My thoughts about research that challenges some of the Science of Reading’s Interpretations of Brain Research: A blog post by Dr. Sam Bommarito

One of the more recent posts about brain research was made by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, famous for his work in physics. His post was made to his Facebook Group on June 30^th. His public group has almost 320,000 followers. He is a world-renowned, well-published expert in physics —a scientist in every sense of the word. One of his posts contained an enry by Dr. ASKY, a well known medical doctor.

In his post, Dr. Tysen quotes Dr ASKY who said:

“Reading seems simple, but a new meta-analysis by neuroscientists at the Max Planck Institute reveals just how complex the brain’s activity is during reading. By analyzing data from 163 brain imaging studies with over 3,000 readers, the researchers mapped how the brain dynamically processes every stage of reading—from letters to full texts—showing that different brain areas are involved depending on the reading task.”

My takeaway from this is that it seems to support the traditional views about reading words.  Words are first decoded by sounding out (think “b-a-t”). After several exposures, the words are then stored in a different part of the brain as sight words. These are the whole words, words that we know by sight (think “bat”). Sentence-level reading and reading of longer texts are processed in different ways and in different parts of the brain. As Dr. Tyson indicates, “The Study Reveals reading is a complex, flexible brain process involving multiple neural networks.”

The name of the study is The ‘reading’ brain: Meta-analytic insight into functional activation during reading in adults. Here is a link to the study  LINK

Here are some highlights from that study:

The scientists at the Max Planck Institute, where the study was conducted, are not alone in viewing reading as a complex, interactive process. In 2023, I did several interviews with Dr. George Hruby on the topic of brain research. Here is a LINK to one of those interviews. The talking points from that interview are listed below:

As you can see, Dr. Hruby also reports that different reading activities are stored and processed in different parts of the brain.  

These are far from the only criticisms of SOR claims about neuroscience but they are ones that I think are important for all literacy folks to know. MY TAKE on all this is that science around the teaching of reading (and writing!) is far from settled. I’ve had many online conversations with SOR advocates who make the claim that readers sound out all their words, even their sight words. Brain research simply does not support that view. In addition, historically, one-size-fits-all solutions have proven ineffective. See what Dr. Hruby said about that in his famous video LINK.

I’ve been teaching since 1970, and I’ve been teaching reading since 1977. I’ve taught every grade, from K to graduate school, including graduate-level reading courses. I often started those courses by announcing that I was going to show a slide containing all the things that would help every child every time. After a dramatic pause, I would put up a blank slide. The point is that what works for one child doesn’t always work with another. For the past five years, I’ve been blogging about the idea that rather than taking sides in the Great Debate, we should take positions on various methods and how and when to apply them. Methods should not be banned simply because they come from the “wrong” point of view. Many in our field have  begun taking what I call nuanced positions. This means taking a position where teachers are allowed to use research-based information from all sides, ensuring that they examine all the research, both qualitative and quantitative. It also means working toward the day when there are no sides. When that day comes, it will be a day when teachers are allowed to locate the research-based practices that will help the particular children they are working with. That would be the day when Empowered Teachers are allowed to use alternate methods when the current mainstream methods fail a particular child. Only then will we have a shot at ending the ever-swinging pendulum of reading instruction.

Dare to Dream!

Dr. Sam (The guy in the middle, taking flak from both sides!)

This post is part two of a blog series entitled:

Let’s Stop the Nonsense and Start Using Common Sense to Guide Our Reading Practices

Copyright 2025 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely this author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization.

It’s Time to Empower Teachers: Let’s Stop the Nonsense and Start Using Common Guide Our Reading Practices. By Dr. Sam Bommarito

For those who don’t know me, I began teaching in 1970 and became a reading teacher in 1977. I’ve taught every grade from K to graduate school, including master’s degree courses in reading. Most of my career was spent as a Title I Reading Teacher/Staff developer. Today I am a reading consultant, blogger and I still find time to do pro bono literacy work for teachers and students.

Ever since the publication of the First-Grade Studies in 1967, we’ve known that when it comes to reading instruction, teachers make a greater difference than programs. The study also demonstrated that programs incorporating phonics instruction yielded better reading performance among students. During most of my six-plus decades in literacy education, there has been a war going on between two camps. The current iteration of those camps includes SOR folks (code-emphasis) and the Balanced Literacy folks (meaning-emphasis). In that time, I’ve seen the pendulum of reading instruction swing several times between code emphasis and meaning emphasis approaches. Yet each time the literacy world moves to the exclusive use of one or the other of these approaches, overall student performance fails to improve. Each approach helps many students, but never all students. The bottom line is that WHAT WORKS WITH ONE STUDENT DOESN’T NECESSARILY WORK WITH ANOTHER. That is the reality that faces classroom teachers every day.  

Currently, many SOR advocates claim they’ve finally found the solution that works with all students. They present data claiming to show huge improvements. Yet critics examining that data challenge whether that is the case. I’ve written about why folks like Dr. Paul Thomas feel that the decline in the NAEP scores demonstrates the need for a new story LINK. He is not alone in that analysis. Teachers using successful practices,  who really did teach both phonics and comprehension all along are being forced to abandon their practices and implement one size fits all programs being mandated by many states.  So, the Great Debate continues. It has become increasingly contentious, especially on social media. What has happened is that both sides use strawman tactics, presenting the other side at its worst, and ignoring or discrediting studies that support the other side. The most concerning thing is that instead of promoting things that help teachers and students, they promote things that help them make the most profit.

What do I have to say about this?

Of all the many hats I’ve worn over the course career the one I am most proud to wear is that of a teacher. I am writing this blog series from the perspective of a teacher. Teachers, especially more experienced teachers, are being put in impossible situations. This has had dire consequences. A recent University of Missouri survey found that 78% of nearly 500 teachers have considered quitting, with more experienced teachers being likelier to make that decision. Teachers who have been teaching phonics (and comprehension) for years are being mandated to follow plans created by individuals who don’t know their students and are unfamiliar with the nuances of their particular setting. Districts are being stripped of their right to create curriculum, and teachers are being mandated by law to follow “research-based programs” that fail to consider all the research, including both quantitative and qualitative studies.

It’s time for all of us to agree that we should apply practices from different perspectives and incorporate those supported by both qualitative and quantitative research. It’s time to empower teachers by helping them to learn about AND USE a variety of practices. They would use those practices within the confines of each district’s curriculum. In that way, teachers won’t find themselves in the impossible situation of replacing things that were mostly working with the latest greatest product, only to have that product replaced in a couple of years with the next latest greatest product. Wouldn’t it make more sense to replace the parts that aren’t working, but keep the parts that are? It’s time to stop the Swinging Pendulum in the middle and for all sides to allow teachers to examine all the practices. It’s time for folks to start taking a more nuanced position on the whole issue of how to teach reading.

My future blogs will deal in depth with each of the topics listed below. Taken together, I think the discussions around these topics will promote the finding of common ground and common practices. For this to work, both sides must acknowledge they don’t have all the answers. These answers are best found at the district level, where districts empower teachers by providing training and then allowing teachers the latitude they need in the practices they use with different students. This would be a major improvement over what is currently happening. Too often, the answer to what to do when the latest greatest programs don’t work for all students is to give them even more of the same program and to blame the teachers who have carried out the latest/greatest programs for not doing them correctly.  They fail to consider the possibility the programs clearly don’t fit all of the students in the population being served and that is why the practices fail..

It’s Time to Empower Teachers: Let’s Stop the Nonsense and Start Using Common Sense to End the Reading Wars.

Dare to Dream!

Dr. Sam (The guy in the middle taking flak from both sides!)

Here is the list of topics:

What brain research really says- READING IS A COMPLEX PHENOMENON. We will do best if our practices reflect that fact. Some of the claims being spread on social media are simply not supported by brain research. LINK

Instructional time is a finite commodity. Let’s not Rob Peter to pay Paul. We must find a way to balance the time spent on comprehension instruction and decoding instruction. We can’t give teachers mandates of teaching time that exceed the time we allocate for classroom instruction. Yet we are routinely doing that, especially at the elementary level.

The history of Structured Literacy and Direct Instruction. Direction Instruction as an instructional method vs direct instruction as a marketing tool- Andy Johnson’s ideas about that.

Let’s not let profit get in the way of real progress. An analysis of what Billy Mollaso and others have had to say, “Profit over Progress? When Market Hype Masquerades as Science, Kids Lose

 “   https://readingrecovery.org/profit_over_progress/  Some SOR advocates seem intent on “selling their product”. Too often, they ignore or discredit alternative approaches.

Best practices in teaching decoding: The role of prosody in reading instruction and Rasinski’s work in teaching prosody and using his research in repeated reading to improve the fluency instruction for readers K-12. 

Writing to read- ways to use writing in Reading Instruction. We will explore ways to connect reading and writing instruction at the word, sentence, and passage levels. See the work of Leah Mermelstein. https://www.leahmermelstein.com/

The case for having a nuanced view of Reading Instruction. Doing that can lead to identifying common ground.

One clear example of common ground is the case for using gradual release of responsibility as a central feature of our educational instruction, especially reading instruction. This seems to be a model that most educators still agree on. Done correctly, it helps ensure that students move beyond naming and describing strategies to internalize and use them effectively.

I want to propose a more provocative example of Common Ground. It is this: Seidenberg’s “takeoff point” and Clay’s “self-extending system” indicate there is an area of important agreement between some SOR and BL advocates. Kids really do reach a point where they start teaching themselves how to use phonological information to unlock words and their meanings. https://doctorsam7.blog/2024/09/07/the-ever-changing-world-of-literacy-my-analysis-of-what-seidenberg-is-now-saying-about-sor-by-dr-sam-bommarito/

Resolving the issue of when this should happen would go a long way toward cutting through the Gordian knot we face regarding reading instruction.