Reading has a history.
Robert Darnton,
The Kiss of Lamourette, 1990
Education, as is true of any domain of intellectual inquiry, is shaped by history, a history driven by research and by politics. It is influenced by academic trends, cultural forces, and individual participants. This is especially true when it comes to identifying the “best” pedagogy for teaching literacy. In our own explorations of what it means to teach in productive ways, we’ve become more aware of the relationship between teacher language and classroom practice and how these influence the climate of the learning setting.
The purpose of this article is to share some new thinking about the role that metaphor plays in the language used to discuss teaching and learning and how this affects the ways in which teachers think and go about literacy instruction.
In this article, when we discuss metaphors, we don’t mean the kinds of figurative language often used to enhance writing, such as “strong as an ox” or “love is a battlefield.” Metaphor in these instances is a flourish used to enliven our sentences and make our imagery more vivid. Rather, what we mean by metaphor for this discussion is what cognitive scientists refer to as conceptual, or embedded, metaphors. Conceptual metaphors guide and reflect how people think about the world and determine their language and behaviors. These conceptual metaphors are so deeply embedded in our thinking, language, and behaviors, they are often unrecognizable as such. And our “metaphors matter…[the] imagery we use is never neutral…”
(Schaffner, 2012). For example, George Lakoff (2002) coined the term “Moral Accounting Metaphors” to illustrate the accounting metaphors used in everyday life to describe our interactions with others, such as “You saved my life! How could I ever repay you?” and “You owe me an apology.” The indebtedness implied through this accounting language can affect not only one’s personal relationships, responsibilities, and interactions but one’s world view and deeper cultural assumptions. In each of these situations, consequences arise from metaphors that direct our thinking, consciously or not.
Literacy learning is also rife with conceptual metaphors. One recurring metaphor is the notion of a pendulum used to illustrate the seemingly ever-changing educational stances. For example, many districts will suddenly adopt practices and structures from a completely different philosophical stance (e.g., open classrooms, mainstreaming, retention in certain grades). For many teachers, this professional whiplash from leadership can result in educational cynicism— “if we just wait, this will go away.”
Another widely accepted conceptual metaphor is that of a ‘reading war.’ The metaphor of the ‘reading wars’ has positioned classroom instruction as a battlefield and teachers as the soldiers who must choose sides. The war, presented as competing pedagogies, resurfaces within the professional bodies representing reading education regularly, many times fueled by the media’s tendency to polarize the debate.
The ‘reading wars’ have a long history within reading education. Theoretical squabbles in reading education began as a series of dichotomous pedagogies, underpinned with ‘Method A’ versus ‘Method B’ arguments. Each was hotly defended and/or attacked by advocates and adversaries. The origin of these debates about the two pedagogies can be traced back to a 1791 essay by German educator, Professor Friederich Gedike (in Paisey, 1978), in which he argued that reading instruction should go from whole words to the parts of these words, i.e., the letters. In the modern era this debate was re-ignited with the 1967 publication of Jeanne Chall's classic volume, Learning to Read: The Great Debate. In this publication, Chall renamed the two approaches as ‘code-based’ (using letters and sounds or ‘phonics’) versus ‘meaning-based’
(recognizing whole words or ‘look-say’). Chall strongly argued that effective reading was contingent upon accurate word recognition, which in turn was best achieved through phonic decoding.
In an early article called “A Linguistic Study of Cues and Miscues in Reading” (1965), Ken Goodman, with his psycholinguistic theory of reading, brought meaning and understanding to the discussion of what it means to read. He changed the definition of “meaning-based” from word-recognition to a process of continuous construction of meaning by learners. These meaning-based understandings emerge as readers predict, confirm or reject those predictions, search and self-correct meanings being constructed, and integrate new meanings with existing understandings. The disparity between Chall’s and Goodman’s definitions regarding what it means to read has been at the basis of the reading dichotomies since these researchers’ publications.
The use of the military metaphor first appeared in an article entitled, From a 'Great Debate' to a Full-Scale War: Dispute Over Teaching Reading Heats Up, by Robert Rothman in a 1990 edition of the journal, Education Week. In this article, Rothman summarized what he referred to as the different ‘camps’ with opposing viewpoints. “The battle lines are drawn between advocates of phonics, who stress the importance of teaching the relationships between letters and sounds, and those of whole-language methodology, who believe children should be taught reading by reading whole texts.” In describing the governmental attempts to find middle ground to settle this dispute, he stated they “have not only failed to quell the debate, but may have exacerbated it.”
Such a long history means that today's teachers are heirs to a long tradition of often acrimonious and unhelpful debate about pedagogical methods, which are presented either as bi-polar opposites, or positions along a bi-polar continuum of some kind. This means that some educators invariably find themselves on the wrong side of what is currently in vogue and are, therefore, doing things the wrong way. Hence, sides, stances, and diametrically opposed viewpoints which have assumed the stature of a war, a damning and unproductive way of thinking in a profession purported to foster community and compassion for children.
Why
How and whether one considers and discusses multiple perspectives on literacy development reveals the metaphor of learning one holds and the way it positions teachers and learners. Neuroscientist Matthew Cobb (2020) argues that holding tightly to metaphors, and the academic research, language, and other discourse that arises from their presence, imposes boundaries and can end up “limiting what and how we can think.” In metaphorical thinking and its related discourse in which reading instruction is positioned as a war, the language used in discussions about it readily reveals the metaphor. Both sides are expected to ‘bombard’ (a war metaphor) each other with the scientific research which ‘reinforces their positions’ and ‘attacks’ the other sides’ thinking. (e.g., ‘blowing their arguments out of the water’). Such conceptual metaphors have ‘forced’ teachers, schools, and districts, who are ‘in the trenches,’ to believe that one side has the answer and the magic ‘bullet’ to ensure that all students will become effective readers and writers. This war language, and the accompanying ‘tactics,’ has permeated our thinking and discussion to the point that we are almost impervious to its presence.
Another consequence of the ‘reading war’ metaphor is that it has become acceptable practice in professional discussions to use evidence-based or scientifically-derived research to ‘ambush’ one’s ‘adversaries.’ Rather than a rational discussion of research and its findings,
particular research becomes the ‘ammunition’ in the arguments for or against particular pedagogies, revealing quite distinct views of what good science and good evidence are and whose science matters. Educational researcher Rachael Gabriel (2018) succinctly captures this state of affairs: “The sloppy, mudslinging nature of these debates has led to confusion, distrust and a tribe-like affiliation with single approaches among practitioners, researchers and policymakers.” Sadly, invoking research as a way to reduce the theoretical confusion surrounding literacy education doesn't seem to have helped anyone to ‘advance the peace.’
Changing the Metaphor
The idea of what it means to teach effectively is contingent upon how one defines, thinks,and talks about such concepts as effective reading and effective learning. Until the educational community comes to some agreement on what these terms actually entail in the 2020s and beyond, the same theoretical squabbles will continue to plague education. Such theoretical arguments are not helpful for the teaching profession or the teaching of reading.
The cognitive scientists who study conceptual, or embedded, metaphors have identified a direct relationship between the embedded metaphors, the ways we think, the language we use, and the ways we behave. This has huge implications for classroom pedagogy.
Instead of a pendulum metaphor or a war metaphor, both of which imply sides, stances, and diametrically opposed viewpoints, the profession needs a metaphor which honors each learner’s construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of meaning. This is true for the whole range of learners found in learning settings. Everyone—young children, classroom teachers, leaders of schools, parents, and beyond—is learning together.
We suggest a metaphor of quilting might more aptly describe the realities of most learning experiences. Quilting invokes a purposeful process of selecting and creatively reshaping existing pieces of fabric in new and interesting ways, reflecting the definition of
creativity offered by Jacob Getzel and Philip Jackson (1962). We believe this way of thinking more accurately describes the reality of most classrooms. Whatever metaphor is held and used, it is crucial for educators to become consciously aware of how these metaphors influence their instructional language and behaviors. Educators need to ask themselves this question: Are the embedded metaphors in the language I use and my behaviors aligned with my values and beliefs about learning and learners? The way we answer this question should ultimately determine how we approach professional discussions and go about teaching children to read and write. As cited in Rothman’s original piece on the ‘reading wars (1990),’ Steven Stahl, professor of education at the University of Illinois, suggested “the real hope for a consensus in reading is with teachers…[Teachers] are inherently reasonable…[They] get the best things out of whatever’s out there…[If] there is a synthesis, it’s going on in the classroom.”
We agree!
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