Sensationalism, politics, and literacy: What's going on?

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 79, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 301-304

  Flippo, Rona F ^a,b  

^a Department of Reading Education ^*  (United States)

^b School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 24944499031     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (10)

1. Nellie S. Huang, 'The New Math: Home vs. School," Smart Money, December 1996, p. 128.
2. Standards of Program Quality and Effectiveness for Professional Teacher Internship Programs for Multiple and Single-Subject Teaching Credentials with a (Bilingual) Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development (CLAD/BCLAD) Emphasis (Sacramento: California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, 1996), pp. 3-4.
3. Jeff McQuillan, "Whole Language Not to Blame in California," letter to the editor, Reading Teacher, December/January 1996/97, p. 32.
4. Christina Duff, "ABCeething: How Whole Language Became a Hot Potato in and out of Academia," Wall Street Journal, 30 October 1996, pp. A-1., A-10.
5. Laurel S. Walters, "As Reading Scores Plummet, States Get Hooked on Phonics," Christian Science Monitor, 18 April 1996, pp. 1, 4.
6. Dan French, 'The Debate on Curriculums for Massachusetts Schools: Reform Is Undercut in Favor of Ideology," Boston Globe, 14 January 1997, p. A-15.
7. The main philosophies that these experts are often associated with can be categorized under three broad headings, as explained in Theodore L. Harris and Richard E. Hodges, eds., The Literacy Dictionary: The Vocabulary of Reading and Writing (Newark, Del.: International Reading Association, 1995), p. 256. First, the "whole-language" philosophy (sometimes called "reader-based" or "holistic" or "top-down") is a theoretical point of view that sees "reading comprehension [as beginning) with and ... controlled by the experiences and expectations that the reader brings to text." Second, the "traditional" philosophy (sometimes called "text-based" or "specific skills" or "bottom-up") is a theoretical point of view that sees "reading comprehension [as beginning] with and ... controlled by the text, as in letter and text decoding." And third, the "interactive" philosophy (sometimes called "integrated") is a theoretical perspective that sees "reading comprehension [as involving] both the accurate, sequential processing of text and the experiences and expectancies that the reader brings to the text, each acting on and modifying the other."
8. P. David Pearson, "Six Ideas in Search of a Champion: What Policymakers Should Know About the Teaching and Learning of Literacy in Our Schools," Journal of Literacy Research, vol. 28, 1996, pp. 302-9.
9. Jack Cassidy and Judith K. Wenrich, "What's Hot, What's Not for 1997," Reading Today, February/ March 1997, p. 34.
10. More details and information on this study and its findings will be available in the forthcoming books, What Do the Experts Say? Contexts and Practices for Classroom Reading (Heinemann) and Reading Researchers in Search of Common Ground (publisher under negotiation).