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2009 38: 382EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHERJim Cummins

and Policy MakersLiteracy and English-Language Learners: A Shifting Landscape for Students, Teachers, Researchers,

  

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Educational Researcher, Vol. 38, No. 5, pp. 380–385

DOI: 10.3102/0013189X09339353© 2009 AERA. http://er.aera.net

Developing Reading and Writing in Second-

Language Learners: Lessons From the

Report of the National Literacy Panel on

Language-Minority Children and Youth.

Diane August and Timothy Shanahan (Eds.).

New York: Routledge, 2008. 320 pp., $140.00

(hardcover), ISBN 978-0-8058-6208-9; $25.95

(paper), ISBN 978-0-8058-6209-6.

Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners

A Review byLisa Pray and

Robert T. Jiménez

This coedited work is a condensed version of a recently published compilation of research titled Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth (August & Shanahan, 2006). The National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth, funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, Department of Education Office of English Language Acquisition, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, was given the charge to “identify, assess, and synthesize research on the education of language-minority children and youth with respect to their attainment of literacy, and to produce a comprehensive report evaluating and syn-thesizing this literature” (p. x). The report purports to represent “the state of knowl-edge” on this topic in a 669-page volume that sets forth questions, methods, and summaries of empirical findings and pro-vides recommendations for future research.

Its authors and editors then wrote the book under review (August & Shanahan, 2008) to make the findings of the larger report “some-what more accessible to the general reader.” The book’s intended audience includes researchers, those involved in teacher educa-tion, teachers, and other school practitioners.

The organization of the book is similar to that of the larger report. The book’s introductory chapter, which is pretty much identical to that in the report, sets forth the methods in the report and a summary of the report’s findings. In the body of the book, each section condenses findings from two or more report chapters, covering English-language learners’ (ELL) literacy development and cross-linguistic relation-ships and the sociocultural context of lit-eracy, instructional approaches, and student assessment. The book’s final chapter is nearly identical to that of the report.

Our review centers on three major topics: the accessibility of the book for its intended audience, the potential uses of the book in a teacher education program, and alternative perspectives on the methodology and major findings of the report and book.

Dissemination of the report’s findings is a critical component of the charge assigned to the National Literacy Panel. Given the complexity of the report, condensing it must have been a daunting task. In our opinion, however, this goal was only par-tially achieved. The authors did not alter the style, construction, flow, or in some cases, text of the book to accommodate a “general reader.” The authors’ understand-ing of a general audience may have been too broad, including a range of potential readers, from researchers to teachers and other school practitioners. Researchers would be well advised to refer directly to the larger report rather than rely on this

condensed version. Teachers and other school practitioners will have difficulty wading through discussions of multivari-ate and regression research designs in their quest to understand the main findings. It seems to us that it would be beneficial to synthesize across all the chapters and put together a text that is truly more accessible, such as Becoming a Nation of Readers (Anderson, Hiebert, & Scott, 1985). For example, the book could flesh out the more important findings from Lesaux and Geva. These authors show us that second-language learners perform as well or better than monolinguals on phonological tasks, that bilingual learners perform better than monolinguals on measures of print aware-ness, and that with sufficient exposure to second-language reading, language-minority students develop word-reading skills equiva-lent to those of monolingual students. It is only when reading comprehension is the focus that language-minority students encounter problems. These research find-ings need to be presented in an integrated fashion to avoid giving the impression that the authors endorse a reductionist version of literacy. Elaborating on each of these points with examples, explaining how instruction influences outcomes, and pro-viding portraits of the students undoubt-edly would be of more value to teachers and other educators. Doing so would make the book unique rather than just a reduced version of the larger report.

Despite the above critique, general themes that appeared across the chapters are important to reinforce in teacher edu-cation programs and in the development of programs that serve second-language learners. For example, Garcia, McKoon, and August remind us that language profi-ciency is a multidimensional construct

Literacy and English-Language Learners: What Researchers and Policy Makers Should Know

Book Reviews

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difficult to measure, that assessments of language proficiency do not predict how well students will perform on standardized reading or content area assessments, that test bias remains a significant concern, and that standardized tests of reading and assessments used to identify students with disabilities provide a “limited view of stu-dents’ language development” (p. 263). The disturbing and continuing problems, which Snow aptly describes as the “sorry state of assessment” (p. 280), provide evi-dence of the critical need for assessment research and development. We really liked the discussion on transfer by Genesee, Geva, Dressler, and Kamil, and the fasci-nating further discussion of the topic picked up on by Snow in the final chapter. Genesee and his colleagues argue that we should rethink transfer as “preparedness for future learning” and that “use of knowl-edge from the first language is evidence of resourcefulness” (p. 68). In addition, strong support for native-language instruc-tion and its beneficial effects on the literacy development of second-language learners were noted in the chapters by August et al. and Genesee et al., who stated that there exists “strong evidence of relation-ships and influences between English lan-guage learners’ first and second languages in second-language literacy” (p. 83). These authors describe the benefits of teaching ELL students in a language the children understand—acknowledging that instruc-tion in the children’s first language (L1) does not inhibit their ability to develop lit-eracy skills in their second language (L2)—and explain the positive effects of literacy transfer from L1 to L2. The implications of these findings are discussed in more detail by Slavin and Cheung (2005) and by Genesee, Lindholm-Leary, Saunders, and Christian (2006). With such solid evidence for native-language instruction, it seems a bit odd that assertions concerning the prom-ise of all-English instruction are recognized as having promise, yet corroborating evi-dence is not provided (p. 171).

Of concern to us was that some perspec-tives and research approaches were privileged over others. This privileging may be related to the selection of authors, who appeared to be overrepresented by the fields of special education and mainstream monolingual lit-eracy researchers. Perhaps because of the pref-erences of their funding agencies, the research questions tended to be driven by a singular,

mostly cognitive theoretical framework. For example, randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental designs were overrepre-sented, and qualitative methods and findings were often presented secondarily, almost inconsequentially. In addition, there was lit-tle attempt to acknowledge the positivist paradigm prevalent throughout the text. This is illustrated by the following quote:

Ethnographies and case studies, like experiments, vary in quality. The best of these studies are based on theory and use rigorous measures aligned with the goals of the study. Ultimately, these studies can generate only hypotheses about the influ-ence instruction may have on learning (because they make no systematic manip-ulation of the instruction, they have no control group), but they can help identify subtle factors that may affect learning, they can be a useful basis for establishing hypotheses for future inquiry, or when joined with experimental studies, they can help explain why certain experimen-tal results are obtained. (p. 133)

Randomized controlled trials are partic-ularly ill suited to the investigation of the multiple dimensions of language learning and literacy, including sociocultural vari-ables. This bias had significant conse-quences for one of the report’s findings: “There is surprisingly little evidence for the impact of sociocultural variables on literacy learning” (p. 8). Would quantitative meth-ods have made these impacts more convinc-ing? Our suggestions are consistent with the Grant, Wong, and Osterling (2007) cri-tique of the report, which questioned using a cognitive theoretical framework to describe complex phenomena related to the intersection of sociocultural characteristics and literacy development. To be fair, we applaud the authors of the report for having included qualitative and ethnographic work throughout the report. We only wish the findings from these studies had been pre-sented in a more substantive manner, as the studies were often cited but not discussed.

Evaluating literacy research produced in the past 25 years pertaining to second-language learners is an enormous and ambitious undertaking. Given the narrow theoretical framework and methodology used, the National Literacy Panel has successfully synthesized the research and identified future research needs according to this perspective. Despite the identified gaps in the research, August et al. tell us that

“efforts to improve the literacy instruction of language-minority children have a good chance at success” (p. 150) and also that “future efforts to improve reading achieve-ment . . . need to put much greater empha-sis on building background knowledge, language development, and cognitive tools” (p. 150). We agree, and we look for-ward to research and theoretical develop-ment that provide better support for developing readers and writers who are second-language learners.

REFERENCES

Anderson, R., Hiebert, E. H., & Scott, J. A. (1985). Becoming a nation of readers: The report of the commission on reading. Washington, DC: National Academy of Education.

August, D., & Shanahan, T. (Eds.). (2006). Developing literacy in second-language learn-ers: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Genesee, F., Lindholm-Leary, K., Saunders, B., & Christian, D. (2006). Educating English language learners: A synthesis of research evi-dence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Grant, R. A., Wong, S. D., & Osterling, J. P. (2007). Developing literacy in second- language learners: Critique from a hetero-glossic, sociocultural, and multidimensional framework. Reading Research Quarterly, 42, 598–609.

Slavin, R. E. & Cheung, A. (2005). A synthesis of research on language of reading instruc-tion for English language learners. Review of Educational Research, 75, 247–284.

AUTHORS

LISA PRAY is an associate professor of the Practice of Teaching English Language Learners at Vanderbilt University, Peabody College, Department of Teaching and Learning, Box 230 GPC, N230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN 37203–5721; lisa.pray@vanderbilt.edu. Her work focuses on development and evalua-tion of ELL teacher education programs and examination of language assessments used to assess English-language learners.

ROBERT T. JIMÉNEZ is a professor of lan-guage, literacy, and culture at Vanderbilt University, Peabody College, Language, Literacy, and Culture Program, Box 330, Nashville, TN 37203; robert.jimenez@vanderbilt.edu. His research focuses on the language and literacy practices of Latino students.

Manuscript received December 15, 2008Accepted December 17, 2008

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Literacy and English-Language Learners: A Shifting Landscape for Students, Teachers, Researchers, and Policy Makers

A Review byJim Cummins

This volume is a condensed version of the much longer report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth titled Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth (August & Shanahan, 2006). In the original report, the panel identified five domains to investigate: (a) the development of literacy in language-minority children and youth, (b) cross-linguistic relationships, (c) socio-cultural contexts and literacy development, (d) instruction and professional develop-ment, and (e) student assessment. The shorter version of the report is intended to make the findings more accessible for researchers, teachers, and other school practitioners.

Although in both works August and Shanahan (and their colleagues who authored individual chapters) present balanced and useful syntheses of research, I was left with a sense of dissatisfaction with their conclu-sions, or lack thereof. I believe that much more definitive, policy-relevant conclusions can be reached on the basis of a critical review of the empirical data than those articulated by the authors. Part of the problem derives from the methodology employed in carrying out the review of research in the original report. Because the panel decided to review (with some exceptions) “only research pub-lished in peer-reviewed journals dating back to 1980” (p. 3), it omitted several highly sig-nificant studies (e.g., Oller and Eilers’s [2002] book Language and Literacy in Bilingual Children, which involved almost 1,000 stu-dents in dual-language or monolingual pro-grams in Florida; and Portes and Rumbaut’s [2001] Legacies, a book that documents sociocultural influences on second-genera-tion minority group students’ English aca-demic development). Other relevant studies reported in sociology journals were also omitted from consideration (e.g., Bankston & Zhou, 1995; Rumberger & Larson, 1998).

In the sections that follow, I review and critique the major findings of the National Literacy Panel.

Development of Literacy

According to the panel, the research points to very different developmental trends in word-level aspects of literacy (e.g., decod-ing, spelling) as compared with text-level skills such as reading comprehension. Language-minority students frequently develop word-level skills to the same degree as their monolingual peers, but significant differences tend to remain in text-level skills. The panel also concluded that what they term “oral language proficiency” explained minimal amounts of variance in word-level skills but played a much greater role in reading comprehension in English for second-language students. The panel points out, for example, that oral vocabu-lary knowledge plays a “crucial role” (p. 46) in reading comprehension.

With respect to factors that influence second-language reading comprehension, the panel highlighted the role of a number of individual variables (e.g., readiness skills, motivation) and contextual variables (e.g., socioeconomic status, text attri-butes). However, the panel also claimed that “although length of time in the coun-try and instruction are likely to have an influence on reading comprehension for language-minority students, there is little evidence available to examine their influ-ence” (p. 43).

This statement is inaccurate in the extreme. Many studies have documented that at least 5 years is typically required for second-language students to catch up in English academic skills such as vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension (e.g., Collier, 1987, Cummins, 1981; Hakuta, Butler, & Witt, 2000; Klesmer, 1994). Thus one of the reasons that differ-ences between native speakers and language-minority students persist longer in text-level skills than in word-level skills is that the “catch-up” trajectories for these two compo-nents of literacy are very different (5 or more years for text-level skills compared with 1–2 years for word-level skills).

Again, contrary to the claims of the panel, there is powerful evidence regarding the role of certain instructional factors in promoting English reading comprehension among ELL students. Elley and Mangubhai (1983), for example, demonstrated that

4th- and 5th-grade students in Fiji exposed to a “book flood” program during their 30-minute daily English (L2) class in which they simply read books either alone or with the guidance of their teacher, per-formed significantly better after 2 years than students taught through more tradi-tional methods. Elley (1991) similarly documented the superiority of book-based English-language teaching programs among primary school students in a variety of other contexts. These findings reflect the growing evidence that reading engage-ment is a powerful predictor of reading achievement (Guthrie, 2004; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Develop-ment [OECD], 2006). For example, the OECD concluded on the basis of large-scale research into the reading achievement of 15-year-olds in 27 countries that “the level of a student’s reading engagement is a better predictor of literacy performance than his or her socioeconomic background, indicating that cultivating a student’s interest in reading can help overcome home disadvantages” (p. 8).

Cross-Linguistic Relationships

According to the panel, strong evidence for interdependence across languages emerged in the areas of phonological awareness, reading comprehension, cognate-vocabulary knowledge, and use of reading strategies. Studies involving aspects of oral language other than vocabulary knowledge tended to be inconclusive.

Interpretation of these data is rendered difficult because of the absence of any the-oretical consideration of the nature of “lan-guage proficiency” and its relationship to “literacy” in the panel’s report. In particu-lar, the way in which the panel conceptual-ized the construct of oral language proficiency is highly problematic. Theconstruct is defined as follows: “For pur-poses of this review, oral language profi-ciency denotes knowledge or use of specific aspects of oral language, including phonol-ogy, vocabulary, morphology, grammar, and discourse domains. It encompasses skills in both comprehension and expres-sion” (p. 1).

No empirical data or theoretical ratio-nale are provided to support the coherence of this construct, and inconsistencies quickly emerge. For example, despite the fact that the definition of oral language pro-ficiency includes knowledge of and use of

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phonology, later chapters frequently treat them as separate constructs. For example, the report points out that “phonological processing skills are better than oral lan-guage proficiency as predictors of word reading skills” (p. 50). More fundamen-tally, vocabulary knowledge and phono-logical processing clearly follow different developmental trajectories after the initial grades, which raises the question of why they should be considered components of a construct called oral language proficiency. Furthermore, it is unclear to what extent oral vocabulary knowledge can be sepa-rated either logically or empirically from written vocabulary knowledge; for exam-ple, is there any fundamental difference in comprehension requirements between lis-tening to a lecture on photosynthesis and reading the same lecture on photosynthe-sis? Certainly, oral vocabulary knowledge and written vocabulary knowledge in this instance are likely to have more in com-mon with each other than either has with the ability to pronounce or decode the word photosynthesis.

Although the panel documents consid-erable research evidence supporting cross-lingual relationships, it also ignores some of the most persuasive research that sup-ports such relationships. For example, an almost universal finding that emerges from a vast amount of research on bilingual pro-grams around the world is that spending part of the day teaching in a minority lan-guage entails no long-term adverse effects on students’ academic development in the majority language (see Cummins, 2000, for a review). These findings can only be explained with reference to some form of common underlying proficiency reflecting interdependence of academic skills and knowledge across languages (or what Riches and Genesee, 2006, describe as a reservoir of knowledge, skills, and abilities that underlie academic performance in both languages).

Sociocultural Relationships

The panel concluded that “there is surpris-ingly little evidence for the impact of sociocultural variables on literacy learning” (p. 8). The panel notes that a significant number of ethnographic and case studies provide examples of teachers’ giving legiti-macy to students’ personal, communal, or cultural backgrounds in the classroom, but in the view of the panel, few of these

studies demonstrated relationships between sociocultural validation in the school and students’ literacy outcomes.

Many sociologists and anthropologists would take issue with this dismissal of the research relating sociocultural factors to students’ literacy development and academic achievement. They might point to the sig-nificant variation across immigrant and minority group students in patterns of aca-demic achievement, which is not accounted for by socioeconomic status, as evidence for the influence of sociocultural and socio-political factors (e.g., Ogbu, 1992; Stanat & Christensen, 2006). They might also point to Portes and Rumbaut’s (2001) con-clusion on the basis of their large-scale study of second-generation immigrant stu-dents that maintaining links to the home culture and language is associated with higher educational achievement:

The findings from our longitudinal study consistently point to the benefits of selec-tive acculturation. This path is closely intertwined with preservation of fluent bilingualism and linked, in turn, with higher self-esteem, higher educational and occupational expectations, and higher academic achievement. (p. 274)

Bankston and Zhou (1995) similarly point out that “identification with Vietnamese ethnicity, Vietnamese reading and writing abilities, attitudes toward future educa-tion, and current study habits all have sig-nificant [positive] effects on current educational outcome” (p. 14).

Classroom and School Factors

The panel concluded that “language-minority students instructed in their native language . . . and English perform, on aver-age, better on English reading measures than language-minority students instructed only in English” (p. 11).

This is clearly an important finding that is consistent with other credible reviews of the impact of bilingual education (e.g., Genesee, Lindholm-Leary, Saunders, & Christian, 2006). However, the panel ignores the more significant and generaliz-able finding that across a wide range of sociolinguistic and sociopolitical contexts, spending time teaching in a minority lan-guage entails no adverse effects on students’ literacy development in the majority lan-guage (see Cummins, 2000, for a review). In other words, bilingual education is a

legitimate and empirically supported option for developing language-minority students’ reading and writing skills both in English and in their home languages.

Assessment

The panel concluded that major problems of cultural and linguistic bias characterize the assessment of language-minority stu-dents. Few could argue with this conclu-sion. However, the panel fails to link what Catherine Snow, in the final chapter of the summary book, calls “the sorry state of assessment” with problems of construct definition related to the notion of “English language proficiency.” If the constructs of (oral) language proficiency and literacy are incoherent, as argued earlier, then assess-ments of these constructs will inevitably reflect that incoherence. Also, the panel failed to address perhaps the major current policy issue related to the assessment of ELL students, namely, the fact that, in the context of the No Child Left Behind legis-lation, ELL students are required to take high-stakes standardized tests after just 1 year of English instruction. If students have not attained grade expectations after 1 year, their performance is interpreted as being due to inadequate instruction. As noted above, ELL students typically require at least 5 years to catch up academically, and thus the attribution of ELL students’ lower reading achievement to inadequate instruc-tion not only ignores the empirical evi-dence but has devastating impacts on teacher and student morale in schools with large numbers of ELL students.

In conclusion, the report is useful but flawed. Much more definitive conclusions are warranted on the basis of the research data in relation to the trajectories of ELL stu-dents’ language and literacy development, the role of L1 in learning L2, the impact of sociocultural variables and societal power relations in determining ELL students’ academic outcomes, and the potential of reading engagement to promote reading comprehension among ELL students.

REFERENCES

August, D., & Shanahan, T. (Eds.). (2006). Developing literacy in second-language learn-ers: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Bankston, C. L., & Zhou, M. (1995). Effects of minority-language literacy on the academic

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achievement of Vietnamese youths in New Orleans. Sociology of Education, 68, 1–17.

Collier, V. P. (1987). Age and rate of acquisition of second language for academic purposes. TESOL Quarterly, 21, 617–641.

Cummins, J. (1981). Age on arrival and immi-grant second language learning in Canada: A reassessment. Applied Linguistics, 1, 132–149.

Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power and ped-agogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Elley, W. B. (1991). Acquiring literacy in a sec-ond language: The effect of book-based pro-grams. Language Learning, 41, 375–411.

Elley, W. B., & Mangubhai, F. (1983). The impact of reading on second language learn-ing. Reading Research Quarterly, 19, 53–67.

Genesee, F., Lindholm-Leary, K., Saunders, W., & Christian, D. (Eds.). (2006). Educating English language learners: A synthesis of research evidence. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Guthrie, J. T. (2004). Teaching for literacy engage-ment. Journal of Literacy Research, 36, 1–30.

Hakuta, K., Butler, Y. G., & Witt, D. (2000). How long does it take English learners to attain profi-ciency? Santa Barbara: University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute.

Klesmer, H. (1994). Assessment and teacher perceptions of ESL student achievement. English Quarterly, 26(3), 8–11.

Ogbu, J. U. (1992). Understanding cultural diversity and learning. Educational Researcher, 21(8), 5–14, 24.

Oller, D. K., & Eilers, R. E. (Eds.). (2002). Language and literacy in bilingual children. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2006). Where immigrant stu-dents succeed: A comparative review of perfor-mance and engagement in PISA 2003. OECD briefing note for Germany. Retrieved December 20, 2007, from www.oecd.org/dataoecd/52/ 55/36702054.pdf

Portes, A., & Rumbaut, R. G. (2001). Legacies: The story of the immigrant second generation. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Riches, C., & Genesee, F. (2006). Literacy: Crosslinguistic and crossmodal issues. In F. Genesee, K. Lindholm-Leary, W. M. Saunders, & D. Christian (Eds.), Educating English language learners: A synthesis of research evidence (pp. 64–108). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Rumberger, R., & Larson, K. (1998). Toward explaining differences in educational achieve-ment among Mexican-American language minority students. Sociology of Education, 71(1), 68–93.

Stanat, P., & Christensen, G. (2006). Where immigrant students succeed: A comparative review of performance and engagement in PISA 2003. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

AUTHOR

JIM CUMMINS is the Canada Research Chair in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Canada M5S 1V6; jcummins@oise.utoronto.ca. His research focuses on literacy development in multilingual school contexts.

Manuscript received March 17, 2009Accepted March, 18, 2009

A Response to “Literacy and English-Language Learners: A Shifting Landscape for Students, Teachers, Researchers, and Policy Makers,” by Jim Cummins

Response byLisa Pray and

Robert T. Jiménez

We heartily agree with Cummins and his critique of Lessons From the Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. In particular, within the full report, the panel failed to meaningfully conceptualize oral language proficiency, too easily dismissed the impact of sociocultural variables on literacy learn-ing, and questioned the legitimacy of bilin-gual education by endorsing English-only instruction without evidence. Although we may take exception to some of Cummins’s statements—such as that “it is unclear to what extent oral vocabulary knowledge can be separated either logically or empirically from written vocabulary knowledge” or that evidence supporting cross-lingual relationships “can only be explained with reference to some form of common under-lying proficiency reflecting interdepen-dence of academic skills and knowledge across languages”—we feel that his conclu-sions are relevant and well articulated.

The greater issue we wish to address is the relative consequence of using the report to define future research. The stated pur-pose is to provide a “comprehensive” report synthesizing education research on the topic of ELL literacy attainment. Yet we believe that this report omitted critical research regarding bilingual literacy because such work did not fit the narrow perspective

taken by the panel (see also Cummins’s review; Grant, Wong, & Osterling, 2007; Slavin & Cheung, 2005). Given the condi-tions under which the report was commis-sioned and created, we believe it would be a mistake if future research were limited to its findings and recommendations.

We are confident that the field is on the brink of new understandings of how to help ELL students become more literate. This is true because the field is maturing and also because we have a new administration in Washington that places a much higher emphasis on examining the multiple vari-ables affecting the academic achievement of ELL students. In our view, the topics addressed by this report were shaped by political influences that have shifted in sub-stantive ways, as evidenced by the report Recommendations for Addressing the Needs of English Language Learners (ELL Working Group, 2009). The contributors to this report encourage researchers to capitalize on the linguistic capital of ELL students. If these new directions do indeed reflect a change in political direction, and we think they do, we sincerely hope that researchers will again seriously examine ELL literacy learning from a sociocultural and linguistic framework rather than exclusively through a monolingual and mainstream lens.

Given the lack of political will, support, and funding for bilingual education in the past 25 to 30 years, it was no small accom-plishment to compile the findings con-tained in the report. In that sense, we are convinced that many of the contributors to this report must have gone to heroic lengths to make their voices heard. We hope that the education research commu-nity can now turn to the investigation of the full range of student strengths and of all possible instructional responses to the needs of students learning English. This work will also require the creation of pro-fessional development models for ELL teachers, the development of true measures of language proficiency, and the investiga-tion of strategies that support students’ ability to leverage their first language to develop understandings of their second.

REFERENCES

ELL Working Group. (2009, March). The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Recommendations for addressing the needs of English language learners. Retrieved March 30, 2009, from http://www.stanford.edu/

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∼hakuta/ARRA/ELL%20Stimulus%20Recommendations.pdf

Grant, R. A., Wong, S. D., & Osterling, J. P. (2007). Developing literacy in second-language learners: Critique from a heteroglossic, socio-cultural, and multidimensional framework. Reading Research Quarterly, 42, 598–609.

Slavin, R. E., & Cheung, A. (2005). A synthesis of research on language of reading instruc-tion for English language learners. Review of Educational Research, 75, 247–284.

Manuscript received April 8, 2009Accepted April 19, 2009

A Response to “Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners,” by Lisa Pray and Robert T. Jiménez

Response byJim Cummins

I find myself in strong agreement with the overall assessment made by Lisa Pray and Robert T. Jiménez in their review of the August and Shanahan volume. With respect to the accessibility of the book for its intended audience, I agree that researchers will rely more on the detailed analyses of the original report, whereas teachers, teacher educators, school practitioners, and policy makers will look for research syntheses that focus more directly and extensively on instructional or policy implications. The primary use of the book will probably be as a supplementary text in graduate courses related to language learning and bilingual education.

The major issue that I would like to address is the observation by Pray and

Jiménez regarding “the positivist paradigm prevalent throughout the text” and the fail-ure by the panel to give due weight to the contributions that qualitative research can make to scientific knowledge generation. The following quote from the text exem-plifies this orientation: “Ultimately, [quali-tative] studies can generate only hypotheses about the influence instruction may have on learning (because they make no system-atic manipulation of the instruction, they have no control group)” (p. 133). I agree with Pray and Jiménez that this perspective is particularly problematic in assessing the relationships between literacy develop-ment and sociocultural variables. However, it also fundamentally misrepresents the relationship between theory and research and the potential contributions of various kinds of qualitative (and quantitative) data to knowledge generation.

Ethnographic and case study data con-tribute to theory (and knowledge genera-tion) primarily by establishing phenomena that require explanation. Across a range of scientific disciplines, knowledge is gener-ated by establishing a set of observed phe-nomena, forming hypotheses to account for these phenomena, testing these hypotheses against additional data, and gradually refining the hypotheses into more comprehensive theories that have broader explanatory and predictive power (Cummins, 1999). As one example, this is how we discovered the nature of our plan-etary system. Any phenomenon estab-lished credibly by observation (qualitative or quantitative) can refute theoretical propositions or policy-related claims. Thus Reyes’s (2001) study of biliteracy acquisi-tion by English-dominant and Spanish-dominant primary-grade students in a

dual-language program that strongly pro-moted writing for authentic purposes established the phenomenon (which is also supported by many other studies) that under appropriate conditions students can spontaneously develop reading and writ-ing skills in their second language without overt literacy instruction in that language. Not only is this phenomenon consistent with claims of cross-linguistic transfer of academic skills, but it also refutes the theo-retical claim that systematic phonics instruction is necessary to develop literacy skills in a language.

Thus, contrary to the claims in the August and Shanahan volume, ethno-graphic and case study research is in the mainstream of scientific inquiry, capable not just of generating hypotheses but also of testing and refuting hypotheses. Had the panel adopted this broader and more mainstream perspective on scientific inquiry, it would have employed a much greater range of data in evaluating the state of sci-entific knowledge on the literacy develop-ment of ELL students, and the panel’s conclusions would have been more defini-tive and policy relevant.

REFERENCES

Cummins, J. (1999). Alternative paradigms in bilingual education research: Does theory have a place? Educational Researcher, 28(7), 26–41.

Reyes, M. L. (2001). Unleashing possibilities: Biliteracy in the primary grades. In M. L. Reyes & J. Halcón (Eds.), The best for our children: Critical perspectives on literacy for Latino students (pp. 96–121). New York: Teachers College Press.

Manuscript received March 19, 2009Accepted April 19, 2009

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