Curt Dudley-Marling

The myth of the normal curve

Contents: Curt Dudley-Marling/Alex Gurn: Introduction: Living on the Boundaries of Normal - Curt Dudley-Marling/Alex Gurn: Troubling the Foundations of Special Education: Examining the Myth of the Normal Curve - Deborah Gallagher: Educational Researchers and the Making of Normal People - Brent Davis/Dennis Sumara: Decentralizations and Redistributions: A Complex Reading of Normality - Donaldo Macedo/Teresa Sorde Marti: Situating Labeling within an Ideological Framework - Steven A. Gelb: Evolutionary Anxiety, Monstrosity, and the Birth of Normality - Rebecca Rogers/ Michael Mancini: Requires Medication to Progress Academically: The Discursive Pathways of ADHD - Eileen W. Ball/Beth Harry: Assessment and the Policing of the Norm - Arlette Ingram Willis: Miners Canaries and Boiling Frogs: Fiction and Facts about Normalcy in Educational and Reading Assessment - Beth Ferri: A Dialogue Weve Yet to Have: Race and Disability Studies - Felicity A. Crawford/Lilia I. Bartolome: Labeling and Treating Linguistic Minority Students with Disabilities as Deficient and Outside the Normal Curve: A Pedagogy of Exclusion - Michael Gill: Sex Education and Young Adults with Intellectual Disabilities: Crisis Response, Sexual Diversity, and Pleasure - Jan Valle/Susan Gabel: The Sirens of Normative Mythology: Mother Narratives of Engagement and Resistance - Bernadette Macartney: Living on the Edge of the Normal Curve: Its Like a Smack in the Head - Gerald Campano/Rob Simon: Practitioner Research as Resistance to the Normal Curve - Alex Gurn: Conclusion: Re/visioning the Ideological Imagination in (Special) Education.

WHOLE LANGUAGE: IT'S A MATTER OF PRINCIPLES

Teachers of students with learning disabilities have shown increasing interest in whole‐language theory and practice as a framework for teaching reading and writing. However, many in the field of learning disabilities conceive of whole language as just a method realized in definitive whole‐language practices. In the absence of a coherent theory of language and learning, there is a serious risk that inconsistencies and contradictions in childrens literacy experiences will appear. There is concern among whole‐language educators that because of these inconsistencies and contradictions, whole‐language instruction is being increasingly misunderstood, misapplied, and unjustly maligned. I attempt to explicate the principles underlying whole‐language theory and practice to reduce misunderstandings and misapplications and to help teachers of students with learning disabilities provide rich literacy learning experiences for their students.

Computers and Language Learning: Misguided Assumptions

There has been a rapid increase in the availability of computer assisted instruction (CAI) software for teaching oral language skills. Despite the growing popularity of CAI in education, such an approach to language teaching fragments and isolates language learning from the context of its use and conflicts with current theory and research in language development and learning. The greatest potential for microcomputers in language learning may be as a medium for increasing student opportunities for using language by bringing students and teachers together around a shared activity.

A Criterion-Based Approach to Software Evaluation

AbstractThe overall poor quality of educational software on the market suggests that educators must continue efforts to evaluate available packages and to disseminate their findings. In this paper, weaknesses in published evaluation procedures are identified, and an alternative, criterion-based model is described. The rationale for the model is drawn from the fields of the assessment of student writing, criterion-referenced testing, and the assessment of second language oral proficiency. Data are presented on the mean ratings of software evaluated with the model, scale intercorrelations, and indicators of its validity and reliability.

The Introduction of Word Processing Into a Grade 7/8 Writing Program

AbstractThis paper reports on a project to integrate microcomputers into a seventh- and eighth-grade writing program. It was found that, although there was considerable social interaction by students in both the computer lab and the classrooms, the public display of the monitors may have encouraged more sharing of student writing. Teachers also reported fewer discipline problems in the lab and both teachers and students believed that student writing was longer using the computers. However, students rarely made substantive revisions of their work. Changes were usually limited to correcting spelling, punctuation, and changing words. The authors conclude that it is unreasonable to expect computers, by themselves, to affect the quality of student writing. Factors such as topic choice, purpose, ownership, and audience are more likely to affect students’ willingness to revise and, ultimately, the quality of their writing.

The Role of SLPs in Literacy Learning.

Literate classrooms immerse students in language, providing them with frequent opportunities to read, write, speak, and listen for a variety of purposes. Language-rich classrooms provide students with a variety of language experiences which encourage the development of literacy and oral language and also enable students to use their language to support their learning. When SLPs collaborate with classroom teachers to develop language-rich environments in the classroom, they increase the likelihood that the goals of therapy will be supported throughout the school day.

Politics of Whole Language.

Absent from most discussions on the effectiveness of whole language is the crucial question: effectiveness at what? The position taken in this paper is that one of the goals of schooling should be to educate students for democracy as a means of challenging a status quo in which a relatively small number of people—privileged by their race, class, gender, language, and sexual orientation—control a disproportionate share of societys social and economic resources. This article examines the potential of critical, pro‐justice, whole language instruction to help create the conditions for a more just and democratic society.

WHOLE LANGUAGE, ASSUMPTIONS, AND IDEOLOGY: A RESPONSE TO GROFF

This paper responds to some of the issues raised in Patrick Groffs response to the article “Whole language: Its a matter of principles” by: (1) explicating the principles underlying oral and written language learning; (2) reiterating the importance of reading texts in learning to read; (3) clarifying the meaning of student ownership within a whole language framework; and (4) challenging the narrow view of science that informs Groffs critique of the research base underlying whole language.

Student ownership and writing: a critical tale

Current theory and practice in literacy education emphasize the importance of student independence, autonomy, and choice — what has commonly been referred to as “ownership.” Presumably, students who are not invested in their writing, for example, are less likely to revise their work and more likely to produce weak, vapid writing. Students in two 7th‐ and two 8th‐grade classes were observed as they wrote during their language arts periods over a period of six months. In general, students found it difficult to exercise much control over decisions affecting their writing and, perhaps as a result, cared little about what they wrote. The study also indicates that ownership is a much more subtle and complicated concept than previously recognized.

Bells, whistles, and pedagogy

An examination of the current pool of educational software, focusing on over 100 programs targeted to the early childhood market, indicates that, although current software may be technologically superior to earlier programs, the fundamental assumptions of the vast majority of educational software remain unchanged and, in many cases, conflict with contemporary theories of teaching and learning. It was concluded that the promise of the microcomputer does not lie in its potential as a teaching machine but in its capacity to encourage learning by bringing students together around a shared activity, its power to increase students’ opportunities to engage in authentic learning opportunities, and its use as a tool to expand students’ potential as learners.