Who to Believe on Twitter

10/13/2019

A recent tweet caught my attention. It was posted by Sherry Sanden, a professor at Illinois State, in response to a thread from APM reporter Emily Hanford, well known to educators for her reporting in the last 18 months on the best way to teach reading and the state of reading instruction in the US. Hanford was responding (I think) to an abstract of a talk Sanden and colleague Deborah MacPhee were to present at ILA, which Hanford thought was inaccurate and possibly a response to her reporting. Hanford posted a series of 14 tweets supporting various aspects of her claims about reading, many with links to the scientific research she cited.

I know this is convoluted and honestly I don't think it matters much, but I'm trying to provide some context. Here's what I really wanted to get at.
This is one of Sanden’s tweets in reply to Hanford.

I won’t take the time here to defend Hanford’s reporting—I’ve recommended her reports in the past and think they are solid, and she did a fine job of defending herself.

I’d like to comment on the obvious implication that Sanden should be taken more seriously because of her job; she’s a professor of education at Illinois State. She has credentials: she has a PhD in the relevant discipline, she publishes research on the topic, presents at professional conferences, and so on.

This is called argument from authority. In this instance, here’s the form Sanden is hoping it will take.

Proposition 1: Sanden has research-based reasons for believing that X is true about early literacy.
Proposition 2: Random tweeters don’t understand research very well, but have good reason to believe Proposition 1 is true (because of Sanden’s credentials).
Conclusion: Random tweeters believe that conclusion X is supported by research.

I considered argument from authority at more length in When Can You Trust the Experts, but here’s a short version.

Believing something because someone else believes it rather than demanding and evaluating evidence makes you sound either lazy or gullible. But we yield to the authority of others all the time. When I see my doctor I don’t ask for evidence that the treatments he prescribes are effective, and when an architect designed a new deck for my house I didn’t ask for proof that it could support the weight of my grill and outdoor furniture. I believed what they told me because of their authority.

I think education researchers don’t speak with that kind of authority and (apparently unlike Sanden) I don’t think we deserve it. I can point to two key differences between a doctor (or architect, or accountant, or electrician, etc) and education researchers.

First, I yield authority to someone who has been vetted by a credible entity. I know that, unless you break the law, you cannot practice medicine (or follow the other professions named) without being licensed by the state of Virginia. I haven’t looked into the matter, but I have no reason to think that the accrediting agencies aren’t doing an acceptable job. For one thing, most of the professionals I hire achieve what I expect them to achieve.
Education researchers, in contrast, are not licensed by a credible authority.

Anyone can take the title “education researcher.” That’s why we must point to earmarks of authority like academic degrees, training, and publications ; these make the silent claim “people with expertise think I’m an expert too,” which is, of course, a bit circular. Sometimes researchers mention television, radio and public speaking appearances. That’s called “social proof,” boiling down to “other people think I’m worth listening to.

The problem is that these earmarks of authority are not very reliable. The marketplace is cluttered with purveyors of snake oil who bear degrees, and even some who have published articles in “peer-reviewed” journals. As readers of this blog know, the idea that “peer review” is a guarantee of high quality in a journal does not bear close scrutiny.

But there’s a second, more important difference between education research and professions where people readily accept argument from authority. Those other fields have more accepted truths.

When I get an electrician to figure out why the breaker in my living room keeps flipping, I understand she may be more or less skillful in diagnosis and repair than another licensed electrician. What I don’t expect is that she could have wildly different—perhaps completely opposing—ideas about how electricity works and how to wire a house compared to someone else I might have called.

Education researchers do not speak with one voice, and that makes it hard to expect an argument from authority will work, as they take this form:

Proposition 1: Sanden says that when it comes to early reading, scientific research suggests “X” is true.
Proposition 2: Willingham says that when it comes to early reading, scientific research suggests “not X” is true.
Proposition 3: Random tweeter has equally good reason to believe (based on their credentials) that Proposition 1 and Proposition 2 are true.
Conclusion: ??????

We can’t make arguments from authority if equally authoritative people disagree.

Part of the problem is that people who enter these arguments actually come at the problems with different assumptions and understandings about what constitutes evidence, and indeed, what it means to know something. That’s most obvious when we have had very different training. Cognitive psychologists and researchers in critical theory address aspects of education that are largely non-overlapping, and you’ll find some of each
these folks in most schools of education, with similar credentials.

I’ve argued elsewhere that those of us in education research would do ourselves a favor if we would make our assumptions more explicit, as well as the limitations of the tools in our analytic toolbox—what problems are our methods well suited to answer and what can’t we answer? I think you don’t hear that often enough.

A final note. Later in the thread Sanden posted this

And then this…

Understood, but that’s social media. It may be frustrating and seem ludicrous that teachers use it to inform themselves, but here we are. If you want people to believe you, it's incumbent on you to explain your reasoning.

Lori Sappington link

10/13/2019 08:49:25 am

Thank you for making my Sunday complete!

Sherry Sanden

10/13/2019 02:14:46 pm

I understand your concern for teachers using Twitter to learn but I worry that the quick-draw responses it inspires don’t prompt meaningful dialogue. I admit, I was taken by surprise by the Twitter attack directed at me and my colleague Friday night, instigated by Hanford and quickly picked up by her followers. She tweeted after learning that we were conducting a conference presentation the next day, to engage teachers in a dialogue around the “science of reading” frenzy that is rearing its head in some parts of the literacy field. As is typical of Twitter, the ensuing conversation only served to push already divergent perspectives further apart; 240 characters on Twitter often does not inspire dialogic interactions but rather, a tendency to reduce conversation to mean-spirited, kneejerk reactions. Hanford tweeted that, based on information she’s reported, we should “adjust instruction and teacher prep and curriculum materials.” Unfortunately, as a fairly novice Twitter user, my snarky reply did not contribute to a civil dialogue. Lesson learned.

However, the substance of my reply, taken literally, stands. All of us can learn from the work Hanford has done to reveal a brewing movement in literacy education that aims to reduce the complex act of reading to an act of decoding words. All educators should attend to that reporting and to the people who line up in defense of it, as it provides important information about the divergent perspectives in the field. However, either her reporting nor her background warrant recommendations for reading instruction.

Hanford is, in point of fact, a media journalist. She has gathered and organized a large amount of information about a narrow band of reading instruction, especially focused on phonics. She has disseminated it in a way that creates the kind of attention-grabbing headlines that appeal to many people’s sensitivities about education. In that respect, she appears to be very good at her job. What she is not is an educator. As far as I know, she has never taught groups of wiggly first-graders to read nor worked with teachers to hone pedagogical skills.

What she has also failed to do is present a fair and balanced portrait of reading, reading education, or teachers of reading. As an example, her stories frequently showcase schools or districts whose purchase of phonics-centric curriculums apparently turn everything around. What these sunny stories of rising test scores fail to show is whether or not students ever choose to pick up a book again; do these phonics-heavy approaches create children who can pronounce the words but don’t ever use this skill for authentic purposes? And where are the stories of the many schools that employ inquiry learning or balanced literacy approaches, or yes, even whole language instruction, to produce successful readers? Her reporting leaves the impression that schools can only succeed by pouring money into phonics programs.

So yes, I will give Hanford’s recommendations the attention they deserve. I will continue to listen and watch and learn from what her stories tell us about the frustration of parents who want the best education for their children, the hunger of teachers for more and better ways to support their learners, and the challenges for educators who pursue authentic, child-centered, meaningful approaches to literacy learning. As a journalist, she has information that supports my learning. But I will take my lessons about reading instruction from the many informed teachers and researchers who are the true experts in the field of reading education.

Catherine Scott

10/13/2019 03:56:13 pm

You were surprised when a gratuitous attack on someone highly respected led to counter attacks.m? Good heavens.

Fr. Peter Totleben, O.P.

10/14/2019 12:09:09 am

I know I'm a bit late to this discussion, but it seems to me that there is a simple way for Dr. Sanden to defend her position: give us a broader picture of the research. To wit:

1. Sanden claims that Hanford presents only a "narrow band" of the research on reading instruction. It would be helpful to see examples of empirical research that contradicts Hanford's claims. This would be the quickest and most effective way to refute Hanford. That Sanden chose not to do this (to my knowledge) makes the interested outside observer wonder why she chose not to, opting for another line of defense.

2. Sanden goes on to claim that Hanford's reporting is not "fair and balanced" because she does not take up the question of whether phonics instruction kills a child's desire to read voluntarily and makes them unwilling to read for "authentic purposes." (I don't really understand what this means).

Now, while the decline in reading for pleasure among people of all ages really saddens me, nevertheless it still seems to be somewhat beside the point. The question here is whether students are able to read *at all* for pleasure or not.

But there is a more important issue than this. Sanden seems to take as axiomatic the idea that phonics instruction is nothing but repetitious drilling, that repetitious drilling is ineffective, that students always dislike all forms of repetitious drilling, and that this dislike of repetitious drilling will transfer to a dislike of reading. I don't think that these four claims are axiomatic; I think that each of them is contentious, and I do contend them.

It seems to me that all learning involves at least some repetitious drilling at least some of the time, and that a good teacher can find ways to make this engaging. (I have seen this both as the one being drilled and as the one doing the drilling). It also doesn't seem to me that it is necessarily the case that a student will transfer a dislike of phonics instruction to a dislike of reading. I know that this is anecdotal, and the plural of "anecdote" is not "statistics", but all the avid pleasure readers I know were schooled in old-fashioned, nun-with-a-ruler-style phonics. In fact, it took me a long time in working with high school and college age students to realize that the reason why so many of them dislike reading was not because of their phonics instruction, but because of their lack of it. It took a few years for me to realize that their whole experience of what it was like to read was different. For them, engaging with the text at its most basic level (i.e. decoding the words) is a mentally taxing experience, not an effortless one. So, the reason why they don't read for pleasure is because there is nothing at all pleasant about the act of reading. It is a mentally taxing activity "all the way down". Now smart kids, and kids with help from outside of school will probably learn to decode even if there isn't a lot of phonics instruction in school. But it seems to me that the quickest and most effective way to teach students to decode well is to teach them phonics directly and systematically. So, I would conjecture that it is not phonics instruction that makes reading unenjoyable, but the lack of it. Phonics instruction seems to me to be the quickest and easiest way to get kids to the point where decoding is effortless, and reading is pleasurable.

(To forestall an objection, note that I am not arguing that phonics instruction is *sufficient* to make reading pleasurable. I am arguing that effortless decoding is *necessary* to make reading pleasurable, and that there does not seem to be a more efficient way to do it than with explicit phonics instruction, which itself need not be unpleasant to children all the time.)

Again, these are just my own thoughts about my own anecdotal experience. They aren't dogma. Is there research that suggests that my anecdotal experience is wrong?

But Sanden's axioms about reading instruction seem to be a special case of a more general axiom in educational theory that could use a bit more critical scrutiny than it seems to get in educational circles. It's the idea that the student's untutored interests should set the agenda in the classroom, and that impositions by the teacher in the learning process (which are usually described in rhetorically pejorative terms, even they do not merit these terms in practice: "drill and kill", "rote learning", "memorizing facts", etc. etc.) are authoritarian, inauthentic, or ineffective. It is true that student's learn more when they have a motivation to learn, and when that motivation is more intrinsic than extrinsic. But, educational theorists conclude too much from this. The very fact that a student needs education implies that the student doesn't fully know what will interest him, or how to obtain the things that ultimately do interest him. The pedagogy advocated by many education theorists contradicts the way that most people learn most things outside of the K-12 class

Fr. Peter Totleben, O.P.

10/14/2019 12:20:41 am

Aww...the comment system ate the rest of my post! Well, it was probably too long-winded anyways!

Sherry Sanden

10/14/2019 08:08:52 am

My colleague and I are organizing a research-informed response and will disseminate in an appropriate forum when we are able.

Steve Dykstra

10/14/2019 04:43:58 pm

Sherry, Can you name some of those researchers you trust, and maybe some you don't? the National Academy of Sciences says not to use multiple cues to identify words, so I guess you don't trust them. Who do you trust?

Sara Peden

10/14/2019 10:02:08 pm

Your comments about Hanford's reporting lead me to believe that you either didn't read a good deal of what she wrote, or did not understanf the thrust of her argument. Much of what you claim she said or implied is actualy controveryed in her writing. For example, she is clear that decoding and reading comprehension are *not* the same. Yet, you claim she implies they are.

Emily Hanford

10/13/2019 05:22:11 pm

Sherry, In your comment, you wrote: "... her stories frequently showcase schools or districts whose purchase of phonics-centric curriculums apparently turn everything around." What stories are you referring to? If you are talking about Hard Words and the story of Bethlehem, PA, I want to make sure you know that Bethlehem did not purchase a “phonics-centric” program. The district is spending many years and millions of dollars teaching principals and teachers about the science of reading. This is information that educators there told me they knew nothing about. I would be happy to connect you with the assistant superintendent who can tell you more about what they are doing, and why, and the results they are seeing.

Also, I am unaware of "a brewing movement in literacy education that aims to reduce the complex act of reading to an act of decoding words." If there is such a movement, it will not find support for that idea in my reporting. In my work, I have explained the Simple View of Reading, which shows that decoding/word recognition is half of the equation when it comes to reading comprehension. The other half of the equation is Language Comprehension. The research clearly shows that schools and teachers must focus on both sides of the equation. Here’s the thing, though: when kids come into school, they already have a lot on the LC side of the equation (some kids have more than others, and this is often related to family income and background). But young children tend to have very little or nothing on the decoding side of the equation. That’s why early reading instruction needs to emphasize phonemic awareness and phonics, to build kids’ decoding skills so they are able to read the words they can say and know the meanings of; this is how they get to reading comprehension, which everyone agrees is the goal.

I illustrated this balance in a classroom I visited in Oakland, CA where phonics and phonemic awareness is one part of reading instruction (this instruction is taught in small groups and differentiated because kids have different needs and levels of decoding skill). There are also lessons and activities designed to build knowledge and vocabulary, to build up the LC side of the equation.

No one is arguing that word recognition = reading. But the research shows that when people struggle with reading, weak word recognition skills are often part of the problem. Being able to quickly and accurately recognize words is how skilled readers are able to focus on the meaning of what they are reading. Teachers need to understand how skilled reading develops. Decades of cognitive science research has produced a mountain of evidence on this, but teachers across the country tell me they are not learning about this evidence in schools of education and teacher prep programs. I’m hoping my reporting can help introduce educators to the science if they don’t know it and provide them with links and places to go for more information. I think everyone wants the best for kids, but there seem to be a lot of misconceptions out there about how reading works. I am trying to shine light on some of those misconceptions. It doesn’t help when my work is mischaracterized. I’m happy to talk with you more about all of this. My email address is on my Twitter bio. Feel free to reach out any time to talk via email or other phone. - Emily

Sherry Sanden

10/13/2019 06:52:33 pm

Emily,
Whatever our differences of opinion, I cannot fault your commitment to this cause; I appreciate your measured response. In answer to your question, “spending many years and millions of dollars” to implement science of reading strategies makes the Bethlehem story exactly the kind of district I refer to. I appreciate you pointing out one district using balanced literacy but the way you describe it, balancing between two sets of skills-based practices, isn’t the way lots of us characterize balanced literacy. I also don’t agree with a blanket statement like “Being able to quickly and accurately recognize words is how skilled readers are able to focus on the meaning of what they are reading.” That is too simplistic a statement, as word recognition and comprehension are interactive processes.
I empathize with your concern about being mischaracterized, as that is how your stories have made many balanced literacy and whole language educators feel. Just as you claim that science of reading advocates don’t only teach phonics, BL and WL teachers don’t ignore it. I’m sure we could both cite anecdotal evidence to the contrary but most educators fit somewhere in the middle. But that is what gets lost in the frenzy to be “right” in this argument. I am certain there are more areas of agreement than differences, if only we could stop shouting long enough to truly hear each other. I appreciate your reaching out.

Sara Peden

10/15/2019 01:56:48 am

Can you explain why your Twitter account doesn't exist now?

Rick Nelson link

10/13/2019 08:00:30 pm

What Ms. Hanford has done is simply to report what scientific studies have consistently found to be true about teaching decoding skills. The recent article in Education Week by Sparks and Schwartz looked at the science and came to very similar conclusions.

Scientists who study how the brain works are in consensus that teaching phonics systematically during initial reading instruction minimizes the percentage of children who have difficulties learning to read. The evidence is from two sources: comparisons of different approaches done to scientific standards, and studies of how the brain’s working memory and long-term memory interact to solve problems.

Hanford, Sparks, Schwartz and Sanden are not scientists who study the brain. But Hanford, Sparks, and Schwartz, as journalists, have tried to help teachers help children by accurately reporting what science says are best practices in teaching reading.

In education as in medicine, science is what the experts in a subdiscipline agree it is. Science identifies what is true, which is often not what we would prefer to hear. Society benefits from the application of science.

Sanden is saying educators should pay little to no attention to what science has discovered about how the brain learns to read.

As I read it, Sanden is asking teachers not to trust science.

When public policy in education is based on denial of science, is it not likely that children will be hurt?

Harriett

10/13/2019 09:31:52 pm

Sherry says that Emily is not an educator and "has never taught groups of wiggly first-graders to read nor worked with teachers to hone pedagogical skills."

I am an educator, and I have taught both wiggly kindergarteners and first-graders to read and have also worked with teachers. As a reading specialist for the last decade, I have worked with hundreds of struggling K-2 students, and, as Emily states, "when people struggle with reading, weak word recognition skills are often part of the problem", which is true for my students.

Emily has done our profession a world of service by disseminating the research I was already familiar with but many are not. Hard Words is on point, but I think At a Loss for Words is even better because the 3-Cueing System is alive and well in my district and contributes to the reading problems of the students who eventually end up in my intervention groups.

Sherry says "I will take my lessons about reading instruction from the many informed teachers and researchers who are the true experts in the field of reading education." Emily has based her reporting on these researchers. It would advance the discussion if their research were questioned rather than Emily's reporting. She is the messenger, and we are lucky to have her.

Sherry Sanden

10/13/2019 09:44:47 pm

Harriet, I am curious to know why you would question one and not the other. For my part, I think both deserve scrutiny. I agree it is important to subject research studies to critical interrogation to ensure their credibility; it is equally important to question journalists who make claims, to ensure fair, balanced representation of facts and the avoidance of confirmation bias. This brings it around to Daniel Willingham's original post, I think: Who has the authority to speak knowledgably on a topic? Since that is difficult to determine, it is incumbent upon us as their audiences to question them all.

Catherine Scott

10/13/2019 09:54:52 pm

Perhaps you could share a critique of the research behind the articles Emily has written.

Start perhaps with that by Dehaene.

Steve Dykstra

10/14/2019 04:57:57 pm

Sherry, as far as I can see, you haven't named the sources you trust or accounted for your position. Your entire argument seems to be, "I'm a professor and I know. She's a reporter, and she doesn't." That and some poor comprehension of Emily's reporting which I chalk up to comprehension problems on your part. I see a lot of that in the world of balanced literacy. Not a surprise, really.

Sara Peden

10/15/2019 12:20:51 pm

If it's incumbent upon the audience to question them all, why is it that when people began to question you, your Twitter account disappeared? Education Faculty members have, in my opinion, a special responsibility to demonstrate a willingness and capability to explain their thinking and be accountable for what they have put out. I think you said something rude and thoughtless, and instead of merely offering a heartfealt apology and returning to intellectual debate, for example offering evidence to support your points of view, you appear to have chosen to evade the discussion. If you deleted your Twitter account, I think that you have set a remarkably poor example for teachers in training.

Sandra Wilde

10/14/2019 09:35:13 pm

Harriet, Could I ask what you know about where the term “3-cueing system” came from and how you came across it? Ken Goodman wrote about the 3 cueing systems readers use and how to assess them in miscue analysis, but the term you use that describes it as a teaching method, often with a Venn diagram, seems to have come from out of nowhere. Where did you come across it and how was it used? It’s always been a mystery to me.

Rick Nelson link

10/14/2019 10:22:33 pm

See "The Three Cueing System" By Marilyn Jager Adams
Visiting Scholar, Harvard University Graduate School of Education
(1998). In F. Lehr and J. Osborn (Eds.), Literacy For All Issues In Teaching And Learning, pp. 73-99. New York Guilford Press.

It includes (from 1998!): The sobering revelation of this story is the profound breach in information and communication that separates the teaching and research communities. In the world of practice, the widespread subscription to the belief system that the three-cueing diagram has come to represent has wreaked disaster on students and hardship on teachers."

The article is nicely summarized on Deb Hepplewhite's blog.

Harriett

10/14/2019 11:18:50 pm

The 3-cueing system (along with Ken Goodman's "Psycholinguistic Guessing Game") was presented to me in my reading specialist's credential program as how students access words. Because, according to this theory, reading is a "guessing game", students are given predictable books in the early years with sight words ("I see the") followed by non-decodable words and are simply asked to read the pictures (elephant). This dependence on "picture power" is beautifully illustrated in Emily Hanford's At a Loss for Words https://www.apmreports.org/story/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading, along with an excellent interview with Ken
Goodman who says at one point that "My science is different."

Bronwyn Ryrie Jones

10/14/2019 12:23:27 am

As a proud public school teacher, and now as someone working in teacher education, I can't imagine how anyone could access the fruits of Emily's journalism and judge that she was over-simplifying a process that is indeed complex. She does quite the opposite; equipped with an impressive depth of knowledge, and with absolute clarity and precision, Emily has shone a light on just how very complex reading instruction is. It is, in fact, much more complex than I was ever led to believe in my teacher preparation. I exited a four year undergraduate teaching degree with honours, having never heard of a phoneme; this is the reality. On behalf of teachers everywhere - thank you for it all, Emily. You're a treasure.

Rosalie Fleming

10/14/2019 12:37:16 am

Many could agree that 65% learn to read using the 3 cueing method beginning with predictable texts and sight word memorization. My response would be why not teach 95% to read using a phonetics based approach where the alphabetic code is translated by learning the sounds and practised using decodeable texts. Of the 65% how many continue to read past the age of 9? They may have learnt to read but are they continuing to read to learn?

Erin S.

10/14/2019 01:17:56 am

Thank-you Emily Hanford for raising awareness surrounding this important topic!

And...apparently the ILA has forgotten that they put this article out there??? https://www.literacyworldwide.org/docs/default-source/where-we-stand/ila-meeting-challenges-early-literacy-phonics-instruction.pdf

Sherry Sanden

10/14/2019 08:17:19 am

The International Literacy Association doesn't need me to defend it but the organization doesn't accept proposals for presentation at the conference as an endorsement of a position but rather, in support of empowering informed decision-making by sharing a variety of perspectives about literacy instruction. That is what we all want, right? ALL of the information that will allow us to make wise instructional decisions?

Erin S.

10/14/2019 02:16:33 pm

What is your position on the three cueing system for reading? Do you agree that it should not be used to teach kids to get the words off the page? If you are in favor of its continued use, please provide the research that shows that it is a better instructional approach when compared to systematic, explicit instruction. We need to stop denying a large majority of children the instruction that they need in order to become proficient readers. Wise instructional decisions are not being made. This is why a large majority of children are not reading proficiently. This is also why children whose parents can afford to get private instruction go outside the system. Reading should not be an extra-curricular activity, nor should it be for those kids whose parents have resources to make sure they get the instruction they need. Systematic, explicit, instruction in the five pillars of literacy harms no one and benefits everyone. The Balanced Literacy approach is not universal in design and perpetuates inequality among our most vulnerable students. Ultimately, this must be about what children need, not about adult feelings. Looking at the reading data, what we are doing simply is not working.

Steve Dykstra

10/14/2019 04:55:03 pm

ALL, positions? Even those with no basis in science or fact? Does presenting he three-cues along side science, as if they are both valid, actually promote decision making? Should we teach both that the planet is round, and flat, and just let people make up their minds? Should we set a model of the Sun orbiting the Earth alongside one of the Earth orbiting the Sun, and let everyone decide for themselves? Is that how you imagine science and scholarship work best?

Rick Nelson link

10/14/2019 07:42:45 pm

I believe we can all agree that as educators, we all want to help children.

Too many children are not learning to read as well as they should, but I would hope that we would focus on fixing the problem, not the blame.

So, may we talk about going forward?

Reading requires complex processing and learning by the brain. Scientists who study the brain say certain methods of teaching reading work better than others because of how the brain is structured.

The International Literacy Association (ILA) has issued a “where we stand” position. It includes “Research establishes that phonics is an essential part of instruction…. Successful programs or methods use explicit phonics instruction that is systematic.”

Going forward, the ILA should stop giving room on their agenda for those who argue against use of systematic and explicit phonics.
Why? For the same reason the AMA does not approve of presentations at its convention by non-scientists who argue against vaccination.

Supporting denial of science is not a legitimate opinion, especially when the outcome is likely to be harmful to significant numbers of children.

Going forward, now that science and the ILA are in agreement, how can arguing against use of systematic and explicit phonics be considered defensible among those of us whose mission is to help young people?

As educators, don’t we have a moral responsibility to align our practice with what science has proven to be best practices?

Sara J Peden

10/15/2019 12:35:10 pm

Informed decision making doesn't rely on 'a variety of perspectives' about literacy instruction. It relies on validate perspectives about literacy instruction.Can you/will you provide empirical evidence in support of your perspective. If you think that what is known about reading wasn't fully covered, why are you not referencing exactly what was left out and how you know it to be true. Epistemology matters in policy-making.

Tara Houle

10/14/2019 08:35:14 am

Education is touted as a profession yet those who earn their living from it, refuse to adhere to the same professional standards that other professions uphold. There's absolutely no reason why the US education system should be in such an abysmal state, given the amount of funding it receives, yet here we are. Perhaps look at those pushing ridiculous ideologies from the ed schools as the number one culprit which has dumbed down entire generations of our kids, and rendered millions of adults illiterate and innumerate. Those defending their honour and reputation as being enlightened, ought to spend a homework session with parents and their stressed out, frustrated children as they attempt to navigate their way through another endless exercise based on harmful ideology being pushed by our schools.

Taxpayers own the system. As with every other publicly funded institution, we have every right to demand what's best for our children and when it's not working, we should demand that those involved need to step down, and get this fixed.

Sherry Sanden

10/14/2019 05:25:18 pm

Steve Dykstra: I will no longer respond to mean-spirited comments, as that does not move the conversation forward. You can contribute to this conversation without personal attacks. My colleague and I are organizing a research-informed response to these questions and will disseminate in an appropriate forum when we are able.

Steve Dykstra

10/14/2019 06:56:37 pm

Of course you won't. Fact is, you didn't reply to gentle requests, firm challenges, or snarky retorts. You made up falsehoods about Hanford's reports but you take offense when you are called out on it. You say you take your lessons about reading instruction "from the many... researchers who are the true experts in the field of reading education" but you can't name any of them until your paper is ready. Don't you know a few names off the top of your head, without writing a whole paper? Who were you referring to? I named the National Academy of Sciences as an important source. As they say down on the corner, "whada you got?"

Sandra Wilde

10/14/2019 07:54:30 pm

Ms. Sanden, your comment from early on in this article seems to imply that journalists can never be as valuable or accurate as teachers in writing about education. This strikes me as a bizarre judgment. Regardless of what you think of Ms. Hanford’s views, she’s an award-winning journalist with extensive experience whose recent publications involve interviews, time spent in classrooms, and citation of research. This blanket attempt to discredit her views by questioning the validity of her profession is reminiscent of other recent attacks on journalism (e.g., “fake news”). You seem to also be assuming that she’s more or less slanting or even manufacturing classroom narratives to grab headlines, thereby casting aspersions on her integrity. In doing all of this, you lose the high ground in any discussion of the issues.

Ed Jones

10/15/2019 06:54:20 am

Dan is missing a huge part of the argument here, though I also can't easily put it to blog form here. But first Sherry's 9/13 response above.

There's an amazing amount of arrogance in this response, considering the push-back of the past few days. But let's assume an honest concern for all children, to wit "What these sunny stories of rising test scores fail to show is whether or not students ever choose to pick up a book again; do these phonics-heavy approaches create children who can pronounce the words but don’t ever use this skill for authentic purposes?" Presumably the 'research-informed response' will demonstrate that balanced reading produces more children who pick up a book again and use their word pronunciation skill for authentic purposes.

She might consider the extensive research referenced here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1529100618772271

Back to Dan's analysis of the authority of professors of education. There's a deeper issue: Most university specializations are subject to a fairly large amount of bias drift. Without more realistic checks and balances than we have now, many academic specialties tend to drift further and further from reality. (There's less of this on the technical side of the academy, as professors move in and out of the real world, often taking years in the field, or at least working closely with those who are there. But science is not immune.) Faculty partisan biases (political and otherwise) tend to weed out intellectually diverse minds, as even a voice like Harvard’s Danielle Allen will contend. Given the extraordinary amounts of cash dumped into universities the past two decades, this effect accelerates with a new generation.

Education professors are sort of triply cursed, as their 'real world', i.e. K12 education, is itself only a model of the world children will face later.

We are over-ripe for a huge revolution in the work of an education professor. They’ll undertake this because they want to be relevant again. More and more of us outside their profession now perform the work they should have been doing all along.

Sandra wilde

10/15/2019 10:31:47 am

Rick and Harriet, thanks. I was aware of the Marilyn Adams article but still have no idea of how she came up with the terminology and how the “3-cueing system” made its way into teacher education programs. I was a student of Ken Goodman’s and also don’t see why the psycholinguistic guessing game article would make sense to read in teacher ed programs. The readings I used for my classes as a literacy professor were primarily books from publishers like Heinemann that focused on actually learning to read in grades 1-6, as well as learning to write and spell, the role of literature, and more, in programs where all of this was integrated with classroom placements and student teaching. I made it very clear to my students that since our classes covered grades 1-6, if they became first grade teachers, it was incumbent on them to read up in detail on how to teach beginning reading, using books I recommended. Student teaching at this level was also a crucial part of the picture.

Steve Dykstra

10/15/2019 12:19:32 pm

Goodman was read in schools of Ed because he seemed to be telling people how reading worked. He was hopelessly wrong but people believed it. It seemed exciting to be out front on something new. There was a lot of that in 1967.

If you read most anything that comes out of Heinemann, you're subscribing to Goodman and the three cues, even if you don't know it in those terms. all those other ways of guring out words, all the ways that aren't bult up from letters and sounds, are founded in the same theories that eschew data and deny science. When you teach a child to guess at a word from a picture, or from a first sound, or from anything other than letters and sounds, you're backing Goodman and the guessing approach. You're buying into a system built on certain foundations, such as accurate word identification is neither necessary nor desirable; not something we should worry about or strive for. People who teach those ways would almost never endorse those views, but they still teach those ways because of those views, even if they don't know it.

Clay said it was better to figure out the word from features such as length and height, how many letters were drawn below the line, special features like apostrophes and hyphens, the general shape of the word, before using any letter sound information. Few teachers believe that, but if you follow Clay you teach in ways that were intended to honor that view of reading, as well as Goodman's claims about accuracy, and a lot of other nonsense.

It's all crap.

Harriett

10/15/2019 01:11:36 pm

Thanks for telling it like it is, Steve.

Sara Peden

10/15/2019 02:08:22 pm

Do you see it as a problem that teachers who might teach Grade 1 have, as there preparation for the most important job in teaching, the exhortation that they should read up on it, to prepare themselves? Or that the universities would be relying on the hope that student teachers will be modeling their practice on an experienced teacher who may or may not know anything about reading acquisition? I think that the last two sentences of your post are about as clear an indictment of teacher preparation as there could be. I am sure you must think that it is sufficient, but there is a well-reasoned argument with plenty of evidence that would say otherwise. I honestly do not believe that there is another single topic or skill for which public education is responsible that is more important than to teach *all* children to read. Your post implies that it is adequate preparation for this monumental task/responsibility to "read up in detail".

Steve Dykstra

10/15/2019 12:21:53 pm

Adams didn't come up with the terminology. Read the article. The terminology and Venn diagram was widespread. It was everywhere. It was the absolute core of both whole language and balanced literacy.

Teresa Murray

10/15/2019 07:25:47 pm

Totally agree with Emily for all above reasons. And grade one teachers should be taught all this in teacher preparation courses, not have to find it out on their own.
Balanced literacy, its harmful effects and the pain children went through caused me many sleepless nights. (Retired gr 1 teacher)

Eporto link

10/16/2019 07:20:07 am

Great point that you've brought up in this post and we totally agree with you that these things must be taught within the teacher training course. Nice work and keep posting such valuable information and insight with us all.

Sarah Hromada

10/16/2019 04:56:02 pm

Dear Professor Sanden - If you are dismissive to the work of Emily Hanford, how do you respond to the parents and their children who have experienced the living hell of our public schools? How do you propose correcting the teachers who don't understand children's needs, blame reading difficulties on poor parenting and suggest guessing and maturity as reading strategies? The reality is that our children are getting to high school or college without the ability to decode words and nobody in our schools can help them. Guessing and skipping words only carry children a limited distance. Emily Hanford's work explains every single struggle my son had in public school. It's time to put kids and families first. Teach them to read!

Janet

10/17/2019 03:22:09 pm

As a ‘lay person’, just a parent of a 6th grader unable to read, the most reliable source on effective reading instruction was my child...“Mom, I finally get it. I finally understand how this [reading] works.”

After just six months (3 hrs/week) of direct, explicit, structured, sequential, science-based reading instruction, synapses were finally firing. The long awaited understanding of sounds, symbols, phonemes, morphemes and more...was finally taking hold in my child’s brain.

Having read hundreds of scholarly articles, books, scientific journals, whole language/balanced literacy,/structured literacy research studies and findings; listened to podcasts, legislative testimony, educators and advocates; met with doctors, psychologists, lawyers, administrators, teachers and tutors; studied statutes, common core, national/state panel and commission recommendations...

Fourteen years later I can say without hesitation the education system from top to bottom failed my family. Every September I believed and trusted the institution, the instruction, the instructors...until I didn’t.

I now trust only the science. Can you blame me?

10/18/2019 07:22:33 pm

Sherry Sanden, have you and your colleague had the opportunity to post the research informed response you mentioned? I am not seeing it here and would like to locate it at the forum you've chosen for its dissemination. Thank you

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