Content uploaded by Jan Turbill
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Jan Turbill on Feb 01, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
Content uploaded by Jan Turbill
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Jan Turbill on Feb 01, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
5/11/12 11:19 AMReading Online: International Perspectives -- The Four Ages of Reading Philosophy and Pedagogy
Page 1 of 13http://www.readingonline.org/international/turbill4/index.html
The Four Ages of Reading Philosophy and Pedagogy: A Framework for
Examining Theory and Practice
Jan Turbill
Analyses of government and media reports demonstrate that there seems
to have always been debate about the most appropriate literacy pedagogy
for our schools (Bouffler, 1997; Brock, 1998; Caine & Caine, 1997). The
debate has been particularly fierce in the past few years, and there is no
indication that things are improving. The issues seem to focus around
what we should teach in the name of literacy and whether we should teach
this way or that way. And each new way has had its share of criticism,
mistrust, and attacks by those who appear to want to cling to an old way.
Most recently, the “new way” was whole language. For a time it enjoyed
the spotlight, shooting up in the 1990s to number 1 on the annual “What’s
Hot, What’s Not” list published in the International Reading Association’s
membership newspaper, Reading Today. Teachers, academics, and
publishers all became “whole language advocates.” (Whether they all
understood the philosophy and its pedagogy is another issue.) However,
by the mid- to late 1990s, for all sorts of reasons (many political), whole
language began to lose favor and came under attack. In Australia and the
United Kingdom, the centralized systems that control the education
agenda decreed that the teaching of literacy needed to be “explicit and
systematic” and implied that whole language teaching was neither, while
in some states in the United States, including California and Texas, the
approach was banned by legislation.
Related Postings
from the Archives
Further Notes on
the Four
Resources Model
by Allan Luke and
Peter Freebody
Comments on the
Reading
Excellence Act by
Ken Goodman
High-Stakes
Testing in Our
Schools by Dana
Grisham
A major claim being made by many state and national governments during this time was that literacy
levels were declining. For example, in September 1997 in Australia, the then minister for schools,
vocational education, and training, David Kemp, released results of the National School English
Literacy Survey, which included a special report on literacy standards. The results, Dr. Kemp claimed,
were “a national disgrace.” The crisis rhetoric that appeared subsequently in the popular media to
denounce education systems, public schools, and teachers for what was claimed to be a decline in
national literacy standards of Year 3 and Year 5 children from across Australia created much anger
among educators and state ministers of education. However, it also created much concern and
confusion among parents and the community at large.
Just how reliable such national surveys and other high-stakes testing are is never questioned by the
popular media. They simply report the claims made, and these soon become “facts” that other media
and politicians go on to use ad nauseum. Many academics criticized the National School English
Literacy Survey on a number of accounts, including its determination of “cut-off scores,” its location
of literacy benchmarks, and the construction of literacy it implicitly endorsed (Alloway & Gilbert,
1998). Some went as far as to accuse the federal minister of manufacturing a crisis in literacy for
political gain (Brock, 1998). However, these defenses are rarely heard outside the academic arena,
and so the debates go on.
Literacy Crisis or Manufactured Crisis? | A Personal Historical Journey | A Fifth Age? | References
5/11/12 11:19 AMReading Online: International Perspectives -- The Four Ages of Reading Philosophy and Pedagogy
Page 2 of 13http://www.readingonline.org/international/turbill4/index.html
A Literacy Crisis or a Manufactured Crisis?
Is the aim to push literacy education back to an age when all students supposedly were literate? Or
are the debates and attacks simply for political gain? Are there other sinister reasons behind them,
such as control of the academic turf or publishers’ control of the market place? Was whole language
really to blame for the so many of society’s ills? Or, to take a more positive view, are these debates
part of a process that forces us to search constantly for better ways in creating a pedagogy of literacy
for all children?
Whatever the reasons, I personally found it distressing that whole language became the scapegoat
for all the ills of education, while literacy itself became the tool of politicians (Turbill & Cambourne,
1997). And we are all feeling the results. Brady (2000) and McNeil (2000) argue that accountability
and standards are the controlling forces in education today. While some might say, “It’s about time,”
these two authors suggest that there is mounting evidence that such control by governments and
bureaucrats is in fact curtailing educational initiatives and has the potential to lead to greater
inequalities in education than ever before.
The “Why is this all happening?” question led me to reflect on my many years of teaching. The
outcomes of those reflections became the basis for this article. In what follows I want to share that
we are indeed moving forward;
it is impossible to go back to a golden age when all students exited our schools literate,
because such a time never existed; and
more students are more highly literate today than ever before.
In putting forward these arguments I also want to demonstrate that whole language is not the cause
of current literacy ills. In fact, the whole language movement has been a major change agent and
strength in the teaching of literacy over the last few decades -- but more on this later.
In order to explore these thoughts further I want to take us on a journey -- a journey that examines
literacy philosophy and pedagogy, and reading in particular, over time. In doing so, I believe we can
see more clearly where we have come from, where we are going, and why literacy education seems
to be constantly in turmoil. I hope that with such an understanding we will feel more in control of
what we do, as well as be able to take control of why we teach literacy the way that we do. We might
even become, as Routman (1996) advises, far more political and begin to believe in ourselves as
professionals.
As it was necessary to contain this article to a manageable length, I have chosen to focus on reading
in the early years. However, it is not difficult to make connections to all aspects of literacy. I leave
that to my readers.
Back to menu
So, Let’s Begin: A Personal Historical Journey
In order to explore my questions, I borrowed a framework used by Hargreaves (1996) in a paper he
presented on what he termed “the four ages of professionalism,” in which he talked about teachers
and teaching over time. I liked this organizer because it signals change while signaling also that one
age leads into another, that we take from one age elements that flow into another, that we are not
talking about passing fads or a pendulum swing, but rather a developmental metaphor. In my
adopting this framework I adapted it to become “The Four Ages of Reading Pedagogy.” I have been
around long enough that I am able to talk with personal knowledge about what some would call
history. It is my personal history, my personal interpretation of the past, that I want now to share.
5/11/12 11:19 AMReading Online: International Perspectives -- The Four Ages of Reading Philosophy and Pedagogy
Page 3 of 13http://www.readingonline.org/international/turbill4/index.html
Within my framework, I call the four ages
1. The age of reading as decoding
2. The age of reading as meaning making
3. The age of reading-writing connections
4. The age of reading for social purpose
The Age of Reading as Decoding
This is the period from about the 1950s into the early ’70s. It was during this time that I taught my
first class of 45 kindergarten children. It is still the age in which some operate, and it is the age that
many want us to return to. But we cannot -- no more than I can go back to being 20-something
again!
This was a simple age -- or so it seemed. (Maybe that is why many want to return to it!) Most people
were employed, and many menial positions did not require the ability to read or write. In Australia
the educational system supplied us with a syllabus that spelled out exactly what we had to do, right
down to the number of minutes to be given to reading. Reading books and workbooks were written
and supplied by the state system. Teachers were considered to be “doers,” practitioners who taught
and tested. We didn’t really think much about how the students learned, about their learning styles,
or that there could be more than one “intelligence.”
Our focus in teaching reading in the early years was on teaching skills including directionality, visual
and aural discrimination, sound-symbol relationship (phonics), and word recognition. Our
understanding of the reading process focused on decoding, or what we might now call “using the
graphophonic cueing system.” Our belief was that if we taught children how to decode the print,
comprehension (as we called it then) would follow. Spelling, handwriting, and written composition
were all seen as quite disparate. Reading itself was broken into separate lessons: phonics lessons,
flashcard drill, comprehension, supplementary reading, reading appreciation, and so on.
Many of us can identify with this age as we taught in it or went to school during it; others may have
heard about it. What I want to argue is that this “way” of teaching reading suited the social, political,
and economic age of the period. In other words, this age of reading served the purposes of the
cultural age in which it operated. I would further argue that, ethically and morally, we cannot teach
reading this way in our current age, just as a dentist or doctor cannot practice as he or she did in the
1960s. We know more now about the teaching of reading, and our culture’s needs have changed.
There were certainly some debates during this first age of reading, as I recall. They seemed to focus
around phonics versus “look-say” methods, and on how children should learn handwriting. However,
I do not recall that these debates took place at the political level as they do today. And they certainly
didn’t affect me as a teacher. The only people I felt accountable to were the children’s parents. Twice
a year I gave them a report on their child’s progress, and rarely did anyone question my judgments.
If I could go back in time and ask teachers of this age to define “reading” and to respond to a series
of questions, I suggest they would answer thus:
Questions for Teachers of Reading in the
Age of Decoding
Teachers’ Probable Responses
What is reading? Reading is decoding print.
What are the skills of reading that need to be
taught?
Phonics, word recognition, word attack,
comprehension.
Why do we read? For pleasure, for information.
5/11/12 11:19 AMReading Online: International Perspectives -- The Four Ages of Reading Philosophy and Pedagogy
Page 4 of 13http://www.readingonline.org/international/turbill4/index.html
What do we read? Books, newspapers, magazines.
How is reading best learned?
Learn the sound-symbol relationships and word
recognition, and htis will lead to meaning. Learn
through rote memorization and drill and
practice.
The Age of Reading as Meaning Making
This age I believe began for Australia in the early to mid-1970s. Employment was still high and
school populations were booming. In Australia many city schools were experiencing high ethnic
diversity due to increased immigration from non-English-speaking countries. Teachers found that
even children born in Australia were coming to school with little or no English, and that in any class
of 35 students, 10 or more home languages might be represented. Teachers were forced to think
about supporting students as they learned a new language. After all, it seemed useless to teach
children phonics when they did not yet know English. Thus, we needed to think about how children
learn a language and how language is connected to learning to read.
At the national level there was a strong move to support the families coming to Australia to supply
labor by providing opportunities for them to learn English. New positions in schools were created
solely to teach learners of English as a second language (ESL). There was a move toward creating “a
more level playing field” in schools by providing “equal opportunities for all students,” and those
schools with high populations of students from “disadvantaged backgrounds” were entitled to funds
to provide enriching experiences for their students. Thus, many urban public schools began to have
access to money for equipment and books that previously had been the domain of those schools with
affluent parent associations.
We began to focus on the individual child as a learner and therefore to see the need to develop
“relevant and meaningful experiences” in the teaching and learning experiences we created for them.
The teaching of reading experienced a major change in focus. The work of Dorothy Watson, Jerry
Harste, Connie Weaver, Brian Cambourne, and many others, moved us into the age of reading as
meaning making. A strong message was that readers bring meaning to print in order to take meaning
from print. Frank Smith talked about “reading behind the eye” as he and others demonstrated that
reading is more than decoding print on the page. Ken and Yetta Goodman’s work on miscue analysis
showed us that all proficient readers use three major subsystems or cueing systems of language in
order to construct meaning from text: the semantic, syntactic, and graphophonic systems. The
diagram in Figure 1, from a 1970s Australian curriculum document (New South Wales Department of
Education, 1978), shows a representation of this theory.
Figure 1
The Three Cueing Systems of the Reading Process
5/11/12 11:19 AMReading Online: International Perspectives -- The Four Ages of Reading Philosophy and Pedagogy
Page 5 of 13http://www.readingonline.org/international/turbill4/index.html
Although widely accepted now, these concepts meant a huge change in thinking for teachers,
particularly for teachers of the early years of schooling. (Some have still not made this paradigm
shift.) Reading was now being described as a process, and it was being argued that children continue
to learn to read long after Grade 2. Thus, the focus of teaching reading broadened across the
elementary years. All elementary school teachers were expected to be teachers of reading.
The concept that children learn to read so they can use reading for learning also emerged at this
time. However, if children were to be successful at being able to use reading for learning, there were
“new” skills we needed to teach them in the upper years of primary school. These included research
or library skills, reading graphs and diagrams, using tables of contents and indexes, locating
information in books, and reading nonfiction and a variety of other genres. These skills were no
longer viewed as “what happens in the library class.”
While spelling, handwriting, and composition were in the main still taught as separate subjects, the
teaching of reading saw the integration of its disparate bits into reading groups or activities.
There was more reading to children from kindergarten through Grade 6. The choice of books to read
aloud as well as those that the children were asked to read themselves began to change: they were
interesting, modern, and engaging. In my state, the system stopped producing reading materials and
publishers moved in with a plethora of reading programs in which there were many interesting and
colorful books organized into levels. Published manuals to support teachers in what to teach and how
to teach it tended to replace the syllabus as the main source of information on teaching reading.
“Teacher inservice” was provided by both the publishers and the system on new and interesting ways
to teach reading within a meaning-making focus. An important emphasis of these courses was to
help the teachers not only to learn new strategies to use in their classrooms but to understand the
reading process and how readers read. Teachers were now beginning to be asked to be doers and
thinkers about what was best practice for the young emergent readers in their classrooms.
While the graphophonic system was still seen as an important focus, the guiding force behind our
teaching was to encourage readers to “go for meaning.” They were asked to predict unknown words
by drawing on the graphophonic system (rather than sounding out each letter) and their syntactic
knowledge (or feel for the grammar) as well as the meaning that they were already constructing; to
read on or to reread to confirm the meaning; and to use the illustrations to support their predictions.
We began talk about reading at a metacognitive level with our students.
Comprehension was not simply the end result of the reading but an integral part from the beginning
of the reading process. Miscues were accepted as long as they maintained the meaning of the
passage, and were noted as part of the assessment process of what the reader was doing. In fact,
5/11/12 11:19 AMReading Online: International Perspectives -- The Four Ages of Reading Philosophy and Pedagogy
Page 6 of 13http://www.readingonline.org/international/turbill4/index.html
miscues were seen as providing insight into the reader’s processing of print which could be used to
diagnose reading problems (Goodman, Watson, & Burke, 1996).
This focus on reading for meaning meant that more “real” reading was done. Classroom libraries with
high-quality children’s literature appeared and children were encouraged to read as many books as
they could. Records were kept of what they read as well as the amount read. The practice of taking
books from school to home began.
Not all educators accepted the move to the meaning-making age, however -- and the debate
between “phonics and decoding first” and “reading for meaning” groups resulted in the development
of two distinct schools of reading theorists and pedagogies. The phonics and decoding group became
strongly aligned with the special education movement.
Another major issue during this age focused on the testing of reading. Many argued that the
standardized instruments used to test students’ reading ability only measured those skills that were
important in the earlier age of reading as decoding. Miscue analysis, running records, retellings, cloze
passages, and informal reading inventories were seen as more useful instruments for measuring
students’ reading growth, as well as diagnosing their reading needs.
How might teachers in this meaning-making age have responded to the questions proposed earlier?
Questions for Teachers of Reading in the
Age of Meaning Making
Teachers’ Probable Responses
What is reading? Reading is understanding the printed word.
What are the skills of reading that need to be
taught?
Sound-symbol relationships; sampling,
predicting, and confirming strategies; reading
ahead, rereading, and using the visual context
to predict meaning.
Why do we read?
For pleasure, for information, for learning, and
for individual growth.
What do we read?
Books both fiction and nonfiction, newspapers,
magazines, advertisements, environmental
print.
How is reading best learned?
By learning the sound-symbol relationships,
gaining background knowledge to bring to the
reading, reading for meaning, being read to,
and by reading, reading, reading.
An interesting point to ponder before we leave this age is that if the major focus in the teaching of
reading for teachers entering the profession during this age was reading for meaning, they would not
have had the same background in reading as decoding as I and my colleagues had had. Thus, it is
possible that educators like myself assumed incorrectly that these younger teachers knew about and
understood the importance of decoding in the reading process. What changed for many of us who
came from the age of decoding into the age of reading for meaning was how the decoding skills
needed in reading (and writing) were taught, not whether they were taught. It now seems
reasonable to accept that many teachers who were trained during the 1970s were not sure what
decoding skills were, let alone how to teach them.
It may be that too many assumptions were made about what teachers understood about the
graphophonic system and how it was learned. And thus, too many misconceptions and
misunderstandings were made by these teachers. Hence the cry by some teachers of “Phonics? Oh,
5/11/12 11:19 AMReading Online: International Perspectives -- The Four Ages of Reading Philosophy and Pedagogy
Page 7 of 13http://www.readingonline.org/international/turbill4/index.html
no. We don’t teach phonics anymore.”
The Age of Reading-Writing Connections
For Australia this age began in the early 1980s, a period of great optimism in education overall. It
was the age when computer technology was introduced into schools. However, it was also a time
when the country began to experience tightening of the economy, with the words “recession” and
even “depression” mentioned in the market place. Greater accountability in public spending was
being called for and this was to have a great impact on education, particularly literacy education.
But, in the beginning of the ’80s, we seemed to be doing the right thing. The teaching of reading was
under control, we thought. Most classrooms seemed to be filled with lots of books -- children’s
literature as well as new reading programs that looked and sounded far more interesting and relevant
than the old department-supplied texts. Colorful “Big Books” were everywhere, all featuring the “3
Rs” of rhyme, rhythm, and repetition.
With such great resources, with teachers reading more to children and children seeming also to be
reading more, we shifted our focus to writing. And we extended the same focus to writing as we had
to reading: we began to examine what writers do -- the process writers go through -- and to apply
this to the teaching of young children.
This age gave us great insights into young readers and writers and raised our expectations of what
they could do. The work of Donald Graves, among many others, showed us that young children can
write. We became researchers in our own classrooms as we watched 5- and 6-year-olds dispell
theories we had held about them as learners. We heard as well as saw these children unravel the
graphophonic mystery as they invented their spellings in their attempts to write. Classrooms became
what I called “phonic factories.” Children were developing and using their phonemic awareness (only
we didn’t call it that), but for all the reasons I talked about earlier, many teachers may not have even
made the connection that students were using and learning about the graphophonic system of
language.
We began to realize the connections between reading, writing, and spelling. It became apparent that
if we wanted our young writers to write, they had to be immersed in the language of books. This may
seem obvious to us now, but we didn’t always think this way.
A major realization of this age was that the child begins the process of developing literacy long before
he or she comes to school. Environmental print is read, copied, and played with by children as young
as 2 or 3. Preschools began to see that they, too, could involve the child in important literacy
activities -- reading to children, encouraging them to write, and so on.
As the age matured we recognized the importance of purpose and audience in shaping the genres of
writing. We began to ask the questions, “What is ‘good’ writing? How do we teach students to write a
variety of text forms?”
In Australia, functional linguists including Michael Halliday, Jim Martin, and Bev Derewianka helped us
understand how different texts are structured, and which texts are important for school success. We
recognized that young writers tend always to recount or to create simply talk written down, unless
they are encouraged to write other text types. This led us to consider the need to introduce a wider
range of text types to young children, to read fiction and nonfiction to them. It led us to reconsider
grammar and the role it played, and to understand that students need to know about language. This
also meant having a language to talk about language. The label “story” was no longer acceptable for
all types of texts children might write. Instead, our students could write recounts, reports, narratives,
descriptions, procedures, and so on.
This focus on structure of texts forced us to examine more deeply what the syntactic system is all
about and what information about syntax or grammar students need to know in order to be more
effective language users. It was the beginning of the “genre movement.”
5/11/12 11:19 AMReading Online: International Perspectives -- The Four Ages of Reading Philosophy and Pedagogy
Page 8 of 13http://www.readingonline.org/international/turbill4/index.html
Big Books came into their own during this age as something we could use not only to teach reading
but also as powerful models for writing in a wide range of genres.
Reading and writing and spelling seemed so closely linked that we now used the term “literacy” to
cover them all.
Toward the end of the 1980s, controversies were rampant. There were cries that students were not
being taught spelling, that acceptance of invented spelling was creating a nation of illiterates, that
our students were not being taught phonics, that student writing was too personal, and that there
was a need for students to be taught the skills of reading and writing (including spelling and
grammar) explicitly. The call for greater accountability in public spending led to the introduction in
1988 of statewide testing in my state of New South Wales, and there were calls for a national
curriculum and national testing. (While these things are now in place in the United Kingdom and to
some extent in the United States with its National Assessment of Educational Progress -- and the
federally mandated testing introduced under the Bush administration -- it has still not occurred in
Australia.) Claims were being made that standards were falling, that students were leaving school
with insufficient literacy skills. But were they? The perception of the nature of reading had changed,
and it was now seen as a much more complex task than in the earlier ages. And in the age of
reading-writing connections, most jobs required reading and writing above a functional level (and far
beyond what was expected during the age of decoding).
Yet, despite claims that schooling was failing, funding for teacher professional development was
decreased quite dramatically in this age (and the decreases continue today). As well, attention to
literacy teaching in preservice teacher education began to decline. For example, in my university the
time allocated in the education program to the teaching of literacy in 1985 was approximately 25
percent; today, it is less than 16 percent.
So, how would teachers in the reading-writing age answer my questions?
Questions for Teachers of Reading in the
Age of Reading-Writing Connections
Teachers’ Probable Responses
What is reading?
Reading is parallel to writing. Writing is
composing meaning into written text, while
reading is composing meaning from text.
What are the skills of reading that need to be
taught?
Sound-symbol relationships; sampling,
predicting, and confirming strategies; reading
ahead, rereading, and using the visual context
to predict meaning; spelling and grammar;
writing for meaning; understanding the writing
process; understanding that readers learn from
writing and writers learn from reading.
Why do we read?
For pleasure, for information, for learning, for
individual growth, and for writing.
What do we read?
Wide ranges of genres for different purposes
and audiences.
How is reading best learned?
By learning sound-symbol relationships, having
background knowledge to bring to the reading,
reading for meaning, being read to, and
reading, reading, reading; by examining written
models, understanding the writing process, and
writing, writing, writing.
5/11/12 11:19 AMReading Online: International Perspectives -- The Four Ages of Reading Philosophy and Pedagogy
Page 9 of 13http://www.readingonline.org/international/turbill4/index.html
As the age of reading-writing connections drew to a close, it seemed that many were calling for a
return to the age of decoding, when all children supposedly had learned to read and write. Yet those
of us who were there during that time knew that literacy had become a far more complex process
than we had perceived it to be in the 1960s. And we knew, too, that our students needed to be more
highly literate at younger ages than ever before.
The Age of Reading for Social Purpose
I believe the last age, one of rapid change and diversity, began in the early 1990s. This was the
beginning of the “postmodern” period (Elkind, 1995). While in many quarters there was a strong
sense of human rights and equity for all in our “global village,” there was also a strong backlash
toward fundamentalism from the far conservative right. It was an age of contradiction and confusion.
Unemployment was high -- 8 percent in Australia, with youth unemployment around 24 percent in
some areas. Downsizing and corporate takeovers were common. The public sector, once the biggest
employer in Australia, shed tens of thousands of jobs across the country.
The jobs that did exist began to require higher levels of literacy skills. For those who were not highly
literate, the prospect of finding a dependable, secure job was becoming increasingly unlikely. It even
became compulsory for young unemployed Australians to attend literacy classes in order to continue
to receive unemployment benefits. Thus, a major purpose of schooling was to provide high levels of
literacy to all students so that they could become useful, employable citizens who would not become
a drain on public spending. (Whether there were jobs available for all these highly literate people was
another question.)
Literacy was becoming a political tool. Grand rhetorical statements decreed that “no child would live
in poverty” and “all children would read and write by Grade 3.” The word literacy began to take on
new meaning, as indicated in the definition in the Australian Literacy Policy (Department of Education
and Employment, 1991, p. 6):
Literacy is the ability to read and use written information and to write appropriately, in a
range of contexts. It is used to develop knowledge and understanding, to achieve
personal growth and to function effectively in our society. Literacy also includes the
recognition of numbers and basic mathematical signs and symbols within text.
Literacy involves the integration of speaking, listening and critical thinking with reading
and writing. Effective literacy is intrinsically purposeful, flexible and dynamic and
continues to develop throughout an individual’s lifetime.
All Australians need to have effective literacy in English, not only for their personal
benefit and welfare but also for Australia to reach its social and economic goals.
Also during this period, an information explosion occurred and access to vast amounts of information
became much easier. Cellular phones, the computer, fax, e-mail, and the World Wide Web kept us all
in touch with one another and began to enter the classroom.
As we moved into the 21st century the concept of reading was recognized by most as involvoing a
much more complex set of skills than had been understood in the past. Today’s culture requires
readers to be able not only to read for pleasure and information but to ask questions of the text, to
recognize how the writer tries to position the reader, and to become what is called a “critical” reader.
The simple Venn diagram that had been used to depict the language cueing systems in the age of
making meaning (Figure 1) has evolved to a more complex diagram (see Figure 2) that includes the
impact of culture and context on a reader as well as the roles that the reader must take on in order
to be effective (Freebody & Luke, 1990).
Figure 1
A Social Model of Reading
5/11/12 11:19 AMReading Online: International Perspectives -- The Four Ages of Reading Philosophy and Pedagogy
Page 10 of 13http://www.readingonline.org/international/turbill4/index.html
(From Harris, Turbill, Fitzsimmons, & McKenzie, 2001)
Reading and the teaching of reading have become more complex and reach out across a wider and
wider audience, so that we now accept that we are lifelong learners of reading -- or, to be more
precise, of literacy. We accept that we will learn new skills in new contexts. It is a K-adult curriculum
now.
However, it is an age when politics and politicians have taken control of the literacy agenda. This is
not surprising, as those who don’t have high levels of literacy are more likely to end up on some sort
of social support and thus are viewed as a “burden” to society. So, in order to save money in the long
term, it seems politicians have agreed that literacy begins in the early years. And they are finally
prepared to support this concept. This “support” includes mandating (even legislating) how early
childhood educators should teach children to read and how and what preservice and inservice
teachers should be taught in teacher education and staff development programs. Each state in
Australia has developed a “literacy strategy” that is supported by strong government spending.
Teachers are once again required to use the materials written and published by their state systems.
The government-initiated and -developed programs from Western Australia and Victoria are now
marketed commercially across the world.
But there is a danger that these programs will de-skill teachers, returning them to being simpler
“doers” of other people’s thinking. There is a strong contradiction emerging here -- wanting teachers
to be teachers of critical literacy yet not encouraging them to be critically literate themselves and to
make their own decisions about the materials and teaching strategies to use in their teaching of
literacy.
Where there is political interference there are lobby groups, and one that has become very strong
during this age includes those who never quite left the age of reading as decoding. They have been
beavering away, many with their own small research projects that prove categorically that children
must have a well-developed sense of phonemic awareness, must know the alphabetic principle, must
be taught phonics through systematic and explicit instruction. Their message has been passed down
through the ages. What is frightening is that the spin these people have put on their message today
has convinced so many in positions of power and financial control that this narrow (and, I would
argue, out of touch with the real world) view of literacy is the only pedagogy for the teaching of
reading.
Those of us who have taught through these ages have observed young children learning to read and
5/11/12 11:19 AMReading Online: International Perspectives -- The Four Ages of Reading Philosophy and Pedagogy
Page 11 of 13http://www.readingonline.org/international/turbill4/index.html
write and know that there is more to it than this narrow view. We have brought with us through
these ages what works for us in the teaching of literacy. We learned a great deal more about literacy,
about learning, about language as each age passed. There is so much that we know now, there are
so many resources that we have access to, that it is often difficult to know where to start with our
young emergent readers, writers, and spellers. We certainly know a lot more than the politicians and
media.
We know, too, that the contradictions that exist create great frustration and uncertainty. Our anxiety
leads to confusion, and it becomes easy to lose confidence in ourselves and our teaching. Teachers
need to be reassured that they are no longer simply doers; we are thinkers and researchers in our
classrooms and schools. We are professionals -- better trained than ever before. We must take
control. We must take time to work with one another, share with one another, collaborate, and
reflect together on philosophy and pedagogy. We must learn from our students so we can develop
programs and curricula that best suit the needs of our students. Together with our students, we can
take control and respond to the challenges and contradictions that emerge from the politicians and
bureaucrats (and from far too many academics!).
Teachers and teaching do make a difference in the literacy education of students. It is important, as
Luke and Freebody (1999) suggest, “to recognize that there is no evidence that literacy education
could possibly ‘end poverty’ or ‘solve unemployment’ in Australia or anywhere else, despite the
cyclical claims by politicians and others that literacy is both the cause and the solution to all that ails
us. But there is evidence that literacy education can make a substantial contribution to transforming
the social distribution of knowledge, discourse, and with these, real economic and social capital
among communities, groups and individuals.”
Back to menu
A Fifth Age?
I think today we most likely have moved into a fifth age, “the age of multiliteracies.” Meaning making
now involves being able to “read” not only print text but also color, sound, movement, and visual
representations. A few minutes’ surfing the Web for information will highlight what I mean. It seems
there is much we need to learn about how readers draw on these different symbolic, or semiotic,
systems to make meaning of their worlds. How do we read these different systems? What strategies
and skills do we use? What do we need to teach out students if they are to become proficient readers
of today’s texts that draw on multiple semiotic systems to represent meaning? These seem to be the
current research questions.
Reading and the learning-to-read process is certainly far more complex process in the ’00s than it
was in the ’60s. It is imperative, I believe, that teachers of reading -- and particularly teachers of
early reading -- broaden their view of what reading is in today’s world. The digital world is here to
stay, and it is a highly literacy-dependent world in which readers and writers need to have highly
refined skills and access to multiple strategies that go beyond paper-based print texts (Turbill 2001).
In his recently published book, Teaching Multiliteracies Across the Curriculum, Unsworth (2001, p. 8)
claims,
In the twenty-first century the notion of literacy needs to be reconceived as a plurality of
literacies and being literate must be seen as anachronistic. As emerging technologies
continue to impact on the social construction of these multiple literacies, becoming
literate is more the apposite.
There is still much for us to learn.
Back to menu
5/11/12 11:19 AMReading Online: International Perspectives -- The Four Ages of Reading Philosophy and Pedagogy
Page 12 of 13http://www.readingonline.org/international/turbill4/index.html
References
Alloway, N., & Gilbert, P. (1998). Reading literacy test data: Benchmarking success? Australian
Journal of Language and Literacy, 21(3), 249-262.
Back
Bouffler, C. (1997). They don’t teach spelling anymore -- or do they? In J. Turbill & B. Cambourne
(Eds.), The changing face of whole language [reprint of the Australian Journal of Language and
Literacy, 20(2)] (pp. 53-61).
Back
Brady, M. (2000). The standards juggernaut. Phi Delta Kappan, 81(9), 648-652.
Back
Brock, P. (1998). Breaking some myths -- again. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 21(1),
l-10.
Back
Caine, R., & Caine, G. (1997). Education on the edge of possibility. Alexandria, VA: Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Back
Department of Education and Employment. (1991). Australia’s language: The Australian language
and literacy policy. Canberra, Australia: AGPS.
Back
Elkind, D. (1995, September). School and family in the postmodern world. Phi Delta Kappan, 8-14.
Back
Freebody, P., & Luke, A. (1990). Literacy programs: Debates and demands in cultural contexts.
Prospect: Australian Journal of TESOL, 5(7), 7-16.
Back
Goodman, Y., Watson, D., & Burke, C. (1996). Reading strategies: Focus on comprehension (2nd
ed.). Katonah, NY: Richard C. Owen.
Back
Hargreaves, A. (1996, October). Four ages of professionalism. Seminar presentation delivered at the
University of Western Sydney, Milperra Campus, Australia.
Back
Harris, P., Turbill, J., Fitzsimmons, P., & McKenzie, B. (2001). Teaching reading in the primary years.
Sydney, Australia: Social Science Press.
Back
Luke, A., & Freebody, P. (1999). Further notes in the four resource model. Practically Primary, 4(2),
5-8.
Back
McNeil, L. (2000). Creating new inequalities: Contradictions of reform. Phi Delta Kappan, 8(10), 728-
736.
Back
New South Wales Department of Education. (1978). Reading K-12 curriculum. Sydney, Australia:
Author.
5/11/12 11:19 AMReading Online: International Perspectives -- The Four Ages of Reading Philosophy and Pedagogy
Page 13 of 13http://www.readingonline.org/international/turbill4/index.html
Back
Routman, R. (1996). Literacy at the crossroads. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Back
Turbill, J. (2001). A researcher goes to school: The integration of technology into the early literacy
curriculum. Journal of Early Literacy, 1(3), 255-279.
Back
Turbill, J., & Cambourne, B. (1997). The changing face of whole language. In J. Turbill & B.
Cambourne (Eds.), The changing face of whole language [reprint of the Australian Journal of
Language and Literacy, 20(2)] (pp. 1-6).
Back
Unsworth, L. (2001). Teaching multiliteracies across the curriculum: Changing contexts of text and
image in classroom practice. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
Back
To print this article, point and click with your mouse anywhere on its text; then use your browser’s print command.
Citation: Turbill, J. (2002, February). The four ages of reading philosophy and pedagogy: A framework for examining theory and
practice. Reading Online, 5(6). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/international/inter_index.asp?HREF=turbill4/index.html
Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted February 2002
© 2002 International Reading Association, Inc. ISSN 1096-1232
