Introduction

by Jeff Sapp

    Every teacher is a literacy teacher in the sense that they are concerned with the communication of ideas through text.  Consequently, this book is for all educators, because, no matter what age, grade, or subject one teachers, all teachers work from a cornerstone of literacy.

    The articles in chapter one take a historical look at the research on literacy, examining where we started, the studies that have most influenced practices, and the role of research in instructional change.  The authors examine the delicate balances that classroom teachers have to maintain to meet high ecademic standards and inspire and develop a lifelong love of reading in students’ lives.  These first articles are cornerstones that ground the volume in a historical context.

    “No education is politically neutral,” bell hooks (1) once said.  Certainly this is nowhere more evident than in the teaching of reading.  Chapter two focuses on the reading wars - a term so fraught with political, cultural, and social underpinnings that researchers have authored multitudes of volumes to understand its implications.  The articles examine the role of the reading researcher, the scapegoating by policymakers and others outside the field who demand a quick and easy political fix, and the consensus about what actually works in teaching reading.  The articles, in one way or another, ask us all to reflect on a critical question:  Who benefits in regard to the reading wars?

    Chapter three brings together methods that both researchers and practitioners agree work in teaching reading.  The chapter begins with a fascinating article about the pursuit of the illusive perfect method for teaching reading.  John Dewey wrote about the fixation educators have with “either-ors” nearly 70 years ago (2).  Dewey stated that there is experience and then there is education.  For education to be at its best, it needs both the praxis and the action.  Dewey was about pedagogical moderation and balance.  His words still ring true today and nowhere more so than in the politicized arena of literacy.  Researchers and practitioners agree on one thing:  good teachers bring a balanced approach to teaching reading.  In describing what works, this chapter offers some innovative content in the form of articles on brain-compatible learning, theories of human cognition, and the understanding that home culture plays a key role in school success.  Last of all, it offers a global perspective by looking at the research from a nine-country study on how teachers around the world approach teaching students to read.

    Chapter four, which provides an update on where research in the field of emergent literacy has been moving, has a great deal to offer all educators.  Reading instruction is such a large field and involves so many areas that even the experts have a difficult time keeping up with research findings, terminology, theory, and practice.  This comprehensive review of recent research in reading instruction offers what is currently considered state-of-the-art methods, including those that can help struggling readers succeed.

    In their book Literacy:   Reading the Word and the World, Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo call for a few of literacy as a form of cultural politics (3).  They believe that literacy “becomes a meaningful construct to the degree that it is viewed as a set of practices that functions to either empower or disempower people” (4).  Chapter five examines “critical literacy” - using language to exercise power and question the practices of privilege and injustice.  If students are to engage in reading and writing, then educators must meet them in their world and be with them in their struggles.  Combining literacy with social justice and empowerment is a way to make reading relevant to students.

    When people think of teaching reading, they often think of the early elementary grades.  Yet one survey shows that only 40% of adolescents read well enough to maneuver the standard high school textbook (5).  The articles in chapter six look at a much-neglected field of literacy - secondary reading instruction.  What works?  What doesn’t?  How do teachers help unsuccessful high school students transform themselves into readers?  What are the effective instructive practices that work best for middle and high school students?

    The poet Marge Piercy once wrote, “Attention is love, what we must give children, mothers, fathers, pets, our friends, the news, the woes of others.  What we want to change we curse and the pick up a tool.  Bless whatever you can with eyes and hands and tongue.  If you can’t bless it, get ready to make it anew.”  In a time when the pubic has a pathology about teaching reading, when politicians use literacy as their main election platform, and when teachers’ heads are spinning from the sheer effort of trying to keep up with the policy changes demanded of them, it is indeed time to “pick up a tool and make it anew” (6)  Synthesizing the most current thought and research on this most politicized subject, this volume is offered as one such tool.

ENDNOTES:

• 1. bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress:  Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York, Rutledge Press, 1994).
• 2. John Dewey, Experience and Education (New York:  Collier Books, 1938).
• 3. Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo, Literacy:  Reading the Word and the World (Wesport, Conn.:  Bergin and Garvey, 1987).
• 4. Ibid., viii.
• 5. National Center for Education Statistics, The NAEP 1998 Reading Report Card (Washington, D. C.:  U.S. Department of Education, 1999).
• 6. Marge Piercy, Three Women (New York:  Perennial, 1999).

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