The Multiverse of the Science of Reading- my thoughts about this important article from NEA & Rachel Gabriel’s Webinar about speculative policy making- a blog entry by Dr. Sam Bommarito
LINK to the article by Grace Hagerman, Published: October 4, 2024
I’m glad so many of my readers attended the webinar by Rachel Gabriel this week. She brought up several important insights about the current Science of Reading movement. I expect I’ll be unpacking those ideas over the next few weeks. One of the articles she suggested we review was this one. Here are the website’s key takeaways from the article.
Let’s especially consider takeaway number three, that the kind of scripted curriculum used in SOR reduces diversity in texts and deprofessionalizes teaching. Here is what P.L. Thomas had to say on that point:
My thoughts and analysis:
Dr. Sam- if something isn’t working, doesn’t it make perfect sense to replace it with something that does? Hmmm. Good point. The problem is that it is unclear whether everything really needs replacing and whether the replacements being offered are really going to work any better than what we have now.
There has been major pushback regarding some of the premises of the SOR movement. Most notable is a book by Tierney and Pearson entitled Fact Checking the Science of Reading. The book is freely available on the Literacy Research Commons website LINK.
The book outlines 10 major well-researched pushbacks about SOR. The executive summary gives an excellent rendition of the book’s major points. A reading of these materials leads me to believe that the claims that it is all “settled science” are, at best, premature. I am aware that there have been criticisms of what Pearson said LINK. I’ll leave it to my readers to judge how much of what is being said is an attempt to discount and discredit alternate points of view and how much of what is said actually derives from fundamentally different views of what constitutes the reading process. Folks should examine ALL the evidence before deciding on this “Great Debate.” I expressed my own point of view that programs and methods that overemphasize decoding at the expense of meaning-making or overemphasize meaning-making at the expense of decoding, have been the source of the pendulum swings we have seen for several decades in the reading world. We’ve yet to learn that what works with one child doesn’t necessarily work for another. LINK
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Another point I would like to make is that there is plenty of evidence to indicate that many of the practices associated with what has been dubbed Balanced Literacy have indeed been successful. I’ve written several times around the point that backs up the thought that BL has a research base and that it has been successful with many (not all!) students in many (not all) settings. For instance, review what folks like Billy Molasso had to say on that point LINK. Yet, if you read the current dialogue on social media, the case is being made that Balanced Literacy and its associated practices are total failures. BL is the reason our reading scores are so poor. So, when we look at long-term reading scores, we should see a dip when BL literacy was introduced. However, longitudinal research indicates that reading scores have been flat for an extended period; see the figure below. LINK
The term balanced literacy first began to be used in 1996. It was based on the work of Michael Pressley LINK. If BL is the cause of all the low reading scores, why don’t we see a drop in scores over the period covered? Folks like Dr. P.L. Thomas and Dr. Andy Johnson have written extensively about what they have dubbed the “phony reading crisis.” There’s a lot to unpack about what they have to say. My point here is not that we should be happy with the tepid results or that we shouldn’t be making changes. As a centrist, I believe we should change ineffective practices, whether they have their roots in the BL or the SOR camps. I’ll take it a step further and say that looking at things from an “us vs. them” perspective has kept the pendulum of instruction swinging for the entire four decades of my teaching career.
In her recent webinar that inspired this blog, Rachel Gabrial repeatedly made points that for me demonstrate that it is not at all settled science. She soundly criticizes the “I’m One Click Away from Happiness” posts regularly appearing on social media. Buy my SOR stuff, and all your problems will be solved. Needless to say, there is no substantiating evidence that the “stuff” produces such magical results. In fairness, I must note that this is exactly what happened to Balanced Literacy back in the day. Folks wanted to label their stuff as Balanced Literacy because that was the hot item of that time. Many things were called BL even when they weren’t. So, buyers need to beware. Sticking a SOR label on a material does not make it SOR. Too often, in many social media discussions, one side or the other is using strawman versions of the other, based on programs/practices that don’t fit the label they are given or worse yet, present purposeful misrepresentations about the position. That adds confusion to an already confused state of affairs.
Let’s turn now to what Dr. Gabrial said in her webinar, Science-Policy Gap: Impacts and Possibilities of Speculative Policy Making. She questioned whether there are multiple high-quality curriculums and whether there is a common definition for the quality of those curriculums. Use this LINK to the YouTube version of her presentation. Especially review what she has to say at 27:00 on the recording. I think you’ll find she provides compelling evidence to justify the conclusion that she, David Pearson, and others have reached. That is the conclusion that we are currently engaged in speculative policy making. Speculative meaning that we hope for success but can’t be sure of that success. I would characterize districts’ current curriculum/curriculum choices being presented in many states as “not ready for prime time.” Yet, such curricula are being mandated by many state legislatures. Please take the time to listen to the full presentation and especially notice the details of how those curriculums are evaluated are dependent on instruments that stress different things (28:59). Notice that she maintains that the curriculum renaissance has faltered (46:34). Dr. Gabriel has already left us a lot to unpack and has indicated she has articles in progress that will explore these concerns ever further.
As a centrist, I advocate for using ideas from all sides, finding common ground using common sense, and taking a nuanced view of the reading process. By doing that, I hope that some sense can be made of the multiverse of reading instruction. I urge policymakers at all levels to carefully examine ALL the research. They should make decisions about whether the research is well enough developed to make the kind of mandates they are making. Perhaps by doing that, we can finally cut through the Gordian knot of how to best teach reading.
So, until next week, Happy Reading and Writing.
Dr. Sam Bommarito (aka, the guy in the middle taking flak from all sides)
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