Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies
CSLPLC:
Schooling Australia ProjectGreen, B. and Reid, J. 2001, Historicising the 'Methods' debate:
Reading Pedagogy and Primary English Teaching in Australia.British
Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Leeds,
September 13-15.
The history of reading instruction, and literacy education more
generally, is characterised by the persistence of preoccupations about
'method'. In many ways this can be described as a truly global
phenomenon, certainly featuring right across the English-speaking world.
How to teach reading is a seemingly never-ending story about the search
for 'one right method' –– the Truth about reading pedagogy. Relatedly,
the historical field is marked by struggles over the pros and cons of
different approaches, or opposing 'methods'. Moreover, in the context of
the so-called 'Reading Wars', how to read and how to teach reading are
often confused and sometimes even effectively conflated. Given the
importance of reading in the project of schooling, there is value
accordingly in interrogating and exploring this history.
This paper presents a historical study of debates organised around particular methods in the teaching of reading. It is contextualised by a larger curriculum-historical study of English teaching, teacher education and public schooling in Australia, in the first half of the twentieth century. We consider a particular instance of the teaching profession's embrace of an apparently successful method in this period. The phenomenon of the 'Jones Method', as it was known, is examined as a case-study in the kind of methodological fixation that characterises the historical scene of reading pedagogy, now seemingly as much as ever.
