Few organizations have as high a concentration of people with advanced degrees as colleges and universities.
People with doctorates insure that debates and decision making will be tedious and laborious; however, those decisions are as negatively influenced by tradition and biases as you can find anywhere, regardless of how well educated everyone is.
One of the greatest examples of the failures of higher education is the use of student evaluations of teaching (SET), a traditional system whereby students offer feedback on their professors and then those evaluations serve in different ways during the annual evaluations of professors as well as the tenure and promotion process.
What is the problem? Well, this is an example of tradition trumping evidence (and, again, you’d think well educated people would prefer evidence over the inertia of tradition) because research for many years has shown that SET are biased against the most marginalized groups of faculty—women, people of color, international faculty, etc.
Once again, two studies confirm the inherent bias of SET, as reported by Colleen Flaherty:
Two new studies on gender bias in student evaluations of teaching look at the phenomenon from fresh—and troubling—angles. One study surveyed students at the beginning of the semester and after their first exam and found that female instructors faced more backlash for grades given than did male instructors. The other study examined how ageism relates to gender bias in student ratings, finding that older female instructors were rated lower than younger women. The second study was longitudinal, so students were rating the same women more poorly over time, even as these professors were gaining teaching experience.
Both studies suggest that as women become more “agentic,” demonstrating agency via stereotypically male-associated traits, they are punished for violating gender norms with lower student ratings.
These studies have some nuances, but essentially, this fits into a very robust body of research that shows SET is harmful for faculty diversity, and thus, for students and colleges/universities:
Kelly-Woessner, A., & Woessner, M. (2006). My professor is a partisan hack: How perceptions of a professor’s political views affect student course evaluations. PS: Political Science and Politics,39(3), 495-501. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20451790
We are well past time to set SET aside, and admit that tradition is not a valid reason to continue to erode efforts toward diversity, equity, and inclusion through rhetoric alone.
My foundations of American education course serves as an introduction to public education and our education majors, but the course also fulfills a general education requirement.
The class comprises mostly first- and second-year students, and those considering education as a major or career can be most of the class or very few. None the less, virtually all of them are a bit disoriented when we begin the course reading philosophers—Foucault, Deleuze, and Freire specifically.
I invite them to read some relatively brief passages from all three, warn them that reading philosophy is challenging, and then reassure them that we are simply using these ideas to begin our semester-long interrogation of how we have public schools and why.
When 2022 NAEP data were released, I immediately thought about a few things.
First, with the dramatic coverage of math scores dropping (see HERE and HERE), I told a few friends to brace themselves for the inevitable next step. And it took only about one day for my prediction to happen with an ad popping up on Facebook:
In the U.S., notably since the release of A Nation at Risk (see HERE and HERE) in the early 1980s, the easiest thing to predict is that the education market place is going to profit from educational crisis.
This fits into my second thought, which is the current and ongoing “science of reading” crisis that was prompted in 2018 by Emily Hanford, but was significantly boosted by the cries of “reading crisis” after the release of the 2019 NAEP data (see HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE).
Now, I regret to note, math will be the next over-reaction, as the ad above shows now that edu-businesses scramble to add math to their offering for reading—solutions need a problem, and high-stakes testing is a problem machine. [1]
And the big picture thing I thought about was Deleuze, from the reading I have students consider:
We are in a generalized crisis in relation to all the environments of enclosure—prison, hospital, factory, school, family….The administrations in charge never cease announcing supposedly necessary reforms: to reform schools, to reform industries, hospitals, the armed forces, prisons….In disciplinary societies one was always starting again (from school to the barracks, from the barracks to the factory), while in the societies of control one is never finished with anything—the corporation, the educational system, the armed services being metastable states coexisting in one and the same modulation, like a universal system of deformation. (pp. 3-4, 5)
Deleuze builds to a powerful and prescient warning:
For the school system (emphasis in original): continuous forms of control, and the effect on the school of perpetual training, the corresponding abandonment of all university research, the introduction of the “corporation” at all levels of schooling. (p. 7)
As a key example, many (if not most) teachers of reading in the U.S. now are being told that their university training was useless, and that they need new training in the “science of reading.” And education corporations are lining up to sell schools that training, a story sold with the “science of reading” label (see about LETRS).
Just to be clear, this is not about the failure of teacher certification or about teaching teachers to teach or students to read; this is about profit through perpetual crisis and (re)training.
And here is the disconnect.
While I carefully help students over the course of a semester examine the claimed democratic foundations of public education (well documented in the writings of Thomas Jefferson and key figures in American education such as John Dewey), we quickly uncover that those democratic ideals are often secondary—or even erased—by market commitments.
So here we are in 2022 still riding the wave of accountability, standards, and high-stakes testing that began with A Nation at Risk and built to George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
As early as the 1990s, however, many education scholars warned that this education crisis was manufactured—essentially a political lie that was bolstered by a media frenzy and a market grab.
The education crisis/education market place dynamic has been in full swing for over forty years now, and the ugly truth is that all of the crisis rhetoric used to justify incessant accountability layered onto a constant process of new standards and new tests is, as Berliner and Biddle documented, manufactured, a lie.
As compelling as it is, we simply do not now have a reading crisis; we have never had a reading crisis.
And NAEP 2022 data do not expose a math crisis.
“Crisis” suggests something new, immediate, and pressing to address.
Student learning has been about the same for nearly a century. Some students thrive (mostly correlated with affluence and being white), many students learn in spite of the system, and too many students are neglected or mis-served (correlated strongly with poverty, minoritized race, multi-language learning, and special needs).
Just to swing back to reading, there is no decade (or even year) over the last 80 years that public, media, and political opinions expressed satisfaction in reading achievement; student reading proficiency has always been characterized as failing, and a crisis.
Always.
As we creep toward an election, we need to admit a few things.
First, the market and commercialism matter more in the U.S. than democracy or even freedom.
We not only want schools to produce (compliant) workers, but also have turned public education into a crisis-based education market place.
Take a little journey to Education Week‘s web site and note that flurry of ads for the “science of reading,” for example:
[Update] Or see what pops up “promoted” on Twitter:
And monitor over the coming weeks; you’ll see more and more addressing math.
Since 2018, media has generated millions of clicks with coverage of the “science of reading,” journalists are winning cash awards and receiving huge speaking fees to discuss the “science of reading,” and education corporations are pulling in millions for software, programs, and training labeled the “science of reading.”
Please take just a brief historical overview since the 1980s. Not a single reform has worked, not a single crisis/reform cycle has been deemed a success.
As Deleuze explains, the point of crisis/reform is to remain always in crisis/reform because that cycle creates a market, and for some people, that market generates profit.
But that crisis/reform cycle has a high cost for students, teachers, and society.
The “science of reading” crisis ironically follows just about two decades after the reading crisis identified by the National Reading Panel and at the center of NCLB—which mandated that teachers had to implement only scientifically-based practices (notably in reading).
That failed (apparently) and the current response is to shout (once again) “crisis!” and demand that mandates restrict teaching to the “science of reading.”
Four decades-plus into a crisis/reform hole and we continue to dig.
Part of me feels sorry for what is about to happen to math, and part of me feels really bad that I hope the coming math nonsense will relieve a little pressure from reading.
But mostly, I hate the lies, political, media, and commercial interests that are eager to shout “crisis!” because in the spirit of the good ol’ U.S. of A., there is money to made in all that bullshit.
Thomas, P.L. (2022). The Science of Reading movement: The never-ending debate and the need for a different approach to reading instruction. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/science-of-reading
Advocates Launch “Freedom to Read” Coalition to Fight Book Bans Across South Carolina
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 27, 2022
CONTACT: Laura Swinford, ACLU of South Carolina, laura@gpsimpact.com
Columbia, S.C. — Advocates and community leaders today launched “Freedom to Read SC,” a statewide coalition that will work to defeat unconstitutional efforts to ban books from school and public libraries. The Coalition includes educational organizations, civil rights groups, religious entities, and others who are committed to free speech and the free exchange of ideas.
“Book bans are in direct violation of the First Amendment, which guarantees all Americans the right to access information and the freedom to read without censorship. Without a doubt, school boards, library boards, and municipal governments that are banning books are running afoul of the Constitution,” said Jace Woodrum, executive director of ACLU of South Carolina. “We urge policymakers to stop this blatantly unconstitutional censorship. Whether we like a book or not, agree with it or not, none of us has the power to supersede the values instilled in the First Amendment.”
Freedom to Read SC will call attention to efforts to ban books in public libraries and school districts throughout the Palmetto state, while organizing and advocating for all South Carolinians’ First Amendment right to access information.
“Librarians are highly trained in evaluating and selecting quality books that meet state curriculum standards and reflect South Carolina students’ varied life experiences,” said Tamara Cox, President of the South Carolina Association of School Librarians. “Even though librarians follow school board-approved purchasing policies, we are seeing a disturbing trend of administrators and school board members overriding their own reconsideration policies and removing books without proper review. Some librarians have been targets of harassment and threats from those who seek to limit intellectual freedoms protected by the First Amendment. Many of these censorship attempts are coordinated by politically- motivated groups outside of education and target books written by or about people of color or other marginalized groups.”
“As a parent, I want my children to develop the skills to interact compassionately with many different kinds of people. Restricting their access to books makes it harder for them to learn about people different from them, and creates a false and narrow version of the society they will inherit,” said Brittany Arsiniega, mother of two children.
The Coalition includes:
Alliance for Full Acceptance
American Association of University Professors SC
ACLU of South Carolina
Campaign for Southern Equality
E3 Foundation
Grand Strand Pride
Harriet Hancock Center Foundation
League of Women Voters of South Carolina
Lowcountry Black Parents Association
Jewish Community Relations Council of the Charleston Jewish Federation
National Action Network of Columbia
SC Association of School Librarians
SC United for Justice and Equality
South Carolina NAACP Conference Youth and College Division
South Carolina Unitarian Universalist Justice Alliance
Upstate LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce
Women’s Rights and Empowerment Network (WREN)
Follow Freedom to Read SC on Facebook for information on local efforts to ban and restrict access to books: https://www.facebook.com/free2readSC
Born in 1961, I entered public school as a first grader in 1967. This was during an era before kindergarten was common for all, and I also had the great fortune or being raised by a working-class stay-at-home mother who doted on my sister and me.
I can’t recall not being able to read, but I do know that my mother taught my sister and me to read well before entering formal schooling. She taped index cards on objects around the house with words identifying those objects, and we read all the time. Lots of Dr. Seuss and such.
My education included the Dick and Jane approach of whole-word instruction; however, I don’t really recall much about learning to read once I entered school except maybe boredom (concerning the lessons, I mean, because I adored my first-grade teacher, Ms. Lanford).
I also can’t really ever think of “sound it out” as a strategy for me when I encountered words I didn’t know. Asking other people is my go-to strategy even today, as I wander into my 60s.
None the less, I do value the role of phonics—the relationship among letters, letter clusters, words, and meaning in a systematic way—although I also recognize the limitations of phonics and rules in the grand scheme of reading for meaning.
The lazy phonics debate tends to work at the extremes—a nonsensical argument that all students need systematic phonics instruction before they can comprehend (phonics-first) couched in the false argument that some literacy scholars and teachers embrace zero phonics instruction (a mischaracterization of whole language and balanced literacy).
The reasonable and practical middle—basic phonics (see here and here)—is often ignored as a result of this laziness.
Systematic intensive phonics for all students is as harmful (and misleading) as providing beginning readers with no phonics strategies for their developing journey to comprehension and critical reading.
One aspect of the phonics-first argument that is rarely confronted is that systematic instruction in phonics rules must establish standard pronunciation, necessarily then alienating young children who are raised in so-called non-standard dialects (such as myself, a Southerner).
We in the South play havoc with “pen,” “pin,” and “pan.”
That lack of interrogating standard pronunciation sits inside the already complicated relationship we encounter in the English language. Consider these words:
some
home
comb
bomb
tomb
womb
woman
women
The pronunciation of “o” is all over the place, and of course, there are so-called rules for why, but that calls into question how valuable phonics rules are versus developing word recognition (and phonics awareness) by reading and thinking about words and meaning versus through drills and rules-based isolated instruction.
Instead of teaching students a rules-based approach to decoding, we should be inviting students into the complexity of letter/sound/word relationships. Basic phonics is a gateway to understanding and comprehension.
How words are pronounced, however, is much more than phonics rules. Pronunciation often is influenced by regional dialects, word etymology, and context of usage.
A fascinating way to explore that is the word “coyote.” Mignon Fogarty explains:
People pronounce “coyote” at least five different ways. It differs by region, age, and even social factors. Some people even pronounce it different ways when they mean different things by it.
While we are perpetually arguing about why students are not reading as well (or as quickly) as we’d like as a society, we persist in failing those students by having lazy arguments and settling for oversimplified charges of failure followed by simplistic solutions.
Again, we are mired in the lazy phonics debate:
“This is a huge wake-up call for America. We answered it in Virginia last year,” [Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R – VA)] said. “We passed the Virginia Literacy Act to bring the science of reading, otherwise known as phonics, back into our school system for K-3. We invested a record amount in education. We, in fact, have been working with higher education and K-12 to raise standards and expectations.”
[UPDATE] And it continues to spread; see Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R):
“The jury has returned,” DeWine, a Republican, said in his State of the State speech late last month where he led off his address with the importance of the Science of Reading. “The evidence is clear. The verdict is in.”
“There is a great deal of research about how we learn to read,” he said. “And today, we understand the great value and importance of phonics. Not all literacy curriculums are created equal, and sadly, many Ohio students do not have access to the most effective reading curriculum.”
DeWine is seeking $129 million from the legislature to retrain teachers and replace elementary school textbooks.
One element of the “science of reading” movement that has received a great deal of media coverage and policy updates across the U.S. is the perennial concern for dyslexia.
While dyslexia debates have often been included in reading crises and reading wars over the past century (see the overview in this policy brief), the current advocacy around dyslexia often exaggerates the impact of dyslexia and oversimplifies how students identified with dyslexia can best be served in classrooms.
In 2019, a grassroots campaign led by parents succeeded in passing a wave of dyslexia legislation. Many states mandated hallmarks of the Orton-Gillingham method, specifically calling for “multisensory” instruction, to help students with dyslexia read and write better.* In New York, where I live, the city spends upwards of $300 million a year in taxpayer funds on private school tuition for children with disabilities. Much of it goes to pay for private schools that specialize in Orton-Gillingham instruction and similar approaches, which families insist are necessary to teach their children with dyslexia to read.
While O-G is extremely popular with parents and is now a dominant approach in practice and policy, “[t]he researchers in both the 2021 and 2022 studies all cautioned that the jury is still out on Orton-Gillingham,” Barshay explains because research (the “science”) simply does not show multi-sensory approaches such as O-G are more effective, including:
The larger 2022 analysis of 53 reading interventions had a higher bar for study quality and only one Orton-Gillingham study made the cut. Several of the reading interventions that marketed themselves as “multisensory” also made the cut, but the researchers didn’t detect any extra benefits from them.
“They weren’t more effective than the ones that didn’t market themselves as multisensory,” said Hall.
As with all reading science and research on how students learn to read and how best to teach reading, the science on dyslexia is not simple and certainly is not settled.
Recommended on Dyslexia
Allington, R.L. (2019, Fall). The hidden push for phonics legislation. Tennessee Literacy Journal, 1(1), 7-20.
Johnston, P., & Scanlon, D. (2021). An examination of dyslexia research and instruction with policy implications. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 70(1), 107. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1177/23813377211024625
Hall, C., et al. (2022, September 13). Forty years of reading intervention research for elementary students with or at risk for dyslexia: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.477
Stevens, E. A., Austin, C., Moore, C., Scammacca, N., Boucher, A. N., & Vaughn, S. (2021). Current state of the evidence: Examining the effects of Orton-Gillingham reading interventions for students with or at risk for word-level reading disabilities. Exceptional Children, 87(4), 397–417. https://doi.org/10.1177/0014402921993406
Below is the current and on-going (and thus updated as new research is published) body of research related to the “science of reading” movement and reading policy adopted in states across the U.S.
As many scholars have noted (see references under Media Portrayals of Reading Science below), the messaging around the “science of reading” has been misleading and oversimplified, contributing to policy and practices that are counter to good practice and the existing research base.
For one political example, consider this:
“This is a huge wake-up call for America. We answered it in Virginia last year,” [Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R – VA)] said. “We passed the Virginia Literacy Act to bring the science of reading, otherwise known as phonics [emphasis added], back into our school system for K-3. We invested a record amount in education. We, in fact, have been working with higher education and K-12 to raise standards and expectations.”
And as Hoffman, Hikida, and Sailors (2020) detail: “the SOR community do not employ the same standards for scientific research that they claimed as the basis for their critiques”; therefore, I provide here the evidence, recommending that any challenges to claims about reading science focus on that evidence and not attacking people or (often misused) terms and labels.
Historical Overview of Reading Debates
1940s
Betts, E., Dolch, E., Gates, A., Gray, W., Horn, E., LaBrant, L., . . . Witty, P. (1942). What shall we do about reading today?: A symposium. The Elementary English Review, 19(7), 225-256. Retrieved May 16, 2022, from www.jstor.org/stable/41382636
1950s, 1960s
Flesch, R. (1986). Why Johnny can’t read: And what you can do about it. William Morrow Paperbacks.
Bowers, J.S. (2020).Reconsidering the evidence that systematic phonics is more effective than alternative methods of reading instruction. Educational Psychology Review, 32(2020), 681-705. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10648-019-09515-y
Williams, B.T. (2007, October). Why Johnny can never, ever read: The perpetual literacy crisis and student identity. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 51(2), 178-182.
Semingson, P. & Kerns, W. (2021). Where is the evidence? Looking back to Jeanne Chall and enduring debates about the science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S157-S169. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.405
1960s, 1970s
Semingson, P., & Kerns, W. (2021). Where is the evidence? Looking back to Jeanne Chall and enduring debates about the science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S157-S169. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.405
Chall, J. (1967). Learning to read: The great debate. McGraw-Hill.
1980s, 1990s
Krashen, S. (2002b). Whole language and the great plummet of 1987-92. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(10), 748-753.
McQuillan, J. (1998). The literary crisis: False claims, real solutions. Heinemann.
Darling-Hammond, L. (1997, November). Doing what matters most: Investing in quality teaching. Kutstown, PA: The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future.
Wilde, J. (2004, January). Definitions for the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001: Scientifically-based research. National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs. Retrieved June 9, 2022, from https://ncela.ed.gov/files/rcd/BE021264/Definitions_of_the_NCLB_Act.pdf
Yatvin, J. (2002). Babes in the woods: The wanderings of the National Reading Panel. The Phi Delta Kappan,83(5), 364-369
Garan, E.M. (2001, March). Beyond smoke and mirrors: A critique of the National Reading Panel report on phonics. Phi Delta Kappan, 82(7), 500-506. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170108200705
Chapter 3 in Thomas, P.L. (2020). How to end the reading war and serve the literacy needs of all students: A primer for parents, policy makers, and people who care. Information Age Publishing.
Shanahan, T. (2005). The National Reading Panel report: Practical advice for teachers. Learning Point Associates. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED489535.pdf
Shanahan, T. (2003, April). Research-based reading instruction: Myths about the National Reading Panel report. The Reading Teacher, 56(7), 646-655.
Review of the Literature on Reading
Reading Policy
Cummings, A. (2021). Making early literacy policy work in Kentucky: Three considerations for policymakers on the “Read to Succeed” act. Boulder, CO: National Education PolicyCenter. Retrieved May 18, 2022, from https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/literacy
Cummings, A., Strunk, K.O., & De Voto, C. (2021). “A lot of states were doing it”: The development of Michigan’s Read by Grade Three law. Journal of Educational Change. Retrieved April 28, 2022, from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10833-021-09438-y
Collet, V.S., Penaflorida, J., French, S., Allred, J., Greiner, A., & Chen, J. (2021). Red flags, red herrings, and common ground: An expert study in response to state reading policy. Educational Considerations, 47(1). Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.4148/0146-9282.2241
Wyse, D. & Bradbury, A. (2022). Reading wars or reading reconciliation? A critical examination of robust research evidence, curriculum policy and teachers’ practices for teaching phonics and reading. Review of Education, 10(1), e3314. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3314
Reading and Teacher Education/Professional Development
Tortorelli, L.S., Lupoo, S.M., & Wheatley, B.C. (2021). Examining teacher preparation for code-related reading instruction: An integrated literature review. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S317-S337. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.396
Hoffman, J.V., Hikida, M., & Sailors, M. (2020). Contesting science that silences: Amplifying equity, agency, and design research in literacy teacher preparation. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S255-S266. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.353
Seidenberg, M.S., Cooper Borkenhagen, M., & Kearns, D.M. (2020). Lost in translation? Challenges in connecting reading science and educational practice. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S119-S130. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.341
Woulfin, S.L. & Gabriel, R.E. (2020). Building infrastructure for improving reading instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S109-S117. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.339
[UPDATE]
Allan Luke & Felicity McArdle (2009) A model for research-based State professional development policy, Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 37:3, 231-251, DOI: 10.1080/13598660903053611
Theories of Reading and Reading Instruction
Compton-Lilly, C.F., Mitra, A., Guay, M., & Spence, L.K. (2020). A confluence of complexity: Intersections among reading theory, neuroscience, and observations of young readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S185-S195. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.348
Paige, D.D., Young, C., Rasinski, T.V., Rupley, W.H., Nichols, W.D., & Valerio, M. (2021). Teaching reading is more than a science: It’s also an art. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S339-S350. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.388
Krashen, S. (2002). Whole language and the great plummet of 1987-92. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(10), 748-753.
McQuillan, J. (1998). The literary crisis: False claims, real solutions. Heinemann.
Semingson, P. & Kerns, W. (2021). Where is the evidence? Looking back to Jeanne Chall and enduring debates about the science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S157-S169. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.405.
Spiegel, D. (1998). Silver bullets, babies, and bath water: Literature response groups in a balanced literacy program. The Reading Teacher,52(2), 114-124. Retrieved May 17, 2022, from www.jstor.org/stable/20202025
Simple View of Reading
Compton-Lilly, C.F., Mitra, A., Guay, M., & Spence, L.K. (2020). A confluence of complexity: Intersections among reading theory, neuroscience, and observations of young readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S18-S195. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.348
Duke, N.K. & Cartwright, K.B. (2021). The science of reading progresses: Communicating advances beyond the simple view of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S25-S44. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.411
Filderman, M.J., Austin, C.R., Boucher, A.N., O’Donnell, K., & Swanson, E.A. (2022). A meta-analysis of the effects of reading comprehension interventions on the reading comprehension outcomes of struggling readers in third through 12th grades. Exceptional Children, 88(2), 163-184. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1177/00144029211050860
Barber, A.T., Cartwright, K.B., Hancock, G.R., & Klauda, S.L. (2021). Beyond the simple view of reading: The role of executive functions in emergent bilinguals’ and English monolinguals’ reading comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S45-S64. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.385
Cervetti, G.N., Pearson, P.D., Palincsar, A.S., Afflerbach, P., Kendeou, P., Biancarosa, G., Higgs, J., Fitzgerald, M.S., & Berman, A.I. (2020). How the reading for understanding initiative’s research complicates the simple view of reading invoked in the science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S161-S172. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.343
Active View of Reading
Duke, N.K. & Cartwright, K.B. (2021). The science of reading progresses: Communicating advances beyond the simple view of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S25-S44. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.411
[UPDATE]
Burns, M. K., Duke, N. K., & Cartwright, K. B. (2023). Evaluating components of the active view of reading as intervention targets: Implications for social justice. School Psychology, 38(1), 30–41. https://doi.org/10.1037/spq0000519
Structured Literacy
Compton-Lilly, C.F., Mitra, A., Guay, M., & Spence, L.K. (2020). A confluence of complexity: Intersections among reading theory, neuroscience, and observations of young readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S185-S195. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.348
Seidenberg, M. (2018). Language at the speed of sight: How we read, why so many can’t, and what can be done about it. Basic Books.
Seidenberg, M.S., Cooper Borkenhagen, M., & Kearns, D.M. (2020). Lost in translation? Challenges in connecting reading science and educational practice. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S119-S130. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.341
Willingham, D.T. (2017). The reading mind: A cognitive approach to understanding how the mind reads. Jossey-Bass.
Shanahan, T. (2005). The National Reading Panel report: Practical advice for teachers. Learning Point Associates. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED489535.pdf
Shanahan, T. (2003, April). Research-based reading instruction: Myths about the National Reading Panel report. The Reading Teacher, 56(7), 646-655.
Bowers, J.S. (2020).Reconsidering the evidence that systematic phonics is more effective than alternative methods of reading instruction. Educational Psychology Review, 32(2020), 681-705. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10648-019-09515-y
Collet, V.S., Penaflorida, J., French, S., Allred, J., Greiner, A., & Chen, J. (2021). Red flags, red herrings, and common ground: An expert study in response to state reading policy. Educational Considerations, 47(1). Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.4148/0146-9282.2241
Garan, E.M. (2001, March). Beyond smoke and mirrors: A critique of the National Reading Panel report on phonics. Phi Delta Kappan, 82(7), 500-506. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170108200705
Seidenberg, M.S., Cooper Borkenhagen, M., & Kearns, D.M. (2020). Lost in translation? Challenges in connecting reading science and educational practice. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S119–S130. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.341
Yatvin, J. (2002). Babes in the woods: The wanderings of the National Reading Panel. The Phi Delta Kappan,83(5), 364-369
Bowers, J.S. (2020).Reconsidering the evidence that systematic phonics is more effective than alternative methods of reading instruction. Educational Psychology Review, 32(2020), 681-705. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10648-019-09515-y
Wyse, D., & Bradbury, A. (2022). Reading wars or reading reconciliation? A critical examination of robust research evidence, curriculum policy and teachers’ practices for teaching phonics and reading. Review of Education, 10(1), e3314. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3314
Davis, A. (2013, December 13). To read or not to read: Decoding synthetic phonics. IMPACT No. 20. Philosophical Perspectives on Education Policy. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1111/2048-416X.2013.12000.x
Filderman, M. J., Austin, C.R., Boucher, A.N., O’Donnell, K., & Swanson, E.A. (2022). A meta-analysis of the effects of reading comprehension interventions on the reading comprehension outcomes of struggling readers in third through 12th grades. Exceptional Children, 88(2), 163-184. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1177/00144029211050860
Pearson, P.D. (2019, October 12). What research really says about teaching reading—and why that still matters [Video]. International Literacy Association 2019 Conference. Retrieved May 18, 2022, from https://ila.digitellinc.com/ila/sessions/123/view
Allington, R.L., & McGill-Franzen, A.M. (2021). Reading volume and reading achievement: A review of recent research. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S231-S238. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.404
Bowers, J.S. Yes Children Need to Learn Their GPCs but There Really Is Little or No Evidence that Systematic or Explicit Phonics Is Effective: a response to Fletcher, Savage, and Sharon (2020). Educ Psychol Rev33, 1965–1979 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-021-09602-z
Cummings, A. (2021). Making early literacy policy work in Kentucky: Three considerations for policy makers on the “Read to Succeed” act. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved May 19, 2022, from https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/literacy
Aukerman, M., & Chambers Schuldt, L. (2021). What matters most? Toward a robust and socially just science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S86 Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.406
Petscher, Y., Cabell, S.Q., Catts, H.W., Compton, D.L., Foorman, B.R., Hart, S.A., Lonigan, C.J., Phillips, B.M., Schatschneider, C., Steacy, L.M., Terry, N.P., & Wagner, R.K. (2020). How the science of reading informs 21st-century education. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S267-S282. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.352
Shanahan, T. (2020). What constitutes a science of reading instruction? Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S235-S247. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.349
Seidenberg, M.S., Cooper Borkenhagen, M., & Kearns, D.M. (2020). Lost in translation? Challenges in connecting reading science and educational practice. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S119-S130. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.341
Seidenberg, M. (2018). Language at the speed of sight: How we read, why so many can’t, and what can be done about it. Basic Books.
Willingham, D.T. (2017). The reading mind: A cognitive approach to understanding how the mind reads. Jossey-Bass.
Afflerbach, P. (2022). Teaching readers (not reading): Moving beyond skills and strategies to reader-focused instruction. The Guilford Press.
Hoffman, J.V., Hikida, M., & Sailors, M. (2020). Contesting science that silences: Amplifying equity, agency, and design research in literacy teacher preparation. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S255-S266. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.353
Johnston, P., & Scanlon, D. (2021). An examination of dyslexia research and instruction with policy implications. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 70(1), 107. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1177/23813377211024625
MacPhee, D., Handsfield, L.J., & Paugh, P. (2021). Conflict or conversation? Media portrayals of the science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S145-S155. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.384
Cummings, A. (2021). Making early literacy policy work in Kentucky: Three considerations for policymakers on the “Read to Succeed” act. Boulder, CO: National Education PolicyCenter. Retrieved May 19, 2022, from https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/literacy
Cummings, A., Strunk, K.O., & De Voto, C. (2021). “A lot of states were doing it”: The development of Michigan’s Read by Grade Three law. Journal of Educational Change. Retrieved April 28, 2022, from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10833-021-09438-y
Huddleston, A.P. (2014). Achievement at whose expense? A literature review of test-based grade retention policies in U.S. school. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 22(18). Retrieved July 26, 2022, from http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v22n18.2014
Hughes, J.N., West, S.G., Kim, H., & Bauer, S.S. (2018). Effect of early grade retention on school completion: A prospective study. Journal of Educational Psychology, 110(7), 974-991. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000243
Jasper, K., Carter, C., Triscari, R., & Valesky, T. (2017, January 9). The effects of the mandated third grade retention on standard diploma acquisition and student outcome over time: A policy analysis of Florida’s A+ Plan. Policy Analysis. Retrieved July 24, 2022, from https://theoptoutfloridanetwork.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/e782a-executivesummary.pdf
National Council of Teachers of English. (2015). Resolution on mandatory grade retention and high-stakes testing. Retrieved May 19, 2022, from https://ncte.org/statement/grade-retention/
Robinson-Cimpian, J.P. (2015, December). Review of The effects of test-based retention on student outcomes over time: Regression discontinuity evidence from Florida. National Education Policy Center. Retrieved July 24, 2022, from https://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-NBER-retention
Hoffman, J.V., Hikida, M., & Sailors, M. (2020). Contesting science that silences: Amplifying equity, agency, and design research in literacy teacher preparation. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S25-S266. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.353
Discussion and Analysis
Dyslexia
Allington, R.L. (2019, Fall). The hidden push for phonics legislation. Tennessee Literacy Journal, 1(1), 7-20.
Johnston, P., & Scanlon, D. (2021). An examination of dyslexia research and instruction with policy implications. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 70(1), 107. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1177/23813377211024625
Hall, C., et al. (2022, September 13). Forty years of reading intervention research for elementary students with or at risk for dyslexia: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.477
Stevens, E. A., Austin, C., Moore, C., Scammacca, N., Boucher, A. N., & Vaughn, S. (2021). Current state of the evidence: Examining the effects of Orton-Gillingham reading interventions for students with or at risk for word-level reading disabilities. Exceptional Children, 87(4), 397–417. https://doi.org/10.1177/0014402921993406
Aukerman, M. & Chambers Schuldt, L. (2021). What matters most? Toward a robust and socially just science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S85-S103. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.406
Hoffman, J.V., Hikida, M., & Sailors, M. (2020). Contesting science that silences: Amplifying equity, agency, and design research in literacy teacher preparation. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S255–S266. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.353
Johnston, P., & Scanlon, D. (2021). An examination of dyslexia research and instruction with policy implications. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 70(1), 107-128. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1177/23813377211024625
Yaden, D.B., Reinking, D., & Smagorinsky, P. (2021). The trouble with binaries: A perspective on the science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S119-S129. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.402
Compton-Lilly, C.F., Mitra, A., Guay, M., & Spence, L.K. (2020). A confluence of complexity: Intersections among reading theory, neuroscience, and observations of young readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S185-S195. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.348
Seidenberg, M. (2018). Language at the speed of sight: How we read, why so many can’t, and what can be done about it. Basic Books.
Seidenberg, M.S., Cooper Borkenhagen, M., & Kearns, D.M. (2020). Lost in translation? Challenges in connecting reading science and educational practice. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S119-S130. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.341
Willingham, D.T. (2017). The reading mind: A cognitive approach to understanding how the mind reads. Jossey-Bass.
Kukull, W. A., & Ganguli, M. (2012). Generalizability: The trees, the forest, and the low-hanging fruit. Neurology, 78(23), 1886-1891. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0b013e318258f812
Hoffman, J.V., Hikida, M., & Sailors, M. (2020). Contesting science that silences: Amplifying equity, agency, and design research in literacy teacher preparation. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S255-S266. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.353
Seidenberg, M.S., Cooper Borkenhagen, M., & Kearns, D.M. (2020). Lost in translation? Challenges in connecting reading science and educational practice. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S119-S130. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.341
Semingson, P. & Kerns, W. (2021). Where is the evidence? Looking back to Jeanne Chall and enduring debates about the science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S157-S169. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.405.
Spiegel, D. (1998). Silver bullets, babies, and bath water: Literature response groups in a balanced literacy program. The Reading Teacher,52(2), 114-124. Retrieved May 17, 2022, from www.jstor.org/stable/20202025
Routman, R. (1996). Literacy at the crossroads: Crucial talk about reading, writing, and other teaching dilemmas. Heinemann.
Compton-Lilly, C.F., Mitra, A., Guay, M., & Spence, L.K. (2020). A confluence of complexity: Intersections among reading theory, neuroscience, and observations of young readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S185-S195. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.348
Aukerman, M., & Chambers Schuldt, L. (2021). What matters most? Toward a robust and socially just science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S85-S103. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.406
Johnston, P. & Scanlon, D. (2021). An examination of dyslexia research and instruction with policy implications. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 70(1), 121-122. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1177/23813377211024625
Barber, A.T., Cartwright, K.B., Hancock, G.R., & Klauda, S.L. (2021). Beyond the simple view of reading: The role of executive functions in emergent bilinguals’ and English monolinguals’ reading comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S45-S64. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.385
Cervetti, G.N., Pearson, P.D., Palincsar, A.S., Afflerbach, P., Kendeou, P., Biancarosa, G., Higgs, J., Fitzgerald, M.S., & Berman, A.I. (2020). How the reading for understanding initiative’s research complicates the simple view of reading invoked in the science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S161-S172. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.343
Duke, N.K. & Cartwright, K.B. (2021). The science of reading progresses: Communicating advances beyond the simple view of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S25-S44. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.411
Hoffman, J.V., Hikida, M., & Sailors, M. (2020). Contesting science that silences: Amplifying equity, agency, and design research in literacy teacher preparation. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S255-S266. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.353
Stillman, J., & Schultz, K. (2021). NEPC Review: “2020 Teacher Prep Review: Clinical practice and classroom management.” Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved July 25, 2022, from http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/teacher-prep
Wyse, D., & Bradbury, A. (2022). Reading wars or reading reconciliation? A critical examination of robust research evidence, curriculum policy and teachers’ practices for teaching phonics and reading. Review of Education, 10(1), e3314. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3314
Huddleston, A.P. (2014). Achievement at whose expense? A literature review of test-based grade retention policies in U.S. school. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 22(18). Retrieved July 26, 2022, from http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v22n18.2014
Jasper, K., Carter, C., Triscari, R., & Valesky, T. (2017, January 9). The effects of the mandated third grade retention on standard diploma acquisition and student outcome over time: A policy analysis of Florida’s A+ Plan. Policy Analysis. Retrieved July 24, 2022, from https://theoptoutfloridanetwork.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/e782a-executivesummary.pdf
Hughes, J.N., West, S.G., Kim, H., & Bauer, S.S. (2018). Effect of early grade retention on school completion: A prospective study. Journal of Educational Psychology, 110(7), 974-991. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000243
National Council of Teachers of English. (2015). Resolution on mandatory grade retention and high-stakes testing. Retrieved May 19, 2022, from https://ncte.org/statement/grade-retention/
Robinson-Cimpian, J.P. (2015, December). Review of The effects of test-based retention on student outcomes over time: Regression discontinuity evidence from Florida. National Education Policy Center. Retrieved July 24, 2022, from https://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-NBER-retention
Having been an educator in South Carolina across five decades, starting in the early 1980s, I have witnessed dozens of challenges by parents concerning assigned books, topics discussed, and controversial ideas raised in class discussions.
In the first years of teaching, I had assigned John Gardner’s Grendel, a retelling of sorts of the Old English classic Beowulf narrative, to my advanced tenth grade American Literature class (knowing they would read Beowulf the next year and also as preparation for advanced students going to college in just a few years).
Grendel was a highly regarded novel, experimental and challenging but also often humorous and deeply thought provoking. Gardner was also one of favorite authors, and his work fit well into preparing students for the Advanced Placement program.
However, this novel became my first book challenge experience as a teacher. I learned a few things.
First, it didn’t take long—my students informed me—to discover that a few parents had conspired to challenge the book primarily as a way to challenge me.
Next, I found out quickly that a few parents did have the power for making decisions for everyone—since the book was pulled from required reading for all students as those two parents requested (although it remained on my classroom shelves and in our library).
While Gardner’s novel does include what some people would consider crude language and one very brief graphic scene, this parent challenge was entirely about ideology, not literary quality or even offensive material.
More broadly, I learned that what I taught would always be about the politics of whose rights matter, including the rights of everyone in a free democracy, parents, teachers, and of course (although this is too often ignored), students.
A few other moments stand out from my two decades teaching high school English.
Once, I had a heated debate with the school librarian about Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. By then, I was English Department chair and teaching AP Literature and Composition. Walker’s celebrated novel was included in that AP course (which is supposed to reflect college-level content and instruction).
The librarian had children who would be in that course, and she was adamant that The Color Purple was pornography, not literature. I calmly referenced several critical books on the shelves of the library, literary criticism on Walker and the novel.
Again, this was not really about the novel; this was about fundamentalist religious beliefs and racism.
Which brings me to maybe the most powerful censorship moment of my career.
I cannot stress this enough, but book bans and censorship are almost never about a book. Book bans and censorship are about some people imposing their ideologies on all people.
I was fortunate to have as a colleague the only Black teacher in our English Department, Ethel Chamblee. She was a powerful advocate for students and one of the kindest supporters of me as a teacher I have ever experienced.
While I was chair, Ethel and I worked to diversify our required reading lists for high school students in our English courses. Before we did so, the required works were all by white authors, and almost entire while men.
This process of revising the reading list was laborious because one reason the so-called canon remains white and male is that older works are often absent any potentially offensive language and all the sex is cloaked in metaphor (my students routinely failed to recognize what Daisy blossoming for Gatsby implied).
However, we eventually chose and approved adding Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston’s novel had been out of print until being fairly recently resurrected, notably as a recommended novel in AP programs.
The novel has some modest sexual content, but certainly isn’t as graphic as The Color Purple or even many of the classics we had required for decades.
During the first semester the book was taught, in Ethel’s classes, a parent complained. By then, I had established a process for parent complaints based on NCTE’s guidelines, including that anyone raising a concern had to complete a form and identify if they had or not read the book.
We had a committee of high school and middle school teachers who reviewed the complaints and issued a ruling.
Since the form demonstrated the parent had not read the book and since the parent boldly admitted they did not want their child reading a work by a Black author (a student sitting in a classroom taught by a Black woman, by the way), we quickly rejected the complaint and noted the student could be issued a different novel instead, but the class assignment remained with the novel on our required reading list.
Now the important part: The parent complaining was a leader in the local KKK.
Once again, I cannot stress this enough, but book bans and censorship are almost never about a book. Book bans and censorship are about some people imposing their ideologies on all people.
Should the bigoted ideology of the KKK determine what books teachers can teach and what books students can read for an entire public school?
Although there is an even harder question—should the bigoted ideology of the KKK be a prison for a child that just happens to be born into that family?
In 2022, book challenges are occurring across the U.S., repeating my own experiences above. These are attacks on freedom in the name of using public schools and public libraries to impose some people’s ideologies onto everyone.
One parent having a book removed from a school library makes decisions for all other parents and students. So who determines whose rights matter?
Academic freedom isn’t free as long as we allow the rights of a few to determine the rights of everyone.
While Paulo Freire is strongly associated with critical pedagogy, I often remind myself that Freire came to his philosophy of teaching and learning through his commitment to teaching adults to read and write.
The U.S. finds itself repeatedly in a state of crisis-paralysis because people periodically discover illiteracy and aliteracy among our students and even adults.
The irony of the nearly nonstop and melodramatic cries of “reading crisis” is that the need for literacy always remains vital for human autonomy, human dignity, and human freedom, but the crisis approach always fails that need.
The problem is that public fears around illiteracy and aliteracy are often overly simplistic, and then calls for solving the “reading crisis” are equally simplistic.
The current Reading War driven by the “science of reading” movement is once again repeating that failed dynamic, notably by claiming that the simple view of reading (SVR) is the current and settled reading science (it isn’t; see here).
And concurrent with this Reading War is a dramatic rise in censorship and book banning—yet another layer of misunderstanding reading and teaching/learning.
Since we seem destined to remain stuck in misreading reading, I want to share Freire’s The Importance of the Act of Reading as an ideal text to reconsider what reading is and why literacy is central to the human condition.
First and vital to understanding literacy, Freire begins by asserting “the practice of teaching—which is political practice as well.”
In other words, teaching reading and any reading done by students (or anyone) are inherently political acts—behaviors that necessarily place humans in situations of power imbalances.
Freire’s meditation on reading was originally presented as a talk in Brazil in 1981. Then, Freire challenged the mechanical and reductive view of reading:
Reading is not exhausted merely by decoding the written word or written language, but rather anticipated by and extending into knowledge of the world. Reading the world precedes reading the word, and the subsequent reading of the word cannot dispense with continually reading the world. Language and reality are dynamically intertwined. The understanding attained by critical reading of a text implies perceiving the relationship between text and context.
One side of the reading debate often focuses on isolated text-only approaches that argue for phonics-first and/or systematic phonics instruction for all before addressing comprehension (or critical comprehension, which is often only approached for some students deemed “advanced”).
Freire, however, grounds reading in the context of reading the world before beginning to decode text for meaning.
In short, context matters, and lived experiences form the basis of anyone acquiring reading and writing. This is key to understanding the problem with focusing exclusively or primarily on in-school reading and writing instruction.
If we in the U.S. value reading for all students and adults, we must acknowledge that addressing the lived experiences of all people—eliminating poverty, food insecurity, job insecurity, etc.—is an essential aspect of needed reading policy.
Simply changing how we teach reading will never achieve the goals we claim to have.
And in this talk, Freire used his own experiences to think aloud and complexly about reading:
I put objective distance between myself and the different moments in which the act of reading occurred in my existential experience: first, reading the world, the tiny world in which I moved; afterwards, reading the word, not always the word-world in the course of my schooling.
Yes, young students must make the transition from reading their world to reading the word, but those acts of reading cannot (and should not) be separated (think of the reductive practice of having students pronounce nonsense words).
Freire speaks not only to acquiring reading, but also to why we read—and this is a powerful refuting of the rise in censorship and book bans being imposed by some parents onto all parents and students:
As I became familiar with my world, however, as I perceived and understood it better by reading it, my terrors diminished.
It is important to add that reading my world, always basic to me, did not make me grow up prematurely, a rationalist in boy’s clothing. Exercising my boy’s curiosity did not distort it, nor did understanding my world cause me to scorn the enchanting mystery of that world. In this I was aided rather than discouraged by my parents.
It was precisely my parents who introduced me to reading the word at a certain moment in this rich experience of understanding my immediate world.
Like Freire, my journey to literacy was enthusiastically driven by my parents and their commitment to me having free access to essentially anything I wanted to read. And like Freire, I had that freedom significantly reinforced by teachers when I was in high school:
I would like to go back to a time when I was a secondary-school student. There I gained experience in the critical interpretation of texts I read in class with the Portuguese teacher’s help, which I remember to this day. Those moments did not consist of mere exercises, aimed at our simply becoming aware of the existence of the page in front of us, to be scanned, mechanically and monotonously spelled out, instead of truly read. Those moments were not reading lessons in the traditional sense, but rather moments in which texts were offered to our restless searching, including that of the young teacher, Jose Pessoa.
Reading and all literacy as well as formal and informal education are human ways of coming to understand the world—including the dark and light—so that we gain agency in our living, so that we are not paralyzed by fear and ignorance.
The why and how of reading, then, are not mere mechanics, but a complex process of critical comprehension:
Mechanically memorizing the description of an object does not constitute knowing the object. That is why reading a text taken as pure description of an object (like a syntactical rule), and undertaken to memorize the description, is neither real reading, nor does it result in knowledge of the object to which the text refers.
And regardless of the simplistic calls by Republicans and conservatives to “just teach” and to not be political, we must recognize that all teaching, learning, and literacy are political acts. As he did throughout his career, Freire denounced the banking concept of teaching that erases human agency and views students as empty piggy banks into which teachers deposit value:
First, I would like to reaffirm that I always saw teaching adults to read and write as a political act, an act of knowledge, and therefore as a creative act. I would find it impossible to be engaged in a work of mechanically memorizing vowel sounds, like in the exercises ba-be-bi-bo-bu, la-le-li-lo-lu. Nor could I reduce learning to read and write merely to learning words, syllables, or letters, a process of teaching in which the teacher fills the supposedly empty heads of the learners with his or her words. On the contrary, the student is the subject of the process of learning to read and write as an act of knowing and a creative act. The fact that he or she needs the teacher’s help, as in the pedagogical situation, does not mean that the teacher’s help annuls the student’s creativity and responsibility for constructing his or her own written language and reading this language.
Freire builds to this: “Reading the world always precedes reading the word, and reading the word implies continually reading the world.”
Reading is not simply decoding text or recognizing whole words. Reading is context, and reading requires context—a context that is far more than letters, sounds, words, sentences, and paragraphs.
Reading is a very human and individual act because “reading always involves critical perception, interpretation, and re-wrìting what is read,” which is how Freire wrote his talk before sharing it aloud as yet another act of re-reading in order to re-write.
Since 2006, England has been implementing mandatory systematic phonics for all students—a policy approach very similar to the “science of reading” (SOR) movement in the U.S.
Reading programs are not one-size-fits-all solutions to challenges related to reading achievement.
Intensive phonics instruction for beginning readers can raise phonics assessment scores in the short run, but greater care should be taken to not call phonics tests “reading improvement” and (once again) those early increases disappear as young readers develop (see the reading science on phonics in the policy brief linked below).
Here is the key chart:
Documentary Fail in US
A documentary on the “science of reading” movement is imminent, The Truth about Reading.
I was deeply skeptical when I first heard about the documentary (see Nancy Bailey’s concerns HERE).
However, I agreed in good faith to be interviewed this past summer, but now that I have seen the promotional trailer, I feel as if my initial skepticism was warranted.
The trailer is melodramatic (think Corridor of Shame, a documentary with good intentions but deeply problematic delivery), and continues to forefront journalists while misrepresenting teacher practice and reading science.
In short, beware.
Recommended
Thomas, P.L. (2022). The Science of Reading movement: The never-ending debate and the need for a different approach to reading instruction. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/science-of-reading
dr. p.l. (paul) thomas 