Structuring Reading Teaching
Structuring Reading Teaching
Minister Erica Stanford is telling the education system to adopt structured literacy, with an emphasis on phonics, throughout NZ's schools. This has implications for thousands of teachers, widespread professional development, preparation and use of materials, purchase of books, and continuing testing regimes. Does it all make sense?
One thing that does make sense is that for decades, teachers have drawn on phonics and links between sound and print to introduce children to reading. With these and other techniques, they have built on children's expanding development of language to recognise the connection between sound, print and word.
At the same time, teachers have moved to make the connection between print and meaning. For instance, when Kindergarten and primary school teachers sit down at the mat to read a story to children, they typically display the book opened towards the children, thereby making connections between illustrations, sound, word and meaning.
Erica Stanford seems to dismiss supports of this kind, talking of "looking at pictures . . . guessing the word." But there are other ways of looking at it.
One elementary point is that illustrations can offer all-important clues for learners to give sense to words. Sound isn't the only clue to making sense.
Another is that in communication, we are constantly making guesses of different kinds as we work out meanings. Even as adults, we encounter words and expressions we don't know. Often we can ignore this, because the flow of print or conversation fills in the gap. But just as often, we figure out some part of the missing meaning from the context – the topic of discussion, the way it is going, clues in the conversation, what we know subconsciously of language and content.
Enabling youngsters to use context in the search for meaning can be an important part of learning to read. That suggests that as learning progresses, it's necessary to get beyond individual words to move on to stretches of print – a language-rich experience.
Part of the point is that valuable and all as phonics can be, especially in making initial connections, becoming a reader includes other strategies for extending one's reading within and beyond the classroom.
Children come to school with abilities in language, knowledge of the world, and imaginations. They're constantly engaged in making sense of what's around them. So they're not just empty vessels to fill up with phonics, and it may not help to fixate for a long time on sound-letter connections. They can legitimately progress to exploring meaning, and it's our job as parents, teachers and writers to help them do so.
There's a cautionary tale in a letter to the NZ Herald (10 May 2024). Joan Ruzich describes how she had asked her five-year-old grandson to sound out boat. He sounded out each letter. "So what does it say?" "I dunno," he said, and ran off.
And there's a cautionary interpretation of structured literacy in Ian Powell's analysis (18 June 2024) published in Scoop, in which he warns of the dangers of hegemony in literacy education.
Along with obligatory structured literacy comes required phonics testing of five-year-olds and older. In early July, the PM and Minister announce testing in the first 20 and 40 weeks of schooling, followed by twice yearly "progression monitoring" in Years 3 through 8.
Research
Stanford's policy demand is obviously a large-scale makeover, so one looks for large-scale studies that would support it. A recent analysis of reading research by Emeritus Prof Jim Cummins points to a number of relevant wide-ranging studies in the US and UK, which take us helpfully beyond our own shores. Some reports note an early advantage from phonics in learning to read, exactly as teachers have practised in NZ and elsewhere for years.
But even twenty years ago, the National Reading Panel in America reported that it could find no relationship between phonics and reading comprehension after Grade 1. Phonics in their study rapidly reached a point of diminishing returns after Grade 1, and the NRP endorsed balanced reading.
Meanwhile, an "impact" team looked closely at the USA's Bush-era $6b project, Reading First, for low-income initial readers. The programme insisted on "stand-alone, one-size-fits-all phonics instruction, isolated from any engagement with meaningful text." The evaluation reported that the programme "did not produce a statistically significant impact on student reading comprehension test scores in grades 1, 2, or 3."
In the UK, in 2022, an extensive review of research into reading comprehension by University College London concluded, "contextualised teaching of reading, or balanced instruction is the most effective way to teach reading."
Significantly, the NRP study referred to above stated categorically that phonics "should not become the dominant component of a reading programme," which is disconcertingly the hallmark of Stanford's policy.
Cummins' analysis of reading research studies reports that supporters of balanced reading teaching don't reject phonics. But they do reject teaching phonics "in an isolated, stand-alone, and rigid one-size-fits-all manner, divorced from actual engagement with high-interest meaningful texts."
At the very least, in trying to make sense of debates over reading, we might exercise a bit of caution in instituting sweeping policy, thereby raising some important questions:
To what extent does it make sense to opt solely for structured literacy and mandate it exclusively throughout the education system?
And, what sort of policy enables children to make sense of print?
But asking the least of questions is surely inadequate. The Education Minister, with her strong background in export sales, is presuming not just to hold dogmatic opinions on literacy, but to enforce them on the education system. We need to energetically demand that it is education professionals, not politicians, who make these decisions.
In her mandating, Stanford joins her boss in intruding on education (an hour a day each in reading, writing and maths) and the National Party deciding which particular medicines to fund (cancer drugs). If it was another party making these moves, National would label it nanny state time.
David Cooke was previously in teacher education at Unitec and York University, Toronto