Review of Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom (1st ed.; Burkins & Yates) / Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Upper Elementary Classroom (Cunningham et al.)
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https://doi.org/10.14507/er.v32.4199Author Biography
Amal Elassi, Transylvania University
Amal Elassi is a visiting assistant professor at Transylvania University. She earned her PhD in curriculum and instruction from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2023. Her research focuses on the linguistic identities of Muslim adolescent girls navigating public and Islamic schools in the United States, with particular attention to how language, faith, gender, and race intersect in their educational experiences. She teaches methods courses in elementary literacy, social studies, and enculturation across global educational traditions, and she supervises student teachers across diverse school settings. Prior to her doctoral work, Dr. Elassi taught English as a foreign language in Egypt for seven years and conducted action research on reading comprehension difficulties among multilingual learners. She is deeply committed to culturally responsive teaching and research that honors the complex, lived experiences of minoritized students.
References
Beck, I. L., Perfetti, C. A., & McKeown, M. G. (1982). The effects of long-term vocabulary instruction on lexical access and reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 74(4), 506–521. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.74.4.506
Bishop, R. S. (1990). Windows and mirrors: Children’s books and parallel cultures. In Proceedings of the 14th Annual Reading Conference (pp. 3–12). California State University.
Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Willows, D. M., Schuster, B. V., Yaghoub-Zadeh, Z., & Shanahan, T. (2001). Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel’s meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 36(3), 250–287. https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.36.3.2
Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7(1), 6–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/074193258600700104
Lombardi, E., Valle, A., Bianco, F., Castelli, I., Massaro, D., & Marchetti, A. (2022). Supporting mentalizing in primary school children: The effects of the Thoughts in Mind Project for Children (TiM-C) on metacognition, emotion regulation and theory of mind. Cognition and Emotion, 36(5), 975–986. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2022.2067521
Zucker, T. A., Cabell, S. Q., Justice, L. M., Pentimonti, J. M., & Kaderavek, J. N. (2013). The role of frequent, interactive prekindergarten shared reading in the longitudinal development of language and literacy skills. Developmental Psychology, 49(8), 1425–1436. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030347
[Books reviewed] Burkins, J., & Yates, K. (2021). Shifting the balance: 6 ways to bring the science of reading into the balanced literacy classroom (1st ed.). Routledge.
Cunningham, K. E., Burkins, J., & Yates, K. (2023). Shifting the balance: 6 ways to bring the science of reading into the upper elementary classroom. Routledge.
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