Visions and Revisions: A Special Education Perspective on the Whole Language Controversy

Abstract

This article discusses the conflict between emerging conceptions of literature-based or whole language approaches to reading/literacy instruction and the direct instruction approach that was widely advocated in the 1980s. The conceptualizations underlying each approach are delineated, as are the limitations. The essay concludes with a depiction of each approach as an idealized vision of the teaching-learning process and the assertion that, in practice, these approaches often overlap. It concludes with a call for research that examines issues in literacy instruction, in a nonpolemic fashion, through careful observation of actual teaching.

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