Learning about Literacy: A 30-Year Journey By P Learning about Literacy: A 30-Year Journey By P. David Pearson & Diane Stephens Presented by Pat Edwards & Hakim Shahid Edu 707 Dr J. McEneaney

Purpose To journey through the historical facets of various interdisciplinary perspectives in order to better understand their individual impact on reading education

Reading Genesis The Way Things Were Mid -1960s Graphic symbols translated to an oral code No difference between oral and written language comprehension Reading considered a perceptual process vs. a language process Teaching emphasized discrimination among visual symbols and their translation to a verbal code Teaching approaches reflected this view - Phonics and whole word instruction

The Journey Begins Mid – late 1960s INTERDISCIPLINARY QUEST

Major Theoretical Changes Changes in the theoretical paradigm over past three decades are captured like this: Anderson, Richard C. & Gaffney, Janet S., (2000) Trends in Reading Research in United States: Changing Intellectual Currents Over Three Decades, Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. III, (Chapter 5 pp. 53-73) Behaviorist Cognitive Sociocultural Trends in reading associated with: Large scale social, economic, and political developments Developments in cognate fields General developments with the work of organizational theorists

Linguistic Perspective Charles Fries “Linguistics and Reading” (1963) * Societies represent key features of their oral language in written language (i.e. phonemes, juncture, italics, boldface type, underlining) * Inferred normal language processes are not represented in the written language Noam Chomsky, “Syntactic Structures”, “Aspects of the Theory of Syntax” (1965) * Language comprehension could not be explained by stringing together meanings of adjacent words * Humans are born “wired” to acquire language * Language acquired easily and normally through exposure to their environment

Psycholinguistic Perspective

Derivational Theory of Complexity Grammatical transformations needed to get from the surface structure of a sentence to its underlying deep structure was an index of difficulty we experience to understand the sentence

Kenneth S. Goodman “A Linguistic Study of Cues and Miscues in Reading” “A Psycholinguistic Guessing Game” Reading errors give insight into the inner working of their comprehension processes Replaced term “oral reading error” with “miscue” Context aids comprehension A three cue system to make sense of text Syntactic – word order Semantic - meaning cues to predict Graphophonemic – knowledge of sound symbol relationships Use of all cueing systems increases word identification and comprehension

Frank Smith “Understanding Reading” Reading not taught; one learned to read from reading Skilled readers make use of prior knowledge Readers rely minimally on visual information Reading is a matter of making informed predictions Reading is a constructive process; readers make sense of what they read based upon what they already know

Influence of the Psycholinguistic Perspective on the field of reading: Encouraged the value of literacy experiences that focused on meaning Emergent readers use their knowledge of language to predict words and meanings Increased appreciation of students’ efforts as readers; errors helped teachers to focus on reading strategies Linked oral and written language acquisition Affected views of teaching and learning – not focused on prerequisite skills but on what can be done to help child as a reader

Cognitive Psychology Perspective

Story Grammar Structural account of the nature of narratives and how it enhances human story comprehension.

Expository Text Structural account of the nature of informational texts and how it enhances human story comprehension.

Schema The structure of human knowledge as it is represented in memory via informational context.

Sociolinguistic Perspective

Dialect and Reading Dialect constituted a well- developed linguistic system complete with rules for variations from standard English.

Reading as a Social Process Community and culture play key roles in shaping the learning processes in children.

Reading Revelations

a. Advanced cognitive flexibility b. Reader-document interaction c. Political-based reading education d. ?????