Balanced Literacy or Systematic Reading Instruction?

The question of how best to teach children to read is the subject of ongoing controversy that, since the latter half of the 20th century, traces its roots to the advent of so-called whole language (WL) instruction (Cambourne, 1988; Goodman, 1987; 2014). WL instruction aligned well with the education...

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Published inPerspectives on language and literacy Vol. 46; no. 1; pp. 35 - 39
Main Author Snow, Pamela
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Baltimore International Dyslexia Association 01.01.2020
Subjects
Children
Children & youth
Curricula
Early Reading
Explicit knowledge
Ideology
Learning
Linguistics
Literacy
Phonics
Postmodernism
Psychology
Reading comprehension
Reading instruction
Reading Skills
Students
Teacher Characteristics
Teacher education
Teaching
Teaching Methods
Writing
United Kingdom > UK
United States > US
Australia
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN1935-1291

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Summary:The question of how best to teach children to read is the subject of ongoing controversy that, since the latter half of the 20th century, traces its roots to the advent of so-called whole language (WL) instruction (Cambourne, 1988; Goodman, 1987; 2014). WL instruction aligned well with the educational Zeitgeist of the 1970s, emphasizing child-led, discovery-based learning with minimal formal instruction provided by teachers. Other important aspects of WL-based educational ideology were the positioning of the classroom teacher as the incontrovertible expert on reading instruction, together with a mistrust of research evidence derived from disciplines with positivist (traditional scientific) orientations, most notably relevant branches of psychology in favor of postmodern approaches which encourage multiple perspectives on meaning in research data (see Snow, 2016).
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ISSN:1935-1291