Discussion
are driven by ADHD and a grab bag of specific learning disabilities , including working memory deficits , visual tracking issues , mild dyslexia and crippling dysgraphia . One of the benefits of having to face these challenges is that I was driven to think outside the book ’ s cramped box – where I came upon the scroll .
I made my first scroll 32 years ago . I ' m still making them today . Over the years , I have experimented with making and using scrolls of picture books , chapter books , young adult literature , poetry , short fiction , novels , textbooks , trade books , journals , magazine articles and other long-form journalism , broadsheet newspapers , and scores ( music ). I unfurled them on the floor ; I unrolled them across desks and tables ; I unrolled them on the walls , on whiteboards , on blackboards , in hallways , across lockers ; I taped them to the ceiling . I unrolled them in cafeterias and gymnasiums ; I unrolled them outside , in playgrounds and skateboarding parks . I shared my work with teachers and students , with parents ( often worried about their children ' s reading difficulties ), and with educators at district trainings and conferences .
Today , scrolls are used in a small but growing number of countries , at all levels from preschool to post-secondary and adult education . In higher education , developmental reading and learning assistance educators in some U . S . community colleges have found success with them , as have learning developers in the United Kingdom ( Abegglen et al , 2019 , 2019b , 2020 ; Rhead 2022 ). Feedback from teachers and students ( Middlebrook , 1999-2022 ) demonstrates that scrolls improve learning across academic disciplines ; that they accommodate a variety of learning differences and learning disabilities ; and that they can be used in a variety of classroom setups and support a variety of teaching styles . Scrolls accommodate the reading levels ( PISA , 2018 ) at which students are functioning . They support the teaching of strategies ( Keene & Zimmermann , 1997 ; Pauk , 2001 ; Robinson , 1946 ), levels of reading ( Adler & VanDoren , 1972 ) and threshold concepts for academic reading ( Morley , 2020 , p . 8 ; Rhead , 2019 ).
The main argument made in this paper is that scrolls provide a range and quality of affordances
( Gibson , 1986 , p . 127 ) that our modern books , whether bound or digital , simply cannot match . As of this writing , this remains a commonsense argument without any research backing , for there appears to be no published research in which the use of scrolls is contemplated .
Discussion
The fundamental difference between book and scroll is best explained by two words : implicit and explicit – each of them ancient , and possibly coined by scribes , monks , bookmakers , and others in the book trades some 2,000 years ago .
Implicit ( im + plicare ) means " infolded "; explicit ( ex + plicare ) means " unfolded or unrolled " ( Global Language , 2001-22 ). Their shared root , plicare / plicit , means " fold ", " bend ", or " layer "; it gives us the plies in plywood and the pleats in our drapes ( ibid ). The sense of implicit is to be hidden in the layers or folds , and thus hidden from view . It describes the process of the book ' s pages disappearing into the folds as texts , handcopied onto parchment , were doubled-over , folded into quires ( the ancient version of modern signatures ), then stacked and bound between heavy wood covers . Once a book is made , the most open that book will ever be is when the reader opens it to a two-page spread – any two-page spread ( or in the case of the digital book , any one screenful ).
Explicit is implicit ' s opposite : The sense of explicit is to be wide-open to understanding ( ibid ); it captures the panoramic feeling of a scroll being unrolled across a table or desk – perhaps onto the floor and down the hallway . For as long as it remains unrolled , it is open . In short , the scroll affords opening all the pages at once , in a single coherent view , but the book does not .
The book and the scroll each provide significant affordances for reading , but the scroll ' s are far richer and , from a user-interface point of view , far more useful . The most significant of the book ' s affordances is random access , which is useful for reference works , such as recipe books , dictionaries , encyclopedias , and atlases . To be sure , the scroll does provide far better random access – richly multisensory , rapidly accessed ,
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