ABSTRACT
This chapter compares and discusses teacher strategies, aims and activities in two jurisdictions, British Columbia in Canada and the USA in the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Reading-literacy Study. British Columbia espouses a child-centred literacy curriculum, whereas the majority of states in the USA use material-centred reading approaches, known as basal readers. Aspects of teaching as well as student achievement are compared for the 9 year-old populations across the two systems. There is evidence of important differences in the material-centred and the pupil-centred jurisdictions with respect to teachers’ aims, strategies and activities. However, the answer to ‘but who did best?’ is not simple. Indications are that similar test achievement can be obtained by quite different educational curricula.
