These methods suggest a new pedagogy for literacy development.

For most educators, literacy is the most important enterprise of schooling. In my view, we will be more successful in teaching literacy when we include in our instructional approaches more of what we know about how we learn to ride bikes and how we learn the properties of the world around us. These methods, already adopted by many teachers, and the use of newer curricula and technological tools for the classroom enable us to use apprenticeship and exploration, old and proven pedagogies, in literacy development.

Take reading, for example. Like most school subjects, reading is often taught as if knowing facts were at its core. Admittedly, some factual knowledge is important. The names of the letters, the spoken words that match many "sight" words, the mnemonic rules for spelling (especially irregular words), and other rote information are important for children to learn.

This kind of knowing, however, represents a just small part of what learning to read really requires. Reading is an act of increasing skill where practice leads to expertise -- knowing how to make sense of a passage even though it contains an unfamiliar word, for example. Reading also requires understanding the properties of written language -- knowing that in good writing each paragraph addresses an idea and possibly includes a transition statement leading to the next paragraph's idea.