Re: Reading to children (Re-

Geoffrey Williams (geoffrey.williams who-is-at english.su.edu.au)
15 Dec 1995 18:56:18 U

To go back several turns in this discussion to Russ, Gordon, Peter and others.
(I have been in Brisbane - sorry to be slow to respond. Maybe different
posts on specific issues are more useful than long ones on lots? I'm still
not sure of the cultural practices here!))

On 13.12.95 Russ wrote:
The kind of practices I associate with joint bookreading don't seem to me to
have their roots in any traditional pedagogy I'm aware of. On the other hand,
I don't know _where_ they came from, and it just occurs to me that I should.
Do others?

Many studies suggested an important correlational relation between home
reading and early school literacy success (official pedagogic success in
Bernstein's terms). Subsequent pedagogic handbooks recontextualized this
research to project an image of a desirable continuity of practice between
home and school, explicitly suggesting that school practices should be based
on "best" home reading practices. This seems to be the main ground for the
development of the "partnership" metaphor. Much of this pedagogic material
was then further recontextualized for parents by professional associations.
For an interesting example from the literature of advice to parents, see "Ten
Commandments for Parents" developed by the Parent Committee of the Michigan
Reading Association and reproduced in an article by Goldfield and Snow in
J.Flood. ed. 1984. Promoting reading comprehension. International Reading
Association. The first commandment is "I will read to my child daily".
Commandment 10 is "I will listen to my child daily about his or her school
reading of stories and progress in learning to read."

This is a very short list of fragments of research influence.
Ninio and Bruner's article "The achievements and antecedents of labelling" was
an important early paper describing influences of jb-r on early oral language
development. (Journal of Child Language. 5. 1-15.)
Clark, M. Young, fluent readers: What can they teach us? London: Heinemann
Marie Clay, The reading behaviour of five year old children: A research
report. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies 2(1) p11-31.
Dorothy Butler, Cushla and her books. Auckland: Hodder and Stoughton. (Cushla
suffered multiple handicaps and against expectations learned to read
proficiently. Butler argues this results from extensive parental reading
during her early years.)
Gordon's work, of course. Additional to the reference he mentioned in an
earlier post, Moon and Wells, The influence of home on learning to read.
Journal of research in reading. 2. 53-62
Bloome, D. Reading as a social process. Language Arts. 62. 134-142.
Teale, W.H. Home background and young children's literacy development. In
Emergent literacy: Writing and reading. eds. W.H.Teale and E.Sulzby. (Ablex)

One of the best-known and earliest pedagogic handbooks is Holdaway, D. The
foundations of literacy. Sydney: Ashton Scholastic.

Geoff.