Reading (1989) 23 (3) 0034-0472 $2.00

Reading Research in Great Britain in 1987 Bridie Raban and Peter Geekie

Introduction

After more than 20 years, the task of reviewing reading research in Great Britain has passed into new hands. The tradition established by Professor Elizabeth Goodacre is invaluable, not only for teachers in classrooms, but for those following up investigations for higher degree and professional researchers themselves. Keeping a track of the pattern of interests and concern provides a fascinating landscape and enables us to be more aware of developing methodologies as well as practical implications for our work with children. The first thing one notices in taking on this task, however, is that the publication of reading research is m a wide range of journals covering the disciplines of education, psychology, linguistics and more recently sociology and anthropology. Coupled with this diver- sity, referring to the area of search as ‘reading’ is to do less than justice to an ever-developing area of investigation into written language generally. Because of this, it is more than likely that some journals have been missed and for this we apologise. The survey reported here, however, illustrates this range of continuing interest.

Investigating Teachers

The proceedings of the 23rd UKRA annual conference were published as Resources for Reading: Does QuaZify Counf?, edited by Betty Root after the conference in Reading. While one might have expected to find papers offering evidence for the question in the title which reflects the confer-

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: Bridie Raban - Reader in Education, Peter Geekie-Visiting Fellow, Department of Arts and Humanities in Education, University of Reading, London Road, Reading RG1 5AQ.

134 Bridic Rabat1 and Peter Geekie

ence theme, only one paper is published in the collection which reports research findings directly. Goodacre describes in-service work with teachers which explored their expectations about the part of the course dealing with research. She gathered information on their expectations about content, teaching method and rationale for including research findings. Using a sentence-completion activity, these teachers demon- strated a variety of attitudes towards research, ranging from favourable to markedly unfavourable. However, when asked to suggest a number of resources for their own teaching and rank them in order of importance, research was not highly rated. Goodacre suggests that the role that ex- pectations can play in teaching interactions, which are basically reciprocal in nature, may well be responsible for these attitudes. She points out that research was seen by these teachers as marginal to their classroom concerns and suggests that teachers who read research, do it, or have an exploratory view of their own teaching, and will be more ‘open’ to reading research information and knowledge.

Further work involving teachers has been reported by Scrimshaw. He observed and questioned four groups of approx. 20 teachers who attended a one hour workshop session on TRAY, an open-ended text disclosure computer program. From 68 respondents, 703 responses were obtained. However, individual teachers tended !o identify only a small proportion of these possible uses, although they were all just finishing the same year long reading course. Cooperative group work was not emphasised and TRAY was seen by most as helping children to work with words or sen- tences rather than with the text as a whole. Scrimshaw argues that these findings have a variety of implications for in-service provision.

Poole’s study involved 626 teachers in primary, middle and secondary schools. 375 completed questionnaires about their use of fiction in the classroom, while a further 251 compiled record books. On the basis of his analysis of these data Poole (1987) concluded that, although the majority of teachers declared their faith in the educational value of fiction, they actually read little quality literature to their pupils and failed to make full use of the potential value of fiction in their teaching. Poole expresses regret that reading at the pre-secondary level is often an undemanding and relaxing activity, rather than being an opportunity for active teaching and learning. At secondary level, there was an increasing use of extracts associated with more formal written follow-up exercises.

Parental Involvement

A quick review of the topics covered by the collection of papers published in 1987 indicates that one of the largest areas of interest continues to be with investigations into parental involvement. It is interesting to note that they are not marked by any great improvement in reading age which

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is the most common criterion adopted by most of these authors. The kinds of gains that they did find were more nebulous and in this respect it is valuable to pause over Francis’ contribution to the debate which is cited at the end of this section.

In one small scale study, Boland and Simmons (1987) evaluated the involvement of parents on the attitudes of 12 children aged from 7 to 9 years. They claim that the project demonstrated that the attitudes of parents and children, and the reading attainment of the children were improved because of the parents’ involvement and the use of real books related to the children’s interests. In view of this they suggest that programmes including these elements are superior to conventional remedial reading sessions.

Miller (1987) discusses the outcomes of the Derbyshire Paired Reading Project which involved 54 children in a six week programme with their parents. Analysis of the data suggested that the best predictor of success in paired reading was the length of the delay allowed by the parent when an unknown word was encountered during reading. The second most useful predictor of reading accuracy success she identified was a high proportion of words read independently. Although this study did not produce overwhelming evidence in support of the effectiveness of paired reading in promoting gains in reading age, Miller suggests that the procedure might be most appropriately used in cases where some reluc- tance to begin some form of parental involvement is encountered or the parent finds it difficult to inhibit negative responses to errors.

Wheldall Merrett and Colmar (1987) describe the ’pause, prompt and praise’ approach to tutoring children in reading and review research studies investigating its effectiveness. Both normal progress children and children with reading difficulties were involved in these projects. It was concluded that both parents and peers could be trained to use the strat- egies effectively. The procedure was not always effective in producing reading gains, however. Hannon’s (1987) study was a response to the Haringey Project, the finding of which suggested that parental involve- ment in school reading programmes can raise the reading ages of working class children to a level at, or above, the national average. His study involved 76 working class children over a period of three years. The differences in reading attainment resulting from the project were marginal. This result stands in strong contrast to the Haringey Project findings and suggests that further assessment of the effect of parental involvement in reading programmes is needed.

A further study, conducted by Greening and Spenceley (1987) compares and contrasts shared reading with paired reading: the former being a modelling technique and the latter based on behavioural reinforcement schedules. Results from three shared reading projects are reported by Greening and Spenceley which involved primary age children in Cleve- land County. Improvements in attitude and fluency were observed even

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in children who made minimal reading age gains during the project. In addition, the authors maintain that shared reading, in contrast with paired reading is a continuous process that maximises the advantages of modelling and enables the child to concentrate on the stories.

Francis (1987) reviews research into the effects of parental involvement in hearing their children read. She makes the point that the results of this research should be interpreted in the light of the fact that there is no adequate explanation of the phenomenon of hearing a child read. She refers to studies which have uncovered a variety of practices related to literacy in the home in a variety of social and ethnic groups. The school- advocated practice of parents listening to their children read is very much an extension of the school into the home, since checking the fluency and accuracy of the reading of prose text is not usually an activity associated with shared literacy activities in the home. While practices like paired reading might achieve the narrowly conceived objective of improving scores on standardised reading tests, there is no knowledge of the influ- ence such a practice might have on other important aspects of becoming literate. It might, for example, change the parents’ conception of literacy and their expectations of their children’s reading responses. Francis suggests that further research should pay more attention to the context of listening to a child read. She says that attention should be paid to the social meanings of literacy for both parent and child, rather than just those meanings attributed to literacy by teachers and schools.

Pre-school Literacy

Cooper (1987) reports a teacher’s attempt to involve parents of the children in her own nursery class in a book-share scheme. It is reported that the scheme not only improved the teacher’s relationship with the parents, but also changed the children’s attitudes to learning to read. In particular, it helped them to see that learning to read was an on-going achievement. This meant that partial success was acceptable at any point in time. Consequently, failure became a meaningless concept. Involvement in the scheme generated confidence and enthusiasm in the children and laid the foundations for comprehensive literacy development.

Further work with nursery school children is reported by Burnside and Billett (1987). They set up a project in a nursery school which was set up to examine aspects of young children’s increasing awareness of the meaning and purpose of written language. The primary instrument of the study was a ’Market Research’ task. This involved the children in framing and asking questions, recording the information gained, and reading it back. The authors say that the potential of young children can be easily stifled by meaningless reading and writing activities. They suggest that meaningful and functional tasks like the one described in this study

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should be part of the activities of all nursery classes. Opportunities to write, coupled with functional activities, permit the children’s literacy to grow naturally out of their existing knowledge of reading and writing.

Research results from a larger study are reported by Blatchford et al. (1987) concerning the extent of children’s pre-school reading related knowledge and its association with reading achievement at 7 years of age. 343 children entering Infant school from 33 ILEA nursery classes were tested on six measures of pre-school reading related knowledge. The authors use these findings to indicate the wide variation between children when they enter school and, therefore, suggest that teachers need to adopt a variety of strategies supporting the early stages of learning to read.

Oral Reading

Campbell’s (1987) study involves an analysis of the oral reading errors of two 6 year old boys who had been identified by their teacher as having made limited progress in learning to read. Tested on the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability, one was assessed as a non-reader, while the other was two months below his chronological age for reading accuracy at the beginning of the year. The data analysed consisted of 150 recordings for each boy of sessions in which they read to their teacher in a normal class- room setting. Campbell concludes that the results cast some doubt on the validity of developmental stage theories. These data suggest that readers will tend to use the most productive cues, and their previous knowledge to solve problems as they occur. There will be changes of emphasis within a continuing set of strategies, and an integration of knowledge sources in reaction to the text. Campbell proposes that reading is a flexible, interactive process which cannot be adequately explained as a fixed series of stages.

Potter (1987) also reports on an analysis of the oral reading errors. The 8 year old boy in his study had been tentatively identified by his teacher as possibly not making good use of context when he read. His scores on the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability showed that he was below his chronological age on both the accuracy and comprehension measures. Analysis of his oral reading scripts produced 129 errors representing 5% of the total number of words read. Potter maintains that his analysis casts doubt on the usefulness of miscue analysis for understanding the reading process. He includes the analysis of a further body of data and suggests that a sub-categorisation of content errors into semantic errors, derivational errors and visual errors would be valuable. This would then present the possibility of what he refers to as post-recognition errors. To further illustrate his point, Potter points to similarities between the response patterns of a deep dyslexic and those of the child who was the

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subject of his study. He suggests that teachers and researchers should place oral reading errors into the categories he specifies so that a better understanding of children’s reading might be achieved than is possible with Goodman and Burke’s miscue analysis procedure.

Remedial Reading

The impact of illustrations on the reading performance of 19 children with reading difficulties drawn from the first year classes of 3 comprehensive schools was examined by Beveridge and Griffiths (1987). Each child saw the same researcher on three occasions, reading two passages each time, one passage with illustrations and one without. The results suggested that at the lowest text difficulty level the children read faster, with less difficulty, making a higher percentage of omissions and insertions and a lower percentage of errors maintaining grammatical acceptability when the text was illustrated. At the highest difficulty level the results followed a directly contrasting pattern. It is claimed that the results show that children use different strategies according to the level of difficulty of the text, and that illustrations exercise some influence on the strategies chosen by the children.

Cox’s (1987) study involved a group of 7% year old children who were selected for inclusion in this study because they obtained a Reading Age of 6.1 or less on the Burt Revised Word Reading Test. The same group were tested again at 15% years using the Word Reading Scale of the British Ability Scales. On the basis of this second test they were sub- divided into three groups, long-term backward children, moderate progress children, and slow starters. An analysis was then carried out to try to identify what features distinguished the long-term backward children from the slow starters. Cox acknowledges that correlation studies cannot establish causal links and he draws attention to the small size of the sample. He then reports that all variables except reading scheme level reached and non-verbal reasoning were associated with the pattern of slow reading development which led on to long-term back- wardness. He suggests that a lack of literary experiences in the home and a poor vocabulary result in poor concentration and low interest in the early stages of reading instruction.

The three groups in Exley and Arnold’s (1987) study were one of pro- foundly deaf 13 year olds; a group of partially hearing 9% year olds; and a group of 7 year olds with normal hearing. The ability of the children in each of the groups to say, write and understand the sentences in the Sentence Comprehension Test was compared. A recognition test of spell- ing ability was also given to the children. Several conclusions were drawn from the analysis of these data. First, it was found that all the groups had more difficulty in writing sentences than in saying them. However, it seems that hearing loss affects writing more than speaking. Next, it was

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found that no significant differences existed in the ability of the three groups to understand the written forms of the sentences. Finally, the spelling test results showed that the hearing children made mainly phonic errors while the partially hearing made more visual errors. The partially hearing, therefore, emerged as an intermediate group on this test. The authors say that these results indicate that hearing impaired children’s language skills are not unitary. Because they speak clearly it cannot be assumed that they will have no difficulty in reading and writing.

Bicknell and Ripley (1987) studied 17 children at Moor House School for speech and language disorders that were identified as having difficulties in co-ordinating the activity of their eyes. As well as suffering from delayed language development and various degrees of deviant articulation they had also been identified for inclusion in the study on the basis of their slow progress in reading. For two of the three treatment groups there were gains in measured reading ability, although the authors point out that significant gains were not likely over such a short period. It was seen as significant, however, that most of the children reported that reading was easier and more comfortable after treatment. The authors conclude that the recognition and treatment of the clinical signs associated with ocular aspects of reading failure are likely to be beneficial to the children concerned.

In Simmons’ (1987) study five boys from a reading clinic were each matched with two other boys; one a ‘normal’ reader of the same chrono- logical age and the other a ’normal’ reader with the same reading age (Salford Sentence Reading Test). The aim of the study was to compare the groups on their performance in a story telling task. Analysis of these data revealed the highly individual nature of their control over story structure. Although the poorest readers showed little awareness of story structure, the same was true of some of the ’normal’ readers. Similarly, two of the boys from the reading clinic used chaining devices (e.g. the frequent use of ’and’) in a way more typical of younger children, but, at the same time, another reading clinic boy told the most sophisticated and syntactically complex story of all. Nevertheless, the author suggests that story telling performance reflects the growth in control over language.

The reading skills of 285 pairs of 13 year old twins drawn from the general population are reported by Stevenson et al. (1987). One group was made up of identical twins. Other groups consisted of pairs of non- identical same-sex twins. The chief objective of the study was to examine genetic influences on reading across the entire range of ability. The results suggested that genetic factors play only a moderate role in any general reading backwardness or specific reading retardation found in this population of twins. This finding runs counter to suggestions made by earlier researchers. However, moderate to strong genetic influences on spelling ability were suggested by the data.

Evidence is provided by Briggs and Underwood (1987) for Stanovich’s

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interactive-compensatory model of reading as a way of reconciling incon- sistent research findings on the comparison of good and poor readers use of a phonological route for lexical access. Results of two tasks using 20 good and 20 poor young readers show that poor readers, like good readers, do use a phonological route to lexical access independent of task demand. They can use rules like those associated with spelling to sound, but perform badly when these rules are tested in isolation. Indeed, they perform badly when any of the subskills of reading is tested in isolation. Poor readers possibly demand more information prior to making a response to text.

Do poor readers have difficulty in generating phonological codes from print? Two experiments are reported by Johnston et al. (1987) which seek to investigate this question further. Forty 8-11 year old poor readers of average and below average intelligence were compared with forty read- ing age and chronological age controls on their performance in reading for meaning tasks. In comparing the performance of low and average IQ poor readers when reading for meaning, it was found that not only do these groups show phonological influences to the same degree, they also have very similar overall levels of accuracy in these tasks. All the groups were found to show a phonological influence in carrying out these tasks.

Riding and Pugh (1987) investigated the effect of intensity of illumi- nation on reading performance with short, moderate and long dark- interval threshold (DIT). Fifty one 9 year old children were tested using a white disc and a tachistocope. These results placed 48 of the children into one of three DIT groups. From the findings reported here and others, these authors point out that taken both by itself and in interaction with illumination, the relationship between DIT and reading performance is sufficiently large to be of practical importance. During the testing of reading, they maintain that if the level of illumination of the text is per- sonally unfavourable to the pupil, then performance will be reduced.

Writing, Spelling and Handwriting

Raban (1987) discusses a study of the relationship between the style of children’s oral responses to adults and their preferred forms of written expression. It is suggested that children might have a preferred mode of writing which is related to other aspects of their linguistic behaviour. Consequently some young writers might find it difficult to respond adequately when requested to write in a style which is not natural for them. Teachers need to be conscious of this so that writing programmes might take into account differences in preferred styles of writing.

Barr (1987) reports on a case-study of a twelve year old boy’s develop- ment in spelling as a consequence of a programme of individual home tuition involving both spelling instruction and opportunities to write. The spelling tuition was basically the look /say /cover /write /check procedure.

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On each occasion the spelling lesson was followed by a ten minute session of speed writing. The child’s writing and spelling improved to a point where he was taken out of the remedial class and returned to the normal stream. The author places heavy stress on the close relationship between spelling and writing and argues for the careful planning of spelling instruction which should be associated with regular opportunities to express ideas in writing free from the fear of excessive correction of surface features.

Campbell’s (1987) study addresses the question of whether human beings have separate mental lexicons for reading and spelling. In other words, can a person reliably recognise that a particular word is correctly spelled when it is encountered in written texts, but consistently misspell the same word when writing texts? To probe this question Campbell examined the responses of two undergraduate students who had been identified as having some difficulty with reading and writing. When they were presented with lists containing a mixture of correctly and incorrectly spelled words, they could usually recognise the correct versions of words they consistently misspelled when writing. They performed this aspect of the task as well as a group of ’normal’ undergraduates. On the other hand, they could not reliably judge whether their own misspellings were correct or incorrect when they appeared in lists. Campbell argues that these results are better explained if separate lexicons for reading and spelling are assumed.

Moore and Callias (1987) report an investigation of a 9 year old boy, described as ’a severe underachiever’ in spelling and reading, who was given instruction in both these areas over an 18 month period. The reading programme used was the Hayes Remedial Reading Scheme which con- sists of highly structured, phonic-based materials. It also uses token rein- forcement for correct responses. Testing at the end of the programme showed that the best result was for words specifically taught. He showed a very limited ability to generalise to words similar in structure to the learnt words. He did, however, show signs of generalisation from the phonics taught in the reading programme. A follow-up test after 14 months showed minimal improvement. The authors speculate that dif- ferent types of remedial programmes might be appropriate for children with different types of initial difficulty.

In order to find support for the role of feedback in the control of hand- writing, Smyth and Silvers (1987) paid 12 adult subjects to write eight sentences under six conditions; three with visual feedback and three without. One pair of conditions had subjects say a nonsense word regularly, another pair had them counting while writing and the third gave subjects no secondary task besides the writing. Through an analysis of resulting errors, two distinct functions of visual feedback were ident- ified, Firstly, the overall spatial arrangement of words on a horizontal line was affected by the absence of vision, but not a secondary task. Secondly,

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producing accurate handwriting patterns appeared to be affected in similar ways, both by the absence of vision and the addition of a second- ary task. These authors argue that the role of visual feedback has been underestimated.

Word Recognition

Brown argues that previously reported studies of word naming have confused and confounded consistency of spelling-to-sound correspon- dence with frequency of that spelling-to-sound correspondence. He proposes a computational model which identifies frequency and not regularity of spelling-to-sound correspondence as the factor affecting word naming timing. Two experiments are reported using two groups of 16 unpaid native English speaking adults. They responded to words and non-words displayed in capital letters on a computer screen. When the response times were analysed in relation to the uniquelexceptionlconsist- ent spellings, support is argued for the computational model.

Some theories of visual word recognition have proposed that morpho- logically complex words are represented in the lexicon in word parts. For instance, the root morpheme appear will be represented independently of the prefix dis and the suffix ing in disappearing. The study reported by Funnel1 (1987) examined the morphological errors made by two subjects with very different patterns of acquired dyslexia. Three word recognition experiments were conducted, using combinations of suffixed and pseudo- suffixed words mixed with other words. Error analyses suggested to the author that there is no evidence for the notion that root morphemes or suffixes are represented as independent orthographic entities.

Walker (1987) presents a computer analysis of three- to seven-letter words with a view to identifying the uniqueness of lower-case word shape. It is shown that word shape alone is rarely adequate to specify completely the identity of a word. However, other work is reported for a small subset of these data which has shown that the utility of a word’s shape is increased dramatically when it is combined with knowledge of syntactic and semantic structure of the passage in which the word was encountered. The analysis reported here indicates that knowledge of the identity of the initial letter of a word carries little information about a word’s identity, although when this knowledge is combined with word shape, the number of candidate words is reduced considerably. More- over, knowledge of the identities of the first and last letters carries considerably more information about a word’s identity than does the initial letter alone.

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Comprehension

Two experiments are reported by Garnham and Mason (1987) which investigate whether episode structure in stories is a general feature of representation of stories in memory. In the first experiment 45 unpaid adults read silently one of three versions of the same story. This was followed by a memory test. The experiment was repeated using 36 paid adults except that the latter group were not told of the test to follow. The specially constructed stories included incidental material within episodes which was not contingent upon the specific events and were placed at different points in each version of the story. The results indicated that there is difficulty remembering at what point in the sequence of events an incidental detail occurred, therefore confirming, in the authors’ view, that episodes in narrative story are distinctive in memory.

168 novice readers (both children and adults) were investigated by Mudd (1987) as a means of probing the relative influence of the text (including illustrations) and their background knowledge on their in- correct answers to comprehension questions on texts read. All subjects read two passages orally. On one reading occasion they were shown an illustration depicting the main idea. Subjects were then asked five ques- tions. These novice readers were found to make more use of background knowledge than the textual information. It is argued that readers may be led towards a greater understanding of text if they are prepared for new vocabulary and concepts in the text and helped to-organise known relevant information in order to ’accommodate’ new information from the text.

Wishart’s (1987) study involved 36 ten-year olds from minority groups. Could the children be made more aware of the importance of cohesive ties in deriving meaning from prose? The programme included discussion of selected passages which focused on the use of cohesive ties to recover the meaning of the text, and the completion of further cloze exercises with selected ties deleted. At the end of the treatment period the children were asked to complete the same cloze exercise used in the pre-test. It was found that the children were significantly better in their use of cohesive ties after the teaching programme had been completed. It was also found that the summary statements which were elicited were most accurate when the prose passage was culturally appropriate to the chil- dren. This author concludes that the ability to use cohesive ties is important if children are to ’read to learn’ effectively. This will be best taught by teachers who are aware of the structural features of text and who use materials which are conceptually familiar to their pupils.

Cornish (1987) reports on a study of 32 undergraduate students who read two 225-word narrative passages and were asked to recall one immediately and both, unexpectedly, after 7 days. Verbatim recall was

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found to decrease significantly for the same passage from one occasion to the next and was poor for the passage recalled once after 7 days. However, a general recall of the material showed insignificant increase across the two occasions. The author argues that verbatim recall is mediated by processes different from those mediating the recall of gist and that some verbatim information is retained after much longer intervals than previously studied.

Kennedy and Murray (1987) provide evidence to refute claims that readers do not attempt a spatial integration of text, mapping into a real- word or viewer-centred coordinate system. This view refers to the precise layout of previously read text held in mind in order that the reader can readily return to a selected place. However, Kennedy and Murray, using 12 adult paid subjects, show that readers are able to accurately sample back in text beyond peripheral acuity. They maintain, therefore, that readers must operate a level of representation of text that involves the computation of spatial coordinates.

Reading and Thinking

As a way of judging whether or not improvements in thinking ability are generalisable to other areas of learning, Riding and Powell (1987) pre- sented half of their sample of 64 five year old children with computer activities designed to facilitate critical thinking in young children. Half were also withdrawn from classes individually to work with an adult on other tasks involving computers. Performance in critical thinking was found to be improved by problem-solving activities and reading improve- ment was noted for the initial low attaining group. With respect to mathematics, girls performed better than boys in both low and high initial attaining groups. It is suggested, therefore, that critical thinking training can be generalised to other activities.

Reading Schemes

As a means of examining an LEA response four years after the Swan Report, Rice (1987) carried out a survey of book provision in 199 Sheffield primary schools. Content analysis of ten reading schemes revealed that not only were black people under-represented, there were very few black-only stories and black people were stereotypically portrayed. The contemporary black experience of Britain was portrayed in terms of assimilation. The illustrations in these books revealed tokenism and marginalisation of black people. Where no reference was made to black people in schemes or series of books used in schools, 'black' was associ- ated with negative concepts.

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Discussion

In reading through these articles a number of thoughts occurred to us. The style of the studies, the indices of reading improvement and the view of reading all appear untouched by a wider perspective which has been emerging over the last decade. Scholars from many disciplines have begun to realise the importance of literacy, both in terms of its influence on individual cognitive development and more recently on its role in the creation and interpretation of culture. As we mentioned in the introduc- tion, sociolinguists, anthropologists, literary theorists and others from around the world have begun to focus on literacy in their studies and theoretical speculations. Indeed, reading research has been broadened and invigorated by the fresh perspectives introduced by these people to a field of investigation which had been in need of new metaphors and fresh methods.

People who have contributed significantly to reading research include Rosenblatt and Iser from literary theory; Brice Heath from sociology; Anderson, Olsen, Ferreiro and Teborosky from psychology; Cook- Gumperz from sociolinguistics; and Goody from anthropology. We also bring to mind the Goodmans, Smith, Cole and Scribner, Snow, and Wells. All these people have brought to the study of literacy rich and varied backgrounds from outside education. As a result we have been through a period of great growth and change. Each year has brought reports from other countries of exciting studies. Researchers have been able to profit from an examination of the benefits of applying new methods from other disciplines to the investigation of the nature of literacy and the mechanisms of its growth.

More recently there has been talk of a paradigm shift. The methods of experimental research have been challenged. The possibility of objective, value-free investigation has been denied. Increasing numbers of scholars have rejected the notion that causal links can be established between identified variables and experimental outcomes. What has been suggested is not just a new approach to research but a new way of viewing the world. Given this intellectual and academic environment, we have found the material available for this current review insular and limited. Where are the influences from other disciplines? Where is any awareness of the broader intellectual movements being discussed in other areas and on other continents?

We are not saying that experimental research studies are no longer acceptable. We are not saying that novelty should be pursued for its own sake. But the influences we have mentioned are not insignificant. They will not go away. All that is being suggested is that literacy research in this country should come to reflect a greater willingness to try alternative means of investigation and a greater awareness of work being done in

146 Bridie Rabat1 and Peter Geekie

other disciplines which will enrich and enliven studies of the nature and development of reading and writing.

If we were to accept without comment the dominance of strictly empirical research in this field, we would still be justified in asking why it is not being pursued with much greater discipline and rigour. In one report after another terms are not clearly defined and variables appear to be chosen for convenience of measurement rather than conceptual relevance. The analysis of variance is routinely used even when the assumptions upon which its legitimate use is based are violated. For instance, interval data are used to compute means, which are then used in formulae assuming the use of continuous variables. Selection of samples is not random and the variables are clearly not normally distributed.

Inevitably we are inviting attack by making the above remarks. Indeed, we are all guilty of these accusations. However, there is need for reading researchers in this country to subject the investigations being done to close critical scrutiny. Ultimately the status of our chosen discipline will depend on the quality of work done by all of us involved in the com- munity of scholars. Our basic concern should be to examine the nature of literacy and promote better instruction through a clearer understanding. We should have left behind studies which make attempts to prove that one method of instruction is better than another, as well as those which 'throw pseudo light on non-problems' (Amis in Lucky Jim).

We have made these remarks in the hope that they will provoke people into constructive responses which will carry us forward into an era of better research, and better informed discussions of problems that really matter. In the future we expect to see the influence of a new emphasis on the importance of context which is so evident in psychology and sociology. It is commonly agreed that meaning is central to reading. It is also obvious that there is no meaning apart from the social and cultural context in which acts of communication take place. Research in our discipline needs to address this issue seriously if we expect our work to take its place with the other disciplines in the investigation of language, literacy and learning.

These remarks made here concerning the published papers presented in this review may well be reflecting one of the major problems now facing the activity of dissemination. It is becoming increasingly the case that journals are not sufficiently responsive. While a reviewing system is laudable, it can be cumbersome and frequently papers can take longer to publish than books. Two years is not unknown to see a study reported in print. Add to this the further time it has taken for us to collate and prepare this review and perhaps we can understand why there has been this mismatch between our expectations and what we have found. Clearly, this will not be the case in years to come.

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Note

More detailed abstracts of these articles are available from the Reading and Language Information Centre, University of Reading, London Road RG15AQ.

References

Barr, J. (1987) Spelling in writing: lessons from a case study. Education

Beveridge, M. & Griffiths, V. (1987) The effect of pictures on the reading processes of less able readers: a miscue analysis approach. Journal of Research in Reading, l O ( 1 ) : 29-42.

Bicknell, P. G. & Ripley, K. M. (1987) Reading problems and ocular anomalies. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 3(3): 293-304.

Blatchford, P., Burk, J., Farquhar, C., Plewis, I . & Tizard, B. (1987) Associations between pre-school reading related skills and later reading achievement. British Educational Research Journal, 13(1): 15-24.

Boland, N. & Simmons, K. (1987) Attitudes to reading: a parental involve- ment project. Education 3-13, 15(2): 28-32.

Briggs, P. & Underwood, G. (1987) The nature of reading ability differ- ences in lexical access. Journal of Research in Reading, lO(1) : 57-74.

Brown, G. D. A. (1987) Resolving inconsistency: a computational model of word naming. Journal of Memory and Language, 26(1): 1-23.

Burnside, M. & Billett, S. (1987) Nursery children as writers. Education

Campbell, R. (1987) One or two lexicons for reading and writing words: can misspellings shed any light? Cognitive Neuropsychology, 4(4): 487-499.

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