Thursday, February 9, 2012

A Fad in Reading Education

Question: Should training in visual-motor processes be a part of reading readiness?

Answer/Quote: “…conclude that the value of perceptual training, especially those programs often used in schools, has not been clearly established. If he concluded that such training lacks solid support, he may begin to question the purchase of attractively packaged materials which some companies offer teachers along with unsubstantiated claims concerning their merits, the practice of providing perceptual-motor training to all school children in the name of readiness training, and the assumption that a lack of perceptual-motor adequacy causes a considerable amount of academic failure.” P. 476.

Comment: One of the values of professional journals is their research into fads of which education has had many. How much money and wasted student time went into the fad of using “attractively packaged” perceptual-motor training materials to prevent reading failure? RayS.

Title: “Visual-Motor Processes: Can We Train them?” D Hammill, L Goodman and JL Wiederholt. The Reading Teacher (February 1974), 469-477.

No comments:

Post a Comment