I found this episode somewhat unsatisfying because it seems like it's very narrowly focused on one aspect of the "reading wars," one which is probably not the most important
In the US, by far the dominant reading instruction paradigm for a few decades has been "whole language," specifically involving the three-cueing approach to learning words. (75% of US K-2nd teachers, according to a Vox article by Rachel Cohen.) It's what's been overwhelmingly taught in teacher education programs. (Perhaps a future Studies Show episode could ask, "what is the evidence that supports whole language and three cueing instruction?") But the "science of reading" side of the US reading wars have been arguing that, in fact, for roughly 60% of students, "whole language" doesn't work. (The claim is that 40% of kids will become good readers no matter what method is used.)
What the "science of reading" folks are promoting includes phonics, but not exclusively. They have a "Simple View of Reading" which says that there are two equally important components to reading: word recognition and language comprehension. Phonics--or rather, "decoding", "phonological awareness," and "sight recognition" are all separate parts of word recognition. Language Comprehension includes vocabulary and background knowledge, among other things.
That is, the "science of reading" side is promoting something more like "a successful reading program will incorporate something like phonics to teach word recognition, combined with other strategies to build language comprehension."
I'm sort of surprised that this episode didn't mention the Sold a Story podcast at all--it's fair to say it (together with the rest of Emily Hanford's reporting over the past six years) is nearly singlehandedly responsible for turning the tide in the US against whole language, most visibly over the past year or so. I thought it made a strong case against "whole language."
There are a number of researchers (Mark Seidenberg, whose work heavily influenced Hanford, or Dominic Wyse, lead author of another UK-based phonics study) who seem to argue that phonics, or something like phonics, is important, but too much phonics at the expense of other literacy skills is detrimental.
In the US, phonics is right-wing-coded. Although conservatives had pushed phonics for a while, the polarization became stronger because of George W. Bush. He had a proposal called "Reading First," which included an emphasis on phonics. You might remember, when he heard the news of the planes hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11, he was in a Florida elementary school classroom reading "The Pet Goat." Which is a book that's a part of a phonics-based curriculum called Direct Instruction, and the school Bush was at was one of the handful of schools using that curriculum.
Okay I started typing and just kept typing and am not going to edit because I hate editing so hopefully this is not too long/unstructured.
I think this is a situation where the evidence is decently strong but strong in a quite different way. It's not necessarily that phonics works particularly well, it's that traditional Whole Language Learning doesn't. Tylenol does not do a good job helping with a sprained ankle, but it certainly works better than homeopathy. Even Bowers does not seem to even support Whole Language Learning. I think this distinction is a bigger deal in the US where strict WLL really swept through A TON of schools. Among other changes a switch to phonics-based education really rocketed Mississippi third-graders up reading exam ranks. I think it's generally valuable to compare policies against each other more directly, and in this case phonics appears to be the superior approach. I do think it's unfair to say that systematic v unsystematic phonics is the argument at least in the States. There's genuine WLL proponents who do not encourage phonics instruction at all. They don't necessarily discourage it, but I never learned phonics in any traditional sense in school.
That "traditional" part is relevant because WLL is extremely mushy. The benefit of the term "holistic" is that you can teach phonics but call it WLL and nobody will much bat an eye. You talk about this indirectly with the "unsystematic phonics" thing, but what does unsystematic mean? Is there even any reason to think that a kid gets less phonics instruction via unsystematic vs systematic phonics? Maybe phonics is how kids learn to read but we teach them SO much phonics that the difference in depth between systematic and unsystematic doesn't matter? In that case it'd still be learning mostly through phonics regardless of the program. It's so squishy as to lose all meaning. I am a meta-analysis skeptic in general, so I think looking at individual studies is significantly better given these limitations. I used to work in housing policy and I think about this in terms of rent control - doing a meta analysis of rent control is a waste of everyone's time because there is such a massive heterogeneity in the interventions that you are just flailing at the wind. I think this is quite common in meta analysis and why in general I view singular studies with strong methodologies much more favorably.
One final point: given the heterogeneity then phonics is arguably superior even if it is not universally better than WLL programs because it's more consistent. When it comes to education what we care most about it equity - we know that some teachers can teach some kids, but how to you best teach all kids? The Reading Wars are really about a relatively small subset of society. WLL is much squishier and gives much more room for lesson changes, which if phonics is always at least as good as WLL methods then those lesson changes only have downsides. That's always been one of the perceived benefits of phonics to me, the inter-school consistency in instruction. If in order to have these similar outcomes you need to require unsystematic phonics isn't that now systematic phonics?
I get the feeling everyone is asking the wrong question. Can we not assume that the majority of kids in affluent nations will learn how to read at a high functioning level almost regardless of the method? Then is the proper question more like, "which method is best for educating those who struggle learning with the methods that work for the majority?" And "what methods do not make things worse for these people?"
This was one of the points made in Sold a Story, the podcast which has done quite a lot in the past year or so to turn the tide of reading education in the US towards phonics and away from whole language: around 40% of kids will learn to read, whatever the instruction method, but there are large numbers of the remaining 60% who might have become nominally literate, but really struggled.
This couldd be on me, but after listening I think I'm unclear what the alternative to systematic phonics was. I heard whole language but I wasn't sure what that entails. Is phonics part of it at all? Or just not emphasized?
The podcast "sold a story" investigates various reading curricula in the States that use a three cueing model to help kids learn difficult words. I got the impression that those curricula were not well studied, and the studies that were done were by the companies themselves, and they were not very good. The teaching methods were based on some flawed assumptions about how people read--namely, they assume that good readers don't read every letter. The host talked to a researcher who said actually we've known for a long time that good readers do read every letter. Is this cueing thing the same as whole language? School districts in the US have a lot of latitude deciding how to teach and what to teach. I thought that sold a story made a very compelling case that the specific curricula that they looked at were potentially harmful, especially for kids who are struggling and don't have parents who can teach them at home or get private tutors. Nevertheless, the vast majority of kids still learn to read just fine.
Interesting experience listening tothis - it was the first of your shows where my prior assumption was that there would be good studies behind this subject - turns out it’s a lot more messy than that and will now adjust my thinking accordingly....
Totally agree with your general distrust of meta-analyses, Stuart. Then the question becomes, if we don't rely on meta-analyses, what do we rely on when we have to make policy choices? I don't have a good answer for that...
Just a short way in, enjoying as ever, and you’ve just mentioned Maslow’s hierarchy. I’d be really really keen to know how much evidence there is behind that…
I found this episode somewhat unsatisfying because it seems like it's very narrowly focused on one aspect of the "reading wars," one which is probably not the most important
In the US, by far the dominant reading instruction paradigm for a few decades has been "whole language," specifically involving the three-cueing approach to learning words. (75% of US K-2nd teachers, according to a Vox article by Rachel Cohen.) It's what's been overwhelmingly taught in teacher education programs. (Perhaps a future Studies Show episode could ask, "what is the evidence that supports whole language and three cueing instruction?") But the "science of reading" side of the US reading wars have been arguing that, in fact, for roughly 60% of students, "whole language" doesn't work. (The claim is that 40% of kids will become good readers no matter what method is used.)
What the "science of reading" folks are promoting includes phonics, but not exclusively. They have a "Simple View of Reading" which says that there are two equally important components to reading: word recognition and language comprehension. Phonics--or rather, "decoding", "phonological awareness," and "sight recognition" are all separate parts of word recognition. Language Comprehension includes vocabulary and background knowledge, among other things.
That is, the "science of reading" side is promoting something more like "a successful reading program will incorporate something like phonics to teach word recognition, combined with other strategies to build language comprehension."
I'm sort of surprised that this episode didn't mention the Sold a Story podcast at all--it's fair to say it (together with the rest of Emily Hanford's reporting over the past six years) is nearly singlehandedly responsible for turning the tide in the US against whole language, most visibly over the past year or so. I thought it made a strong case against "whole language."
There are a number of researchers (Mark Seidenberg, whose work heavily influenced Hanford, or Dominic Wyse, lead author of another UK-based phonics study) who seem to argue that phonics, or something like phonics, is important, but too much phonics at the expense of other literacy skills is detrimental.
In the US, phonics is right-wing-coded. Although conservatives had pushed phonics for a while, the polarization became stronger because of George W. Bush. He had a proposal called "Reading First," which included an emphasis on phonics. You might remember, when he heard the news of the planes hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11, he was in a Florida elementary school classroom reading "The Pet Goat." Which is a book that's a part of a phonics-based curriculum called Direct Instruction, and the school Bush was at was one of the handful of schools using that curriculum.
Okay I started typing and just kept typing and am not going to edit because I hate editing so hopefully this is not too long/unstructured.
I think this is a situation where the evidence is decently strong but strong in a quite different way. It's not necessarily that phonics works particularly well, it's that traditional Whole Language Learning doesn't. Tylenol does not do a good job helping with a sprained ankle, but it certainly works better than homeopathy. Even Bowers does not seem to even support Whole Language Learning. I think this distinction is a bigger deal in the US where strict WLL really swept through A TON of schools. Among other changes a switch to phonics-based education really rocketed Mississippi third-graders up reading exam ranks. I think it's generally valuable to compare policies against each other more directly, and in this case phonics appears to be the superior approach. I do think it's unfair to say that systematic v unsystematic phonics is the argument at least in the States. There's genuine WLL proponents who do not encourage phonics instruction at all. They don't necessarily discourage it, but I never learned phonics in any traditional sense in school.
That "traditional" part is relevant because WLL is extremely mushy. The benefit of the term "holistic" is that you can teach phonics but call it WLL and nobody will much bat an eye. You talk about this indirectly with the "unsystematic phonics" thing, but what does unsystematic mean? Is there even any reason to think that a kid gets less phonics instruction via unsystematic vs systematic phonics? Maybe phonics is how kids learn to read but we teach them SO much phonics that the difference in depth between systematic and unsystematic doesn't matter? In that case it'd still be learning mostly through phonics regardless of the program. It's so squishy as to lose all meaning. I am a meta-analysis skeptic in general, so I think looking at individual studies is significantly better given these limitations. I used to work in housing policy and I think about this in terms of rent control - doing a meta analysis of rent control is a waste of everyone's time because there is such a massive heterogeneity in the interventions that you are just flailing at the wind. I think this is quite common in meta analysis and why in general I view singular studies with strong methodologies much more favorably.
One final point: given the heterogeneity then phonics is arguably superior even if it is not universally better than WLL programs because it's more consistent. When it comes to education what we care most about it equity - we know that some teachers can teach some kids, but how to you best teach all kids? The Reading Wars are really about a relatively small subset of society. WLL is much squishier and gives much more room for lesson changes, which if phonics is always at least as good as WLL methods then those lesson changes only have downsides. That's always been one of the perceived benefits of phonics to me, the inter-school consistency in instruction. If in order to have these similar outcomes you need to require unsystematic phonics isn't that now systematic phonics?
I get the feeling everyone is asking the wrong question. Can we not assume that the majority of kids in affluent nations will learn how to read at a high functioning level almost regardless of the method? Then is the proper question more like, "which method is best for educating those who struggle learning with the methods that work for the majority?" And "what methods do not make things worse for these people?"
This was one of the points made in Sold a Story, the podcast which has done quite a lot in the past year or so to turn the tide of reading education in the US towards phonics and away from whole language: around 40% of kids will learn to read, whatever the instruction method, but there are large numbers of the remaining 60% who might have become nominally literate, but really struggled.
This couldd be on me, but after listening I think I'm unclear what the alternative to systematic phonics was. I heard whole language but I wasn't sure what that entails. Is phonics part of it at all? Or just not emphasized?
The podcast "sold a story" investigates various reading curricula in the States that use a three cueing model to help kids learn difficult words. I got the impression that those curricula were not well studied, and the studies that were done were by the companies themselves, and they were not very good. The teaching methods were based on some flawed assumptions about how people read--namely, they assume that good readers don't read every letter. The host talked to a researcher who said actually we've known for a long time that good readers do read every letter. Is this cueing thing the same as whole language? School districts in the US have a lot of latitude deciding how to teach and what to teach. I thought that sold a story made a very compelling case that the specific curricula that they looked at were potentially harmful, especially for kids who are struggling and don't have parents who can teach them at home or get private tutors. Nevertheless, the vast majority of kids still learn to read just fine.
Interesting experience listening tothis - it was the first of your shows where my prior assumption was that there would be good studies behind this subject - turns out it’s a lot more messy than that and will now adjust my thinking accordingly....
Totally agree with your general distrust of meta-analyses, Stuart. Then the question becomes, if we don't rely on meta-analyses, what do we rely on when we have to make policy choices? I don't have a good answer for that...
Just a short way in, enjoying as ever, and you’ve just mentioned Maslow’s hierarchy. I’d be really really keen to know how much evidence there is behind that…
Love the Pod gents. Question - should I be getting ad reads on my premium subscriber feed?