Social Research Methods

Abstract

Reproduction in any form (including the internet) is prohibited without prior permission from the Society they cannot afford to compromise market-oriented skills by refocusing education on children's social, emotional and aesthetic development. These views reflect Bernstein's description of our society as being over-pedagogized, with the main purpose of lifelong learning being to train and retrain the workforce to become responsive to a rapidly changing job market.This book is an ambitious project, in that it attempts to bring together the debates on reading, targeting phonics in particular and explore the wider context of neoliberal ideologies regarding educational policy and the use of science to inform classroom practice in America. As I read this book, I kept questioning what the main issue was. If Strauss is to use phonics as a vehicle to discuss the political, ideological and social context of education in American state schools, then he should have discussed in more detail the processes whereby neoliberal ideologies shape literacy policy and the obstacles to the development of democratic practices and participation in American schools, and extend his discussion on academic imperialism. However, if the main focus was whether phonics or whole-language approaches are effective methods to teach reading and how phonological development relates to reading, then a detailed discussion of the vast research body that covers these instructional methods and their theoretical underpinnings would have been useful.Strauss, being a linguist himself, discusses in detail the empirical research on the letter-sound system of the English language. Specifically, he provides a detailed analysis of the phonetic rules and the logical organization of the letter-sound system, questioning the assumption that we need to know how this system works in order to learn how to read. I think this is an important issue which goes to the heart of the reading debates, and to address it there is a need to explore how research on the letter-sound system interfaces with research on reading. There is also another body of research that is not discussed here, which examines the effectiveness of phonics in the development of reading, especially for children with dyslexia and other learning difficulties. This is an important body of research especially when Strauss states that around 45% of illiterate children display learning difficulties and sensory impairment. Also, research evidence on the effectiveness of the whole-language approach is missing.However, if the main focus of the book is on the impact of marginalization, poverty and inequality on literacy, the state-endorsed ideologies that shape education and the future of corporate America, then the discussion on literacy, the nature and purpose of education and what a future knowledge-based society requires is somewhat limited. De Sousa Santos in his New Common Sense: Law, Science and Politics in the Paradigmatic Transition (1995) observes that the 'future is no longer what it used to be', suggest...

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