Reform And Literacy Education

A critical resource for literacy educators and graduate students, this volume investigates key moments in the development of literacy education and provides a much-needed overview of where, when, and how efforts to shape education influence literacy teaching, as well as what literacy educators can do to advocate for themselves, their students, and the profession. Organized around three themes—history, effects, and advocacy—this volume offers a nuanced exploration of the complex issues surrounding literacy education, and suggests coherent approaches to evaluating and understanding the various policies and reform efforts, and their impacts on literacy teaching and learning. Chapter authors draw on a variety of research– and practice-based perspectives to explore the impact of reform on literacy and literacy education, and examine the evolution of literacy education, providing much-needed historical context for shifts in policies and models in the field.

Although the United States Education Mission recommended that the Japanese give serious consideration to the introduction of alphabetic writing, key American officials in the Civil Information and Education Section of GHQ/SCAP delayed and effectively killed action on this recommendation. Japanese advocates of romanization nevertheless managed to obtain CI&E approval for an experiment in elementary schools to test the hypothesis that schoolchildren could make faster progress if spared the necessity of studying Chinese characters as part of non-language courses such as arithmetic. Though not conclusive, the experiment's results supported the hypothesis and suggested the need for more and better testing.

In Closing the Circle, Sean Walmsley offers education practitioners at all levels—district and school administrators, curriculum supervisors, staff developers, literacy coaches, classroom teachers, and special education teachers—a coherent framework along with practical advice for setting K–12 language arts expectations and for effectively guiding instruction, assessment, reporting, and data analysis. Distilled from the author’s extensive experience working with schools and districts, the framework enables educators to prioritize literacy learning and work together more productively to achieve better literacy outcomes for all students. The innovative framework includes five major elements: (1) a set of clearly defined literacy attributes (concise expectations for what students should know, do, understand, and experience in the language arts); (2) instructional contributions that best support students, including struggling learners, in acquiring the attributes; (3) appropriate assessments for tracking students’ progress; (4) reporting practices that clearly explain the progress achieved; and (5) rigorous analysis of data to inform instruction. The model embraces a broad conception of literacy and includes expectations for reading, writing, listening, and speaking as well as viewing and representing, making it especially suitable for learning in the digital era.

Distributed to some depository libraries in microfiche.

"The scope and nature of this account of the modern history of reading/literacy education (especially tied to the aspirational readers) are unique. Enlisting the metaphor of waves, it traces monumental shifts in theory, research and practice related to reading education and literacy that represent developments that verge on revolutionary changes. Each of these waves is accompanied with a discussion of the aspirational reader that sets the stage for contemplating these shifts and their significance. The discussions trace the research and theoretical developments in a fashion that exemplifies the origins of the shifts and their influences"--

Success for All is a comprehensive reform model for elementary school that combines state-of-the-art curriculum, research-based instructional methods, assessments, and professional development with one-to-one tutoring, extensive family support services, and other strategies to ensure that every child is successful in the early grades and then builds on that success throughout the elementary years. Started in 1987, it is the most widely used of all reform designs. It is currently in about 1800 schools serving more than a million U.S. children, mostly in high-poverty schools. It is also the most extensively researched comprehensive reform program, with two dozen evaluations carried out in eight research institutions. Success for All: Research and Reform in Elementary Education is the first edited volume presenting research on Success for All in the U.S. and in five other countries for which the program has been adapted. This book presents a description of Success for All, an overall summary of all achievement studies, reviews of research, original presentations of new research, and discussions of the impacts and the implications of this research and dissemination for educational policy and practice in many arenas.