The Science of Reading ... what actually works?
As teachers return to school this fall, they will likely contend with one of education’s hottest topics: the “science of reading.” But as we’ve seen here, getting the science right will require more than a workshop or a new program. It will take critical evaluation of curriculum and instruction informed by research on the targeted population to understand how specific children learn to read and how best to teach them.
While the term “science of reading” is not new, it has made its way into the discourse through popular journalism. Many educators have turned to social media and workshops to learn about this “science of reading” in efforts to meet the needs of their students. Elementary students have made less progress in reading over the past three school years due to Covid-related interruptions that have especially impacted racially and socioeconomically minoritized groups.
Whilst it is true that research on reading has much to say about the effectiveness of practices for teaching children to read, teachers are unlikely to find one curriculum or set of materials that will meet all students’ needs. As educators are faced with making decisions about which to use, it is more important than ever to evaluate whether the new products can be successful with a specific population of students (e.g., autistic, non-verbal, ADHD, ect.).
As a researcher and special education teacher, one of the resources I often recommend is the What Works Clearinghouse, a digital library operated by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences.
WWC offers teachers and families the chance to dive deeper into the offerings to help make initial judgments about the appropriateness and fit of proposed instructional programmes. For example, you can find the type of program and delivery method. Is it a whole curriculum, a supplemental offering, or a teaching practice? Did the underlying research include Language Learners? You can even dive into the outcomes.
Why is this important? Take Reading Rockets review of the Repeated Reading strategy (link). In it, they note “The research suggests that part of Chomsky's theory was wrong. Studies of repeated reading sometimes aimed at these special "average phonics skills but low reading" kids, and other times they just focused on all readers in regular classrooms. The results were exactly the same: repeated reading improved reading ability across the board.” Was Reading Rockets quoting the Repeating Reading marketing materials, or did they perform their own research? They don’t say. Thus, the value of the WWC.
Here’s the results from WWC: Literacy Achievement = not measured & Reading Achievement = 0. Not a ringing endorsement.
Other popular reading programmes, like Achieve3000® & Fast ForWord®, show similar results. Lots of “not measured” and “uncertain effects” comments.
This is why marketing terms like “research-based” are so misleading. Sure, it’s based in research. But that fact alone does not make it affective. When you dive into the research, you often find that your child, or the children in your classroom, don’t match the profile of the studied population. If you’re wondering why what you’re doing isn’t working, this is probably a good place to start looking - a lack of fit between the tool / technique and the student population. This is a similar situation to that featured earlier this year - “where’s the evidence …”
As a thought experiment, I filtered my search on the WWC database by “Literacy,” “Children/Youth with Disabilities,” and “English Language Learners.” These fit the profile of my students here in Los Angeles. This reduced the available tools / techniques from over 200 to 3. Of the three, only one registered a positive result for reading comprehension. The other two were listed as negative and 0 for their effectiveness.
So what does this say about the “science of reading?”
Try the WWC for your learner’s tools / techniques. Let me know what you find in the comments below.