Below is a tweet by Brett Benson (@SoLInTheWild).
Here are my thoughts:
How does a child prone to disengaging from reading connect concepts when they've been taught the sounds of letters incorrectly from the start?
The phonological awareness deficit as the cause of dyslexia was debunked around 2017. Even with the research reports debunking that theory and my explanation of my students being able to read in Malay and Pinyin how audacious is it for James Chapman to say that he stands by what he and Tunmer wrote in 1996?
In 2021 I wrote to James Chapman again. Here is my email.
The following email from James Chapman, in 2010, fortifies the saying by Charlie Munger that the Human mind is like the human egg.
One of my first emails disagreeing with a Phonological Awareness Deficit being the cause of dyslexia was to James Chapman. He and William E. Tunmer had jointly produced a paper stating that dyslexia is caused by Phonological Awareness Deficit.
This is a clear case of researchers who have written something and when evidence to the contrary is produced they refuse to accept it.
Here is the fourth and final part of Anna Stokke's podcast with Matther Burns.
Anna Stokke:
About some of the education thought leaders, sometimes you could even call them education celebrities, I think. And we see this in both reading and math. Do you think maybe they get caught up in the positive attention that they're receiving and that this may be why they don't step back on the claims they've made, even when it comes to light that there are problems with some of the ideas they promote?
Matthew Burns:
And I think because of that, people telling you that your stuff is so great and people tell you what you say is true, that you sort of start to believe it.
And you get to the point where you can say, “Well, I think it's true. Therefore, it must be.” So I think we researchers need to be more self-critical and self-reflective. We need to recognize “What I'm thinking based on evidence, or is it something I think is true because I think it's true?” So I really challenge other researchers to engage in that level of self-reflection because you can get caught up in it really easily.
My comment:
Wow! Matthew
has put it very well. Do read his excellent response above, again.
Yesterday, I read the following report by Professor James Chapman of Massey University complaining about Professor Stuart McNaughton of Auckland University.
This report which reminded me of the saying ‘Pot calling the kettle black’ written on 2.9.2020 is more recent than the report I posted yesterday.
Here are some extracts and my comments:
James Chapman and William Tunmer (JC&WT)
The Education Science Advisor (ESA) to the Ministry of Education, Professor Stuart McNaughton, authored The Literacy Landscape in Aotearoa New Zealand. McNaughton framed his report with a key question: "What are the most reasonable explanations for our problems in excellence and equity in literacy? Specifically, what are the plausible hypotheses for: (a) the overall drop in literacy achievement in successive cycles of international assessments; and (b) the limited impact on changing the distributions of achievement for Māori and Pasifika students and those from low socioeconomic status (SES) communities?"
The following are extracts of a research report by Prof. James Chapman and Prof. William Tunmer in 2019 and my comments. I was sent this as an attachment in an email from James Chapman a week ago, on 6.12.2021.
Chapman and Tunmer are researchers attached to Massey University
The wealth of scientific evidence does not support the view that dyslexia is present at birth, that it can involve numeracy and musical notation, and that the skills may not “match up to an individual’s other cognitive abilities” (Elliott & Grigorenko, 2014).
The U.S.-based International Dyslexia Association (IDA) has retained the term dyslexia:
Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. (IDA; retrieved from http://eida.org/definition-of-dyslexia/ )
