ABSTRACT
The original What’s Hot survey was constructed by perusing professional journals, noting the frequent topics at conferences, looking at popular magazines, and listening to various reports on television and radio. What are the forces that have determined the very hot literacy trends and issues for 2010, and how have these areas of focus changed since 2001? This chapter provides a resource for future scholars who might want to update P. D. Pearson’s chronicle of American reading instruction, which stopped at the year 2000. Early intervention became a hot topic long before the advent of the What’s Hot list. It will be interesting to see if B. Fertig’s popular account of the fates of three struggling/striving readers has the same effect as Rudolf Flesch’s landmark expose Why Johnny Can’t Read. The literacy demands associated with adolescent literacy were much more complex and content-specific.
