The increasing reliance of our educational system on standardized tests has precipitated a national debate. This debate, however, has proceeded with little attention to the tests themselves. This book makes a scholarly contribution to the debate by using the methods of discourse analysis to examine not only representative material from reading tests but also children's responses to it. The book is particularly attentive to the role of culture in shaping children's understanding of what they read.

This book discusses aspects of the theory and practice of qualitative research in the specific context of language and literacy education. It addresses epistemological perspectives, methodological problems, and practical considerations related to research involvements in areas of language education and literacy studies rather than generic issues of other fields of social sciences. The volume starts with Theoretical Considerations in the first part and raises some epistemological and theoretical concerns that are rarely debated in the specific context of research on language and literacy teaching. The second part, Methodological Approaches explores issues of the design and implementation of language and literacy education research within the framework of some of the major established qualitative research traditions. Finally, the part on Research in Action discusses practical aspects of a few actual instances of qualitative research on language and literacy education in different contexts.

The issues of literacy and illiteracy have made their presence felt in every country of the world. Anyone who has explored these issues quickly comes to understand that, because the acquisition of basic literacy is no longer enough, these concerns may never go away entirely. This bibliography is conceived as a starting point for continued research and study in the areas of literacy and illiteracy. Chapter one deals with international and national research in literacy. The international research section is subdivided into sections pertaining to cross-cultural, cross-national, world literacy, and world regional research in literacy. The national research section lists countries alphabetically with the United States being further subdivided into general and state-by-state sections. Illiteracy and UNESCO and literacy in the third world are the subjects of chapters two and three respectively. Cross-referencing is provided by author and subject indexes. This volume provides much-needed access to information on literacy and illiteracy for teaching, research, and planning purposes.

"Reading has a history. But how can we recover it?" This volume brings together original research essays focusing on the history of reading in the British Isles, using evidence ranging from library records to Mass Observation surveys to highlight the social factors that influence a seemingly private, individual activity.

This book offers comprehensive coverage of critical literacies by pursuing a balanced approach to theory, research, and practice. By clarifying the gaps among the frameworks of critical literacies, the author discusses new ways of approaching them from global and multicultural perspectives and provides an instructional model of critical global literacies that draws on her own experience and an extensive literature review. This insightful book also documents teachers' case studies, focusing on their voices and instructional approaches in diverse classrooms. The author critically analyses the case studies and offers important suggestions for future research and practice.

We inhabit a textually super-saturated and increasingly literate world. This volume encourages readers to consider the diverse methodologies used by historians of reading globally, and indicates how future research might take up the challenge of recording and interpreting the practices of readers in an increasingly digitized society.

Addressed to researchers in Applied Linguistics, and to professional teachers working in, or studying teaching and learning processes in, multilingual classrooms, "Critical Reading in Language Education" offers a distinctive contribution to the question of how foreign language learners can be helped to acquire effective literacy in English. At the heart of the book is first-hand classroom research by the author as both teacher and researcher, demonstrating an innovative research methodology and empirical evidence to support a critical reading pedagogy.

This book is a guide to current research and debate in the field of literacies practice and education. It provides both an historical and lifespan view of the field as well as an overview of research methodologies with first-hand examples from a range of researchers involved in literacy research.

In 1911 Cora Wilson Stewart founded the Moonlight Schools in Rowan County, Kentucky, an innovative night program that taught illiterate adults to read. Hoping that 150 people would attend the first classes, Stewart was amazed that over 1,200 men and women enrolled. She quickly developed reading material for these men and women that appealed to them instead of the childrens texts that most educators were using with adults. With the success of the Moonlight Schools, Stewart moved forward in her crusade against illiteracy; she quickly became the most prominent advocate for the cause on both the national and international scene. Stewart took the fight against illiteracy at a time when it was an accepted part of American life. She shocked the nation when she pointed out that 25 percent of the men who signed up for the draft in 1917 could neither read nor write. From her beginnings in the mountains of Kentucky, she went on to chair the Illiteracy Section of the World Conference of Education Associations five times; she founded the National Illiteracy Crusade in 1926. She even received one vote for president at the 1920 Democratic convention. Her crusade came despite the fact she was a victim of domestic abuse who suffered through three failed marriages. Her life reflects the challenges faced by female reformers in the early part of the 20th century.

Bringing together research from a variety of countries and periods, this volume introduces readers to the diverse approaches used to recover the evidence of reading through history in different societies, and asks whether reading practices are always conditioned by specific local circumstances or whether broader patterns might emerge.

A research-based, practical, comprehensive guide to teaching literacy in K-8 classrooms In an era of rigorous standards, Teaching Children to Read provides the essential information and strategies pre-service and new teachers need to help their students develop into capable and confident readers. The importance of the teacher's role is emphasized in every chapter using seven pillars of effective reading instruction: Teacher Knowledge; Classroom Assessment; Evidence-Based Teaching Strategies; Response to Intervention (or Multi-Tiered Systems of Support); Motivation and Engagement; Technology and New Literacies; and Family and Community Connections. Filled with recommendations made by the Institute of Education Sciences' What Works Clearinghouse and links to IRIS Center instructional modules (in Revel (TM)), the 8th Edition provides the research-based tools and knowledge needed to plan and deliver up-to-date, effective reading instruction in today's classrooms. Teaching Children to Read, 8th Edition is also available via Revel, an interactive learning environment that enables students to read, practice, and study in one continuous experience.

"Talking About Literacy" re-examines dominant notions of what literacy is and challenges the reactive solution to the issue of simply teaching the illiterate basic reading and writing skills. The subject of literacy contains enormous emotional and political associations, and the job of literacy educator often involves changing attitudes and challenging prejudices. Adult literacy education means not only teaching courses in "basic skills," or "language support," but also designing strategies which encourage people to see that these courses may meet their own interests--and educating them and others to rethink their own negative attitudes toward "illiteracy."
This book looks in detail at five principles which Jane Mace suggests are central to the education of people who often can read, but wish they could read better; or who can technically write, but have a desire to do so with more expression and coherence. These principles focus on five themes: "context, inquiry, authorship, equality" and "community," which take seriously the view that adult students are writers as well as readers, and that they have an entitlement to be read, as well as to read others.
"Talking About Literacy" relates a set of ideas about literacy and learning to a range of examples from adult education and training, addressing the social contexts in which people read and write, whether for recreation or for academic and vocational purposes. While addressed primarily to those educating adults in the critical and confident use of reading and writing, this book will also be of interest to anyone who wishes to examine underlying assumptions about literacy and illiteracy.

How is a local level democratic organization cultivated so that members, who were previously disenfranchised, are empowered to oppose an oppressive central authority and participate in a revolutionary reconstruction of society? Having spent many years researching this question, Johannes P. Van Vugt applies a model of democratic organization for social change to his findings regarding the way literacy campaigns and Christian Base communities were organized in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Brazil. His study is valuable as an example of a scientific methodology for studying and cultivating democratic organization for social change, and as a clarification of the controversy over the role of specific campaigns and organizations.

Van Vugt approaches his study from an interdisciplinary perspective using a methodology that is qualitative, historical, and comparative. He blends the cultural insights of ethnography with the structural understanding of how ideologies and organizations motivate and mobilize people. His research is based on field studies in Nicaragua; other studies of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Brazil; and theories of democratic organization and social change.

AMIDST THE OTHER religious, political, and technological changes in seventeenth-century England, the ready availability of printed books was the most significant sign of the disappearance of old ways of thinking. The ability to read granted new independence as the interactions between reader, text, and author moved from the public forums of church and court to the privacy and solitude of the home.

Privacy and Print proposes that the emergence of the concept of privacy as a personal right, as the very core of individuality, is connected in a complex fashion with the history of reading. Cecile M. Jagodzinski attempts to recover the experience of readers past by examining representations of reading and readers (especially women) in five genres of seventeenth-century literature: devotional books, conversion narratives, personal letters, drama, and the novel. The discussion ranges from the published letters of Charles I and John Donne to Aphra Behn's Love-Letters between a Nobleman and His Sister and Margaret Cavendish's literary activities. The author examines how the resulting shifts in religious and literary practices due to the printed book influenced the development of the literary canon. She also addresses women's ambiguous roles in print culture, trying to pinpoint how privacy became gendered in the early modern period.

Debates about privacy and individualism still rage in today's computerized society. Jagodzinski's important and well-written book speaks to these present-day concerns and offers a historical example of the effect of new technologies on popular culture.

Feeling exhausted after guided reading? Are you working tirelessly while your students aren't even breaking a sweat? Do you ever wonder if other teachers feels the same way you do about guided reading-that it's not working the way you think it should? You are not alone. There seems to be much confusion surrounding guided reading-the term even means something different from school to school. Now you can turn to the 50 years of collective experience of authors Jan Burkins and Melody Croft to prevent guided reading from going astray in your classroom. Jan and Melody present personal clarifications, adaptations, and supports that have helped them work through their own tricky parts as they guide readers. The book's six chapters each clarify a misunderstanding about guided reading instruction in the following areas: The teacher's role and the gradual release of responsibility Instructional reading level Text gradients Balanced instruction Integrated processing Assessment With 27 strategies, you're sure to find the help you need to work through your own challenges as you guide groups of readers.

This book presents cutting-edge research findings in areas critical to advancing reading research in the 21st century context, including new literacies, reading motivation, strategy instruction, and reading intervention studies. While students' reading performance is currently receiving unprecedented attention, there is a lack of research that adopts an international perspective and draws on research expertise from different parts of the world to present a concerted effort, discussing key research models and findings on how to improve reading education. Addressing this gap in the literature, the book also responds to the challenge of promoting higher levels of literacy, and supporting and developing readers who can enjoy and critique texts of every genre.

This diverse collection of American folktales and true stories showcases the history and lore of the western states. Capturing the spirit of legendary figures like Jim Bridger and Kit Carson and events like the Gold Rush, stories animate American history. Experiencing these tales allows students to enjoy a vibrant aspect of history that is rarely represented and communicated: the hopes, fears, joys, and trials of the people who came before us. The United States of Storytelling: Folktales and True Stories from the Western States contains lore about early pioneers and settlers, Native Americans, and later immigrants of the states west of the Mississippi as well as the Commonwealths and Territories. Each chapter focuses on an individual state and includes approximately six folktales or true stories from that state, plus the date it entered the union. Appropriate for students in third through eighth grade, this guide is specifically suited for children studying the states in grades four through six, serving as a valuable storytime resource as well as a research springboard for these age groups. Features folklore presented by four noted storytellers and scholars Each chapter/state includes a sub-bibliography that lists sources by title; there is also a general bibliography in the back of the book Each chapter/state has its own glossary of terms

Translation and Opposition is an edited volume that brings together cultural and sociological perspectives by examining translation through the prism of linguistic/cultural hybridity and inter/intra-social agency. In a collection of diverse case studies, ranging from the translation of political texts to interpreting in concentration camps, the book explores issues of power struggle, ideology, censorship and identity construction. The contributors to the volume show how translators, interpreters and subtitlers as mediators put their specific professional and ethical competences to the test by treading the dividing lines between constellations of 'in-groups' and cultural or political 'others'.

Millions of descendants of the former colonized and enslaved peoples around the world are now classified as poor readers, bad writers, and slow learners. Are they illiterate or silenced people? Are they global citizens or global outcasts? Drawing from case studies of flesh and blood individuals in Mexico and the U.S., this book questions the colonizing images of the "illiterate", and explores the ways in which the long social history of conquest and colonization, plunder and globalization, is inscribed in the personal histories of today's subjugated people. It argues that rather than "limited literacy skills" they face systematic lack of freedom to speak, act, and make decisions about their own lives. Literacy, thus, is understood as a key practice of voice and citizenship.

The Meaning Makers is about children's language and literacy development at home and at school. Based on the Bristol Study, "Language at Home and at School," which the author directed, it follows the development of a representative sample of children from their first words to the end of their primary schooling. It contains many examples of their experience of language in use, both spoken and written, recorded in naturally occurring settings in their homes and classrooms, and shows the active role that children play in their own development as they both make sense of the world around them and master the linguistic means for communicating about it. Additionally, this second edition also sets the findings of the original study in the context of recent research in the sociocultural tradition inspired by Vygotsky's work and includes examples of effective teaching drawn from the author's recent collaborative research with teachers.

Academic literacy - prepare to learn is different from traditional courses in that it is task-based: it requires of language learners who are developing their academic literacy to do authentic academic tasks and to solve real academic problems. It assumes that telling students about how tasks must be done is never enough - they must be allowed to demonstrate that they can actually do real academic work.

This book joins two important fields, that of literacy and multimodality, with a focus on local and global literacies. Chapters include work on media, popular culture and literacy, weblogs, global and local crossings, in and out of educational settings in such locations as the US, the UK, South Africa, Australia and Canada.

Using literacy practices in the newly independent post-apartheid Namibia as a lens through which to examine the effects of globalisation, this broad case study looks at issues surrounding tourism, state control and the new forces of consumerism. By placing literacy at the centre of an investigation into social and cultural change as experienced by individuals, Papen shows that in times of change, reading and writing are always implicated in structures of power and inequality. The book considers language practices that can exclude some members of Namibian society and also looks at the strategies used by local people to accommodate and even embrace the onward march of global English and the influx of foreign visitors, practices and modes of commerce and interaction.

Teaching Reading and Writing: The Developmental Approach is a comprehensive yet accessible guide to the tools and knowledge pre-service and experienced teachers need to teach literacy in a developmentally-responsive and integrated way-while meeting the diverse needs of students in today's classrooms. Using a conversational tone to present a wealth of critical content, the book helps readers connect theory to practice through vignettes and sample lessons from real classrooms; authentic student work samples; ideas for using and integrating print-based and digital texts across the curriculum; and tools for organizing and managing a comprehensive, developmentally-responsive literacy program.