[Reading-hall-of-fame] RE: Reading-hall-of-fame Digest, Vol 42, Issue 1

[P. David Pearson]

What all of this says to be is that comprehension skills and  
strategies, like phonics skills and strategies (and like the  
assessment of enabling skills), go awry when they become goals not  
tools to assist learning or, put differently, when they become ends  
not means.  So a skill or strategy brought forward at a particular  
moment to solve a particular problem, might be just what a student  
needs to achieve that productive cumulative experience in a domain of  
knowledge or inquiry.  But set aside, isolated, and taught and  
practiced as an isolated end unto itself becomes an irrelevant  
curricular appendage.

But to move to the other end of the continuum--the direct refusal to  
offer kids any advice about how to enact a routine of some sort to  
solve a problem of some sort--seems equally as misguided.

So the only think that makes sense is the situated instruction and  
enactment of any sort of "procedures", whatever label--skill,  
strategy, process, or routine--we give it.

David P.



On Nov 3, 2009, at 6:06 PM, Arthur N Applebee wrote:

David,

I think you are touching on a central issue—the difference between  
novice and expert may be a function of the knowledge of the domain  
gained through cumulative experience, rather than the attainment of  
specific knowledge or skills through direct instruction.  But we often  
focus on the skills, rather than the guided immersion in the domain  
that leads to productive cumulative experience.  We framed our AERJ  
study of discussion-based approaches to the development of  
understanding in part in terms of the literature on comprehension  
strategies, but the results suggest that the process of sustained and  
focused discussion, without an emphasis on specific comprehension  
strategies, has a powerful effect on learning.   Our work was with  
middle and high school students, but I think the general principle is  
true across ages.

Arthur

(Arthur N. Applebee, J. Langer, M. Nystrand, & A. Gamoran, Discussion- 
based approaches to developing understanding: Classroom instruction  
and student performance in middle and high school English. American  
Educational Research Journal 40:3, 685-730, 2003. )

From: reading-hall-of-fame-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk  
[mailto:reading-hall-of-fame-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf  
Of David Olson
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 4:54 PM
To: Jay Samuels
Cc: reading-hall-of-fame at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
Subject: Re: [Reading-hall-of-fame] RE: Reading-hall-of-fame Digest,  
Vol 42, Issue 1


Jay et al:

In my view "processing speed" is merely a reflection of one's  
knowledge.  But I think the question raises a more general question.   
In reviewing a bunch of papers on literacy, it occurred to me that  
there is a considerable gap among experts (like ourselves) on the  
following issue:

Do tested differences between the good and poor readers, the literate  
and the non/less literate, provide a reliable guide as to what should  
be taught.

I think not.  And that included speed of processing.  Whereas most/ 
many literacy researchers seem to think that if good/poor readers  
differ on, say, short term memory for letters, vocabulary, sentence  
comprehension, inferencing, etc. that implies that such  "skills"  
should be taught.  That assumption is taken for granted by most  
prescriptive reading programs.  I don't agree.

How about you?

David
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