Causes of Reading Failure #2,305

Via the  Instructivist, I found Sandra Stotsky's article:  Why American Students Do Not Learn to Read Very Well:  The Unintended Consequences of Title II and Teacher Testing

Download S_Stotsky_Reading_at_Risk.pdf   (PDF, 444 KB)

In the paper, Stotsky reviewed the tests given,

to determine whether the tests appear to address three major  components of a research-based approach to reading pedagogy (instruction in phonemic  awareness, phonics, and vocabulary knowledge), the weights attached to knowledge of these  three components, and the quality of the sample questions they provide. 

[snip]  I also analyzed the profiles of the tests required for licensure as a reading teacher, reading  specialist, early childhood teacher, or special education teacher. 

[snip]   Alarmingly, the tests most states  require for licensing special education and early childhood teachers  do not address these  components at all.  In addition, ETS offers a set of pedagogical tests of “principles of teaching  and learning,” required by many states for the initial license of all teachers in addition to a subject  test, that, to judge from its sample questions, seems to denigrate non-constructivist approaches to  pedagogy.      

The findings of this study suggest that even a drastic revision of currently deficient licensure tests  for prospective elementary teachers to ensure they are taught a research-based approach to  reading pedagogy will not be sufficient to guarantee the use of such an approach.  What is needed  is systematic revision of all licensure tests for those who teach children or who supervise or  supplement the work of those who do to make sure that they all promote a research-based  approach to reading pedagogy.      

Ken Goodman on the place of phonics in learning to read (from an article by Paul R. Whiting on Whole Language in Australia)

Whole Language does support the learning of phonics to the extent that phonics is a set of relations between the sound system and the orthographic system of written language. . . .However, there is abundant research to show that direct instruction in phonics is neither necessary nor desirable to produce readers" (Goodman, 1989, p.215). Unfortunately, but characteristically, he does not cite any of this research.

Goodman, K.S. (1989) Whole language research: Foundations and development. Elementary School Journal, 90, pp. 207-221.

Reading the code, reading the whole. (education techniques)
Science News; 2/29/1992; Bower, Bruce  -- a good early introduction to the controversy and the players.

Learning To Read and Whole Language Ideology  by Jeffrey M. Jones, M.D..,Ph.D..  (Undated, but the youngest reference is 1995)--strongly critical of the WL approach

On the nature of whole language education-- a fact sheet from .  Not unbiased, claims WL based on "research".

Rich Gibson's page on whole language philosophy -- deeply supportive; relates WL to Critical Pedagogy and affirms that teaching is a political act.  Also read Paolo Friere and Pedagogy for Social Justice

Rhetoric and Revolution Kenneth Goodman's "Psycholinguistic Guessing Game" (2002)   A Whole Language Catalogue of the Grotesque (2002)   Constructivism in Education: Sophistry for a New Age (1998) and Ed  Schools in Crisis  (2002) by  Martin A. Kozloff

Guided Reading, Whole Language Style by Patrick Groff (undated)

Whole Language Lives On by Luisa Cook Moats (2000)

My favorite, though, is a parody: Golf, the Whole Language Way.

Comments

[JohnL]

Good one, Liz. I'm going to point to it.