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Issue Information Issue Informationpp. i - vi Abstract Keywords: |
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Short Communications Editorial Statement Special Issue: The Future of Whole Languagepp. 7 - 7 Abstract Keywords: |
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Original Articles Looking Back to Look Forward: Understanding the Present By Revisiting The Past: An Australian PerspectiveBrian Cambourne* & Jan Turbill pp. 8 - 29 Abstract Cambourne and Turbill trace the growth, change and finally marginalisation of progressive approaches to literacy education by examining whole language philosophy in Australia from the 1960s to the present. Using a critical lens, Cambourne and Turbill describe how whole language has been positioned throughout the last nearly 50 years in terms of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. Cambourne and Turbill offer a personal history of whole language in Australia and draw connections of the educational changes occurring in their country to other western democracies. Their insights are valuable in order to examine other grass roots programs and to better understand how politics impact educational movements. Keywords: |
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“Whole language” and moral panic in Australia
Susanne Gannon* & Wayne Sawyer pp. 30 - 51 Abstract This paper examines the media and political landscapes within which “whole language” is currently constituted in Australia. Through surveying the themes and rhetoric deployed in media texts over recent years, we consider how “whole language” has been taken up as part of a wider media campaign around education generally. We consider how this campaign has been instrumental in constructing a moral panic around literacy education in particular. We begin with an overview of how the literacy standards of Australia's young people compare on international measures with young people elsewhere. We consider how the media has bundled these with populist concerns about literacy pedagogy and other educational issues to create a sense of national crisis about education. We argue that the sociological concept of "moral panic" provides a useful and systematic theoretical framework for reading these discursive tactics of the media. Finally, we examine how a National Inquiry into literacy responded to this panic by reinscribing a familiar – and unhelpful- binary between “whole language” and phonics-based instruction. In the title and in the body of the paper we keep “whole language” in quotation marks to remind the readers that use of the term in the media texts that are analysed differs widely from its usage by literacy specialists. Keywords: |
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Core Values of Progressive Education: Seikatsu Tsuzurikata and Whole Language
Mary M. Kitagawa, & Chisato Kitagawa pp. 52 - 67 Abstract Seikatsu tsuzurikata is a grassroots movement in Japan that has many parallels to the whole language movement, but it developed completely independently, beginning in the late 1920’s. Our research into this movement was conducted in 1984 and described in Kitagawa and Kitagawa (1987). We are now updating our earlier research. Seikatsu tsuzurikata is fundamentally a writing education movement designed to help students develop a strong sense of self by having them write descriptive, detailed compositions about their daily life and the world around them. We want to describe how seikatsu tsuzurikata and whole language are similar and different, just as any set of “distant cousins” might want to know how they are related. Keywords: Seikatsu Tsuzurikata, Whole Language, Co-spectatorship Role, Belonging Identity, Development of Personhood |
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Becoming Whole Language Teachers and Social Justice Agents: Pre-service Teachers Inquire with Sixth Graders
Monica Taylor, & Gennifer Otinsky pp. 68 - 82 Abstract As we strive to help pre-service teachers understand both why and how to teach for social justice, we face the challenge of making whole language teaching less abstract and intangible. Frequently pre-service teachers understand the principles of teaching for social justice but have no sense of how to infuse them into their teaching. They accept that these theories can be utilized in their education courses but they are doubtful that they would work successfully with children or even be accepted in K-12 school environments. Keywords: |
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Review Articles Book Review: Whole language voices in teacher educationAmy S. Flint pp. 83 - 86 Abstract Keywords: |
International Association of Educators.