.gov/legislation/ESEA/ index.html Johnson, D. D., & Pearson, P. D. (1975). Skills management systems: A critique. The Reading Teacher, 28, 757–764. Kelly, W. (1953). The Pogo papers. New York: Simon & Schuster. Kilgallon, P. A. (1942). A study of the relationships among certain pupil adjustments in reading situations. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Pennsylvania State College. Klausmeier, R. A., Rossmiller, R. A., & Saily, M. (Eds.). (1977). Individually guided elementary education: Concepts and practices. New York: Academic. Linn, R. L. (2000). Assessments and accountability. Educational Researcher, 29(2), 4–16.

244

P. David Pearson

McGill-Franzen, A., Zmach, C., Solic, K., & Zeig, J. L. (2006). The confluence of two policy mandates: Core reading programs and third-grade retention in Florida. Elementary School Joumal, 107(1), 67–91. National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. (2006). The five core propositions. Retrieved November 10, 2006, from http://www.nbpts.org/the_standards/the_five_ core_propositio National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction: Reports of the subgroups. Washington, DC: Author. No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107–110, 115 Stat. 1425. (2002). Retrieved April 10, 2003, from http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/esea O’Connor, R. E., Bell, K. M., Harty, K. R., Larkin, L. K., Sackor, S. M., & Zigmond, N. (2002). Teaching reading to poor readers in the intermediate grades: A comparison of text difficulty. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94(3), 474–485. Otto, W. (1977). The Wisconsin design; A reading program for individually guided elementary education. In R. A. Klausmeier, R. A. Rossmiller, & M. Saily (Eds.), Individually guided elementary education: Concepts and practices (pp. 216–237). New York: Academic. Otto, W., & Chester, R. D. (1976). Objective-based reading. Reading, MA: AddisonWesley. Shanahan, T. (Ed.). (1983). Edited version of P. A. Killgallon, A study of relationships among certain pupil adjustments in reading situations. In L. Gentile, M. L. Kamil, & J. Blanchard (Eds.), Reading research revisited (pp. 553–556). Columbus, OH: Merrill. U.S. Department of Education, Office of Post-Secondary Education, Office of Planning and Innovation. (2002). Meeting the highly qualified teachers challenge: The secretary’s annual report on teacher quality. Washington, DC: Author. Veatch, J. (1960). In defense of individualized reading. Elementary English, 37, 227–234. Walsh, K., & Tracy, C. O. (2006). Increasing the odds: How good policies can yield better teachers. Washington, DC: National Council on Teacher Quality. Wundt, W. M. (1896–1897). Outlines of psychology (C. H. Judd., Trans.). Retrieved December 10, 2006, from http://www.hyorku.ca/dept/psych/classics/Wundt/ Outlines/

18 Essay Review Revolutionary Reading Henrietta Dombey

The book reviewed here is Alan D. Flurkey and Jingguo Xu (eds), On the Revolution of Reading: The Selected Writings of Kenneth S. Goodman (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003). For decades, together with his colleague and wife Yetta, Kenneth Goodman has been lionized and vilified by literacy educators and education decisionmakers on both sides of the Atlantic. It is unusual for scholars as careful and thorough to evoke such responses. However, literacy in general and literacy education in particular are highly political and contentious issues. Those who make connections, as Goodman does, between literacy activities in the classroom and the power of the individual in the wider literate society are entering hotly-contested ground. It is widely believed that a nation’s prosperity, well-being, and standing in the world are, in large part, the product of the level of literacy achieved by its citizens. When the countries on the Pacific Rim surged to economic success, just over a decade ago, we were told that this was the result of their high test scores, and that these were the product of “traditional” whole-class teaching from the front (see, e.g. IMF 1991, Reynolds and Farrell 1996). Despite the subsequent economic decline of a number of those countries with high reading scores, the notion persists that a high level of literacy is an essential component of a country’s success in the world.

Kinds of reading However, what kind of literacy? One’s view of this is closely linked with one’s view of a healthy society. Is what’s wanted the literacy to speed up the processing of insurance claims? Or do we want (at least in some of the population) the literacy to interpret more complex documents? What about the imaginative literacy that allows one to think about other places and other times and other points of view, and to see the familiar in new ways? Or the critical literacy that allows us to evaluate carefully what is read and written? Governments tend to take a rather narrow view. All over the anglophone world, especially in the Northern hemisphere, education in general and literacy education in particular have been straitened in recent years by governmental

246

Henrietta Dombey

insistence on measurable outcomes and the imposition of targets, largely predicated on a limited and instrumental view of literacy. Perhaps this is inevitable in a market-driven culture, where a demand for “accountability” accompanies every sort of public expenditure. This insistence on measurable outcomes has created an atmosphere in which high test scores are no longer regarded as less than totally valid or reliable indicators of the learning achieved, but instead are perceived and treated as the desirable goal of education. To answer a set of externally-devised questions in the way approved by the examiner proves you are a capable reader. No matter if you find it hard to locate information on a given topic, cannot relate the text in front of you to what you have learned from other texts or to your own experience, have no capacity to evaluate what you read with the critical faculties needed in the world, or have no love for reading and never read when you don’t have to. If you answer the test questions in the right way, you are contributing to raising the national literacy index and ultimately to its economic advance. Ken Goodman has never settled for such a limited view of literacy education. Throughout all that he has written—and this volume collects together papers written from 1967–1994—it is clear that the goal for him is not just the mechanical “retrieval” of information, but active engagement with texts that matter to the reader. Even of “readers in trouble”—those who read less well than they or others would like—he writes: “Pupils must reach the point where they choose to read when there is nobody there to make them do it, before educators can really claim success” (p. 429). The texts he draws on for his own sustenance come from far beyond the usual frame of reference of those who write on learning to read; in addition to the works of the psychologists and linguists discussed below, they include works by Copernicus, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Thomas Kuhn, and Umberto Eco, among many others. All are substantial. All are challenging—not just to the individual reader, but to the accepted wisdom of their times. Reading for Goodman is a far from trivial business. He wants the children we all teach to share in reading experiences of as much value to them. This rich conception of reading informs all his work. However, this lofty and powerful aim is accompanied by a keen and almost anthropological interest in what readers—from novices to the highly experienced—actually do as they operate on text. Ken and Yetta Goodman have given us “kidwatching” and made it evident that there really is no substitute for examining the reading process in action, not taken away from real-life contexts to a laboratory setting or reduced to the fragmentary abstractions of the usual kind of reading test, but the whole process, in its normal functional context, where readers engage with text to make sense of it. Anything short of this is not reading in Goodman’s book. Tests composed of nonsense syllables, single words, unconnected sentences, or literal “comprehension” questions on longer passages cannot, in his view, be counted as tests of reading, for none of these will serve as an indicator of the process of comprehending in which the effective reader engages, of which more below.

Revolutionary Reading

247

Miscue analysis Over the years, this kidwatching has produced important results. Carefully documented and analysed through the procedures of “miscue analysis,” which, with Yetta Goodman, he pioneered and developed, kidwatching has shown us that neither young readers nor proficient readers proceed in a straighforwardly linear or inductive way from letter-perception, through word- and phrase-perception, to meaning. The process is far messier, more complex, and more intelligent, and calls into question much conventional wisdom about how we should teach children to read. It involves knowledge of language and knowledge of the subject matter of the text being read. Most importantly, it is an active process, with inference and guesswork at its heart, held in check by self-monitoring for sense, necessitating movements to and fro in the text, rather than a relentless forward progress. In miscue analysis, the procedure the Goodmans developed, the child reads aloud a piece of coherent, connected, usually narrative text, of interest to her, unaided as far as is possible without the child being made to feel uncomfortable. She subsequently re-tells the story. As she reads aloud, where her responses differ from the words on the page, the teacher or other investigator marks what she says on her own copy of the text, using agreed symbols to show such deviations as repetition, hesitation, or omission. The “window on the reading process” that this procedure offers has been widely used in research into children learning to read (e.g. Bussis et al. 1985), as well as by teachers seeking to understand how particular students go about the process and what they derive from it.

Seminal influences Goodman’s challenging conceptions of reading and learning to read have not arisen from these close observations alone. In pioneering the recognition that reading is a process that is essentially linguistic, his earliest writings are powerfully influenced by Chomsky’s conceptions of language. In those early papers, he sees reading as principally concerned with arriving at the “deep structure” of a text, the semantic and syntactic relations which find expression in the “surface structure” of words organized temporally or spatially. This makes the accurate identification of letters, phonemes, and individual words—the concerns of most researchers into early reading—appear quite irrelevant to an understanding of the processes involved. If reading a text is arriving at its deep structure, then what matters is helping the child achieve the most efficient and effective route to this deep structure, which, says Goodman, certainly doesn’t involve identifying every letter, and often not every word. In his top-down approach, he draws on work ranging from Cattell at the end of the 19th century, to George Miller in the middle of the 20th, showing that “what we know controls what we perceive” (p. 331): linguistic knowledge is involved in the perception of written text, words are easier to perceive than arrays of individual letters, and meaningful propositions, in familiar language are easiest of all (Cattell 1886, Miller 1956).

248

Henrietta Dombey

For Goodman at this time, the term “decoding,” so often used by others to refer to word identification, refers instead to the process of arriving at the deep structure, or meaning, of text, not the identification of individual words, much less the process of sounding these out on a grapheme-by-grapheme basis. So, for him—at least in his early papers, those written up to the mid-1970s—the focus of reading is the reconstruction of meaning. Reading is decoding and decoding is reading. He advocates the term “recoding” for oral reading (reading aloud) since the message, having been extracted from one code (written language), is now inserted into another (spoken language). However, he claims that what teachers tend to train children to do in the early stages of learning to read, namely to give an oral rendition of the text that is accurate word-for-word, short circuits this process, as it misses out the essential stage, arriving at meaning. It goes against all Chomsky has taught us about how we process language. He is also much influenced by the work on language acquisition that Chomsky’s work initiated, which sees the child as applying her innate Language Acquisition Device to the speech she hears around her, and so constructing a succession of increasingly complex grammatical rule systems, from which her own speech is generated. Supported by a few neat and familiar instances of children’s rule-bound “miscues,” such as “I seed the mouses,” this idea, revolutionary in its time, banished for ever the claims that imitation, operant conditioning, or explicit rule-following provide adequate explanations of children’s language learning. After the publication in 1959, in the journal Language, of Chomsky’s (1959) devastating review of Skinner’s (1957) book Verbal Behavior, swiftly followed by an explosion of work by Brown (1973) and others on language acquisition, it became widely accepted that children and their linguistic errors (such as “mouses” and “runned”) could no longer to be patronized or usefully corrected. Instead, the children had to be respected as constructors of grammars, which they were shown to revise and expand at a truly impressive rate. And of course children were doing all this without any conscious knowledge of verbs or nouns, much less of subordinate clauses. As psycholinguists started to listen carefully to children’s speech, they found most 5-year-olds, in terms of sentence structure, to have mastered the essentials of the adult linguistic system, without any conscious awareness of what they were doing. Those who sought to explain language acquisition took Chomsky’s (1959: 58) words to heart “a refusal to study the contribution of the child to language learning permits only a superficial account of language acquisition . . .”. Children were studied not for their deficiencies as language-learners, but for their power as languagegenerators. Goodman draws clear parallels with learning to read. Just as children learn to talk without explicit attention to the phonemes, word classes, or syntactic structures of which language is composed, so they should be allowed to learn to read and write. Instead of drawing children’s attention to letters and words, we should, he argues, regard learning to read as a natural process. “In neither case is the user required by the nature of the task to have a high level of conscious

Revolutionary Reading

249

awareness of the units and system” (p. 354). However, although conscious awareness of the bits and pieces plays little or no part in Goodman’s view of learning to read, this does not mean that the mind is not at work. Just as Chomsky dismisses research into language acquisition that accords no importance to the child’s contribution, failing to recognize the uniquely powerful mental power of the human child to shape the degenerate language she is surrounded by into a set of orderly structures which she then manipulates at will, so Goodman castigates those who devise lengthy and detailed programmes for reading instruction that treat the learner like Skinner’s black box, denying any capacity to detect the regularities and infer the underlying structures of written language. Those who take such a limited view of the learner may have given us “a highly-developed technology of instruction,” but its “very shallow theoretical base” makes this worthless. Like Chomsky, Goodman rejects psychological approaches based on behavioural learning theory and the work of Thorndike and Skinner, which treat the learner as the empty-headed and passive subject, acted on by the teacher and the text, which provide the stimuli, prompting responses which are then re-inforced through external reward. Goodman sees the vast commercial apparatus of the teaching of reading, with basal readers at its heart, as founded on such a conception. Instead, he is guided by psychologists who take the view that children have minds. We need a psychology, he argues, based on our uniquely human capacities, which have enabled us to make our mark on the world, not one that treats us like pecking pigeons or bar-pressing rats. In Piaget’s work, he found more congenial ideas, which influenced his earliest writings, particularly in the concept of children’s progress through states of disequilibrium and equilibrium, achieved through the processes of assimilation, accommodation, and adaptation. These ideas allowed a view of literacy learning as an active process in which children are forever striving to make their worlds more predictable and manageable, as they focus their mental energies on making sense of texts. Goodman was also much influenced by Piaget’s respect for the power of play as a context for learning. Later, Vygotsky, who also sees play as a powerful context for children’s learning, became a stronger influence. He was valued partly for this and his thinking, now well-known and widely-respected, on such matters as learning as an essentially social process, the need to engage children in whole tasks that make sense to them, and the zone of proximal (or potential) development. However, Vygotsky’s (1962, 1978) less well-known observations on learning to read and write also appealed to Goodman. Writing in 1990, Goodman heads an article with a quotation from Vygotsky’s (1978) Mind in Society: “The best method (for teaching reading and writing) is one in which children do not learn to read and write but in which both these skills are found in play situations. . . . In the same way as children learn to speak, they should be able to learn to read and write” (p. 118). Goodman comments that “[i]n this passage, Vygotsky expresses his belief that written language develops, as speech does, in the context of its use.” He draws clear parallels with Goodman’s own Whole Language approach to

250

Henrietta Dombey

literacy learning, which “views learners as strong, not weak, independent, not dependent, active, not passive” (p. 258). However, in a sense, reading Vygotsky appears to have confirmed and refined Goodman’s ideas, rather than revolutionized them. The shift in focus from the individual to the social had already been made after his encounter in the late1970s with the work of another ground-breaking linguist, Halliday (1975). A paper published in 1979, “Learning to read is natural,” indicates a marked shift from his earlier, heavily Chomskyan, position, and is the first product of Halliday’s enduring influence. First appearing in Resnick and Weaver’s (1979) Theory and Practice of Early Reading, it made an important contribution to the development of a powerful school of thought that proposed ways of examining and promoting children’s early reading predicated on a view of children as active and interactive learners. From Halliday and the school of systemic linguistics that has grown up around him, Goodman takes the powerful conception of language as essentially functional. Whereas Chomsky sees language as an immensely intricate system, which children master, when exposed to it, because they are programmed to do so, while not denying its complexity or the child’s innate mental powers, Halliday sees language as performing a range of functions for us. So, we learn language not just because we are programmed to do so, but because of what it can do for us. Language for Halliday is “meaning potential”; our control over the system increases in order to enlarge our “meaning potential,” to enable us to make more and subtler meanings, related in increasingly complex ways and to put these to use, so that we might control the actions of others, interact with them or announce ourselves as individuals, as well as communicate information. In learning language we are learning how to mean, and meaning is essential to being human. And, rather than functional expansion following an extension of mastery of the forms of language, to Halliday, an awareness of function always precedes the grasp of the forms through which it can best be realized. We have to have an idea of what we want to do with the tools before we can learn to use them effectively. Influenced by Halliday, Goodman argues that the acquisition of written language should be seen as expanding the user’s linguistic range and effectiveness. Children must be put in a position to feel certain needs if they are to seek actively to develop the related forms, just as, in their oral language learning, they were impelled to learn the forms of the imperative by the need to regulate others. However, most early literacy teaching has no such aims or means in mind. No account is taken of how the written word might extend children’s range as language-users, and thereby have an evident intrinsic value for them. Whereas, when they are learning to talk, the informative function appears to be the last one that children acquire (they can tell you what to do long before they can tell you about things), it is often the only function served by the texts they are expected to read and write in school. In conventional classrooms, children tend not to read or write for their own purposes, so they see their school literacy activities as

Revolutionary Reading

251

serving only to please the teacher and to show that you are a good pupil. From this point on, all Goodman’s work is coloured by a desire to make written language in the school classroom as functionally varied as it is in the world outside, and to respect the sequence of learning shown in children’s development of oral language. The term for which Goodman is perhaps best known is “Whole Language.” The term was coined to indicate the nature of the language-learning process—complex but unified, involving semantic, syntactic, and grapho-phonic elements all bound together—as much as the teaching process, which engages children in making sense of, and constructing, whole texts rather than focusing on decontextualized bits and pieces. From 1979 on, Goodman characterizes this in Halliday’s functionally varied terms, stating that, “Halliday’s (1975) seven functions make a good guide for generating learning experiences for initial and continuing reading instruction” (p. 368). Beside the linguists and the psychologists, there is another thinker who has been important to Goodman, Freire (1970). From his work in downtown Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s, to his more recent work with the Tahono O’odham native American people in Arizona, Goodman has always been passionately concerned with the literacy education of those in danger of marginalization. In this, he is guided by Freire, who urges that the “banking” view of education, which treats learners as empty vessels, should be replaced by one that sees learners in a power-relationship to society. Education must empower, to help learners liberate themselves. This means that “The learners must own the process of their learning. They must see learning including literacy and language development as part of a process of liberation” (p. 381).

Comprehension and comprehending Of course Goodman is not alone in wanting children to learn to put reading to use. Schools, teachers, and examiners have traditionally been concerned with comprehension, seeing this as the goal of reading instruction. However, to Goodman, comprehension is very different from comprehending. The first is a product—inert, and usually uniform and mundane, the stuff that many reading tests demand. It is composed of items of information “retrieved” from the text and presented to the tester, much as a dog retrieves ducks shot down from the sky and presents them to his master. Comprehension is backward-looking and concerned with the conventional; in no way does it engage the reader as an individual with her own experience and way of seeing the world. By contrast, comprehending is to Goodman an active process, a personal transaction between the reader and the text, in which the reader seeks to make sense of what she reads, relating it to what she knows. It is a process that has a forward dynamic, shaped by the reader’s expectations, inferences, and predictions. However, it also involves, certainly where challenging text is concerned, backward moves, when parts of the text surprise or fail to make sense, and the experienced reader knows she has to look more closely and with a sharper focus

252

Henrietta Dombey

on the meaning being constructed. For Goodman, certainly after 1979, meaning is not located in the text, or even the author, but in the transaction.

Passionate responses So we can begin to see some of the reasons why Goodman’s work has excited passionate responses—both hostile and favourable. He challenges: •

• • • • • • •

the conception of the learning and teaching of reading as straightforward, orderly processes, proceeding through a “hierarchy of skills” from small, simple units—letter/sound relationships—to larger, more complex units; the idea that one’s competence as a language-user can be developed by focusing on the component parts of a text; related to this, the idea that to read well one must attend to every word and every letter; the underlying assumption that control over form must precede control over function; the view that the teacher should be in charge of the student; the view that a centrally-devised programme should be in charge of the teacher; the view that the goal of the process is to fit individuals into the existing social structure; and what counts as success.

Such ideas threaten the publishers of basal readers—reading schemes, as we call them in the UK—and the whole testing machinery. They call into question the way in which children and, increasingly, teachers, are assessed and graded. They also question the validity of much research into the learning and teaching of reading. And, they pose a threat to teachers who are happy to follow texts chosen by others and lesson plans devised far away from their classrooms. Above all, they threaten those with vested interest in the status quo. On the other hand, these same ideas have elicited warm responses from teachers who are knowledgeable about children and children’s literature, and passionate to bring the two together. “Whole language” has been a rallying cry in the US as teachers have enthusiastically adopted a pedagogy that places emphasis on what children can do and on the meanings they can make through written language. And, in the UK, while the term “whole language” has never caught on, both directly through his own writing and indirectly through the work of popularizers and those of like mind, his works have had an enormous influence. Teachers have warmed to a conception of literacy teaching and learning that takes a fresh look at how we read and write in the real world, that proposes that learning in school should be like the (apparently more successful) learning out of school and that the curriculum should involve children in “a series of authentic speech and literacy events” (p. 316). Thoughtful, confident, and ambitious teachers have been persuaded of the dangers of empty learning or “procedural display”

Revolutionary Reading

253

in many school-based literacy activities, and have felt invigorated by the notion that, like mastery over spoken language, mastery over written language is brought about through the forces of individual invention and social convention, and the tension between them. Teachers with imagination have welcomed the idea of adjusting the school to the learner, rather than the learner to the school. Many have found that life in the classroom is much more interesting if, like Goodman, they encourage their students to take risks, to draw inferences, to use literacy for their own purposes. They have valued the encouragement he has given them to see themselves as thinking professionals, rather than the distributors of “teacherproof” materials. In miscue analysis, teachers have welcomed a diagnostic tool that indicates, not just which component bits of the reading process children have knowledge of, and which bits appear to be missing, but, more importantly, how each individual child goes about the task of reading, and where her problems might lie, in terms of the strategies she adopts when faced with text. It enables teachers to identify where children are failing to make effective, harmonious use of the major “cueing systems” of written text: the semantic, the syntactic, and the grapho-phonic. It shows them plainly how children may appear to misread a word, but in their re-telling, reveal how they have, in fact, identified the problematic word in the text and made appropriate sense of it. It also shows that children whose miscues are not immediately corrected, given space, are often capable of correcting themselves. The “Whole Language” approach allows teachers to recognize children’s preschool experiences of literacy, to work from children’s interests, and to create alluring and stimulating language environments in their classrooms that intensify the literate environment outside school. It legitimizes broadening the literacy curriculum to include a range of texts, from collectively-established classroom rules to the writing of telephone messages in the role-play area—in other words to use written language to expand their linguistic range and effectiveness.

Fundamental challenges However, what about the claims on which this practice rests? Is reading an essentially top-down process? To make effective sense of a text, do we always approach it with an expectation of its overall meaning, and then operate through sampling, prediction, and checking? Is learning to read similarly top-down? Can we happily assume that phonics learning will take care of itself, just like the learning of phonology in spoken language? Is the main barrier to effective learning an excessive concern for accurate word-identification? Goodman has, of course, not been the only scholar to look at these processes. Using the metaphor of the latest development in computing in the mid-1970s, Rumelhart (1976) proposed that the process of reading was one of “simultaneous, multi-level, interactive processing.” Rather than operating in a top-down way, as Goodman had claimed, or in the bottom-up way on which the whole basal apparatus is predicated, Rumelhart claims that reading is both at once. The

254

Henrietta Dombey

reader comes to a text with expectations that influence what she perceives, producing downward-directed hypotheses about sentences, phrases, and words. So far, so Goodman. However, at the same time, Rumelhart argues, she notices individual letters, from which she derives upward-directed hypotheses about the words, phrases, and sentences. Reading is smooth and untroubled as long as the two sets of hypotheses are in agreement. Where conflict arises, the reader needs to both check the meaning and look closely at the letters on the page. This view is now widely accepted. And a legion of investigators and educators have challenged the views that children can infer the relationship of written to spoken language for themselves and that the explicit teaching of phonics is harmful. It is clear that some children do work out the relationships without explicit teaching: a famous paper by Torrey (1969) documented one such case. A more recent European text gives accounts of many more (Cohen and Söderbergh 1999). However, the Torrey case, which concerns the successful self-teaching of an African American 5-yearold, while by no means unique, is not widely replicated in whole-language classrooms. Cohen and Söderbergh (1999) report on even younger children, whose homes have been made into very carefully contrived environments, in which adults interact with them principally through the written word. Replication in a school setting appears not to be a practical proposition. Work by the British psychologist Frith (1985) clearly demonstrates that, regardless of the teaching methods used, children’s approach to wordrecognition follows a similar developmental route as they make progress in learning to read. She sees three phases in this progress, starting with the logographic phase in which children see words as whole configurations and have no strategies for identifying new words. This is followed by the alphabetic, or analytic, phase in which they process problematic words deliberately, a bit at a time. Most finally arrive at the orthographic phase, in which they “recognize” new words immediately, having internalized the spelling patterns they exhibit. Frith, whose main interest is in children who experience great difficulty in learning to read, sees the transition from the logographic to the alphabetic to be peculiarly problematic for most child learners. Children need to have their attention drawn to the workings of sound/symbol relations, and most need extensive support and encouragement to invest the energy necessary to the arduous process of mastering these. There is much current debate about the best kind of phonics teaching. It is true that much conventional phonics teaching is based on the idea of an isomorphic relationship between individual letters and individual phonemes, an idea which, in a paper published originally in 1972, Goodman rightly rejects. Yet, there are other, linguistically better-informed, approaches. Goodman’s claim that “alphabetic systems don’t simply operate on a letter-sound basis. . . . Sequences of sounds seem to have relationships to sequences of letters” is not only supported by Chomsky and Halle (1968), but also at the heart of the onset and rime approach to phonics teaching developed by Goswami (1988) in the UK and Moustafa (1997) in the US.

Revolutionary Reading

255

Recent studies of classrooms on both sides of the Atlantic have shown that the most successful teachers of literacy give pride of place to a range of meaning-making activities with whole texts that their students find interesting, again giving support to Goodman (see Medwell et al. 1998; Pressley 2003). However, these studies also show that these teachers give their students explicit instruction in phonics. Goodman might quarrel with the criteria for success, but in neither study is this limited to children’s scores on standardized tests of literal comprehension. However, the phonics teaching is not decontextualized: children attend to the spelling of words in the context of using them for a meaningful purpose. So, while much rigid and conventional phonics teaching, with its burdensome and tedious apparatus of basal schemes, might be said “to make learning hard for children” (p. 423), this does not seem to be the case for all phonics teaching. Children can be helped to take possession of the tools they need for the making sense of the texts they are interested in.

Our debt to Goodman We owe an enormous debt to Goodman for bringing so clearly to our attention, over the last 30 years and more, the idea that literacy teaching is most effective when children are engaged in constructing or comprehending texts that have a compelling meaning for them, that serve a purpose in their lives. He has also helped us all to recognize how important and noble an enterprise literacy education is—or should be. He has shown us the links between literacy teaching and hopes for a better world. Indeed, his work is characterized by such connections—between wide intellectual horizons and close observations of readers in action, between large political issues in the wider world and power relations in the literacy classroom, between the reading of literature of enduring power and significance, and a young child’s encounter with a text that speaks to her. As a writer and thinker, Goodman has spent most of his long professional life building a unified theory of language and literacy development. It is in the nature of things that unified theories on complex matters are hard to achieve. As Dyson (1979) writes of the unified field theory which has been the goal of so many physicists, and which preoccupied Einstein’s last years, “I knew how many great scientists had chased this will-o’-the-wisp of a unified theory. The ground of science was littered with the corpses of dead unified theories” (p. 62). A unified theory of language and literacy development may be similarly elusive. Goodman sees children as complex constructors of linguistic meaning, operating, through the different media of spoken and written language, and at different stages along the road to proficiency, in essentially similar ways. However, it would seem that, as well as important similarities, there are important differences between learning written and spoken language, and between the processes employed in reading and writing at different levels of proficiency. We do not yet have a unified theory to cover language and literacy development. However, this does not mean the search is a fruitless process. In physics, the search for unified theories carries on, and is thought to have provided the

256

Henrietta Dombey

dynamic of much productive recent investigation. Goodman has contributed significantly to the long-term process of constructing such a theory for literacy, through work that has also been of more immediate benefit. Literacy studies have been enormously invigorated by the theoretical perspectives Goodman has developed and articulated with such clarity. Over the last four decades, Goodman’s has not been a lone voice. Others have worked to investigate the processes of reading and writing in the light of what we know about language, literature and human learning. However, Goodman’s work stands out as the most ambitious in scope and the most rooted in observations of readers and writers engaged in putting literacy to use. Meanwhile, other forces have been at work. Literacy research is no exception to the information explosion of our age: more information than ever before is traded daily on an exponentially expanding number of topics. And, of course, this proliferation poses problems, both for individuals trying to make sense of and improve their practice, and also for decision-makers trying to take education forward at school system or national level. Some filters are necessary. The National Reading Panel (2000), set up by the US Congress in 1997, was charged with just such a mission—to provide “an evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature.” However, this 14-member panel failed to recognize the long-term and complex nature of learning to read; instead, as a respected critic puts it, “reducing schooling in general and reading education in particular, to a series of low—or non-interacting interventions” (Cunningham 2001: 330). Taking “scientific” to mean “positivist” (a definition that would exclude much important work in physics), the panel discarded all studies except those using a narrowly positivist approach, reserving their approval for short-term, univariate, and single cause studies. Such an approach means that all work that takes a longer view, that looks closely at processes and intentions, that takes account of particular contexts, or attempts to build a theoretical coherence is discarded. Along with the work of other noted scholars, Goodman’s work was discarded. This is certainly in tune with an age of targets and accountability. However, how much does it have to do with advancing education? Teachers know the importance of a longer view. Education must be about the longer view or it is nothing. The kindergarten teacher establishes ways of behaving in school not just to ensure better working conditions for her teaching in the next few months, but also to develop in her charges consideration for others in the wider society throughout their future lives. Both teachers and researchers need to look closely at processes—and talk to learners—if they are to understand why they do what they do. Particular circumstances matter too. Attempts to impose uniformity in education inevitably founder as children arrive at school with different experiences, expectations, and ideas, a reality which we neglect at our peril. Theoretical coherence, although problematic, is nonetheless essential. Teachers’ decisions need to be informed, not only by their understanding of the particular experiences, strengths, and needs of their students, but also by a clear

Revolutionary Reading

257

sense of the subject matter to be learned and the processes of human learning. This is particularly important in an area such as literacy where much practice rests on shifting conceptual sands. To move practice forward, we need a whole, coherent picture of a dynamic process in action. Goodman will never find favour with those with small measuring sticks and small minds. However, as this book shows abundantly, he has immeasurably enlarged our ideas of what it is to learn to read and how we can best help students to do it.

References Brown, R. O. (1973) A First Language: The Early Stages (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Bussis, A. M., Chittenden, E., Amarel, M. and Klausner, E. (1985) Inquiry into Meaning: An Investigation of Learning to Read (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates). Cattell, J. (1886) The time it takes to see and name objects. Mind, 11, 63–65. Chomsky, N. (1959) Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. Language, 35(1), 26–58. Chomsky, N. and Halle, M. (1968) The Sound Pattern of English (New York: Harper & Row). Cohen, R. and Söderbergh, R. (1999) Apprendre à Lire avant de Savoir Parler: une nouvelle conception de l’apprentissage de la lecture (Paris: Albin Michel). Cunningham, J. (2001) The National Reading Panel Report. Reading Research Quarterly, 36(3), 326–335. Dyson, F. (1979) Disturbing the Universe (New York: Basic Books). Freire, P. (1970) The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans M. B. Ramos (New York: Seabury). Frith, U. (1985) Beneath the surface of developmental dyslexia. In K. E. Patterson, J. C. Marshall, and M. Coltheart (eds), Surface Dyslexia: Neuropsychological and Cognitive Studies of Phonological Reading (Hove, UK: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), 301–330. Goswami, U. (1988) Orthographic analogies and reading development. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 40A, 239–268. Halliday, M. A. K. (1975) Learning How to Mean: Explorations in the Development of Language (London: Edward Arnold). International Monetary Fund (IMF) (1991) World Economic Outlook (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund). Medwell, J., Wray, D., Poulson, L. and Fox, R. (1998) Effective Teachers of Literacy (Exeter UK: University of Exeter and the Teacher Training Agency). http:// www.leeds.ac.uk/ educol/documents/000000829.htm (visited 8 April 2004). Miller, G. A. (1956) The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63(2), 81–92. Moustafa, M. (1997) Beyond Traditional Phonics: Research Discoveries and Reading Instruction (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann). National Reading Panel (2000) Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction, NIH Pub. No. 00–4769 (Washington, DC: National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development). http://www.nichd.nih.gov/ publications/nrp/smallbook.htm (visited 7 April 2004).

258

Henrietta Dombey

Pressley, M. (2003) Balanced elementary literacy instruction in the United States: a personal perspective. Keynote Paper presented at the International Literacy Conference, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, November 2003. http://literacyconference.oise.utoronto.ca/papers/pressley.pdf (visited 8 April 2004). Resnick, L. B. and Weaver, P. A. (eds) (1979) Theory and Practice of Early Reading (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates). Reynolds, D. and Farrell, S. (1996) Worlds Apart? A Review of International Surveys of Educational Achievement Involving England (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office). Rumelhart, D. E. (1976) Toward an Interactive Model of Reading, CHIP Technical Report No. 56 (University of California at San Diego, San Diego Center for Human Information Processing). ERIC ED 155 587. Skinner, B. F. (1957) Verbal Behavior (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts Inc.). Torrey, J. (1969) Learning to read without a teacher: a case study. Elementary English, 46(5), 550–556. Vygotsky, L. S. (1962) Thought and Language, trans. E. Hanfmann and G. Vakar (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Vygotsky, L. S. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, ed. M. Cole (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

Contributors

Bess Altwerger is Professor of Elementary Education at Towson State near Baltimore, Maryland. Her research on the impact of contrasting reading programs on young children’s reading development is published in Language Arts, English Education and Phi Delta Kappan. Her most recent publication is Rereading Fluency: Process, Practice, and Policy (with N. Jordan and N. Shelton.). T. G. Bever is Research Professor of Cognitive Science, Linguistics, Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Arizona. He has authored more than 150 scholarly articles and edited or co-authored eight books, most recently Sentence Comprehension. His research focuses primarily on the bases for linguistic universals. David Bloome is Professor of Education in the Language, Literacy and Culture program at The Ohio State University’s College of Education and Human Ecology. His research focuses on how people use spoken and written language for learning in classroom and non-classroom settings, and how people use language to create and maintain social relationships, to construct knowledge, and to create communities, social institutions, and shared histories and futures. He is the founder and former co-editor of Linguistics and Education: An International Research Journal and is currently co-editor of the Reading Research Quarterly. Bertram C. Bruce is Professor in Library and Information Science, Curriculum and Instruction, Bioengineering, the Center for Writing Studies, and the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Recent books include Libr@ries: Changing Information Space and Practice and Literacy in the Information Age: Inquiries into Meaning Making with New Technologies. As indicated by his many affiliations, Chip’s orientation is interdisciplinary and wide-ranging. Brian Cambourne is Associate Professor and Honorary Principal Fellow in the Faculty of Education at University of Wollongong in Australia. He started his career by teaching for fifteen years and is currently one of Australia’s

260

Contributors

most eminent researchers of literacy and learning. His major interest is in professional development for literacy education and he is committed to the idea of co-learning and co-researching with teachers. Of his many publications, The Whole Story: Natural Learning and the Acquisition of Literacy in the Classroom, is a classic. Henrietta Dombey is Professor of Literacy in Primary Education at the Education Research Centre, University of Brighton, Falmer, Brighton. She investigates the interaction between teachers, children and texts. She recently co-edited a book titled Classroom Interactions in Literacy. Gerald L. Duffy is Professor Emeritus of Michigan State University and currently the William Moran Distinguished Professor of Reading and Literacy at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. His research has focused on effective reading strategy instruction and on teacher development. Of his many publications, two are noteworthy here—a chapter “Beating the Odds in Literacy Education: Not the ‘Betting On’ but the ‘Bettering Of’ Schools and Teachers” and the chapter reviewing teacher education research “Teaching Teachers to Teach Reading: Paradigm Shifts, Persistent Problems and Challenges.” Carole Edelsky is Professor Emerita of Language Arts at Arizona State University. Her research interests have been in the areas of first and second language literacy, gender and language, critical literacy and classroom discourse. Her book, Writing in a Bilingual Program was the first book on that topic in the United States. Another volume, With Literacy and Justice for All is now in a third edition. Barbara M. Flores is Professor at California State University, San Bernardino. She has engaged in collaborative action research with teachers and children in schools, completing about 15 longitudinal studies, which has spearheaded the development of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment tools to address the development of scientific concepts and academic language across the content areas. She has co-authored the first authentic Latino Spanish/English beginning readers, Piñata and Más Piñata. Perry Gilmore is Professor in the Department of Language, Reading and Culture at the University of Arizona. She is a sociolinguist and educational anthropologist and a Professor Emerita of Alaska Native Languages, Linguistics and Education at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Her primary research interest is in the ethnography of communication and has included studies of children’s discourse, folklore and peer culture; pidginization and creolization processes in language; ethnographic studies of language and literacy acquisition; and issues of identity and ideology in indigenous language and culture regenesis. She is co-editor of two major ethnography collections, Children In and Out of School: Ethnography and Education, and The Acquisition of Literacy: Ethnographic Perspectives.

Contributors

261

W. Dorsey Hammond is Professor of Education at Salisbury University in Salisbury, Maryland. Recent publications include a monograph co-authored and edited with Taffy Raphael on Emergent Literacy in the New Millennium, and he is currently co-authoring a book on reading comprehension. Jerome C. Harste is Professor Emeritus and the first recipient of the Martha Lea & Bill Armstrong Chair in Teacher Education at Indiana University. His book (with Carolyn Burke and Virginia Woodward) Language Stories and Literacy Lessons was awarded the David H. Russell Research Award from the National Council of Teachers of English. His several other contributions to the literature include Beyond Reading and Writing, Curriculum, Inquiry & Multiple Ways of Knowing, and Whole Language: Inquiring Voices Want to Know. James V. Hoffman is Professor of Language and Literacy Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include teacher preparation, classroom instructional practices and literacy education in developing countries. He has authored five books and over 100 scholarly articles in reading education. Stephen Krashen is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Southern California. He is best known for developing the first comprehensive theory of second language acquisition and as the co-inventor of the Natural Approach to foreign language teaching. Ray McDermott is Professor of Education and Anthropology at the School of Education, Stanford University. He takes a broad interest in the analysis of human communication, the organization of school success and failure, and the history and use of various literacies around the world. His work includes studies of inner-city public schools, after-school classrooms, and the function of information technologies in different cultures. Sharon Murphy is Professor of Education at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her research interests include assessment and literacy learning. Currently her research involves the development of an approach to assessment that is motivated by ethical and epistemological considerations. She has co-authored or co-edited books on literacy education (Literacy Education through Language Arts), arts education (Telling Pieces: Art as Literacy in Middle Grade Classes), literacy assessment (Fragile Evidence: A Critique of Reading Assessment), and curricular materials in literacy (Report Card on Basal Readers), and has written numerous articles in academic and professional journals and books. George Newell is a professor at The Ohio State University, teaching in the English language arts teacher education program, and co-directs (with Dr. David Bloome) the Columbus Area Writing Project. At advanced graduate level, Dr. Newell offers courses on research in teaching and teacher education, digital and the written composition, and adolescent literacies. His research

262

Contributors

has focused generally on investigations of the contexts of schooling and the cognitive, linguistic, and semiotics demands of school tasks, especially composing (in multimodalities) and learning in English and the content areas; examining the kinds of instructional support provided in undertaking those tasks; and assessing the knowledge and skills that result. He has also studied the learning and development of preservice and early career high school English teachers. He has published in Research in the Teaching of English, Written Communication, and Journal of Literacy Research. Currently, he is working with Dr. Bloome and Dr. Hirvela on a study of teaching and learning argumentative reading and writing in high school English language arts classrooms. P. David Pearson is Dean of Education at University of California-Berkeley. His research interests include practice and policy in literacy instruction and assessment. Among his long list of publications are the Handbook of Reading Research, and Learning to Read: Lessons for Effective Schools and Accomplished Teachers (with B. Taylor). Iliana Reyes is Associate Professor of Language, Reading and Culture at the University of Arizona. Her research has focused on the nature of early childhood bilingual development and second language acquisition by integrating concepts and theories of developmental psychology. Her research has been funded by the Foundation for Child Development and published in the Reading Research Quarterly, Bilingual Research Journal, First Language, and the International Journal of Bilingualism. Patrick Shannon is Professor at Pennsylvania State University in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. He has taught, worked with teachers, and conducted research across North America. He is the author, co-author or editor of nine books including Reading Poverty and Education and Cultural Studies. Nancy Rankie Shelton is currently an Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her research focuses on writing in elementary classrooms, the effects of mandated reform on literacy education, and critical literacy. Kathy G. Short is Professor in the Department of Language, Reading and Culture at the University of Arizona. Her work focuses on literature circles, curriculum and inquiry and collaborative learning environments for teachers and children. She has served as co-editor of Language Arts and The New Advocate. She is the co-author of many articles and books, including Creating Classrooms for Authors and Inquirers, Learning Together through Inquiry, Literature as a Way of Knowing, Talking about Books, and Stories Matter: The Complexity of Cultural Authenticity in Children’s Literature. Steven L. Strauss is a practicing neurologist in Baltimore, Maryland. His recent book, The Linguistics, Neurology, and Politics of Phonics: Silent ‘e’ Speaks Out

Contributors

263

critiques the linguistic and neurological arguments that are being used to resurrect phonics and forcibly install phonics in classroom instruction. Robert J. Tierney is Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia and Professor in the Language and Literacy Education Department. In recent years a major focus of his work has involved examining assessment procedures that may serve to empower teaching and learning without either compromising the complexity of what is measured or undermining ongoing goal-setting of teachers and students. Emanating from his work with teachers, he has co-authored two books, Portfolio Assessment in the Reading-Writing Classroom, and Interactive Assessment: Teachers, Parents and Students as Partners.

Index

accountability 31, 230, 231, 237, 240, 246 Adams, M. 6, 10, 175 African-American language 72–73 agency 27, 128, 129, 133 Allington, R.K. 179, 236 alphabetic principle 25, 167–168, 254 analysis by synthesis model 39, 41–42 Anderson, Richard C. 3 anthropology 76–80, 89–90, 92, 93n5 anticipation miscues 10 Antrop-González, Rene 108 assessment 14, 91, 173–187, 193, 207–208, 210, 246; context 179–180; definitions of reading 174–176; DIBELS 175–176, 192, 206, 232–233; epistemic responsibility 180–184; ETS 209; fluency 191–192; high-stakes 31, 180, 229, 230, 231; instruction linked with 229, 230; interpretation practices 178–179; methodology of 176–178; miscue analysis 225; quantitative 118; test score pollution 230–231, 233; TOEFL study 51 assumed competence 78, 87 Auerbach, Red 140 Australia 116, 121 Author Recognition Test 55 authoring cycle 132 authorship 61, 62–63, 75 Bakhtin, M. 63 Barbatsis, G. 56 Barnhart, C.L. 5–6, 21 Bartlett, Sir Frederic 3 Bartolomé, L. 170 basal readers 217, 218, 220–221, 224, 249, 252 Bateson, Gregory 128 Beck, I. 49 behaviorism 17, 18–22, 35, 77, 87–89;

basal readers 217; information processing comparison 23, 24, 27; learning theory 116–117, 249; teacher preparation 120, 121 Bennion, K. 180 bilingualism 54–55, 144–159, 160–172 biliteracy 147, 148–156, 160–172 Biocca, F. 56 biology 100–105 Bloom, Benjamin 239 Bloomfield, Leonard 5–6, 21, 24 Boas, Franz 78 books 56, 90, 153 Booth, Wayne 129 brain processes 17–18, 25–27, 28–31 Brown, R.O. 248 Brown, S.M. 177 Brown, Sterling 72–73 Bruner, Jerome 22, 23, 27, 35 Buchanan, Ethel 223 Burke, Carolyn 179, 219, 222 Burns, S. 192 business 216, 220–221, 222–223, 224–225, 226 Cambourne, B. 7, 9, 124, 219 Caplan, David 24 Carle, Eric 2, 8 Carlson, J.F. 180 Carroll, John 239 Cattell, J. 247 Center for the Expansion of Language and Thinking (CELT) 205, 222–223 Center for the Study of Reading (CSR) 3, 5, 204, 221 Chall, J.S. 4, 6, 11 Chard, D. 191 China 80 Chinese characters 81–84, 92n1, 92n3, 92n4 Cho, G. 55

Index Chomsky, Noam 20, 35, 77, 87, 96, 188, 204–205, 247–249, 254 Church, Susan 225 Clay, Marie 129 close observation 78–79 cloze tests 176 coaching 136–143 Cochran, Orin 223 Cochran-Smith, Marilyn 79 Code, Lorraine 173, 174, 181, 182, 183 coffee cups 96–97, 99, 100 cognitive psychology 22, 23–27, 31, 32, 34–35, 204 Cohen, R. 254 commercialism 220, 221 community building 106–108, 110 community informatics (CI) 113n2 comprehension 4, 6, 14, 39–43, 251; assessment 209; fluency 190, 191, 192, 194, 197, 199; Goodman/Smith Hypothesis 46; NCLB 13, 189; phrase spacing 43–44 Comprehension Hypothesis 47, 52, 57–58 computers 55–57 Conklin, Harold 84 Connell, Jeanne 97 constructivism 3, 27–32, 35, 161, 209–210, 222, 239 context 4, 11–12, 61–62, 71–72; anthropology 77; assessment 179–180; Hanunóo 84–85 conversation 97, 106 cortex 25–26, 28–31 creativity 35, 63 Csikszentmihalyi, M. 55 cueing systems 165–166, 169–170, 204, 221, 253 culture 76, 92, 127, 130 curriculum 126–135, 238, 240–241; frameworks 131–132; inquirybased 128; mandated 131, 210–211; narrowing of 13–14, 183; PACHS 109 Darwin, Charles 99, 100, 104 Davies, John Ilott 100–105, 112 Davis, Brent 130 De Haan, J. 56 Deacon, T.W. 124 decodable texts 2, 5–6, 189 decoding 37, 40, 191, 195, 198, 200, 248 deficit arguments 78, 189 democracy 92, 97, 107, 112 Destexhe, A. 29, 30 Dewey, John 77, 86, 89–91, 204; curricular frameworks 132;

265

democracy 92, 97, 112; experience 97–98, 99–100, 105; inquiry 103; longitudinal relations 104; mind-body integration 99; moral growth 99; reflex arc 20; Whole Language 224 dialect 2, 217 dialogue journals 162–169 DIBELS see Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills discourse 73–74 diversity 89, 156 Dixon, M. 56 doctors 235, 236 drawing 162 Durocher, Leo 140 Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) 175–176, 192, 206, 232–233 Dyson, F. 255 Elementary and Secondary School Education Act 221 Eliot, George 104–105 Elley, W. 48–49 Emery, C. 55 English as a foreign language 48–49, 50–54 epistemic responsibility 173, 174, 180–184 equity 238, 239, 240 errors 2, 179, 248 ethics 102–103, 129, 181 ethnography 61, 78, 79, 80 evolutionary theory 99, 123 experience 97–98, 99–100, 105, 106, 109 experimental design 32–33, 123 Fader, Daniel 48 family interactions 144–145, 147, 148–156 feedback/feedforward 30–31 Ferreiro, E. 145, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166 Fiji Island study 48–49 Filback, R. 55 Fishman, A. 175 Fitzgerald, H. 56 Fleck, L. 173 fluency 175, 189–190; flow 192–193, 200; large-scale study 193–200; measurement of 190–192; NCLB 13, 189 Flurkey, Alan 190, 192–193, 196, 200, 245 “fourth grade slump” 11 free voluntary reading (FVR) 47–54 free voluntary web-surfing 56

266

Index

Freebody, Peter 130 Freire, Paolo 108, 251 Frisbie, D.A. 182–183 Frith, U. 254 frogs 101–102, 111, 112 Fromm, Erich 20 funding 216, 221 Gagné, Robert 239 Gee, James 133 Geertz, C. 62 Gomez Palacios, M. 162 Goodman, Ken 5, 14, 92, 136, 204–208, 212, 228; analysis by synthesis model 39, 41–42; anthropology 76–80; assessment 207, 208, 211; behaviorism 87, 88; brain processes 17; comprehension 251; Comprehension Hypothesis 47, 57; curriculum development 126; debt to 255–257; epistemological stance 175; essay review 245–257; Goodman/Smith Hypothesis 46; Hanunóo 86; Harry Pope 119–120; influences on 204, 246, 247–251; instructional models 131; invention 63; kidwatching 129, 246; language 11, 144; learning to read as a natural act 6–7, 145, 248; meaning 28, 123; miscue analysis 1–2, 38–39, 120–121, 160–161, 173, 176, 188, 219, 247; passionate responses to 252–253; politics of reading education 214, 216–218, 220–221, 222–226; psycholinguistic guessing game 87; reconstructive theory 43, 45; representation 37–38; social world 88–89; sociopsycholinguistic model 77, 160–162, 169, 170, 204; text selection 178; Whole Language 12, 215–216, 223–225, 251; wholeness of work 96, 113 Goodman, Yetta 1, 5, 14, 92, 136, 212, 228; anthropology 76–80; behaviorism 87, 88; brain processes 17; curriculum development 126; Hanunóo 86; Harry Pope 119–120; interpretation 179; kidwatching 246; language 144; learning to read as a natural act 145; meaning 123; miscue analysis 120– 121, 219, 247; politics of reading education 214, 216–218, 222; “roots of literacy” 146; social world 88–89; Whole Language 215–216, 223–225;

wholeness of work 96, 113 Goosebumps 50 Goswami, U. 254 grammar 20–21, 33–34, 248 Graves, Donald 3, 5 Greene, Maxine 107 Griffin, P. 192 Guillery, R.W. 29, 30 Gutiérrez, Kris 210–211 Haas, N.S. 230–231 Haladyna, T.M. 230–231 Halle, M. 41, 254 Halliday, M.A.K. 77, 250, 251 Hangul 82–83 Hanson, F. Allan 180 Hanunóo 84–86, 89 Harry Pope 119–122, 125 Harste, J.C. 130–131, 239–240 Hartley, J. 176 Hasbrouck, J.E. 191 Hawkins, J. 30–31 health care 235 Hearne, Betsy 98 Henry, Jules 80 heritage language reading 54–55 Herman, J. 231 Hill, C. 178 Hirsch, E.D. 127 home environment 144, 147, 148–156 Hooked on Books: Program and Proof (Fader & McNeil) 48 Huey, Edmund Burke 214–215, 216, 225 Hurd, S. 56 Huxley, Julian 101 Huysmans, F. 56 ideology 73, 189, 216, 242 individual differences 229, 235, 236, 237–241, 242 Individualized Educational Plans (IEPs) 241 individualized libraries 239 information processing 17, 23–27, 31, 32, 33, 34–35 Input Hypothesis 46, 57 inquiry 98, 103, 122, 128, 132, 133 insertions 10 intentionality 33, 35 interactive journals 162–169 International Reading Association (IRA) 136, 143 internet 56–57 interpretation 37, 178–179

Index invention 63 Iser, Wolfgang 128 Jackson, L. 56, 57 Janks, Hillary 131 Japan 92 Kamler, Barbara 130 Kelley, William Melvin 64–65 kidwatching 113, 129, 155, 246, 247 King, Martin Luther Jr 98 Knobel, Michelle 134 knowledge 35, 113, 127, 161; teachers 234, 236; transfer of 230; warrantability 173, 174 Korea 54, 55, 77, 81–84 Kozol, J. 128 Krashen, S. 55 Kress, Gunter 133 language 7, 8–11, 123, 204; assumed competence 78, 87; bilingualism 144–159; Chomsky’s influence on Goodman 247, 248; close observation 79; Comprehension Hypothesis 57–58; constructivism 27–28; curriculum 133; discourse 74; functional nature of 250; Hanunóo 84–86; ideology 73; Input Hypothesis 46; Korea 81–84; PACHS 110; “performance oriented” 71; performatives 67–68; as psycholinguistic guessing game 28, 37–45, 87, 217; reading assessment 175; social context 61–62; unified theory of 255 Lankshear, Colin 134 Larsen, E. 178 Lashley, Karl 20 Latinos 147–154, 155, 210–211 Latour, B. 97 learning 90, 123–124, 128–129, 132; assumed competence 78; behaviorism 116–117; bilingual children 154; close observation 78–79; Dewey on 100; empowerment of learners 251; family interactions 144–145; habit formation 118; mastery 239–240; as political 80; social mediation 140; teachers’ responses to Goodman 252–253; transfer of 229–233, 242; ubiquity 79–80; Vygotsky 249 Ledyard, G. 81–82, 83, 92n1 Lee, S.Y. 51–52

267

Leland, C. 130–131 Lemons, Abe 138, 139 letters 37, 39, 165, 167, 170, 247 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 76, 80, 86 Lewison, M. 130–131 Lewontin, Richard 103, 105 linguistic clues 121–122 Linguistic Readers 5–6 Linn, Robert 231 Liu, C-K. 52 Lombardi, Vince 139 Luke, Allen 130 Mangubhai, F. 48–49 Margulis, L. 103 market ideology 216, 246 Martin, Bill 2, 8 Marx, Karl 23 Mason, Beniko 50–51 mastery learning 239–240 McDermott, J.J. 100 McDonnell, L.M. 180 McGill-Franzen, A. 241 McNeil, Elton 48 McQuillan, J. 55 meaning 5, 12, 27–28, 133, 205; analysis by synthesis model 42; behaviorism 21; construction of 7, 8, 14, 123–124, 210, 217; fluency 196, 198, 199; “fourth grade slump” 11; Harry Pope 120, 121–122; information processing 23; meaning potential 250; miscue analysis 38–39 Menand, Louis 98 Menosky, Dorothy 222 Messick, Samuel 181, 182 Mesulam, M.-K. 25–27, 30 metacognition 6, 146 Miller, George 247 minorities 78, 110 miscue analysis 1–3, 14, 38–39, 122, 160–161, 188–189, 217, 247; assessment 225; design limitations 176; fluency 192, 193–199, 200; groundbreaking achievement of 35; ignored by NRP 4; increased recognition of 6; interpretation 179; listening to children 113; naming of assessment procedures 181–182; pervasiveness of 173; reading as language process 9–11; scientific realism 219; semantically appropriate miscues 120; teachers’ responses to 253 Montessori, Maria 90

268

Index

Mosenthal, Peter 219 motor theory of speech perception 40 Moustafa, M. 254 multiple-choice tests 176–177, 178, 184n3, 233 multiple cueing systems 2, 4, 6, 11 multiple literacies 130 mutual control, principle of 182 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 191, 209 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development 6 National Reading Panel (NRP) 13, 189, 206, 219, 241; fluency 190, 191–192, 193; research 2, 4, 256 National Society for the Study of Education (NSSE) 215 Naturalistic Inquiry 122–123 NCLB see No Child Left Behind neural pathways 25–26, 27, 28, 30–31 neuroscience 17–18, 25–27, 28–31 Newman, Judith 223 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) 4, 5, 84, 189; coaching 136, 142; individual differences 229; monitored curriculum 240; narrowing of curriculum 13–14; oppression of schools by 110; politics of reading education 206, 221, 225; research 6; teacher quality 233 Noddings, N. 102 Nolan, S.B. 230–231 NRP see National Reading Panel Nyikos, J. 92n3 O’Connor, R.E. 241 Oldham, J. 56 onset and rime approach 254 oral language 8, 14, 24, 146, 166, 251; see also speech oral reading 204, 225, 248; assessment 174, 178, 179; comprehension 192, 197; fluency 190, 191, 192–193 originality 63 orthography 170 outcome measures 139–140, 245–246

Pedro Albizu Campos High School (PACHS) 108–110 Peirce, Charles Sanders 133 Pennycook, Alastair 130 perceptual discrimination 120, 121 performatives 67–68 Perry, Martha 62 Philippines 77, 84–86 phonemes 21, 40–41, 167, 170, 247 phonemic awareness 13, 181, 189 phonetics 6, 167, 170 phonics 11, 37, 84, 133, 210; behaviorism 21, 22; fluency 190, 194, 195–196, 198, 200; Goodman/ Smith Hypothesis 46; intensive 31; isolated teaching of 170, 189; NCLB 13, 189; paradigm shifts 6; political controversy over 80; teaching methods 254, 255; Whole Language 13 phonological processing 22, 24–25 phrase boundaries 42, 43–44 Piaget, Jean 20, 27, 77, 93n6, 128, 144, 188, 249 Pikulski, J. 191 play 249 politics 76, 80, 86, 89, 206, 214–227; business 220–221; CELT 222–223; of coaching 142–143; miscue analysis 188–189; politicians’ use of test results 180; science 218–219; state 221; teacher education 234; Whole Language 223–225, 226 Popham, W.J. 183 positivism 256 power 218, 222, 226 pragmatism 98, 99 Pratt, M.L. 66 print environment 24, 145–146 professional development 233, 237 progressivism 99 psycholinguistics 2–3, 77, 96, 188, 204, 223; see also sociopsycholinguistic model psychology 18, 22, 238, 249; see also cognitive psychology Puerto Ricans 106–111, 112 quantitative analysis 32–35

Page, William 222 Paige, Rod 233 parents 79–80, 91, 148–154 participant observation 77, 79 Paseo Boricua 106–111, 112 Pearson, David 136, 210, 215–216, 224

race 67 racism 98, 99, 129–130 Rasinski, T. 191 rationalization of reading education 214–215, 216, 217–218, 225

Index reading: assessment 173–187, 208–209, 246; Australian teaching methods 117–119; behaviorism 88; bilingual children’s home literacy practices 151, 153, 154; Comprehension Hypothesis 47, 57; computers 55–57; constructivism 27–31, 209–210; context 11–12; as decoding 37; deep structure of texts 247–248; free voluntary reading 47–54; Goodman/Smith Hypothesis 46; Hanunóo 86; Harry Pope 120–122; heritage language 54–55; individual differences 238–239; information processing 24; as language process 9–11; learning to read as a natural act 6–9, 145, 248; misplaced emphasis on mechanics of 90–91; paradigm shifts 1–4; phrase spacing 44; politics of reading education 86, 89, 214, 216–218, 220–221; premature teaching of 89, 90, 91, 93n6; as psycholinguistic guessing game 10, 28, 87, 204–205, 217; rationalization of reading education 214–215, 216, 217–218, 225; Rumelhart’s theory 253–254; science 218–219; scope and sequence charts 131; silent 39; sociopsycholinguistic model 18, 31, 35, 160–162, 169, 170, 204; stage model 4, 6, 11; Vygotsky 249; Whole Language 12–13, 224; see also comprehension; miscue analysis; oral reading Reading Excellence Act 206, 216 Reading First 5, 6, 189, 200, 216; coaching 136, 142; fluency 190; individual differences 229; narrowing of curriculum 13–14 reading rate (WCPM) 194, 195–199 Reading Recovery 5, 142 ReadSmart 44 realism 219 recoding 248 reconstructive theory 39–43, 44, 45 reflex arc 19–20, 27 reinforcement 117 research 4, 5–6, 77, 218–219, 256; fluency 191, 192–200; free voluntary reading 48–54; miscue analysis 1–2; Naturalistic Inquiry 122–123 resistance 107 Resnick, L.B. 250 retakers study 50–51 role play 65

269

“roots of literacy” 146 Rosenblatt, Louise 28, 105, 204 Rudman, H.C. 180 Rumelhart, D.E. 253–254 Sagan, D. 103 Samuels, S.J. 192 scaffolding 3, 137–138, 149, 153, 241 science 116, 173–174, 215, 218–219, 222–223, 225, 226 scientific management 220, 221 scope and sequence charts 131 Scott Foresman 220–221 scripted programs 14, 140, 189, 233, 237, 240 scripts 80; Chinese 81–84; Hanunóo 84–86 Scruggs, T.E. 180 Searle, John 18, 23 Sejong, King 82–83, 84 semantics 41, 42 sentences 41, 42–43, 118, 166 Shanahan, T. 49 Shaywitz, Sally 18, 21–22, 24 Sherman, S.M. 29, 30 Shin, Fay 50 Simonton, D. 55 Sims, Rudine 222 Singapore 49–50 skills 58, 117, 118 Skinner, B.F. 77, 87, 248, 249 slavery 72, 98 Smith, Adam 89 Smith, D.M. 77, 87–88, 89 Smith, E. Brooks 128 Smith, Frank 9, 10, 46, 47, 57, 128, 205 Smith, K. 52–53 Snow, C. 192 social justice 109, 130 social practice, literacy as 130–131 socio-constructivist theory 209–210 sociolinguistics 76, 78, 217 sociopsycholinguistic model 18, 31, 35, 77, 160–162, 169, 170, 204 sociopsychoneurolinguistic model 18 Söderbergh, R. 254 Solic, K. 241 space 133 speech 21, 37, 39, 248; analysis by synthesis model 41–42; information processing 24, 25; motor theory of speech perception 40; see also oral language spelling 13, 170, 255

270

Index

stage model 4, 6, 11 Standard English 217 standardization 223 standards 240, 241 Stanovich, K. 11, 55, 175 state 221, 222, 224, 226 Steiner, Rudolf 90 Stevens, K. 41 stimuli 19–20, 21–22, 27, 117, 118, 121–122 stories 98 storytelling 68–71 Stout, J.L. 106 Strauss, S. 122 Street, Brian 130 Structured English Immersion (SEI) 148, 154 Sumara, Dennis 130 syllables 92n3, 165–166, 167 symbols 123–124, 163, 166 syntax 41, 42 Taiwan 51–53 Taylor, Frederick 220 teach-practice-test pattern 117–118 teacher education 116–117, 120, 141, 233, 234, 237 teachers: basal teachers’ manuals 218; bilingual students 155, 156; child as curriculum informant 240; coaching 136–137, 141–142; curriculum 126, 132, 210–211; evaluation of 183; long-term view 256; miscue analysis 3; politics of reading education 215, 223; prerogative 229, 233–237, 242; professionalism 206; responses to Goodman 252–253; scripted programs 14; students’ individual differences 238; tests 91; Whole Language approaches 224 teaching 80, 137, 228–229, 254 teamwork 138 Teberosky, A. 145, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166 test score pollution 230–231, 233 texts 63–64, 74, 175; assessment 208, 209; comprehension 251; deep structure of 247–248; selection of 178 thalamus 25, 28–31 Thich Nhat Nahn 107 Tierney, R. 13–14 time 133 Tindal, G. 191 TOEFL study 51

Torrey, J. 254 Townsend, Dave 41 transactional sociolinguistics 77, 160, 204 transfer of learning 229–233, 242 Trueman, M. 176 Tse, L. 54–55 universities 110–111 validity 34, 181, 182–183 vocabulary 13, 50, 52, 189 Von Eye, A. 56 Vygotsky, Lev 27, 77, 144, 161–162, 249–250 Wahlberg, H.J. 177 warrantability 174, 175, 177, 180–181, 182, 183 Watson, Dorothy J. 179, 222, 223 Weaver, P.A. 250 Wertsch, J.V. 63 White, K.R. 180 Whole Language 6, 12–13, 14, 206, 251, 253; evolutionary theory 99; letter/ sound correspondences 170; politics of reading education 215–216, 223–225, 226; teachers’ responses to 252; Vygotskian approach 249 Witton-Davies, G. 52 Wolf, Dennis 62 word processing 11–12 word-recognition 254 Wright, Richard 54 writing 3, 5, 8, 66–67, 118; assessment 208–209; authorship 61, 62–63, 75; bilingual children’s home literacy practices 149–151, 152–153, 154; Bloomfield on 21; early childhood experience 145–146; Hanunóo 86; miscue analysis 2; pedagogization of 74; phrase boundaries 43–44; as political activity 76; psychogenesis 162–169, 170; Vygotsky 249; Whole Language 13, 253 Xu, Jingguo 245 Zeig, J.L. 241 Zhao, Y. 56 Zmach, C. 241 zone of proximal development 154, 161, 165, 241, 249