[Reading-hall-of-fame] article on legislating phonics

[David P. Reinking]

Dear Hall of Fame colleagues,

I thought many of you might be interested in the attached article entitled “Legislating Phonics: Settled Science or Political Polemics” that George Hruby, Vicki Risko and I recently published in Teachers College Record.

Thanks to the generous support of the University of Kentucky, which paid SAGE’s fees, the article is open access.  It may be freely accessed and disseminated, including at the following website:  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01614681231155688

Here is the abstract:
In this commentary, we identify a phonics-first ideology and its polemical distortions of research and science to promote legislation that constrains and diminishes the teaching of reading. We affirm our own, and a majority of reading professionals’, commitment to teaching phonics. However, we argue that phonics instruction is more effective when embedded in a more comprehensive program of literacy instruction that accommodates students’ individual needs and multiple approaches to teaching phonics—a view supported by substantial research. After summarizing the politicization of phonics in the United States, we critique a legislated training course for teachers in Tennessee as representative of how a phonics-first ideology is expressed polemically for political purposes. We contrast it with a more collaboratively developed, balanced, nonlegislative approach in the previous governor’s administration. Specifically, the training course (a) makes an unfounded claim that there is a national reading crisis that can be traced to insufficient or inappropriate phonics instruction; (b) distorts, misrepresents, or omits relevant research findings and recommendations, most prominently from the report of the National Reading Panel; (c) inaccurately suggests that “balanced literacy instruction” is “whole language” instruction in disguise; and (d) wrongly claims that its views of phonics are based on a settled science of reading.

David

David Reinking
Distinguished Professor of Education Emeritus
Clemson University, and
Adjunct Professor of Education
Dept. of Language and Literacy Education
Mary Frances Early College of Education
University of Georgia
David.Reinking @uga.edu
http://www.davidreinking.info<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com_-3Furl-3Dhttp-253A-252F-252Fwww.davidreinking.info-252F-26data-3D01-257C01-257Clg40-2540txstate.edu-257Cd43f2d8241584a0ca81608d50aa7b5c9-257Cb19c134a14c94d4caf65c420f94c8cbb-257C0-26sdata-3Dji-252FNnlYJBKtAbG0lEfttgJUZxsi6BinXvN1OaPMm5Uc-253D-26reserved-3D0&d=DwMFAg&c=Ngd-ta5yRYsqeUsEDgxhcqsYYY1Xs5ogLxWPA_2Wlc4&r=gUnMZ3Xw_juA4Q4q8MsCC_IKO_x_v_mImmv8TQcuKAs&m=UedHPeoTlZDAK_Y35nsdvaZ1tvfVsAXM3l43vQNlACI&s=5qWqgpYErOqlfng1rqjL41TgwAGTYZ6oMB15g45RwUc&e=>/
orcid.org/0000-0001-8040-6673


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.nottingham.ac.uk/pipermail/reading-hall-of-fame/attachments/20230407/2cb4a4c4/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Reinking et al. 2023.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 354705 bytes
Desc: Reinking et al. 2023.pdf
URL: <http://lists.nottingham.ac.uk/pipermail/reading-hall-of-fame/attachments/20230407/2cb4a4c4/attachment-0001.pdf>