Abstract
In the current industry-driven educational climate, resources are produced, marketed, and subsequently understood to be synonymous with “balanced literacy.” This article critically examines various programs currently in wide use to demonstrate this occurrence. The examination specifically provides examples of how the appropriation and marketization of limited understandings of complex theories can restrict teachers' classroom practice. To this end, conceptualizations of balanced literacy are offered and discussed in relationship to products identified as providing balanced literacy instruction. The limitations of these programs and the effects they have had on the organization of classroom time and teachers' decision-making processes are analyzed. The analysis is intended to provoke critical conversations about the nature of mass-purchased literacy “solutions” and teachers' professional practice and development. Whether readers are in a position to purchase or to implement mandated programs, a guide to foster good “teacher consumerism” is offered to address the inadequacies of purchased literacy programs. The article considers questions and concerns and provides insights regarding the roles students and their teachers play in negotiating how literacy teaching and learning are understood and developed in classrooms. There is no sure cure so idiotic that some superintendent of schools will not swallow it. The aim seems to be to reduce the whole teaching process to this sort of automatic reaction, to discover some master formula that will not only take the place of competence and resourcefulness in the teacher but that will also create an artificial receptivity in the child. H. L. Mencken, 1918, in Postman, 1995, p. 49
Published Version
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