The argument between advocates of the whole language approach and the phonics approach threatens to become so polarized and politicized that agreeing on a middle ground seems at times impossible, and the voices of reason and experience are drowned out. The debate erupted anew in California after alarming news stories about reading scores ranked…

A longitudinal study, involving five beginning teachers, revolved around questions about how teachers' own emerging theories of literacy instruction are shaped by their interactions with other theories and perspectives and through their own work with students who are learning to read, write, and understand text in schools. Trained in the whole…