644 © 2005 International Reading Association (pp. 644–652) doi:10.1598/RT.58.7.5 JAMES S. DAMICO Multiple dimensions of literacy and conceptions of readers: Toward a more expansive view of accountability To meet the literacy needs of midlevel learners, U.S. teachers need a more inclusive understanding of accountability. W ith the aid of a common metaphor, I would say the United States is in the midst of a policy pendulum swing away from classroom practices grounded in experiential learning and meaning making toward practices that favor decontextualized activities and the acquisition of atomistic skills (Pearson, 2003). The severity of this swing stems from recent literacy policy initia- tives, especially the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (2002), whereby readers are increasingly viewed, conceptualized, and judged in terms of how proficiently they can demonstrate competence with particular reading skills and teachers are evaluated in terms of how well students acquire these skills. Acquiring and applying literacy skills are not unimportant: They are essential. Yet this primary emphasis on atomistic, decontextualized skills, championed by mounting, externally imposed test- ing mandates, has led to rigid and narrow concep- tions of accountability for both students and teachers. (See Allington, 2002, and Garan, 2002, for cogent critiques of the National Reading Panel report; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000) As a result, promoting a different and more comprehensive conception of reading grows ever more difficult. To best meet the literacy needs of today’s learners, we need a more holistic and inclusive understanding of accounta- bility, one that situates and understands skills- focused approaches as part of a comprehensive conception of literacy instruction and literacy learners. This article addresses this need, using one model that frames a more comprehensive under- standing of literacy (Green, 1988) to consider how events in one U.S. elementary school classroom can help us think about issues of accountability in a similarly comprehensive way. In this classroom, a first-year teacher, Ruthie Riddle, engaged her fifth graders in two discussions during a literature-based unit on slavery and freedom. These discussions, which took place roughly two weeks apart, are based on the following question that Ruthie posed to her students: “Why might we read more than one story about a topic or a person?” A close examina- tion of how this group of students responded to this question shows how they began to cultivate a more comprehensive conception of reading, coming to see readers as puzzle solvers, text and genre inves- tigators, and potential authors. The voices and ideas of the students and Ruthie along with Green’s model of literacy point to possibilities for a more expansive view of accountability in literacy edu- cation, a view that moves beyond reductive con- ceptions of literacy learning and accountability. A three-dimensions model of literacy Green’s (1988) model, rooted in sociocultural perspectives of literacy learning (Barton & Hamilton, 2000; Moll, 1994; Vygotsky, 1978), has three interlocking and equally significant literacy dimensions: the operational, the cultural, and the critical. (To see how this model has evolved with