Kenneth Goodman

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-21-2024

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.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Thinkers

First Page

1417

Last Page

1430

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