DOMINIC W. MASSARO, editor
University of California, Santa Cruz

Contexts for Learning

Teaching Reading: Effective Schools, Accomplished Teachers
Edited by Barbara M. Taylor and P. David Pearson. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2002. xvii + 401 pp. Cloth, $99.95; Paper, $39.95.

The development of reading and writing ability is ultimately a linguistic process: learning to deal with language in a new mode. Teaching young children to read is helping them use language in new ways to learn about the world. For many "disadvantaged" students, this kind of learning happens mainly at school, as the "schooled" ways of using language are different from the ways of using language they experience in their daily lives. The English language through which they experience schooling may also be different from the language or variety of English through which the rest of their lives is enacted. A major challenge for educators is to give these children contexts for learning and experiences that build on what they bring to the classroom to enable the literacy development that gives them access to new ways of meaning-making.