[AAACE-NLA] Reading Wars Startingin Adult Literacy

[David Collings]

Colleagues,

The journal article that Tom cites below is available from the International
Reading Association (IRA) Web site for a fee.  You may download the entire
article at the non-member rate of $8.75.  You may also become a member of
IRA ($36 per year) and subscribe to the Journal of Adolescent & Adult
Literacy ($20 per year for online only) for access to the article.  

Here is the link for joining and subscribing:

http://marketplace.reading.org/memberships/ira_newmbr.cfm

For $56 you will have online access to entire journals beginning with the
September 2004 issue.

David C.


David Collings
AAACE-NLA Moderator
david at collings.com 

-----Original Message-----
From: aaace-nla-bounces at lists.literacytent.org
[mailto:aaace-nla-bounces at lists.literacytent.org] On Behalf Of
tsticht at znet.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 6:57 PM
To: aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org
Subject: [AAACE-NLA] Reading Wars Startingin Adult Literacy

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


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