This post was written by NCTE member Bobbie Kabuto, the chair of the NCTE Standing Committee on Literacy Assessment.
So that is how to create a single story: show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over, and that is what they become.
—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Danger of a Single Story TED Talk
In Part II of Literacy Assessment as Advocacy: Learning to Be Literate, Pat Paugh and Deborah MacPhee continue the conversation on the dangers of creating single stories of literate learners. In Part I, Paugh and MacPhee discussed their upcoming book Learning to Be Literate: More than a Single Story. Centering meaning making at the core of learning to be literate, Paugh and MacPhee presented two parts of the Active Literacy Learning, or ALL, framework: Learning the Codes and Reading and Writing with Purpose.
In this video blog, Paugh and MacPhee elaborate on the ALL framework to include two additional parts of the framework: Building Confidence and Competence and Engaging Critically with Texts. Paugh and MacPhee close the video blog by addressing assessment as advocacy through two discussion questions:
- How does the ALL framework come together to address the current trends in the media that promote a single story of reading achievement?
- What are the dangers of creating a single story of literate learners?
It is the policy of NCTE in all publications, including the Literacy & NCTE blog, to provide a forum for the open discussion of ideas concerning the content and the teaching of English and the language arts. Publicity accorded to any particular point of view does not imply endorsement by the Executive Committee, the Board of Directors, the staff, or the membership at large, except in announcements of policy, where such endorsement is clearly specified.
Bobbie Kabuto is professor and chair of the Elementary and Early Childhood Education Department at Queens College, City University of New York.
Standing Committee on Literacy Assessment Members: Chris Hass, Renata Love Jones, Bobbie Kabuto, Idalia Nuñez, Kathryn Mitchell Pierce, Peggy O’Neill, Eric Turley, and Elisa Waingort.