Stop the Pendulum: Public Policy and Personal Experience in Reading Instruction and Reform
By (Author) William D. Bursuck
By (author) Craig Peck
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
15th November 2021
United States
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Educational: First / native language: Reading and writing skills
Educational strategies and policy
418.4071073
Paperback
120
Width 153mm, Height 220mm, Spine 9mm
231g
This is a book about the struggles over reforming reading instruction and the corresponding effort to improve reading achievement in the United States over the last seven decades.
Stop the Pendulum provides a history of reading instruction and school reform in the US since 1955. As K12 teacher educators and university researchers, the authors share an accessible description of history and policy. Bursuck and Peck demonstrate their passion for their subject as they describe policies and reform trends and offer suggestions based on their experience to guide future efforts to improve educational reform. Through their research and vignettes, they attempt to motivate educators and policy makers to reach a consensus about how to best deliver reading instruction that meets a range of student needs in a way that teaches both decoding and comprehension skills. The authors take into account the research-based positions on all sides of the reading war. The connection they offer between history and personal experience allows readers to more deeply consider the impact of the history of reading instruction on students. Recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. * Choice Reviews *
This book offers an excellent, comprehensive view of the history of reading politics and pedagogy. I wish it was going to be ready for my first cohort of urban reading specialists this summer. -- Brooke Blanks, Assistant principal, Roanoke City Public Schools
The authors of Stop the Pendulum! have combined history and personal experience to create a highly informative and readable narrative of the last 50 years of the Reading Wars. Knowing the past and desiring that all children gain the gift of competent reading, educators should join the authors in choosing the Radical Middle where both decoding and comprehension are not just balanced but both are taught using the highest level of systematic, explicit instruction. -- Anita L. Archer, PhD, author and teacher educator
William D. Bursuck is Professor Emeritus of Specialized Education Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He obtained his Ph.D. in special education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Until his retirement in 2014, Dr. Bursuck was involved in preparing special and general education teachers to teach reading and other essential skills to students with special needs.
Craig Peck received his Ph.D. in History of Education from Stanford University in 2001. He currently chairs and teaches doctoral studies classes in the Department of Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Dr. Pecks research has appeared in journals such as Educational Administration Quarterly, Education and Urban Society, Teachers College Record, and Urban Education.