Ending the Reading Wars by Anne Castles, Kathleen Rastle, Kate Nation

Juliet Palethorpe replied as follows in a tweet to me.

 I think you’ll find summaries of the research on reading instruction to date dispute your view.

I read the article twice and did not see anything that disputes what I had written on. I then tweeted Juliet Palethorpe asking her to please let me know exactly which of my views the article disputed but did not receive any response.

Here are extracts of the article with my comments. 

Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert

Anne Castles, Kathleen Rastle, Kate Nation

There is intense public interest in questions surrounding how children learn to read and how they can best be taught. Research in psychological science has provided answers to many of these questions…

We call for an end to the reading wars and recommend an agenda for instruction and research in reading acquisition that is balanced, developmentally informed, and based on a deep understanding of how language and writing systems work.

My comment: I very much doubt if this will end the reading wars. The fundamental matter which is the teaching of the pronunciation of phonemes correctly has not been addressed. This Science of Reading (SoR) has nothing new that has not been said before.

The quality and scope of the scientific evidence today means that the reading wars should be over. But strong debate and resistance to using methods based on scientific evidence persist.

My comment: The reading wars will not be over until kids are not confused by the teaching of the pronunciation of phonemes wrongly. A majority of kids will learn to read as they learned during the whole word as well as the phonics period. What we should be concerned with are the kids who shut down/ disengage from learning to read due to confusion.

It is uncontroversial among reading scientists that coming to appreciate the relationship between letters and sounds is necessary and nonnegotiable when learning to read in alphabetic writing systems and that this is most successfully achieved through phonics instruction.

My comment: Yes, the relationship between letters and sounds is paramount. I also believe that it will be most successfully achieved through phonics instruction. However, to cater to all the kids we need to first teach the pronunciation of phonemes correctly. This is the foundation of learning to read.

I have produced YouTube videos explaining the various reasons why kids, predisposed to shutting down, disengage from learning to read.

For those who have yet to listen to them, I urge you to listen to the videos before we continue with the rest of the article.

You may access all the 5 videos from my post here.