[AAACE-NLA]Fourth Grade Plunge and Adult Literacy Research

[Thomas Sticht]

Research Note                                        April 24, 2003


    The Fourth-Grade Plunge: An Example of How Evidence-Based Adult Literacy
    Research Has Influenced K-12 Instructional Guidance

    Tom Sticht

    In September 2002,  The Partnership for Reading published a report
    authored by John Kruidenier entitled Research-Based Principles for Adult
    Basic Education Reading Instruction (the report can be downloaded at
    www.nifl.gov/partnershipfor reading). The report laments the paucity of
    research on adult reading and discusses how it draws upon K-12 research
    to inform adult reading instruction when that is appropriate. Missing
    in most of the recent guidance on scientific, evidence-based
    research for teaching children to read is any reference to adult literacy
    research that can inform K-12 educational practice.

    However, the Spring 2003 issue of the American Educator, the professional
    journal of the American Federation of Teachers, an AFL-CIO labor
    organization for educators, has published a special issue with the title:
    "The Fourth-Grade Plunge: The Cause, the Cure". The cover of the special
    includes a summary that states:

    "In fourth grade, poor children’s reading comprehension starts a drastic
    decline-and rarely recovers. The Cause: They hear millions fewer words at
    home than do their advantaged peers-and since words represent knowledge,
    they don’t gain the knowledge that underpins reading comprehension. The
    Cure: Immerse these children, and the many others whose comprehension is
    low, in words and the knowledge the words represent- as early as
    possible."

    Inside the journal, the major article is by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., author of
    the best-selling, and controversial book Cultural Knowledge: What Every
    American Needs to Know (Houghton Mifflin, 1987). In the present article,
    Hirsch offers one approach to building children’s comprehension
ability in a section called, Build Oral Comprehension and Background
Knowledge. The
    section begins with the statement, "Thomas Sticht has shown that oral
    comprehension typically places an upper limit on reading
comprehension; if you don’t recognize and understand the word when you
hear it, you also
    won’t be able to comprehend it when reading. This tells us something very
    important: oral comprehension generally needs to be developed in our
    youngest readers if we want them to be good readers." Hirsch cites a book
    entitled Auding and Reading: A Developmental Model by Sticht, et al
    (HumRRO, 1974-now out of print) in support of his statement. In an
    earlier book entitled The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them
    (Doubleday, 1996) Hirsch has referred to the limits of oral language
     comprehension on reading comprehension once decoding has been acquired
     as "Sticht’s Law."

    Later in this special issue of the American Educator, Andrew Biemiller, a
    professor at the Institute of Child Study at he University of Toronto
    extends Hirsch’s point in an article entitled, Oral Comprehension Sets
the Ceiling on Reading Comprehension. In support of his argument
Biemiller
    cites a chapter by Sticht & James (1984) which includes an extended
    discussion of the concepts of "oracy to literacy transfer" and the use of
    listening assessment to determine "reading potential."

    What I have found particularly interesting is that these articles cite
    research by colleagues and myself that was done as part of a program of
    research to better understand adult reading education, not childhood
    reading.  Almost 30 years ago, to aid in the better understanding of
adult literacy issues, colleagues and I wrote Auding and Reading: A
    Developmental Model to provide a summary and synthesis of how the
"typical child," a theoretical abstraction of course,  born into our
literate
    society grows up to become literate in the judgment of other adults. This
    was done to provide a frame of reference for better understanding  how it
    is that some children, unlike the "typical child," grow up to be less
than adequately literate in the judgment of other adults and might
benefit from participating in an adult literacy program.

    The Auding and Reading book offered guidance for adult reading
instruction that presaged the present guidance in the American
Educator for K-12 education. For instance, on page 122 of Auding and
Reading we stated the
    need for: "Methods for improving oral language skills as foundation
skills for reading. In this regard, it would seem that, at least with
beginning or unskilled readers, a sequence of instruction in which
vocabulary and concepts are first introduced and learned via oracy
skills would reduce
    the learning burden by not requiring the learning of both vocabulary and
    decoding skills at the same time. It is difficult to see how a person can
    learn to recognize printed words by "sounding them out" through some
    decoding scheme if, in fact, the words are not in the oral language of
the learner. Thus an oracy-to-literacy sequence of training would seem
    desirable in teaching vocabulary and concepts to unskilled readers."

    The Auding and Reading book goes on to discuss concepts of
automaticity in decoding, which underlies fluency of decoding in both
auding and reading
    and why it is important to develop fluency (automaticity) of decoding for
    the constructive processes involved in comprehension by languaging to
    proceed either by listening to the spoken language or by reading the
    written language.

    It is indicative of the rather long time that it takes for ideas to be
    dissiminated and assimilated in a field of knowledge that this year the
    American Educator, which reaches a million or so educators, has brought
    many of the ideas from adult literacy research into the arena of K-12
    education.

    There remains a need for further understanding of the life span changes
    that affect reading. For instance, the National Adult Literacy Survey
    (NALS) indicated that as adults got older, their performance of NALS
    literacy tasks dropped. In research on the use of the telephone to assess
    literacy, colleagues and I found that we could draw upon the theoretical
    foundation of literacy given in the Auding and Reading book and
subsequent research on listening and reading to assess knowledge
development across the life span. In this case, we found that older
adults knew more than
    younger adults about a wide range of subjects. We used techniques that
did not overload working memory like most of the NALS tasks do.
Because older
    adults generally lose some working memory capacity, we felt that NALS
type tasks are inappropriate for assessing the literacy ability of
older
    adults. Whatever the case, the fact that adults change across the life
    span argues for more research to better understand literacy
development in adulthood beyond what we have learned today and what we
can gleam from
    studying the literacy development of children. Interestingly, as the
    American Educator for Spring 2003 illustrates,  what new learning we
    acquire about adult literacy development across the life span may have
    additional, important implications for K-12 literacy education. This
adds weight to the importance of policies that emphasize the need for
research on adult literacy education.


    Thomas G. Sticht
    International Consultant in Adult Education
    2062 Valley View Blvd.
    El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
    Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133
    Email: tsticht at aznet.net