Editor’s note: SET published this post originally on 21 October 2021. I am reposting the beginning of it here with a link to the original. Because it is very intriguing (at least to me) to see what was being discussed prior to the stir of interest in reading and reading instruction that has occurred in the intervening years. If you wish, please click through to read that old version of the content, which I have moved out from behind the pay wall.—JohnL
Editor’s Previous Note: I revised this post 11 October 2024. Mostly I was correcting typos, but I also added a couple of links to more recent content.—JohnL
There’s been a lot of press about reading instruction lately. Is it just interpretations of puffs of smoke or is there something more important happening?
Writing in Ed Week, Sarah Schwartz reported about anticipated changes in some widely used early literacy programs that would de-emphasize teaching young children to use “multiple cues” in decoding (Schwartz, 2021). Ms. Schwartz’s article is one of several reports that examine tension between different points of view in what has often been described as “the great debate” (Chall, 1967) or “the reading wars” (Silverman, 2019).
Because I’m opposed to metaphors that refer to “fights,” “battles,” “wars,” and similar references to violence, I hope to use different language; but here where I often quote the authors, the authors have used such martial metaphors.
—JohnL
The disagreement about reading
The tension in early reading, which was aptly captured in Emily Hanford’s series for American Public Media, is about whether early or beginning reading instruction should promote fundamental skills (letters and sounds; “phonics”) or higher-order skills (enjoying reading; getting the author’s ideas). Advocates of the latter argue that reading is, fundamentally, getting meaning from text—don’t focus on the print details as long as you believe you understand the author’s message. Advocates of the former argue that to understand an author’s argument, you must be able to covert her squiggles into language—to hear her speak.
Disagreements between these perspectives have become polemic. Advocates of one view disparge the advocates of the other view. For example, should educators promote “word calling?” Advocates of the other view argue that the their detractors are promoting guessing rather than decoding (“you’re telling kids to guess about this word”)
So, this polemic is probably an important part of the debate. Not only is the “great debate” about how to teach reading, it’s also predicated on using language that disparages advocates of alternative perspectives: “Let me characterize your argument in a disparaging way.” (I hope to avoid continuing that approach in this post.)
Recent news
Ms. Schwartz’s article connects with her previous reporting on the topic of the “three cueing” methods taught to huge percentages of children in the US as well as other articles about the topic. Among curricula adopted by US schools, the leaders (i.e., those curricula used by more schools than others) are those that recommend the three-cueing system (Schwartz, 2019).
In a nationally representative survey, the Education Week Research Center asked K-2 and special education teachers what curricula, programs, and textbooks they had used for early reading instruction in their classrooms.
The top five include three sets of core instructional materials, meant to be used in whole-class settings: The Units of Study for Teaching Reading, developed by the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, and Journeys Into Reading, both by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. There are also two early interventions, which target specific skills certain students need more practice on: Reading Recovery and Fountas & Pinnell’s Leveled Literacy Intervention.
There can be little doubt that cognitively, readers have many cues (what we behaviorists would calll “Sds”) when they encounter a word or words while reading. And, I’d agree that competent readers adjust their reading on the basis of multiple features of what they are reading.
What cues? Well, competent readers translate the letters of words to their spoken representations very quickly. They do so so smoothly and efficiently, that their use of sound-symbol associations, blending, and such is almost invisible.
—> Read the full original (it goes on for another couple of 1000 words) here:
Smoke signals in reading education
Editor’s Note: I revised this post 11 October 2024. Mostly I was correcting typos, but I also added a couple of links to more recent content.—JohnL