Contemporary Readings In Literacy Education

Contemporary Readings in Literacy Education is designed to provide students with high-quality journal and research articles in literacy education. The readings are contextualized with introductions and discussion questions by the editors of the text. The text will help instructors to easily integrate the latest research into their course in a meaningful way. This reader, with edited content and contextualizing material, makes the latest research more interesting and accessible to the students of literacy education.

Contemporary Readings in Curriculum provides beginning teachers and educational leaders with a series of articles that can help them build their curriculum knowledge base. [This book] provides a historical context of the curriculum field, giving educators a solid foundation for curriculum knowledge; describes the political nature of curriculum and how we must be attentive to the increasingly diverse populations found in our schools; connects the readings to traditional course goals, providing practical applications of curriculum topics; covers cocurricular issues, which have become a major contemporary topic within school systems; enhances the articles with a strong pedagogical framework, including detailed Internet references, questions for each article, topic guides tying each article to course topics, and article abstracts for the instructor. --Publisher description.

With contributions from leading international researchers, Contemporary Perspectives on Reading and Spelling offers a critique of current thinking on the research literature into reading, reading comprehension and writing. Each paper in this volume provides an account of empirical research that challenges aspects of accepted models and widely accepted theories about reading and spelling. This book develops the argument for a need to incorporate less widely cited research into popular accounts of written language development and disability, challenging the idea that the development of a universal theory of written language development is attainable. The arguments within the book are explored in three parts: overarching debates in reading and spelling reading and spelling across languages written language difficulties and approaches to teaching. Opening up the existing debates, and incorporating psychological theory and the politics surrounding the teaching and learning of reading and spelling, this edited collection offers some challenging points for reflection about how the discipline of psychology as a whole approaches the study of written language skills. Highlighting ground-breaking new perspectives, this book forms essential reading for all researchers and practitioners with a focus on the development of reading and spelling skills.

This text is concerned with contemporary attitudes and approaches to the teaching of literacy, children's literature and other non-book texts and media. Based on research from the UK, the USA and Europe it makes a contribution to theory and practice.

Literacies, Literature and Learning: Reading Classrooms Differently attends to pressing questions in literacy education, such as the poor quality of many children’s experiences as readers, routine disregard for their thinking and the degrading impact of narrow skills measurement and comparison. This cutting-edge book moves beyond social, psychological and scientific categories that focus on individualistic and linear notions of the knowing subject; of progress and development; and of child as less than fully human. It adopts a posthumanist framework to explore new perspectives for teaching, learning and research. Authors from diverse disciplines and continents have collaborated to interrogate the colonising characteristics of humanism and to imagine a different – more just - reading of a literacy classroom. Questions of de/colonisation are tackled through the exploration of both education and research practices that seek to de-centre the human and include the more than human. Inspired by an example of high quality children’s literature, playful philosophical teaching and the power of the material, the authors show how the chapters diffract with one another, thereby opening up radical possibilities for a different doing of childhood. The book hopes to help transform adult-child relationships in schools and universities. As such, it should be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the areas of literacy, philosophy, law, education, the wider social sciences, the arts, health sciences and architecture. It should also be essential reading for teacher educators and practitioners around the world.

This issues reader presents current information on critical trends and developments in literacy education to help teachers choose and articulate their own informed approach to reading education. Now in its Fourth Edition,Issues and Trends in Literacy Educationcontinues to present a wide variety of opinions and positions in all crucial aspects of reading and writing education. This new edition includes up-to-date discussions on current topics such as fluency, the use of technology in reading, and multicultural literacy, among others. Renowned authors Dick Robinson, Mike McKenna, and Judy Wedman gear students to success by presenting scrupulously researched material that meets the NCATE/International Reading Association requirements for accreditation of graduate reading programs. A Letter to Students from the Authors Dear Reader, The authors of this literacy education textbook welcome you to the study of this important aspect of instruction. You are probably quite aware of the many current controversial topics in literacy such as assessment, the use of technology, and approaches to the teaching of reading skills. This new edition ofIssues and Trends in Literacy Educationwas organized around a number of the most critical questions in the current field. Articles in each of these areas were selected primarily on the basis of providing you, the reader, with the latest information as well as varying opinions on a wide variety of literacy topics. One of the primary goals of this book is for you to use these readings as a “springboard” for further investigation in topics that interest you related to effective literacy instruction. Each of the chapters includes a selection of related readings for additional study in a particular area of reading education. These can be used for in-depth study as well as a basis for personal research and writing of related class papers and presentations. The field of literacy education is a rapidly expanding and changing area in education. We hope you find the materials in this book to be both challenging and interest as you continue your study of this field. Thank you, Dick Robinson Mike McKenna

This volume identifies and critically analyzes research studies related to the critical skills, environments, and adult interactions that contribute to young children’s literacy development. The volume reminisces on the reformation that has emerged in the language and literacy education of young children. Prior to the 1960's, few studies were available on pre?first?grade literacy. Then studies began to emerge in the 1960's focusing on the reading readiness paradigm and on the conventional assumption that literacy development was only introduce and when children experienced formal reading instruction in school (Sulzby & Teale, 1986). Fortunately, Durkin (1966) found that there were children reading before first grade and determined that the reading readiness paradigm was theoretically and pragmatically incongruous. Others followed Durkin’s footsteps. Sulzby and Teale (1986) identify the following concepts about young children’s acquisition of literacy learning: 1. Literacy development originates well before children are introduced to formal instruction. 2. The notion that reading precedes writing or that writing precedes reading is a fallacy. 3. Literacy blooms in "real?life" settings and by performing real?life activities that are used to "get things done." 4. The purposes of literacy for young children are as important in learning about writing and reading as are the dimensions of literacy. 5. Children’s cognitive development is important to their acquisition of literacy during the years from birth to six. 6. Children learn written language when they actively engage in their world. Competent teachers throughout the United States suggest that prior to attending school, children have acquired a distinctive culture, collection of experiences, and group of abilities (Vacca & Vacca, 2000). Many prekindergarten children have been in a group setting for three and four years such as a child care setting where teachers and caregivers teach them reading and writing.

This unit is about cultural relevance and getting teens to fall in love with books that are deeply meaningful to the lives they are living right now. The unit will introduce young people to some of the great writers of their generation, the writers who are writing for them, and will create powerful opportunities for teens to share their voices, and find their places, in school and in the world. Across the unit, readers will: Deepen their comprehension, studying summaries and reviews in preparation for reading and developing their own analytical summarising techniques; Consider transactional reading practices, identifying the ways that readers bring their own identities to a text and the ways that these identities shape their responses; Be innovative in their writing about reading, annotating and taking longer-form notes in reading notebooks to engage more deeply with texts and other readers; Investigate power dynamics, power systems, and sources of power through theoretical lenses; Become literacy activists, learning to speak seriously and passionately about books they choose to read and recommend to book club peers. The goal of this unit is to teach contemporary literature in a way that empowers our students as democratic readers and thinkers, and young activists. The Units of Study for Teaching Reading series saves teachers hundreds of hours of planning, freeing time for analysing student work, working with individuals and small groups, and for studying with colleagues. The series provides teachers with the tools and support they need to move students quickly and efficiently toward grade-level expectations, while also helping kids become proficient, lifelong readers.