Offers reflections by a teacher educator who spent a year teaching a third-grade class. Discusses the realities of a teacher's internal decision-making process and day-to-day interactions with children in the classroom. Notes that uncertainty is what keeps the inquiry process going. (SR)

Examines relationships between 418 elementary school teachers' theoretical beliefs toward reading instruction and their attitudes about pupil control. Uses the Theoretical Orientation to Reading Profile (TORP) and the Pupil Control Ideology Form (PCI) for data collection. Finds as teachers' scores moved toward the whole language end of the TORP…

"Sharing the ownership of knowing" (a constructivist concept of motivation for literacy learning) is a dynamic classroom interaction in which a teacher's constructivist epistemological stance facilitates students' sense of their own construction of meaning and the integrity of their own thinking. Sharing the ownership of knowing was one…

A continuing longitudinal study examined students' perceptions of their learning and motivation in a whole language classroom setting. Subjects, 14 fifth- or sixth-grade students who collaborated in the inquiry as co-researchers, were interviewed in depth. The mixed fifth- and sixth-grade classroom at the "Willow School" in southern…

Whole language represents only one of many good concepts about teaching reading to children, but it is not for everybody. Because whole language is a philosophy rather than a specific method, educational practitioners can incorporate different aspects of this philosophy to different degrees. If teachers think of a continuum of theoretical bases…

Applying the whole language perspective across the primary-grade curriculum, this book presents 10 essays that describe first-, second-, and third-grade classrooms where teachers find authentic, meaningful ways for children to communicate about their lives and what they are learning. Essays in the book demonstrate numerous whole language…

Emergent and beginning readers demonstrate many predictable behaviors in the kindergarten classroom, yet every child is making sense out of print in his or her own way. The job of the kindergarten teacher is to help each child to continue developing as a reader and writer. Reading and writing materials are accessible and usable throughout a…

An ethnographic study described a successful educational environment for students from low-income families and examined what it is about those environments that makes them successful. The subject class was a combined fourth and fifth grade class at Taft Elementary School in a predominantly African American working class community two miles from…

Sharing both collective and individual experiences and insights about whole language, teaching, and educational change, this book explains whole language instruction and its implementation on a school-wide basis. Each chapter moves from research to theory, and from theory to application in classrooms that actually exist. The book explains why…

Examines the degree to which whole language practices have become a part of reading instruction offered by first grade teachers in six school districts. Finds that teachers spent less than 10 percent of the reading instructional time engaged in practices which could be considered in agreement with whole language theory. (MG)

A study investigated how schools and teachers attempt to meet the needs of language minority students and to utilize literature as a means to teach English language reading to students while building their English language capacities. Language arts and reading instruction was observed in 12 third- through fifth-grade classrooms in three elementary…

A study examined how teachers' attitudes and beliefs affect their enactment of literature-based curriculum materials, whether student attitudes differ in accordance with the teacher's orientation, and whether student achievement in reading and writing differ in whole language and traditional classrooms. Two "whole language" and two "traditional"…

Highlighting typical days in a variety of whole-language classrooms, this book describes learners of all ages, beginning with a home day-care setting through preschool programs and elementary classrooms to a junior high and high school. The book also describes a special education site and an English-as-a-Second Language classroom, and concludes in…

A study explored the changing role of the elementary teacher within the context of book discussions as teachers move from basal instruction to literature-based reading instruction. As part of an earlier study, two upper-grade teachers consistently expressed concern during interviews and group discussions with their colleagues about how to foster…