Return-Path: <nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id iALE1b113588; Sun, 21 Nov 2004 09:01:37 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 09:01:37 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <DKEOLPOMKNLOKACEJJALAEBLCAAA.hdooley@riral.org> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "Howard Dooley" <hdooley@riral.org> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-ASSESSMENT:740] Re: Balanced Reading Theory X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; Status: O Content-Length: 7156 Lines: 132 Karen -- I really don't have anything to add to the theoreticial discussion your and Mr Demetrion are carrying on. Rather, I am responding to your interesting comments about EFF, about half way through your posting. Your impression couldn't be more wrong. I particularly note that reading and writing are not marginal in EFF; they are, however, one of 16 standards, which within the framework are equal. None of the standards form a core; hence, the wheel. However, individuals may realize that in their lives, at this time, reading or writing are not important to them. They may marginalize them to focus on other standards in the current context of their learning need. Also, your assertion that at least part of EFF's intent is a money-making scheme through an assesment business -- perhaps, someday to be foisted upon the rest of the adult literacy world -- well, that's really a mis-impression. And I find your impression on this point quite ironic, sctually, since one of my and my assessment group's issues with EFF is the lack of assessments -- for the foreseeable future. In particular, the lack of a standardized assessment is a major drawback in the US, since the federal government mandates such from programs to obtain its funding. However, the EFF framework is very much at odds with the standardized assessments recognized by the US government. So, if programs use EFF standards, they still have to use an assessment which isn't aligned with it for a very high-stakes situation. This was part of my EFF questions, put out into the aether last week, but, alas, not finding any way back home... -----Original Message----- From: nifl-assessment@nifl.gov [mailto:nifl-assessment@nifl.gov]On Behalf Of HthKar@aol.com Sent: Saturday, November 20, 2004 10:14 AM To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: [NIFL-ASSESSMENT:730] Re: Balanced Reading Theory Mr Demetrion How come what you say often sounds so sensible? Perhaps it is because you write like an English person and avoid these long slushy sentences with eliptical adjectivals at the end. I am not sure why Scribner uses the word 'cognitive' to descrbe her psychology as she began a piece I read recently by having a go at Descartes, thus implying a monist, determinist and reductionist approach to the human. Since parallels between the 'New (Continuously Improving) literacy studies and behaviourist thinking interest me the reference to Descartes did too. Like Skinner, some of the New Literacy Studies, fascinating as their work is, object to things being described as 'autonomous'. I understand that there are sharp intakes of breath if cognition is mentioned, rather as if one had used the wrong spoon at tea, sorry, dinner. I tried to raise these ideas in a paper not too long ago and was criticised from post modernist perspective for 'not discussion my epistemology'. This still rankles. An English chap called PRing is quite good on all this. Stay away from 'isms' he says. Good for him; I intend to. I thought Sticht accepted that functional context (of which I think there are two sorts) was in part a long-standing piece of common sense known to teachers of initial reading, and one which I would have thought underpinned the use of stories with children, though I know the whole use of literature is now under threat from various quarters including the Australian genre theorists, some of whom argue, being apparently unfamiliar with various religious texts and Greek myths that narrative goes with capitalism. I also thought that Sticht attributed the phrase 'functional context' to Shoemakker, whose name I may have spelled incorrectly. When I lookedat EFF I noticed how very marginal within it all reading and writing seemed to be, and many of the 'skills' reminded me very much of what here in the UK tend to be labelled 'key skills', which have been massively controversial, with much I feel equivocal (in a technical rhetorical kind of sense, not the lying sense) use of words like 'skill'. This gets parodied using Gilbert and Sullivan 'Skills? I've got a little list, I've got a little list.' Of course I cannot speak from experience. I thought that more than anything EFF was basically a framework for assessment, and that the business angle of it was to sell tests. Presumably they will try to market these world wide, or have I got this wrong. Top down and bottom up I can go with, though here we have new standards with 'middle' and there is very little integrative since to go with the systems performative way of doing things that is fashionable people are bringing in smart targets based on the list(S) of bullet points about which I have probably moaned on this forum before. As for phonics, I have got more into the pile of second hand linguistics books I have acquired and discovered more deeply that there is no such thing and this explains a lot that just an awareness derived from trying to teach kids with regional accents to read using phonics gave me. Not that I think that it is helpful to make teachers of English as a first language learn the phonetic alphabet though it might help ESOL teachers, haven't done enough basic ESOL to be able to have tried it. And why neo Vygotskian? What was wrong with the old stuff? It's about linguistic determinism, isn't it?? I have recently been turning to an idea I was given many years ago when I first trained, and the idea of this is to save me from death as a teacher of English by discrete bullet point. We were told that Bruner argued that you could and should teach any subject in an intellectually honest way from the start. Since, it seems to me, though I am aware that some people, including Skinner, would argue with this, language is nota set of discrete bits, but has structures and levels which are interrelated as a system, then it is highly unhelpful to confuse even beginning learners by using lists of discrete bullet points, which are to be ticked off one by one as evidence for them is collected, as if one was working with one of those NVQ type qualifications, with them. Teaching learners something of the truth about language would also, I think, help some of them understand some ofits difficulties. If people learned to read and write as naturally as they learned to speak, which some of the neo whatevier anti-state education people seem to be arguing, those who object to 'schooling', then I certainly would not be facing adults who find it difficult to read. i think one thing suggested by Scribner's work in Liberia, fascinating as it is, is that none of the differing sub-cultures described left literacy to emerge by osmosis; it was taught in each of them. I would also question whether, since they devised different assessment tools for each of the cultures, it is valid to make comparisons between results obtained on such different instruments,I cannot recall now whether their actual methods attempted to deal with this. I also recall that metacognition seemed to emerge in the cultures they studied. This was interesting too. There is a lot of stuff here about strong and weak theories of situated learning, which makes sense.
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