Beginning To Read And The Spin Doctors Of Science
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Beginning to Read and the Spin Doctors of Science
Suggesting that the contention that phonemic awareness must be taught directly and that children need explicit systematic instruction in phonics is less of a scientific "fact" than an exercise in political persuasion, this book presents the story of the political campaign that is taking place to change the minds of Americans about how young children learn to read. The book begins with a close look at the empirical research being used to support a massive shift in the national understandings about language, literacy, and learning and concludes by revealing the ways in which research studies on early reading instruction are being used by the federal and state governments to support a new methodology that has turned early reading instruction into "a massive business of unprecedented commercial worth." The chapters in the book are: (1) In Which We Are Told Training in Phonemic Awareness Is the Key to Reading Success; (2) In Which Phonemic Awareness Research Is Analyzed from an Experimental Psychological Perspective; (3) In Which Phonemic Awareness Research Is Analyzed from a Sociocultural Perspective; (4) In Which We Find Foorman's Research Does Not Support the NICHD [National Institute of Child Health and Human Development] Proposition That "Phonological Processing Is the Primary Area Where Children with Reading Difficulties Differ from Other Children"; (5) In Which Teachers Are Turned into Clerks and We Discuss Power, Privilege, Racism and Hegemony; (6) In Which Governor Bush's Business Council Holds a Pre-Summit Meeting in Texas; (7) In Which We Have an"If-They-Say-It's-So-It-Must-Be-So" Attitude toward Experimental Research; (8) In Which the Kindergarten Children in North Carolina Are No Longer Expected To Try To Read and Write; (9) In Which I Become the Documentation on Which I Build My Case; (10) In Which We Are Told That in America We Are All Equal. Are We or Aren't We?; (11) In Which We Find the Desks and Chairs Are Broken and the Toilets Don't Work; (12) In Which We Ask: Do You Think America Likes Children?; (13) In Which We Consider If We Are Comfortable Mandating Reading Programs based on Neuroimaging Research and Genetic Studies of Reading Disabilities; (14) In Which California Politically Reinvents How Young Children Learn To Read; (15) In Which California Ends Local Control and the State Board of Education Leads the Jihad; and (16) In Which We Enter the Central Chamber of the Hegemonic Labyrinth. (Contains approximately 250 references; an appendix that offers a response to preliminary statistical analyses used to support the nationally publicized findings of the NICHD Houston reading studies, and an appendix that offers "late-breaking" news about the NICHD Houston reading studies are attached.) (RS)
Reading Across International Boundaries
Reading Across International Boundaries, edited by Roger Openshaw and Janet Soler, clearly demonstrates these broader characteristics of debates about the teaching of reading. It sets the educational issues firmly in the context of the social, cultural and political dynamics that inform and animate them and give them their meaning. It does so by setting out to understand their historical and comparative dimensions. Establishing the historical context highlights the origins and also the longevity of the problems and conflicts that are now widely familiar. The comparative approach also gives purchase on the wide range of approaches taken to these issues in nations around the world. More than this, however, this collection takes us into the realm of international influences. It underlines how debates in this area are not simply national, but are international and global in their scale. Moreover this is the case not only in relation to the broad fabric of policy debate, but also in the everyday struggles of pupils, parents and teachers in schools, classrooms and homes. Such an agenda is unsettling and provocative. It has the potential to challenge received opinion, to hustle preconceptions. It may also propose alternative visions for the improvement of teaching in this area that might be taken up and taken seriously in different localities or even more broadly. Most of all, it enables us to enrich and broaden our understanding of the learning and the teaching of reading at a time when awareness and vision are sorely needed. This collection of articles by leading scholars based in several different countries will be a significant contribution to the research field, but also a major resource when put to good use by policy makers and practitioners, as it should surely be.
An Introduction to Critical Discourse Analysis in Education
Accessible yet theoretically rich, this text introduces key concepts and issues in critical discourse analysis and situates these within the field of educational research. Beyond providing a useful overview, it contextualizes CDA theories and methods in accounts of discourse in classroom and other settings.