Historical Perspective on Reading Research

A Historical Perspective on Reading Research and Practice.  Alexander, Patricia A. and Emily Fox.  Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (5^th ed.).  2004 International Reading Association.

I didn’t have too much trouble or frustration reading this chapter.  I think that is because I’m familiar with a lot of the academic history that is discussed, and it was interesting to learn how reading studies and theory developed along with everything else.

One problem that I had was just that it was long, and as I spent most of Saturday reading for this class and another, as well as taking notes and preparing an annotated bibliography, by the time I got to the last section I was quite tired.  The next day, when I went to write up my notes, I noticed that the parts I’d highlighted in the last section were not necessarily the most salient points, and had to re-read that part of the chapter to be able to outline the points in an understandable way.

 

Conditioned Learning 1950-1965

Skinnerism:

·         Processes and skills necessary to read could be broken down into parts, which could be practiced and reinforced in the classroom.

·         A medical metaphor for reading: diagnosis, prescription, remediation

·         Reading as conditioned behavior, not growth or development

o   Learning came from repeated and controlled stimulation which elicited a predictable response with no cognitive involvement.

Rival views:

o   William James (1890) reading is a mindful habit

o   Gestalt Theory: understanding phenomena as a whole; Chall (1967): whole word recognition

Natural Learning 1966-1975

Advances in neurology and AI turned attention back inside the human mind

Chomsky:

·         Language acquisition (so, reading) is “hard wired”

o   Learning is a natural process

o   Humans born with a preexisting template guiding language use

o   Learning to read was an inherent ability

o   Learner is active, a constructor of meaning

Sociolinguistic: Labov and Shuy

·         Language of kids growing up in different social settings vs the language demanded in school started to become more important

Rival views

·         Similar views, but not necessarily hard wired—so machines can be programmed to use language

Information processing 1976-1985

·         Little regard for innateness and little interest in keeping all fields unified

·         Focus on the individual mind

·         cognitive psychology dominates

o   exploring the construct of prior knowledge, which is powerful, pervasive, individualistic, modifiable

·         Text based learning was about knowledge which was organized within the individual mind

·         Searched for general laws that explained human language as interaction between symbol system and mind

·         Mechanistic info processing metaphor

·         Schema Theory: building blocks of cognition

·         Students’ knowledge could be modified through intervention, training or explicit instructions

o   Text processing strategies: summarization, mapping, self questioning, predicting

·         Rival view: Rosenblatt: learner’s response to a literary work falls along a continuum

o   efferent <- - ->aesthetic

o   efferent: focus on learning and what happens after the reading

o   Aesthetic: enjoyment of reading where reader gets “lost” in the literature

Sociocultural Learning 1986-1995

·         New interest in ethnographic and qualitative modes of inquiry

·         Naturally occurring texts in natural settings

·         More holistic  and aesthetic

·         Teacher as facilitator

·         The outcome of learning less important than the process

o   Two extreme views

§  Knowledge from school is an oppressive tool of political and cultural authorities seeking to maintain dominance

§  Or schooled knowledge as the currently agreed-on interpretation of a reality that is essentially unknowable

·         Formal or schooled knowledge as less important

§  Schooled is of limited relevance thus limited value of students

§  Unschooled is concrete and personal, so more relevant

·         Group more important than individual learning

·         Learning as a sociocultural collaborative experience in a learning community

·         Increased sophistication of the conception of knowledge

o   Multitude of “knowledges” which have to be coordinated in the performance of any literacy act

o   One's existing knowledge could actually impede learning/development

·         Terms: learning communities, socially shared cognition, distributed cognition, guided participation, anchored instruction

Engaged Learning 1996-present

·         New interest in:

o   Hypertext and hypermedia; nonlinear text

o   Classroom discourse and its role in students’ development.

o   Motivation

·         Student seen as an engaged or motivated reader

·         Shift away from studying just kids or struggling readers to all ages and abilities

·         Engaged:

o   Not just traditional texts but all texts a student encounters

o   Students’ meaningful and goal-directed participation

o   Both individualistic and collective

o   Strategic processing again important

§  Learning strategies for reading

o   Readers are continually developing, even into adulthood

o   Reading is cognitive, aesthetic AND sociocultural

·         Our understanding of how students learn by alternative forms is still “emergent”

o   Literacy researchers may need to reconsider fundamental concepts such as learning, memory and strategic processing