Recently the fire burning under the reading wars cauldron was significantly stoked by Patrick Gower on his inaugural television show, ‘Paddy Gower Has Issues’ (24-5-23).
This show featured an investigation into the teaching of reading. It was not a careful exposition of the issues that underpin the complex act of language acquisition. The show championed Structured Literacy as the answer to declining literacy rates.
Following his debut show, I was interested to listen to Patrick Gower being interviewed on Radio New Zealand’s Mediawatch.
He differentiated ‘Paddy Gower Has Issues’ from his 2022 long-form documentary series (Patrick Gower on…) by inferring that the former was a ‘tonal tightrope’ between comedy and investigation and the latter, subject to a much “deeper level of research and a heavy investment of time”.
The investigation into the teaching of reading on ‘Paddy Gower Has Issues’ wasn’t an investigation. An investigation requires balance and I was disappointed to note Balanced Literacy was given 2 minutes. This occurred over the course of an interview about Reading Recovery, a ‘Help’ strategy for young people not making sufficient progress in their reading and writing. This compares with 16 minutes of interviews making the case for Structured Literacy across 7 different proponents.
The complex practice of learning to read deserves better. Certainly, exploring the issues around language acquisition deserves a “deeper level of research and a heavy investment of time”.
Avoiding the inaccurate binary arm-wrestle
It is a shame that the teaching of reading continues to be divided into the arbitrary camps of ‘Structured’ and ‘Balanced’. It does not reflect the range of capabilities that teachers need in their teaching toolkit. The complex act of becoming literate has been simplified to soundbites, weaponised, and now increasingly politicised. Calling the teaching of reading a ‘lottery’ or labelling teachers using balanced approaches as participating in ‘malpractice’ as occurred in Paddy Gower Has Issues is at best inaccurate and at worst, damaging.
Incendiary rhetoric has consequences.
These past few weeks, I have heard of instances of angry parents confronting principals at Reading Recovery schools.
Driving a change in pedagogy through the court of public opinion by shaming professionals has no place in our education system.
It is vital that the public and education workforce understand that the teaching of reading is complex and multifaceted. We must work to avoid the inaccurate binary arm-wrestle that characterises our current narrative.
Spanning the continuum
The truth is that teaching reading requires the capability to teach phonological understanding AND support the establishment of comprehension including the use of contextual cues. Teachers have always understood this.
We are not adequately teaching our trainee teachers phonemic understanding. In other words, Balanced Literacy has not been balanced at all, it has largely been focused on whole language approaches and such an imbalance is not appropriate. The teaching workforce needs opportunities to upskill in phonics instruction and this should be built through Initial Teacher Education programmes.
However, this does not mean the wholesale rejection of balance. The term Balanced Literacy needs to be reclaimed from those who have a skewed view of what balance means. Balanced Literacy is not a focus on the importance of context in language acquisition alone but on the full range of strategies across the Structured-Contextual continuum.
The great thing about Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Support is that it is a ‘Help’ strategy that spans this continuum.
Reading Recovery is an intervention for those children who are struggling the most with their reading and writing. If the whole-of-class approaches to teaching literacy are not effective for a student, they will be referred to Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Support for more intensive reading and writing support. This support is provided by a specialist Reading Recovery teacher, who has been trained across a broad range of literacy techniques, including structured literacy.
Such a ‘Help’ strategy is needed in our profession. It is what Associate Professor Rebecca Jesson calls the AND+AND approach, using the expertise of phonics AND the expertise of Reading Recovery. It's a 3-tiered approach, based in the first year of school – with phonics sitting strongly in Tier 1 in the first months of school. Teachers will then work together at Tier 2 with small groups if children need extra support after six months. If children are not underway with literacy after a year, teachers will build on Reading Recovery from there.
This deep explanation of the kaupapa of the refreshed Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Support was not made evident in the Paddy Gower Has Issues episode on the teaching of reading.
Professional respectful dialogue (or lack of)
There is no doubt that the simplistic rhetoric and public shaming that is characterised by the current reading wars have made it a challenge to find professionals prepared to share their views that the teaching of reading is not a simple binary. The professional belittling of anyone who suggests that the science also supports a Balanced Approach has virtually killed respectful professional dialogue.
Associate Professor Rebecca Jesson calls this the Ad Hominem argument in her superb blogpost, Critical Literacy: An Essential Skill For The Literacy Debates. These are criticisms directed at people rather than at the point they are trying to make. Ad Hominem arguments are used to discredit, belittle, and embarrass the person, rather than engage in the debate.
Professional respectful dialogue has been subjugated to aggressive public positioning. In an election year, there is much at stake not least teachers’ ability to exercise their professional judgments.
Drawing from multiple knowledge systems
Valerie Strauss’s very readable article in The Washington Post, entitled, On the Latest Obsession With Phonics, makes the point that the National Reading Panel report of 2000, much cited today for its support of phonics instruction, actually reported that teaching phonics had only moderate effects, limited to first grade. The Report also goes on to say it is, “important to emphasize that systematic phonics instruction should be integrated with other reading instruction to create a balanced reading program. Phonics instruction is never a total reading program.”
Most teachers and principals understand this, including colleagues who are embracing structured approaches and who invariably still expect their teachers to deploy adaptive expertise across all literacy domains including comprehension.
As Associate Professor Rebecca Jesson points out, “The benefit of drawing from evidence in many approaches is the focus on teacher knowledge and adaptive expertise. Drawing from multiple knowledge systems means that teachers have access to a wider repertoire so that they can design the lessons for the children they are working with, depending on what those children need.”
Such an approach is the very essence of teaching.
As professionals, we must guard against ceding pedagogy to the court of public opinion. There are plenty of people who see teaching as a technical exercise and the problems of learning solvable by programmatic thinking.
Stanford Professor Elliot Eisner puts it well, “When the public and politicians are concerned about the educational productivity of its schools the tendency, and it is a strong one, is to tighten up, to mandate, to measure, and manage. The teacher’s ability to exercise professional discretion is likely to be constrained”.
I continue to have enormous faith in our teachers and principals who work to bring their best judgment about the best mix of pedagogical strategies to respond to the needs of young people in their care.
Long may that strategy reject the false binary of Structured vs Balanced.
