https://pamelasnow.blogspot.com/2019/11 ... -with.html
Running with the hare and hunting with the hound. My response to Lucy Calkins' "Science of Reading" essay.
This week, Lucy Calkins of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University, and highly published Heinemann author and creator of reading, writing, and spelling materials for teachers, published a piece entitled No-one gets to own the term “the science of reading".
Although Calkins’ work is not directly referenced in Australia as much as it appears to be in North America, the kinds of ideas she espouses, certainly do permeate, via the ubiquitous Balanced Literacy, which readers of this blog will know is really just Whole Language 2.0.
I’ve had a careful read of Calkin’s essay, and would like to share some reflections here.
Firstly, there’s the title, which does seem to have a slightly petulant, foot-stamping edge to it. Calkins is right, in the sense that no-one “owns” the science of anything. Science is its own master, and does not have one face for some, and another face for others, despite Kenneth Goodman’s extraordinary statement to Emily Hanford earlier this year, that “my science is different”.