Stories Grounded in Decades of Research: What We Truly Know about the Teaching of Reading

Abstract

The recent dissemination of selective research findings related to reading privileges a narrow body of reading scholarship and a singular, unproven solution—teaching phonics. We offer a research‐based correction by presenting two compelling bodies of research to argue that reading instruction must be responsive to individual children. While this confluence of complexity does not deny the importance of phonics, it highlights the significant findings related to: (1) the brain and reading, and (2) the systematic observation of young readers. We argue that reductive and singular models of reading fail to honor the cultures, experiences, and diversity of children. This confluence of research findings reveals an unequivocal need for caution as states, universities, schools, and teachers adopt assumedly universal and narrow approaches to teaching reading.

Book Review: Literacies that Move and Matter: Nexus Analysis for Contemporary Childhoods

“…In the last few years, public discourse on literacy has been constricted as politicians, publishers, and popular media have been trumpeting a singular, seemingly surefire, yet misleading way to teach reading to all children. “Emphasize phonics!” they proclaim and back up this decree with plans that can easily be mandated, packaged, and sold to schools (Compton-Lilly et al, 2023). This simplified, single-factor, “science of reading” approach, however, relies on a very narrow body of research targeting the needs of a specific student population and ignores decades of educational and literacy research that have demonstrated that reading is anything but a simple process (Alverman et al, 2018; Pearson et al, 2023).…”