Toward a culturally sustaining science of reading

The reading wars, or the perennial debate between phonics and whole language, have long permeated the discourse in the literacy world. As a middle level English Language Arts (ELA) teacher and teacher educator, I have largely stayed out of the debate. I have chosen instead to focus my work on the sociocultural side of literacy (Gee, 2014) with a focus on literacy as a liberatory practice (Freire, 1970). Critical literacy (Janks, 2013), multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2013), and culturally sustaining literacy pedagogies (Muhammad, 2023; Paris & Alim, 2014) framed the way I approached ELA teaching in my 5-8th grade classrooms and continue to shape the middle grades ELA methods courses that I teach. My lack of engagement in the reading wars does not reflect the level of value I place on the teaching of reading. Instead, it has been a personal choice to stay out of a politicized discourse that felt dehumanizing and more about the need to be right (or prove someone else wrong) than a focus on what was best for kids.

One cannot value literacy as a liberatory practice and not advocate for universal literacy. I very much believe that learning how to read, write, and communicate ideas is a human right. As an educational researcher, I also believe in science, and I recognize that science is constantly changing. That is what makes being an academic such a fascinating endeavor. As a field we think we have things figured out, and then some brilliant team of researchers muddies the waters with a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of learning and teaching. That is how science works. It is always and should always be evolving. Educational research is especially complex because our human variables are always changing.

For this reason, I am skeptical of any educational movement that claims to have the definitive answer to anything. That is why until this moment, I have both tried to understand what is meant by the science of reading (SoR) and ignore the discourse surrounding it. I have chosen to focus on what is best practice for young adolescents without engaging in the debate. It has been easy for me to stay out of the debate since I live and work in a state whose policies (if not practices) have leaned liberal and because middle school, arguably, is about reading to learn, not teaching kids to read. However, I am beginning to see scripted curriculum based on SoR become the norm in my community’s public middle schools, particularly those that serve the highest proportion of historically marginalized youth and families. This is resulting in a move away from culturally constructed educational opportunities. As a result, I can no longer ignore the realities of the impact of this movement on middle school ELA teaching and learning.

So, what is SoR? To get there, I first need to explain what I am going to refer to as the sciences of reading¹ (note the intentional “s” at the end of science). In its broad, less political definition, the sciences of reading refer to the body of research and knowledge that informs how people learn to read. According to Shanahan (2020), the term science of reading has existed for over 200 years. It encompasses various aspects of reading, including phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and the cognitive processes involved in reading. As with all areas of science, the sciences of reading continue to evolve, incorporating new research findings and perspectives to provide an ever expanding understanding of reading development. This body of work includes all types of reading-based research, both the research related to phonetic awareness that has been politicized in positive ways in these new reading wars and the research around whole language and balanced literacy² approaches that have been canceled in recent years.

This broad research into how humans learn to read has helped shape educational practices and policies by highlighting the need for explicit and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics, as well as the importance of exposure to rich language and reading materials. The sciences of reading are what I use every day to make decisions about how to prepare middle-level educators to best engage with young adolescents in their ELA classrooms.

However, the SoR that is permeating dominant discourse, often outside of the education realm, and that is driving policy shifts from preschool to higher education, is a different breed. According to Shanahan (2020), “The impact of the term science of reading as used today is as much bound up in its tone as in its meaning; it now often seems to be used as a rhetorical cudgel to challenge those not adhering to some particular conception of it” (p. S236). According to Duke and Cartwright (2021), what researchers have referred to as the simple view of reading (SVR) is being used widely to not only explain SoR to classroom teachers and others involved in reading education, but to guide instructional practice and drive massive policy changes in literacy instruction everywhere. However, the research behind SVR is over 35 years old. As such, it has major limitations. According to Duke and Cartwright (2021), “Instructional practice guided by the SVR leaves educators ill prepared to understand or identify instructional targets for poor comprehenders with grade-appropriate decoding and listening comprehension, because no source for such difficulties is evident in the SVR” (p. S27). They further explained how SVR does not name specific factors within word recognition and/or language comprehension as being important even though research has documented their contributions to reading.

Additionally, Shanahan (2020) stressed that not only is the SoR that many people are applying simplistic, but the claim of its proponents that is provides the answers to how to teach reading is misleading given the that the focus of the research cited is not on how to teach reading, but on how humans learn to read. Shanahan (2020) argued that there is a huge difference between the science of reading and the science of teaching reading:

If our goal is to determine how best to teach reading, then we must rely on data that evaluate the effectiveness of teaching, rather than depending solely or even mainly on studies of reading processes or of other noninstructional phenomena, which are then applied to teaching through analogy or logical deduction or from premature conclusions drawn from empirical investigations that do no more than describe or correlate. (p. S236)

In teacher education, we refer to this concept as pedagogical content knowledge or the knowledge of how to teach certain content. Numerous scholars have discussed the distinction between content knowledge (in this case knowledge of how humans learn to read) and pedagogical content knowledge (or knowledge of how to teach humans to read) and have stressed the importance of both (Abell, 2008; Shulman, 2000). Thus, any science of reading that does not include pedagogical content knowledge provides an incomplete picture of an educator’s role in student acquisition of reading skills. Couple this with the acknowledgment that there is much we still do not know about how to actually teach reading (Shanahan, 2020), and the current move to upend reading instruction by codifying certain ways of teaching in policy, seems premature.

Another shortcoming of SoR, as it is currently being touted, is its lack of focus on the interplay between knowledge and learning to read. Researchers have found that cultural and background knowledge positively impact reading development (Duke & Cartwright, 2021). Of this, Duke and Cartwright explained:

… reading difficulties are sometimes context dependent, occurring when there is a mismatch between the knowledge assumed by the author/text (and teacher) and the knowledge of the reader. This in turn opens the door for considering how and why race, religious background, socioeconomic status, and other factors impact the reading process—why social justice concerns are relevant, even in understanding the process of reading. For example, readers who are rarely provided with opportunities to read texts that reflect their cultural background will experience the reading process differently than those with the privilege of a frequent match of their cultural background and the knowledge assumed by an author/text. (p. S28)

Duke and Cartwright (2021) went on to describe that a meta-analysis of 49 studies showed that motivation and engagement are predictors of reading achievement. Despite this, the current SoR discourse has included rhetoric against a focus on diverse representation in curriculum to make way for more scientifically-proven methods of reading instruction, once again proving a politically charged piecemeal picking and choosing of which research is valid and which is not.

So, while I continue to unpack and better understand both the implications of the current SoR movement on middle grades ELA instruction and the broader sciences of reaching, what I do know is this: no amount of educational research is going to solve a systemic, social issue. Millions of humans around the world are labeled as illiterate not because of the single reason that we do not know how to teach them to read, but because of the sociopolitical context that leads to poverty, racism, classism, sexism, and all the other discriminatory beliefs and practices that have led to an education debt (Ladson-Billings, 2006) that disproportionately prevents access to high quality schooling for millions of youth around the world. Educational policies that ignore this have done nothing to close the opportunity gap (i.e. NCLB), and I fail to see how the rhetoric around SoR, as it is currently conceived, is going to lead to different outcomes for our most vulnerable populations. Instead, it feels like yet another series of legislated mandates that require training for teachers and pre-service teachers without a clear or agreed upon understanding by literacy experts about how to translate research on reading into practice. Further, this mainstream conceptualization of SoR seems to intentionally ignore any research on the connection between culture and learning (see Aukerman & Chambers Schuldt, 2021).

As middle level educators and administrators, what can you do? You can be critical of any movement that is based on incomplete science. You can read and listen widely to understand both sides of the debate. You can do your own reading of research related to both how humans learn to read and how to teach humans to read, recognizing that these are not one and the same. You can be skeptical of scripted curriculums that claim to work equally for all youth, regardless of their racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, or linguistic background and instead apply the sciences of reading by engaging in action research to see what works best for your own students within the specific context in which you teach. The work presented by the three sets of practitioner/research partners in this issue of Middle School Journal provides a great model for this. And you can continue to teach your students and engage their families in ways that respect their backgrounds and present circumstances, holding them to high expectations, exhibiting unconditional care, and advocating for evidence-based literacy curriculum, pedagogies, and assessment strategies that are culturally sustaining. As Aukerman and Chambers Schuldt (2021) explained:

Assessments in line with this broader conception could be designed to look for and value difference across capacities and dispositions within and across students, with the goal of providing more multifaceted understandings of how students are engaging in the work of reading, rather than narrowly focusing on the extent to which they measure up to goals on a particular metric. (p. S95)

It is possible to create a scientifically-driven movement that combines culturally sustaining pedagogies with a strong understanding of how humans learn to read. Now more than ever, it is time for us all to engage in the work needed to make this a reality for all middle level learners.

Notes

¹ Throughout this editorial I will use the abbreviation SoR to refer to the specific political movement around the science of reading and the term sciences of reading to refer to the broader body of literature around learning to read.

² A balanced literacy approach combines elements of both whole language and phonics instruction, recognizing the value of both approaches in teaching reading effectively.