[AAACE-NLA] Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz

[Thomas Sticht]

Debbie asks: If it is true that older, "tried and true" methods are being
"confirmed" by more recent research as effective, why do we continue to
have a steady stream of adults with limited reading skills coming out of
systems that used (an continue to use) these very methods?

[answer: There are numerous factors involved in why some people go to
school and don’t appear to do well in reading or many other subjects,
either, so there is no one path to failure as far as I know. I would
venture a guess that many problems are not the result of poor teaching but
of out-of-school factors at home, with peers, various undetected medical
problems, etc  Of course, it is also likely that not everyone who goes to
school gets good reading instruction for whatever reasons. Perhaps some
teachers are not well educated about reading instruction.  Other students
may get good instruction  but do not engage in much reading and do not
acquire much knowledge (vocabulary, concepts, etc.) to perform very well
on reading tests. There is some evidence that becoming a skilled reader
may require reading  1 to 10 million words a year outside of school.
Recall that by definition it takes an average 12th grade student 12 years
to read at the average 12th grade level when using norm-referenced
measurement. The concept of "limited reading skills" implies some sort of
standard for reading proficiency that I don’t think is well established
and widely agreed to.  If we take most adult’s judgments of their own
reading skills as valid, over 93 percent of adults in the NALS said they
read well or very well, so if we give any credence to the adults judgments
I guess we might conclude that the schools are doing pretty well in
teaching the vast majority of students to read using the "tried and true"
methods that research is confirming as useful. But of course this is
contentious.]


Debbie asks: do you know of any studies that looked into the educational
histories of adult ed learners to investigate what methodologies were
used, and presumably, failed?

[answer: Yes, Alan Quigley has looked into adult’s educational histories,
Purcell-Gates did some of this, and there are some other studies that I
know of but cannot dredge up right now. But probably others on the
aaace-nla list can help with this.. ]