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

[Cunningham, James William]

David,
Thanks so much for the link. I just finished giving it a quick read. You, George, and Vicki have done our field, teachers, and children a great service. Hopefully, its open access will lead to it being widely read and considered.
Why anyone would rely on influencers, politicians, and real scientists pontificating out of field for how something as important as reading should be taught is a mystery to me.
Jim Cunningham
________________________________
From: Reading-hall-of-fame <reading-hall-of-fame-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> on behalf of David P. Reinking <David.Reinking at uga.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 7, 2023 12:06 PM
To: Reading-hall-of-fame at lists.nottingham.ac.uk <Reading-hall-of-fame at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>
Subject: [Reading-hall-of-fame] article on legislating phonics


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

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