Reviews
Professional Materials

Edward Gordon

Francis E. Kazemek

Teaching Reading to Adults: A Balanced Approach

Reviewed by Edward Gordon, Imperial Consulting Corporation, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Pat Campbell has pursued a long career in adult literacy as a program coordinator, researcher, writer, trainer, consultant, and instructor at the University of Alberta. In Teaching Reading to Adults she distills her broad range of practice and research into a book directed at “literacy practitioners who also want to balance instruction in ‘reading the word’ with instruction in ‘reading the world’” (p. vii).

This work has the latest information on reading assessment and instruction and is a good update to the earlier book of Rena Soifer (1990) on adult literacy. Campbell conducted focus groups across Canada to obtain answers to educators' questions about teaching reading to adults. As a result, a broad audience will find this book of great value including adult basic educators and English as a Second Language instructors, trainers, reading specialists, administrators, literacy coordinators, and graduate students.

Teaching Reading to Adults presents an overview of useful best practices drawn from the author's own work and a review of prior research. This includes discussions on the so-called “balanced approach” to reading instruction, “The Foundations of Reading” (theory), “Assessment,” “Word Recognition,” “Comprehension,” and “Teaching Reading in a Participatory Context.”

The author first presents a balanced approach to teaching reading. She sees value in integrating the whole language and phonics instructional systems, combining their strengths and, in so doing, creating “instruction that is more than the sum of its parts” (p. 4). This helps “bypass the debate” on what system to use that “can become emotional” and a distraction from helping an adult learn to improve his or her reading (p. 3). This balanced approach assesses what the adult already knows and needs to learn. The author believes that this pragmatic method is a much more effective way to respond to adult literacy needs.

Campbell then addresses the four major reading theories that drive most reading programs: top down, bottom up, interactive, and social constructivism. For each theory she offers useful examples and insightful discussion.

Assessment is considered as an array of useful tools including standardized tests, competency-based models, and authentic assessment strategies. She discusses the pros and cons of each form and the purposes for which a particular tool can best be put to use. The book's approach to word-recognition systems is based on language cueing. A diagnostic assessment can result that will further assist reading instruction.

The final two chapters deal with comprehension from a social constructivist perspective in which the reader builds personal meaning by relating what is read to his or her own previous knowledge (p. 122). The author sees a more participatory approach to reading education as a successful means to raise consciousness and increase adults' thinking skills in the classroom and in their daily lives (p. 150).

Each chapter features a useful summary. An extensive list of references that pertains to the topics under review is listed with each chapter for further study.

Teaching Reading to Adults is limited to a general review of adult and family literacy. Unfortunately, it has little to say about workforce literacy instruction. Computer-based instruction as blended learning is also ignored. In the tradition of other how-to books for teachers, Teaching Reading to Adults has no index but does provide the reader with a good glossary of terms.

These limitations aside, Teaching Reading to Adults is an invaluable handbook for practitioners and graduate students alike. It should become mandatory reading for all adult reading practitioners.

Pat Campbell. 2003. Edmonton, AB, Canada: Grass Roots Press. 158 pp. ISBN 1-894693-18-9. CAN$39.95. US$31.95.

Reading Work: Literacies in the New Workplace

Reviewed by Francis E. Kazemek, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA.

I have been engaging in adult literacy education for more than 20 years, and most of my writing related to workplace literacy has been critical of both its practices and underlying (if any) theory. Thus it was with joy and encouragement that I read Reading Work: Literacies in the New Workplace. It takes its place among a small number of books on the subject that are grounded in the complex relationships between job site practices and the substantial body of literacy research. Indeed, I think it is at present the best book on the subject.

The book describes longitudinal ethnographic research conducted by the authors in four different Canadian workplaces: a food-processing plant, a textile factory, an urban tourist hotel, and a high-tech metal parts manufacturer. They spent six to eight months in the sites getting to know the people and the work. They listened to the stories of management and workers, observed “literacy-in-use,” gathered artifacts, and explored as a team what they learned through their collaborative efforts.