This is an open clarification to set the record straight about a recent co-authored article in The Reading Teacher (ILA): Stories Grounded in Decades of Research: What We Truly Know about the Teaching of Reading.
This clarification is being made in my name only and reflects only my perspective.
After the piece was posted online for early access, Nell Duke requested that her name be removed from a table in the article:
Since the term “science of reading” has a variety of contexts and meanings as I have documented in my own work, I appreciate any concern raised about misunderstandings or misrepresentations.
First, then, let me clarify that the intent of the “challenges” is grounded in the SOR movement making claims through journalists, such as Emily Hanford, and high-profile organizations, such as The Reading League, that the simple view of reading is “settled science”; see for example, the following:
To understand what the science says, a good place to start is with something called the “simple view of reading.” It’s a model that was first proposed by researchers in 1986 to clarify the role of decoding in reading comprehension. Everyone agrees the goal of reading is to comprehend text, but back in the 1980s there was a big fight going on over whether children should be taught how to decode words — in other words, phonics.
The simple view says that reading comprehension is the product of two things. One is your ability to decode words: Can you identify the word a string of letters represents? For example, you see the letter string “l-a-s-s” and you are able to sound it out and say the word….
The simple view is an equation that looks like this:
decoding ability x language comprehension = reading comprehension…
The simple view model was proposed more than 30 years ago and has been confirmed over and over again by research.
There Is a Right Way to Teach Reading, and Mississippi Knows It
To be brief, current research, including work by Duke on the active view of reading, challenges the claim that SVR is settled science:
The simple view of reading is commonly presented to educators in professional development about the science of reading. The simple view is a useful tool for conveying the undeniable importance—in fact, the necessity—of both decoding and linguistic comprehension for reading. Research in the 35 years since the theory was proposed has revealed additional understandings about reading. In this article, we synthesize research documenting three of these advances: (1) Reading difficulties have a number of causes, not all of which fall under decoding and/or listening comprehension as posited in the simple view; (2) rather than influencing reading solely independently, as conceived in the simple view, decoding and listening comprehension (or in terms more commonly used in reference to the simple view today, word recognition and language comprehension) overlap in important ways; and (3) there are many contributors to reading not named in the simple view, such as active, self-regulatory processes, that play a substantial role in reading. We point to research showing that instruction aligned with these advances can improve students’ reading. We present a theory, which we call the active view of reading, that is an expansion of the simple view and can be used to convey these important advances to current and future educators. We discuss the need to lift up updated theories and models to guide practitioners’ work in supporting students’ reading development in classrooms and interventions.
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. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.411
Other scholars have also challenged SVR as settled or adequate:
Theoretical models, such as the simple view of reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986), the direct and inferential mediation (DIME) model (Cromley et al., 2010; Cromley & Azevedo, 2007), and the cognitive model (McKenna & Stahl, 2009) inform the constructs and skills that contribute to reading comprehension. The simple view of reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986) describes reading comprehension as the product of decoding and language comprehension. The simple view of reading is often used to underscore the critical importance of decoding on reading comprehension; however, evidence suggests that the relative importance of decoding and language comprehension changes based on students’ level of reading development and text complexity (Lonigan et al., 2018). Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies demonstrate that decoding has the largest influence on reading comprehension for novice readers, whereas language comprehension becomes increasingly important as students’ decoding skills develop and text becomes more complex (e.g., Catts et al., 2005; Gough et al., 1996; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Proctor et al., 2005; Tilstra et al., 2009). However, the simple view of reading does not comprehensively explain all skills that influence reading comprehension, nor does it inform what comprehension instruction requires.
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. https://doi.org/10.1177/00144029211050860
In that context, I think including those scholars neither misrepresents their work nor misrepresents reading science.
As such, ILA’s statement seems to be a dangerous precedent for policing scholars and for eroding scholarship in the context of media, political, and market forces.
I remain convinced the work scholars are doing on the active view of reading is not only important for understanding reading science but for understanding that science is often a conversation and an on-going evolution, not something settled and not something to be wielded like a hammer.
Ironically, I have been advocating for the voices and work of those scholars in the removed table be given greater weight and time than journalists, politicians, and commercial interests. So I regret that they are no longer being highlighted.
Finally, I recognize that it takes more nuance and care than is often afforded on social media to acknowledge that the robust and on-going body of reading science, in fact, contradicts the stories being told under the label SOR in the media and by political and market interests.
But if you genuinely engage with the science, that is all the article is seeking to address.
dr. p.l. (paul) thomas 