First Edition

FACT-CHECKING
THE SCIENCE
OF READING

OPENING UP THE
CONVERSATION

Robert J. Tierney
P David Pearson
© Robert J. Tierney and P David Pearson, 2024

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Figure 2: Scarborough’s Reading Rope (p.57) is reprinted with permission of Guilford Press.
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S.L. (2023). Stories grounded in decades of research: What we truly know about the
teaching of reading. The Reading Teacher, 77(3), 392-400.
FACT-CHECKING
THE SCIENCE
OF READING

OPENING UP THE
CONVERSATION

Robert J. Tierney
P David Pearson

VANCOUVER - BERKELEY
2024
Acknowledgements

There is an element of uncertainty with the writing and publication of

this monograph. From the outset we found ourselves wrestling with the merits
of a project directed at fact-checking the Science of Reading. Our goal was
to delve into the credibility of the evidence enlisted for the claims being made
and the mandates being imposed. Our hope was that we could do so in a
manner that was neither biased nor negative but represented a form of fair
witnessing with an eye to supporting more discerning decisions by educators
and increased civility in a field often characterized as contentious.
We overcame our reluctance with support from one another and
several colleagues whose own engagements with these matters have been
inspirational. We would like to send special thanks to several individuals who
served as models for us and provided vital support. They include: Maren
Aukerman, Richard Beach, Sam Bommarito, Brian Cambourne, Sam DeJulio,
Gina Cervetti, Nell Duke, Barbara Flores, Rachael Gabriel, Judith Green, Jim
Hoffman, George Hruby, Peter Johnston, James King, Carol Lee, Allan Luke,
Dixie Massey, Lesley Morrow, David Reinking, Victoria Risko, Emily Rodgers,
Donna Scanlon, Peter Smagorinsky, Norman Stahl, Diane Stephens, and David
Yaden. We hope that they see merit to what we have done.
We are also indebted to the University of British Columbia and the
University of California Berkeley and for two incredible associates—Caroline
Hamilton who provided editorial and research expertise and Logaine Navascués
who did the lay out of the material working with Anthony Whalen at Marsworks
that hosts the book (https://literacyresearchcommons.org).
Finally, this project demanded a great deal of back and forth between
the two of us amidst other challenges that arose in our lives. Our friendship
and respect for one another were vital as were the patience and support of our
partners—Barbara and Terry.
Table of Contents

PREFACE IX
INTRODUCTION
Historical Precedents 1
The Current Situation 5
Taking Stock of the SoR: Fact-Checking 8
Claims Suggesting that the Science of Reading is Settled 9
The Overall Claim: The Science of Beginning Reading
Instruction is Settled 12
Methodological and Epistemological Diversity
in Educational Research 15
Situated Scholarship 17
Modesty as a Core Research Value 19

EVALUATING THE SETTLED CHARACTER OF KEY SOR CLAIMS

CLAIM 1
Explicit systematic phonics instruction is the key curricular
component in teaching beginning reading 21
CLAIM 2
The Simple View of Reading provides an adequate theoretical
account of skilled reading and its development over time 38
CLAIM 3
Reading is the ability to identify and understand words
that are part of one’s oral language repertoire 46

V
 CLAIM 4
Phonics facilitates the increasingly automatic identification
of unfamiliar words 50
CLAIM 5
The Three-Cueing System (Orthography, Semantics, and
Syntax) has been soundly discredited 55
CLAIM 6
Learning to read is an unnatural act 67
CLAIM 7
Balanced Literacy and/or Whole Language is responsible for the low or
falling NAEP scores we have witnessed in the U.S. in the past decade 78
CLAIM 8
Evidence from neuroscience research substantiates the efficacy offocus on
phonics-first instruction 88
CLAIM 9
Sociocultural dimensions of reading and literacy are not
crucial to explain either reading expertise or its development 100
CLAIM 10
Teacher education programs are not preparing teachers
in the Science of Reading 112
CONCLUDING STATEMENT 123
REFERENCES 145

VI
List of Figures and Tables

INTRODUCTION
Table 1: U.S.-Based Initiatives 3
Table 2: Initiatives in the U.K. and Australia 4
Table 3: Key Sources and Indicators of Science of Reading (SoR)
Advocacy across Media 5
Table 4: SoR Basic Pedagogical Claims 10
Table 5: Settings, Policies, Methods, & Theories Informing Basic
SoR Claims 11

CLAIM 2
Figure 1: Duke & Cartwright’s (2021) Active View of Reading 42
Figure 2: Scarborough’s Reading Rope (2001) 44

CLAIM 5
Figure 3: The Three-Cueing System 55
Figure 4: Rendition of Rumelhart’s (1977) Interactive Model 59
Figure 5: Rendition of Gough’s (1972) One Second of Reading
Model 60
Figure 6: Rendition of Rumelhart & McClelland’s (1986) Parallel
Distributed Processing Model of Reading 61

VII
 CLAIM 7
Figure 7: Percentage of Fourth-Grade Students Scoring Basic Level or
Above on Reading on the National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP), 1992–2019 (Reinking, Hruby, & Risko) 81
Figure 8: NAPLAN Mean Results by Student Year, 2008-2022
(ACARA, 2022) 82
Figure 9: NAPLAN Mean Results for Year 3 Students Indigenous
& Non-Indigenous, 2008-2022 (ACARA, 2022) 83
Figure 10: PISA Mean Reading Literacy Scores and Distribution
of Student Performance by Country
(De Bortoli, Underwood, & Thomson, 2023) 85

CLAIM 8
Figure 11: Dyslexia: Going from Text to Meaning
Adapted from Shaywitz and Shaywitz (2020) 90
Figure 12: Word Retrieval in Typical and Dyslexic Readers
Adapted from Shaywitz and Shaywitz (2020) 90
Figure 13: Activated Neural Systems in Nonimpaired and Dyslexic
Readers. Adapted from Shaywitz and Shaywitz (2020) 91
Table 6: Reading Processes Distributed across the Brain
(Compton-Lilly et al., 2023) 95

VIII
Preface

The two of us have been in the field of literacy education research

across a number or major developments. David started as a 5th grade
classroom teacher in Porterville, California; Rob, as an elementary teacher in
Australia. Throughout our careers as educators, we have remained connected
to classrooms in our efforts to support learners, teachers, parents and school
personnel in achieving their literacy goals. Our engagements have resulted
in publications in leading journals and various outlets, and have been widely
cited by educators. We have also served in numerous leadership capacities,
including editing key journals and reference works. As a result, we have
witnessed the ebb and flow of curricular movements through many cycles.
Especially salient has been the periodic swing of the pendulum between
curriculum-centered and child-centered philosophies of teaching and
learning reading. The difference between these two perspectives is nuanced,
but important:
• Curriculum-centered approaches ensure that all students get an
opportunity to learn that which authoritative agencies and individual
judges deem to be “the right stuff.”
• Child-centered approaches ensure that each student gets access to
the right—and unique—mix of opportunities and supports that build upon
their lived experiences and meet their needs to achieve their potential
and key outcomes.

Equally salient has been the frustration educators feel when they reflect on
the fact that, despite our best and most sincere efforts, many students still
fail to acquire the literacy abilities (particularly the reading competence) they
need to be successful in school and everyday life. It is undoubtedly these
frustrations that lead to the third salient feature of this literacy landscape:
The never-ending quest to find panaceas or fail-safe approaches to teaching
reading—in other words, the best methods that will ensure that every student
becomes a reader. While these tensions and swings in perspectives are
concerned with the whole span of reading development, their primary focus is

IX
Preface

on the earliest stages of learning to read. There they center on the question of
whether the earliest emphases should be on cracking the code (i.e., through a
systematic phonics approach) or on reading for sense-making (i.e., where the
code is taught as one of many components in a comprehensive or balanced
approach that enables novice readers to understand and interpret the texts
they encounter).
Each of us has written about these matters in the past (Pearson, 1989,
2000, 2004; Tierney, 1992, 2001, 2009, 2018), most notably in a book we
co-authored (Tierney & Pearson, 2021) about the waves of research and
practice that have ebbed and flowed in the literacy education field. But never
have we witnessed anything like this current push for a return to foundational
skills that flies under the banner of the “Science of Reading” (SoR). We
became involved in the current debate in a reactive rather than a proactive
way, as we witnessed the deluge of commentary in books, journal articles,
and print, broadcast, and social media—all culminating in a common plea to
return to the systematic teaching of phonics as the first and foremost teaching
obligation of schools. The more we read, listened, and viewed, the more we
recognized the same arguments, terrain, and recommendations from earlier
iterations of the debate—often framed using military metaphors, such as the
Reading Wars (DeJulio et al., 2024; Kim, 2008; Pearson, 2004). But we also
noticed something new in the current SoR version: A self-assured attitude
among those carrying the SoR flag, who assert a clarity and a confidence
about the return to phonics that leaves little if any doubt about what the
research demonstrates about early reading. Their consistent message is that
phonics, first and fast, is settled science—and it is high time to get on with the
policies and legislative action needed to ensure that every child in the U.S.
(as well as Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and any other English-
speaking country) is provided direct access to the code as the first step in the
process of becoming a reader.
Our initial reaction was to say to ourselves, “Have they been reading
the same research we have?” Why? Because our reading of the research—
across the many reports, syntheses, and consensus documents produced
since the landmark year of 1967 (the publication year of Jeanne Chall’s book,
Learning to Read: The Great Debate, as well as that of Bond and Dykstra’s

X
 Preface

First-Grade Studies)—prompted us to reach a very different conclusion,

something like this:
The inclusion of code-based instruction, as a part of a comprehensive
early reading curriculum, yields consistently positive and moderately-sized
effects on isolated measures of word reading—but inconsistent and small
effects on comprehension.

This reading of the findings led us to reach a much more nuanced policy stance:
A code-emphasis component is warranted as a part of a comprehensive
curriculum—namely, one that orchestrates synergies among a range of
necessary developmental facets, including:
1. Foundational skills (including letter-sound knowledge and phonemic
awareness);
2. Language (especially the language of schooling);
3. Knowledge (especially knowledge of the natural, social, and cultural
worlds in which we live);
4. Writing (so that students benefit from moving back and forth
between oral and written language registers);
5. Motivation (so that students are highly engaged in their reading);
and
6. Relevance (so all students can capitalize on their cultural and
personal assets in learning to read).

Whereas SoR advocates were granting 3 cheers to phonics, we were proposing

1.5, maybe 2. This discrepancy between our reading of the research and the
readings we encountered in both the professional literature and public and
social media led us to take a closer look at the circulating discourse, with the
intention of making a public statement about these differences—addressing
why they exist, and what conclusions we reached after weighing the arguments
and evidence behind SoR claims.
Undoubtedly, for both of us, the precipitating event was Emily Hanford’s
(2022) release of the six-part podcast, Sold a Story, broadcast by American
Public Media beginning in late 2022. Hanford’s series motivated us to accelerate
our response for many reasons—two of which were most pressing to us:

XI
Preface

1. A consistent misinterpretation of the relevant research findings; and

2. A mean-spirited tone in her rhetoric, which bordered on personal
attacks directed against the folks Hanford considered to be key
players in what she called the Balanced Literacy approach to
teaching early reading.

In particular, Hanford identified Kenneth Goodman, Marie Clay, Lucy Calkins,

and the team of Gay Su Pinnell and Irene Fountas as culpable in advancing
approaches to teaching early reading that included elements beyond decoding.
Goodman was singled out for his contributions to a child-based theory of
reading called “Whole Language,” which encouraged novice readers to focus
on reading for meaning—a process that might include drawing on context or
other elements to predict a word, instead of first decoding the print through
phonics. Lucy Calkins and the team of Fountas and Pinnell were assailed
as creators of commercially-popular published reading programs built on
Whole Language, or Balanced Literacy, principles. Marie Clay was criticized
for promoting, among other practices, reliance on the three-cueing system.
Hanford clearly and unambiguously lay the blame for what she described as
a crisis in America’s reading performance at their collective feet. Both her
substantive errors and personal attacks accelerated our motivation to take on
this review of the whole SoR movement.
As fate would have it, Rob had been asked to present a paper on the
socio-cultural chasm in the Science of Reading at the American Educational
Research Association’s (AERA) Annual Meeting in Chicago in April 2023. Rob
invited David to co-author the paper with him, and that provided the catalyst
for this effort. In our discussions about how to frame our response, we were
taken with the recent trend in print journalism in which news reporters and
columnists fact-check the claims made by politicians about policy proposals
and personal achievements. The general approach is to:
1. State the claim, preferably in the politician’s own words;
2. Unpack the argument and evidence (allegedly the facts) provided in
support of the claim;
3. Evaluate the validity of the “facts” (as it turns out, they are often
other claims rather than facts) in evidence, as well as how those
facts are used in the argument to support the claim;
XII
 Preface

4. Reach a conclusion about the validity of the claim, especially the

degree to which it can be supported by the evidence.

We wondered whether we could apply the same approach in addressing the

many claims made by those researchers and policy advocates aligned with
the SoR. Thus, we began the process. Early on, we settled on a tentative title,
Fact-Checking the Science of Reading, and we expected that the simple
4-part approach to analyzing each claim we encountered would serve us well
in writing the essay.
Well, it did and it didn’t. On the one hand, we were able to locate a
provisional set of claims—statements like:
• All students benefit from an early emphasis on the code.
• Learning to read is an unnatural act.
• Reading is best defined as recognizing and understanding words that
are a part of one’s oral language repertoire.
• The three-cueing system has been debunked.
• Good readers don’t guess, and poor readers shouldn’t.
• Social, cultural, and contextual factors may influence learning more
broadly, but their influence does not shape the basic act of reading.
• Reading performance is on the decline, as evidenced by national
assessments, and these declines can be attributed to neglect of
phonics.
• Teacher education programs have been delinquent in not preparing
teachers to teach phonics.

But when we tried to apply the four-part structure, we realized that it did
not lend itself to the kind of careful, nuanced, and deliberate consideration
of the conceptual, methodological, and political issues that lay just beneath
the surface of each claim. Hence, while this book does fact-check a set of
important claims that are circulating in the public sphere, it is more about the
issues that these claims bring to the table than it is about the validity of the
claims themselves. For example, the section on whether learning to read is a
natural act brings up several contrasts, such as:

XIII
Preface

• Learning to speak versus learning to read in one’s home language.

• School-based acts of literacy versus everyday acts of literacy at home
and in the community.
• Learning to read versus learning many other things, such as how to add
or ride a bike; the capitals of Europe; the causes of the Civil War; etc.

Similarly, the relatively straightforward claim about the alleged three-

cueing system masks a complex array of theoretical (e.g., the linguistic and
epistemological resources that shape the basic socio-cognitive processes
involved in reading) and practical issues (e.g., what advice should we
offer novice or low-performing readers when they “get stuck” on words
or meaning?). When we learned that some of most prestigious reading
researchers (e.g., Rayner et al., 2001) defined reading in a highly constrained
manner (as identifying and understanding words that are a part of one’s oral
language repertoire), we realized that in that single statement, they removed
reading from any obligation to account for most if not all of the social, cultural,
and contextual factors that the learning sciences have implicated as central
to all facets of learning, including learning to read.
Things got even more complicated after Rob traveled to Chicago to
deliver the AERA paper. Following that conference, we collaborated with the
International Literacy Association to plan, and eventually deliver, a webinar,
“Fact-checking the Science of Reading.” It took place about 5 weeks after
the AERA presentation, in late May of 2023. We then did a second webinar
(a kind of fact-checking 2.0) on the same set of ideas for Rutgers University
in September.
What this meant for us as authors—and what it means for you as
readers—is that each of the sections of this book turned out to be more
an extended conversation about the issues surrounding a specific claim
than a direct and simple “fact-checking” of one statement. We get to the
fact-checking, but in most cases only after, or sometimes while, unpacking
those issues. What began as a “collage” of mini-essays extended to a longer
version, involving a form of iterative fact-checking as we dug deeper into each
claim.

XIV
Introduction

The reading field has been a site of passionate debate about

curriculum, teaching, and learning (Chall, 1967; Johns, 2023; Mathews,
1966; Pearson, 2004) since the mid-19th century. Some of the most salient
questions in dispute have included:
• Is reading a quest for meaning, or a search for the code (to map letters
onto sounds)?
• Is it phonics, or whole words?
• Is it part-to-whole, or whole-to-part?
• Does reading come to us as naturally, as with oral language?

First raised by scholars such as Horace Mann in the 19th century (see
Mathews, 1966), these questions and more have persisted for nearly 200
years. They have ebbed and flowed with shifts in the leading philosophical
views (e.g., child-centered versus curriculum-centered) and research foci
(e.g., basic processes versus instructional practices) that have guided the
teaching and learning of reading across different eras.

Historical Precedents
These issues reached a crescendo in the United States in the 1960s,
when two seminal studies dominated discussions of beginning reading. In one
of its early efforts to fund experimental research, the U.S. Federal government
(via the Cooperative Research Branch of the then Office of Education) funded
what came to be called the First-Grade Studies (Bond & Dykstra, 1967)—a
search for the best method of teaching beginning reading. This undoubtedly
remains the largest—before or since—direct comparison of various methods
of teaching reading in grade one (including various phonics- or code-based
approaches). The findings from this project led to the conclusion that no one
method exhibited consistent advantages over others (Bond & Dykstra, 1967),
suggesting that we would be better off examining the all-important role of
teachers in their delivery of a range of approaches.

1
Introduction

In that same year, Jeanne Chall’s (1967) classic book, Learning to

Read: The Great Debate, was published. Like the First Grade Studies, Chall
emphasized the critical role of the teacher. In a famous conclusion, Chall
pleaded for both an effective method (code-emphasis) and an effective
teacher: “But a good method in the hands of a good teacher—that is the
ideal” (p. 309). Unlike the First Grade Studies, Chall’s book acknowledged
the wide range of approaches that emphasized cracking the code as the first
order of business in early reading curricula. Chall didn’t just address the issue
of the best method for teaching beginning reading; she dealt with a number of
other issues as well, including: a) Content, and addressing enduring themes
in the human experience; b) More challenging texts at every grade level; (c)
New tests, both single-component skill tests and assessments that require
the orchestration of many skills; and (d) Increasing the quality, relevance, and
transparency of reading research (see Pearson, 2000, p. 163). Nevertheless,
the major recommendation was still to ensure that an early code-emphasis
was infused into all early reading programs—a priority that would endure
across the decades.
Despite the popularity of Chall’s book, both at the time of its publication
and in the half century to follow, it did not settle the debate about the most
effective method of teaching beginning reading. Instead, it would take many
government-sponsored reports, legislative actions, scholarly volumes, and
grassroots movements—and 60 years—to get us from Chall’s version of
the debate to today’s. During that period, the field witnessed the advent
of psycholinguistics; the cognitive revolution; socio-cultural and critical
perspectives examining and supporting learner- and meaning-centered early
literacy development; and several pendulum swings toward or away from
the emphasis on mastery of the code. Although meaning-centered work
dominated this period (i.e., that focused on basic processes and instructional
practices), support for a code emphasis did not diminish—especially among
psychologists and educators with a strong commitment to understanding and
improving teaching and learning for both young and vulnerable readers.
This was apparent in the numerous attempts to reach a definitive
conclusion on the matter of code emphasis—a persistent thread throughout

2
 Introduction

research syntheses, consensus processes, and mandates. As seen in

Table 1, the U.S. based initiatives included several large-scale studies and
publications. On the empirical front, the National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development (NICHD; see Foorman et al., 1998) also sponsored an
influential quasi-experiment during the revival of code approaches in the mid-
1990s; later, the U.S. Department of Education sponsored two large-scale
quasi-experimental studies during the No Child Left Behind, Reading First era
(Gamse et al., 2008; Jackson, et al., 2007), comparing code-emphasis with
more broadly-based, business-as-usual approaches.

Table. 1
U.S.-Based Initiatives

1985 Becoming a Nation of Readers. The report of the Commission on

Reading. National Academy of Education, National Institute of
Education, & Center for the Study of Reading (Anderson, Hiebert,
Scott, & Wilkinson)

1990 Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print (Adams)

1998 Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children: A Report of the

National Research Council (Snow, Burns, & Griffin)

2000 Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read

(NRP & NICHD)

2010 Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy

Panel (NELP& NICHD)

The US was not unique in these initiatives; similar debates emerged

elsewhere. For example, in the U.K. and Australia, the ebb and flow of
discussions pertaining to phonics and language matters was evidenced in
various government reports in the 60s and 70s—as well as those from recent
years (Table 2).

3
Introduction

Table 2
Initiatives in the U.K. and Australia

1966 Standards and Progress in Reading

(The Morris Report on Reading in England and Wales;
see Morris)

1967 Children and their Primary Schools

(The Plowden Report on Reading in the U.K.; see CACE)

1975 A Language for Life

(The Bullock Report on Language and Reading; see Bullock)

2005 Teaching Reading: Report and Recommendations

(see Rowe and the National Inquiry into the Teaching of
Literacy, Australia)

2006 Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading

(The Rose Report on the Teaching of Early Reading in the
U.K.; see Rose)

Consistent across these efforts to identify the best approach for teaching
early reading is the argument that the explicit and systematic teaching of
phonics (defined as the cipher that helps students map letters onto speech
sounds) serves as a key component of comprehensive, well-integrated and
orchestrated reading program. If and when phonics instruction is approached
in this explicit and systematic way, students will experience greater success in
early reading. Most of the reports also emphasize the important role of learning
letter names as well as phonemic awareness training, usually in conjunction
with the teaching of letter-sound correspondences. While the U.K.’s Rose
Report (Rose, 2006) went further in recommending synthetic phonics (e.g.,
teaching the parts of the word, such as “buh-ah-tuh,” before blending into
the whole word, “bat”), the others stopped at “explicit and systematic” in
their phonics recommendations. All of these recommendations came with
the qualification that the results were more substantial on measures of word
reading than comprehension, but that did not deter champions of phonics
from mobilizing these claims for policy endorsements.

4
 Introduction

The Current Situation

Since about 2016, these debates have taken a turn toward a more strident
insistence on making the code the centerpiece of early reading instruction. Flying
under the banner of the Science of Reading (SoR), code-based advocates—
some from the reading research community and some from the policy advocacy
community—have accused the education establishment of resisting the “settled
science” by supporting curricula based on tenets of Balanced Literacy and/or Whole
Language. Within the ongoing public debates across social media and the popular
press, we have witnessed a confluence of forces, all pointing to a greater early
emphasis on cracking the code that links written to oral language (see Table 3).

Table 3
Key Sources and Indicators of Science of Reading (SoR)
Advocacy across Media

• Concerns over meeting the needs of struggling readers, especially those

diagnosed with dyslexia (e.g., International Dyslexia Association, 2020)
have suggested that teaching systematic phonics is the most urgently
needed reform (Buckingham, 2020).
• A resurgence of interest in the line of government-sponsored reports on
preferred approaches to early reading instruction.
• Articles in major print and broadcast media (e.g., The New York Times,
The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Times, Education Week,
The Globe and Mail, and National Public Radio, among others).
• Social media blogs, videos, and podcasts advocating a return to phonics-
first, most influentially those of broadcast journalist Emily Hanford (e.g.,
2018, 2022)
• Books by eminent psychologists unpacking the scientific research on the
nature of the reading process, such as:
• Wolf (& Stoodley, Illus., 2008): Proust and the Squid: The Story and
Science of the Reading Brain
• Dehaene (2009): Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read.
• Willingham (2017): The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to
Understanding How the Mind Reads.
• Seidenberg (2017): Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why
So Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It.
• Johns (2023): The Science of Reading: Information, Media, and Mind in
Modern America.
5
Introduction

The combination of SoR forces has been remarkably effective in shaping

public opinion and conversations about the superiority of phonics (over
Whole Language or Balanced Literacy approaches to instruction) as well as
regional and national legislation and policy. As a result, a growing number
of legislatures in jurisdictions across the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, and
Australia have been mandating educational policies that require schools and
teachers to make code-based instruction the first priority in beginning reading.
The expectation of both scholars (e.g., Buckingham, 2016; 2019a,
2019b; Seidenberg, 2017; Rayner et al., 2001) and policy advocates
(Hanford; 2018; Moats, 1999; 2000; 2020), sometimes implicit and
sometimes explicit, is that upon entry to schooling, children can use their
existing language and knowledge expertise to comprehend text—once the
words have been identified and understood. Deeming phonemic awareness
and the ability to recode print into speech as paramount, SoR advocates
express concerns about the insufficient preparation of teachers to support
beginning and struggling readers (Ellis et al., 2023). Lobbying for changes
to teacher preparation programs and instructional practices, they insist that
teachers learn how to teach phonics more effectively.
They do so based on claims that the science of reading is “settled,”
and that teaching alphabetic skills is the essential starting point for beginning
reading instruction and the naming of words. Moreover, SoR advocates lean
on common rationales and key works by eminent scholars to explain why
word learning is the most important goal for novice readers. Leading the list
are:
• Gough & Tumner’s (1986) Simple View of Reading;
• Chall’s (1983) Stages of Reading Development;
• Perfetti & Hart’s (2002) Lexical Quality Hypothesis;
• Share’s (1995) account of phonics as a self-teaching mechanism; and
• Ehri’s (2014; 2020) views about orthographic mapping.

Stemming from this work, systematic phonics has been positioned by

authorities, policymakers, and pundits across various countries as the mainstay
of the early reading curriculum. Similar to earlier eras, advocates for a code
emphasis have been quick to add that while phonics is a necessary condition

6
 Introduction

for early reading success, it is, by itself, not sufficient, and must therefore be
complemented by curricular foci on language, especially academic language,
as well as knowledge of the natural, social, and political world in which we live
(Castles, Rastle, & Nation, 2018; Rose, 2006; Seidenberg, 2023b; Wexler,
2023). Interestingly, however, our own perusal of the policies and media
representations suggests to us that even when the calls for policy reform
include greater emphasis on language development, knowledge acquisition,
and comprehension, the popular discussion has focused almost exclusively
on a return to phonics as the most foundational of skills for early success
Phonics, in the public, social, and academic media, has become first among
equals.
In several states in the U.S., the legislation has been so detailed as to
specify that certain educational practices may not be taught in schools (see
Olson, 2023, for an account of passed or proposed legislation). These include
practices such as the three-cueing system, which encourages students to use
both meaning and orthographic cues to unlock unknown words. Some states
have gone as far as to ban the three-cueing system from being taught as a
pedagogical strategy in teacher education programs. Key to these debates
over method is the starting point of reading—and what counts as reading.
Based upon the intricacies of the alphabetic system of writing (e.g., Castles,
Rastle, & Nation, 2018; Seidenberg, 2017; Wolf & Stoodley, 2008), both
phonemic awareness and letter-sound knowledge are deemed essential for
learning to read. Meaning is viewed more as a product of decoding rather
than as a means of supporting it. As Castles, Rastle, & Nation (2018) stated:
If a child learns to decode that symbol-to-sound relationship, then that
child will have the ability to translate printed words into spoken language,
thereby accessing information about meaning. (p. 9)

These scholars build their approach using a mix of sources, including research
on effective curricular approaches, the history and the evolution of the alphabet
system, and neurological evidence about the areas of the brain that are
activated in response to print stimuli. At the same time, they make claims from
national and international test results—speculating that the ebb of test results
and the shortfall in improvements for struggling readers might be ascribed

7
Introduction

to the failure of other, often meaning-based, approaches. Specifically, they

point to Whole Language and Balanced Literacy—sometimes claimed to
be Whole Language in disguise (Moats, 2000)—as the likely culprits in
these alleged declines (e.g., Hanford, 2018; Moats, 2020).
While not wanting to diminish the merits of the overriding goal of
meeting the needs of students—especially those struggling to learn to
read—the nature of these efforts, their underlying assumptions, and their
adoption are sobering if critically examined against and held accountable
to a fuller consideration of research. With the support of some parent
groups and the media, advocates of systematic phonics have been an
influential force in shaping legislation and policy in over 40 states in the
U.S. (Olson, 2023). In the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K.,
SoR campaigns have led to mandates for major curriculum changes for
beginning reading, based upon claims that phonics is key to reading
development. The sometimes explicit, sometimes implied accompanying
claim is that alternative approaches to reading instruction—including Whole
Language (Altwerger, Edelsky, & Flores, 1987; Goodman & Goodman,
1982), Reading Recovery (Clay, 1993; 1998; Pinnell, DeFord, & Lyons,
1988), Guided Reading (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996), and Balanced Literacy
(Calkins, 2019; Calkins et al., 2022; Salinger & Weinberg, 2021)—have
contributed to reading failures. Specifically, according to SoR advocates,
these approaches promote misguided emphases (e.g., enlisting meaning
based cueing systems) and espouse faulty assumptions (e.g., reading is
natural) stemming from work by Frank Smith (1971/2012, 1973, 2015)
and Ken Goodman’s model of reading as a psycholinguistic guessing
game (Goodman, 1967, 1968, 1969).

Taking Stock of the SoR: Fact-checking

Certainly, these developments in our knowledge—about the need for more
emphasis on the code—merit taking stock and fact-checking to assess
the validity of the claims. To that end, we will examine the assumptions, the
evidence, and the reasoning used to support the claims that are prevalent
in SoR discourse. Our fact-checking is not exhaustive, but it does address

8
 Introduction

what we consider key issues driving the controversies involved in this new
instantiation of the Reading Wars (Castles, Rastle, & Nation, 2018; Kim,
2008; Pearson, 2004).
Our goal is to raise questions and to engage all parties with a
stake in this conversation—educators, parents, scholars, legislators, the
public, and the media—in finding a path forward to meet the needs of all
students, their parents, and their teachers in the diverse communities that
comprise the societies in which we live. To these ends, we are attempting
to understand the views of those who align themselves with the SoR. At
the same time, we are holding them to account—asking what evidence
and warrants exist for their claims, and whether their arguments merit the
influence they currently have over national and international discussions,
legislation, and mandates for teaching reading.
We hope that our comments contribute to opening conversations—
consistent with the concluding views expressed in Adrian John’s (2023)
recently published history of the Science of Reading:
We should look much further and more deeply, not only at the science of
reading, but at the reading of science—or rather, at the act of reading in
science. One way to resolve the alleged crises of the scientific enterprise
may lie in an understanding of those practices. (p. 427)

Claims Suggesting that the Science of Reading is Settled

So, what are the claims that emanate from scholars and policy
advocates who align themselves with the Science of Reading (SoR)? A
recurring position is that important aspects of reading development are
settled science. The most common, and surely the most significant in
terms of its current influence on policy in many states (Olson, 2023) and
other English-speaking countries (Rose, 2006; Rowe et al., 2005), are
the claims about pedagogy (Table 4).

9
Introduction

Table 4
Systematic phonics instruction is the key to effective beginning
reading instruction.

Related claims include:

• The Simple View of Reading (Reading Comprehension is the
product of Decoding and Listening Comprehension, or RC = D x
LC) provides an adequate theoretical account of skilled reading
and its development over time.
• Reading is best defined as the ability to identify and understand
words that are part of one’s oral language repertoire.
• Phonics facilitates the identification of unknown words that, with
multiple exposures, become immediately recognizable at sight,
thus permitting readers to devote more and greater cognitive
resources to making and monitoring meaning.
• The Three-Cueing System (Orthography, Semantics, and Syntax)
has been soundly discredited.
• Learning to read is an unnatural act.

Other assertions are not so much claims about the nature, development, or
instruction of reading as they are complements to these more basic claims.
They tend to be more about the settings, policies, research methods, or
theoretical perspectives that inform the more basic claims (Table 5).

10
 Introduction

Table 5
Settings, Policies, Methods, & Theories Informing Basic SoR
Claims

• Balanced Literacy and/or Whole Language approaches bear the

responsibility for the low or falling National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP) scores the U.S. witnessed in the past decade or so.
• Recent neuroscience research bolsters our confidence in the central role
of phonological processing and phonics instruction in supporting early
reading development.
• Broad contextual perspectives, such as sociocultural models of reading
and literacy, are not needed to explain reading development. They may
bear on literacy and learning, broadly construed, but not on reading.
• Literacy teacher education programs are not preparing teachers in the
Science of Reading.

We address the question of just how settled each claim is, but first we deal
with the broader question of what it means to possess, or even talk about,
“settled science.”

11
Introduction

The Overall Claim: The Science of Beginning Reading Instruction is

Settled
In their volume examining the generalizability of research, Ercikan and
Roth (2009) raised what may be the most important question about classroom
instruction: Which matters more—the mean (what works “on average”) or the
variation (what it would take to find approaches for even the outliers in a
classroom)?
The teacher, to design appropriate instruction for individual students, is
interested precisely in the variation from the trend, that is, she is interested
in the variation that in statistical approaches constitutes error variance….
we need to provide her with forms of knowledge that are simultaneously
sufficiently general to provide her with trends and with forms of knowledge
that are sufficiently specific to allow her to design instructions to the specific
needs expressed in the variation from the trend. (p. 5)

Such a tempered position seems counter to the political reality—the spread of

legislation mandating practice—but not inconsistent with recent scholarship
focused upon interrogating the “Science of Reading.”
When a wide range of scholars were recently given an opportunity to
critically examine the Science of Reading in a special collection of Reading
Research Quarterly, most of the participating authors asserted, suggested,
or implied that we are “not there yet”—in terms of being able to offer firm,
scientifically unambiguous guidance to teachers about teaching and learning
for diverse classrooms and learners. A number of the authors (e.g., Alexander,
2020; Cervetti, et al., 2020; Graham, 2020; Hoffman, Hikida, & Sailors,
2020; Seidenberg, Borkenhagen, & Kearns, 2020; Shanahan, 2020; Woulfin
& Gabriel 2020) expressed restraint in linking practice too tightly to the basic
science of reading (see also Yaden, Reinking, & Smagorinsky, 2021).
For example, Mark Seidenberg—a vocal advocate for enhancing
our professional commitment to science as the backbone of understanding
reading and its development (e.g., Seidenberg, 2017)—and his colleagues
(Seidenberg, Borkenhagen, & Kearns, 2020) seemed more set upon
suggesting future directions, needs, and hypotheses than providing
prescriptions. Indeed, they advocated a broad set of efforts, including multiple

12
 Introduction

cross-disciplinary endeavors; studies of teaching practices; avoidance of

a limited focus (e.g., on phonics); more studies on what might be done in
different contexts to enhance early learning, and a more inclusive focus on
all learners; and an examination of the systems needed to implement change.
Ironically, in spite of the restraint called for—even by scientists aligned with the
SoR—policy and legislation marches on, often citing research that scholars
regard as not quite ready for policy implementation (Seidenberg, 2023c).
While we endorse, even champion, the notion that research contributes to
improving our understanding of literacy development and how to support it through
curriculum, we do so cautiously and carefully. Certain practices with select students
in particular situations have merit. But it is a step too far to assume that all students
would profit in the same ways from high-fidelity implementation of particular
practices; evidence from the crucible of the classroom is required before any blanket
mandates are implemented. Research and best practices represent possibilities
for consideration rather than mandates that might override varied needs, interests,
backgrounds, and development pathways of students. Particularly problematic are
extrapolations to practice derived from research comparing the practices of good
and poor readers; they often leave the unwarranted conclusion that we should
teach all poor readers to do exactly what good readers can do. We believe that
all research can—or should—do is provide hypotheses for careful classroom
design, further research, and experimentation. Our position should not be viewed
as discounting research findings. Both of us have spent our careers conducting
and reporting on research conducted following a wide range of methodological
traditions and in a diverse array of school settings. We believe that research is
one of our most important tools for evaluating theories and for documenting the
efficacy of instructional practices. But so too are cultural practices that are involved
in our approaches to and uses of research as guides for theory development and
practices. As Johns (2023) stated:
Much that the modern science of reading investigates and everything that
it claims to know about the practice, turns out to be cultural “all the way
down.” This is all the more apparent as the science and history of this field
converge on a shared understanding—an understanding that reading is
indefinitely multiform and unsettled. It is shaped by cultural experience, by
history itself. (p. 426).

13
Introduction

Our position is that practice should be guided by research. However, we

would quickly add, we should always rein in the tendency to overgeneralize
from research to practice—particularly from basic research to practice.
Rather, a kind of dialectical conversation should arise out of discussions of
the generalizability of educational research. The general must always respect
its limits by recognizing variability in the particulars. Thus, we need an ongoing
conversation that is dialogical rather than monological. We regard setting (the
total context of teaching) as the starting point for addressing, celebrating,
and taking advantage of the diversity students bring to classrooms. Teaching
practices, it follows, should be responsive to the students and settings in
which teachers teach and students learn. This principle aligns with what
statisticians call interaction effects—the observation that the effect of an
intervention may not generalize across learners, tasks, or sites.
These issues are not restricted to education. In medicine, for example, the
generalizability of results from carefully controlled research is frequently tempered
in applications to patients’ different circumstances. Doctors prepare for the
possibility that “every case will vary from the norm.” In medicine, the appreciation
of the science is yoked to an understanding of its modesty, and a recognition
that medical science is always unsettled—thereby avoiding overgeneralization
and inviting critique and counterevidence. Practices in medicine could provide an
aspirational model for education. A convergence of developments in healthcare
have led to what the World Health Organization has described as a rebalancing
of rights and authority for determining health care protocols with patients and
communities in particular health care settings (WHO Regional Office for the
Western Pacific, 2007). This reflects a concern regarding what Helfand, Aguilar-
Gaxiola, and Selker (2009) have characterized as overgeneralized medicine:
When we prescribe these treatments widely even though we know little
about them, we practice “overgeneralized medicine;” for most patients, we
do not even know the likelihood of benefit in the short run, or anything about
the benefits and risks in the long term. “Overgeneralized medicine” persists
because physicians are usually willing to prescribe widely even when little
is known about the actual long-term benefits and harms. In many cases, it
takes years for it to become evident that the supposed benefits were less
impressive than we hoped, and the harms worse than expected. (p. 444)

14
 Introduction

Shifts in approaches to healthcare also reflect a recognition of medical

support as formative and transactional, tied to ethics of care, reciprocity, and
respect. In promoting the needs of the individual patient in their community
context, they position medical practice within an ethic of cultural safety. As
Curtis et al. (2019) suggest:
…cultural safety encompasses a critical consciousness where healthcare
professionals and healthcare organisations engage in ongoing self-reflection
and self-awareness and hold themselves accountable for providing
culturally safe care, as defined by the patient and their communities, and as
measured through progress towards achieving health equity. (p. 16)

Culturally responsive (Gay, 2000), culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings,

1995), and culturally sustaining (Paris, 2012) may well be the educational
counterparts of Curtis et al.’s notion of culturally safe medical practice.
Likewise, there are similar practices in law, suggesting refrain in generalizing
findings across different sites or circumstances. A key notion in law, for
instance, is precedence as distinct from universal principles. Findings from
other cases might inform, but should not be applied without regard to context-
specific differences (Pattinson, 2015).

Methodological and Epistemological Diversity in Educational

Research
We recognize the role for carefully controlled experimental studies
in education, but we also see the need for a more dynamic, iterative, and
inclusive approaches to educational research and development—those
that capitalize on many ways of knowing and many ways of collecting and
analyzing evidence. Pearson (2004, 2020), in discussing the unintended
consequences of various skirmishes in the Reading Wars, has argued strongly
for a methodological compatibilism (Howe & Eisenhart, 1990), based on the
idea that the problems and dilemmas we face in education are too important
and too complex to leave in the hands of any one methodological tool.
Our claim is that “it takes a full and complementary satchel of methods,
lenses, and epistemologies to make a science of reading” (Pearson, 2021,
p. 99). We accept the premise (see National Research Council, 2002) that

15
Introduction

complexity demands complementarity in our search for explanation and

improvement. Surely, then, we will want—even demand—randomized field
trials for policy guidance, especially on pedagogical matters.
We demand such trials for vaccines and new medical or pharmaceutical
practices; we should demand no less for education (Shanahan, 2020). But
those randomized trials in medicine are the last 10% of the story of science.
We must not privilege that small portion of the scientific journey over the other
90%, in medicine or education. We also need:
• Careful descriptions of phenomena in their natural settings (which
biologists, chemists, and physicists have done for centuries);
• Examinations of natural correlations among variables in a particular
setting (so we can judge the cumulative effect of persistent covariation);
and
• Natural experiments (where serendipity does by circumstance what
experiments do by intention).
To accomplish these goals, we also need other tools in the satchel, including:
• Data gathered in the name of theory-building and evaluation (not unlike
some of the basic research driving the SoR). This is to ensure a rich
pipeline of insights about how cognition interacts with culture and
context to promote the magic of reading;
• Design experiments—those planful, incremental approaches to
examining features of interventions in real learning situations (to ensure
that we understand how things work “out there,” (see Hoffman, Hikida, &
Sailors, 2020); and
• Qualitative forays into the worlds of teaching and learning and
implementation, using tools such as ethnography and critical discourse
analysis. Specifically, such tools would help to unearth:
- Plausibilities up front;
- Consequences (both intended and unintended) on the back end;
- Up close and personal accounts of practices, to provide better
explanations of why things do and don’t work—and, when they work,
what “active ingredients” propelled them; and
- Situated understandings and generalizations about how and why
things work the way they do.

16
 Introduction

But all these tools will be useless if we cannot, or do not, accept the
fundamental premise—that the role of research, in a democracy that espouses
commitments to equity, opportunity, and justice, is to improve the quality of
the lives for all of its citizens.

Situated Scholarship
Additionally, and in pursuit of equity, opportunity, and justice, all
educational research needs to be well-situated in the contexts within which it
is conducted. It should be built upon the premise that situation matters. Most
importantly, it must recognize the social and cultural circumstances and engage in
research befitting partnerships or respectful consultations, rather than detached
objectivity and standardized deployment. Consistent with the model Schnellert,
Butler, and Higginson (2008) have proposed, we opt for research-into-practice
efforts that are driven less by top-down mandates or implications from the
research and driven more by engaging multiple stakeholders in coordinated,
and/or collaborative inquiry as a means to support teacher decision making
and practices. These collaborative practices should apply to the full range of
school- or community-based research, including testing practices; observational
procedures; measurements; analyses; and the interpretation of the results, as
well as their use en route to taking stock and implementing change.
We need to extend our research—by moving beyond basic research
conducted in laboratory settings, or drawing from studies of adults to address
teaching and learning for different students in different situations. To such ends,
we envision a more interactive and situated approach: Transformative research
and development endeavors in classrooms, clinical settings, or communities,
enlisting ethical tenets that extend beyond objectivity and anonymity to respect,
relevance, and reciprocity (Lather, 2004; Luke, 2011; Smith, 2000; Smith, 1999,
2005). Shanahan (2020), Allington (2007), and Stephens (2023) all offer this
advice: Curriculum and pedagogy deserve their own science, lest we end up
limiting the warrants for our claims about classroom practices to basic research
that has only the remotest of links to practice. There is a need to nurture a science
of reading development that seeks evidence-based findings across at least three
layers of diversity—diverse learners experiencing diverse pedagogies in diverse
settings.

17
Introduction

The translation of research findings to classroom practice is not

straightforward, even in tightly controlled studies of teaching, as evidenced
by attempts to achieve fidelity across classrooms. Practices are apt to vary
across classrooms and schools as teachers strive to respond to the needs
of their students. At minimum, variability ought to be documented in some
manner, either through fidelity checklists or careful descriptions of what
actually happened inside classrooms (see Taylor et al., 2000; Taylor et al.,
2002). We should also consider models that embrace variability—rather than
regard it as error variance that compromises the analyses and generalization
of treatment effects. The first step in achieving such a goal would involve an
orientation to ongoing inquiry that is iterative rather than settled—grounded
in the particulars of classrooms, and open to the variability of learners, their
teachers, and their learning experiences.
A variability-oriented view of educational science is compatible with the
recent and powerful developments in the learning sciences—what have come
to be referred to as design studies (Gutiérrez et al., 2017; Gutiérrez & Penuel,
2014; Hoffman 2023; Sailors & Hoffman, 2019; Simon, 1969/1996, 1973;
Van den Akker et al., 2006). Gutiérrez and Penuel (2014) describe design
research in critical spaces of transformation that reinvent experimentation,
transforming the traditional fixed approaches with readily measurable
outcomes into more open-ended socially embedded experiments that involve
ongoing mutual engagement (p. 20). As Hoffman (2023) recently suggested,
one of the keys of design research involves “seeing everyday practices in
new (and critical) ways and then using design research to explore the ‘what
could be’” (p. 478). For Hoffman, like Gutiérrez & Penuel, such studies form
an essential contrast with large-scale studies because they are small in scale
and locally situated; context is not a nuisance to be “eliminated or controlled
but studied for its influence. The power of design research comes in the
interaction of researchers across different contexts engaging with similar
challenges and similar design paths” (Hoffman, 2023, p. 478).
For teacher educators and historians in our field, such an orientation
should be considered more reassuring than radical. This represents forms
of research that recognize the diversity of learners and the saliency of their
socio-cultural experiences. These views align with research on teaching and

18
 Introduction

the overriding influence of the teacher variable in the teaching of reading. They
complement the tenets of action research and reflective practice espoused
by Schon (1983), Kincheloe (1991), and others. In a recent book chapter
(Tierney & Pearson, 2023), we have recommended a move away from the
notion of best practice to best practicing to emphasize the principle that
practices
…are evolving understandings not stable prescriptions. They are aspirations,
not facts. Yesterday’s best practice must give way to today’s, and today’s,
to tomorrow’s. They require constant adaptation and updating. (p. 462)

We also echo García and Kleifgen’s (2020) commitments, in their discussions

of multilingual teaching and learning, that educators “must respond to the
specific interaction, in the specific place, and with the specific interlocutors
and objects in which the spontaneous performance happens” (p. 13).
Essentially, what all these efforts have in common is a commitment to
a paradoxical principle: If your goal is to know what works in general, start by
figuring out what works in a specific setting, with a particular set of students,
teachers, and local cultural resources. Regardless of whether you are testing
hypotheses, observing to unearth patterns of behavior, seeking answers, or
just refining questions, research involves discovery. A useful metaphor for
cutting to the core of this perspective comes from legal discourse. Cases
are adjudicated not just on legal principles, but also on legal precedents. The
precedents are particular cases that serve as exemplars to guide future legal
judgments; in fact, it is commonplace to use the name of the case (Plessy
v. Ferguson; Miranda; Roe v. Wade; Dobbs) to refer to the principle, as well
as to ground it in particulars. We think the idea of precedents of particularity
might be a useful way to think about what is needed to improve the impact
of educational research on practice. Such a venture would certainly highlight
the importance of situating our scholarly principles in particular settings.

Modesty as a Core Research Value

These thoughts on situatedness lead directly to our last note regarding
just how settled science is. Any general views of a Science of Reading—or
any other research endeavor that aspire to wear the mantle of science—need

19
Introduction

to adopt an appropriately modest and skeptical view of just how certain and
settled scholarship ever is. We agree with Reinking, Hruby, and Risko (2023)
view that the notion of a “settled science is an oxymoron”:
Scientists are never entirely comfortable that their current data and
explanations are fully explanatory. They are continually testing the veracity
and utility of current theories, findings, and interpretations. They look for
anomalies in their data, and they set an extremely high bar for any conclusions
that might approach certainty. What attracts them to science is that nothing
is entirely settled. They live in the realm of perpetual ambiguity and what-ifs.
Scientists seek final truths only in the abstract, knowing that the best they
can do is reduce ignorance.
…Scientists aren’t satisfied with determining what works or not. They want
to understand how, why, and in what circumstances different approaches
may or may not be a good fit. Multidimensional continua, not binaries,
are the stuff of science, especially when science is applied to real-world
decisions in the realm of instructional practice.
…Science, used this way, is not a means of inquiry toward better
understanding or to obtain better results, but something that requires
uncritical deference and genuflection. It suggests that the aim of science
is to reach a state where no further understanding is possible, where no
more questions need to be asked, where no more evidence needs to
be considered, where no other perspectives or interpretations can be
reasonably offered, and where anyone who thinks otherwise is a misguided,
if not a heretical denier of immutable truth. Such perspectives are not
science, especially in matters of teaching and learning, which are always
embedded in an incredibly complex social system that entails cultural
norms, values, and beliefs, including issues of equity and justice. (p. 123-
124)

It is neither necessary nor wise to regard some science as settled. Instead of

touting that science is settled, we look at how its history documents an inherently
provisional endeavor—always prepared to be modified, or even overturned, by the
next challenge from empirical evidence or the next shift in theoretical paradigms.

20
Evaluating the settled character of key SoR claims

We turn now to the specific claims emanating from the SoR discourse
of “settled science.” As a reminder, we review each claim in three steps: a)
Unpacking the evidence presented for its validity; b) Offering our reading of
that evidence; and c) Concluding with a revised version of the claim that we
can support. In terms of the sequence of claims, we considered many options—
but settled on using our perceptions of their prominence in the current SoR
discourse, either in scholarly or policy contexts, as our standard. To operationalize
the prominence standard, we examined their ubiquity in books, professional
journals, the popular press, and social media.

21
 CLAIM 1

Explicit systematic phonics instruction is the key

curricular component in teaching beginning reading.

The Evidence Marshalled in Support of the Claim

A prototypical example of the evidence for phonics appears in an
article for Reading Research Quarterly, in an issue dedicated to analyses of
the Science of Reading (SoR). In a section of the article entitled, “Compelling
evidence in the science of reading” (p. S270), Petscher and colleagues
(2020) provided a clear and definitive endorsement of the role of decoding
instruction in the learning and teaching of reading:
Since the publication of the National Reading Panel’s (2000) report, and
supported by subsequent research (e.g., Foorman, Beyler, et al., 2016;
Gersten, Jayanthi, & Dimino, 2017), it is clear that a large evidence base
provides strong support for the explicit and systematic instruction of the
component and foundational skills of decoding and decoding itself. That
is, teaching students phonological awareness and letter knowledge,
particularly when combined, results in improved word-decoding skills.
Teaching students to decode words using systematic and explicit phonics
instruction results in improved word-decoding skills. (p. S271)

They went on to identify how these findings about decoding bear out in
studies of specific populations:
Such instruction is effective both for monolingual English-speaking
students and students whose home language is other than English (i.e.,
dual-language learners; Baker et al., 2014; Gersten et al., 2007), as well
as students who are having difficulties with learning to read or who have an
identified reading disability (Ehri, Nunes, Stahl, & Willows, 2001; Gersten
et al., 2008). (p. S271)

This endorsement is typical of many we found in our perusal of both scholarly

and policy advocacy literature. Looking across many endorsements of early

22
 Claim 1

phonics, many different syntheses of studies are cited, but the single most
cited evidentiary source for this stance on reading is the meta-analysis in the
Alphabetics section of the National Reading Panel (NRP) Report, commissioned
by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
(2000). Bowers (2020), emphasizing its influence, noted that the NRP report
has been cited over 24,000 times. The chair of the Alphabetics subgroup,
Linnea Ehri, along with colleagues Nunes, Stahl, and Willows, summarized
that section’s findings in the Review of Educational Research (Ehri et al.,
2001)—a piece that also subsequently became a popular evidentiary source
for the efficacy of phonics instruction (with over 1500 citations as of August
2023). Other common but less frequently cited sources include the What
Works Clearinghouse practice guide by Gersten et al. (2008), and a 2016
What Works Clearinghouse report on foundational skills to support reading in
grades K-3, co-authored by Foorman and colleagues (Foorman et al., 2016).
Increasingly, secondary syntheses (syntheses or analyses of syntheses)—
such as the 2018 piece in Psychological Science in the Public Interest by
Castles et al., the critical analysis by Bowers (2020), or the recent postmortem
of the furor spawned by the Bowers piece (Brooks, 2023)—are also gaining
favor as authoritative documentary sources.
There are some differences in the approaches and perspectives
published in other countries. However, many of those reports have similar
antecedents, including claims of unmet student needs; indications of falling
national test results; and suggestions that certain educational approaches
contribute to these declines. Likewise, there have been similar leanings in
terms of recommendations, drawn from a comparable definition of reading
from advisors with shared views.

Our Reading of the Evidence and the Claim

As suggested in our introduction to this monograph, debates over the
efficacy of phonics-first approaches were lively and controversial matters in
the 1960s. They retreated in the two decades following, as comprehension,
text structure, and knowledge took center stage in conversations and policies
about reading (Pearson & Cervetti, 2017). The 1990s ushered in new debates
and a flurry of activity regarding the role of phonics in early reading. In the late

23
Claim 1

1980s, the U.S. federally-funded Center for the Study of Reading was asked
to develop a report on beginning reading, which resulted in Adams’ (1990)
volume, Beginning to Read. This was followed by a major NICHD-funded
quasi-experimental evaluation of three levels of phonics—directed code,
embedded code, and implicit code (Foorman et al., 1998). The results, which
showed small to moderate advantages for direct code on within-word tasks,
were widely used in the media, including several Education Week articles
(Manzo, 1997, 1998a, 1998b), and in state policy settings (see Manzo,
1998c; Taylor et al., 2000), seeming to claim a clear mandate. This prompted
a short but sharp controversy (Taylor et al., 2000) about the role of research
in warranting changes to policy and practice. The next major developments
were a National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council report,
Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow, Griffith, & Burns,
1998), followed, in short order, by the NRP and NICHD (2000) report,
Teaching Children to Read. All of these efforts concluded that, according to
the research, systematic phonics instruction provides a reliable advantage
over non-systematic, opportunistic phonics (e.g., synthetic approaches,
such as matching phonemes to graphemes, then blending to pronounce the
word), especially on word reading outcomes. They also recommended policy
changes that would feature systematic phonics as one key component (but
certainly not the only component) in a comprehensive reading/language arts
curriculum.

The National Reading Panel. In 1997, the NICHD was asked by Congress
to assemble a National Reading Panel of “experts” to assess the status of
research-based knowledge, including the effectiveness of various approaches
to teaching children to read. The Panel divided into subgroups, generating
seven broad questions to guide their work. Other questions and subgroups
focused uponRelated to claims about the best approach to beginning reading
instruction, the first two of these key questions were:
• Does instruction in phonemic awareness improve reading?
• If so, how is this instruction best provided?
• Does phonics instruction improve reading achievement?
• If so, how is this instruction best provided? (p. 1-3)

24
 Claim 1

Other questions and subgroups focused upon the role of fluency

instruction, comprehension instruction, vocabulary instruction, independent
reading, technology, and teacher education. To address these first two
questions on phonemic awareness and phonics, the Alphabetics subgroup of
the NRP, chaired by Linnea Ehri, engaged in a selective research review, meta-
analysis. They restricted their examination of the research to peer-reviewed
articles governed by traditional and positivistic experimental standards—
namely, quasi-experimental and randomized experimental studies. In doing so,
they excluded naturalistic studies (e.g., descriptive studies, ethnographies,
and case studies of young learners). Among the exclusions were studies of
print awareness; emergent reading and writing behaviors, engaging texts for
a range of purposes—all topics and perspectives that would be difficult to
study within experimental frameworks. Reviews, including our own, are never
totally objective, nor are they inclusive or apolitical. To some extent, they reflect
the studies included for consideration and the conceptual predispositions
of the reviewers. The NRP report was no exception. The Panel’s selective
review of traditional experimental studies adopted the lens of meta-analysis
in the hopes of gleaning, where possible, convergent findings. In terms of
beginning reading, the focus of the Alphabetics subgroup review—driven by
their guiding questions—was the influence of teaching phonemic awareness
(sensitivity to the structure of sounds in spoken language) and phonics
(learning letter-sound correspondences and patterns) on both word reading
and comprehension. These approaches to word learning became their primary
concern.
To draw conclusions from the set of experimental studies sampled,
the NRP employed, where possible, meta-analyses, using effect sizes (i.e.,
the average difference, measured in standard deviations, between competing
treatments) as the common metric. Their goal was to determine the most
consistently effective approach to teaching early reading. While they reported
in a tempered fashion that their analyses had yielded positive results for the
effects of phonemic analysis on the identification of unknown words and the
pronunciation of pseudowords, they reported no advantages of PA instruction
in terms of transfer to reading comprehension. As they reservedly concluded:

25
Claim 1

PA training does not constitute a complete reading program. Although

the present meta-analysis confirms that PA is a key component that can
contribute significantly to the effectiveness of beginning reading and spelling
instruction, there is obviously much more that needs to be taught to children
to enable them to acquire reading and writing competence. PA instruction
is intended only as a critical foundational piece. It helps children grasp
how the alphabetic system works in their language and helps children read
and spell words in various ways. However, literacy acquisition is a complex
process for which there is no single key to success. Teaching phonemic
awareness does not ensure that children will learn to read and write. Many
other competencies must be taught for this to happen. … Whether the
benefits are lasting will likely depend on the comprehensiveness and
effectiveness of the entire literacy program that is taught. (NRP & NICHD,
2000, pp. 2-6–2-7)

The conclusions about phonics instruction, are similarly couched as cautious

advice, with many qualifications:
…it is important to emphasize that systematic phonics instruction should
be integrated with other reading instruction to create a balanced reading
program. Phonics instruction is never a total reading program. In 1st grade,
teachers can provide controlled vocabulary texts that allow students to
practice decoding, and they can also read quality literature to students
to build a sense of story and to develop vocabulary and comprehension.
Phonics should not become the dominant component in a reading program,
neither in the amount of time devoted to it nor in the significance attached.
It is important to evaluate children’s reading competence in many ways,
not only their phonics skills but also their interest in books and their ability
to understand information that is read to them. By emphasizing all of the
processes that contribute to growth in reading, teachers will have the best
chance of making every child a reader. (NRP & NICHD, 2000, p. 2-97)

In 2001, Ehri and her colleagues published a peer-reviewed version of ostensibly

the same data that formed the basis of the NRP phonics meta-analysis. However,
they reached a more optimistic, and much less qualified, conclusion:

26
 Claim 1

Systematic phonics instruction helped children learn to read better than

all forms of control group instruction, including whole language. In sum,
systematic phonics instruction proved effective and should be implemented
as part of literacy programs to teach beginning reading as well as to prevent
and remediate reading difficulties. (Ehri et al., 2001, p. 393).

Missing, in comparison with the NRP report, is the language about the other
pedagogical supports and processes, in concert with phonics, that contribute
to the development of competent, committed readers. After examining the
conclusions from the 2000 National Reading Panel and the 2001 Ehri et al.
article, Bowers (2020)—perhaps the most vocal critic of the NRP report—
noted that a more apt conclusion from the evidence provided would be
something much more modest. As he suggested: “Systematic phonics did
provide a moderate short-term benefit to regular word and pseudoword
naming, with overall benefits significant but reduced by a third following 4–12
months” (p. 687).

Reanalyses of the NRP Data. The data from the NRP meta-analysis on
phonics have been reanalyzed on several occasions. Among the earliest were
2003 and 2006 attempts by Camilli and his colleagues to refocus the analysis
on systematic (i.e., the treatment) versus unsystematic phonics, the latter of
which Camilli took to be the status quo in U.S. classrooms (Camilli, Wolfe,
& Smith, 2006; Camilli, Vargas, & Yurecko, 2003). Camilli et al. coded all of
the treatment conditions across all of the analyzable studies as systematic
phonics, unsystematic phonics, or no phonics. Additionally, Camilli et al. added
codes for moderator variables not used in the NRP—namely, the regular use
of language activities (shared writing or reading), tutoring, or basal programs.
In the 2003 analysis, they did replicate the advantage for systematic phonics,
but at a 50% reduction in effect size compared to the NRP. Additionally, they
found reliable moderating effects for both language activities and tutoring,
with both effect sizes larger than those for systematic phonics.
In their 2006 reanalysis, using multilevel modeling, they found
even smaller effect sizes for systematic phonics. In 2008, Stuebing et al.
reanalyzed the same Camilli datasets. In their critique, they noted that the

27
Claim 1

different outcomes of the Camilli work, in comparison with the findings of

the NRP, was not due to the use of slightly different data sets. Camilli et al.
(2008) responded that same year with another defense of their findings and
methodology.
In 2006, Torgerson, Brooks, and Hall, noting that the NRP had
included studies that used both randomized and nonrandomized designs,
carried out a reanalysis that corrected what they considered to be errors in
applying inclusion criteria. The net effect was that while the word-reading
effects remained, no comprehension or spelling effects proved significant.
When Bowers (2020) examined the NRP report alongside the reanalyses
conducted by Camilli et al. (2003, 2006) and Torgerson and colleagues
(Torgerson, Brooks, & Hall, 2006), he concluded:
…a careful review of the NPR (2000) findings show that the benefits of
systematic phonics for reading text, spelling, and comprehension are weak
and short-lived, with reduced or no benefits for struggling readers beyond
grade 1. The subsequent Camilli et al. (2003, 2006) and Torgerson et al.
(2006) reanalyses further weakens these conclusions. (p. 691)

Other Major Syntheses. In addition to these reanalyses, several scholars

(Adesope et al., 2011; Galuschka, et al., 2014; Hammill & Swanson, 2006;
Han, 2010; McArthur et al., 2021; Sherman, 2007; Suggate, 2010, 2016)
undertook new meta-analyses, with both old and new studies included, while
Torgerson et al. (2019) and Bowers (2020) engaged in critical tertiary analyses
of the many meta-analyses. Torgerson and his colleagues (2019) found that
definitive conclusions about which approach to use would require more
evidence from impeccably-designed randomized controlled trials—although,
they noted, it was sensible to include some form of systematic phonics in
curricula for younger readers. Bowers, however, took issue with the somewhat
qualified conclusions of the Torgerson et al. (2019). As he argued, because
the control conditions in the NRP and the Torgerson et al. (2019) analyses
included both unsystematic phonics (which Bowers claims to be characteristic
of Whole Language) and no phonics conditions, neither the NRP nor Torgerson
et al. can conclude that systematic phonics is superior to unsystematic (what

28
 Claim 1

we might call opportunistic) phonics. After examining an array of meta-analyses,

reanalyses, and tertiary analyses, Bowers (2020) concluded (in his own tertiary
analysis):
In sum, the above research provides little or no evidence that systematic
phonics is better than standard alternative methods used in schools. The
findings do not challenge the importance of learning grapheme-phoneme
correspondences, but they do undermine the claim that systematic phonics
is more effective than alternative methods that include unsystematic
phonics (such as whole language) or that teach grapheme-phoneme
correspondences along with meaning based constraints on spellings
(morphological instruction or structured word inquiry). (p. 705)

Bowers’ critique did not go unchallenged by colleagues with a history

of advocating for a strong phonics position (e.g., Buckingham, 2020;
Fletcher, Savage, & Vaughn, 2021). Critics took issue with Bowers’ goals,
assumptions, and methods of critique. Both Buckingham (2020) and Fletcher
and his colleagues (2021) revisited the same studies that prompted Bowers
(2020) to conclude that the empirical support for systematic phonics over
other approaches was extremely weak—only to conclude the polar opposite.
Namely, they found that support for systematic phonics as a necessary—but
not a sufficient—curricular feature was uniformly strong (although Fletcher,
Savage, and Vaughn did note that “explicit” might be a more fitting term
than systematic to describe the successful code-based interventions). Both
parties also agreed that better randomized controlled trials were needed to
evaluate the relative efficacy of competing approaches, including some (e.g.,
combining morphology and phonology in promoting letter-sound knowledge)
that were not well-examined in pedagogical research. One statement in the
Fletcher, Savage, and Vaughn (2021) response, taken from the abstract,
stands out to us as emblematic of the unproductive nature of the debate we
seem to experience again and again, with Groundhog Day-like regularity:
We conclude that there is consistent evidence in support of explicitly teaching
phonics as part of a comprehensive approach to reading instruction that
should be differentiated to individual learner needs. The appropriate question
to ask of a twenty-first century science of teaching is not the superiority of

29
Claim 1

phonic versus alternative reading methods, including whole language and

balanced literacy, but how best to combine different components of evidence-
based reading instruction into an integrated and customized approach that
addresses the learning needs of each child. (p. 1249)

Comments like this, from a group of scholars readily identifiable as “scientists

of reading,” makes us wonder why the debate endures—when there seems
to be little left to debate (see our concluding section on our advice for a post-
reading-war set of principles for moving the field ahead).
We would note that Bowers, throughout this repartee with colleagues,
held steadfastly to several points: (a) Letter-sound correspondences (what
he calls GPCs for grapheme-phoneme correspondences) must be learned;
(b) Phonics is one way, but certainly not the only way, to promote such
learning; and (c) As a field, we would do well to capitalize on the recent
evidence supporting an emphasis on morphology. By developing pedagogical
approaches that promote a dual emphasis on phonology and morphology, he
argued, we could advance a more refined, transparent, and effective way of
helping students learn how to link graphemic information to meaning.
Three more recent syntheses add to this consistent evidentiary
trend (the phonics effect is stronger on word reading than on passage
comprehension outcomes) and interpretive thread (phonics is a key part of a
comprehensive and responsible reading program). Hall et al. (2023) conducted
a meta-analysis of 53 experimental or quasi-experimental intervention studies
conducted between 1980 and 2020 that aimed to improve reading outcomes
for over 6,000 K-5 students with or at risk of dyslexia. They concluded that
the effects on reading comprehension outcomes tended to be smaller than
effects on word reading or spelling outcomes. In contextualizing their results,
they noted:
This finding corroborates results reported by Gersten et al. (2020 and Neitzel
et al. (2022), who found that outcome domain statistically significantly
moderated intervention effects. Gersten et al. determined that effects on
word/pseudoword measures were greater than effects on passage reading
or reading comprehension measures; Neitzel et al. found that effects on
alphabetics (i.e., PA, print awareness, letter naming, phonics knowledge,

30
 Claim 1

decoding, and encoding) and passage reading fluency measures were

larger than those on general reading performance measures. …Although
improvements in foundational skills would be expected to translate to improved
reading comprehension (Hoover & Gough, 1990), reading comprehension
was nevertheless a less proximal outcome for this corpus of studies. (p. 303)

Wyse and Bradbury (2022) reviewed evidence from national and international
assessments, their own qualitative meta-synthesis of largely the same corpus
of studies reviewed by Suggate (2016) and Bowers (2020), and a survey
administered to a large sample of teachers in the UK (to gain a sense of
practices actually being implemented in schools). Looking across this span
of data, they concluded:
The undue separation of the teaching of the alphabetic code from the
context of whole texts as part of teaching of the alphabetic code from the
context of whole texts in the teaching of reading in primary/elementary
schools is unlikely to be effective as contextualized teaching of reading, and
as such poses a significant risk to typically developing children’s education
and life chances because it is not optimal robust evidence-based teaching.
If education policies also fail to sufficiently reflect the robust research
evidence this risk is compounded. (p. 42)

They hypothesized that “phonics teaching is most likely to be effective for

children aged five to six” (p. 42), and added that, in general: “A focus on whole
texts and reading for meaning, to contextualize the teaching of other skills and
knowledge, should drive pedagogy” (p. 42). Whereas Bowers’ (2020) critique
prompted the conclusion that systematic phonics was no more effective on
key outcomes (word reading and comprehension) than unsystematic phonics
(operationalized as opportunistic “teachable moments,” often attributed to
Whole Language or Balanced Literacy approaches), Wyse and Bradbury’s
conclusion is more affirmative: Focus on making meaning and use phonics to
promote that broader goal. It is interesting to note that some 15 years earlier,
Wyse, writing with Goswami (2008), noted that systemic but contextualized
phonics instruction, when it was a part of a larger comprehensive curriculum,
was equally as effective as any other phonics approach—and, in a few studies,

31
Claim 1

proved to be the most effective approach on both word and passage level
tasks.
The most recent critique we found before we went to press was a
response by Brooks (2023), to both Bowers (2020) and Wyse and Bradbury
(2022). Brooks (2023) claims that both parties misinterpreted the results
from the studies included in their tertiary syntheses. In particular, he argues
that Bowers over-relied on Camilli’s work, which Brooks takes to be flawed in
terms of categorizing teaching methods. Similar to Buckingham (2020) and
Ehri et al. (2001), Brooks concludes:
… the evidence in favour of systematic phonics seems robust, and the key
implication for teachers of initial literacy is therefore that systematic phonics
instruction should remain an essential element within their repertoire. (p. 2)

Brooks qualifies that strong endorsement in the conclusion to his essay. In

the end, he aligns more with the conclusions offered by Fletcher, Savage,
& Vaughn (2021) and the NRP report (NRP & NICHD, 2000)—arguing that
phonics is an essential, but not the only, component of a comprehensive
program:
…in the current state of knowledge, the evidence in favour of systematic
phonics instruction seems robust. This does not imply that it should be
used to the exclusion of other aspects of instruction, but does imply that
it should form an essential part of a rich and varied language and literacy
curriculum. (p. 6)

Research, Evaluation, and Policy Studies. As a reminder, the two major

quasi-experimental research studies in the U.S. (Gamse, et al., 2008; Jackson
et al., 2007) came out of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The legislation
established the Reading First (RF) and Early Reading First (ERF) program
initiatives, which stipulated that reading curricula and materials for elementary
and preschool-age children, respectively, were expected to align with certain
criteria. ERF preschool programs were meant to focus on developing skills in
oral language, phonological awareness and awareness of print conventions,
and alphabet knowledge. The RF programs were then expected to emphasize

32
 Claim 1

the five components of reading instruction: 1) Phonemic awareness; 2)

Phonics; 3) Vocabulary; 4) Fluency; and 5) Comprehension.
The Reading First (RF) study by Gamse and colleagues (2008)
concluded that RF schools (those which emphasized the 5 components)
showed a modest but consistent advantage over non-RF schools, using a
measure of word decoding in Grade 1, but not on comprehension measures
at any grade level. The Early Reading First study (Jackson et al., 2007)
showed strong effects on teacher knowledge and practices, but weak effects
on student outcomes. In other words, compared to non-ERF preschools,
the teachers in ERF preschools changed what they did to align with the
guidelines—but these changes in practice had little impact on student
performance. The only significant advantage for ERF schools was on print
awareness (none on phonological awareness or oral language). By contrast
to the national studies, several of the Reading First quasi-experimental
evaluations carried out at the state level revealed that schools that followed
the RF guidelines for program (i.e., the 5 components or pillars) outperformed
non-RF schools with comparable demographic characteristics (see Coburn
et al., 2011; Pearson, 2010), again suggesting that when phonics is a part of
a more comprehensive program, it is associated with positive outcomes.
The U.S. has certainly not been alone in the quest for a panacea to
reading development debates—nor have they been the only region in which
systematic, sometimes synthetic, phonics have been positioned as the solution.
Other countries have paralleled the U.S., in terms of the process undertaken
for reviews, the premises that guide them, and the nature of expertise enlisted.
In the United Kingdom, for example, the Secretary of State commissioned Sir
Jim Rose to review the teaching of early reading; Rose’s recommendations
placed a major emphasis on teaching phonics systematically and synthetically
(Rose, 2006). In Australia, the Australian Council of Educational Research
commissioned a report on the teaching of reading, under the leadership of
Kenneth Rowe (Rowe & National Inquiry, 2005). In Canada, in response to
a concern spurred by the Canadian Supreme Court with regard to the rights
of special education students in learning to read, the Ontario government
commissioned a report that appears to similarly advocate for phonics-focused

33
Claim 1

instruction (OHRC, 2022). A close examination of these reports, informed by

the research syntheses and various meta-analyses we have just reviewed,
reveals them to be generally in favor of phonics—again, not on its own, but
as a key component in a more comprehensive curriculum. These are certainly
more modest than the claims made in the media, blogs and other outlets by
policy advocates (e.g., Buckingham, Wheldall, & Beaman-Wheldall, 2013;
Hanford, 2018; Moats, 2000).

More Signs of Restraint. In addition to the consistent qualifications

coming from research syntheses, signs of restraint come from scholars and
policymakers both aligned with and skeptical of the SoR. Among the skeptics
were Johnston and Scanlon (2022), who, in a policy statement for the Literacy
Research Association, reviewed the research informing practices for students
diagnosed with dyslexia. They questioned whether the science was “settled,”
the efficacy of synthetic phonics, and the importance of context versus cueing
systems. With respect to phonics, they concluded that the evidence
…does not justify the use of a heavy and near-exclusive focus on phonics
instruction, either in regular classrooms, or for children experiencing
difficulty learning to read (including those classified as dyslexic). (p. 25)

They also argued that there was little evidence to suggest that phonics
should be pursued synthetically or removed from other curricular practices
(e.g., those targeting comprehension, vocabulary, contextual clues, etc.).
Reinking, Hruby, and Risko (2023) offered another critique of the
SoR position. In an effort not unlike ours, they disputed the validity of several
claims distilled from SoR advocates, including arguments made in articles in
the popular press, professional archival literature, and social media posts. As
they note, these claims include:
• Phonics is the essential component of learning to read.
• Phonics should be mastered before other components of a
comprehensive curriculum are addressed.
• Differentiated instruction for mastering the code is not necessary.
• Synthetic phonics is preferred to other more analytic or opportunistic
approaches.

34
 Claim 1

• The vast majority of reading difficulties stem from incomplete mastery of,
and can be remediated by, phonics.
• There is a crisis in reading performance in this country, and it can be
explained by the education establishment’s reluctance to accept phonics
as the curricular key to early success.
• Phonics requires continued emphasis until it is mastered by students.
• The science behind these claims is settled.

The key point in their article is that while the research base for these claims
is weak, they are nonetheless offered to legislators and policymakers at the
state and local level as scientifically irrefutable and, therefore, appropriate
for supporting wide-scale reforms that favor code-based standards for early
reading instruction.

Mark Seidenberg (2017, 2023b/c), in contrast, is among the advocates

of an early emphasis on phonics. In a recent blog entry, Seidenberg (2023c)
expressed concern that in our zeal to ensure a good start for young readers,
we might have overemphasized the necessity of phonemic awareness:
The goal of teaching children to read is reading, not phonemic awareness.
We know that learning to read does not require being able to identify 44
phonemes or demonstrate proficiency on phoneme deletion and substitution
tasks because until very recently no one who learned to read had to do these
things. Instruction in subskills such as phonemic awareness is justified to
the extent it advances the goal of reading, not for its own sake. (para. 2)

In that same blog entry, he stated:

The treatment of PA in the “science of reading”–the idea that a certain level
of PA is prerequisite for reading, and that PA training should continue until
the student becomes highly proficient at PA tasks regardless of how well
they are reading–is emblematic of problems that have arisen within the SoR
approach. It is an overprescription that reflects a shallow understanding
of reading development yet has become a major tenet of the “science of
reading”. The PA situation and other developments suggest to me that
the SoR is at risk of turning into a new pedagogical dogma, consisting

35
Claim 1

of a small set of tenets loosely tied to some classic but dated research,
supplemented by additional assumptions that are ad hoc and ill-advised.
(para. 5)

Both in his blog and in his 2020 co-written piece for Reading Research
Quarterly (Seidenberg, Borkenhagen, & Kearns, 2020), Seidenberg stressed
the need to elevate our efforts to translate research into practice by enhancing
the efficacy of translational research.
As noted, Sir Jim Rose (2006)—who managed to convince the UK
Secretary of State to mandate synthetic phonics—was also known as an
advocate of synthetic phonics. In his commissioned report from 2006, he
concluded:
Having considered a wide range of evidence, the review has concluded
that the case for systematic phonic work is overwhelming and much
strengthened by a synthetic approach…. ( p. 20)

Earlier in that same report, however, Rose waffled a bit, as in this more
tempered statement:
It is widely agreed that reading involves far more than decoding words on
the page. …Phonic work is therefore a necessary but not sufficient part
of the wider knowledge, skills and understanding which children need
to become skilled readers and writers, capable of comprehending and
composing text. (p. 4)

Rose even suggested that “leading edge practice bears no resemblance to a

‘one size fits all’ model of teaching and learning, nor does it promote boringly
dull, rote learning of phonics” (p. 16).
One can include Gough in this list of phonics advocates who
demonstrated restraint in their emphasis on the code in the early years of
schooling (e.g., Gough & Hillinger, 1980; Gough, Hoover, & Peterson, 1996;
Gough, Juel, & Roper-Schneider, 1983; Gough & Tunmer, 1986). Gough, as
well as his colleagues Hoover and Tumner (Hoover & Gough, 1990; Hoover
& Tunmer, 2018, 2020, 2022), assert that the cipher used to recode print

36
 Claim 1

into speech must be learned and probably must be taught to most novice
readers. However, they stop short of any specific suggestions about the
characteristics of that instruction.

Our Revised Version of the Claim

Looked at historically, the characterization of phonics—as a) exerting
a greater effect on reading words and/or pseudowords than understanding
text and b) one key piece in a larger and broader curriculum—is consistent
with the cautions offered in a long line of efforts to determine the best method
for teaching reading. The list begins in the 1960s, with Chall (1967) and the
First-Grade Studies (Bond & Dykstra, 1967), and goes on to include major
syntheses, such as Becoming a Nation of Readers (Anderson et al., 1985),
Beginning to Read (Adams, 1990), Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young
Children (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998), and the National Reading Panel
Report (NRP& NICHD, 2000). These were followed by the quasi-experimental
studies funded during the Reading First era (Gamse et al., 2008; Jackson et
al., 2007), alongside a similar lively debate in the UK (Rose, 2006). Everyone
seems to be saying that a responsible curriculum—rationalized as part of the
settled science of reading or as part of an ecologically-balanced program—will
ensure that all students get full access to all the evidence-based pieces of the
reading puzzle. So why are we—educators, researchers, policy advocates—
still shouting at one another? We are not sure. We will take up this question
again, after reviewing 9 more claims related to the debate.
Here’s one working hypothesis to carry into the rest of the claims.
Neither side really trusts the other to follow through on their statements of
commitment. SoR folks seem to believe that a lot of educators (teachers, and
especially teacher educators) keep their fingers crossed when they promise
to provide students with access to the full range of code-based instruction.
Folks with a balanced literacy perspective, on the other hand, seem to believe
that SoR-oriented advocates want to marginalize language, comprehension,
and critical thinking practices until all of the code-based knowledge is
mastered. In short, we don’t really trust one another to keep our promises.
We will revisit this potential impasse at the conclusion of this monograph.

37
 CLAIM 2

The Simple View of Reading provides an adequate

theoretical account of skilled reading and its
development over time.

The Evidence Marshalled in Support of the Claim

As developed by Gough and Tunmer (1986), the Simple View of
Reading (SVR) maintains that reading comprehension (RC) is the product of
decoding (D) and language comprehension (LC): (RC = D x LC). Those who
champion the SVR are quick to point out both its empirical strengths (i.e.,
evidence available to document its validity—see Catts, 2018) and conceptual
merits (i.e., its elegant simplicity—see Pearson, Madda, & Raphael, 2023).
For instance, a common claim is that the SVR is supported by over 150
research studies (Seidenberg, 2023b; The Reading League, 2023). A typical
citation documenting its empirical stature is captured in this statement from
Castles, Rastle, and Nation (2018):
Measures of decoding and of linguistic comprehension each predict reading
comprehension and its development, and together the two components
account for almost all the variance in this ability (e.g., Lervåg, Hulme &
Melby-Lervåg, 2017). Early in development, reading comprehension is
highly constrained by limitations in decoding. As children get older, the
correlation between linguistic and reading comprehension strengthens,
reflecting the fact that once a level of decoding mastery is achieved, reading
comprehension is constrained by how well an individual understands
spoken language (LARRC, 2015). (p. 27)

Much of the scholarship in support of the SVR also points to its conceptual
integrity and economy—as a useful way to describe the many aspects of
reading development (Catts, 2018; Lonigan, Burgess, & Schatschneider,
2018; Sleeman et al., 2022). In its original conceptualization (see Gough &
Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990) the SVR simply asserts that:

38
 Claim 2

• The complex array of factors affecting reading comprehension (RC) can

be conveniently placed into one of two big buckets:
1. Decoding (D)
2. Oral Language (or Language) comprehension (LC)
• The quality of RC can be determined by the product of these two
clusters:
(RC = D x LC)
• Most if not all of the variance in RC can and will be explained by this
formula.

Additional claims in the original view maintain:

• D and LC are of equal importance in determining RC
• Both D and LC are necessary for RC, but neither is sufficient on its own.
(Pearson Madda, & Raphael, 2023, p. 11)

Undergirding these arguments is statistical explanatory power, and a leap—

from correlational data, emanating from a subset of measures, to causal claims.
The causal link seems presumptuous, but tempting; for once D and LC are
entered into a statistical model designed to explain reading comprehension
outcomes, there is little if any variance left for other factors to explain (Castles,
Rastle, & Nation, 2018; Lonigan, Burgess, & Schatschneider, 2018).
It is also important to note that the SVR is and has always been silent
on the question of the specific instructional protocols best suited to building
those skills (Hanford, 2020; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Hoover & Tunmer,
2018). Nevertheless, Gough and his colleagues (see Hoover & Tunmer,
2020) were clear that students in grades K-1, while reasonably assumed to
be experts on the Language Comprehension side of the equation, were likely
in need of explicit instruction to develop the Decoding side. The SVR is often,
indeed almost universally, cited by advocates of early phonics instruction who
employ SoR rhetoric. Hanford (2020), for example, after agreeing with its
founders that the SVR does not specify how to teach reading, goes on to say
that the SVR “… makes clear that the first task of the beginning reader is to
learn how to decode the words he or she knows how to say” (para. 34).

39
Claim 2

Our Reading of the Evidence and the Claim

Many of the sympathetic reading researchers who extol the SVR—and
readily refer to the 150+ studies validating it—have also been conducting
research to evaluate and revise the model; in short, to improve it! Most of these
endeavors attempt to add complexity within the SVR’s current parameters,
such as incorporating new features within the Decoding and Language
Comprehension buckets. Some have also attempted to replace the model
with a more complex alternative.

Increasing Complexity for the Simple View. Much of SVR research over
the past 20 to 30 years has focused on improving and fine-tuning the SVR
model. Ironically, this line of scholarship seems directed toward enhancing the
complexity of the simple view—suggesting that it may not be so simple after
all (see LRRC & Chiu, 2018; Cervetti, et al., 2020; Francis, Kulesz, & Benoit,
2018; García & Cain, 2014; Kim, 2017). In general, SVR studies illustrate
that a combination of decoding and language comprehension proficiencies
has a more powerful effect on reading comprehension than either component
alone—indicating that there are facets of each that bolster one another toward
increasing competence over time. As such, some studies have identified
important prerequisites to effective word recognition and decoding-related
skills, such as phonological awareness, rapid word identification, and letter
knowledge. Other scholars have noted that vocabulary, grammar, and the ability
to read extended text are important predictors of language comprehension,
which has come to include working memory, inferencing, and background
knowledge (Cromley & Azevedo, 2007; Francis et al., 2018). In short, reading
comprehension is thought to be a multidimensional, complex cognitive act.
Cervetti and her colleagues (2020) summarized the SVR studies
conducted in the 2010 IES-funded Reading for Understanding initiative.
Across multiple sites, these studies documented the importance of early oral
language skills—those often overlooked by SoR advocates—that support
both decoding and oral language comprehension in young readers. In keeping
with other scholars, Cervetti et al. (2020) found that the skills contributing to
RC within the D and LC clusters varied across the grades (see also Catts,

40
 Claim 2

2018; Lonigan et al., 2018). For instance, while word-level skills and fluency
(within the D cluster) have a significant impact in the early grades, starting in
third grade, skills within the LC cluster become a more important determinant
of RC. Researchers have attributed this shift in impact to increases in the
vocabulary, grammar, and discourse demands of the texts students encounter
after the primary years (Pearson et al., 2020).
Overall, the SVR work over the last two decades shows that the
two clusters still provide, at a broad level of consideration, a useful—and
simple—heuristic for thinking about how word-level and language-level skills
and processes contribute to reading comprehension. At the same time, they
also illustrate how that seductively simple formula (RC = D x LC) masks an
increasing amount of complexity. There’s a lot to be considered and developed
through rich learning experiences, once you take off the lid!

From Simple to Active. With these studies in mind, what progress

have we made in refining the SVR for a more complete account of reading
comprehension? Duke and Cartwright (2021) created a new model that
essentially answered that question. Their extensive review of the research
over the past two decades demonstrated that the SVR becomes more
complex when we deconstruct what is inside—and between—the language
comprehension and decoding clusters. Considering the overlap between the
two, they offered compelling evidence that many other factors not represented
in the initial equation contribute to reading performance. They proposed a more
comprehensive model than that represented in the SVR: The Active View of
Reading, or AVR (Figure 1). Their recent empirical investigation of the validity
of the AVR (Burns, Duke, & Cartwright, 2023) found that the new model
was able to explain additional variables that the SVR could not—providing
what they argued would be a more thorough evidence-based foundation for
reading interventions (albeit a modest improvement; see Shanahan, 2023).

41
 Claim 2

Figure 1
Duke & Cartwright’s (2021) Active View of Reading

R D RECOGNITI
ON
WO
Phonological awareness
(syllables, phonemes, etc.)
Alphabetic principles
Phonic knowledge
Decoding skills
Recognition of words at sight

E LF R E G U
-S LA G ING PROCES
E D SE
RI Print concepts
Motivation and
IV

S
TI

engagement B
A CT

Reading fluency
ON

Executive function skills Vocabulary knowledge

Strategy use
Morphological awareness READING
(word recognition
strategies, comprehension Graphonological-semantic
strategies, vocabulary cognitive flexibility
strategies, etc.) (letter-sound-
meaning flexibility)

Cultural and other content knowledge

Reading-specific background knowledge
(genre, text features, etc.)
Verbal reasoning
(inference, metaphor, etc.)
Language structure
LA (syntax, semantics, etc.)
N
N GU Theory of mind IO
AG NS
E COMPREHE

This is a reader model. Reading is also impacted

by text, task, and sociocultural context.

Duke, N. K., & Cartwright, K. B. (2021). The science of reading progresses: Communicating advances
beyond the simple view of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(1), S25-S44.

42
 Claim 2

Our Revised Version of the Claim

In spite of these endeavors over the years to add nuance and
explanatory power to the SVR, advocates in the Science of Reading debate
continue to marshal the Simple View as justification for claims that reach
beyond the evidence provided by the research. Claims in social media and
the popular press—specifically, that the SVR carries direct implications for
specific instructional approaches—are those that Gough and his co-theorists,
Tumner and Hoover, explicitly avoided. In fact, the only claims about teaching
and learning by its originators were that: 1) The cipher that provides a map
from print to speech must be learned; and 2) For most novices, the cipher will
have to be taught—because they are unlikely to discover it on their own.
So where do we stand on the Simple View of Reading? We believe
that the adjective simple in the model’s name more aptly modifies the word
view than the word reading. In other words, the SVR is a simple way of
conceptualizing the complex phenomenon we call reading. It may be that the
very complexity of reading demands a simple heuristic; with so many moving
parts, we need these two big buckets to mentally store all of the components.
Despite the attention that the Simple View of Reading has received,
other models and metaphors have been offered in an effort to draw together
and provide an intelligible rendering of the nature of reading acquisition. Among
the most notable has been the depiction of reading acquisition as a Reading
Rope, offered to parents and educators by Hollis Scarborough (Scarborough
2001, 2023). Although not intended as a formal testable empirical model, it
has become popular as a metaphor to support parents and educators in their
understanding of reading acquisition. Figure 2 provides a representation of
the metaphor, incorporating the two intertwining sets of strands involved in
the development of skilled reading (i.e., the fluent execution and coordination
of word recognition and language comprehension). The elements constituting
the strands are not intended to exist independently, but interactively, as they
support one another in a fashion that is synergistic.

43
Claim 2

Figure 2
Scarborough’s Reading Rope (Scarborough, 2001)

Scarborough, H. S. (2001). “Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities:
Evidence, theory, and practice.” In S. Neuman & D. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook for research in early
literacy (pp. 97-110). New York: Guilford Press.

Unfortunately, in the fast-paced and chaotic world of social media,

the adjective simple gets applied to the reading process as a whole—and
then to the teaching of reading. This chain of unwarranted inferences guides
educators and parents to reach the conclusion that if we simply teach phonics
first—and fast—each and every student will be able to read and understand
any and all words and text that is within their listening repertoire. And that will
be as good as it gets.

44
 Claim 2

While we can live (and indeed, have lived) with the SVR, we believe
there are no credible theoretical, empirical, or practical reasons for making
do with an adequate model. That is, we see no compelling ideas, research
findings, or implications from those findings regarding classroom teaching
that require us to put square pegs in round holes, especially when we have
a more fulsome model (a sociocultural view of reading) available. We will
unpack this framework in our treatment of Claim 9.

45
 CLAIM 3

Reading is the ability to identify and understand

words that are part of one’s oral language repertoire.

The Evidence Marshalled in Support of the Claim

An authoritative, highly-respected account of this claim appeared in
a November, 2001 issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest,
in a piece authored by an equally-renowned team of psychologists: Keith
Rayner, Barbara R. Foorman, Charles A. Perfetti, David Pesetsky and Mark
S. Seidenberg. After comparing the relative merits of very broad versus
very specific definitions, they arrived at what they believed to be a mid-level
definition of reading:
In focusing on reading’s distinguishing features, we define learning to
read as the acquisition of knowledge that results in the child being able to
identify and understand printed words that he or she knows on the basis of
spoken language. (Rayner et al., 2001, p. 34)

The rationale they offered for this claim sheds light on why the debate over
teaching early reading seems so entrenched and difficult to resolve. In that
same piece, prior to defining reading, they distinguished reading from literacy:
To see the value of the narrower definition, it is useful to make a distinction
between literacy and reading. Literacy includes a variety of educational
outcomes—dispositions toward learning, interests in reading and writing,
and knowledge of subject-matter domains—that go beyond reading. These
dimensions of literacy entail the achievement of a broad range of skills
embedded in cultural and technological contexts. An extended functional
definition is useful in helping to make clear the wide range of literacy tasks
a society might present to its members. (p. 34)

The Rayner et al. (2001) definition has experienced remarkable staying power
over the past two decades. It has been implicitly relied upon by researchers
(e.g., Gough & Tumner, 1986; Seidenberg, 2017) who assert that the reading

46
 Claim 3

novice’s first learning priority is to crack the code that maps written onto oral
language. It has also showed up in social and news media—in press that
supports an early emphasis on teaching systematic phonics (e.g., Kristoff,
2023; Hanford, 2018; Moats, 2020).

Our Reading of the Evidence and the Claim

A common ploy in academic debates is to ask opponents to define
their terms. The debates over early reading pedagogy provide compelling
evidence as to why this is actually good advice. For instance, contrast the
Rayner et al. (2001) definition with this one by Patricia Alexander (2020),
offered in the Reading Research Quarterly issue on the SoR:
The reality is that reading does not begin or end with phonics or whole-
word instruction (Seidenberg, 2013). It is far broader and more complex.
Reading, broadly conceived, is any interaction between a person—be it
a child, adolescent, or adult—and written language (Pearson & Cervetti,
2013). That interaction can involve written language at many levels, from
words and sentences, to paragraphs, to entire volumes (Shanahan, 2019).
Also, reading can be performed for many reasons, from purely personal to
largely academic, and in many contexts, both in and out of school, as well
as online or in print (Ito et al., 2013; Singer & Alexander, 2017). (p. S90)

Or, consider another broader definition of reading comprehension from

the 2026 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Reading
Assessment Framework (NAGB, 2021):
Reading comprehension is making meaning with text, a complex
process shaped by many factors, including readers’ abilities to
• engage with text in print and multimodal forms;
• employ personal resources that include foundational reading skills,
language, knowledge, and motivations; and
• extract, construct, integrate, critique, and apply meaning in activities
across a range of social and cultural contexts. (p. 5)

These definitions of reading provided by Alexander and the 2026 NAEP were
not the first to challenge narrow interpretations. As early as 2002, shortly after

47
Claim 3

the definition by Rayner and his colleagues (2001) appeared in print, the RAND
Reading Study Group (RRSG, 2002) published a definition oriented more
toward sociocultural than cognitive frameworks. Reading comprehension, the
RRSG asserted, is “the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing
meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. We use
the words extracting and constructing to emphasize both the importance and
the insufficiency of the text as a determinant of reading comprehension” (p. 11).
Proposing that the process of reading comprehension entails three primary
elements—the reader, the text, and the activity (in which comprehension is a
part)—they then emphasized that it always occurs in a sociocultural context,
“that shapes and is shaped by the reader and that interacts with each of
the three elements” (p. 11). Clearly, both the Alexander and 2026 NAEP
definitions share more in common with the RRSG (2002) definition than that
of Rayner et al. (2001).
Over the years, scholars have brought different assumptions and
goals to the debate—leading to incommensurable definitions of reading and
complicating, if not dooming, conversations across perspectives. According
to Rayner et al. (2001), the distinctive essence of reading is the process
of decoding print to speech. As such, their definition intentionally excludes
passage-level (connected discourse) factors—along with the social, cultural,
and contextual resources available to all readers. The Alexander and NAEP
definitions, on the other hand, attempt to move beyond decoding—emphasizing
instead the social, cultural, and functional applications of reading, such as
inquiry, knowledge acquisition, or perhaps even action, in real world settings.
This also has implications for instruction: For instance, notice how easy it is to
leap from the Rayner et al. definition to a pedagogical emphasis on cracking
the code. By contrast, see how easy it is to leap from the Alexander or
NAEP definitions to a comprehensive approach that attends to the contexts,
functions, and applications of reading to learning or problem-solving.
It should not be underemphasized that Rayner and his colleagues
limited what counts as reading to the naming of words and the understanding
of their decontextualized meanings. Not phrases, sentences, discourse, or
genres, but words. In the definition proposed by Rayer et al. (2001), the
understanding of units larger than words is not a part of “reading”—so it must

48
 Claim 3

be accomplished by knowledge and processes that are a part of literacy.

Hence, larger units arise in functional situations (real world contexts) in
which we learn to read worlds, including texts that describe those worlds. In
short, the Rayner et al. (2001) focus on word naming comes at a conceptual
cost—assigning all things social, cultural, contextual, epistemological, and
motivational to literacy and learning. For our part, we would rather keep them
front and center within the construct of reading!

Our Revised Version of the Claim

What counts as reading? This remains a key question at the center
of the SoR debate. If reading is defined as identifying and understanding
words that are a part of one’s spoken language, then it makes sense to
focus on what many novices lack when they enter school (i.e., the cipher that
maps print to speech, acquired through systematic decoding instruction).
However, if reading is defined more broadly, then it makes sense to offer
a comprehensive curriculum that orchestrates those many processes and
types of knowledge—in terms of the code; word meanings and relationships;
language; and (perhaps most important) the social and cultural worlds in
which we use reading, writing, and language to make sense of things. With
such disparate perspectives, it is little wonder, then, that our debates are
seldom resolved. Nowhere is this tension between competing definitions
more active than in the models of the reading process, including models of
how it develops (as noted in Claim 2, concerning the adequacy of the SVR).
To be crystal clear, we side with broader, more inclusive definitions
of reading (as further addressed in Claim 9, on the sociocultural models of
reading). We take this stance mainly because we believe that the narrow
definition pushes most of the important variables in the quest for making
meaning into another category—one we might label literacy and learning—
where those phenomena and corresponding parts of the school curriculum
(e.g., science, social studies, or integrated studies) do the heavy lifting. We
see few advantages, and a host of disadvantages, in this definition—and its
consequences. Conversely, we see—and will try to convince readers of—
the many advantages of a sociocultural model, especially on standards of
ecological validity, diversity, and equity.

49
 CLAIM 4

Phonics facilitates the increasingly automatic

identification of unfamiliar words.

The Evidence Marshalled in Support of the Claim

One of the great insights of scientific reading research conducted
over the past 40 years is that as students become more proficient readers,
they develop increasingly accurate and automatic word identification skills.
These skills become so accurate and automatic that readers can identify
the pronunciation and meaning of most of the words they encounter in
print, without the arduous or even cursory recoding of each letter to its
corresponding sound realization. As recently described by Ehri (2021),
this is how the process works:
When children are taught decoding skills, they can apply this
knowledge to written words by learning to convert the sequence of
letters (graphemes) into blended sounds (phonemes) to pronounce
unfamiliar words. Once the words are decoded a few times, their
spellings are bonded to their pronunciations and are retained in memory,
so that children read them automatically or “by sight.” This process of
storing words in memory is called orthographic mapping and acts
like glue, bonding the spellings of words to their pronunciations. When
the meanings of the words are activated, they also become bonded
to the spellings. Once these processes are established in memory,
students are able to look at written words and immediately recognize
their pronunciations and meanings, which allows them to focus on the
meaning of the text rather than on decoding the words. All words that
are sufficiently practiced—not just high frequency words or irregularly
spelled words—become sight words through this process and are then
read from memory automatically. (para. 3)

Dubbed the “self-teaching” hypothesis by David Share (1995), this

function of phonics, or decoding, has been featured in a long line of
research demonstrating how readers get from laborious, letter-by-letter,

50
 Claim 4

sounding out of words and their parts to the fluent, automatic, and
accurate processing that characterizes expert reading at any age. It is
this combination of Share’s self-teaching hypothesis and Ehri’s notion of
orthographic mapping (Ehri, 2014) that explains what Ehri considers to
be the typical course of reading development. Additional insights come
with these new constructs—namely, that we cannot explain what expert
reading looks like by assuming that: a) Readers continue to recode each
graphemic unit (letter or letter grouping) into its corresponding speech
sound (phonemic realization of the unit); or b) Readers simply learn all
words as intact “wholes” (in the manner assumed by the classic look-say
approaches popular in the first half of the 20th century). Additionally, this
led to at least two meanings of the term “sight word” in reading theory and
pedagogy. In one, sight word indicates all those high frequency words with
devilish spellings that don’t map easily onto their pronunciations (e.g., the;
of; give; have; hear versus heart; will read versus have read). In another,
sight words refer to all the immediately identifiable words in a student’s
portfolio—words that have passed through the portals of self-teaching
and orthographic mapping and no longer present as arduous orthographic
puzzles. Fluent expert reading at any level of sophistication is readily
explainable by these constructs.
Ehri (2014, 2021), in commenting on the pedagogical implications
of her orthographic mapping research, suggests several desirable, perhaps
necessary, elements in early literacy programs:
1. Grapheme-Phoneme Relations. Letter-sound correspondences
should be carefully laid out in scope and sequence (although she does
not specify a specific sequence).
2. Phonemic Segmentation. The ability to segment the stream of
speech into independent phonemes is critical to learning letter-
sound correspondences. This is to guarantee that readers connect
the grapheme to only that sound associated with the letter (e.g., the
s in sum only with the sssss, and not with the uuuu), and to facilitate
decoding, the next step in the process.

51
Claim 4

3. Decoding. This involves using the knowledge and skill obtained

in the first two elements to sound out words that are novel and
unfamiliar so that readers can read and spell them accurately.
4. Spelling. Though not strictly required for ensuring grapheme
to phoneme connections, requiring students to also spell words
helps to ensure bonding—not only of orthographically predictable
words (e.g., bat or fin), but also for the predictable portions of
orthographically unpredictable words (e.g., the s and d in said; the
d, e, and t in debt).
5. Correct Word Pronunciation. Pronouncing words correctly in
order to ensure that their spellings are bound to their pronunciations.
6. Text Reading Practice. In general, readers should independently
read material that is relatively easy. When reading more challenging
texts, readers should receive appropriate scaffolding from others
(i.e., teachers or tutors). Ehri notes that this step is essential for many
of the high frequency but very abstract and often orthographically
unpredictable “glue” words of English, such as was, said, held, or
with—words whose meanings require context to be activated.
7. Use of Context. Ehri’s (2021) description of this element comes
with clear restrictions. As she describes, the role of contextual
information—i.e., semantic, syntactic, and (perhaps) pragmatic—
is to “monitor their comprehension to make sure the words they
read make sense in that context (para. 11).” However, Ehri (2021)
cautions: “If they use context to guess the words and skip over
spellings without processing letter-sound connections, unfamiliar
words will not be secured as sight words in memory” (para. 11).
In short, readers should read by first decoding or identifying
words at sight—using context to verify and confirm those initial
understandings.

52
 Claim 4

Our Reading of the Evidence and the Claim

We have no quarrel with this formulation of the development of expert,
efficient reading. We accept the idea (and the research supporting it) that
expert readers develop (i.e., over time and with appropriate experiences,
pedagogy, and exposure to texts) a large portfolio of immediately identifiable
and understandable words (i.e., words whose pronunciations and meanings
are readily available for meaning making). We do, however, quarrel with the
pedagogical recommendations that accompany the underlying theory and
research of reading development. Our quarrel is largely empirical rather than
theoretical, focusing on the evidence that runs counter to the claims in the
pedagogical implications.
First, we challenge the assertion that orthographic mapping (the
creation of the portfolio of immediately identifiable sight words) is developed
through—and only through—multiple attempts to decode a word (i.e., by
employing some combination of phonemic segmentation and grapheme-
phoneme knowledge). What if orthographic mapping were developed
through multiple attempts to read the word, either through decoding,
contextual prediction, or some combination of the two? We are not aware
of any evidence that suggests that context cannot aid the development of
orthographic mapping. To the contrary, we know from the work of Scanlon
and her colleagues (see Scanlon & Anderson, 2020; Scanlon et al., 2024)
that the Interactive Strategies Approach (ISA), which features a menu of cues
to assist in identifying unknown words (what Scanlon calls “word solving”):
a) Results in better performance than a phonics-only approach with a range
of readers, including those identified with decoding difficulties; and b) Over
time, nurtures readers to develop an increasing reliance on orthographic cues
with an accompanying decrease in reliance on contextual cues. Assuming that
students using the ISA also experience growth in their orthographic mapping
portfolio, then decoding may not be the only pathway to this all-important
store of words that can be read and understood at sight.

53
Claim 4

Our Revised Version of the Claim

We have mixed views on the acceptability of this claim. The act of
reading for meaning may or may not entail word-by-word reading, especially
if the reader is engaged in reading for meaning (e.g., engaging in visualizing,
inferencing, etc.). In other words, an emphasis upon word-by-word reading
may not support a reader’s enlistment of an array of comprehension processes,
important over time, for reading for meaning.
However, if accurate, word-by-word reading is your goal, we can
support this version of the claim: “A range of word-solving strategies,
including recoding letters into sounds, facilitates the increasingly automatic
identification of unfamiliar words.” This version of the claim is more consistent
with the empirical research we have reviewed. Most important for us as a
profession is to consider either version of the claim as provisional—awaiting
a robust program of pedagogical research designed to examine the efficacy
of various practices in supporting the development of these important sight
word repertoires.
Again, assuming the importance of accurate word-by-word reading,
equally important is developmental research demonstrating how these
expansive sight word repertoires facilitate comprehension for students at
different ages. The theory, which underlies both the self-teaching hypothesis
and orthographic mapping development, is that when most word identification
is automatic, it releases cognitive capacity and attention that can be directed
toward text understanding. It’s a compelling and plausible hypothesis, and
deserves (and awaits) compelling documentation. But it does rests on the
presumption that naming words is key to learning to read and whether such a
definition is overly restrictive.

54
CLAIM 5

The Three-Cueing System (Orthography, Semantics,

and Syntax) has been soundly discredited.

The Evidence Marshalled in Support of the Claim

Defining the three-cueing system is the first step in explaining the
resistance to it by both scholars and advocates within the SoR community.
Easier said than done.
Three-cueing is often depicted as a Venn diagram (Figure 3) of
three sources of knowledge (cues). According to this model, as readers
unlock word pronunciations and meanings on the way to comprehension,
they consult: 1) Orthography (letter to sound patterns); 2) Syntax (sentence
structure and morphological knowledge); and 3) Semantics (word meanings
and relationships among words).

Figure 3
The Three-Cueing System

SEMANTIC SYNTACTIC

ORTHOGRAPHY

55
Claim 5

In tandem with the shift to practices aligned with the SVR, the
discrediting of the cueing system became commonplace. In the U.K.,
advocacy for a model of learning to read that focused upon the enlistment of
the cueing system (referred to as the Searchlights model) was displaced as
teachers were directed to focus on decoding alone. Teachers were directed
as follows:
… attention should be focused on decoding words rather than the use
of unreliable strategies such as looking at the illustrations, rereading the
sentence, saying the first sound or guessing what might ‘fit’. Although
these strategies might result in intelligent guesses, none of them is
sufficiently reliable and they can hinder the acquisition and application of
phonic knowledge and skills, prolonging the word recognition process and
lessening children’s overall understanding. Children who routinely adopt
alternative cues for reading unknown words, instead of learning to decode
them, later find themselves stranded when texts become more demanding
and meanings less predictable. The best route for children to become fluent
and independent readers lies in securing phonics as the prime approach to
decoding unfamiliar words. (Primary National Strategy, 2006, p. 9)

Indeed, the use of cueing systems (e.g., Goodman, 1965; 1967; 1969)
has become one of the most contentious issues in discussions of the SoR.
SoR advocates contend that the three-cueing system is predicated on the
mistaken belief that as readers develop expertise, they become increasingly
nimble and skilled at orchestrating their use of all three cues. Drawing on
Keith Stanovich’s (1980; 1984) interactive compensatory model and Charles
Perfetti’s (1980) verbal efficiency model, these de facto critics of three-
cueing models (e.g., Hanford, 2018; 2019) define learning to read instead
as, first and foremost, a form of word mastery. As beginning readers gain
experience, they compile a store of words (presumably those already in their
oral language repertoire) that they immediately recognize en route to reading
for meaning (as we describe in Claim 4 regarding orthographic mapping).
Critics cite studies comparing good and poor readers (e.g., Schwartz
& Stanovich, 1981; Stanovich & West, 1979), which suggest that apart from
their engagement with predictable texts (e.g., Martin and Carle’s 1983 book,
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?), struggling readers have a

56
 Claim 5

tendency to over-rely on context clues and pictures to develop hypotheses

(the word “guess” is often used by the critics) regarding the pronunciation and
meaning of words. Consequently, poor readers fail to develop the decoding
skills necessary for facile word identification, and their accuracy and fluency
appear to flounder. Good readers, on the other hand, are able to successfully
enlist phonemic awareness and letter-sound correspondences to decode,
and then understand, words. These differences between good and poor are
taken as evidence that accurate and automatic word recognition is key to
developing fluent reading and reading for meaning. This view lends credence
to the argument that phonics is the more expeditious approach to beginning
reading expertise—and that approaches enlisting multiple cueing systems
are flawed, misguided, and perhaps even harmful to young readers (Hanford,
2018; 2019; Moats, 2000).
Criticisms of the three-cueing system are based on a combination
of anecdotal evidence and opinion (Seidenburg, 2017; Moats, 2000),
including extrapolations from static comparisons of the strategies of good
and poor readers. They do not examine specific interventions involving the
three-cueing system, such as the Interactive Strategies Approach (Vellutino
& Scanlon, 2002; Scanlon et al., 2024), or the work of Marie Clay (1993;
1998) on Reading Recovery. For example, Marilyn Adams (1998) described
the limitations of the three-cueing system after conducting occasional
conversations with teachers and surmising their lack of clarity on how to
guide students in the use of different cues. Mark Seidenberg rationalized
an exclusive focus upon phonics skills in order to simplify what is taught
and what students are expected to learn. He postulated that, as a matter of
expediency (at least partially), restricting “... the range of alternatives to one
that works may be more effective than offering multiple cues (Seidenberg,
2017, p. 303).
In fact, Seidenberg (2017; 2023b) argues that early advocates for
cueing systems, such as Kenneth Goodman, have the roles for orthographic
and contextual processing backwards; that is, word recognition comes first,
followed by other contextual factors. Disagreeing with Goodman’s (1967)
premise that reading is “a psycholinguistic guessing game,” Seidenberg
dismisses approaches by other literacy educators that might provide, either

57
Claim 5

directly or indirectly, evidence for the use of cueing systems (beyond letter-
sound correspondences). Yet he also takes issue with the Simple View of
Reading (SVR) and Scarborough’s Reading Rope (RR). Recognizing the
inadequacies of those models as well, Seidenburg (2023b) in a recent blog
post calls for a new approach:
Classic ideas such as the SVR and the RR are fine places for the “science
of reading” to start and poor places to stop. If you don’t know about this
work it’s new to you. If you do know about it, you’ll respect the fact that the
studies don’t address basic questions about instruction or learning, and
thus are consistent with many different approaches, including poor ones. I
encourage people to embrace this work for what it offers—some important
general insights about reading—and move on.
Rather than components of reading such as print and language we need
an account of what, when, and how. We need a developmental perspective
that considers the relationships between different types of knowledge, how
the information is learned, and how learning changes as knowledge grows.
(paras. 30-31)

Our Reading of the Evidence and the Claim

The only way we can make sense of the arguments marshalled against
the three-cueing system is to infer that the opponents object to its use in
pedagogy rather than in reading theory. Many of the most vocal critics of the
three-cueing system either espouse or support models of the expert reading
process that posit an important role for all three of these information sources.
They describe how readers recognize and understand words and connected
discourse through the combined processing mechanisms for orthographic
information, semantic information, and syntactic information (as well as other
sources, like letter features).
David Rumelhart’s (1977) popular Interactive Model of Reading, from
which Keith Stanovich (1980; 1984) devised his interactive-compensatory
model, is most transparent on the importance of all three processors of
information (see Figure 4). According to Rumelhart, each processor works
independently to send its working hypotheses about the word the reader
is trying to identify to an executive “Pattern Synthesizer.” The Pattern

58
 Claim 5

Synthesizer, using all the information available, then provisionally commits to

a given word. The moment more information becomes available, the reader
takes that into account to confirm or alter their working hypothesis. We liken
this model to a committee meeting of department heads: The committee chair
(Pattern Synthesizer) asks for hypotheses about what word is represented
by the graphemic information in the Visual Information Store (VIS). Each
committee member (Knowledge Source) filters the information under scrutiny
through their knowledge base to develop the most plausible hypothesis about
the word’s identity. The Pattern Synthesizer compiles all these hypotheses
(dare we say educated guesses?) to arrive at a consensus and provisional
identification of the word. As each Knowledge Source gains access to the
hypotheses of the other sources, takes in more graphemic information in the
VIS, and refines their hypothesis about the word’s identity, they allow the
Pattern Synthesizer to come up with new, and presumably more informed,
consensus hypothesis. This cycle continues until the Pattern Synthesizer is
ready for input from a new graphemic string (e.g., a word), and the process
repeats itself.

Figure 4
Rendition of Rumelhart’s (1977) Interactive Model

Syntactical Semantic
knowledge knowledge

Feature Pattern Most

VIS extraction probable
synthesizer
device interpretation

Orthographic Lexical
knowledge knowledge

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Claim 5

Gough’s (1972) “one second of reading” model (see Figure 5), which
undergirds his Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986), similarly
features processors for various kinds of information: A pattern recognizer
and a character register for orthographic information; a decoder to get from
orthographic to phonologic inputs; a librarian to access word meanings; and
an executive, dubbed Merlin, to consult with syntactic and semantic rules,
and put it all together.

Figure 5
Rendition of Gough’s (1972) One Second of Reading Model

Syntactic &
Semantic
Rules

Suppose the TPWSG Primary

eye... MERLIN
WTAU Memory

VISUAL
SYSTEM Lexicon LIBRARIAN

Character Phonemic
Icon SCANNER DECODER
Register Tape

Pattern
Recognition Code
Routines Book

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 Claim 5

Even the strongest critic of the three-cueing system, Marilyn Adams (1990),
leaned on the then-emerging parallel distributed processing model of reading
(e.g., Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986; see Figure 6). Like the Rumelhart
and Gough models, the parallel distributed processing model posits that
processors for orthographic, phonological, and semantic information are
deployed en route to identifying and understanding both words and connected
discourse.

Figure 6
Rendition of Rumelhart & McClelland’s (1986) Parallel Distributed Processing
Model of Reading

Orthographic
Written Processor
Language (Letters &
Spellings)

Semantic Context
Processor Processor
(Meaning) (Interpretation)

Phonological
Spoken Processor
Language (Speech
Sounds) Conceptualizing Early Literacy
Development

Given the widespread support of such models, objections to the three-

cueing system must not be directed at theories of expert word and discourse
comprehension. This leaves us to conclude that it is the use of three-
cueing systems to guide instruction that many find objectionable. Indeed,

61
Claim 5

several scholars with recorded opposition to the three-cueing system

espouse eclectic orientations to theories of reading—supporting notions
of the orchestrated interdependency of processes, and the simultaneous
engagement of phonics with cueing systems related meaning making. Perfetti,
for example, emphasizes the synergies between comprehension and meaning
making in reading development from an early age. In an interview with David
Boulton for the Children of the Code project website (Boulton & Perfetti,
2005), Perfetti suggests that there is a reciprocity between comprehension
and the development of word identification, noting how “components can
develop in tandem in ways that mutually reinforce each other” (“Reciprocal
Relationship”). He goes on to call for an approach to reading that recognizes
how “all parts of the system…. mutually support and strengthen each other.”
Likewise, in her landmark book Beginning to Read: Thinking and
Learning About Print, Adams (1990) discusses at length the importance of
simultaneously engaging the cueing systems, thereby coupling phonics and
with meaning making skills. As she states:
In both fluent reading and its acquisition, the reader’s knowledge must be
aroused interactively and in parallel. Neither understanding nor learning can
proceed hierarchically from the bottom up. Phonological awareness, letter
recognition facility, familiarity with spelling patterns, spelling-sound relations,
and individual words must be developed in concert with real reading and
real writing and with deliberate reflection on the forms, functions, and
meanings of texts…All of its component knowledge and skills must work
together within a single and interdependent system. And, it is in that way
that they must be acquired as well: It is not just eclecticism that makes a
program of reading instruction effective; it is the way in which its pieces
are fitted together to complement and support one another. (pp. 422-423)

Adams also supports, rather than criticizes, the contributions of Reading

Recovery as developed by Marie Clay (1993). Despite some opposition
to Reading Recovery and Clay’s work (Chapman & Tumner, 2011; 2015;
Nicholson, 2011; Reynolds & Whedall, 2007), several scholars have pointed
to its effectiveness in balancing the various interdependent elements,
including foundational skills, needed in learning to read (see Schwartz, 2005;
2015: Schwartz et al., 2009). As Robert Schwartz (2015) noted:

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 Claim 5

Clay’s (2001) theory incorporates a more-complex view of early literacy

learning that incorporates direct phonics and phonemic awareness
instruction and links that knowledge to monitor word recognition decisions
while reading (Doyle, 2013; McGee, Kim, Nelson, & Fried, 2015; Schwartz,
2015; Schwartz & Galllant, 2011). This emphasis on monitoring during the
reading of connected text helps many struggling beginners to construct
the elaborate set of orthographic knowledge that Tunmer and Nicholson
(2011) call the cipher. (p. 5)

In her approach to Reading Recovery, Clay (1993, 1998) suggested teachers

provide readers with focused, strategic ways of enlisting phonics and the
other cueing systems as they develop and monitor their reading across
various texts (e.g., word analysis and sound blending activities; see Clay,
1993; 1998). Clay’s notion of the self-improving system—which interestingly
bears a family resemblance to Share’s (1995) self-teaching hypothesis
for recoding—submits that readers, like conductors of an orchestra (see
Anderson et al., 1985), acquire the ability to manage multiple strategies for
reading. Within this model, different cueing systems offer a means by which
the reader can “cross check” their word recognition and meaning making
as they read. Clay therefore did not suggest displacing grapho-phonemic
approaches; she merely suggested ways in which readers might be guided
to deploy cueing systems interdependently. Advocates of Whole Language,
such as Yetta Goodman and her colleagues (Goodman, Burke & Sherman,
1980; Goodman & Marek, 1996), also suggest the importance of learning to
orchestrate multiple cues, even promoting strategy lessons and retrospective
miscue analyses to support readers as they engage with multiple diverse
cueing systems (see Gibson & Levin, 1975, on teaching a “set for variability”).

Evidence Supporting Multiple Cueing Pedagogy. Significant support

for a more inclusive orientation has also emerged from several studies
comparing multiple cueing approaches with a singular emphasis on phonics.
Scanlon and Anderson (2020) summarize work that was initiated by Vellutino
and Scanlon (2002) and refined over several decades (see Scanlon, et al.,
2024). They specifically examine the Interactive Strategies Approach (ISA),

63
Claim 5

a technique intended to help readers develop word solving strategies that

enlist the use of orthographic, phonological, syntactic, semantic, and lexical
cues. As Scanlon and Anderson (2020) state:
The ISA involves extensive attention to the development of phonological/
phonemic awareness and phonics skills and the application of those skills in
combination with the development of strategic word-solving skills in context.
In the ISA, substantial emphasis is placed on the interactive and mutually
supportive roles of contextual and alphabetic information in the process
of word solving. It involves explicit instruction and guidance in the use of
word-solving strategies and in the underlying skills and understandings that
enable the use of those strategies (Anderson, 2009; Scanlon, Anderson, &
Sweeney, 2017). (S21-S22)
…
According to the theoretical model that underlies the ISA, students at the
early stages of learning to read need to understand the communicative
purposes and conventions of print, develop facility and fluency with the
alphabetic code, learn to use both code- and meaning-based word-
solving strategies in interactive and confirmatory ways, and be provided
with supportive opportunities to orchestrate these understandings in both
structured tasks and authentic reading contexts (Vellutino & Scanlon,
2002). (p. S22)

Drawing from 25 years of research regarding the use of this approach with
beginning and struggling readers as well as middle grade students, they found
that the ISA, more so than other approaches, offers readers a form of self-
teaching. This advantage supports readers’ successful, ongoing enlistment
of phonics for word learning in the context of their engagement with “natural”
texts (i.e., texts that are not contrived to ensure a preset repetition of selected
words or word families, or not specifically designed for research purposes).

Our Revised Version of the Claim

Critics of the three cueing systems hold the view that teaching
beginning reading should focus on developing a reader’s ability to recognize
words accurately and automatically. They argue that decoding is key to
developing the automatic word identification—thus freeing up the cognitive
resources for constructing meaning. Accordingly, they question Goodman
(1967) and other literacy educators whose approaches either directly or

64
 Claim 5

indirectly might perpetuate the use of cueing systems (other than phonics)—
arguing that these are distractions from the crucial work of decoding.
In our view, however, SoR advocates have been too quick to dismiss
the positive contributions of multiple cueing models and approaches—
namely, that they support word identification and understanding, as well as
the development of word learning, word solving, and orthographic mapping.
Reading requires an orchestration of various factors across words and
sentences. It seems overly limiting to discredit the use of cueing systems
based on what some might consider a restrictive assumption—that reading is
entirely the accurate naming of words, rather than an act of meaning making
that involves hypothesizing. To dismiss the use of context as an over-reliance
on “guessing” or “predicting” ignores important evidence. The essence of most
theoretical models of reading involves semantic, syntactic, and orthographic
processing, We also find some of the arguments against cueing systems
(i.e., the view that the use of context or syntactic, semantic or pragmatic
cues, even when coupled with phonics, may detract from word learning) to
require the out of hand dismissal of important lines of research. Opponents
of cueing systems fail to consider research that might counter their position.
They suggest the need for, but sometimes fail to examine, studies considering
these matters more directly with students as they learn to read. And, despite
the danger of extrapolating from comparisons of good and poor readers, they
use those studies to support their critique of an emphasis on context or the
use of cueing systems (Seidenberg, 2017). As a result, Whole Language and
other popular approaches (e.g., Balanced Literacy) have been maligned as
having a phonics gap and a flawed allegiance to cueing systems.
Deep down, we also suspect that many scholars have experienced
a kind of knee-jerk reaction to Goodman’s (1967) name for this approach—
“reading as a psycholinguistic guessing game.” Arguably, Goodman’s
extended discussions of the reading process indicate that his use of “guessing”
in the title was meant to convey a disposition to predicting, inferring, cross-
checking, and hypothesizing. And while some of us might wish he had called
it something else, like “informed hypothesis testing,” or even “educated
guessing,” he didn’t.

65
Claim 5

It is time, we think, to recognize that there is always a tentative and

provisional character to both word identification and meaning construction.
Meanings change across settings, and no matter how good we are at reading,
we don’t always get things right the first time around. That is precisely why
Gibson & Levin (1975) proposed the necessity of a “set for variability” in the
development of readers’ word-solving repertoires. To rely on extrapolations
from comparisons of good and poor readers while ignoring research on the
efficacy of multiple cueing pedagogical approaches seems short-sighted.
Prudently, in her discussions of cueing systems, Adams (1998) did not
deny their possible role, but instead suggested the need for more research
on their use with beginning readers. We believe that the work of Scanlon
and her colleagues (2024) has answered Adams’ call by demonstrating
that a “full tool box” of word solving strategies, as reflected in their ISA
interventions, enhances word solving, word reading, orthographic mapping,
and understanding connected text.

66
CLAIM 6

Learning to read is an unnatural act.

The Evidence Marshalled in Support of the Claim

The notion that learning to read is unnatural is one of the core arguments
for phonics-first approaches to reading. The phrase was memorialized in
classic pieces by Goodman and Goodman (1976; 1979) entitled, Learning
to Read is Natural, and by Gough and Hillinger’s (1980) Learning to Read:
An Unnatural Act. As Moats (2000), a key spokesperson for a decoding
emphasis in beginning reading, has argued: “Learning to read is not natural
or easy for most children” (p. 14). In a similar vein, physician and learning
development scholar Sally Shaywitz (Boulton & Shaywitz, 2004), whose
research focuses on dyslexia, noted in an interview:
We’re not hardwired for written language. Many societies on earth indeed
rely solely on an oral language. So whereas spoken language is instinctive
and natural—you don’t have to teach a baby to speak, you just expose that
baby to a spoken language and that baby will learn, eventually, to speak—
reading has to be taught. It’s artificial, it’s acquired. (from the section, “Brain
Not Wired for Reading”)

Maryanne Wolf, in her 2018 book on reading in a digital era (Wolf & Stoodley,
2018), seems to espouse a more extreme position on this matter (especially
in comparison to her earlier writing; see Wolf & Stoodley, 2008):
…human beings were never born to read. The acquisition of literacy is
one of the most important epigenetic achievements of Homo sapiens. To
our knowledge, no other species ever acquired it. The act of learning to
read added an entirely new circuit to our hominid brain’s repertoire. The
long developmental process of learning to read deeply and well changed
the very structure of that brain’s circuitry, which rewired the brain which
changed the nature of human thought. (p. 1-2)

Wolf goes on to say that while oral language is a “basic human function” (p. 17)—
acquired with minimal if any instruction—reading is an unnatural, cultural act:

67
Claim 6

We human beings have to learn to read. This means we must have an

environment that helps us to develop and connect a complex assortment of
basic and not-so-basic processes, so that every young brain can form its
own brand-new reading circuitry. (p. 18)

Mark Seidenberg (2017) likewise highlights that reading is not simply the
“handmaiden of spoken language” (p. 20)—and that word-level deciphering
is the “necessary bridge between print and speech” (p. 119). As he argues:
Whereas talking with children guarantees that they will learn to speak…
reading to children does not guarantee that they will read. Children learn a
spoken language through exposure and use, but reading requires systematic
guidance and feedback, more than occurs in casual reading to children. In
short, reading to children is not the same as teaching children to read….
Reading to children is important but not sufficient, children benefit from
it quite a lot, but it neither obviates the role of instruction nor vaccinates
against dyslexia.

While Seidenberg notes there are exceptions—children who “teach

themselves” (p. 114)—he underscores that “grasping the alphabetic principle”
(p. 119) is the first step in teaching reading:
It should be clear why becoming alphabetic is a major hurdle that requires
instruction, feedback, and practice. The child has to think phonemically,
which involves both phonology and orthography, and learn arbitrary cross-
modal associations between graphemes and phonemes…The amount of
instruction required depends upon the child and how they are taught. (pp.
119-120)

The arguments in support of decoding by Seidenberg (2017) and Wolf (Wolf

& Stoodley, 2008; 2018) draw upon a history dating back to the advent of
alphabetic systems. In such views, writing systems represent degrees of
decontextualization (or recontextualization) that require multiple processes
of meditation—from symbols to sounds to meaning. Advocates of word
learning will sometimes characterize learners as non-readers until they can
decode words—an “unnatural” skill that demands systematic intervention to
be acquired. As Castles, Rastle & Nation (2018) contend:

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 Claim 6

…it is clear that the fundamental insight that graphemes represent

phonemes in alphabetic writing systems does not typically come naturally
to children. It is something that most children must be taught explicitly, and
doing so is important for making further progress in reading. Fortunately,
however, the foundational knowledge required to trigger this insight is not
extensive and, once acquired, puts children on a path to accruing further
knowledge and firmly establishing their alphabetic decoding skills. (p. 11)

Threaded throughout these arguments is support for the explicit teaching of

word level decoding—presented as the alternative to leaving learners to their
own resources. Direct interventions focused upon the mastery of phonics are
especially stressed in cases where learners might struggle with learning to
read (such as children diagnosed as dyslexic), or might have missed the rich
literacy experiences afforded to other young children.

Our Reading of the Evidence and the Claim

As noted, some who argue that learning to read is unnatural also
acknowledge that this is not universal to all learners (e.g., Castles, Rastle
& Nation, 2018; Seidenberg, 2017). They recognize that exceptions exist;
indeed, they do not exclude the possibility that some beginning readers
and writers draw upon something akin to a natural prowess for discerning,
applying, and refining reading and writing skills.

Missing Perspectives. Missing from these discussions of the unnatural

nature of reading is research describing the connection between learning
to read and the ways in which learners become involved in experiences with
print and other symbolic representations prior to schooling (e.g., by engaging
with representations, objects, gestures, and other forms of communication;
see Perry, 2023; Siegel, 2006). By facilitating the development of print
awareness and an appreciation of different contexts, print conventions, genres,
and other elements, early meaning making cues advance learning to read
and write, including decoding skills (Beers & Henderson, 1977; Chomsky,
1979; Yaden & Templeton, 1986; Yaden, Rowe, & MacGillivray, 2000).
Even less apparent in this research is any consideration of the extensive,

69
Claim 6

multidisciplinary discussions of these issues, dating back some 75 years,

across linguistics, psychology, sociolinguistics and behaviorism. Scholars
across different fields (Bissex, 1980; Dyson, 1995, 2013, 2016; Ferreiro &
Teberosky, 1982; Halliday, 1975, 2010; Harste, 2021; McGee & Richgels,
1990; Olson, 1977; Purcell-Gates, 1995, 2007; Purcell-Gates, Jacobson, &
Degener, 2004; Scribner & Cole 1981; Teale, & Sulzby, 1986) have observed
that from birth, learners have an extraordinary capacity for learning written as
well as oral language—without any apparent instruction. Their discussions
draw upon the rich history of scholarship in oral language development—
including work by Lenneberg (1967), who argued that language development,
including reading, has a genetic basis; or Peirce (e.g., Peirce, Hartshorne,
& Weiss, 1932, 1933, 1935; Peirce & Burks, 1958), whose approaches
to reading informed sociolinguistics and socio-semiotic perspectives. As
Noam Chomsky (1965) suggested with his influential notion of a Language
Acquisition Device, learners have an innate capacity for language learning:
…a child cannot help constructing a particular sort of transformational
grammar to account for the data presented to him, any more than he can
control his perception of solid objects or his attention to line and angle. Thus
it may well be that the general features of language structure reflect, not so
much the course of one’s experience, but rather the general character of
one’s capacity to acquire knowledge—in the traditional sense, one’s innate
ideas and innate principles. (p. 59)

Arguably, in a similar vein, Stanislas Dehaene (2009) suggested that research

in neurology pointed to a form of cultural adaptability akin to an ability to
recycle or engage in forms of cultural learning.

Learning by Observation. Observational studies of young learners

suggest that reading development proceeds both alongside oral language
development as well as independently. Young learners use their innate
prowess as they engage with print and related representations for a range
of purposes (e.g., functional, communicative, imaginative). Reflecting their
developing understanding of norms, and evolving facility with meaning making
processes (e.g., seeking coherence; predicting and connecting ideas), young

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 Claim 6

learners explore and enlist various conventions, including forms of utterances

and graphic representations, as they read, write, and draw (see Bissex, 1980;
Dyson, 1995, 2013, 2016; Ferreiro & Teberosky 1982; Halliday, 1975, 2010;
Harste, 2021). Numerous observational studies note how reading and writing
development begins at birth, and evolves within families and everyday settings.
As Dyson (2001) notes, written language exposure actually introduces new
sociocultural contexts for children:
Learning about written language is thus not just about learning a new code
for representing meanings. It is about entering new social dialogues in an
expanding life world. As such, written language learning is inevitably a part
of learning about social and ideological worlds and about the place of a
child’s own relationships and experiences in those worlds. (p. 138).

This spontaneous or minimally guided learning occurs as young learners

interact with symbols, images, or print, creating multimodal responses to
engage with their world. Perry (2023), drawing upon semiotics, noted that
the practice of engaging through sign-systems is “...the primary or central
characteristic of life, whether human or organic” (p. 1); her perspective gives
printed language a “natural” status equivalent to oral language. But the link
between oral and written language is even more salient, as it is the practical
work of all literacies—engaging with reading/print communities in partnership
with oral language development. Granted, what may be missing from such
discussions are studies that more fully consider whether these skills are best
acquired in a natural quest for meaning making—i.e., the result of learners’
natural prowess—or are more efficiently taught as an independent enterprise
within a school curriculum. Also missing are studies examining how teaching
and learning might build upon, rather than displace, these innate reading
propensities.

A Communicative Perspective. Athey (1971), in her extensive review

of different models of language development and reading, emphasized that
reading should be examined not as “a bundle of skills, but a system of social
communication” (p. 11; see also Davis, 1971). She outlined the need for

71
Claim 6

a sociolinguistic perspective in studies attempting to unravel what naturally

develops and what might be taught. In a similar vein, Seigel (2006) noted that
the evidence from these studies supports the idea of emergent literacy—a
notion which emphasizes that these early efforts should not be regarded as
“pre-literate” but rather as early, literate attempts at sense-making:
…when children wrote signs (famously DO NAT DSTRB, GNYS AT
WRK [Bissex, 1980]) or read familiar storybooks, the results could not be
interpreted as unsuccessful imitations of adult writing and reading, but as
reflections of children’s growing facility with the full array of knowledge
required to mean through written language. (p. 66)

The Interdependence of Oral and Written Language. In the afterword

to Adams’ influential (1990) treatise, Beginning to Read, Dorothy Strickland
and Bernice Cullinan discussed the natural versus unnatural distinction. They
suggested the primacy given to phonics by Adams assumes that children
learn only what they are taught and, in the case of phonics, that they master
skills separately rather than in combination. Instead, they argued, reading is
more developmental, and reading abilities emerge interdependently as skills
and strategies integrate—especially in rich literate environments, where
the abilities of readers and understandings of reading expand. From this
developmental perspective, they questioned the characterization of learners
as readers and non-readers. Moreover, they challenged the focus on phonics
as a decontextualized and isolated linguistic practice:
We feel it is misleading to categorize a child as either a reader or a non-
reader with no in between. We prefer to trust the evidence that Adams
provides about her own children as well as the careful observations of
numerous researchers (Cochran-Smith, 1984; Bissex, 1980; Baghban,
1984) whose work suggests that literacy development starts early and is
ongoing. Rather than classifying children as readers and non-readers, we
believe it is more accurate to consider their literacy development as being
on a continuum of increasing competence.
… The research that Adams cites often assumes that linguistic awareness
is a precondition to reading and writing. Most of the studies show a
relation between knowledge of letter names and literacy development are
correlational. The researchers use measures that diagnose a child’s linguistic

72
 Claim 6

awareness—the result of which is not important in itself as much as it is a

reflection of a broader knowledge about reading and language (Anderson,
Hiebert, Scott & Wilkinson, 1985; Nurss, 1980). Moreover, this information
does not provide a base to sort out any kind of temporal sequence nor
does it imply that the best way for children to acquire linguistic awareness
is through direct instruction. It may be that development in literacy causes
growth in linguistic awareness. Ignoring recent observations about growth
in literacy may lead us to lose sight of the fact that it is story reading,
talking about stories and print, and attempts at writing that may influence
the acquisition of phonics rather than the other way around. (Strickland &
Cullinan, writing in Adams, 1990, pp. 427-428)

William Teale (1982), drawing upon his extensive observations of young

readers and writers, argued that using terms such as natural and unnatural
when defining learning to read and write fails to acknowledge how learning to
read can, and often does, develop as an interplay between learners and their
environments. That environment might be in a home, a community center,
a day care, or even a school setting. Efforts to differentiate natural from
unnatural, Teale explained, often missed the transactional nature of learning
to read, ignored the mutually constitutive nature of teaching and learning, and
failed to recognize the “natural” propensities of learners:
Frequently the adult assumes that the typical literacy curriculum with its
progression from part to whole and its hierarchy of skills represents a model
of how children learn to read and write. The belief is that literacy development
is a case of building competencies in certain cognitive operations with
letters, words, sentences and texts, competencies which can be applied in
a variety of situations. A critical mistake here is that the motives, goals, and
conditions have been abstracted away from the activity in the belief that this
enables the student to “get down to” working on the essential processes
of reading and writing. But, … these features are critical aspects of the
reading and writing themselves. By organizing instruction which omits
them, the teacher ignores how literacy is practiced (and therefore learned)
and thereby creates a situation in which the teaching is an inappropriate
model for the learning. Some children are able to maintain the whole and
learn despite the teacher; others accept the teaching model as a way of
learning and become its victims. (p. 567).

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Claim 6

Teale’s response to those who argue that learning to read is unnatural might
well be something like: “It’s only unnatural if you arrange the conditions to
make it so.” According to Teale, if you let learning to read follow its course in
making a difference in the daily lives of children, where it can be nurtured by
purposes and motives, it will appear to be much more a part of the natural
course of events.
Yaden, Reinking and Smagorinsky (2021), in their discussions of
the Science of Reading, also considered this tendency in research to use
binaries or opposing views. They were particularly concerned with the use
of the nature versus nurture binary to dismiss views of reading development.
Citing a Vygotskian perspective, they argued (as Teale did) for a transactional
view:
Vygotsky (1987, 1997) argued that human development is a function of
the intersection of nature and nurture. He continually stressed that although
germane to the developing personality, materialist explanations alone (i.e.,
biological, neurological, physiological, stimulus–response mechanisms)
of human behavior were never sufficient to explain the higher, culturally
mediated psychological functions, such as attitudes, ideologies, methods
of abstract reasoning, memory, emotions, voluntary attention, or will. To
Vygotsky and the cultural-historical approach that he and his colleagues
founded (Cole, 1996), the nature/nurture debate was not an either/or
question but a both/and proposition. (p. S125).

Situated Language Use—Both Oral and Written. This tension between

oral and written language as it pertains to what is or is not natural hearkens back
to the second claim in this series, about how we define reading. If reading is
identifying and understanding words available in one’s oral language repertoire,
then it can be easily divorced from meaning making. Such an intentionally
narrow definition of reading also prevents scholars from taking into account
what we know of reading development—including the synergies between
reading, various forms of representations (e.g., drawings), writing, and oral
language that educators have gleaned from observation. Consequently, those
who emphasize this unnatural character make scant mention of the power of
writing or other forms of representation as vehicles for learning to read (see
Tierney & Shanahan, 1991). For example, it is noteworthy that despite some

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 Claim 6

mention of research on invented spellings by Carol Chomsky, her work with

writing as integral to reading development receives no mention. In particular,
they exclude reference to her assertion that the natural goal of early readers
is to make sense of print:
Children who have been writing for months are in a very favorable position
when they undertake learning to read. They have at their command
considerable phonetic information about English, practice in phonetic
segmentation, and experience with alphabetic representation…. They have,
in addition, an expectation of going ahead on their own. They are prepared
to make sense, and their purpose is to derive a message from the print, not
just pronounce the words. (Chomsky, 1979, pp. 51-52)

Those who view reading as natural, by contrast, align with the perspective that
meaning making with print (for a range of functions) arises as young learners
encounter the world. In essence, this is tied to the notion that learners engage
with reading their world from the outset—exploring the nature and role of print
as they encounter and learn the prompts of signs. As Meek (1982) suggested,
based upon her extensive experience with young learners:
The biggest mistake that we make is in giving the five-year-old the notion
that you learn to read by a series of exercises, like scales in music, and then
you are rewarded with a ‘real’ book or ‘real’ reading in another form. (p.11)

Meek’s view aligns with Jerome Bruner’s (1990) discussion of meaning

making; he argues that the quest for meaning, explanation, and coherence
drives all of our interactions with the natural, social, and cultural worlds in
which we live.

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Claim 6

Our Revised Version of the Claim

Our own sentiments align with those of both Bruner and Meek.
We don’t propose a wired in reading acquisition device that parallels the
consensus view of a built-in language acquisition device (Chomsky, 1965).
However, we do believe that all humans are wired to engage in sense-making
in all their encounters with the natural, social, and cultural worlds in which
they live. They seek coherence in their explanations of everything. From this
perspective, learning to read is no more or less natural than learning how
to cross a street, ride a bike, do multiplication, categorize dinosaurs, or find
support for claims you make when developing arguments. Moreover, it is
consistent with what Freire (1972) had in mind when he discussed the need
for humans to read both the word and the world.
Our current working hypothesis, in trying to understand why so many
scholars regard learning to read as unnatural, is that they really want to
divide reading into two phases: a) Identifying and understanding words; and
b) Understanding connected discourse. Again, we return to the Rayner et
al. (2001) definition from the third claim that we fact-checked. Recall their
distinction between reading and literacy. Reading, for them, is phase A—that
is, getting the words mapped onto students’ oral language lexicon. At that
point, all the language, knowledge, and contextual resources that readers
bring to the printed page can kick in to aid in the discourse comprehension
phase. Phase A is arbitrary and unnatural; phase B is highly natural, or at least
as natural as everything else we do. Put another way, with this approach, the
only meaning making in reading is understanding words; the meaning making
that comes later in discourse comprehension is just like meaning making
for oral language, or for any other artifacts or phenomena we encounter in
everyday experience.
If reading is defined as the translation of print into sounds (to identify
words tied to the alphabetic principle; see Claim 2), then the case for learning
to read as an unnatural activity (at least for some learners) may have some
support. It is likely, however, that you will find exceptions. While most children
will require explicit instruction to master the cipher, some young children
learn to read without the need for explicit intervention—and do so in ways

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 Claim 6

that parallel learning to speak. By contrast, if you define learning to read as

achieving a range of functions through engagement with symbols of various
types (linguistic and non-linguistic), then you will likely suggest that learning
to read occurs naturally—from an innate propensity to enlist and expand one’s
use of symbols (letters in the alphabet among them) as one expresses oneself
or interprets the world. In other words, if you take a step back and look at
reading through the lens of writing development, print awareness, or reading
the signs that we encounter as we engage with people, places, and our
environment—then what counts as reading includes much more than reading
print.
For us, learning to read may not be specifically wired in the same way
we have come to accept the specificity of the wiring for learning one’s oral
language. But, as nearly as we can fathom, it is as natural or unnatural as
learning anything else we learn in our quest to make meaning and achieve
coherence about all of life’s phenomena. Learning to read print, in this sense,
is integrated with—and a natural outcome of—learning to make sense of the
world.

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 CLAIM 7

Balanced Literacy and/or Whole Language is

responsible for the low or falling NAEP scores we
have witnessed in the U.S. in the past decade.

The Evidence Marshalled in Support of the Claim

Using scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP), or any other wide-scale assessment, to make a claim about why
the U.S. education system (or that of any other English-speaking country)
is failing its students is not a new practice—especially coming from policy
pundits with an axe to grind. Historically, questionable claims regarding the
rise and fall of test results have fueled conversations, more speculative than
certain, about the quality of schooling and student learning outcomes. And
the SoR movement is no exception.
For example, in a February 2023 opinion column for The New York
Times, Nicholas Kristoff enlisted familiar arguments to suggest a connection
between the teaching of phonics and better test results. As he stated:
Two-thirds of fourth graders in the United States are not proficient in
reading.
Reading may be the most important skill we can give children. It’s the pilot
light of that fire.
Yet we fail to ignite that pilot light, so today some one in five adults in the
United States struggles with basic literacy, and after more than 25 years of
campaigns and fads, American children are still struggling to read. Eighth
graders today are actually a hair worse at reading than their counterparts
were in 1998. (paras. 3-5)

The column segued into a case for teaching reading through systematic
phonics. A month or so later, in March of 2023, a similar argument was made
by the Editorial Board of The Washington Post (WP Editorial Board, 2023)—
citing tests score changes in Mississippi as evidence of the virtues of phonics.
This particular case, commonly referred to as the Mississippi Miracle, has

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 Claim 7

often been used to demonstrate the power of legislative action to contribute

to positive change in teaching practices. Indeed, the National Council on
Teacher Quality (Ellis et al., 2023) touted the state of Mississippi as “a top
state in the NCTQ review” (p. 24), arguing:
… this dedication to teacher preparation is achieving results for students:
Between 2013 and 2019, the state saw fourth grade NAEP scores rise
dramatically, including for historically marginalized groups such as Black
and Hispanic students. Even after the pandemic, Mississippi maintained its
gains in reading in 2022, while many other states declined. (p. 24)

Likewise, in Australia, SoR claims and the Mississippi miracle have been touted
to advance alarmist inferences of a crisis, justify a purging of past practices,
and to insist that systematic phonics offer a panacea. Media, such as the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC; e.g., Duffy, 2024), and policy
lobby groups, such as the Grattan Institute (Hunter, Stobart, & Haywood,
2024), have suggested that declining reading performances propel the need
to reform curriculum and teacher education to align with a systematic phonics
emphasis. As authors of a report by the Grattan Institute suggested:
Australia has an unacceptably high number of children and adolescents who
fail to reach minimum proficiency standards in reading. According to 2023
NAPLAN results, about one in three Australian students are not meeting
grade-level expectations in reading. Australia has too many ‘instructional
casualties’—students who should read proficiently, but haven’t been taught
well.
At the same time, not enough Australian students are excelling in reading.
According to PISA (the OECD’s Programme for International Student
Assessment), in 2022 only 12 per cent of Australian students were high
performers in reading, compared to 22 per cent in Singapore. (Hunter,
Stobart, & Haywood, 2024, p. 8)

Our Reading of the Evidence and the Claim

Can and should such test results be used to support causal
connections between past and present practices and outcomes—especially
if the timelines for practices and the results do not always align? We concur
with a number of our colleagues: The use of national and international test
results to judge the effectiveness of approaches to teaching reading constitute

79
Claim 7

a commonplace problem. As Bowers (2020) argued, it is a bridge too far for a

government to attribute improvement in national and international test results
to their advocacy and demands for phonics instruction—or, for that matter,
for any type of instruction. These claims often draw faulty inferences about
patterns and trends in test scores; misinterpret performance levels (e.g., basic
versus proficient versus advanced); and ignore the correlational nature of the
evidence. These arguments also ignore the limits of the measures themselves.
Even if we did accept the dubious practice of elevating correlations to causal
connections between practices and outcomes, we would be forced to also
acknowledge that on other outcomes—such as the enjoyment of reading—the
evidence favors those countries that have been largely spared from reforms
and mandates requiring the teaching of phonics (Goldstein, 2023).
Reinking, Hruby and Risko (2023) noted that NAEP data has remained
largely unchanged: “What is particularly remarkable is that…plotting reading
scores on the NAEP across decades results in essentially a flat line, although
with a slight upward movement since the outset” (pp. 113-114.). In an endnote,
they add that this flat trajectory reflects “...the average scores for Grade 4
students, which is most relevant to early reading, but graphs for students in
Grades 8 and 12 are similarly flat” (p. 126). Other countries have witnessed
similar trends, as seen in discussions of increased national testing regimens
and international comparative measures such as PIRLS (the Progress in
International Reading Literacy Study). For example, educational authorities
in England applauded their country’s rise in 2021 PIRLS rankings, from 8th
to 4th place. Despite no change in their overall score from the preceding
2016 PIRLS results, they ascribed such improvements to an emphasis in
phonics instruction (e.g., Weale & Adams, 2023). (Media accounts in New
Zealand, by contrast, have suggested that high performance on PIRLS can
be ascribed to support for motivating young readers—e.g., by nurturing their
self-confidence and love of reading; see RNZ, 2023).
As Reinking, Hruby, and Risko (2023) also noted, the manner of
reporting NAEP results by proficiency levels (advanced, proficient, basic)
contributes to the problem. As they showed (see Figure 7) and explained:

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 Claim 7

Proficiency levels created a custom-made crisis. Using the 2019 NAEP

reading scores, a typical argument goes something like this: “Only 34%
of fourth-grade students nationally scored at or above the proficient level
in reading.” That sounds alarming, suggesting that only about a third of
readers are proficient. Some might even interpret this to mean that two
thirds of students are hardly reading at all. But, if “basic” means something
closer to “average,” which it does, and readers in that group are combined
with “proficient” or above… approximately two thirds of all fourth-grade
students are reading at or near grade level, with slight increases over the
year. There was a statistically significant drop by 1 point in 2019; although
that drop is worth watching, it is not a trend indicating a crisis. (p. 115)

Figure 7
Percentage of Fourth-Grade Students Scoring Basic Level or Above on
Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP),
1992–2019 (Reinking, Hruby, & Risko, 2023)

Year Percentage at or above NAEP Basic

2022 63
2019 66
2017 68
2015 69
2013 68
2011 67
2009 67
2007 67
2005 64
2003 63
2002 64
2000 59
1998 60
1998 62
1994 60
1992 62
100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Percent
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Claim 7

Similar evidentiary paths and arguments have been pursued in Australia. For
example, data from Australia’s National Assessment Program–Literacy and
Numeracy (NAPLAN) have been used to discredit approaches to teaching
reading and teacher education. As shown in Figures 8 and 9, the results bring
to the fore differences across student populations, such as Indigenous and
non-Indigenous groups. Yet the results should not be misread as trends over
time; for instance, the test performance of Indigenous students may signal a
need to improve the tests themselves—in other words, a need to recognize
that the tests enlisted may not afford a valid measure of Indigenous students’
literacies.

Figure 8
NAPLAN Mean Results by Student Year, 2008-2022 (ACARA, 2022)

Students in Australia, reading

700

600
Mean scaled score

500

400

300

200
2008 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021 2022

Year level Year 9 Year 7 Year 5 Year 3

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 Claim 7

Figure 9
NAPLAN Mean Results for Year 3 Students Indigenous & Non-Indigenous,
2008-2022 (ACARA, 2022)
Year 3 students by Indigeneity, reading
700

600
Mean scaled score

500

400

300

200
2008 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021 2022

Year level Indigenous Non-indigenous

Nevertheless, the NAPLAN results reinforce concerns about a widening gap

between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. As Natasha Bita (2022),
the education editor of The Australian, commented:
Fresh NAPLAN data exposes a growing gap in achievement between
students from wealthy and poor families, as well as girls and boys, with at
least a third of Indigenous teenagers functionally illiterate. (para. 2)

Despite the longstanding nature of these gaps, and the range of factors that
have been identified as contributors to such results (e.g., economic factors
resulting in major disparities in school funding; the application of a one-size-
fits-all, Eurocentric curriculum), some SoR advocates continue to claim that
such differences have arisen from curricular emphases (e.g., that emphasize
Whole Language and, as a result, fail to teach phonics). As Bita (2022)
suggested:
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Claim 7

…nearly 9 per cent of all year 9 students—taught to read using the “look and
guess” whole-language technique popular a decade ago—are still struggling
to read and write, with boys falling behind faster than girls. (para. 5)

On a global scale, the same trend can be seen in the interpretation of PISA
results (Programme for International Student Assessment). Claims are
made that crises have arisen—even when fluctuations and differences in
performance (between benchmarked countries) might be minimal (i.e., when
other factors are taken into consideration, such as the range of scores, the
sampling of students, the timing of the tests, and the manner in which students
are prepared; see Figure 10).

Our Revised Version of the Claim

We do not deny that there should be an increased investment in
reading instruction; however, it should not be based on claims that dismiss
past efforts and suggest new directions without stronger evidence. Aligning
the timing of educational developments with test performance data is quite
speculative; it is well-nigh impossible to ascribe causality with any confidence.
At best, such data provide a justification for probing more deeply, by
conducting experimental research that can evaluate the causal relationships
between programs and outcomes. Moreover, this practice ignores (perhaps
conveniently) those economic and other factors have been shown to be
influential. Yet in the United States and elsewhere, educators, the public, and
politicians and policy makers continue to be presented with such evidence to
support or dismiss educational developments.
A recent manifestation of this tendency involves the heralding of
developments in Mississippi. The alleged Mississippi Miracle—celebrated by
the governor of Mississippi, The Washington Post, and the National Council
on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)—was touted as an example of how phonics
instruction would lead to dramatic NAEP score increases. Unfortunately,
closer examinations of the data and Mississippi education policy have raised
concerns that the data may not be as strong as claimed (especially over the
long term). The alleged increases in reading performances may have arisen
not from an emphasis upon phonics, but rather from policies directed at

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 Claim 7

Figure 10
PISA Mean Reading Literacy Scores and Distribution of Student Performance
by Country (Based upon De Bortoli, Underwood, & Thomson, 2023)

Difference
between
Mean Confidence 10th & 90th
Country Score SE Interval percentiles Distribution of scores

Singapore 543 1.9 538-546 271

Ireland 516 2.3 511-520 227
Japan 516 3.2 509-522 249
Korea 515 3.6 508-522 262
Chinese Taipei 515 3.3 508-521 269
Canada 507 2.0 503-510 278
United States 504 4.3 495-512 292
New Zealand 501 2.1 496-505 287
Hong Kong (China) 500 2.8 494-505 255
Australia 498 2.0 494-501 288
United Kingdom 494 2.4 489-499 269
Finland 490 2.3 485-494 270
Denmark 489 2.6 483-493 238
Poland 489 2.7 483-494 272
Czech Republic 489 2.2 484-493 256
Sweden 487 2.5 482-491 290
Italy 482 2.7 476-486 240
Germany 480 3.6 472-486 276
Portugal 477 2.7 471-481 243
Norway 477 2.5 471-481 295
OECD Average 476 0.5 474-476 262
Spain 474 1.7 471-477 250
France 474 3.1 467-479 277
Israel 474 3.5 466-480 323
Hungary 473 2.8 467-478 264
Viet Nam 462 3.9 454-469 197
Greece 438 2.8 432-443 245
Iceland 436 2.1 431-439 271

200 300 400 500 600 700

85
Claim 7

teaching to the test and from the exclusion of certain students from being
tested. Indeed, further examinations expose what might be considered
more tempered claims for improvements in reading performance, as well as
uncertainly about the antecedents of such results—questioning the influence
of the shift to phonics, and the extent to which such initiatives are replicable
(Drum, 2023; Westall & Cummings, 2023).
In reviewing the Mississippi results, LA Times business columnist
Michael Hiltzik (2023) and education bloggers Bob Somerby (2023) and
Kevin Drum (2023) reported what they deem to be a statistical illusion—one
that mischaracterizes Mississippi fourth-grade students’ unprecedented
growth in reading performance as correlated with the state’s emphasis on
phonics (and, by extension, the Governor’s support of Mississippi’s Literacy
Promotion Act). According to Somerby and Drum, the results are not just
suspect; they represent a cover-up. The miracle growth suggested in the
results, they assert, arises from the exclusion of the lowest 10% of students
from the data. As Somerby and Drum reveal, if the data are examined in terms
of the performance of Mississippi students across the elementary grades—
specifically, if those students forced to repeat the third grade were included in
the pool—the gains espoused would disappear. Claims that the achievement
gap had lessened would be likewise be countered if a closer examination
were conducted of select minorities. African American and Mexican American
students were not faring any better than in prior years; indeed, the gap between
White, Black, and Mexican American students was widening. Essentially, they
argue, the reforms had no effect. As Hiltzik (2023) noted in his review:
…whatever gains had shown up in Mississippi’s fourth-grade scores had
vanished by the eighth grade, when all students notched exactly the same
scores in 2022 as they had in 2013. A teaching program whose gains
evaporate over a four-year span doesn’t much warrant the label “miracle.”
(para. 27)

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 Claim 7

Despite efforts to counter such concerns by individuals and advocacy groups

(e.g., Collins, 2022), there is sufficient uncertainty to warrant questioning
the claims being made, and their generalizability. The jury is still out on the
long-term nature of changes in Mississippi, and how and why the scores of
some Mississippi students may have climbed the way they did. If it were as
simple as changing curriculum standards, then why didn’t states that made
similar changes yield similar results? What is clear, however, is that assigning
causal connections between curriculum and the results of widely-used tests,
such as DIBELS or NAEP, is based on spurious reasoning. Moreover, efforts
to even consider the evidence of any causal relationship may suffer from a
credibility problem, stemming from the measures themselves. NAEP, like
many of the national assessments in various countries, offers a broad measure
that should not be viewed as sampling the diverse literacies of the readers.
Indeed, the NAEP does not test for knowledges and skills in which minority
students might excel. Tests such as DIBELS likewise approach the testing of
comprehension in a very narrow fashion—using the Maze procedure, which
has been shown to be insensitive to comprehension beyond the boundaries
of single sentences (Shanahan, Tobin, & Kamil, 1982).
We advocate a more cautious approach, one in which the trends
observed in national (such as NAEP or NAPLAN) or even international (such
as PISA or PIRLS) assessments are regarded as warning signs, as causes
for alarm or surprise, that will trigger more careful and longer-term studies
by the broader research community—research that, by design, would have
the capacity to evaluate causal relationships. As current policy pundits and
reporters have done, we ask more of these assessments than they were
designed to accomplish, as they spread unwarranted—and potentially
harmful—claims about both the positive (phonics first will solve our woes)
and negative (Balanced Literacy is the culprit) effects of curricular change.

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 CLAIM 8

Evidence from neuroscience research substantiates

the efficacy of focus on phonics-first instruction.

The Evidence Marshalled in Support of the Claim

A neuroscientific basis for learning to read has been a focus for over 100
years as physicians and psychologists and have sought to understand dyslexia,
aphasia, and various language processing issues. These investigations have
ranged from crude measures (such as measuring the circumference of the
brain) to studies of eye movements and, more recently, enlisting magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) to map brain activity. By correlating the results of
these measures with processes such as language comprehension, language
production, and reading, scholars have offered hypotheses and explanations
about the neurological basis of language development and how brain activity
interfaces with reading processes and development. As Maryanne Wolf
(2008), based on her explorations of the Science of Reading, suggested:
The more we know about the development of the reading brain and the
dyslexic brain, the better we are able, in our interventions, to target more
specifically the particular parts or connections that are not developing
in some children. Interventions in dyslexia—just as in reading that is
developing typically—must explicitly address every component system of
reading intensely and imaginatively, until some level of automaticity and
comprehension is attained (p. 227)

Of particular relevance to reading and writing within neuroscience

research is the work of neuropsychiatrist Samuel Orton and his colleague,
educator and psychologist Anne Gillingham (see Gillingham & Stillman,
1946; Orton, 1937; 1966). Drawing on their own observations, eye
movement work attributed to ophthalmologist Louis Émile Javal (e.g., Javal,
1905; see also Wade & Tatler, 2009), and work by educational psychologist
Grace Fernald (1943), Orton and Gillingham suggested that many reading
difficulties involve a habitual shortcoming in brain activity—specifically, in left
hemispherical engagements—that, in turn, might be related to the limitations

88
 Claim 8

of approaches to reading (e.g., the “look say” method). Enlisting synthetic

phonics in approaches to reading development, they postulated, might
compensate for what they deemed to be an overdependency on the right
versus the left hemisphere, and help and support the brain development they
saw as lacking. The Orton-Gillingham multisensory pedagogical approach—
grounded in Orton’s (1937) neurological work on language processing and
reading difficulties, and later built upon by Gillingham and Stillman (1946)—
has over time remained a prominent method of dealing with issues of dyslexia
(see Orton, 1966). Despite questions that might be raised about the “science”
of Orton’s hypothesis linking brain development and pedagogy (e.g., in terms
of pinpointing brain activity to the act of reading, or demonstrating how brain
activity is prone to the influences of pedagogy), Orton’s work continues to
undergird SoR claims that neuroscience research supports a phonics-first
approach to reading.
Providing partial support for Orton’s hypothesis, functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) has led some neuroscientists and educators to
suggest that reading development (i.e., phonological coding and syntactic
and semantic processing) tends to be associated with certain regions of the
brain—and that activation of those regions might advance learning to read
(as defined by those elements). For example, among children identified as
dyslexic, often-cited Sally Shaywitz and Bennett Shaywitz (e.g., Shaywitz &
Shaywitz, 2020; Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2005; 2008) have demonstrated a
preponderance of development in the frontal lobe and the right, as opposed
to the left, hemisphere of the brain. They suggest that a large proportion of
struggling readers, while they have intact systems, lack development in the
left hemisphere associated with language processes—and, as a result, are
disadvantaged in terms of the automaticity and fluency required to succeed
as readers. The claim is that these shortcomings contribute to a failure to
identify words, as suggested by Figures 11 and 12.

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Claim 8

Figure 11
Dyslexia: Going from Text to Meaning
General
Adapted from Shaywitz and Shaywitz (2020) intelligence

Vocabulary

Word
TEXT D E C O D I N G MEANING
identification

Reasoning

Concept
formation

A phonological weakness blocks decoding, which in turn interferes with word

identification. This prevents a dyslexic reader from applying his higher-level skils to get
at a word’s meaning. But even if he can’t identify the word specifically, he can apply
these higher-level skills to the context around the unknown word to guess at its meaning.

Figure 12
Word Retrieval in Typical and Dyslexic Readers
Adapted from Shaywitz and Shaywitz (2020)

DOLL DOLL
ROLL ROLL
FOG FOG
LOG DOG LOG DOG
FOR FOR
L O
F L ?
R ? F
D O G D ?
G
R

DOG
Mmm...
DOG Mmm...
Mmm...

TYPICAL READER DYSLEXIC READER

It is this fundamental dofficulty in retrieving the tiny individual sounds of spoken

language that lies at the heart of dyslexia and explains the dyslexic’s problem in word
retrieval.

Shaywitz, S. E. & Shaywitz, J., (2020) Overcoming dyslexia. (Second edition). New York: Alfred A.
Knopf; ISBN: 9780385350327
90
 Claim 8

Shaywitz and Shaywitz ascribe this skewed development (i.e., an overreliance

on the right hemisphere, and what they suggest is a less efficient left
hemisphere) to environmental influences, including a lack of opportunity to
engage with learning words (e.g., through an engagement with phonics). The
notion of the key role played by the left regions of the brain iscoupled with
two views: 1) Activation (or lack thereof) of certain parts of the brain (while
reading) may be symptomatic of a failure of brain development; and 2) The
simultaneous engagement of various areas of the brain is possibly significant
as well (see Figure 13).

Figure 13
Activated Neural Systems in Nonimpaired and Dyslexic Readers
Adapted from Shaywitz and Shaywitz (2020)

NONIMPAIRED DYSLEXIC

At left, nonimpaired readers activate neural systems that are mostly in the back of the
left side of the brain (shaded areas); at right, dyslexic readers underactivate these reading
systems in the back of the brain and tend to overactivate frontal areas.

Shaywitz, S. E. & Shaywitz, J., (2020) Overcoming dyslexia. (Second edition). New York: Alfred A.
Knopf; ISBN: 9780385350327

A frequent if aspirational goal of many neurological researchers, such

as Shaywitz and Shaywitz or Wolf, is to connect neurological activity to
reading development and pedagogy. Yet without more sophisticated devices
for tracking readers’ brain activity, and further research studies exploring
instructional possibilities, this may well more speculative than assured. As

91
Claim 8

neurologists note, the fMRI affords tentative implications but significant

constraints, including its failure to assess brain activity over time, its failure
to register brain activity that has occurred, and the lack of resolution found
in the images. Researchers also highlight variability in responses of different
readers, such that pinpointing a one-to-one relationship and generalizing
across learners is problematic. Recent discussions have noted the limitations
of generalizing, across learners, brain activity in specific regions (i.e., those
involved in certain functions of language processing) (Crinion et al., 2013;
Maisog et al., 2008). To summarize, the limitations of brain scans have
included:
1. The tools enlisted for brain scans afford a snapshot of brain
activity—reflecting an instant, not an extended period of time;
2. Efforts to localize specific areas of the brain where activation
occurs is variable across readers—and even may vary across the
same readers;
3. Attributing signals within specific regions to reading behaviors and
not to other factors is problematic;
4. Efforts to enlist magnetic resonance devices are difficult with very
young learners.

In her pursuit of what Shaywitz (2003) refers to as “the holy grail” (p. 87)—
identifying the neurological underpinnings of dyslexia—she emphasizes
the variability of dyslexia and the need for considerably more research on
teaching, learning, and development. Her discussions are coupled with
recommendations for parents and educators, such as considering the range
of factors that might contribute to some readers’ struggles. It is noteworthy that
she points to the importance of reading connected text—not just words—and
describes how learning occurs via interactions with more than just phonetic
cues.
While there is some optimism that additional research and more
refined observation devices will yield more clarity on the relationship between
brain activity and reading development, there is an admission that we are
not there yet. In their discussion of dyslexia and the brain, the International
Dyslexia Association (IDA, 2020) summarized such future hopes:

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The role of the brain in developmental dyslexia has been studied in the
context of brain anatomy, brain chemistry, and brain function—and in
combination with interventions to improve reading and information about
genetic influences. Together with results of behavioral studies, this
information will help researchers to identify the causes of dyslexia, continue
to explore early identification of dyslexia, and determine the best avenues
for its treatment. (p. 3)

In his book Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read,
Stanislas Dehaene (2009) discusses developments in neuroscience on
a number of fronts—highlighting the extraordinary advances made by
researchers studying the nature of brain activity and development in relation
to reading. He describes how studies suggest an extensive flow of activity
across regions of the brain when readers are exploring the meaning of text.
He also discusses the learning brain’s plasticity from birth, as it “recycles” to
address cultural systems such as reading and writing. However, he notes:
The insight into how literacy changes the brain is profoundly transforming
our vision of education and learning disabilities. New remediation programs
are being conceived that should, in time, cope with the debilitating incapacity
to decipher words known as dyslexia. (p. 2)

Dehaene offers suggestions, based upon correlational data, and some

speculations as to how teaching and learning might proceed—including
critiques of Whole Language as an “approach” to learning words. Yet he
refrains from offering firm suggestions based upon what he recognizes to be
the limitations of the science, such as the lack of an adequate convergence
of findings, and a void in instructional studies available to substantiate
speculative instructional implications. He even suggests that the practical
wisdom of teaching and teachers still has a role in shaping everyday practice,
at least perhaps, until more definitive research findings are available:
My own impression is that neuroscience is still far from being prescriptive.
A wide gap separates the theoretical knowledge accumulated in the
laboratory from practice in the classroom. Applications raise problems
that are often better addressed by teachers than by the theory-based
expectations of scientists. (p. 218)

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Our Reading of the Evidence and the Claim

It is clear that the scholars whose work we have reviewed are aware
of the “aspirational” potential of neurological insights to guide pedagogy.
Although advocates of teaching phonics often might concede some of the
aforementioned limitations, they dismiss them as more circumstantial than
substantive. Their arguments combine anecdotes about learners who have
benefitted from phonics; alternatively, they make reference to evidence of
the benefits of teaching phonics from neuroscience research (e.g., Dehaene,
2009; 2011; Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2020; Shaywitz, 2003; Shaywitz et al.,
1996; Simos et al., 2002) . In terms of the latter, they tout select fMRI findings
from a small number of neuroscientists who claim to have evidence of neural
pathways that lead from phonemic analysis to word naming to comprehension
of meaning. This may be due in part to the fact that, despite the somewhat
speculative use of fMRI results among researchers, the notion of reading
research supported by identifiers such as neuroscience or the science of
reading has appeal. It suggests a biological connection to reading (including,
perhaps, reading difficulties). Of particular importance to SoR advocates, it
appears to provide evidence of brain activity reflecting a neural pathway from
orthography to meaning mediated by phonology.
Given the questionable reliability of such results and other factors that
might be in play, claims that enlist select neuroscience studies to argue for
the primacy of phonics may be difficult to substantiate or even verify. For
example, as Compton-Lilly et al. (2023) report, reading processes involve
multiple networks distributed across various regions of the brain (see Table
6); as such, phonics is not exceptional, but one of many information sources
and factors related to reading that have been shown to register brain activity.
Additionally, at a base level, fMRIs or brain scans have been shown to lack
reliability (e.g., when the same stimuli mimicking the same conditions yield
different results). Therefore, to match the results from neuroscience to
propositions for the primary role of phonics for functional purposes seems
spurious—more curious than convincing.

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Table 6 Reading Processes Distributed across the Brain

(Compton-Lilly et al., 2023)

Sources of Definition Neural regions involved

information

Phonetics The sounds in a language Temporal lobe, auditory

cortex
Orthographics Conventions of written Occipital-temporal
language ventral cortex

Semantics Word meanings and Temporal-parietal and

general knowledge frontal cortex

Syntax The arrangement of words Left frontal cortex

and phrases in a sentence

For some, substantiation of the important role of phonics—to the

exclusion of other approaches—derived from select neuroscience observations
may be “a bridge too far.” As Strauss, Goodman, and Paulson (2009) have
argued, these arguments fail to reckon with other findings. As they stated:
The functional MRI studies which claimed to show that the brain uses letter-
sound relationships as it reads, and that reading is essentially matching
letters with sounds, were based on an inadequate understanding of human
brain function. The studies indeed demonstrated that a sufficiently advanced
machine can reveal brain sites where letter-sound processes occur. But
they were misinterpreted to imply that nothing else of significance to
reading is going on when the reader transacts with a whole, meaningful
text (p. 032)

If other neuroscience studies of learning and development are considered,

then all learning, including learning to read, appears more complex than
triggering the phonological processing areas of the brain. Other fMRI studies
have identified additional factors that trigger changes in the brain’s response,
demonstrating the engagement of the whole brain in conjunction with social
and cultural contexts and socio-emotional responses (e.g., Immordino-Yang
& Gotlieb, 2017). With the advent and growth of culturally-based studies
of neuroprocessing (e.g., neuroanthropology), studies have highlighted the

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limitations of distilling or separating brain activity in certain regions, as well as

the extent to which neuroscience can offer discrete and unfettered conclusions
about the relationships between brain activity and external engagements.
Cultural neuroscience in particular has drawn attention to how routine cultural
practices as well as what might be considered socio-emotional engagements
interface with human brain development and learning (e.g., Chiao & Immordino-
Yang, 2013; Han, et al., 2013; Immordino-Yang & Gotlieb, 2017; Immordino-
Yang & Yang, 2017; Immordino-Yang, et al., 2009; Lee et al., 2020; Zhou
& Fischer, 2013). In addition to influencing brain function, culture changes
the structure of the brain (e.g., Domínguez et al., 2009). This work illustrates
how culture operates in tandem with other influences—in a fashion that not
only shapes pre-existing patterns of neural activity, but also may determine
whether a pattern is present at all.
Neuroscience research has also identified how experience with different
tasks impacts brain functioning. Recent fMRI studies by Immordino-Yang and
her colleagues have documented how meaning making engages the whole
brain rather than isolated regions, interconnecting emotion, cognition, and
executive functioning. In their imaging studies of teens’ responses to stories of
struggle and resilience, abstract meaning making was associated with activity
in a network of the brain—what they term the default mode network—that
supports reflective and imaginative modes of processing, often with cultural,
ethical, and identity-related implications (Gotlieb et al., 2022; Gotlieb, Yang,
& Immordino-Yang, 2022; 2021; Immordino-Yang, Christodoulou, & Singh,
2012; Yang et al., 2018). Among adolescents, activation of this network in
response to stories was found to predict memory of the stories and growth in
brain structures five years later (Immordino-Yang & Knecht, 2020). Although
these areas of research are still in their infancy, such studies do highlight
the need to temper claims that neuroscience substantiates a discrete and
independent pathway to learning to read through phonics. At minimum,
as Gotlieb et al. (2022) note, fMRI studies suggest a tension between
neuroscience research findings and approaches to education. As they state:
“The tension, then, in effective literacy curriculum design and delivery is
around how best to navigate and support both [foundational skills and broader
literacy] aspects of children’s learning” (p. 83).

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Our Revised Version of the Claim

Neurologist and linguist Stephen Strauss (2014) noted that the select
findings of by some phonics advocates fail to reckon with the limitations of
extrapolating from brain imaging studies. As he suggested:
…being able to image brain regions where sounding out letters takes place
does not mean that sounding out letters is the key to successful reading.
It just means that we have a technology that can identify where the brain
accomplishes the conversion of letters to sounds. For sure, we have learned
something about the technology, that it has a certain degree of cognitive
resolution, so to speak. What it tells us about reading remains an open
question. …magnetic resonance technology is powerful enough to find
brain regions that carry out otherwise useless and meaningless tasks, like
identifying a font as not conventionally familiar. For all we know, sounding
out letters is just as useless and meaningless. Its status as a central principle
in a model of reading and dyslexia needs to first be established on the basis
of the empirical evidence from reading research. In other words, the high-
tech evidence cannot be interpreted in the absence of a theory of reading.

The medicalizers claim that giving dyslexic readers hours and hours of
intensive direct phonics instruction can literally repair their damaged brains.
…No; they merely observed that the subjects of their studies learned what
they were taught. (pp. 41-42)

At the very least, and until more definitive neurological (and pedagogical!)
evidence is available, we should be somewhat skeptical about connections
drawn between the biology of the brain and learning to read. Studies of the
brain may not provide evidence of a clear relationship between phonics
and learning to read or, by extension, overcoming reading difficulties. As
educational psychologist Julian Elliott (2020) noted in his discussion of
neuroscience and dyslexia:
Confusion seems particularly evident in this discipline, where beguiling
references to brain scans and the brightly colored pictures of brain
activation seem to reduce the critical faculties of many. Many fail to
understand that the contribution of neuroscience to the practical task of
assessment and intervention of reading disability is still rudimentary, and
scientific understandings continue to be undermined by methodological
difficulties and the selective use of evidence.

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… neuroscientific research on dyslexia is frequently characterized by

“distortions, simplifications, and misrepresentations” (Worthy, Godfrey, Tily,
Daly-Lesch, & Salmerón, 2019, p. 314). An absence of criticality reflects
a form of neuroseduction, whereby neuroscientific accounts increase the
likelihood that one will be persuaded by explanations or conclusions that
are not justified by the facts. Principal among these for dyslexia, perhaps, is
the erroneous belief that brain imaging can be employed for the purpose of
differential assessment and intervention rather than this being an aspiration
for the future that may ultimately “be proven to be unfeasible” (Ozernov-
Palchik, Yu, Wang, & Gaab, 2016, p. 52). (p. S66)

In exploring the use of neuroscience in discussions of the Science of Reading,

Yaden, Reinking and Smagorinsky (2021) raised some of these same issues.
As they note, detractors of neuroscience in the SoR debates have expressed
major concerns, including: 1) The extent to which fMRI’s yield images can
or should be viewed as discrete images of learning responses associated
with teaching specific foundational skills (i.e., apart from other responses
to reading); 2) The reliability of such research, especially considering the
difficulty replicating data from brain scans; and 3) The extent to which data
from brain scans can serve as evidence or the basis for educational practices.
As they stated:
Many researchers in neurobiology (e.g., Elliott et al., 2020; Hickok,
2014; Lyon, 2017) have voiced alarming concerns about the validity and
preciseness of brain imaging techniques such as functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) to detect reliable biomarkers in processes such
as reading and in the diagnosis of other mental activity. (p. 123)

Yaden and colleagues (2021) particularly highlight the concerns, expressed

by neuroscientists themselves, regarding the problems with replicability—
most notably inconsistencies in results from scans for the same individual.
They emphasize the flaws in moving from brain scans to pedagogy; as
they describe, inferences are “uncritically derived from these constructed,
multicolored pictures and extrapolated to classroom practices that fit with
theories about the relation between neurobiology and action in the world or,
in our case, processes of and subsequent instruction in reading” (p. S122).
Reiterating concerns voiced by Elliott and colleagues (2020)—that “commonly

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used task-fMRI measures lack the minimal reliability standards necessary”

(p. 803) to identify abnormal brain activity—they raise serious caveats to
interpreting any imaging study as applicable to classroom applications.
Even those claiming major breakthroughs admit that a cloud hangs
over connections between neurological studies and reading processes and
pedagogies. While major gains have been made in learning about brain
activity during reading, the findings are more suggestive than certain. To
date, they are limited by the state of neurological science, the complications
associated with generalizing across individuals, and the lack of instructional
studies supporting their ties to specific approaches to teaching and learning.
As for us, we remain both hopeful and skeptical about the capacity
of neuroscience to inform curriculum and pedagogy. Breakthroughs are
certainly welcome. And, other things being equal, we should expect a degree
of resonance between basic brain research and pedagogy. When it comes
to classroom practice, perhaps we should regard neuroscience with hopeful
skepticism as we explore research on teaching and learning to assess the
relevance and carryover of findings from brain research. But before we invest
in changes in policy, we owe it to students, parents, and the broader society
to test those hypotheses in the crucible of the classroom by employing a full
range of methodological, both quantitative and qualitative. tools, along the
lines of the suggestions we made in the introduction to this fact-checking
exercise.

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 CLAIM 9

Sociocultural dimensions of reading and literacy

are not crucial to explain either reading expertise
or its development.

The Evidence Marshalled in Support of the Claim

Despite some mention of issues around equity, ethnic differences,
and language, most scholars and pundits aligned with the SoR give scant
attention to the sociocultural dimensions of literacy. Instead, this entire domain
is simply defined as irrelevant to (i.e., not affecting) the reading process. Our
review of Claim 3, which focused on a definition of reading, provides the
best perspective on how and why contextual features of learning in general—
and reading in particular—are excluded from accounts of the skilled reading
process as well as reading development. As a reminder, in the November,
2001 issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Rayner and his
colleagues offered this intentionally narrow definition of reading:
In focusing on reading’s distinguishing features, we define learning to
read as the acquisition of knowledge that results in the child being able to
identify and understand printed words that he or she knows on the basis of
spoken language. (p. 34)

This is followed by a clear and concise statement concerning contextual

factors:
To see the value of the narrower definition, it is useful to make a distinction
between literacy and reading. Literacy dispositions toward learning include
a variety of educational outcomes— interests in reading and writing, and
knowledge of subject-matter domains—that go beyond reading. These
dimensions of literacy entail the achievement of a broad range of skills
embedded in cultural and technological contexts. An extended functional
definition is useful in helping to make clear the wide range of literacy tasks a
society might present to its members. For example, literacy may be defined
as including computer literacy, historical literacy, and scientific literacy, among
others. Such a functional definition takes literacy as referring to a level of
achievement, an extension of basic skill to reasoning and discourse in a domain
(Rayner, et al., p 34)
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In essence, what Rayner et al. accomplished was to exclude almost all things
sociocultural from their definition of reading—assigning contextual factors to what
they labeled the domain of literacy. Beyond reading, literacy covered “extended
functional definitions,” which might entail “reasoning and discourse.” This is a
clever move if one desires to keep a tight rein on what is meant by reading.
But notice that it does not absolve educators from dealing with these elements
and issues; all it does is to shift the responsibility to other curricular areas. In
this definition, reasoning, discourse, (presumably) knowledge, and functional
applications of reading likely fall to disciplinary curricula, such as literature,
science, or history—but do not concern the reading teacher.

Our Reading of the Evidence and the Claim

In 2018, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine
(NASEM) published a follow-up to the National Research Council’s 1999
classic report, How People Learn. In the updated volume, How People Learn II,
the authoring panel established a new norm for framing learning:
… all learning is a social process shaped by and infused with a system of
cultural meaning… Human development, from birth throughout life, takes place
through processes of progressively more complex reciprocal interactions
between the human individual (an active, biopsychological organism) and
that individual’s immediate physical and social environments. Through these
dynamic interactions, culture influences even the biological aspects of learning.
(pp. 27-28).

It is difficult to understand how the Rayner et al. definition could possibly meet
this new standard—defining learning, including learning to read, as an inherently
social, cultural, and contextual process. Addressing inequities, especially the
needs of struggling readers, is sometimes declared as the raison d’être for SoR
approaches to reading. Yet by giving so little consideration to sociocultural
factors, such views lead to universal generalizations (i.e., across ethnic groups)
and standardized recommendations for instruction.
As we have argued, advocates of a narrow definition of reading prefer to keep
sociocultural elements at bay—whether it be the situated nature of learning and
cognition, consideration of issues of diversity and multiculturalism, or the dynamics
of classrooms themselves—and out of the reading process. As Maryanne Wolf

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(2008) acknowledges, her treatment of cultural and historical perspectives is

lacking (p. 17). Despite professing views that lean toward transactional and
cognitive perspectives—those that embrace definitions of reading that go
beyond the page—her orientation and focus ultimately land on the mastery of
grapho-phonemic correspondence for beginning readers, at least as the first
step toward meaning. As we have suggested, these perspectives are in sharp
contrast to what the authors of How People Learn II (NASEM, 2018) noted:
all learners grow and learn in culturally defined ways in culturally defined
contexts. While humans share basic brain structures and processes, as
well as fundamental experiences such as relationships with family, age-
related stages, and many more, each of these phenomena are shaped
by an individual’s precise experiences. Learning does not happen in the
same way for all people because cultural influences are influential from
the beginning of life. These ideas about the intertwining of learning and
culture have been reinforced by research on many facets of learning and
development. (p. 2).

Adding to this, the authors of the NASEM report also underscored the need
to understand and acknowledge “the constellation of influences that affect
individual learning” (p. 2):
Each learner develops a unique array of knowledge and cognitive resources
in the course of life that are molded by the interplay of that learner’s
cultural, social, cognitive, and biological contexts. Understanding the
developmental, cultural, contextual, and historical diversity of learners is
central to understanding how people learn. (pp. 2-3).

Selective Attention to Cultural Dimensions. Nevertheless, there

remains a tendency among SoR and phonics advocates to defer meaning
making to attaining accurate and automatic word identification via mastery
of grapho-phonemic relationships. What is particularly vexing is that some
of the discussions of beginning reading by SoR scholars include lengthy
exposés on the history of print, as well as developmental reading research
that references the cultural, social, and other dimensions of reading. Books by
Seidenberg (2017) and Wolf (2008, 2018), for instance, trace the history of
print and its evolution across time and place—by relating these developments
to sociocultural considerations. In their discussions of reading, however, they

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seem to discard any mention of these sociocultural elements, focusing almost

exclusively on orthographic factors in learning to read. It is as if they pivot from
approaches that draw on sociocultural views of reading development—only
to segue into touting the necessity of grapho-phonemic correspondence as
the exclusive goal of beginning reading for English speakers.
These accounts also give scant attention to engaging with print and
other symbolic representations. In doing so, they largely ignore the extent to
which reading is about making sense of one’s world and the world of others—
and participating in those worlds for various purposes, including survival and
sustaining relationships. The chasm in this approach ignores the innate linguistic
talents of learners, such as the pragmatic discernments of learners who, as
they read their worlds, piece together coherent and feasible understandings
of the role of print within them. We wonder if the shortcomings of phonics
approaches (i.e., in terms of carryover to comprehension development) is
rooted in this failure to graft the approach to sociocultural considerations,
such as the interests and backgrounds of learners. While SoR advocates
would suggest that a limited focus ensures word-level mastery for beginning
readers, those concerned about the ramifications of a widening sociocultural
chasm would argue instead that the goals of teaching reading should extend
beyond word learning to the ways in which readers comprehend and engage
with broader worlds. As noted earlier, the results of a number of longitudinal
studies suggest that a focus on phonics does indeed propel the learning of
letter-sound relationships and readers’ abilities to pronounce pseudo-words.
However, these results also suggest that this approach fails to enhance
reading comprehension, and offers little to support young readers’ abilities to
read for meaning (Tierney & Sheehy, 2005).
As noted in Claim 1, the U.K.’s Rose Report (2006) likewise gave
cultural issues limited attention. In an arguably apologetic tone, brief mention
is made of readers’ cultural backgrounds and teaching English as a second
language. As the report states:
Children’s backgrounds will obviously shape their experiences and should
be taken into account, for example, by recognising cultural events, such
as religious festivals and traditional stories. These can provide powerful
learning opportunities to boost speaking, listening, reading and writing in
English. (p. 24)

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Reports emanating from the U.S. (e.g., Adams, 1990; Snow, Burns, & Griffin,
1998) similarly make occasional references to the importance of relevant
content in reading instruction, but their discussions are minimal. Discerning
the influence of sociopolitical considerations—or viewing diversity as a
goal, or as a means of enhancing and complementing beginning readers’
experiences—is rarely examined in detail. Furthermore, when discussions of
diversity do arise, they seem to position difference as synonymous with deficit.
This lack of attention given to sociocultural considerations seems antithetical
to discussions of learning and reading.
While the SoR instructional focus on decoding may frame reading as
distinct from sociocultural considerations (Rayner et al., 2001), our contention
is that doing so is ill-advised and unnecessary limiting.. SoR advocates claim
their focus is on neural, perceptual, and psychological factors; however, any
research-based description of reading processes and reading development
that does not account for the social, cultural, historical, and other contextual
elements of reading cannot and should not claim to call itself “a science
of reading.” We contend that sociocultural considerations are integral to
individual and societal development, and should serve as foundational
educational tenets—forming a key lens in educational research, theory, and
practice.

Missing Research Perspectives. We are concerned that the Science

of Reading, by privileging phonics as the key starting point for learning to
read, may advance an approach limited in its potential reach, relevance, and
outcomes. The SoR focus on teaching decoding can contribute to a shortfall in
supporting readers’ development, and ignores an entire body of sociocultural
research and findings about literacy development. Certainly, carefully
controlled studies of early readers involving manipulated circumstances are
relevant to our understanding. But they should not be viewed as superior to
the thick descriptions of learning to read and its precursors that have been
undertaken by scholars such as Dyson (1982, 1989); Ferreiro and Teberosky
(1982); Halliday (1975); Harste, Woodward, and Burke (1984); Purcell-
Gates (1995, 2007), and her work with Jacobson and Degener (2004); and
Teale and Sulzby (1986). These researchers have illuminated the many social,

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cultural, and contextual dimensions of reading and writing as foundational

to understanding reading development, including word reading. As Carol
Lee (2020), in discussing the documentary film Babies (Balmès, 2010),
suggested:
This film clearly shows that each of these infants works to accomplish the
fundamental life tasks I have articulated, but in very different ways, with very
different kinds of social supports, and toward very different social goals.
They are physiologically predisposed to explore in order to accomplish
these fundamental tasks (to stand, to grasp, to walk, to use language, to
get what they want, to establish relationships with others, to explore their
material and social worlds) through their participation in the practices of
their diverse cultural niches (Rogoff, 2003; Super & Harkness, 1986).
It is the dynamic interplay between physiological processes rooted in our
biology and our participation in cultural practices that creates the ecology
of human development. (p. 40)

Ann Haas Dyson (1987), in her extensive observations of young children in

classrooms, has also noted how important written language is to the functions
of everyday social purposes and activities:
…written language is a social tool that functions in varied ways in our
society. As children grow up, they learn about this tool—its purposes, its
features, its processing demands—as they encounter meaningful activities.
Even in communities where literacy assumes a relatively minor role, children
are not isolated from written language (Heath, 1983). The adults who live
with children write notes, jot down phone numbers, and needed grocery
items, fill out forms and checks and children take to pen and paper. They
participate in literacy activities with more skilled others, explore and play
with print’s functions in varied ways in our society. As they grow up, they
learn about this tool—its purposes, its features, its processing demands
and uses as a means of expression. From the beginning, then, literacy is
woven into the familiar fabric of social life. (p. 6)

Extending these examinations to digital worlds, scholars have also noted

how young learners, as they interact with digital devices, are involved in a
range of sociocultural engagements—with others on and off screen as well
as with the multilayered and dynamic images and symbols encountered in

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digital environments. As Deuze, Blank and Speers (2012) noted, “the social
arrangements of media both stretch existing ways of doing things and making
sense of the world across cultural and spatial boundaries, while at the same
time functioning to articulate and demarcate local communities and identities”
(p. 9). Understanding life in a virtual world, they argue, requires moving beyond
the immediate sociocognitive, semiotic, and embodied underpinnings of
meaning making articulated in earlier research to a more complex explorations
of living with and across multiple worlds.

Extending Sociocultural Considerations to Ecopedagogy. We

argue that sociocultural considerations are seminal to studies of reading
development; they are not simply ancillary matters that can be deferred.
They also, we suggest, heighten consciousness in a way that can inform
approaches to research. In her discussions of Indigenous methodologies,
New Zealand Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2005) has suggested that
a culturally-informed research approach is “a transformative project that
is active in pursuit of social and institutional change, that makes space for
indigenous knowledge, and that has a critical view of power relations and
inequality” (p. 89). Sociocultural considerations, in addressing the specific
needs of local circumstances and the diverse interests and backgrounds of
learners, should therefore facilitate more ethical approaches to working with
and for communities, and enable “indigenous communities to theorize their
own lives” (p. 90).
Sociocultural considerations also reframe the roles of teachers and
approaches to teaching. To capture the fundamental commitment to diversity
and the idea that cultural, social, and historical affordances shape learning—and
teaching—at every turn, we posit that teachers, in their facilitative and supportive
roles, should assume the roles of cultural workers and ecopedagogues (a term
emanating from Paulo Freire and various other scholars; see Grigorov & Fleuri,
2012; Misiaszek, 2020; and the definition below).

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Ecopedagogy (from Misiaszek, 2020)

Ecopedagogy is essentially literacy education for reading and

rereading human acts of environmental violence with its roots in
popular education, as they are reinventions of the pedagogies of the
Brazilian pedagogue and philosopher Paulo Freire. Ecopedagogies
are grounded in critical thinking and transformability, with the
ultimate goal being to construct learning with increased social and
environmental justice. Rooted in critical theories and originating
from popular education models of Latin America, ecopedagogy is
centered on better understanding the connections between human
acts of environmental violence and social violence that cause
injustices/oppressions, domination over the rest of Nature, and
planetary unsustainability. Teaching to understand the social aspects
of environmental issues, from local-to-global perspectives and
knowledges, as well as through the scholarship of multiple disciplines,
is essential to determine actions for lasting changes toward
environmental well-being and planetary sustainability. (p. 1)

As teachers engage with learners in culturally-responsive ways, enlisting their

skills as educators, they partner with learners and communities in a fashion
akin to community builders—developing allyships in support of learners’
literacy developments and their communities. They adopt critically reflexive
dispositions, always seeking to be informed, with humility and respect, by the
communities and learners with whom they negotiate curricula. As Maori scholar
Graham Hingangaroa Smith (2000) has suggested, culturally-responsive
teaching and research entails engaging in ways that are mutually supportive
of diverse cultures—not in a fashion that dismisses cultural differences or
reelevates colonial dispositions of the past. This, as Lester-Irabinna Rigney
(2021) has advocated, develops spaces of learning that are aligned with the
rights of learners—where their unique voices are heard, and their ways of
knowing, rooted in and seeded from their cultures, are supported.

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As cultural workers and ecopedagogues, teachers also assume a role

of mentorship, introducing learners to cultural and social practices as they
help them to read and represent their worlds (as has been done in some
societies for tens of thousands of years). Such engagements in “reading and
writing the world” mirror the observations of Dyson (1995) and McEneaney
(2006) in school settings, as well as articulations of participatory culture
in digital settings (Jenkins et al., 2009). As Jenkins et al. (2009) define it,
participatory culture involves
…relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong
support for creating and sharing creations, and some type of informal
mentorship whereby experienced participants pass along knowledge to
novices. In a participatory culture, members also believe their contributions
matter and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the
least, members care about others’ opinions of what they have created) (p.
xi).

Jenkins et al. (2009) also emphasize how “participatory culture shifts the focus
of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement. The
new literacies almost all involve social skills developed through collaboration
and networking” (p. xiii). As such, learnings are place-based and people-
oriented in participatory settings; students read and write their worlds as they
encounter different forms of transactions (and co-constructions) and engage
with colleagues and collaborators.
Our advocacy for the teacher as a cultural worker and an ecopedagogue
builds upon notions of respect for diversity and culturally-relevant schools—
those that “provide educational self-determination, honor and respect the
student’s home culture” (Ladson-Billings, 1994, pp. 135–137; see also
Ladson-Billings, 1995). Such an orientation aligns with emerging findings
from studies of effective schools, which point to customized testing and
teaching practices, developed collaboratively by teachers, as key factors in
school success (Taylor et al., 2000: Taylor et al., 2002). It also requires that
we view educators as being akin to cosmopolitans; as Allan Luke (2004) has
argued: “What is needed is a teacher whose very stock and trade is to deal
educationally with cultural ‘others’, with the kinds of transnational and local
diversity that are now a matter of course” (p. 1439). This befits the forms

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of engagement that Mike Rose (1995) gleaned from his study of effective
teachers in different U.S. communities. As he stated:
As one teaches, one’s knowledge plays out in social space…teaching well
means knowing one’s students well and being able to read them quickly
and, in turn, making decisions to slow down or speed up, to stay with a
point or return to it later, to underscore certain connections, to use or forgo
a particular illustration. This decision-making operates as much by feel as
by reason; it involves hunch, intuition, at best, quick guess.
There is another dimension to the ability to make judgments about
instruction. The teachers we observed operate with knowledge of individual
student’s lives, of local history and economy, and of sociocultural traditions
and practices. They gain this knowledge in any number of ways: living in
the communities in which they work, getting involved in local institutions
and projects, drawing on personal and cultural histories that resemble
the histories of the children they teach, educating themselves about
the communities and cultures of the students before them, connecting
with parents and involving parents in schooling, and seeing students as
resources and learning from them. (p. 419)

This kind of culturally-responsive teaching requires a greater and more genuine

respect for the plurality of assets all students bring with them to school. It also
entails other shifts—from viewing teachers as sages to teachers as allies;
from espousing singularity to plurality in crafting practices; from approaching
curriculum as generic and standardized to instead approaching it as particular
and generative; and from framing cultural differences as barriers to embracing
them as assets to be leveraged in building a classroom culture of respect. As
Purcell-Gates & Tierney (2008), based in part upon Purcell-Gates’ extensive
work linking reading development to communities, suggested:
Teachers must be aware of what the children come to school knowing,
and not knowing, and then must be allowed to tailor beginning reading
instruction that will make a difference for all children in the context of real
reading and writing activities. Teaching models that strip down reading and
writing to technical skills outside of meaningful practice may show what
looks like good results on skills tests, but these gains are quickly lost after
grade two. Children learn to read and write better when teachers respond
to them based upon knowledge of them as individuals and as members of
cultural communities. (p. 5)

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This approach repositions teaching reading as a method of creating a space

in which learners explore meaning making with culturally diverse tools and
partners. It is what we would expect to find in Kris Gutiérrez’s (2008) notion
of a “third space”—a learning environment wherein students explore on their
own terms and with their own practices. Such an approach builds upon
or advances learners’ abilities and opportunities to draw on their cultural
repertoires of experiences and possible strategies—catering to rather than
squelching practices that enrich learners’ situational and linguistic diversity.

Our Revised Version of the Claim

As core studies of reading comprehension have established, the
background experiences of readers are the key determinants of meaning
making. As we read, we take on roles that supersede as well as intersect with
a range of other factors. Yet sociocultural considerations are often dismissed
in the name of seeking broad consensus on some common ground. Consider
the case of members of the Development Panel, selected by the Governing
Board of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), who
revised the framework for the NAEP reading assessment (NAGB, 2021).
Consistent with advances in theory and research on learning (NASEM,
2018), the Panel encountered open resistance from the Governing Board
when they introduced sociocultural considerations into framework. As Forzani
et al. (2022) document, efforts to update the framework were ultimately
rejected by a small minority of the Board, “resulting in missed opportunities
to advance NAEP reading in ways that would have emphasized equity and
the role of sociocultural context in reading while also better accounting for
the role of prior knowledge in reading” (p. 158). In several states, pushback
on sociocultural issues and diversity have similarly undergirded debates over
critical race theory, woke culture, and the censorship of books (Bethea, 2023;
Delgado & Stefancic, 2023; Jago, 2022; Lukianoff & Schlott, 2023; Romano,
2020; SLJ, 2023).
We favor approaches that instead build upon or advance learners’ use of
their cultural repertoire of experiences and possible strategies. Unfortunately,
many of our curricular approaches often give restricted recognition to the

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value and power of learners’ situational and linguistic diversity. Discussions

of synthetic phonics are not exceptional, and materials (e.g., projects, words,
texts) are not aligned with learners’ worlds (i.e., their language experiences
and linguistic repertoires). By contrast, as García and Kleifgen (2020) note, a
translanguaging literacies approach:
…. holds much promise to provide minoritized bilingual students, especially
those who are emergent bilinguals, with ways to deepen understandings of
texts, generate more diverse texts, enjoy more confianza as literate beings,
and experience a deeper critical multilingual awareness. (p. 568)

Although the SoR focus on teaching decoding may appear to be neutral with
respect to matters of equity and diversity, it is not. Questioning the racialized
implications of SoR policies and frameworks in the context of U.S. schools,
Richard Milner (2020) suggested:
Acknowledging the importance of students’ language and literacy skill
development in their very early years of life, educators may set Black
students up for failure when they refuse to recognize or do not have the
frames to identify language and literacy assets, strengths, skills, dispositions,
mindsets, and practices that these students already possess and bring into
a classroom. With an empirical and analytic framework that only sees what
is missing, what is “wrong” with these students, Black students’ experiences
in schools become dehumanizing from the very start of school. (p. S250)

In keeping with these perspectives, we think both the evidence about learning,
including learning to read (e.g., Lee, 2020; NASEM, 2018), as well as the
moral imperative to ensure curricular and pedagogical equity and relevance,
point us toward sociocultural views of reading research, theory, and practice.
The mistake, we think, of the SoR reform initiatives is that in their zeal to
ensure a secure hold on the science of word reading and understanding, they
have lost their grip on the other equally-scientific endeavors—namely, the
vast body of research that tells us that learning is enhanced when matters of
diversity, equity, relevance, ecological validity, and cultural plurality are front
and center in our enactment of curriculum and teaching. Time to rebalance!

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 CLAIM 10

Teacher education programs are not preparing

teachers in the Science of Reading.

The Evidence Marshalled in Support of the Claim

In his closing remarks following a panel discussion with Kymyona Burk,
Emily Hanford, and Donna Hejtmanek, Mark Seidenberg remarked: “I do not
blame teachers. I go out of my way not to blame teachers, but I will blame
those who taught them” (Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership,
2023; this stance was similarly voiced in Seidenberg’s 2017 book, Language
at the Speed of Sight).
Teacher education programs have been the focus of a great deal of
criticism, even blame, for failing to address the findings, often referred to as
the settled science, about key elements of teaching beginning reading (e.g.,
phonics and phonemic awareness), and meeting the needs of struggling
readers—especially those that might be identified as dyslexic. At times, these
critiques lay the blame for these alleged omissions on the prevailing Whole
Language or Balanced Literacy views that teachers receive in their teacher
preparation programs (Buckingham & Meeks, 2019; Moats, 2014).
In the United States, the National Council on Teacher Quality—guided
by an advisory panel of expert teacher educators and researchers—has
evaluated teacher education programs with a rubric derived from scientific
studies of reading to determine whether scientifically-based principles and
practices are being taught. In their most recent effort (Ellis, et al., 2023), NCTQ
researchers obtained and evaluated copies of syllabi and other material from
undergraduate and graduate teacher education programs (relying, at times,
the Freedom of Information Act to obtain materials) to measure the alignment
of those programs with principles and practices stemming from their reading
of the scientifically based reading research. More specifically, they assessed
whether programs teach future teachers to:
…understand and know how to explicitly and systematically teach the
five components of scientifically based reading instruction, including: (1)

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developing students’ awareness of the sounds made by spoken words

(phonemic awareness); (2) systematically mapping those speech sounds
onto letters and letter combinations (phonics); (3) providing students
extended practice reading words with learned letter-sound combinations
so they learn to read words with automaticity, without a lot of effort, at a
good rate, and with expression (fluency)—allowing them to devote their
mental energy to the meaning of the text; (4) building word knowledge
using student-friendly definitions and engaging practice opportunities
(vocabulary), a skill closely associated with the final component; (5)
ensuring students have the skills, knowledge, and strategies to understand
what is being read to them and eventually what they will read themselves
(comprehension). (Ellis et al., 2023, p. 5)

The program review was based upon a large set of submissions in response to a
solicitation from NCTQ across the 50 states and the District of Columbia—693
programs in total. Overseeing the analyses was a panel of “experts” on the
Science of Reading, who helped to establish the criteria used in the rubric
and the training program for the analysts. The trained analysts were charged
with discerning whether program material featured the desired emphasis on
key components (e.g., in terms of time and content covered), along with a de-
emphasis on practices deemed contrary to those core elements (e.g., use of
the cueing system, running records, guided reading, balanced reading, etc.).
NCTQ assigned letter grades (A-F) to each university program, based on
scores obtained by applying their rubrics—and made recommendations for
remedial action for low-scoring programs.
Most programs reviewed received low marks, with programs at many
highly regarded universities and schools of education receiving failing or
near failing marks. Operating on the assumptions that the science is settled,
and their rubrics reflect that science, NCTQ concluded that the majority of
teacher education programs are falling short; they lack the required emphasis
on key components of scientific research and placing too much emphasis
on scientifically discredited components (e.g., three-cueing; balanced
components). The logic behind such a review was to pair scientific methods (an
evaluation based upon criteria allegedly derived from research) with a public
airing of the data to convince low-scoring and arguably recalcitrant programs

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to mend their ways and adhere to the NCTQ standards for evidence-based
components of effective early reading instruction. The Council advocated
for increased accountability measures for teacher education and licensure
programs; recommended the development of reading licensure tests; and
urged state and university leaders to use their own “bully pulpits” to promote
these desired changes.
This type of report is not unique to U.S. contexts; a similar review was
pursued in Australia, where the suggested evidenced-based approaches
were those that emphasized phonics (Teacher Education Expert Panel, 2023).
Similar to the U.S., in both Australia and the U.K., media and government
officials have criticized teacher education programs for inadequately preparing
educators to teach reading in the early years with an emphasis upon phonics
(see Hanford, 2018; 2019b; Harris & Grace, 2023; MacPhee, Handsfield, &
Paugh, 2021; Wilson, 2021).
Critics of current teacher education programs infer from these data
that teacher education programs are failing to adequately prepare teachers
in the Science of Reading (e.g., in terms of both the linguistic knowledge
required to meet the needs of beginning readers, as well as the teaching
practices that might be pursued to support students). Some studies suggest
that teachers may claim adequate knowledge on the teaching of phonics, but
close examination of the specifics of their knowledge may suggest otherwise
(Arrow, Braid, & Chapman, 2019; Bell, Ziegler, & McCallum, 2004; Malatesha
Joshi, Binks, & Graham et al., 2009; Malatesha Joshi, Binks, & Hougen et al.,
2009; Bos et al., 2001; Cunningham et al., 2004; Tortorelli, Lupo, & Wheatley,
2021). In terms of teachers’ preparation for teaching phonics, they report that
a combination of preservice programs and ongoing professional development
contribute to their practices. As Meeks and Kemp (2017) concluded from a
survey of Australian teacher education:
Although preservice teachers generally rated themselves as prepared to
teach early reading, most demonstrated minimal to very poor knowledge
of the components of early reading, indicating a substantial discrepancy
between the general confidence of preservice teachers to teach, and their
limited content knowledge of beginning reading skills. (p. 1.)

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Our Reading of the Evidence and the Claim

Our reading of the claim and evidence leads us to conclude that the
research used as the basis for evaluating teacher education programs fails to
meet the standards for evidence-based practice that such arguments claim
to support. The critiques coming from NCTQ and other sources (e.g., Moats,
2014; Hanford, 2019; Seidenberg, 2013) attempt to link teachers’ knowledge
of effective practices and the linguistic principles behind those practices
to classroom practices; they further assume that what teacher education
students do once they get into their own classroom is a direct reflection of the
influence of the teacher preparation programs that they experience. A further
assumption behind the NCTQ critique (and many prior critiques) is that if
teachers can receive the right, relevant technical knowledge, they will more
or less automatically apply related and implied research-based practices
effectively in their classrooms.
The history of teacher education suggests, to the contrary, that the
content of university methods courses is far down the list of factors that
shape what beginning teachers do in their classrooms. Even more important,
research on teacher learning and professional development suggests that
simple transmission models of teacher change (disseminating the fruits of
scientific knowledge will usher in new paradigms and practices) are woefully
naïve and inadequate (Richardson, 1992; Pearson & Cervetti, 2006 in Snow,
et al, 2006). Changes in declarative knowledge (WHAT teachers know)
is but one facet in the process of nurturing changes in practice; it is also
necessary to address HOW (procedural knowledge) as well as WHY and
WHEN (conditional knowledge) to employ certain practices. Even when new
information is accompanied by monitoring and sanctions (either rewards
or penalties), teachers often resist changes that do not comport with their
existing views about what students need to succeed Callahan, et al, 2009).
The NCTQ work fails to consider the important understandings
about teacher education and learning embodied in the long history of key
constructs, such as Shulman’s pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman,
1987) Ball’s variation of content knowledge for teaching (Ball et al. 2008),
Ladson-Billing’s (2020) culturally relevant pedagogy, or notion of learning

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communities (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Rogoff et al., 2001; Wenger, 1998),
This is unfortunate because contextualizing their goals within the rich literature
on teacher learning would have offered some basis for judging the likelihood
that any efforts at changing the knowledge base for teaching reading would
stand a chance of succeeding.
Nor did they choose to consult, or even consider, the considerable
and growing reviews of literacy teacher education—both historical and from
recent years—enlisting various meta-analyses in their efforts to glean a clearer
illumination of trustworthy trends. This work is highly relevant to the NCTQ
enterprise since it is a direct, explicit critique of the NCTQ portfolio as well as
other efforts that, on the face of it, appear to be driven by key features of the
SoR. For example, Hoffman, Hikida, and Sailors (2020) explore the manner in
which teacher preparation has been examined by the NCTQ . Drawing upon
research syntheses of a large and dynamic database of research on literacy
teacher preparation, known as the Critical, Interactive, Transparent, and
Evolving review of literature on Initial Teacher Education in Literacy (CITE-
ITEL), Hoffman et al. question the conclusions reached and recommendations
offered—Hoffman et al. The online database comprises over 600 empirical
studies published between 1999 and 2019; the syntheses cited by Hoffman
et al. (2020) reviewed research published between 2000 and 2018 (Fowler-
Amato et al., 2019). Hoffman et al. (2020) point to major gaps in the scope
of the review of teacher preparation offered by SoR advocates. Noting how
studies have been excluded from discussions of the SoR, they suggest that
the conclusions and recommendations offered through a SoR lens should be
viewed reservedly. In turn, they argue for substantially more research—such
as studies that extend to sociocultural considerations and those that include
a more formative approach to teaching practices (i.e., that do not presume
a research base for the practices that SoR advocates suggest are either
counterproductive or essential).
In a study that complements and extends the research by Hoffman et
al. and others, Tortorelli, Lupo & Wheatley (2021) pursue a focused study of
code-related preparation of teachers in various countries (largely the U.S.
and Australia). Reviewing a large data set of studies representing a wide
range of programs, they scrutinize the focus, methodology, and findings

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of a select subset of 27 studies—comprised overall of 5,226 preservice

teacher participants from 180 programs. These also represented a mix of
examinations—such as technical knowledge of linguistic awareness, and
pedagogical knowledge1 derived from a range of circumstances. The
reflections on the review neither confirmed or disconfirmed deficits in teacher
knowledge and raised questions about the relevance. As they suggested in
the overview of their research:
We identified 27 studies examining preservice general elementary
preparation in code-related instruction, including phonological/phonemic
awareness, phonics/decoding, spelling/orthography, and morphology,
published between 2001 and 2020. We analyzed the studies to determine
(a) how preservice knowledge of code-related instruction has been studied,
(b) how preservice teachers’ literacy knowledge was defined and assessed
in these studies, and (c) primary findings across studies and implications for
teacher preparation and future research. We found that the research base
largely relied on quantitative multiple-choice assessments that privileged
linguistic content knowledge over pedagogical and situated knowledge.
The body of research was constrained by narrow definitions of science and
knowledge, repetition across studies in methods and data sources, limited
samples that overlooked diversity in preservice teachers and elementary
contexts, and methodological problems. (p. 317)

They concluded that we need more robust research to evaluate “...the claim
that increased linguistic knowledge improves the quality of code-related
instruction” (p. 319).

As they stated:
Overall, our findings contextualize and complicate claims that code-related
skills are being neglected in teacher preparation programs. We found that
the research base privileges technical, linguistic content knowledge over
pedagogical knowledge of how to teach code-related skills and situated
practice in engaging and supporting real students. …. We agree that much
work needs to be done in teacher preparation programs to better prepare

1 Fewer than 50% of the studies examined pedagogical knowledge. In those studies, examining
technical knowledge, the connections to classroom practices were rarely researched. Overall, our
findings contextualize and complicate claims that code-related skills are being neglected in teacher
preparation programs. We found that the research base privileges technical, linguistic content knowledge
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teachers to teach code-related instruction in adaptable and equitable

ways. However, this work requires more complex solutions than simply
teaching more linguistic knowledge to preservice teachers. Instead, we call
for collaborations among researchers, teacher educators, and advocates to
support all students in learning code-related skills. (p. S334)

Teacher education efforts are being dismissed on the basis that they are
misdirected and obstructionist, with little exploration of the earnest efforts of
teachers and teacher education programs to meet the needs of learners with
different needs2. While programs are being discredited and past teacher
development initiatives discounted, the commitment of teachers to address
the individual needs of students (in relation to phonics and other facets key
to ongoing reading development) are questioned. As Jenny Gore (2023)
noted in her discussion of the Strong Beginnings Report in Australia (Teacher
Education Expert Panel, 2023):
This specification of core content comes from the Australian Education
Research Organisation (a government created, independent education
evidence body). It has no particular expertise in research on teacher
education. The approach taken is narrow and overlooks swathes of high
quality research …
What’s missed in education debates—which invariably pitch teaching
practices against each other—is that what matters most is the underlying
quality of the teaching. The report assumes new graduate teachers deliver
poor teaching and their university education is to blame. This premise has
been challenged by recent studies, which show new teachers teach just as
well as those with years of experience.
The new regulations recommended by the panel treat teacher educators
as if they aren’t already motivated to improve the student experience and
outcomes, understand and incorporate the latest educational research, or
engage in good practice. (Gore, 2023, paras. 27-28)

2 In the 1970s, considerable attention was focused upon identifying the relationship and role of
teacher variable in the teaching of reading. In the 1980s and 1990s, initiatives such as the Holmes
Group focused upon teacher education improvements through enhanced teamwork within the uni-
versity and in schools. Tutoring programs for reading—and, likewise in recent years, the influence of
coaches—have been subjected to major research. Programs that some advocates have dismissed,
such as Reading Recovery, have a history of extraordinary teacher preparation efforts. Both technical
and pedagogical deliberations are fine-tuned as teachers are observed and afforded feedback as they
engage with students under the close scrutiny of other teachers and Reading Recovery trainers.

118 2
 Claim 10

Or, as Harrison (2006) noted in response to an earlier report by the National

Council on Teacher Quality (Walsh, Glaser, & Wilcox, 2006) entitled, What
Education Schools Aren’t Teaching about Reading and What Elementary
Teachers Aren’t Learning, much of the public discourse surrounding literacy
research in the U.S. is filtered through the lens of “necessary illusions”—one
of which, he notes, is that teacher education is fundamentally flawed, and
needs to be radically overhauled (or even abandoned).
With a measure of reserve by some SoR advocates (e.g., Seidenburg,
2023c) the overhaul has gained considerable momentum in efforts to realign
teacher education to ensure that teachers know code-based instruction and
possess the linguistic knowledge (e.g., grapho-phonemic understandings)
needed to enhance the word learning of young readers. For example, Louisa
Moats and her colleagues have been responsible for development of Language
Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS), a professional
development program intended to enhance in-service K-3 teachers’ linguistic
knowledge (Moats, 2023; Schwartz, 2022). Likewise, in Australia, SoR
advocates have argued for a revamping of teacher education programs to
prepare teachers with the knowledge they need to teach phonics. In turn they
have recommended programs they have authored (e.g., Buckingham, 2023).

Our Revised Version of the Claim

If the NCTQ scholars, or scholars who align themselves with some
version of the SoR, want to use teacher education, either pre- or in-service, as
a vehicle for promoting enduring changes in classroom practice, they need to
contextualize their policy efforts and research syntheses in a more substantive
understanding of the rich lines of theory and research on teacher education,
teacher learning, and teacher change. Implicit in their recommendations
seems to be erroneous theory of action, which assumes that (a) if you
provide teachers with the right knowledge and (b) provide incentives and/or
sanctions for holding themselves and their students to practices emanating
from that knowledge, change will happen. Teacher learning, teacher change,
and teacher education are a lot more complicated than that (Cochran-Smith
& Reagan, 2021, 2022; Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005).

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Claim 10

There exists a far more extensive research base on teachers and

literacy teacher education than that which is considered in SoR discussions.
The research enlisted in the critiques of reading teacher education—used as
the basis of calls for reform—does not meet the standards of the research
that Science of Reading advocates have often touted as essential in mining
the pedagogical research for reliably effective classroom practices. Given a
very different set of conclusions from the elaborate reviews of Hoffman et al.
(2020) and Tortorelli, et al. (2021) we recommend that all scholars wanting
to evaluate the presence or absence of teacher education programs need to
bring a broader set of lenses to the effort. Missing from SoR arguments are
considerations from various ongoing discussions of teacher education (e.g.,
Britzman, 2003; Cochran-Smith & Reagan, 2021, 2022; Darling-Hammond
& Bransford, 2005: National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education,
2010; National Education Policy Center, 2022; Richardson, 1998; Zeichner,
2020).
The pool of studies of teacher education drawn upon by the SoR
advocates appear to be limited in terms of their discussions of how, when and
where teaching practices are shaped. For example, Sanden and her colleagues
questioned the scope of the surveys in terms of when and how teachers
were prepared (Sanden et al., 2022). Based upon a survey of practicing
teachers in Illinois, Sanden et al. suggested a combination of contributions to
their practices, preservice programs, professional development or in-service
programs, and curricular materials. Befitting Britzman’s (2003) discussion of
practice begetting practice, Sanden et al. suggested that the teachers also
emphasized how their practices contribute to and evolve from feedback from
teaching and student learning.
Still to be addressed more fully are questions pertaining to the nature
of teacher knowledge, including how teacher knowledge develops, how
teaching practices change and how both knowledge and practices might be
enlisted to support student reading development. Some studies do suggest a
correlation between student learning and changes in teacher knowledge and
improvements in practices through preparation or in-service support (e.g.,
coaching), but a clear picture of the relationship does not exist (Atteberry

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& Bryk, 2011: Cassidy, et al. 2010; Kraft, Blazar & Hogan, 2018; Neuman
S. B., Wright, 2010; Metzler & Woessmann, 2010; Palincsar et al., 2020;
Rivkin, Hanushek, Kain, 2005; Rockoff, 2004; Sailors & Price, 2015). Further
illumination is needed of other approaches to the professional development
of reading teachers. For example, “behind the glass” training of teachers
enlisted in Reading Recovery merit examination (e.g., Compton-Lilly, 2011)
likewise, the role of collaborative engagements of teachers (e.g., Green et
al. 2012: Green et al., 2015; Johnson, 1997; Taylor, Pressley & Pearson,
2002) and the systems that contribute to or detract from meeting the needs
of students through the support of ancillaries, teacher aides and especially
special education staff and school psychologists (e.g., Allington & Franzen,
1989).
Then there is the matter of explicit instruction—a common
recommendation, especially when phonics is the instructional activity. SoR
admonishments to teach “explicitly” teaching should also be unpacked. Our
reading of the research on variations of explicit teaching reveals mixed views
on its enlistment without consideration of the nature of learning being pursued.
There is a long continuum of possibilities, ranging from direct instruction of the
sort involved in the implementation of Distar in the 1960s (see Stockard, et
al., 2018) to occasional scaffolding of largely independent work (see Raphael
& Au, 1998). For example, nuanced explorations of the gradual release of
responsibility by Pearson and his colleagues (Pearson et al, 2019; Dole, et al,
2019) together with reciprocal teaching (e.g., Palincsar & Brown 1984) might
inform such discussions. Further, consideration of complex learning theories
pertain—that is discussions of cognitive flexibility (e.g., Spiro et al. 1988;
Wittgenstein, 1953) tied to situated learning wherein learning is developed
from multiple engagements in the activity of reading. As Brown et al. (1989)
noted:
The activity in which knowledge is developed and deployed, it is now
argued, is not separable from or ancillary to learning and cognition. Nor is it
neutral. Rather, it is an integral part of what is learned. Situations might be
said to co-produce knowledge through activity. P. 42.

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Increasingly, relevant to such considerations are case studies of learning

enlisting conversational analyses and sociolinguistic research examining
classroom interactions (e.g., Bloome et al., 2005; Bloome et al., 2008; Bloome
and Green, 2015; Feltovich et al. 1988; Garcia & Kleifgen, 2019; Gutiérrez
et al., 1999: Johnston, 2004; Saville-Troike, 2003) and the research on the
constraints and affordances of varying discussion routines (Murphy et al.,
2009). Studies of teaching need to move beyond judging teacher education
on the basis of course syllabi and surveys; scholars should be examining
teaching in the context of classrooms, student teacher interactions and
learning. Judging teacher education should extend beyond a consideration
of inputs to outputs including what teachers have learned and do and their
influences.
Certainly, building upon our discussion of sociocultural considerations
in Claim 9, we would also recommend that research on teacher education
extend to matters of diversity, equity, and contextualization. To address issues
of equity in education requires us to reckon with the issues raised by Milner
(2020)—that is, to scrutinize the ideology undergirding the SoR for beginning
reading and consider whether teachers and teacher education are engaging
with or sidelining diversity. Do our approaches ignore our diversities by
disconnecting teaching and learning from an appreciation and recognition
of culturally-based and idiosyncratic identities? Unfortunately, if considered
through the lens of the populations that teachers intend to serve, studies
should examine how minorities positioned to better support their learning.
Minorities should not be outsiders as they encounter teaching approaches,
texts, and tests that are alien to their worlds.

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Concluding Statement

Now that we have navigated 10 claims frequently encountered in the

public discourse about the Science of Reading (SoR), what’s next? Where
should you—and we—go from here? As we said at the outset of this book, we
hope our airing of these claims moves us in the direction of reaching consensus
and finding common ground, with a more modest and evidence-based set of
claims that emanate from a full(er) reading of the science(s) of reading. We’ll
get to that search for common ground. But first, a few reminders of the nature
of our journey—particularly its limitations.

The Science of Reading is not the Whole Story

We all need to acknowledge that the question of what the SoR does
and does not tell us about early reading development and pedagogy is one step
in the journey toward universal literacy. There is so much more to the reading
puzzle that must be addressed in any society that aspires to help all its citizens
develop the literacy expertise they will need to lead engaged, productive,
discerning, and personally satisfying lives.

Influences from New Cultural Practices. Even a cursory examination of

recent developments in our digital age reveals a host of new and not fully
understood matters. For instance:
• The spread of multimedia has exploded traditional notions of what counts as
text. Very soon, print on paper will no longer be the dominant form of text.
• The democratization of information on the internet has raised the ante with
regard to the need for schools and society to nurture the development of
critical dispositions toward digital information. The need for knowledge and
reasoning to evaluate the validity and trustworthiness of ideas we encounter
every day, hour, and minute while we are online grows more urgent with
every election cycle, and every attempt to mask the truth. To foster literacy in
these new settings as a tool of liberation rather than domination, we need to
build our capacity to promote healthy skepticism and critical stances toward
the claims and evidence we encounter everywhere we look in our cultures.
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Concluding Statement

• Youth are leading the way in the evolution of online and multimedia
literacies. Adults and scholars around the world need to catch up with
them.

As Selfe and Hawisher (2004) noted some 20 years ago:

…if literacy educators continue to define literacy in terms of alphabetic practices
only, in ways that ignore, exclude, or devalue new-media texts, they not only
abdicate a professional responsibility to describe the ways in which humans
are now communicating and making meaning, but they also run the risk of their
curriculum no longer holding relevance for students who are communicating in
increasingly expansive networked environments. (pp. 234-235)

Other Curricular Matters. By limiting our focus to the claims of others about
reading development and pedagogy (i.e., those that have captured the popular
press and social media), we have, albeit unintentionally, omitted, or at least
underrepresented, other important facets of reading curriculum and pedagogy—
all of which deserve at least as much attention as the development of word-level
expertise. These all-important elements—which just did not arise in our fact-
checking—include:
• The key role of knowledge and meaning vocabulary, both as cause and
consequence of comprehension, in shaping reading expertise and our
capacity to use the insights gained in reading to address issues and take
action in the natural and cultural worlds in which we live. Knowledge and
the words we use to name that knowledge are doubly important when
we venture into disciplines that define schooling across the age span.
The natural and social sciences, the humanities (especially history and
literature), and the arts all render knowledge ever more salient in the
literacies needed to fathom their content and discourse.
• The critical role of language, again as both cause and consequence
of comprehension. This includes three facets of language: a) Everyday
language; b) Academic language, or the language that helps students learn
to “talk like a book;” and c) The role of first language, in the case of bilingual
or multilingual students, in shaping second or additional language reading
and writing.

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• The central role of talk in so many aspects of learning to read: Talk
about text (both content and structure); talk about words (i.e., semantic
networks, morphological families, and contextually-nuanced meanings);
and talk about solving problems (e.g., for both unknown words and
obscure passage meanings) and apply what we learn from reading to
everyday problems.
• The set of processes that have been variously labeled—for example,
as conative factors, or, more recently, literate dispositions (Aukerman
& Chambers Schuldt, 2021). These include motivation, engagement,
interest, self-efficacy, agency, identity, growth mindset, disposition,
social-emotional learning, and empathy—all of which shape acts of
literacy.
• Asset-based and culturally-sustaining pedagogical practices that allow
all students to “see themselves” and their cultural practices in the
curriculum, providing “hooks” for students to make personal connections
to the texts and ideas they encounter.
• The role of writing in enhancing reading development, both at the word
level (e.g., spelling and meaning vocabulary) and at the text level (e.g.,
the comprehension and critique of text-based ideas, explanations, and
arguments).
• The pervasive role of text in both reading and writing, as it reflects
both language and knowledge; introduces knowledge of genre, text
structure, and other pragmatic features of written language; and extends
to imaginal and multimedia text. Texts provide both scaffolds and
challenges for readers at every stage of development.
• Assessments—both large-scale, summative assessments, used to
evaluate broad trends over time, as well as internal (to schools and
classrooms), formative assessments, used to provide feedback about
the day-to-day progress of students and the relevance and impact of
daily curricular experiences—matter. We know that, for better or worse,
assessment drives instruction. We should strive for better.

If we were writing a monograph about the elements of a comprehensive

reading/literacy curriculum, all these matters would have been in the foreground

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 of our presentation. Remembering that school improvement involves teacher
learning as well as student learning, our plan for outlining a comprehensive
curriculum would have insisted that teacher learning be as research-based
as student learning. That would mean recognizing the importance of teachers’
voices and leadership in planning and implementing professional development
(Bryk et al; 2010; Callahan, Griffo, & Pearson, 2009; Taylor, Pressley, &
Pearson, 2002). Such a monograph would also have revealed the irony of
delivering research-based knowledge about pedagogy for K-12 students in a
manner that defies all we know about adult and professional learning.

Broader Societal Constraints. Complicating matters further are the

societal phenomena that affect all aspects of literacy expertise, at every stage
of development (i.e., from preschool to nursing home). Our individual and joint
experiences as literacy professionals tell us that we won’t solve the reading
problem (which we take to be the unconscionable gaps in achievement
between rich and poor, minority and majority, Indigenous and non-Indigenous,
and privileged and marginalized groups) in any country across the Americas,
the United Kingdom, Europe, Africa, or Asia and Oceania until and unless we
solve a host of other inequities. The right to read entails the right to the finest
teachers with the broadest cultural repertoires, and to the very best, most
scientifically-grounded and culturally-sustaining curriculum we can muster.
However, it also entails many other rights: Good health care; preschool
learning opportunities; decent and affordable housing; satisfying jobs; safe
neighborhoods; equitable school funding; and fair justice systems. We won’t
get to any of these rights without fundamental reforms that redistribute wealth,
income, and privilege.

The Science of Reading is an Important Story

Even so, in acknowledging the importance of these disclaimers, we also
acknowledge just how significant the momentum has been for the SoR. It is
even more important when policy is involved, as it clearly is in today’s political
landscape. As we’ve witnessed:
• More than 40 states in the U.S. have passed SoR-based laws that limit
the choices that districts, schools, and teachers can make;

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• Phonics is the core component of the U.K.’s reading strategy, and a
version of the SoR is gaining traction in some Canadian provinces;
• Specific approaches to the teaching of the code are being prescribed
for both public schools and teacher preparation programs in Australia;
and
• Similar forces are at work in New Zealand, especially in critiques of
Reading Recovery.

Indeed, it was the scope and impact of the SoR meme—across

social media, the popular press, and ultimately policymaking bodies, such
as legislative halls and school boardrooms—that prompted us to pursue this
“fact-check.” Our goal has been to illuminate the claims, the evidence offered
to support the claims, and the reasoning used to link the two. For each claim,
as you recall, we began with what we intended to be a sympathetic reading—
our best attempt to lay out the arguments provided by SoR scholars and
advocates to justify the claim. We followed this with our admittedly critical
reading of the claim and evidence—providing, as best we were able, other
evidence that we felt had been overlooked. Finally, we ended our treatment
of each claim with an updated version of the claim that we, from our vantage
point, could accept—especially in terms of guiding policy and practice.

The Science (of Reading) is Not Settled

Our most important conclusion from this effort is that the science
of reading is not settled. This is mainly due to the fact that science is an
inherently-unsettled, ever-provisional, always self-improving enterprise. But
we also reach this conclusion because, in the case of reading, the evidence
should have guided us, as a field, to more modest claims than those that have
been provided.
Based on our analyses in this book, we further conclude that we are
engaged in an unwarranted rush to judgment in our policymaking efforts.
Many of the laws and policy initiatives, however well-meaning they may be,
go well-beyond the warrants provided by the available evidence. They should
be reined in such cases—so that districts, schools, and teachers can choose
from the full range of evidence-based practices warranted by the research.

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 While we have no desire to diminish the professionalism of teachers,
we also have no desire to turn (or return) to any version of an “anything goes”
approach, in which individual teachers have the sole authority, responsibility,
and prerogative to determine what’s best for students in their care. As noble a
homily as it is, the notion that “teaching is what happens when you close the
classroom door” should, in the name of equity, be strongly resisted by all parties
engaged in policy conversations, especially teachers and their organizations.
Better to replace it with the homily, “teaching is what happens when you
open the classroom door to bring knowledge of learning, development, and
teaching—along with the hopes and concerns of children, their families, and
the professional expertise of your peers—into the classroom.” That is the ideal
in any profession, be it medicine, law, the clergy, or teaching. Namely:
• To know as much as we can; and
• To serve the interests and needs of our clientele.
More specifically, the bargain we as teachers make for the prerogative granted
by society should be to possess—and use—the very best, valid, and research-
based knowledge we can about learning, development, and teaching. That
goes for all disciplines in the school curriculum, not just reading.

A Rush to Judgment. The other side of the coin is that if policy-making

bodies—at the federal, state/provincial, or local level—aspire to develop and/or
work with research-based curricula, they must abide by two key principles: 1)
Examine the full range of relevant research when establishing goals to pursue
and standards that districts, schools, and teachers should meet; and 2) Resist
policies that are more restrictive than the full body of relevant evidence warrants.
Currently, however, we see several areas where policy-making bodies have yet
to facilitate such research-based curricula and pedagogy, by errors of omission
or, alternatively, through errors of commission. Some key omissions:
• Where are the policy levers to ensure that students have the tools they
need to understand and evaluate the trustworthiness of information
available across public and social media?
• Where are the incentives to promote the capacity to comprehend,
critique, and compose arguments that link claims and evidence through
reasoning?

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 Concluding Statement

• Where are the mandates to ensure that all students receive curricular
opportunities to use their cultural assets in learning from the school
curriculum?

Some errors of commission:

• When a district limits its teachers to a single “systematic” approach to
teaching phonics (e.g., sequential decoding or word family phonics). In
the face of evidence supporting a range of systematic approaches, this
oversteps the bounds of the available science.
• When a district or a state adopts a year-long, print-free program to
teach phonemic awareness (PA) to all kindergarteners. This again
oversteps the boundaries of the science of reading. A research-
based approach to PA would have: a) Linked PA instruction to letter-
sound instruction (e.g., work with the sound of “t” when introducing
the letter); b) Limited the total amount of time to under 20 hours of
PA activityacross a school year, and c) Given a free pass to kids who
acquired PA incidentally while learning to spell on their own.
• When a district adopts a series that provides nothing but decodable
texts for students to read, they disregard the accumulating body of
evidence showing that decodable texts are no more effective than (and,
at times, not as effective as) a collection of garden-variety texts from the
array of available children’s literature.
• When a state passes a law forbidding the use of a range of contextual
cues to unlock unknown words—in deference to only orthographic and
phonological cues—it privileges, in the face of mixed evidence, some
relevant research (e.g., Landi et al., 2006) over other relevant research
(e.g., Scanlon & Anderson, 2020). This may be to the possible detriment
of some students, for whom early reliance on context may eventually lead
to, or even facilitate, later preference for direct letter-sound matching. A
wiser state would ask for more scientific research to clarify the matter.

In countries like the U.S., Australia, and Canada, federal systems of
education give states and provinces most of the prerogative in how they enact
educational policy. When such authorities do make excessively restrictive

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policies, they should admit that values, beliefs, and/or cultural traditions—not
evidence—are the foundations of those policies. Honest declarations of political
interests are preferable to false claims of scientific rigor. Moreover, whether
we like it or not, there will be decisions about the curriculum—decisions that
some individuals or collective will have to make—for which the research bases
are silent, ambiguous, or insufficiently rigorous and robust to merit firm policy
recommendations. Better to admit an underlying appeal to belief, tradition, or
a working theory, than to engage in a pretense that research was the guiding
force.
In these cases—when existing research cannot provide a clear
pathway—what standard shall we choose to guide us? What do we do until
trustworthy and definitive evidence from randomized trials is available? Our view
is that we use the best available evidence we have—from natural experiments,
close ethnographies, case studies, and the wisdom of practice p. In the final
analysis, in exchange for the teaching profession’s commitment to know as
much as it can know, we must respect the prerogative of teachers to adapt
and modify research-based practices to meet the constraints and affordances
of the situations in which they teach. This disclaimer is all the more important
when research guidance is, at best, weak.

Provisional Conclusions
Now to some guidance from us. What have we learned in this deep dive?
We have struggled with how to position and name our ideas about how to move
forward. Books and monographs such as this often end with recommendations—
and each of us, both separately and together, have offered more than our fair share
over the years. But “recommendation” seemed too strong a term for analysts
who have just declared that science is a modest, provisional, eternally-evolving,
seldom-settled endeavor. Alternatively, we considered the term “extrapolations,”
in recognition of the idea that the statements we make are our interpretations, not
necessarily summaries or syntheses of the work of others. But besides sounding
ponderous, we were not really sure what that meant. Also in the running were
“thoughts”—as in “thoughts about the Science of Reading”—but that seemed
too timid, even for provisionalists like us. We finally settled on “conclusions,” to
emphasize the end, for now, of this leg of our journey. Here they are.

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Conclusion 1: Accept the principle that science is never settled. As

we argued in the introduction to this book, and again in the previous section,
the first thing all of us (especially researchers) who touch or are touched
by the reading research enterprise must do is to accept the premise—and
the reality—that the science of reading (indeed, the science of anything) is
never settled. Science, by its nature and commitment to modesty, is always
provisional; ever-ready to be tweaked, revised, or replaced by the next
theoretical insight or empirical finding. Settled science, as Reinking, Hruby,
and Risko (2023) have argued, is an oxymoron.

Conclusion 1.1. We should examine reading and its development

through many scholarly lenses. It is not so much that the use of one
research tool is or is not settled. Rather, the complexity of the phenomena
we examine through a scientific lens demands a diverse, flexible, and
complementary set of tools. As we argued in the introduction, we always need
to employ the full range of methodological and epistemological perspectives
available to us—shifting from one to another as purposes and questions
change, or, even more likely, tussling with the differences of interpretation that
arise when we examine any phenomenon through different lenses. We must
be ready for a variety of outcomes when multiple perspectives are in play,
ranging from consensus to complementarity to conflict.

Conclusion 1.2. Research findings need to be situated (i.e., adapted

to individuals, settings, and purposes). Application is always situated,
not generic. As we have argued in more than one claim, teachers, like doctors,
must use both generic and situated knowledge. We want teachers, just as
we want doctors, to be equipped with the most relevant and up-to-date
knowledge of the very best practices to use in serving their clientele. And,
lacking any specific information about an individual patient (in medicine) or
student (in education)—as the saying goes, “all other things being equal”—we
expect professionals to use their knowledge of what works best in general to
treat or nurture individuals. However, when professionals possess particular
knowledge about any of us as individuals, including our social and cultural
histories, settings, and experiences, we expect them to use that “situated”

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knowledge to revise, modify, or adapt generic treatment or practice.

Individual differences are real (Afflerbach, 2016; Connor et al., 2009);
we need to remember that as we persuade teachers to apply the ideal
of evidence-based practice as they shape instruction for students in their
care.

Conclusion 1.3. The Science(s) of Reading must be modest in its

claims—especially with regard to application. The overall degree of
confidence we place in the reading research enterprise and our role within
it should be tempered by the knowledge that science itself is a modest
enterprise. We should accept and take pride in that reality, especially as
we contemplate overgeneralizations from research to practice. Doctors
are taught to be vigilant about variations from the norm, expecting that any
case encountered is likely to be an exception to the rule. That perspective
is equally important in educational practice. We must embrace the
complexities of reading, both for expert and novice readers. And we must
be prepared to reconsider our positions when new and more trustworthy
evidence becomes available. In those instances, we would do well to
remember Anthony Fauci’s public updates on the Covid-19 pandemic (as
well as those of many other scientists). When his updates contradicted
his earlier analyses or recommendations, he indicated, in response to the
sometimes-frustrated reactions of reporters, that his approach was to follow
the evidence—wherever it took us. New evidence often leads to revised
explanations and adapted recommendations. That’s the spirit we need in
the science(s) of reading.

Conclusion 1.4. Let’s not ask research to carry burdens it is not

designed to carry. The best example of such unfair burdens is asking
basic research about the reading process to reveal direct implications for
classroom practice. Basic research in reading—of the very sort we see
coming from eye-movement studies, fMRI scans, and tightly-orchestrated
laboratory studies—are great at revealing the neurological processes
involved in reading and responding to texts of various sorts. But you do
not recommend phonics for all six-year-olds because the area of the brain

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in which phonological processing is located activates when adults decode

nonsense syllables. If you want to know whether phonics works, you compare
it with viable alternative approaches in an ongoing line of classroom-based
research and development that might lead eventually to randomized trials.
And randomized trials may not be the last word: There are, for instance, many
examples in which the common usage of a drug or a procedure after federal
approval has yielded dangerous side effects—effects that did not arise
during the experimental phase of testing (thalidomide and fentanyl come to
mind). Other prominent examples include the failure of medical experiments
to include sufficiently broad samples of participants (e.g., excluding minority
participants) to assess the generalizability of findings.
A close second in terms of unfair burdens is asking classroom
ethnographies to reveal evidence that generalizes to all classrooms. The
thick descriptions of classrooms from the ethnographic tradition are great
at revealing, up close and personal, what makes some classrooms tick. Why
do some classrooms hum, while others devolve into chaos, and still others
wither in boredom? Nevertheless, you don’t pass a law requiring a particular
approach to discussion for all schools in Alberta because one gifted teacher
in Calgary was masterful at engaging all her students in rich talk about text.
Instead, you expand ever-outward—to see how far her approach might travel
and perhaps conduct further studies of the efficacy of the approach or its
modifications.
Third, you don’t use NAEP or PISA data to answer causal questions
about the relative effectiveness of different movements—like Balanced Literacy
(whatever that is) or SoR-based curricula (whatever that is)—by comparing
the achievement of different states or countries to one another over time.
Instead, you use the outcomes of those wide-scale assessments to seed
hypotheses about important policy questions, for which relevant research
studies should be developed and implemented.
All three examples are important for two reasons: 1) Too many
enthusiastic advocates try to force one or another of these genres of
scholarship into exactly that role—of causal explanation—and 2) All three
of these genres of scholarship are wonderful at generating questions, and
even hypotheses, that deserve testing—with appropriate research designs. A

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Concluding Statement

corollary of this conclusion is that in the final analysis, questions of curricular

and instructional efficacy ought to be settled in the crucible of the classroom.
As Shanahan (2020) noted in the first special issue of Reading Research
Quarterly devoted to the SoR, the science of reading instruction ought to be
as salient and well-funded as the science of basic reading processes.

Conclusion 1.5. Claims about settled science notwithstanding,

there are major gaps in our knowledge about reading development.
Time to address them. On this matter, we prefer to be suggestive rather
than definitive—largely because we think this is a matter for the literacy/
reading research community, not just us, to hammer out (see Conclusion
3, below, for our thoughts regarding professional collaboration). Currently,
there also exist some useful recommendations in other research syntheses
(e.g., Pearson et al, 2020) that should be consulted as part of any broad
effort to define a new research agenda. We think the following questions
and others—about research and implementing research-based practice—
deserve more attention.
• Has the three-cueing system really been discredited? If so, then why
is a set for variability in reading and solving words so important? Why
do approaches that include multiple cues for word-reading and word-
solving outperform those with fewer cues available?
• Is reading development better captured by an assembly-line model (i.e.,
one building block at a time until the repertoire has been completed) or
an orchestration model (i.e., at every stage of development, articulating
and harmonizing all of the word- and text-level processes to achieve
understanding)?
• Can an emphasis on processes, such as comprehension and
composition, enhance growth on decoding and word learning? There is
some evidence for such interactions (Cervetti, et al, 2020; Seidenberg,
2023); a closer look is needed.
• Is comprehension best supported by an emphasis on a single element
(such as decoding, language, knowledge, strategy instruction, self-
efficacy, or motivation), or, alternatively, a comprehensive approach—
that attempts to orchestrate all of these elements?

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• What roles do text features play at each stage of development from novice
to expert reader? Is there a viable role for decodable text, one that our
research up to now has not been able to validate? Recent examinations
of the impact of decodable and garden variety texts on early reading
by Hiebert and her colleagues (Hiebert & Tortorelli, 2022; Pugh, et al.,
2023) suggest that relative effects are mixed, with some results pointing
to a place for a range of texts in early reading programs. And at all grade
levels, are there aspects of text complexity that our work up to this point
missed, or underestimated?
• Has the Simple View of Reading (SVR) outlived its usefulness? As helpful
as it has been over the last 40+ years, is it time to admit that the Simple
View is not so simple after all? Even its ardent supporters are in the
business of modifying it on a regular basis; moreover, we have alternatives,
such as the Active View of Reading and the Direct and Inferential
Mediation (DIME) models, that build on, complicate, and complement the
SVR. Perhaps it is time to move on.
• What can we do to ensure that hypotheses about pedagogy undergo
thorough testing in schools and classrooms before they make their way
into the policy world? We agree with Shanahan (2020) that the science
of reading instruction deserves as much attention as the science of basic
reading processes.
• What knowledge about reading, literacy, and learning do teachers need
at various stages of their careers, and how can we best nurture it? A
mammoth undertaking, surely, and one that we, as a profession, have
been grappling with for the best part of a century. But we still manage to
find ways to disregard most of what we know about the research on adult
and professional learning when we try to “deliver” information to teachers
about research-based practices. The National Academy of Education
rekindled an effort to specify a developmental trajectory almost 20 years
ago (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2006; Snow et al, 2006); time to
return to that effort.We can do better. We must.
• Finally, how do all of these other questions interact with language
proficiency, in L1, L2, and across languages? In a number of jurisdictions,
a large percentage of students have a home language other than English.

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Concluding Statement

For example, in California 1.1 million English learner (EL) students are
enrolled in TK-12. Across the State, 60% of young children have a
home language other than English. Not surprisingly, groups such as the
California Association for Bilingual Education question the reverence
of some legislators and policymakers for the SoR and what they deem
the lack of support given teachers as they navigate the diversity of
language and cultural backgrounds in their classrooms. Members of
the Association lament the extent to which a one size fits all approach,
derived from the SoR, is under consideration. We do not disagree with
their concerns. Alas, we have said very little about emergent bilinguals
in this monograph. Part of the reason, of course, is that it has not been
as major a claim in the social and popular media as the claims we
have addressed. Although we make mention of translanguaging as an
important insight and promising practice, we treat the topic minimally.
We know that the situation for these learners deserve a much fuller
discussion as a cultural assets of all learners. A child’s mother tongue
may be their most important cultural asset; finding ways to privilege
it as an asset in an English-only classroom is a sobering challenge.
Some scholars have claimed that the SoR is as applicable to emergent
bilinguals as it is to English-only speakers (Goldenberg, 2020). Others,
ourselves included, would say that the science of cultural assets is
as applicable to English-only speakers as it is to emergent bilinguals.
Discussions of the SOR for all learners (and especially multilingual
learners) need substantially more development.

As we indicated, this short list is intended to be suggestive of issues that some

collaboratively-constituted panel, task force, or committee might examine as
part of a more fulsome consideration of the state of our knowledge.

Conclusion 2: At all levels, including pre-K, students deserve a

comprehensive curriculum. Single-factor solutions to multi-faceted
problems are predisposed to failure. Whether you call it balanced,
comprehensive, structured, or well-orchestrated, we should leave nothing to
chance.

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 Concluding Statement

Conclusion 2.1. A comprehensive curriculum requires a full reading

of all the science(s) of reading. The broadest goal is to ensure that
students can construct meaning with the texts we ask them to read—hence,
all the component, or enabling, skills and processes included in the curriculum
should be focused on achieving that broad and overarching goal. Teaching
the code has been a consistent message in the research cited by researchers
and policymakers aligned with the popular version of the SoR, as well as
those advocating versions of comprehensive literacy. Yet equally consistent in
these syntheses has been the qualification that the code cannot, and should
not, stand alone. The rest of the curriculum should be informed by the most
up-to-date knowledge. At minimum, a comprehensive curriculum should be
informed by these literatures:
• Models of Reading, Literacy, and Learning shape literacy pedagogy.
Especially important are models that help us as teachers learn about:
• The nature of meaning making;
• The nature and development of the cipher that links print and
speech;
• Language (especially talk about text, language, and words);
• Knowledge; and
• Social, cultural, and contextual experiences and settings that
shape reading.
• Disciplinary Literacy. Wed first-hand inquiries (i.e., experiential) with
second-hand inquiries (e.g., through reading texts) to explore how the
worlds we live in work—preferably through project-based learning. In
Freire’s words, we must learn to read both the word and the world.
• Literate Dispositions. Motivation, engagement, interest, self-efficacy,
agency, identity, growth mindset, dispositions, social-emotional learning,
and empathy all shape acts of literacy.
• Asset-Based and Culturally-Sustaining Pedagogies that enhance
literacy development. Why? Because…
• We all need to see, find, and expand ourselves in the curriculum.
• We need to unearth and name systemic racism, especially that
which we cannot see ourselves.

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Concluding Statement

Key to reading/literacy development is the engagement of student’s meaning

making from the outset—by connecting to and building from their worlds.
Learning to read should bridge from opportunities to represent thinking in
talk, image, and text. Learning about the code be embedded in and emerge
from such engagements.

Conclusion 2.2. Novice readers should acquire a full repertoire of

word-level skills as a part of the meaning making process. The
repertoire includes word-reading, orthograhic mapping, word-
solving skills, and the disposition to orchestrate them in tandem
with language and knowledge in making meaning. As we detailed
in our reading of Claim 1, versions of the claim that the code deserves a
prominent curricular home have emerged from the endless analyses of the
data (from previous and new syntheses). Looking across several of the claims
we have evaluated, it is clear to us that embracing this responsibility is an
enduring and recurrent theme. It was a conclusion of each of these syntheses:
• Chall’s 1967 Learning to Read: The Great Debate
• Anderson and his colleagues’ 1985 Becoming a Nation of Readers,
sanctioned by the National Academy of Education
• Adams’ 1990 Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print,
sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education
• Snow and her colleagues’ 1998 Preventing Reading Difficulties in
Young Children, sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences
• The 2000 Report of the National Reading Panel and the National
Institute for Child and Human Development, Teaching Children to Read
• The 2010 Report of the National Early Literacy Panel and the National
Institute for Child and Human Development, Developing Early Literacy
The idea that students need to become good codebreakers has never
been controversial. Whole Language advocates, for instance, want students
to develop a repertoire of tools (including grapho-phonemic) that will help
them unlock words they might encounter. The controversy has arisen from
arguments over the curriculum and pedagogy needed to internalize code-
breaking and other knowledge, skills, and dispositions. At the center of this
debate lies the question: Must we teach what must be learned? Implying, of

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course, that we might be able to orchestrate learning environments in which

children will discover the cipher for themselves, as a natural byproduct of
reading for meaning. Mark Seidenberg, a strong advocate of explicit code
teaching (e.g., Seidenberg, 2017), recognizes that many students engage
in what he terms statistical, or implicit learning (e.g., Seidenberg, 2023a)—
by drawing inferences about the underlying rules, patterns, or heuristics that
operate across data sets they encounter while reading.
For now, we are provisionally siding with what might be termed, in legal
parlance, a strict originalist approach—in which we assert that the syntheses
mean what they say. Our close, text-based reading of the evidence, as we
argued for in Claim 1, suggests that systematic (rather than opportunistic)
programs show a consistent advantage in terms of developing word-level
skills (with less consistent effects on comprehension), as long as they also
attend to a range of other curricular matters (e.g., comprehension, language,
motivation, and agency). Any assertion that the approaches also need to be
synthetic (e.g., sequential decoding) or structured is reaching further than the
evidence permits. The approaches could be synthetic, but they needn’t be.
At this point, it would seem consistent with the evidence to implement
programs that help students develop and use a full complementary repertoire
of ways of reading and unlocking words, whether it be Linnea Ehri’s (2005)
combined approaches to reading words (e.g., sequential decoding; decoding
by analogy, sight, and context); Scanlon et al.’s (2024) Interactive Strategies
Approach; or even the phonics-on-the-fly portfolio of practices that Taylor
and her colleagues (2002) found so predictive of achievement. Readers
need a full toolbox, supported by teachers who are keeping tabs on their
development and switch from one resource to another as they help students
develop what Gough and Hillinger (1980) called, “cryptoanalytic intent” (p.
188).
Word reading, especially the facile sort that is accurate, automatic,
and fluent, cannot be achieved without a repertoire of word-solving skills that
help students figure out the pronunciation and meaning of words they cannot
immediately recognize and/or understand. As we demonstrated in Claim 4,
nowhere in the entire repertoire of reading skills and practices are variability
and flexibility more important than in addressing these “clunks” in the reading

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Concluding Statement

process. As Gibson and Levin (1975) argued at a theoretical level, and others
(Scanlon & Anderson, 2020; Chapman & Tunmer, 2011) have demonstrated
empirically, readers must learn to expect variability in the consistency between
English orthography and phonology and deploy a flexible set of strategies that
nimbly shift between the orthographic, phonological, semantic, and syntactic
cues in the texts they encounter. The interactive nature of skill development
and the orchestrated use of skills should be uppermost in our thinking,
planning, and delivery of word-level curricular practices.

Conclusion 2.3. Accept responsibility for ensuring that all readers,

including novice readers, acquire the knowledge, language, skills,
and dispositions they need to become learners who can use
reading, writing, and language to learn about—and live productive
lives within—the natural, social, and cultural worlds they inhabit.
With a goal this broad and deep, we are asking much of the educational
system and its teachers. Yet no teacher would accept less for any of the
students under their tutelage. It is why we teach, and it is why citizens invest
in and support their schools. At the curricular level, this means that the
curriculum to support reading acquisition ought to be connected to, perhaps
even integrated with, the curriculum for learning other language arts, as well
as for learning in the disciplines (i.e., within the sciences, the social sciences,
and the arts and humanities). It is our way of maximizing the likelihood that
students will gain access to the knowledge, language, and inquiry skills they
will need to live productive lives—and enhance their reading development.
This recommendation is grounded in both research and the moral imperatives
of education. We know, from diverse and continuously-expanding bodies of
theory and research (Cervetti et al., 2020; Duke & Cartwright, 2021; Kim,
2017; Scarborough, 2001), that language development is as important to
reading development as the acquisition of the cipher—the code that allows
readers to map written onto oral language. We also know that when reading
(and writing, by the way) are situated within these broader goals of knowledge
and language development, students have a space in which to apply, refine,
and hone their ever-developing reading skills.

140
 Concluding Statement

Conclusion 3. The field needs a complete “reset” on how to man-

age differences, controversy, and deeply-held beliefs in our quest
for common ground.

Conclusion 3.1. We need to replace false debates with real debates.

We need to stop speaking for others, asserting confidently what we take to
be their position (often in caricature, as a straw man), and offering our critique
(not of their position, but of our rendition of their position). Let us speak only
for ourselves, bring our data to the table, and stay there—until all possible
avenues of research-based consensus have been explored and exhausted.
Let’s stay long enough to figure out what we do agree on, and build from
there. Above all, let’s avoid what we see so much of in some Western societies
nowadays—particularly in politics, and especially on culturally divisive issues:
Engaging in confirmation bias, by limiting our input to messages from those
who think just like us.
False debates often sow distrust and misinformation among parents,
schools, and policy makers—thereby alienating teachers and cutting off
opportunities for productive discussion (see Gabriel, 2020; Gabriel & Strauss,
2013; Pearson, 2004; Pearson, Madda, & Raphael, 2023; Reinking, Hruby,
& Risko, 2023). We do not discount the importance of debate; we simply
argue that critics on both sides should commit to a genuinely scientific and
collaborative dialogical examination of research that informs these complex
issues. Real debates might lead to a hierarchy of consensus. For example:
• We begin with a search for consensus—to identify research-based
policies upon which we can agree. The list will be longer than we think.
As we said in our concluding section for Claim 1, we are sometimes
surprised that the debate continues, even when alleged antagonists
express agreement (e.g., the debate between Bowers, Fletcher and
colleagues, and others about the instructional surround for phonics; see
p. 41).
• We unearth disagreements and sort them into categories, such as:
• Unsettled questions for which we can imagine a short-term line
of research leading to resolution.

141
Concluding Statement

• Unsettled questions for which the current or even short-term line

of research—due to ambiguous, unclear, or conflicting results—is
unlikely to lead to resolution.
• Unsettled questions for which evidence is irrelevant—most likely
because they are rooted in moral and ethical issues about the
nature of schooling in societies. Political resolution seems the
only option
• The panels reconvene periodically (Five-year intervals seem right) to
revisit the unsettled issues in light of more recent research.

None of these tough conversations will work, however, unless our discourse
becomes more civil. In the preface to this monograph, we expressed our
shock and dismay at the bad behavior we have witnessed in some of the
interactions, especially in social media. Critique, supported by evidence, is
welcome. But name-calling, impugning motives, and other tools of the ad
hominem disposition, are not. And, of course, disrespect for those with
whom we disagree is equally as problematic in legislative halls and political
discourse, where it has become so prevalent that it is viewed as a threat to
democracy worldwide.

Conclusion 3.2. It is time for what might be considered “learning

nests,” and perhaps another National Reading Panel. Better yet,
an International Reading Panel. Still better: A panel selected to
represent the full range of basic and applied research and full range
of constituents whose lives are shaped by the panel’s outcomes.
As a field, we constitute a panel that ensures a voice for all constituents, with
either relevant knowledge or high stakes in the quality of reading curricula.
Experts in reading research will surely provide an important nucleus to such
a panel, but also included would be researchers representing all of the fields
previously identified in Conclusion 2.1 (on a comprehensive curriculum). It
would also include parents, teachers, policymakers, and teacher educators,
all representing the groups whose lives will be shaped by the panel’s
recommendations. Models exist for just these sorts of broadly-representative

142
 Concluding Statement

groups. In the U.S., these include the National Assessment of Educational

Progress (NAEP) Framework panels, or, with some modification, the Institute
of Education Sciences (IES) What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) panels.
At the local level, we would also encourage “learning nests”—gatherings
wherein colleagues might discuss teaching and learning pathways, share
the data and research they’ve engaged in in their own classrooms, and plan
their own design studies (i.e., in which they study their students’ needs and
development to better tailor and refine their curricular practices).

Closing
We hope that our examination of these claims contributes to a
respectful consideration of the issues related to learning to read. Beyond
the fact-checking, there may not be agreement with everyone on all issues;
in fact, we are not always sure we agree with one another with some of our
recommendations for moving forward. That’s healthy. But the two of us do try
to model what we hope becomes a professional ethic: Staying at the table,
in the conversation, until every ounce of consensus and goodwill has been
expended. Even if the two of us don’t agree on everything, we’re staying at
the same table! We hope these discussions help to open a conversation,
consistent with one of the views expressed in Johns’ (2023) conclusion to his
history of the Science of Reading:
We should look much further and more deeply, not only at the science of
reading, but at the reading of science—or rather, at the act of reading in
science. One way to resolve the alleged crises of the scientific enterprise
may lie in an understanding of those practices. (p. 427)

143
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Rob Tierney and P David Pearson explore the validity of claims associated with the Science of
Reading as they have appeared in social media, the popular press, and academic works.

The book offers a comprehensive review of these claims—analyzing the evidence, reasoning,
assumptions, and consequences associated with each claim—and closes with ideas for moving
beyond the debates to greater consensus or accommodation of differences. The book is a must
read for educators involved in teaching reading, as well as parents, policy makers, and other
stakeholders.

Rob Tierney is Dean Emeritus of the Faculty of Education

at University of British Columbia and Professsor Emeritus
of Language and Literacy Education. He is Past President
of the International Literacy Association as well as Literacy
Research Association and the Association of Canadian
Deans of Education. His research interests are focused on
global developments in educational research.

Robert J. Tierney

P David Pearson is the Evelyn Lois Corey Emeritus

Professor of Instructional Science in the Berkeley School
of Education at the University of California, Berkeley,
where he served as Dean from 2001-2010. His current
research focuses on literacy history and policy.

P David Pearson

VANCOUVER - BERKELEY