The search for the right blend of instructional practices to achieve a balanced reading program is as fraught with pitfalls as is the search for a perfect reading method (Duffy & Hoffman, 1999). Many of the reforms suggested for achieving balance in one's reading program, have focused on the role of direct, systematic phonics instruction (Pressley, 1999; Speigel, 1992). These changes may not address other important aspects of an effective reading program, including; the reading materials provided in the classroom and used for instructional purposes, the types of assessments used to evaluate reading ability, the social aspects of the classroom community and the theory of reading drawn upon to support reading instruction. Limiting the discussion to which blend of instructional practices constitute the best approach for teaching reading often overshadows important questions concerning how reading is defined in our schools and what kinds of readers are being created by our reading instructional practices.

Balanced reading programs have been referred to as; a prominent factor in the future of America’s children (Honig, 1996), a blending of whole language and direct instruction (Speigel, 1992), an acceptance of diverse perspectives (Bialostok, 1997), and as a solution to the phonics-whole language debate (Adams & Bruck, 1995). Because a balanced reading program has been used to represent so many different perspectives a single definition, or an agreement among reading educators, has not been forthcoming (Freppon & Dahl, 1998). It seems that no matter what one’s political or philosophical orientation is these days, many educators and commercial publishing companies are claiming that their approach to reading instruction is, in fact, balanced. Politically speaking, educators either stand in favor of balance, since there is little space allowed for contra-minded educators to dissent, or are seen as non-compliant radicals bent on keeping the “Reading Wars” going (Stanovich, 1990).

Educators, promoting the necessity of achieving balance in America’s public schools’ reading programs, begin by proclaiming a crisis in reading education and imply that it is important to bring reading instruction back into balance as quickly as possible in order to resolve the crisis (Spiegel, 1998; Stanovich & Stanovich, 1995). Other educators have suggested that a majority of the reading programs being used in classrooms today are “unbalanced”, inferring that these particular reading instructional practices are more concerned with sharing literature than implementing a direct, systematic phonics instructional program (Honig, 1996; Moats, 2000).

It has also been suggested that literature based reading frameworks push the teaching of phonics and reading skills to the periphery of the reading program (Grossen, 1997), and that the easiest way to achieve balance is by “injecting” some direct, intensive, systematic phonics instruction into the existing reading program (Adams & Bruck, 1995). While these proponents of a balanced reading program might not agree what the right blend of instructional practices is needed to achieve balance, their focus remains on a balance among instructional methods, usually referring to the need to include explicit, systematic phonics instruction, leaving other important issues unaddressed.

From a different perspective, the focus on direct, systematic phonics is a concern for educators often associated with whole language and meaning-centered approaches to reading instruction. Several of these educators suggest that many proponents of a balanced reading program are simply trying to maintain the dominance of commercial phonics programs (Coles, 1998; Weaver, 1990). Educators challenging the versions of balanced reading put forth by various phonics proponents, also challenge the research base used as the foundation for their instructional practices (McQuillan, 1998; Taylor, 1999). It is suggested that the research base used to support a balanced reading program is limited to experimental and quasi-experimental designs, and omits many important studies and research paradigms (Allington, 2002; Coles, 1998). It is important to note that not only is the blend of instructional practices being challenged by these educators, so are the research foundations used to support these practices.

Pearson and Raphael (1999), advocating a “radical middle” between the two sides in the “Reading Wars,” presented two series of continua for a balanced reading program, the first addressing contextual aspects, including; authenticity, classroom discourse, teacher’s roles and curricular control, and the second addressing aspects of the content to be taught, including; skills contextualization, text genres and response to literature. These two continua are used to demonstrate the complexity in achieving a balanced reading program, suggesting the need for educators to move beyond the phonics-whole language debate, and address other aspects of what they referred to as a “comprehensive” reading program.

Reutzel (1998) suggests we look to the balanced reading programs created by New Zealand educators during the late 1980’s for a broader perspective concerning issues of balance. He points out that balance is not a new idea, and that New Zealand educators have offered a framework for a balanced reading program that should be reconsidered in today’s discussions. Although these widely respected educators offer a more thorough perspective concerning a balanced reading program, I believe they have not gone far enough to address other important aspects of a balanced reading program suitable for supporting the types of readers that can be successful in our contemporary, democratic society.

Enlarging the Vision of Balanced Reading

Many proponents of a balanced reading program define reading in terms of oral fluency, decoding ability and a traditional version of reading comprehension often associated with the identification of a single main idea and supporting details, that may be described as a “modernist” approach to reading instruction and the act of reading (Elkind, 1997; McKormick, 1994). This modernist perspective on reading and reading comprehension focuses on instructional practices that are associated with what Luke and Freebody (1997) have labeled “decoding competencies.” Because of this focus on “reading as decoding,” many balanced reading programs narrowly define the reading process as decoding ability and reduce the discussion to finding the right blend of instructional practices that support a reader’s decoding competencies. In other words, a balanced reading program should be concerned with more than simply finding the correct blend of instructional practices, designed to create proficient decoders, that have been “…scientifically proven to be most effective…” (Luke, 1995). As literacy educators, we should be concerned with the types of readers we are creating in our public schools, rather than simply whether our pedagogical blend of instructional methods is balanced. By narrowing the definition of reading and reading comprehension through limited acceptance of diverse research paradigms, we have in effect limited the types of readers we will be supporting and educating in our schools.

In this article, I suggest that a balanced reading program must go beyond a specific blend of instructional methods, to address the following issues: (a) the range of competencies we expect readers to develop in our schools, (b) the assessments used to evaluate literacy development or reading ability, (c) the reading materials and resources used in the classroom, especially the role of children’s literature in the elementary reading curriculum, (d) how students are expected to respond to their readings, and (e) the role of the teacher and the community of readers established in the classroom. Although it is beyond the scope of this article, balanced instructional approaches should also look at balancing the research foundations used to support our instructional practices.

In order to put these issues in perspective, a brief description of what an elementary classroom that addresses each of these issues will be included. To provide these descriptions, I will draw upon my experiences during my twelve years as an intermediate grade level teacher. By doing so, I am not trying to define the version of balanced reading that should be adopted by teachers everywhere, but simply what a classroom that addresses an enlarged version of a balanced approach to reading instruction may look like.

Addressing Reader’s Competencies

It is not just the ability to read, often defined in balanced reading programs as accurate decoding of texts, but developing the desire to read, understanding the uses of texts and the ability to critique the author’s intentions and agendas, that is equally important. Luke (1995) writes, “…knowledge of the alphabet, grapheme / phoneme relationships, left to right directionality, and so forth is a necessary but not sufficient condition (italics in original) for using literacy for social functions in actual contexts.” (p.105). A balanced reading program should include a variety of instructional experiences, resources and expectations for readers that encompass the complete range of reading competencies described by Luke and Freebody (1997), rather than focusing exclusively on a reader’s ability to decode text and read aloud fluently.

Luke and Freebody (1997) have described four competencies that they feel are vital for readers to develop in contemporary, post-industrial societies; (a) decoding competency, the ability to understand the structures and grapho-phonic relationships of language (b) semantic competency, the ability to make meaning in transaction with texts (c) pragmatic competency, the ability to understand how texts are used, and (d) critical competency, the ability to understand the political and social aspects of texts. They insist that each reading competency is a necessary, but insufficient ability to support the development of successful readers. It is only through an expanded vision of the competencies that readers need to develop, addressing the pragmatic, semantic and critical aspects of reading, as well as readers’ ability to decode text, will our reading programs support the needs of readers in today’s society. We need to address balance "across" these four competencies, not balance "within" the decoding competency, because to do so, would be to limit our understandings of the reading process that provides the foundation for our instructional decisions.

In my classroom, reading was viewed as the ability to decode text, the ability to construct meaning in transaction with a text, allowing for multiple interpretations and ideas to be expressed and the ability to apply a variety of critical perspectives to understand how our responses to a particular text are affected by the social contexts of our readings. Rather than simply decoding a story and searching for the main idea thought to be hidden within the bowels of the text, literature discussions that took place during read alouds, small group literature studies and after independent reading time allowed students to share interpretations and negotiate meaning in the context of these discussions. Reading strategies, designed to help students independently construct meaning in transaction with texts, were taught in the context of actual reading events. The ability to construct meaning was always the goal in our classroom reading experiences, where decoding became simply one tool among many for doing so. Even the National Reading Panel (2000) report states,” by emphasizing all of the processes that contribute to growth in reading, teachers will have the best chance of making every child a reader.” (p.10).

Addressing Assessments Used to Determine Literate Abilities

Considering the dominance of standardized assessments that has arisen in the past decade, it is easy to suggest that the current amalgam of educational assessments being used in public schools are not in balance. The high-stakes associated with standardized testing and the lack of credibility bestowed upon classroom-based assessments suggests the need to balance the ways we learn about readers and their progress in schools (Kohn, 2000). Standardized testing in the early grades focuses primarily on decoding competencies and alphabetic knowledge, while intermediate and middle grade testing focuses on modernist conceptions of comprehension, such as main idea and author’s intentions (Murphy, 1997). These tests do not address the pragmatic or critical competencies suggested earlier by Luke and Freebody and tend to constrict the definition of reading to decoding ability and finding the main idea.

Classrooms that focus exclusively on raising test scores disable readers (Kohn, 2000). The world is not a testing scenario and reading is more than answering multiple-choice questions. However, teachers that leave students to fend for themselves without helping them prepare for the standardized tests they are sure to face in their educational careers are likely to be seen as politically naïve, or possibly, professionally irresponsible.

As teachers gather information concerning the readers in their classrooms, and begin to use this information to drive instructional decisions, they are better positioned to provide the kinds of reading instruction individual readers need. Classroom teachers also use the information provided by these classroom-based assessments to articulate their understandings of their students’ reading abilities to a wide array of interested audiences, such as parents, school boards and state legislatures.

In a balanced reading program, standardized tests would be only one method of gathering information about readers (Farr, 1992). Portfolios, retellings, miscue analysis and running records, classroom observations, literacy interviews and other classroom-based assessments would be included in a balanced assessment framework (Rhodes & Shanklin, 19XX; Strickland & Strickland, 1999). No one particular assessment is capable of generating a complete picture of a reader’s progress. It is only through a balance of external and classroom based assessments, the involvement of students in the assessment process and the negotiation of the criteria used to judge the quality of our literate abilities and products will teachers come to know the readers in their classroom and be able to use this information to direct instructional decisions (Serafini, 2000).

In my classroom, students created portfolios to demonstrate their development as literate human beings. Accompanying student generated portfolios, I created collections of student work and classroom based assessments, including; audio tapes of students’ oral reading, retellings, running records and miscue analyses, writing samples, conference notes, observational notes recorded during reading workshop and interviews conducted to understand attitudes concerning reading and students’ understandings of the reading process. What emerged was a more extensive understanding of a student’s reading abilities than could be demonstrated using standardized measures alone. These collections and portfolios became the primary artifacts used to articulate my understandings of a child’s literate abilities and their educational progress during parent teacher conferences. By balancing the standardized assessment instruments with classroom-based assessments used to understand my students’ needs and abilities, I was better able to facilitate my students’ development as readers and provide evidence of this development for concerned audiences.

Addressing Reading Resources and Materials

Not only do we have to help children learn how to read, we have to help them understand why they should read and what reading can do for them as individuals. In order to do this, we need to provide resources that pique students’ interests in literary experiences and create an environment that supports their growth as readers. A primary consideration in a balanced reading program should be the types of materials and resources, especially the types of children’s literature, we provide in our classrooms.

The use of children’s literature in the elementary classroom has burgeoned in the past two decades and has assumed a prominent place in the elementary reading curriculum (Harris, 1992). However, using literature to simply teach decoding skills or competencies does a disservice to teachers, literature and young readers. Literature illuminates life (Peterson & Eeds, 1997). It helps people understand their place in the world and their experiences as human beings. It should be used as more than a resource for teaching letter sounds and grapho-phonic correspondences. Children’s literature should be respected first as a literary work of art, then second as a resource for supporting students’ growth as readers.

Many elementary classrooms have a limited amount of literature available for children to read and often rely upon a mandated commercial reading program for reading instructional purposes on a daily basis (Allington & Walmsley, 1995). Because of differences in financial support for reading materials, the resources available in many elementary classrooms can range from a few books provided by the classroom teacher to a well-stocked classroom or school library. The types of reading materials that students are exposed to and are required to read greatly affects the types of readers that are constructed in the classroom. Because of this, we need well stocked school libraries and financial support for classroom teachers to develop adequate libraries and resources in their classrooms. Textbook allocations dominate most elementary school resource budgets. In order to balance the resources used in reading instruction, a significant portion of each school’s budget needs to be allocated for children’s literature and other authentic reading materials.

In my classroom, I have created a classroom library that includes over one thousand books, including picture books, young adult novels, emergent reading materials, magazines, non-fiction materials and poetry anthologies. I tried to provide reading materials that were closely associated with materials found in the world outside of schools. Authenticity was an important consideration in my selections. However, making sure the reading materials were relevant to the lives of my students, were of the highest literary quality, included multicultural perspectives, challenged students to think about the world we live in and provided diverse perspectives to important social issues, were also important considerations in selecting materials to include in our classroom. As other educators have suggested, it is important to balance the variety of reading materials in elementary classrooms to provide support for all readers of varying abilities and interests, and to engage the minds of my students. Having books in the classroom available for students to read and take home, is an important part of my instructional program.

Addressing Responding to Reading

Not only do we need to acknowledge the role the reader plays in the process of making meaning, we have to carefully examine the ways in which we require children to represent responses to their readings. The various modes of representation we require readers to use to represent the meanings they have constructed during the reading event, for example, using writing, art, music, oral discussion, book reports or multiple choice questions, limit as well as provide a structure for conveying meanings (Eisner, 1998). For example, when children are required to write a book report they are limited in the depth of the response they can offer and the understandings they can convey through this particular mode of representation. By providing a variety of opportunities for students to demonstrate their understandings, we are able to gain deeper insights into the meanings they construct in transaction with texts.

Traditionally, students have been required to read a book and either answer predetermined questions or write a book report about their understandings. These two types of responses generally focus on the meanings found “in” the book that readers were expected to “extract” during their reading (McKormick, 1994). While these types of experiences may align to the types of experiences found in standardized assessments, they do not often relate to the experiences readers are exposed to outside of schools. When people finish a literary experience, for example a book, movie or newspaper article, they often discuss their ideas, may even write in a journal or notebook about the experience, but generally do not answer predetermined questions, write reports for someone or run to find a cardboard box to build a diorama.

In a balanced reading program, students should be provided with a variety of ways to respond to their readings. This aspect of a balanced program should address the differences between teacher directed responses and student initiated responses, allowing for multiple ways of representing and expressing students’ meanings, and extending, rather than restricting students understandings. Opportunities for students to respond to their readings should allow for multiple interpretations, providing space for students to construct diverse, yet defendable, understandings from the texts they read.

The experiences provided in our classrooms must enrich our students’ lives and imaginations, not simply help them score better on tests to alleviate the political pressures we are currently under. In my classroom, students were invited to respond to their readings in a variety of forms, including; drama, art, writing and oral discussion. By enlarging the opportunities for students to demonstrate their engagement with text and the meanings they constructed during reading, I was able to understand my students reading processes and perspectives. Reading ability in my classroom became more than the ability to score well on a standardized test. It became the ability to engage with texts, construct meaning and to represent their understandings through a variety of systems of meaning.

Addressing Communities of Readers

Reading is a cognitive, as well as a social process. Because of this, balanced reading programs need to take into account the social context, along with the cognitive or individual aspects, of reading instruction. The balanced reading programs described earlier tend to focus on the individual, cognitive aspects of reading instruction, and view the social context as merely a variable or background condition to be controlled.

In order to change the type of readers we develop and support, we need to change the way we talk about texts and the interactions concerning literature we facilitate in our elementary classrooms. The ways in which we encourage children to talk about texts, the types of responses that are valued in a classroom community and the expectations we hold for readers affect the types of reading communities we develop in our classrooms and schools. By creating a space where readers can develop a full repertoire of reading competencies, providing the opportunity for students to read a wide selection of texts and develop the skills and strategies to make meaning in transaction with texts, we can establish a community of readers where individual readers begin to understand the power and the pleasure of reading (Serafini, 2001).

In a community of readers, students learn from each other, as well as their teacher. Teachers serve as “literacy demonstrators,” working alongside students helping them to develop the skills and strategies needed to participate in the literacy events presented in their classrooms. It is not just what readers learn, but also how readers learn things (Langer, 1997). The context in which readers develop reading strategies, concepts, attitudes and social and cognitive processes plays an important role in how readers will use these understandings. In this sense, becoming a reader has as much to do with one’s participation in a community of readers as it does with the skills one acquires as an individual reader (Gee, 1996).

A balanced reading program cannot take for granted the community of readers, and the classroom environment, that is created to support individual readers. The community of readers established in the classroom determines the expectations for readers, what meanings, interpretations, skills and strategies will be valued and the types of readers that will be created in the classroom context. If we want readers reading for meaning, using their pragmatic and critical competencies, along with their decoding competencies, we need to establish this expectation in our community of readers.

In my elementary classroom, I attended to the social aspects of the reading workshop, as seriously as I did the instructional strategies I designed and implemented. In order to help my students understand what readers do and what it means to be a successful reader, we read books that contained readers as the main character or reading as a prominent theme in the story. These books helped us to discuss what it means to be a reader in today’s society, and to create our own working definition of a successful reader. As a community of readers, we negotiated what was important to learn about reading and being a reader, with the curriculum mandates of the district, the state standards documents, parents’ expectations and our own concerns, needs and interests.

Our community of readers developed as we discussed books together, shared our personal literary experiences and negotiated meanings in transaction with literature. Reading aloud literature, discussing our interpretations and constructing understandings together, helped facilitate the development of our community of readers. Rather than telling students what was important to learn about reading and which reading strategies they needed to use, we constructed our understandings together as we read books, talked about them and created our own interpretations and impressions.

Concluding Remarks

Strickland (1995) sees balance as “… the search for bridges between the conventional wisdom of the past and the need to take advantage of new research and wisdom particularly as it relates to issues such as grouping, direct versus indirect instruction, and assessment. “ (p.295). The current “back to basics” movement may acknowledge the conventional wisdom of the past, but is reluctant to adapt to the understandings generated by reading researchers in recent years (Coles, 1998). However, how we define a balanced reading program will depend on how we define reading and what we expect of the readers that we support in our elementary classrooms.

A balanced reading program should not be viewed as simply an eclectic bag of tricks that teachers pull out to teach reading. Balanced reading programs must go beyond a focus on the appropriate blend of instructional strategies to address the types of readers being supported and the context in which these readers are developed. Decoding ability is not sufficient. Readers need to be able to understand what they read, how texts are used and how they position us as readers in the world in which we live. I believe we need to enlarge the vision we have for balanced reading programs to include the variety of issues described above. By addressing these issues, rather than narrowing the scope of balanced reading to focus on decoding competencies, we will provide a more comprehensive, and eventually more effective, approach to creating and supporting the kinds of readers necessary for a successful democratic society.

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