Course Logistics
Instructors: Brian Wandell Dates: Tues-Thurs Time: 3:15-4:30 Location: TBD E-mail contact: |
Course Overview
How we
teach children to read, and how we specifically teach children with reading
disabilities, has stirred much controversy: Debates over the reading
curricula are sometimes called the Reading Wars. In this seminar, we will review the
intellectual foundation of reading curriculum development, and we will try to
understand the contributions of scientists, educators and policy-makers. One goal of the seminar will be to
understand how scientists, educators, and policy-makers can work together to
produce an effective curriculum. A
second goal will be to understand the specific neurological properties of the
population of students who have extraordinary difficulty in learning to read,
and what might be done to assist that group. |
Learning to Read: The
Great Debate. (1996).
Jeanne S. Chall. Harcourt Brace,
New York. 3rd Edition.
Reading Instruction that Works.
(1998). Michael Pressley. The Guilford Press, New York.
The Myth of the First Three Years (1999). John Bruer. The Free
Press.
The Scientist in the Crib (1999). Gopnik, Meltzhoff
and Kuhl. William Morrow, New York.
Beginning to Read.
Thinking and Learning about Print. (1994) Marilyn J. Adams.
The MIT Press, Cambridge.
The Mind’s Past (1998). Michael
Gazzaniga. The UC Press.
Misreading Reading (2000). Gerald Coles. Heinemann, Portsmouth.
Phonics Phacts (1993). Ken Goodman. Heinemann, Portsmouth.
Foorman, B.R., Francis, D.J., Fletcher, J.M., Schatschneider, C., & Mehta, P. (1998).
The role of instruction in learning to read: Preventing reading failure in at-risk children.
Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 37-55. (Description of Houston Study)
Taylor Anderson and Others
Critique
Foorman Responds to Taylor
and Others
Only read this after you have done your assignment: The
Rozin Study
Dyslexia. S. Shaywitz, (1987). Scientific American, V. 256, no. 1, p. 34.
Work on the
Magnocellular Theory
Scientific
American Debate: Galaburda
Commentary: White
matter in the STS (From Eden and Zeffiro).
Genomics:
Science: Quantitative Trait Locus for Reading Disability on Chromosome 6
Lon R. Cardon, Shelley D. Smith, David W. Fulker, William J. Kimberling, Bruce F. Pennington, John C. DeFries
Science, New Series, Vol. 266, No. 5183. (Oct. 14, 1994), pp. 276-279.
News article: Scientists Find the First
Gene for Dyslexia.htm
Krueger;
New York Times piece; Tennessee project
IDEA discussion and analyses
Rod Paige
Reid Lyon
Tips
on citation format, including how to cite web sites.
Stanford Library- main
website
AskERIC- search ERIC
for scientific publications in Education.
We are going to carry use this seminar as an investigation of the many different topics that touch on reading. At different points in the class, we will adopt the point of view of scientists, engineers, educators, and policy-makers.
As scientists, we will ask what we know about the act of reading. What ways do children learn to read? What brain mechanisms are involved, and how do these mechanisms differ between individuals? We will try to understand what people claim about these mechanisms, and we will examine the evidence for these different claims? What do Psychiatrists and Neurologists do when they examine and treat children for reading disabilities? How do the professionals in the field of reading classify children?
Then, we will examine different assistive technologies for reading. What are they? How expensive are they? How well do they work?
We will ask ourselves what research efforts are the most important, and what technology should we try to develop?
Then, we will ask about reading curricula. How are the textbooks written? Do these materials incorporate the knowledge we have about children and their differences? What do they contain, and why?
Finally, we will investigate the public policies that are in place to improve the success rate of reading. One of the major education acts is up for review this year (IDEA) and we will try to follow the policy debate and see how the facts we have learned are being used to frame the debate in Washington.
|
Dates |
Topic |
Readings |
|
October 2 and 4 |
The Great Debate |
Stephen Metcalf Remedial Ed. The New Republic, October 2, 2000 |
|
October 9 and 11* |
Behavioral Measurements |
Woodcock Johnson and Related Perceptual Material |
|
October 16 and 18 |
Reading Curricula |
Open Court Curriculum |
|
October 23 and 25 |
Early Identification and Reading Interventions |
Foorman and Coles |
|
Oct 30 and Nov 1 |
Neuroscience |
Shaywitz, Eden, MisReadingReadingSciAm |
|
Nov. 6 and 8 |
Genomics |
|
|
Nov. 13 and 15 |
Teachers and Schools of Education |
|
|
Nov. 20 |
Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA), Psychiatry and Neurology Clinics |
|
|
Nov. 27 and 29 |
The Role of State Governments |
Krueger, Hanushek |
|
Dec. 1 |
NIH and Research Agenda |
|
* Wandell away; Dougherty covering
Each week we will have a basic reading and a corresponding discussion led by class members. The focus of the discussion will be a specific issue concerning reading. We will begin the course with a review of how people measure reading skills and what is known about the brain basis of reading. Then, we are likely to investigate how reading is taught in schools; what we know about the effectiveness of current instruction; what we know about early identification for reading failure; what are effective interventions when a child is failing to learn to read; the costs and benefits of the current system of reading instruction; the costs and benefits of some of the proposed approaches to reading instruction.
The course will be run flexibly; when topics come up in class we may decide to investigate those. Some questions are likely to come up. For example, we may decide to investigate the assistive technologies available for reading. Or, we may decide to look into how Schools of Education teach reading. Or, we may decide to look into what is known about the effectiveness of different reading interventions in helping children become good readers.
The course homework will consist of regular reports of the
results of specific investigations back to the class. Each student will be responsible for at least two reports on
topics the class wants to hear about.
The class as a whole will be responsible for writing a long report in
the form of a signed web page.
Different individuals will provide the background information, analytic
information, and conclusions about some topic that the class reviews. As you will see, there are already a variety
of (conflicting) web pages about reading.
I hope the one we produce will be authoritative and useful.
The main course project will be a written report. The basis of the report is this.
Suppose
you are on the legislative staff of a California State Assembly person. The legislator you work for sits on an
important educational committee. S/he
is looking for a compelling reason to spend money on some element of
educational reform, but the legislator does not want to waste the taxpayer’s
money.
So, the
legislator has asked you to prepare a report that you will provide at a special
staff meeting. You will be asked to
identify a topic where you think significant improvement can be made in the
reading curriculum. You will be asked
to do the following elements in your proposal to the staff.
Your
reports will be built up in a series of steps, in cooperation with Bob, Gayle
and me. First, we will ask you for a
one-page description of the topic you propose to investigate. We will review your suggestion and offer you
some guidance and reference material.
Then, you will submit an outline of your report and we will review it
with you. Then, you will submit a
complete draft of your report. If
necessary, we will ask you to make some changes to this draft to arrive at a
final report.
In
preparing your report, we would like you to look up the names of real
legislators who play a role in education.
These may be people either in California, or from a state where you grew
up. In addition to the scientific
review and proposed changes, we would like you to tell us something about the
legislation, funding, and political climate surrounding your proposal.
Grading
You will be graded on three elements of your work (a) Oral discussion in class (b) Brief written summaries about the reading (c) Written work (see The Project, just above) |