Reading Instruction That Works: The Case for Balanced Teaching [Paperback]

Michael Pressley PhD (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1572303190 | ISBN-13: 978-1572303195 | Publication Date: April 10, 1998

This text profiles some of America's reading instructors, documenting how they combine aspects of both skill and whole language approaches.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book is well-written, informative, and comprehensible to a nontechnical audience. The content is timely, given the heatedness of debates over whole language versus phonics instruction that are currently receiving widespread political and media attention. I was particularly impressed by how up to date the references are." --Linda Baker, PhD, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

"Integrating a review of the literature with hundreds of hours of classroom observation, interviews with expert teachers, and his own findings into how children learn to read, Michael Pressley provides an exemplary model for literacy instruction. The book demonstrates the benefits of a balanced approach in an interesting and unbiased manner, covering applications both with emerging readers and more sophisticated upper-grade children. Throughout, Pressley offers straight talk about important topics." --Lesley Mandel Morrow, PhD, Rutgers University

"The most complete and compelling presentation of balanced reading instruction that is available to date. Synthesizing extensive research, illuminating trends, and building bridges between different fields of knowledge, Pressley demonstrates that balanced reading instruction involves much more than simply selecting from a list of curricular choices. The book helps teachers understand the conditions in which certain approaches are more effective, why they are effective, and how we know that they will improve students' literacy. Lifting us up on the shoulders of past research, and proposing promising new directions for teacher education and reading instruction, this book will help maximize the literacy successes of future generations." --Cathy Collins Block, PhD, Texas Christian University

"For school psychologists seeking to improve their understanding of literacy and the reading process and to gain a comprehensible overview of the most updated research, Pressley provides an excellent starting palce for developing a sound understanding of some of the more salient features involved in the overall process." --John M. Hintze and Judy E. Loughin in School Psychology Quarterly

About the Author

Michael Pressley, PhD, who passed away in May 2006, was University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University, as well as Director of the Doctoral Program in Teacher Education and Director of the Literacy Achievement Research Center, with both roles part of his professorship in the Department of Teacher Education and the Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education. He was an expert on effective elementary literacy instruction, with his research appearing in more than 300 journal articles, chapters, and books. Dr. Pressley served a 6-year term as editor of Journal of Educational Psychology. He was honored with awards from the National Reading Conference, the International Reading Association, the American Educational Research Association, and the American Psychological Association, among others. Dr. Pressley received the 2004 E. L. Thorndike Award from Division 15 of the American Psychological Association, the highest award given for career research accomplishment in educational psychology.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 298 pages
• Publisher: Guilford Press (April 10, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572303190
• ISBN-13: 978-1572303195
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,477,284 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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54 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An essential book for teachers of literacy, November 23, 1998

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This review is from: Reading Instruction That Works: The Case for Balanced Teaching (Hardcover)

Defining whole-language or for that matter the skills-emphasis approach to literacy has been as elusive to many in the teaching profession as the recovery of the lost ark. In Michael Pressley's newest book Reading Instruction That Works: The Case for Balanced Teaching, he makes a gallant attempt and a plea to stop the confusion and start the process of a constructivist "balanced approach" to literacy. It is a must read for any professional who desires to understand the current trends that have shaped literacy programs across the country in the last thirty years. Pressley shakes his ink-stained finger at whole-language zealots and skills-based robotrons with commendable due process as he clearly explains the foundational constructs that have developed in each "camp" over the years, and the political feuding it has caused and will likely continue over the next decade. But Pressley goes further by logically and diplomatically identifying the roots of the literacy controversy and lack of proper teacher training that stems from instructional deficits on the university level. He makes his case for a balanced approach to literacy with the idea that taking the best of both literacy philosophies will lead to an end of the squabbling and result in much more time focusing on the imperative instructional needs of children. Simple as this sounds, it is not. Frank Smith: "A word can not be recognized until its meaning has been comprehended....The first alternative is-to skip over the puzzling word. The second alternative is to guess what the unknown word might be. And the final and least preferred alternative is to sound out the word." (page 66, Reading Without Nonsense)

Ken Goodman: "Reading is a psycholinguistic guessing game." (Pages 115-16, The Reading Process: Cycles and Strategies)

Constance Weaver: "It's not necessary. Just as they learn patterns of oral language, so most children will unconsciously learn common phonics patterns." (Page 197, Reading Process and Practice)

What do all of the whole-language princes and their queen have in common? That is a rhetorical question that requires little thought, indeed. What has been stated has resulted in a credibility problem-one that is not readily admitted nor easily abandoned by the promoters of an incomplete philosophy. On the other hand, Pressley is quick to point out with another ink-stained finger the shortcomings of a skills-emphasis approach without regard to comprehension. Reading and comprehension are two very distinct features of literacy and must be addressed as Pressley states:

The skills-emphasis model...fails because the skills that are the focus of the skills-emphasis enthusiasts, especially decoding skills, are not all there is to literacy. The skills-emphasis model is an incomplete model of literacy development, one that does not even acknowledge as important many defensible whole-language practices that are embraced by those who control the elementary schoolplace- elementary teachers. (Page 268, Reading Instruction That Works: The Case for Balanced Teaching)

Pressley goes on to identify what happens in excellent classrooms and provides mountains of research evidence and sources from his personal longitudinal studies to decades old research that is still verifiable. He also manages to include a nice child development abstract and a well-summarized appendix of "Landmarks in Development of Literacy Competence from 0 to Beyond the Elementary Years". As a final kick in the "hoo-haa," Pressley includes a Dave Letterman style "Ten Dumb and Dangerous Claims about Reading Instruction" that would almost be funny if they were not so pathetically damaging. He does make a good case for reading instruction that works-balanced reading and comprehension practices that need to be implemented by all teachers who instruct children in literacy as a matter of course.