Rethinking learning to read

Learning to read is considered to be a crucial step in any child’s education, and literacy is a central concern, not just for educators and parents but for politicians and wider society as well. Rethinking Learning to Read offers a unique contribution to the subject by investigating in depth, for the first time, how home educated children learn to read. Based on an international sample of 311 families with a total of 400 children this book explores, the experiences of those who learn to read away from the mainstream school agenda. The results constitute a unique resource and insight into how children learn to read when not constrained by school methods. A wide range of views and pedagogical attitudes are presented and considered from philosophical, psychological and practical points of view. The result is a provocative discussion of literacy built around the words of home educating parents as they describe their children’s experiences and deliberate themselves on how we understand learning to read. In so doing many normative assumptions are challenged including the necessity for age related achievement targets, the pursuit of a universal “best method” approach to reading instruction, a “building block” progressive approach, and the contention that children need to be professionally and actively taught to read. Through the analysis of parents’ experiences and reflections the authors begin work on the construction of alternative representations of what happens when a child learns to read. This book also has wider implications in understanding how learning takes place in the home, the relationship between teaching and learning and gives real insight to the phenomena that is home education