Transcending the Divide: Where College and Secondary Reading and Study Research Coincide

Abstract

T Л hose of us who teach literacy usually accept the idea that reading, writing, and study strategies are developmental. Youngsters develop their literacy from birth on, and, to some of us, dividing literacy education into steadfast designations such as early childhood, elementary, middle, secondary, and college learning (which may have pragmatic value) seems counterproductive or at least arbitrary. Even so, many educators and others (e.g., parents, community leaders, writers and journalists, policymakers) think of learning as going from childhood through the college years and beyond, and that what happens in the early years informs the elementary years, what happens in the elementary years informs the middle school years, and so on. This, of course, is true, yet this linear way of conceptualizing literacy education appears to move in one direction. What if we take another view? What if we turn it around and see that we can be informed from both directions?