Sadly, the heart of the conflict is about the provision for children and the unnecessary and sometimes devastating 'special needs' caused by flawed teaching (according to the research evidence on reading instruction) and/or weak teaching. This is a moral issue and thus the conflict will remain necessary until such time as all children are well-served - and this will not happen until all teachers are well-served by their initial teaching-training and continued professional development. The conflict is because many trainers and teachers are defending the indefensible in that we have the research evidence and the internet through which to access it, we have test results showing the effects of different types of teaching and quality of teaching. The conflict is also because of deep misunderstanding about the nature of the complex English alphabetic code (and this includes teachers and the general public) - the most complex alphabetic code in the world. The conflict is also because whilst people fight vociferously to defend their current understanding and beliefs - others, by necessity, feel obligated to fight the corner for the children who are not taught - for whom the clock ticks and opportunities are lost at an early age for the children. We must never make light of this state of affairs (the conflict) because it is real and it is virtually impossible to hold those to account who are in the strongest positions to do more about changing the status quo.
Debbie's comment is wise and thoughtful. The alphabetic code is indeed complex, but phonic in its basis. It is widely misunderstood either as something chaotic (rather than complex) or as more consistent than it is in reality. It needs to be understood in all of its aspects, and then presented clearly to children.
Can't help thinking it really needs a list of things that people don't agree on to go with it.
Bowers, J.S., and Bowers, P.N. (in press). Progress in reading instruction requires a better understanding of the English spelling system Current Directions in Psychological Science.
These papers challenge the claim that English has a "complex" alphabetic system. Instead, English has a morphophonological system that encodes both phonology and meaning (through morphology). It is not phonic in its basis.
Citing the work of one person is far from enough evidence to suggest phonics instruction does not work. Though I do say we "know" it works more from corollary studies that explain variance in later reading achievement rather than actual experimental studies.
We also know, at least here in the US, when we try to scale up key reading findings we muck it up so bad and end up with programs like Response to Intervention that do more harm than good.
"The simple fact is that the present orthography is not merely a letter-to- sound system riddled with imperfections, but instead, a more complex and more regular relationship wherein phoneme and morpheme share leading roles"
There is not even an argument about this in linguistics (and pretty much everything is controversial in linguistics).
Please link to response to intervention, what it entails and how it went wrong.
Can you send me these links because I am doing a talk with the teachers at my school about phonics.
Just read your link Jeffery. Your research is very much at odds with consensus and frankly challenging to follow. While the argument for phonics is largley based on only a few sources constantly quoting each other this is a normal issue in science in general. The main support for phonics is the fact those studies compared actual teaching approaches in large cohorts and concluded that SSP was the most effective. If you believe you have a more effective framework then articulate that theory, develop a teaching approach and then compare that approach gainst SSP. You seem a long way from doing that. You may be right but it is unlikely and your ideas are not currently relevant to a discussion about whole language vs SSP. That war seems to have been won, at least on an evidence base.
3 I am confused why you are conflating 2 and 1. Phonics is the best way of teaching decoding but mixing in other phonemes with struggling students slows progress. Listening to reading, oral literacy, and restricted reading/writing practice (using only taught phonemes) don't slow progress.
4 . Not using the best evidence is unproffesional and neglect. If phonics is not the best way of teaching decoding (not literacy) please link to further reading.
5 your political analogy seems accurate but you forgot to map across the general lack of knowledge and interest. Most people don't care about the phonics debate which is why the compromise fallacy seems just as likely a candidate.
6 finally to my knowledge phonics is a good candidate for most evidence based educational practice. If I accept your argument then I feel I should stop advocating for evidence based teaching. It simply wouldn't be developed enough. Feel free to mention other evidence based practices which you feel are more supported.
I should mention I am a maths teacher so this stuff is at the limit of my knowledge. I was also confused by a posters phonology/morphology argument. Of course morphology is needed for understanding but it rarely leads to bad decoding except in the case of irregular verbs. It obviously leads to poor grammar and comprehension when tenses are garbled.
Nicely done, Dan. Nuanced and, dare I say, "balanced." :-) You anticipate quibbles, and I have just a minor one -- in the first statement in your list. I think it is not "decoding sound" but rather decoding text to get to "sound" and thus to words, and hopefully to "meaning," with room for some back and forth among the latter two, and the larger textual, genre, and discourse context.
I too am curious about why the public discourse about reading instruction seems to be suffering from a new littering of horse carcasses and heaps of straw. Perhaps it is rooted at least in part in a fear that the weakening of the strictures associated with the Federal accountability regime may undercut some of the advantages enjoyed by purveyors of more "systematic " and "scientific" approaches to reading instruction, and that we will descend into an era of "free beer and no police." But I certainly agree with you that stark either/or positions are counterproductive, and a waste of time and resources that could better be devoted to designing and continually improving multifaceted instructional regimes that support teachers in attending to their students' individual progress and problems, so they can adjust their approach and dosage as needed to help their students keep moving ahead.
I was provoked by Jeffrey Bowers’ comments to read his “Reconsidering the evidence…” article and to look at the video of a teacher using one of his suggested alternative approaches. I think he probably is quite right that the existing research evidence does not “prove” that systematic phonics is more effective than any alternative approach, though part of the force of his argument lies in his, to me quite amusing, review of many of the major studies purporting to offer such proof, which really demonstrates that it is very hard to prove anything about the relative effectiveness of a seriously underspecified and uncertainly implemented treatment compared to even less well defined, loosely implemented, and contaminated, alternative-, or “business as usual”-, treatments, all with under-controlled teacher and student populations. His point about English orthography’s being a mix of grapho-phonemic and grapho-morphemic coding is more fundamental, and to me it highlights the point that the label “systematic phonics” simply papers over the fact that there is no one well-specified, agreed “systematic” order and manner in which the codings should be taught – or for that matter for how long, for whom – beyond the hard to believe that anyone ever said it, and truly stupid, idea that the code should be taught thoroughly before any attention is paid to meaning and to the fact that the code exists to enable human beings to communicate information and tell stories in forms that extend the reach (and complexity) of spoken language through time and space. This is a foolishness right up there with the idea that we should waste the representational efficiency bequeathed to us by the invention of grapho-phonemic systems (coupled with and maybe diluted by grapho-morphemic coding systems) by teaching kids that reading is a word-solving, cueing puzzle game (and in so doing perhaps tending to limit real reading competence to a privileged Mandarin class?). I think we would be better off if we would just substitute the word “explicit” for “systematic” at this point, and save “systematic” for a time when we know a lot more about in what order and how much for whom, though even then the phonics should be understood to co-exist with, and support a focus on, ways of representing, communicating, and understanding other levels of meaning.
Rachel Gabriel’s piece that she refers to in her comment here (flagged by Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post) is a longer version of the same argument you are making – also nicely balanced, thoughtful, and humane. It is well worth reading – and a calm rejoinder to Emily Hanford’s op ed and audio-documentary, and perhaps as well as to Susan Pimentel’s October 26 Ed Week Commentary, though Pimentel does seem to want to accept Hanford’s worries and then move on toward “balance” ? by adding a focus on “content knowledge” (referring to some other wise things you have said) and well-designed curriculum, so maybe she too is heading in a more sensible direction. We will see, but certainly your six statements are a constructive nudge showing the way. So, thank you for that.
Phonics is considered proved in the sense that it has a strong theoretical basis and multiple large scale comparison studies that show it outperforms alternative approaches. This doesn't mean it is certain but it is a high standard for a social science and to my knowledge a candidate for the most evidence based intervetion, rather then principle, in education. If this is not sufficient then we'll we'l you are a postmodernist and truth is purely relative. Know if you can show me some evidence of alternative methods out preforming systemic synthetic phonics I will be forced to reconsider. Note proof of principle studies that don't compete with stronger opponents are not relavent evidence. See Hattie for his everything works in education argument. The Hawthorne effect is also worth a recap. Please can people engage with the arguments logically rather then in value unfalsifiable ways. We do not need total knowledge in any domain to make predictions otherwise we would know nothing. The shaky epistomologepis foundations of all knowledge, while fascinating, is an irritating distraction from implementing any human knowledge.
I am the co-founder of Lexercise, a provider of teletherapy services for struggling readers and writers. We have provided services for >100,000 struggling readers.(Seehttps://www.lexercise.com/) I think you are underestimating the degree to which schools and educators across the globe (including the USA) understand the scientific principles for teaching reading. We have worked with thousands of struggling readers who have not been taught to read and spell using methods endorsed by consensus science. Science suggests most of them would not be struggling if they had been taught using a scientifically sound method. Is it "a waste of time " to address this? I would suggest this is the very best use we could make of time and money in education!
Phonics at best is temporary at the very early stages because as anyone who has taken Linguistics 101 knows - English is NOT a phonetically based language. A temporary assist/transition yes, but no competent reader reads phonetically. Ontario Canada scores top 10 in the world in reading and systematic phonics disappeared a couple decades ago. How do you guys in the US score on PISA?
The argument is that you learn to decode more effectively by using phonics, especially new words. This includes learning alternative spelling arrangements. No one thinks you continue to do this as you become a competent reader, this argument is about the most effective way of learning how to read.
John Bald's website is a good place to research this argument.
P.s the idea of needing to consciously learn a skills before it becomes automatic or even unnecessary is hardly new to education either in academics or sport.
Well yes, and you guys have Trudeau – and we have Trump, so rub it in. But both phenomena leave some room for further discussion about causation. The point is not that there isn’t strong evidence that explicitly calling learners’ attention to the grapho-phonemic code and providing them with extensive opportunities to make and practice the relevant associations is correlated with their chances of becoming fluent decoders and “readers,” or that interventions of this sort aren’t particularly helpful for students who otherwise are having difficulty in learning to read. There is, and they do seem to be.
Nor is there a denial that instructional regimes that rely solely on exposure to meaningful text and on word solving and cueing, with little or no explicit attention to phonics, if there are such regimes, are likely to result in significant proportions of their students having limited success in learning to read.
The point is that, while some level of fluency in decoding is undoubtedly necessary, it is not likely to be sufficient, for high levels of comprehension of more complex text, and the discourses and genres associated with it. “Systematic Phonics” is hardly a single, well-defined, curriculum or instructional regime, in the same way that “balanced-literacy” or “whole language” also are not. If there truly were a hard-line version of systematic phonics that in practice actually withheld any focus on meaning until decoding was assured, I would bet that it would lose when pitted against some well-designed form of balanced literacy, if the outcome measures included comprehension of complex text at some later level of schooling. However, I would hope that teachers would be too sensible and humane to allow such a study to be carried out.
Neither reading nor writing are unitary “skills.” Becoming effective in any or all of the genres of literate communication, both sending and receiving, and using them for all the purposes such genres serve, requires time, practice, exposure, and feedback – for each of them. Effective instructional designs have to be multi-faceted, sustained , building up over time, and sensitive and responsive to individual variations in needs, backgrounds, and ability. They are not really appropriate for big, one-shot, random-assignment , controlled evaluations – rather they should be refined in long-term design – trial and revise – processes, probably piecemeal in nature. This is the reason to be impatient with the reading wars, and why one might think we have better things to do. Because we do. And I think that is not just an expression of epistemological perfectionism but rather a matter of urgent practical worry.