3 ms·

I would be a bit cautious about taking teachers' word for what works and what doesn't work. Every critical piece on reading instruction on the US seems to make

by 4bpp 3y ago

I would be a bit cautious about taking teachers' word for what works and what doesn't work. Every critical piece on reading instruction on the US seems to make it pretty clear that teachers have a strong emotional and political attachment to the "whole language" method that might cloud their judgement and motivate their reasoning. See for instance the opening quote of an older article in Time (https://time.com/6205084/phonics-science-of-reading-teachers/ https://time.com/6205084/phonics-science-of-reading-teachers...): > The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. “This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,” says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. “So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw [a phonics-based curriculum] out.” It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences. “Those who wanted to fight for social justice, they figured that this new progressive way of teaching reading was the way,” he says.

pfedak 3y ago
That definitely comes through in the piece the parent linked, it's very much a narrative of fighting against misinformed outsiders pushing phonics for various research-based reasons, instead of just trusting teachers.
leoc 3y ago
There are plenty of academics who oppose or have reservations about the capital-letters Science of Reading https://radicalscholarship.com/2022/05/23/nyt-blasts-calkins-with-science-of-reading-propaganda/ https://radicalscholarship.com/2022/05/23/nyt-blasts-calkins... . Of course they, too, could be ideologically motivated or stubbornly attached to their existing beliefs, for all I know, but it's clearly not a clean split between academics and teachers.
- 4bpp 3y ago
  I would be surprised if it were (a clean split between academics and teachers). However, it seems like your link at least isn't at odds with the idea that there may be a clean split between those who seek to optimise for the declared learning outcome (reading proficiency, in this case) and those who optimise for the advancement of some political goal to which the learning outcome is at best conditionally conducive, and almost certainly secondary. (Just look at the tag collection in the sidebar.)

by 4bpp 3y ago

pfedak 3y ago

That definitely comes through in the piece the parent linked, it's very much a narrative of fighting against misinformed outsiders pushing phonics for various research-based reasons, instead of just trusting teachers.

leoc 3y ago

There are plenty of academics who oppose or have reservations about the capital-letters Science of Reading https://radicalscholarship.com/2022/05/23/nyt-blasts-calkins-with-science-of-reading-propaganda/ https://radicalscholarship.com/2022/05/23/nyt-blasts-calkins... . Of course they, too, could be ideologically motivated or stubbornly attached to their existing beliefs, for all I know, but it's clearly not a clean split between academics and teachers.

4bpp 3y ago
I would be surprised if it were (a clean split between academics and teachers). However, it seems like your link at least isn't at odds with the idea that there may be a clean split between those who seek to optimise for the declared learning outcome (reading proficiency, in this case) and those who optimise for the advancement of some political goal to which the learning outcome is at best conditionally conducive, and almost certainly secondary. (Just look at the tag collection in the sidebar.)