Do basal readers deskill teachers? A national survey of educators' use and opinions of basals

Several researchers and writers have hypothesized that basal reading programs Limit or control teachers' instructional decision making through a process referred to as deskilling. In this study, we evaluated this assertion by surveying elementary educators regarding their use of and opinions about basal reading programs. Responses from 553 of 1,000 randomly sampled International Reading Association members on 7 descriptive, 16 Likert, and 3 open-ended items revealed little, if any, evidence of teacher deskilling. Rather, results indicated that most educators (a) are discriminating consumers in charge of their curricular and instructional decision making, (b) view basal reading programs as 1 instructional tool available to them as they plan literacy lessons, and (c) do not relinquish control to basal materials or any presumed power behind the materials. On the basis of survey results and prior research, we argue that, rather than deskilling teachers, basal materials empower teachers by providing them instructional suggestions to draw from, adapt, or extend as they craft lessons.