Literacy and Reading

In the Renaissance, Europe experienced the beginnings of a profound transformation from restricted to mass literacy. In 1500 very few people could read and write, but by 1800 a majority of adults in northwestern Europe were literate. This entry outlines the special nature of early modern literacy; it charts the changing social and geographical distribution of literacy in early modern Europe; and it offers explanations and an assessment of the importance of this complex development.

The Skills of Literacy

Early modern literacy was made up of several skills, which are best seen as bands in a spectrum of communication rather than discrete categories. Reading of print or writing was possible at two levels. Some people could decipher texts, read them aloud, and memorize them in a mechanical or ritual way—although their personal understanding may have been questionable. We should not exaggerate the understanding and facility of those who possessed this intermediate or semiliteracy. Those with better education and a deeper immersion in printed and written culture could comprehend the text with greater precision, reading and thinking silently to themselves. They could understand new texts as well as familiar ones. However, "reading" was not restricted to written or printed words alone. People could gather information and ideas from looking: interpreting pictures and prints in broadsheets and "chapbooks" (pamphlets) or watching and participating in plays and processions. Gesture remained a subtle and important form of nonverbal communication.

If they wanted to transmit their own thoughts other than through speech, people had to learn to write, or rather compose—an advanced skill that required considerable training and practice and that effectively marked "full" literacy for most people. The other, more common, level of writing was in fact copying: writing without necessarily understanding. It was at this stage that people learned to sign their names on documents, and this ability is commonly used as an indicator that someone could read and understand printed and written texts in the vernacular, the language of everyday life. In other words, he or she was well along the road to "full" literacy. A small minority of men and a handful of women could also copy or compose in Latin, the international language of learning throughout the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the early modern period, or in another pan-European language like French. Even those who had none of these skills were not culturally isolated, for they could listen—hear a priest's sermons or a friend reading aloud, participate actively or passively in discussions with their peers. The way to understand literacy in early modern Europe is to assess the access that people had to the different bands in the spectrum and the ways they used them.

The ability to read and write was a function of access to schooling, demand for basic learning, and prevailing social and cultural attitudes to literacy. Commercial, religious, administrative, and intellectual "revolutions" of the fifteenth century onward enhanced the supply of education and fueled a growing demand for instruction. The chances of being educated and of acquiring literacy depended on a wide variety of factors in historic Europe. Wealth, sex, inheritance laws, projected job opportunities, employment for children, even the language a person spoke in everyday life—all played their part. Thus literacy grew because of "push" and "pull" factors. For example, there was the push of religiously inspired educational campaigns (Lutheran, Calvinist, and Catholic). There was the pull of personal religious needs and economic incentives such as a desire for social or geographical mobility. Book production also grew dramatically. Perhaps 150 to 200 million copies were turned out during the sixteenth century, and 1,500 million copies were printed in the eighteenth century. This outpouring fed on and was nourished by growing literacy. More schools were provided and more were demanded. Schools were important to learning, but nowhere were they compulsory and, because of costs, many children received only a very brief and basic education. In Sweden, mass reading ability was achieved almost entirely by learning at home.

The Impact of Religion

The Swedish literacy campaign that began in the late seventeenth century was designed to consolidate the Lutheran Reformation there, and many of the advances in reading and writing stemmed from the religious battles of the early modern period. It is commonly asserted that Protestantism is the "religion of the Book." Indeed, Protestant countries tended to be more literate than Catholic, and where the faiths coexisted, as in France, Ireland, and the Low Countries, Calvinists tended to be more accomplished than Catholics. However, on closer inspection the picture is less clear-cut. Dynamic Counter-Reformation Catholicism could produce results comparable with the Lutheran heartland. Just 40 percent of accused adults examined by Spanish inquisitions knew the Ten Commandments well in the 1560s and 1570s, compared with 80 percent by the 1590s, while the proportions felt to be crassly ignorant fell from 50 percent to under 10 percent. Importantly, this was pure memorization rather than reading. Indeed, the distinction between the faiths was often more subtle than crude literacy rates—but no less important. Qualitative differences in the uses and importance of literacy distinguished Protestants from Catholics. Reading Scriptures was central to the Reformed faith. Religious books were probably read more frequently among Protestants, and the very status of reading was special. Protestants tended to own more books on a wider variety of religious topics than their Catholic neighbors and to use them differently. Protestants accepted the overwhelming authority of what they knew or thought was in a religious book.

As well as successes in inculcating religious knowledge in ("Christianizing") their peoples, Catholic countries could boast some excellent educational facilities. At the elementary level there were, for example, Italian Schools of Christian Doctrine, which from the mid-sixteenth century taught religion and basic reading and writing to urban children. At the postelementary level there were the famous schools of the Jesuits and other religious orders. Nor should we ignore the contribution of second- and third-generation Reformations, Protestant and Catholic alike. In Denmark and Prussia it was not the Lutheran Reformation of the sixteenth century that brought about widespread literacy, but the early-eighteenth-century campaign waged by the Pietists with the help of the new "absolutist" rulers. In France female religious orders provided the impetus behind the rapid advance in women's literacy after c. 1740.

Literacy Among Men and Women

Outcomes (the social and geographical distribution of literacy) are relatively easy to demonstrate using the universal, standard, and direct measure of ability to sign one's name in full on a document such as a court deposition, a contract, or a marriage certificate. Male achievements were superior to female, those of the rich to those of the poor; urban dwellers were almost invariably better able to write than were peasants. In the east, south, and far north of Europe, the ability to write was less than in the heartland of the continent, but reading may have been as widespread (maybe more so) in Scandinavia. For all the apparent simplicity of these patterns, they become more complex and nuanced on closer investigation—and more so still when we move away from the quantitative measures to a qualitative analysis of meanings and uses.

Around 1500 even basic literacy was restricted to less than 10 percent of men. Judged by the rather advanced skill of signing, the most pronounced early expansion occurred among the middling and upper classes, among men, and in towns. In northern England the illiteracy of the gentry fell from about 30 percent in 1530 to almost nil in 1600, but that of day laborers stayed well above 90 percent throughout the period. Male achievements were almost always superior to female. For example, one bridegroom in three could not sign Amsterdam's marriage register in 1630, compared with twothirds of brides. Until the eighteenth century the rate of improvement for men generally exceeded that for women. The literacy of townspeople also grew more quickly than that of rural dwellers. By the mid-eighteenth century London and Paris had literacy levels not achieved nationally until the late nineteenth century. In eastern Europe almost the only literate people were townspeople.

Patterns of Change

Change was halting and irregular. Different groups reached "ceilings" or "plateaus" at different times, from which it might take decades to move. For men at least, Castile in the sixteenth century was on a par with France and England until the second quarter of the seventeenth century. Between c. 1620 and c. 1740 it failed to develop at the same rate. The literacy of Castilian women crept up only marginally from 1500 to 1740. The second half of the eighteenth century was better for women everywhere in western Europe. Female literacy grew much more rapidly than male in northern France in the two generations before the Revolution. In parts of northwestern Germany girls began to receive instruction in arithmetic for the first time. However, the current of change ebbed as well as flowed. For centuries the leaders in raising literacy, some early industrial towns of Britain and the southern Low Countries in the late eighteenth century saw falling levels as population growth swamped the social infrastructure and child employment created a disincentive for education.

The extent of divisions between social groups varied over both space and time. In the sixteenth century, when literacy was limited, virtually all those who could read and write came from the landlord, mercantile, or professional classes. Beneath them lay a yawning chasm of illiteracy. This stark differentiation was tempered over time as more members of the middling and lower orders—artisans and farmers, for example—picked up the skills of the book and the pen. In England, lowland Scotland, the Netherlands, northern Germany, and northeastern France, an expansion of literacy for the middling ranks had occurred by the end of the seventeenth century. Southern Italy and Poland (and, to an even greater extent, Russia) had very limited literacy deep into the nineteenth century.

Reading

Much research into literacy has focused on the ability to write. However, there are many reasons to believe that reading was a more widespread skill. Children of the lower social classes, who made up 50 to 90 percent of European people, generally received no more than three to four years of education, meaning they learned only to read. For adults, reading had more religious and recreational value than writing, which was by no means essential to everyday life. Indeed, it may be that in countries like Italy and France two or three women could read for every one who could write during the eighteenth century. The campaign to promote religious literacy in Scandinavia produced remarkable results. As late as the mid-seventeenth century a third of adults were able to pass the church's tests of reading, but a century later more than four out of five men and women could read.

Tacitly or overtly, studies showing apparently extensive reading suggest that the breadth of cultural access was much broader than the figures for signing imply. Yet reading might actually mean memorization, and without practice, the reading skills of many ordinary people ill equipped them for exploring the new literature of the Renaissance and Enlightenment. As late as 1750 critical reading ability in the German lands was confined to just 10 percent of the population, a figure that applies equally well to the rest of northwestern Europe. Print and writing may therefore have had a limited impact on ordinary people who were ostensibly "readers." Nevertheless, we must be alert to the possibility that reading was more widespread than writing, especially among poorer men and among women as a whole. After all, women of the haute bourgeoisie or the landed classes (and especially unmarried ones, it seems) read periodicals and novels. They used circulating libraries, joined reading societies, attended the theater and concerts, collected prints, and bought paintings. Women seem to have been a crucial component of the anticipated audience for Enlightenment literature.

Yet such women were not typical. The existence of social forms, which provided visual, spoken, and sung communication (such as the French veillée or evening gathering and the German Spinnstube or spinning circle) and which were dominated by ordinary women, suggests that their cultural lives continued to be cast in an oral/aural and visual framework. Males were educated to participate in the public sphere, women in the private or domestic one. This usually meant that girls gained religious knowledge, learned to read, and were given practical instruction in gendered skills like "housewifery." In the Mediterranean lands where gender roles were most firmly delineated, it was long held to be unnecessary to train girls in more than the rudiments of religious morality. In the deep south of Italy and in parts of eastern Europe such as Hungary, reading and writing were uncommon for either sex. The people of these regions actively preferred oral forms.

Latin and the Vernacular

The spread of literacy across western Europe made communication easier. What people did with their ability to communicate using letters depended on what tongue(s) they knew. Until the second half of the seventeenth century, the majority of printed books were in Latin. Those with Latin (perhaps 1 or 2 per cent of the population) were part of a pan-European culture in the age of the Renaissance, but theirs was a circle from which were excluded the illiterati—the medieval term for those unable to speak, read, and write Latin. Latin remained important as a core subject in postelementary education throughout the early modern period. During the eighteenth century, speaking, reading, and writing French came to replace Latin for cultural and intellectual purposes—at least for the elites of Catholic and perhaps Orthodox Europe. French became the new Latin. Throughout the early modern period Church Slavonic was the language of learning and literacy in Russia, but it was alien to everyday speech and was taught to a tiny number.

Indeed Latin versus vernacular was only one of many linguistic oppositions in early modern Europe. The vernacular was increasingly used in education, print, government, and administration—but which vernacular? For even within small countries many tongues could be spoken, with important implications for literacy. Seven out of ten of the inhabitants of Wales knew no English and could speak only Welsh in 1800. France was a linguistic Tower of Babel. In 1790 French (langue d'oïl ) was the dominant language in just fifteen of eighty-nine départements; six million French could not understand French at all; a further six million could understand it but spoke it only imperfectly; thirty patois were spoken, plus foreign languages like Flemish or German or Basque; only three million could speak French "properly." The linguistic map of Europe resembles that of literacy: in areas where the language of everyday life was not that of education, contact with outside authority, or printed literature, literacy tended to remain low.

For all the obstacles, dead ends, and inconsistencies in the development of reading and writing, literacy certainly expanded between 1500 and 1800. What, in conclusion, can be said about its uses? Reading tastes changed, notably from the practical to the recreational. New value was placed on originality and novelty in writing. The real growth area in reading material was not the staple texts, which people perused closely, but the more varied, ephemeral, and entertaining fare that was becoming available. Readers ranged more extensively among literary forms, where previously they had focused on a few texts. Between 1700 and 1789 there were published 1,200 French-language periodicals of at least one year's duration. History and travel books became more popular. While literacy was, by all measures, on the rise in the eighteenth century, it may be that for reasons of cost and availability, or because of limited education, not everyone could enjoy its products. The fully literate indulged themselves in its novelties; the semiliterate remained within their traditional mental world. In his autobiography, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) recounted childhood memories of enjoying a chapbook literature of magic, chivalry, and saints, which had changed little for centuries. Europe was well on the way to mass basic literacy by 1800, but there were still pronounced divisions in access to and uses of literacy's products.

Bibliography

Houston, Robert A. Literacy in Early Modern Europe: Culture and Education, 1500–1800. 2nd ed. London, 2001. Unrivaled geographical coverage in a comprehensive and readable overview. Contains an extensive bibliography of further reading.

—R. A. HOUSTON

ADVERTISEMENT

The terms literacy and reading, though related, are neither synonymous nor unambiguous. Typically reading is subsumed by literacy, with the latter term referring to reading, writing, and other modes of symbolic communication that are valued differently for social, economic, and political reasons often imposed by a dominant culture. Simply broadening the definition, however, does not alleviate the ambiguity. For instance, the assumption that literacy exists in the singular has been criticized by Brian Street in 1995 and others for ignoring the socially situated aspects of one's multiple literacies (print, nonprint, computer, scientific, numeric) and their accompanying literate practices.

A preference for literacies, as opposed to literacy in the singular, also signals a critique of the autonomous model of reading that has dominated Western thinking up to the present. It is a model that views reading largely from a cognitive perspective - as a "natural" or neutral process, one supposedly devoid of ideological positioning and the power relations inherent in such positioning. Conceiving of literacies in the plural and as ideologically embedded does not require giving up on the cognitive aspects of reading. Rather, according to Street, the ideological model subsumes the autonomous model of reading in an attempt to understand how reading is encapsulated within broader sociocultural structures (schools, governments, families, media) and the power relations that sustain them. This focus on literacies and reading as social practices within various contexts is central to untangling the "realities" (the so-called knowns), unsupported assertions, and controversies that surround the practices.

Realities

Definitive paradigm shifts since the last quarter of the twentieth century have marked transitions from behaviorist to cognitivist to sociocultural models of the reading process. Although these changing conceptions have altered how researchers and practitioners think about the reading process generally (and instruction, specifically), overall the field has remained largely focused on two major topics: reading acquisition and comprehension. This is not to say that other topics have been neglected. For instance, sufficient evidence exists for linking reading directly and inextricably to writing, such as the work of Robert Tierney and Timothy Shanahan, and Ian Wilkinson and colleagues; and other evidence connects various instructional practices to students' reading engagement and motivation to learn content, such as that of John Guthrie and Allan Wigfield. In terms of sheer quantity of research findings, however, the focus remains on reading acquisition and comprehension.

Reading Acquisition Research

Reading acquisition is no longer seen as the sole responsibility of the school; nor is it viewed as a "lockstep" process that moves from oral language development (speaking and listening) to print literacy (reading and writing). Currently, learning to read is viewed as a developmental process, one that emerges gradually from the time a child is born. The role of the family is paramount in fostering a child's growth in language and in creating a literacy-rich environment. Parents, educators, researchers, and policy-makers constantly look for ways to provide all children with access to the world of print, largely because knowing how to read and knowing what to do with information gained from reading is thought to be key to a child's future well-being.

The Report of the National Reading Panel in the year 2000, a major reference for U.S. education policymakers, is an evidence-based assessment of the experimental and quasi-experimental research literature on reading. The National Reading Panel (NRP) used strict selection criteria in analyzing a comprehensive body of research that focused primarily on early reading and reading in grades three to eight, with the research being limited to studies published in peer-reviewed journals written in the English language. One of the panel's goals was to report how instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, and fluency impacts children's early reading development and achievement in school settings.

Phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness and knowledge of the alphabetic principle (commonly known as letter recognition) are said to be the best school-entry predictors of a child's success in reading during the first two years of schooling in an alphabetic language, such as English. Phonemic awareness is not an innate skill; it can and must be taught. Children are said to be phonemically aware when they are able to manipulate phonemes (the smallest sound units of a word that impact meaning) in spoken words. The NRP found that children (regardless of socioeconomic class) who received between fifteen and eighteen hours of phonemic awareness instruction, prior to being taught how to read and/or before entering the first grade, benefited greatest from such instruction.

Phonics. Unlike phonemic awareness, which refers to the blending and pulling apart of the various sounds that make up spoken words in an alphabetic language, phonics refers to the sound-symbol correspondences in that language. Phonics is a tool for decoding words; it is not a reading program. Knowledge of phonics does not ensure that one will comprehend printed texts because reading is a far more complex process than simply sounding out words.

The NRP concluded that children (regardless of socioeconomic class) who receive systematic phonics instruction in kindergarten and first grade show greater improvement in word recognition skills than do children who receive no such instruction; however, phonics instruction after first grade does not significantly contribute to gains in children's word recognition abilities. The panel also concluded that the type of systematic phonics instruction (e.g., synthetic, analytic, analogy) children receive, either individually or in small or large group settings, does not significantly affect the contribution such instruction makes to reading achievement.

Fluency. According to the NRP, phonemic awareness and knowledge of phonics are tools for helping children achieve fluency in reading. Fluent readers can decode words rapidly and accurately with good comprehension. Caution needs to be exercised, however, in interpreting these findings. Possessing well-developed word recognition skills - a condition often associated with having knowledge of phonics - does not necessarily translate into fluent reading. As the NRP pointed out, fluency is thought to develop when individuals have sufficient opportunities for, and practice in, reading. Typically, such practice is associated with independent or recreational reading both in and out of school. At this point, however, only correlational data exist to support the hypothesized connection between increased reading practice and improved reading achievement.

The NRP examined research on guided repeated oral reading practice as well as on methods that attempt to increase the amount of time a child engages in independent and/or recreational reading. The panel concluded that explicit guidance during oral reading has consistent and positive effects on word recognition, fluency, and comprehension. However, researchers have yet to agree on the best approach for helping children achieve reading fluency. In sum, although many have applauded the efforts of the NRP for its concise compilation of relevant research pertaining to reading in schools, others have criticized the panel for failing to address the early learning that occurs before a child goes to school, and for failing to provide information about home support for literacy development. Still others have called attention to the fact that the studies the NRP selected for analysis did not address issues related to teaching children whose first language is other than English how to read.

Comprehension Research

Research on reading comprehension has been limited largely to print-based texts and various strategies for studying and learning from those texts. The NRP concluded that seven comprehension strategies (comprehension monitoring, cooperative learning, using graphic and semantic organizers, generating questions, answering questions, using story structure, and summarizing) are effective in helping students learn from text. Although the NRP reported trends supporting conventional wisdom that vocabulary instruction leads to improved comprehension, it offered no conclusive evidence on this point due to the limited number of studies that met its strict criteria for inclusion. Nor did the NRP draw conclusions about the most effective instructional methods for teaching vocabulary.

Caution needs to be taken in interpreting the NRP's findings. The report did not include research on second language reading and reading to learn in domain-specific areas. Nor did it include studies using qualitative research designs, the absence of which severely limits what can be known about the contexts in which instruction occurred. Moreover, six of the seven comprehension strategies that were considered effective were ones that teachers would use if they believe reading comprehension consists of students working individually to extract information from printed texts. This rather narrow view of comprehension instruction risks disenfranchising students who may learn better in more socially interactive settings or whose literacies span a broader range than those typically associated with school or assessed by traditional reading measures.

Beyond strategic knowledge, readers who possess and activate relevant prior knowledge, who demonstrate an awareness of text structure, and who apply appropriate metacognitive skills to comprehending texts are more proficient learners than those who either do not possess such skills or who lack appropriate background knowledge. That is to say, constructing meaning involves using information and experiences gained previously to interpret new information in light of the old. It also entails recognizing the various reasons that authors structure their texts as they do (e.g., to inform, to persuade, to elicit appreciation for certain literary devices). Finally, comprehension calls for monitoring the demands of a particular reading task, knowing what background knowledge and strategies are relevant to the task, evaluating the inferences one makes while reading, and applying any of a number of fix-up strategies when understanding falters or breaks down completely.

Unsupported Assertions

Intuitively appealing literacy practices are often linked to improved reading achievement without adequate support in the research literature. Although a lack of empirical evidence for their use does not make such practices wrong, it does call into question the wisdom of making curricular or programmatic decisions on the basis of custom alone or anecdotal evidence at best. A good example of this phenomenon is the widespread acceptance of the idea that encouraging students to read more will translate into improved fluency and higher reading achievement. As the Report of the National Reading Panel has shown, most of the studies that met the panel's stringent criteria for qualifying as scientifically sound research failed to find a positive relation between encouraging students to read and improved reading fluency and achievement.

Another intuitively appealing practice - using technology to improve reading instruction - has only a meager research base to date. Its overall and long-term effectiveness is simply an unknown according to the NRP. Although the panel described several trends suggesting the usefulness of computer technology for reading instruction, too little evidence presently exists to make informed recommendations. Lacking evidence as to whether or not the knowledge students gain from online instruction is superior to that gained from more traditional instruction, reading educators are likely to remain ambivalent about making drastic changes in the way instruction is delivered.

Equally unclear is the degree to which integrated literacy instruction fosters outcomes such as authentic reading tasks, better applicability of learning, deeper and more coherent understanding of subject matter, and greater efficiency in teaching and learning. Thought to be one of education's most elusive constructs, integrated literacy instruction generally involves organizing the curriculum is ways that promote students' use of language and literacy processes to learn school subjects (e.g., science, social studies, math). An extensive review of the research literature on integrated literacy instruction led James Gavelek and colleagues to remark in the year 2000 on the exceedingly low ratio of data-driven articles to general papers on the topic. Although they remained optimistic about integrative approaches, these researchers questioned whether or not the push toward such integration was a bit premature, or possibly illfounded.

Controversies

A controversy exists in the United States about how to teach reading effectively and efficiently to students whose home or first language is not English, the language of mainstream education. The U.S. Census Bureau of 2000, relying on data from the 1990 census, reported that 6.3 million children, ages 5 through 17, speak a language other than English in the home; of these children, 4.1 million speak Spanish. Since 1990 the Hispanic population has increased by 57.9 percent in the United States, a demographic factor that accounts no doubt for people of Hispanic, Latino, and/or Spanish origin receiving the most attention in terms of educational program development. Programs developed primarily to facilitate English language learners' entry into English-speaking schools vary in the degree to which they provide support in the students' home language. Depending on the English language learners' needs and the availability of funding, children may be submersed in classrooms where English is the medium of instruction. This means they will not be offered any first-language literacy support; nor will they receive the three to six years of transitional bilingual education that has been shown to be effective. Although sheltered English language programs are becoming more popular in the United States, they do not offer opportunities for children to become bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural. Two-way bilingual programs, with their emphasis on instruction in both the home language (in many cases in the United States, Spanish) and English, provide such opportunities.

Elizabeth Bernhardt reported in 2000 three possible ways of looking at the relationship between first and second language learning experiences. She noted a transfer relationship where the knowledge and skills of the dominant language transfer to the learning of the second language; an interference relationship where the dominant language impedes the learning of the second language; and a dominance effect where the behaviors of the first language control those of second language literacy. Bernhardt pointed out that in the case of second language reading, it is unclear as to whether first language skills transfer or interfere with learning to read in a second language. Controversies surrounding the interference model show no sign of abating. In fact, literacy educators, such as Georgia Ernest García, who question the validity of such a model, often cite a well-known longitudinal study of Spanish-speaking children by J. David Ramírez and colleauges, which showed in 1991 that instruction that fosters bilingualism and biliteracy does not place youngsters at an academic disadvantage. In that study, children who were enrolled in a late-exit bilingual program scored higher on standardized tests of English language and reading proficiency than did their monolingual peers.

Another controversy surrounding reading instruction has its roots in what Harvey Graff has labeled in 1988 the "literacy myth." Part of the dominant world view of the Western world for over two centuries, the so-called literacy myth equates the ability to read with personal and individual worth, social order, and economic prosperity. Its tenets reach deep into the American psyche, and its implications for reading instruction regularly place teachers in the public eye. Evidence of the literacy myth's stranglehold on the teaching profession is the fact that educators in the United States often fall under attack by politicians, the media, and the general public for not serving students well enough to ensure that they join the U.S. workforce and compete favorably in the rigors of a world market place.

The problem deepens when the media and other information sources convince the general public that a literacy crisis exists. Word of such a crisis leads parents, teachers, administrators, and policymakers to search for a universally effective way to teach all children to read, and just as predictably, to a proliferation of commercially prepared reading programs. School districts adopt commercially prepared programs in an attempt to solve the perceived problem. For example, programs such as Success for All, Core Knowledge, Accelerated Reader, and Saxon Phonics exist side by side (and in company with many other such programs) in the current educational market. Many of these programs are intended to help teachers concentrate more of their attention on student learning and less on lesson preparation. The developers of these programs also claim they offer continuity and consistency of instruction. Individuals who are critical of commercially prepared reading programs point to their scripted nature and to the narrow focus of their academic content. Teachers, in particular, sense a loss of autonomy and professionalism when local or state mandates force them to rely on one particular kind of commercial reading program. They know that in the field of literacy instruction the concept of "one-size-fits-all" does not apply to the children they teach. Nor does this type of instruction take into account the multiple literacies children living in the twenty-first century already possess or need to develop.

Bibliography

Alexander, Patricia A., and Jetton, Tamara L. 2000. "Learning from Text: A Multidimensional and Developmental Perspective." In Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. 3, ed. Michael L. Kamil, Peter B. Mosenthal, P. David Pearson, and Rebecca Barr. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Barton, David; Hamilton, Mary; and Ivanic, Roz, eds. 2000. Situated Literacies. New York: Routledge.

Bernhardt, Elizabeth. 2000. "Second-Language Reading as a Case Study of Reading Scholarship in the 20th Century." In Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. 3, ed. Michael L. Kamil, Peter B. Mosenthal, P. David Pearson, and Rebecca Barr. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Core Knowledge Foundation. 2001. Core Knowledge Sequence, K - 8. New York: Doubleday.

Gaffney, Janet S., and Anderson, Richard C. 2000. "Trends in Reading Research in the United States: Changing Intellectual Currents over Three Decades." In Handbook of Reading Re-search, Vol. 3, ed. Michael L. Kamil, Peter B. Mosenthal, P. David Pearson, and Rebecca Barr. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

GARCÍA, Georgia Ernest. 2000. "Bilingual Children's Reading." In Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. 3, ed. Michael L. Kamil, Peter B. Mosenthal, P. David Pearson, and Rebecca Barr. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Gavelek, James R.; Raphael, Taffy E.; Biondo, Sandra M.; and Wang, Danhua. 2000. "Integrated Literacy Instruction." In Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. 3, ed. Michael L. Kamil, Peter B. Mosenthal, P. David Pearson, and Rebecca Barr. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Gee, James P. 1996. Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses, 2nd edition. London: Taylor and Francis.

Graff, Harvey J. 1988. "The Legacies of Literacy." In Perspectives on Literacy, ed. Eugene R. Kintgen, Barry M. Kroll, and Mike Rose. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Guthrie, John T., and Wigfield, Allan. 2000. "Engagement and Motivation in Reading." Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. 3, ed. Michael L. Kamil, Peter B. Mosenthal, P. David Pearson, and Rebecca Barr. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Institute for Academic Excellence. 2000. Getting Started with Accelerated Reading and Reading Renaissance. Madison, WI: Institute for Academic Excellence.

RAMÍREZ, J. David; Yuen, Sandra D.; and Ramey, Dena R. 1991. Executive Summary: Final Report: Longitudinal Study of Structured English Immersion Strategy, Early-Exit and Late-Exit Transitional Bilingual Education Programs for Language Minority Children. San Mateo, CA: Aguirre International.

Report of the National Reading Panel. 2000. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Simmons, Lorna. 2001. Saxon Phonics K - 2 Classroom Kit. Norman, OK: Saxon.

Slavin, Robert E. 2001. One Million Children: Success for All. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Snow, Catherine E.; Burns, M. Susan; and Griffin, Peg, eds. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Street, Brian V. 1995. Social Literacies: Critical Approaches to Literacy in Development, Ethnography, and Education. New York: Longman.

Tierney, Robert J., and Shanahan, Timothy. 1991. "Research on the Reading-Writing Relationship: Interactions, Transactions, and Outcomes." In Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. 2, ed. P. David Pearson, Rebecca Barr, Michael L. Kamil, and Peter B. Mosenthal. New York: Longman.

Wilkinson, Ian; Freebody, Peter; and Elkins, John. 2000. "Reading Research in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand." In Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. 3, ed. Michael L. Kamil, Peter B. Mosenthal, P. David Pearson, and Rebecca Barr. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Internet Resource

U.S. Census Bureau. 2000. "Language Use." www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/lang_use.html.

— DONNA E. ALVERMANN, M. KRISTIINA MONTERO