The term "balanced literacy" was popularized in the mid-1990s to describe a middle ground in terms of text selection, instruction, skills, and strategies. The intention was to merge the promising elements of whole language and phonics. Interactions with educators and literacy leaders across the country currently suggest that a term that…

Drawing on an asset-based approach to adolescents and their literacy practices, this book is a powerful resource for secondary teachers across all content areas. The authors encourage a "widened lens" approach that considers varied perspectives and research findings when engaging in multiple and often competing initiatives, issues, and…

A decade after the publication of Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement, the influence of John Hattie's statistical work continues to grow. This paper critically examines one aspect of Hattie's 'synthesis' of education meta-analyses, his summation of research data for whole language literacy teaching. Of…

The current global trends demand that we remain conscious of how distinct norms in groups we affiliate with affect decisions. Among developmental aspects, childhood language acquisition depends heavily on epigenetic interactions between the innate and the immediate environment (Sinha, 2017). This explanatory sequential mixed methods study explored…

New Zealand's approach to literacy instruction is predominantly whole language. Explicit code-orientated literacy instruction is not favoured, however, most teachers are believed to include phonics in their literacy lessons. No study has been reported on phonics use in New Zealand schools. Survey responses on the use of phonics instruction from…

This study investigated the effects of using an interactive e-story for early literacy instruction on word recognition, story comprehension and story application. The study was conducted in two classrooms in the southern border provinces of Thailand with ethnic minority children at the kindergarten level. The samples consisted of 60 children who…

Based on the finding that teachers' literacy beliefs affect their instructional practices, recent studies on literacy beliefs present an increasing interest in heritage language (HL) because of the rapid increase in heritage learners' enrollment. However, less is known about Korean language teachers' literacy beliefs and practices in college…

This is a quantitative research project utilizing secondary data. Reading Recovery and Leveled Literacy Intervention are two early literacy interventions based on a whole language and phonetic approach to reading instruction. For the purposes of this study, the end-of-first-grade benchmark is a Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) 18 and the…

Recently, the balanced literacy approach, a combination of whole language and skill development approaches has received attention in literacy instruction. The purpose of this school-based action research was to create a balanced literacy environment, and to describe the impacts of the various instructional activities based on the balanced literacy…

This paper analyzes whole language and code-based skills approaches in early literacy and the specific patterns of interaction present in both approaches. Nineteen hours of video data were coded to analyze the nature of whole language versus code-based skills instruction and document the allocation of time spent on each approach in a reading…

The author's career in professional education is intertwined with the history of language arts education in the United States and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). The author joined NCTE in the 1960s, though she was already teaching for about 10 years with a well-developed constructivist perspective on teaching and learning.…

The problem investigated by this study was whether teachers of kindergarten through second grade feel themselves to be effective literacy teachers and if they do not feel effective, to find out whether their agreement or disagreement with the literacy methodologies required by the school was a factor. The mixed methods approach to this study…

The dichotomisation of literacy instruction into phonics instruction versus a whole language approach fails to realise a fundamental tenet of providing equitable educational opportunities to diverse groups of children. Diversity becomes a problem to solve through "inoculation programmes" or "special" education expertise.…

This article describes an unconventional method to teach un-contracted braille reading and writing skills to students who are blind and have additional disabilities. It includes a keyboarding curriculum that focuses on the whole language approach to literacy. A special feature is the keyboard that is adapted with braille symbols. Un-contracted…

This article examines recent research and developments relating to the role of phonemic awareness and phonics in early literacy education and the relevance of these findings for school counsellors and teachers. It defines and reviews the role of phonemic awareness and phonics in theoretical models of reading processes, including whole-language,…