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Article Excerpt
We are three university professors who were concerned about the academic information and skills we teach our students but also about our influence on their beliefs, values, and behaviors. Although our graduate students have a significant passing rate on competency-based teacher examinations and content-specialty examinations, we were unsure whether the programs we offer address behaviors, values, and habits--in short, the affective domain, characterized by lifelong learning and literacy. Were we, as trainers of teachers, preparing a generation of teachers only concerned with helping children to succeed with high-stakes tests, when the demands of an ever-changing global society require so much more?
In our desire to prepare teachers to go beyond high-stakes test mandates, this study replicated a survey developed by Applegate and Applegate (2004) about undergraduate college students' literary attitudes and habits. We focused on graduate students who are prospective or relatively new teachers of literacy and children with special needs. Our purpose was to investigate the fit between curricula and practices. Should teacher preparation institutions realign course content to balance the "scientific study" of reading with the "art" of reading? Should teacher preparation institutions also address the aesthetic enjoyment that comes from being a lifelong, engaged reader?
Related Literature
The Art of Teaching Reading: The Role of the Affective Domain
As we considered how our current preservice and inservice graduate students affect the youth in our schools, an essential question became, "Do children learn because of what we, as teachers, say, or do they learn by observing what teachers do and how teachers behave?" There is much evidence, buttressed by the experiences of classroom teachers, to suggest that teachers' values and behaviors exert as powerful an influence on students' hearts and minds as the curriculum itself. For example, Brophy's (1986) and Deci's (1971) work on intrinsic versus extrinsic motivators suggested that the teacher is a focal point for motivation. More recently, Schunk (1990) noted that teachers with low self-esteem or feelings of self-efficacy tend to avoid planning opportunities to promote growth, challenge, and change and, thus, fail to influence intrinsic motivation in pupils. Skinner, Wellborn, and Connell (1990) characterized the relationship between teacher behaviors and student motivation as reciprocal. Therefore, student teacher behaviors influence pupils and vice versa. The importance of teachers in affecting student motivation for reading has been well researched (Guthrie, 1996; Sanacore, 2002; Scott, 1996; Skinner & Belmont, 1993; Sweet, Guthrie, & Ng, 1998; Wang & Guthrie, 2004; Wilhelm & Smith, 2000). Cunningham (2005) asked, "If they [students] don't read much, how they ever gonna get good?" to describe how teachers can go a long way in allocating time for reading. With all that we know about motivation and the teacher's role in promoting reading, how is it that reading is in decline today?
Aliteracy: A Growing Problem
Scott (1996) defined aliteracy as a "lack of reading habit especially in capable readers who choose not to read." Mikulecky (1978) was among the earliest researchers to differentiate aliteracy from illiteracy. Characteristics of aliterates have been well noted in the research. Aliterates typically suffer from a lack of engagement or intrinsic motivation to read, even when they are capable of successfully comprehending material (Asselin, 2004). Decker (1986) found three significant causes of aliteracy among students: (a) a narrowing of vocabulary development and exposure to words in schools; (b) an increase in television watching; and (c) an imposition of state-mandated high-stakes tests, which tend to dilute the curriculum and force teachers to do "test prep" skill and drill at the expense of reading for enjoyment.
Several researchers have concentrated on the interaction of home and school (Beers, 1996; Shapiro & Whitney, 1997; Trelease, 1995), suggesting that aliteracy may have its roots in preschool reading environments. McKenna (2001) noted that reading attitudes and motivations are crucial to the development of lifelong literacy. He described how schools make these attitudes about reading cumulative and ongoing.
Although home and school can provide a nurturing environment for lifelong reading, a study by the National Endowment for the Arts (2004) showed an overall decline in the amount of leisure time reading and noted the following dubious trends in aliteracy:
* Less than half of the adult American population now reads literature.
* There has been a progressive 10% decline in reading each of the past 20 years, representing the loss of 20 million potential readers.
* A decline in reading of literature parallels a decline in total book reading.
* Reading has declined among every group of readers, from high school dropouts to college graduates and professionals, for the past 20 years (pp. viii-xii).
Such statistics reinforce suspicions voiced by literacy educators and researchers such as Mueller (1973), Cramer and Castle (1994), and Metsala, Wigfield, and McCann (1997) that aliteracy may be growing among all segments of our population despite our best intentions and efforts.
Several investigators, including the authors of this study, have wondered how much of the blame for this problem may be assigned to literacy professionals. For example, Heathington and Alexander (1984), Lehman, Freeman, and Allen (1994), Reutzel and Sabey (1996), and Morrison, Jacobs, and Swinyard (1999) found that elementary school teachers have always valued lifelong reading; however, these researchers found very little information on how teachers consistently apply instructional support of that goal. Could the aliteracy problem be due, in part, to the aliteracy...
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