Literacy research has continued to develop at a rapid pace in these last five years of the millennium. New ideas about how children learn to read have led to a better understanding of the causes of progress and failure in the mastery of literacy, with repercussions for children's assessment and teacher education. These new discoveries also allow teachers to transcend the old debates in reading instruction (phonics versus whole language) and offer the path to a synthesis. At the same time, research with teachers about their own implementation of methods and the development of their own knowledge about the teaching of literacy has produced a fresh analysis of the practice of literacy teaching. Inspired by these developments, teachers, teacher educators and researchers worked together to produce this volume, which promotes the integration of literacy research and practice.

Section 1: Developmental Research and the Teaching of Reading.- Introductory Comments.- Morphemes and Spelling.- From Learning to Teaching to Learning French Written Morphology.- Oral and Written Words. Are They the Same Units?.- Developing Morphological Awareness and Learning to Write: A Two-Way Street.- Interacting Processes in the Development of Printed Word Recognition.- Section 2: Assessment and Intervention for Children with Reading Difficulties.- Introductory Comments.- Pre-school Prediction and Prevention of Dyslexia: A Longitudinal Study with Children of Dyslexic Parents.- A Closer Look at the Spelling of Children with Reading Problems.- Egoinvolved Stimulation of Early Literacy.- The Role of Semantic and Phonological Skills in Learning to Read: Implications for Assessment and Teaching.- Section 3: The Use of Theories by Teachers and Teacher Educators.- Introductory Comments.- The Reading Debate.- The Teaching-Learning Process in Early Written Language Acquisition.- Theoretical Discussions and Pedagogical Practice: How "Theorization" Can Help in Teacher Training.- Relations between Teachers' Subject Matter Knowledge about Written Language and Their Mental Models about Children's Learning.- Section 4: Issues in the Teaching and Assessment of Children's Literacy Process.- Introductory Comments.- Focused Literacy Teaching at the Start of School.- From Invention to Convention. Children's Different Routes to Literacy.- Issues in the Development of Second Language Reading: Implications for Instruction and Assessment.- Words, Letters and Smurphs: Apostrophes and Their Uses.