Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (1998) / Chapter Skim
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9. The Agents of Change
9. The Agents of Change
Pages 277-312
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From page 277... ...
We therefore give teachers and teacher education the most detailed treatment in this chapter on agents of change. We also consider the ways that federal, state, and local education agencies, publishers, and mass media have an impact on the issues.
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From page 278... ...
· Opportunities for children likely to experience difficulties in becoming fluent readers to be identified and to participate in effective prevention programs. · Opportunities for children experiencing difficulties in becoming fluent readers to be identified and to participate in effective intervention and remediation programs, well integrated with ongoing good classroom instruction.
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From page 279... ...
Programs for teachers' professional development often flounder, lacking a strong apprenticeship system and hobbled by the course-by-course approach in college education. They cannot meet the challenge inherent in trying to prepare teachers for highly complex and increasingly diverse schools and classrooms; the challenge of keeping abreast of current developments in research and practice once teachers begin to teach; the complexity of the knowledge base itself, which often appears to support conflicting positions and recommendations; and the difficulty of learning many of the skills required to enact the knowledge base, particularly to work with those children having the most difficulties.
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From page 280... ...
Little systematic attention has been paid to in-service education and other options for professional development for preschool teachers. There are, however, some thought-provoking programs for preparing people to focus on literacy with preschool children, and they raise interesting problems.
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From page 281... ...
Only given more extended collaborative work between the institute staff and the Head Start teachers were such problems ironed out and the new approaches refined for maximum value for literacy support. McLane and McNamee came to recognize that the teachers valued oral language artistry and creatively provided occasions for children to develop it.
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From page 282... ...
In contrast, in a position paper on teacher preparation the Orton Dyslexia Society takes the following position on requirements for preschool teachers (1997:16)
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From page 283... ...
Given the severe constraints on the amount of time that can be dedicated to any one topic in a teacher education program, teacher preparation must be seen as a career-long continuum of development. In other words, learning to become a successful teacher -- of reading or any other subject -- cannot be seen as the consummate function of an undergraduate program or a fifth-year credential program.
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From page 284... ...
Some of the knowledge base can be acquired in general college education, before a concentration in teacher preparation. Other aspects are the more specific knowledge and skills that should be organized as course work and practicum experiences for teacher education.
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From page 285... ...
THE AGENTS OF CHANGE 285 to page and and of next uses command reading use in on Readers language and various master the principle continued written and Become Opportunity of appreciation to explore grasp Child to them. to alphabetic writing.
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From page 286... ...
286 PREVENTING READING DIFFICULTIES IN YOUNG CHILDREN the in in to language meet printed that and and to success writing. experience to prevention and write enhance skills and contexts and likely identified and be effective understanding read reading Opportunity to in of enthusiasm to by develop experience children Child to meta-cognitive to for For (3)
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From page 287... ...
THE AGENTS OF CHANGE 287 to and well intervention experiencing identified programs, classroom be effective to in with children for remediation (6) difficulties participate and integrated instruction.
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From page 288... ...
Teacher candidates must also acquire an understanding of the alphabetic principle and the ways in which oral and written language contrast and support each other as children emerge into literacy and begin to process written language to read and write. The future teacher's child development study must focus on oral language development, emergent literacy development, and the interaction of development and instruction affecting the processing of alphabetic print and getting meaning from it.
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From page 289... ...
The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (1996) recently issued yet another scathing indictment, calling the state of teacher preparation "a great national shame." In a review of the literature on professional growth among pre-service and beginning teachers, Kagan (1992:162)
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Continuing professional development should build on the preservice education of teachers, strengthen teaching skills, increase teacher knowledge of the reading process, and facilitate the integra
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From page 291... ...
The content, context, and quality of in-service professional development vary greatly from school district to school district; Calfee and Drum, in The Handbook of Research on Teaching (third edition, 1986) describe the situation as chaotic.
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From page 292... ...
. Quality professional development integrates knowledge and skill development: meaningful intellectual substance explicating theories from sources both inside and outside teaching can be tailored effectively to the context, experience, and needs of the particular teachers by providing demonstrations and opportunities for practice and feedback (Little, 1993; Monroe and Smith, 1985; Joyce and Showers, 1988)
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From page 293... ...
Box 9-3 presents an example. Guidelines and Standards for Teacher Education To prevent reading difficulties among children, professional development for teachers should attend to all the elements of teacher knowledge presented in Table 9-1.
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From page 294... ...
With respect to early reading, NCATE has curriculum guidelines for early childhood education, elementary education, and advanced programs for reading education. While there is nothing in the guidelines contrary to the needs for teacher preparation listed in Table 9-1, it is worrisome to note the lack of specification about the details of knowledge of written and oral language and ways to teach reading.
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From page 295... ...
The Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) provides a way for states to work cooperatively to formulate policies to reform teacher preparation and licensing.
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Teachers Providing Special Services An important part of a school's program for preventing reading difficulties is the teachers who have responsibilities and specific expertise for supporting and teaching children identified for special services. This includes not only special education teachers but also those who work with children identified on the basis of limited English proficiency or economic background, as well as those taking a specialist role with respect to reading instruction and the prevention of, or intervention in, reading difficulties.
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From page 297... ...
Teachers of language-minority students need additional professional development services: · If students are in a bilingual education program where they are learning to read in a non-English language, teachers must have an understanding, accompanied by strategies and techniques, for teaching children to read in that language. For alphabetic languages, such as Spanish, many of the same principles that are valid in English
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From page 298... ...
3. Supervised practice in teaching reading Training Requirements for Reading Specialists, Resource Room/Special Education Personnel [The above 3 areas plus]
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From page 299... ...
The federal government provides leadership, resources, and incentives, but in the United States, jurisdiction over education is a state and local matter. States Any current effort to prevent reading difficulties occurs in the context of systemic reform, the term used to describe state initiatives begun in the last decade to improve education.
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From page 300... ...
In this section, we focus on three primary areas in which states are especially pivotal for providing both support and pressure to raise achievement and to minimize reading problems: curriculum standards, teaching capacity, and textbook approval procedures. Curriculum Standards Ideally, standards are an important step to ensuring educational equity within and across schools, school districts, and states and for communicating with publishers and teacher education institutions about what the state wants.
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From page 301... ...
Building Teaching Capacity States have traditionally had the responsibility for overseeing institutions that organize pre-service teacher education as well as for licensing individual teachers. Changes are under way in several states on both fronts, but few have developed sufficiently to be evaluated.
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From page 302... ...
California's performance was among the lowest in the nation, and it was one of a handful of states that had significantly declined in the reading proficiency of its students. Although there continues to be disagreement over the role played by the 1987 language arts framework in California's reading score decline, pub lic and political pressure to change the direction of reading instruction mounted.
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Without special provisions, a reform curriculum for children or teacher preparation can flounder in the face of inappropriate books in classrooms. State approval or failure to approve books influences their production as well.
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Ideally, state curriculum standards and textbook adoption would be synchronized. Texas recently required publishers to develop textbooks that meet the state standards if they wish to have their materials adopted by the state, and this requirement will apply to its reading language arts standards.
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From page 305... ...
The various state standards and benchmarks related to reading, for example, can each be available for other states to learn from because of the coordinating efforts of a regional education laboratory. A third role of the federal government, with respect to preventing reading difficulties, is the stimulation and support of research not only by the U.S.
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From page 306... ...
Government-sponsored projects that produce brochures, posters, and public service announcements make information about reading available in a variety of venues. Recent notable efforts include Learning to Read/Reading to Learn (Office of Special Education Programs and the National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators)
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From page 307... ...
On one hand, teachers may not know or have adequate opportunity to learn what they need to know to use the materials adequately; on the other hand, curriculum designers may not know or have the opportunity to learn about the ways that curriculum materials fit into the complex concrete situation that teachers face every day. It is the interplay between professional development and materials development that holds the key.
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From page 308... ...
Publishers making a productive connection between materials development and professional development would have to do research on teachers and students (i.e., support or at least use it) , as Ball and Cohen (1996)
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From page 309... ...
By giving up the fiction that the published materials are the only influence on the curriculum actually delivered in classrooms, published materials could have a more productive effect on it. If states and districts insist that the content of reading textbooks for children correspond to standards based on the principles in this report, and if publishers develop materials with more interaction with the customers, the fact that the text materials influence the
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From page 310... ...
We focus on four areas as illustrations: news, public service announcements, special activities for educators, and special activities for children. News about reading and preventing reading difficulties can contribute to the public dialogue that is an important part of restructuring schools for high-quality student learning (Newmann and Wehlage, 1995)
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From page 311... ...
. Another study followed children for three years and found that those who viewed Sesame Street frequently at an early age had an advantage in vocabulary, letter and word recognition, and school readiness, even when the child's language skill and home background factors were controlled for; furthermore, 6- and 7-year-olds who had viewed Sesame Street more frequently when they were younger had better reading comprehension scores in first or second grade
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From page 312... ...
. CONCLUSION Central among the implementation issues we raise is teacher preparation and continuing professional development, but we cannot ignore the fact that many parts of society, from parents and community to the federal government, publishers, and the media should also take responsibility for bringing about change in the state of reading education.
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