Politics and the Pendulum: An Alternative Understanding of the Case of Whole Language as Educational Innovation

Abstract

McAdam’s (1999) political process model describes the generation and decline of social movements. According to McAdam (1999), the generation of a social movement involves the confluence of four factors: the expansion of political opportunities, the presence of certain shared cognitions within the community; the mobilization of indigenous organizational resources (p. 61), and the shifting response of other organized groups to the movement (p. 231). In the space of this commentary it is not possible (or appropriate) to provide a complete detailed analysis of whole language as a sociopolitical movement, but it is possible to present provocative evidence of an alternative characterization of the process of innovation. In the following sections we will discuss each of the above four factors of the political process model with respect to the whole language movement and the clear challenge these factors offer to the characterization of innovation as swings of the pendulum.