[AAACE-NLA] Reading Wars Startingin Adult Literacy

[tsticht@znet.com]

Aaace-nla Colleagues: Are we seeing the start of "reading wars" in adult
literacy education? Daphne Greenberg recently posted a book review by R.
Stainthorp that was critical of the approach to reading that Purcell-Gates,
Jacobson, and Degeneris take in their book on literacy practices of adult
learners. Now Eric Weiner has published an article taking issue with the
"componential" approach to adult reading taken by the Partnership for
Reading housed in the National Institute for Literacy and disseminated by
the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL).
Weiner's article is not available online to my knowledge but you should be
able to read it at your local research university. Tom Sticht



Abstract of
Keeping Adults Behind: Adult Literacy Education in the
Age of Official Reading Regimes

Eric J. Weiner

The Partnership for Reading (PFR) in the United States has recently thrown
its hat into the ring of adult literacy research and practice. Its
information about adult literacy comes, almost entirely, from the National
Reading Panel's (NRP) data on children. Building its case from the NRP
data, the PFR advocates for a narrow, school-based conception of reading,
excluding from its recommendations several aspects of literacy development
that have been determined by many adult educators, scholars, and
practitioners to be vital for the successful development of competent
readers and writers. In short, the PFR produces, legitimates, and
disseminates knowledge that supports truths about adult literacy
development that are either seriously flawed or need considerable
contextualization. At stake in confronting and disrupting the hegemony of
the PFR is no less than the pedagogical capacity to imagine and put into
practice adult literacy initiatives that go beyond the strict confines of a
federalized body of "official" and "scientifically proven" knowledge.

As a challenge to the PFR's official knowledge, the author discusses two
successful adult literacy initiatives that involve what he calls a critical
integrative literacy—that is, a strategy of literacy development that merges
the technical and contextual in the service of social change and individual
power.

Abstract from Weiner, E.J. (2005, December). Keeping Adults Behind: Adult
Literacy Education in the Age of Official Reading Regimes. Journal of
Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 49(4), 286–301. doi: 10.1598/JAAL.49.4.3