Kenneth Goodman

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

Abstract

Kenneth (Ken) Goodman (December 23, 1927--March 12, 2020) was an eminent reading researcher, teacher, and prolific literacy scholar. He was also a staunch advocate for teachers and children. Goodman is often referred to as the "Father of Whole Language," a grassroots movement that empowered teachers as literacy professionals and deviated from psychology-based models of reading which emphasize finite skills. Goodman's early work in miscue analysis, a method of assessing students' reading comprehension based on samples of oral reading, revolutionized the teaching of literacy, especially reading, and provided a foundation for his work in the area of whole language. Goodman generated a psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic model of reading which was informed by the work of Noam Chomsky. Goodman described the process of learning to read as a process analogous to Chomsky's description of the process of learning a language. In Goodman's model, literacy develops naturally as a result of experiences and interactions with print, similar to how spoken language capacity typically develops innately as an outcome of experiences with oral language. Goodman, who often described reading as a psycholinguistic guessing game, emphasized three primary cueing systems that children use when deriving meaning from print. Goodman's body of work spans decades of research and learning-from his early years as an educator to his status as professor emeritus at the University of Arizona in Tucson, USA.

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS