ABSTRACT
There are few topics in education that have been the subject of as much heated discussion and controversy as the issue of how best to help children learn to read. Although research on this topic has a long history (Adams, 1990; Clark, 1988), it is still a topic about which there is enormous diversity of opinion among both researchers and teachers. Part of the problem, of course, is that the question of how best to teach children to read is too broadly focused to be addressed by a single answer. Answers to this question are likely to be conditional upon many different factors, such as the abilities and motivations that children bring with them to school; the abilities, knowledge, personality, and motivation of their teachers; and the support for the child available in the home and neighborhood. With these factors, and others, providing contextual constraints on effectiveness of various instructional methods, it is not surprising that we currently have so little consensus about instructional methods for children who experience special difficulties learning to read.
