Occupied Reading: Critical Foundations for an Ecological Theory(Critical Education Practice)

Today's growing national concern about education centers on the paramount importance of teaching reading and writing. This volume offers a rigorous examination of reading and the pedagogy of reading critically. The book examines the crucial role of reading in the education of the child for the year 2000 and explores the history of reading and readers in America while surveying the attendant literacy debates. The author examines the historical progress of American reading instruction, demonstrating that how one is taught to read not only determines what one will read, but also what is permissible to read, and how pedagogies of reading define reading publics. An important chapter focuses on reading as a process of identity construction that creates not only a text but shapes the person who reads that text. The book also describes reading as a psychological process in which the creative act of manipulating the text produces the self and the world. A final chapter discusses reading as the center of the educational system and examines methodologies. An index is provided.

Table of Contents:
Contents *Introduction *Occupied Reading *Pragmatism, Populism and Whole Language *A Psychology of Reading-Foundation *A Psychology of Reading-Toward an Ecological Theory *Three Readers Reading: A Pedagogy *Bibliography *Index

Review :
"Alan Block taught in the public schools for seventeen years, took a doctorate in English, and over the past several years has studied exhaustively the file of reading. These qualifications and accomplishments are visible in Occupied Reading. It is a careful, comprehensive, stunning piece of work. The field of reading may never be the same." -- William F. Pinar, Department of Curriculum and Instruction Louisiana State University "Block's study ties the construction of meaning to the constitution of self and society. This is a far-ranging and scholarly study of theories of reading." -- Madeleine R. Grumet, Dean School of Education, Brooklyn College, City University of New York "Combining postmodern critiques with whole language hopes, Alan Block routs the psychologists and pedagogues who have occupied American reading instruction for nearly a century and points out a way in which we can come to know ourselves and the world through reading." -- Patrick Shannon, Language and Literacy Education, Penn State University