Critical Research And The Future Of Literacy Education

By Author: Cornelia
Total Articles: 95
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All over the globe those who "have" are outperforming the "have-nots" in literacy education, with serious implications. Generally, the differences in achievement are easily predictable along the lines of race, class, gender, and language background (College Board, 2005; Perie, Grigg, & Donahue, 2005). Certainly there are structural and cultural contexts, including inequitable access to resources and institutionalized racism, that problematize the concept of the achievement gap, but these differences in academic performance still carry significant social, economic, and political consequences. At a time when we need to expand our literacy GHD MK4 research horizons to address issues of equity and excellence in literacy education, research practices are often narrowly focused on large standardized measures that make it difficult to tease out the nuances of exemplary classroom practice. In the United States, for instance, many state departments of education rank schools only according to aggregate test scores. These standardized tests are generally taken in the spring ...
... and the results are made available the following school year. Schools that perform poorly are often threatened with takeover or the loss of resources, and administrators are challenged to offer more basic and traditional curricula delivered through a teacher-centered pedagogy to increase their scores by a number of percentage points.

Taken as a whole, these tests do not tell us a great deal about what is happening or what is possible in language and literacy education. They do not help us understand how teacher experience, institutionalized racism, culturally alienating curricula, or test anxiety affect the scores of schools serving populations that are largely nonwhite or low income. What's more, the tests do not tell us about the tremendous opportunity gaps that exist between the wealthiest and the poorest students (Hilliard, 2003). They do not tell us about what is working in settings where individual students or classrooms are excelling; furthermore, these tests tell us nothing about how teachers informally assess students throughout the academic year, how GHD IV MK4 Purple they make connections between students' lived experiences and the world of academic literacy, or how students become motivated to see themselves as intellectuals and empowered readers and writers. Such tests do not measure the extent to which our students are becoming powerful, humane, culturally affirmed, and engaged citizens.

All over the globe those who "have" are outperforming the "have-nots" in literacy education, with serious implications. Generally, the differences in achievement are easily predictable along the lines of race, class, gender, and language background (College Board, 2005; Perie, Grigg, & Donahue, 2005). Certainly there are structural and cultural contexts, including inequitable access to resources and institutionalized racism, that problematize the concept of the achievement gap, but these differences in academic performance still carry significant social, economic, and political consequences. At a time when we need to expand our literacy GHD MK4 research horizons to address issues of equity and excellence in literacy education, research practices are often narrowly focused on large standardized measures that make it difficult to tease out the nuances of exemplary classroom practice. In the United States, for instance, many state departments of education rank schools only according to aggregate test scores. These standardized tests are generally taken in the spring and the results are made available the following school year. Schools that perform poorly are often threatened with takeover or the loss of resources, and administrators are challenged to offer more basic and traditional curricula delivered through a teacher-centered pedagogy to increase their scores by a number of percentage points.

Taken as a whole, these tests do not tell us a great deal about what is happening or what is possible in language and literacy education. They do not help us understand how teacher experience, institutionalized racism, culturally alienating curricula, or test anxiety affect the scores of schools serving populations that are largely nonwhite or low income. What's more, the tests do not tell us about the tremendous opportunity gaps that exist between the wealthiest and the poorest students (Hilliard, 2003). They do not tell us about what is working in settings where individual students or classrooms are excelling; furthermore, these tests tell us nothing about how teachers informally assess students throughout the academic year, how GHD IV MK4 Purple they make connections between students' lived experiences and the world of academic literacy, or how students become motivated to see themselves as intellectuals and empowered readers and writers. Such tests do not measure the extent to which our students are becoming powerful, humane, culturally affirmed, and engaged citizens.