Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing to beginners. To use phonics is to teach the relationship between the sounds of the spoken language (phonemes), and the letters (graphemes) or groups of letters or syllables of the written language. Phonics is also known as the alphabetic principle or the alphabetic code. It can be used with any writing system that is alphabetic, such as that of English, Russian, and most other languages. Phonics is also sometimes used as part of the process of teaching Chinese people to read and write Chinese characters, which are not alphabetic, using pinyin, which is.
A Bachelor of Education is an undergraduate academic degree which prepares students for work as a teacher in schools. A Bachelor of Education program typically lasts three to four years and combines both coursework and practical experience in educational settings. The curriculum is designed to provide foundational knowledge in pedagogy, educational psychology, teaching methodologies, and subject-specific training. Graduates of this program are equipped with the skills necessary to foster a supportive and effective learning environment for their students.
The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is a United States professional organization dedicated to "improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education. Since 1911, NCTE has provided a forum for the profession, an array of opportunities for teachers to continue their professional growth throughout their careers, and a framework for cooperation to deal with issues that affect the teaching of English." In addition, the NCTE describes its mission as follows:
The Council promotes the development of literacy, the use of language to construct personal and public worlds and to achieve full participation in society, through the learning and teaching of English and the related arts and sciences of language.
Kenneth Goodman was Professor Emeritus, Language Reading and Culture, at the University of Arizona. He is best known for developing the theory underlying the literacy philosophy of whole language.
The College of Education is the undergraduate and graduate education school of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It was founded in 1905 and took on its current name in 1918 after previously being known as the School of Education. The college offers undergraduate, graduate, and online programs in areas including elementary education, early childhood education, special education, and Educational Organization and Leadership. It began with six departments; three of them merged and formed the largest department in the college. All departments offer masters and doctoral degrees. However, only two departments offer undergraduate degree programs: Special Education and Curriculum & Instruction. The college also offers 16 online programs. Students seeking an undergraduate degree in the college must meet the minimum graduation requirement set forth by the university. To obtain a certification, students must also meet the requirements of the Council on Teacher Education, a professional educational administration at the University of Illinois. The total enrollment is 1,361 students as of 2015.
The formation of a Commission on the Future of Higher Education, also known as the Spellings Commission, was announced on September 19, 2005, by U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. The nineteen-member commission was charged with recommending a national strategy for reforming post-secondary education, with a particular focus on how well colleges and universities are preparing students for the 21st-century workplace, as well as a secondary focus on how well high schools are preparing the students for post-secondary education. In the report, released on September 26, 2006, the Commission focuses on four key areas: access, affordability, the standards of quality in instruction, and the accountability of institutions of higher learning to their constituencies. After the report's publication, implementation of its recommendations was the responsibility of U.S. Under Secretary of Education, Sara Martinez Tucker.
Andrew Pollard is an emeritus professor at the Institute of Education, University College London. Formerly, he was Professor of Education at the universities of Cambridge, Bristol and the West of England, Bristol. He chaired the Education Sub-panel for the 2014 Research Excellence Framework on behalf of UK Higher Education Funding Councils, which involves assessing the quality of research undertaken in UK universities. He was Director of the ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme from 2002 to 2009, of the UK Strategic Forum for Research in Education from 2008 to 2011 and of ESCalate, the Education Subject Centre of the UK's Higher Education Academy. He is a non-executive director of William Pollard & Co. Ltd. a print and communications company, founded in 1781 and based in Exeter.
Peter Freebody is an Australian Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Past appointments included Professorial Research Fellow with the Faculty of Education and Social Work and a core member of the CoCo Research Centre at the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia. His research and teaching interests include literacy education, classroom interaction and quantitative and qualitative research methods. He has served on numerous Australian State and Commonwealth literacy education and assessment advisory groups. Freebody, with Allan Luke, originated the Four Resources Model of literacy education.
Anne Haas Dyson is a professor at the University of Illinois. Her fields are the study of literacy, pedagogy, and contemporary, diverse childhoods. Using qualitative and sociolinguistic research procedures, Dyson examines the use of written language from children's perspectives within their social worlds, and as they engage with popular culture. Books she has published include The Brothers and Sisters Learn to Write, Popular Literacies in Childhood and School Cultures (2003), Writing Superheroes, Contemporary Childhood, Popular Culture, and Classroom Literacy (1997), Social Worlds of Children Learning to Write in an Urban Primary School (1993), Multiple Worlds of Child Writers: Friends Learning to Write (1989). Dyson has also written articles for professional journals.
Larry R. Johannessen (1947–2009) was an American educator, academic, and author.
Anthony Petrosky is an American poet, and professor.
James Nimmo Britton was a British educator at the UCL Institute of Education whose theory of language and learning helped guide research in school writing, while shaping the progressive teaching of language, writing, and literature in both England and the United States after the Dartmouth Conference (1966) of Anglo-American English educators.
Kathleen Blake Yancey is the Kellogg W. Hunt Professor of English at Florida State University in the rhetoric and composition program. Her research interests include composition studies, writing knowledge, creative non-fiction, and writing assessment.
Arthur Noble Applebee was a researcher and professional leader in United States secondary education. He obtained his doctorate at the University of London in 1973 and held professorships at Stanford University (1980–1987) and the University at Albany, State University of New York (1987–2015). Active in national policy, he assisted in validating the Common Core State Standards and co-authored fourteen of the National Assessment of Educational Progress's "Reading Report Cards" documenting student achievement. He also documented the state of the teaching of writing in U.S. Secondary Schools in a number of studies. In addition to his scholarly work, he also was lead author/editor on numerous series of English textbooks for both primary and secondary schools, comprising at least 35 volumes. Applebee served as editor from 1984 to 1991 of Research in the Teaching of English, as president of the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy and as a member of the Validation Committee for the Common Core State Standards.
Timothy Shanahan is an educator, researcher, and education policy-maker focused on literacy education. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Education, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education, Department of Curriculum & Instruction, and he has held a visiting research appointment at Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was elected president of the International Literacy Association in 2004. He operates the popular informational website, Shanahan on Literacy. He was recently recognized as one of the top 2% of scientists in the world, according to a recent study published by Stanford University scholars.
Victor Villanueva is an American academic and scholar in rhetoric and composition studies, serving the role of Regents Professor Emeritus at Washington State University. Villanueva was awarded NCTE's David Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English for his groundbreaking book Bootstraps, From an American Academic of Color. In 2009, Villanueva was the recipient of the Conference on College Composition and Communication Exemplar's Award. Villanueva has written and edited a number of significant works on the topic of race, rhetoric, basic writing, and the social and political contexts of literacy education.
Janet Emig was an American composition scholar. She is known for her groundbreaking 1971 study The Composing Process of Twelfth Graders, which contributed to the development of the process theory of composition. Her article, "Writing as a Mode of Learning" (1977) is also frequently cited and anthologized by the Writing Across the Curriculum movement.
Arthur "Art" J. Baroody is an educational psychologist, academic, and an expert in mathematics education research. He is a Professor Emeritus of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Senior Research Fellow in Morgridge College of Education (COE) at the University of Denver.
Multimodal pedagogy is an approach to the teaching of writing that implements different modes of communication. Multimodality refers to the use of visual, aural, linguistic, spatial, and gestural modes in differing pieces of media, each necessary to properly convey the information it presents.
Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar is a scholar of education known for her research on literacy instruction, reciprocal teaching, and cognitive apprenticeships. Her involvement in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Research Council on the Prevention of Reading Difficulty in Young Children, the National Research Council's Panel on Teacher Preparation, and the International Literacy Association's Literacy Research Panel, attests to her dedication to advancing educational research and improving teacher training. Palincsar is the Ann L. Brown Distinguished University Professor Emerita at the Marsal Family School of Education at the University of Michigan.
