Reforming Reading, Writing, and Mathematics

Teachers' Responses and the Prospects for Systemic Reform

In this book S.G. Grant reports his study of how four Michigan elementary school teachers manage a range of reforms (such as new tests, textbooks, and curriculum frameworks) in three different school subjects (reading, writing, and mathematics). Two significant findings emerge from his comparison of these responses: teachers' responses vary across classrooms (even when they teach in the same school building) and also across the reforms (a teacher might embrace reforms in one subject area, but ignore proposed changes in another).

This study of teachers' responses to reading, writing, and mathematics reform and the prospects for systemic reform is part of a growing trend to look at the intersection of curriculum policy and teachers' classroom practice. It is unique in the way the author looks at teachers' responses to multiple subject matter reforms; uses those responses as part of an analysis of the recent move toward systemic reform; and employs empirical findings as a means of examining the current movement toward systemic reform.

Reforming Reading, Writing, and Mathematics is important reading for researchers, practitioners, and graduate students of educational policy, teaching and learning in reading, writing, and mathematics, and elementary education, and for policy analysts in universities, foundations, and government.