[Reading-hall-of-fame] Re: Frank Smith

[P Pearson]

I first met Frank in 1970 when Ken Goodman and James Fleming invited him to
be a part of the IRA Preconvention Institute of the Psycholinguistics and
Reading Committee--in Anaheim at Disneyland if I recall rightly.  His talk
that day was the tipping point that pushed me over the edge on the issue of
relative salience of top-down versus bottom-up processing for reading.  And
when Understanding Reading came out the next year, I had the complete
theoretical and (at least a part of the) empirical base for jumping ship on
any version of behaviorist leftovers (e.g. Markovian chains) for explaining
language or reading.

His distinction between comprehension and learning was key for me because
it allowed me to link his work to Piaget (assimilation vs accommodation) or
Rumelhart's later distinction between accretion, fine-tuning, and
restructuring.

We interacted with some regularity until he went off to Victoria after
which I lost track of him, but I followed the books and essays that came
later whenever I could get a hold of them.

I fully agree with Brian's assessment that he, along with Ken, changed how
we think about reading.

David


On Fri, Jan 1, 2021 at 12:12 PM Brian Cambourne <bcambrn at uow.edu.au> wrote:

> How sad.
> What a giant he was in our field.
>
> Like Ken Goodman, Frank changed how we thought and taught literacy in
> Australia.
>
> I was very fortunate that my Dean of Education at Riverina College (Dr
> Peter Rousch) found the funds to entice Frank  to accept a 6 month contract
> as a Visiting Fellow at our college back in the mid 70’s. The lectures and
> sessions he gave during those months were groundbreaking for me personally
> and for Australian literacy education in general.
>
> I remember a short film he referred us to. It showed him observing and
> interacting with a young learner-reader as they wandered through a Canadian
> department store. Frank asked his young subject what he thought the signs
> they encountered as the wandered through the store meant.
>
> They came to the “ Footwear” section with lots of shoes and boots under
> the sign “Footwear”. Frank asked the young kid what this particular sign
> meant. His response was “ it either means Fuck -off  or  boots”.
>
> Frank left it to the viewer to work out his subject was responding to both
> the configuration of letters  in the word “Footwear” and the context in
> which it occurred.
>
> Another great loss to our field.
>  Brian Cambourne
>
>
>
>
> > On 2 Jan 2021, at 6:43 am, Diane Lapp <lapp at sdsu.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Happy New Year Everyone.
> >
> > I am sad to share a message I received from David Olson regarding the
> recent death of Frank Smith. I have attached it below. Another great loss
> to the field of literacy.
> >
> > Warmest regards,
> > Diane Lapp
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >
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> >
> >
> >
> >
> > <Frank Smith.docx>
> >
> >
> >
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-- 
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
P. David Pearson
Evelyn Lois Corey *Emeritus* Professor of Instructional Science
Graduate School of Education
University of California, Berkeley

email:  ppearson at berkeley.edu
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