Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

812 The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology
school, district, city, and regional success at teaching and learning can be measured accurately. As
technology moves to the forefront of human, business, and international communication and production,
discourses promoting technological education predominate in discussions of educational
attainment. Essential elements of teaching and learning prescribe teacher lesson plans. Practice
tests, test preparation, and curriculum that prepare students for testing success have become
the emphasis in educational attainment of late. Critical thinking exercises with multiple-choice
answers respond to the need for critical thinkers in our work society. Little, if any effort, is put on
citizenship development, as discourses to achieve on tests and obtain high credentials for entrance
into the best schools and universities drive education machinery.
Such a delimitation of educational discourse narrows the scope and discussion, “Of what
purpose is education?” The delimitation of literacy as related to the discourse of scientific reading
further reduces the scope of education. The manner in which such limits on the discussion of
education is further amplified becomes clear when we consider how scientifically based reading
research was a requirement in the application for federal reading grant monies by low-achieving
schools. In the No Child Left Behind grant application, the verbiage for teaching reading to
youngsters was required to reflect phonics, phonemic awareness, and scientifically verifiable
methods of manifesting that student success had been achieved in reading. The power and
knowledge arrangements described by Foucault to determine certain knowledge as truth and to
favor certain discourses is a helpful analogy to invoke here. Power and knowledge arrangements of
corporate power and money, the politicians who are vested in the webs of the publishing business,
and the discourses that prescribe to the public what kinds of literacy, reading and writing, and
education, in general, are to be implemented, remind us that testing is an ubiquitous obstacle to
education for purposes other than testing. The importance of literacy to Jefferson was directly
connected to citizenship. In the present day, literacy is taught in the academic area of language
arts; it is not taught in the social studies, where government and citizenship are purportedly
taught. Literacy as the exercise of and articulation of personal and communitarian desire for
social justice, inclusion, and access is lost as literacy becomes the ticket to test success.
The rise of scientific testing of literacy has been a gradual development. It begins with the
following and is implemented at all levels of teaching and learning: the rise of science, the rise
of psychology as science and the study of reading as a psychological endeavor, the regard for
reading as a psychologically testable skill, the de-professionalization of teachers, and the rise
of high-stakes testing as the determining measure of educational success. Accountability tests
are staged at every step to ensure that proper teaching and learning occur. We indeed are being
disciplined by the test, by science, by reading instruction, and by scientific reading instruction.
Educators and concerned citizens feel the need to ask how we got this way and what can be done
about it. I have attempted to explain how we got this way; now we as a collective must decide
what we will do about it.
TERMS FOR READERS
Critical literacy—literacy that is focused on community and political involvement, the exercise
of political power, the use of reading and writing to contribute to one’s social community and/or
to transform one’s world.
Literacy—Reading and writing in general. The focus here, however, is on reading specifically.
Scientific testing—Of or related to standardized testing with a history grounded in psychological
study, development, and implementation in educational institutions.