Pedagogy of Literacy in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The early decades of the nineteenth century involved a diversity of word-recognition approaches to the pedagogy of reading. These approaches can be classified under synthesis, analysis and holistic methods. Synthetic approaches involved the learning and combining of letters and word elements into whole words. One widely–used form of synthesis, known as the spelling or alphabetic approach required the reader to call the letter names to identify the word: cee-a-tee (cat). An alternative synthetic approach, not adopted in Ireland, the phonic approach required the sounding out of letter sounds to arrive at the required word: k-a-te (cat). This at a later stage, developed into the compounding of syllables for word identification (un-der-stand).The dominant approach in Ireland however relied on rote-learning. It could be codified loosely as Look-and Say, in which the pupil’s visual memory contributed to word memorisation.