Anna Stokke's podcast with Matthew Burns - Final Part

                                                     

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.

Sharon Vaughn - helping kids with reading problems

 

The following are from the blog post by Kathryn Solow that I posted yesterday.

All of this advice applies to college professors as well. We have to remember that professors are people too.

So what does this mean in practice?

It means that we have got to stop shaming and blaming professors for what they do not know and were never taught. Many of these professors started out as classroom teachers. They took the same reading methods courses that the teachers did. They completed the same projects. They learned from the same professors. They are just as much victims of a broken educator prep-system as classroom teachers are.

My comment:

YES! Professors are people too. However, these professors/educators/researchers should think and be responsible for what they write. They should be willing to admit a mistake and move on. I have far too many examples of this but will, for now, give just a few examples.

Paradigm Inertia – Part 2

We were told in the previous post that the biggest block to a paradigm shift is personal, emotional, and thoroughly unscientific reasons.

Let us examine some of the blocks and non-replies I have personally encountered.

i.                    Automatic reply: Dr.Charles Perfetti - Children of the Code Perfetti, Charles A perfetti@pitt.edu To:luqmanm2002@yahoo.co.uk Sat, 8 Aug 2015 at 14:08

 

I am out of the country. I will not be able to reply to all emails in a timely manner until Dec 21.

 

ii.                  Diane Lyon <dianellyon@gmail.com>

To:luqmanm2002@yahoo.co.uk Wed, 5 Aug 2015 at 21:05

My name is Diane Lyon, I'm Dr. Lyon's wife.

Reading4all@tx.rr.com is the mail we use.  Please don't hesitate to send your questions and if Dr. Lyon would be happy to answer your questions or send you to others who may have more current information.

Diane Lyon

iii.               Diane Lyon dianellyon@gmail.com To:luqmanm2002@yahoo.co.uk

Mon, 10 Aug 2015 at 21:28

Dear LUQMAN MICHEL,

We received your emails.  We are on travel and cannot commit the time needed at this time to a thorough response.  As you can imagine we receive hundreds, if not thousands, of emails and feel it only fair to respond thoughtfully when time allows.

Can a deaf person learn to read

 

How does a deaf person learn to read just as well as one who can hear?

Read the comment section of my post on ‘How the brain learns to read' – Dehaene Stanislas.

Here is another account by another deaf person who is able to read. This should put paid to Dehaene’s theory which says the following:

Reading requires specializing the visual system for the shapes of the letters, and connecting them to speech sounds.

Teaching letter-sound correspondences is therefore essential.

I have repeated several time for you to think rather than accepting whatever is said by so called experts such as Sally Shaywitz, Dehaene Stanislas, Andy Johnson, Timothy Shanahan, David Boulton, Sharon Vaughn and many others. 

Dr. Rachael Gabriel - whose pronunciation is correct?

                                                                By Dr.Rachael Gabriel
 

Her profile says: Education researcher, writer, host of Literacy Fellows Podcast, Assoc. prof. of literacy education.

Here is a link posted on Twitter by Dr. Rachael Gabriel.

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-the-science-of-reading-should-make-room-for-skepticism-just-not-for-ignorance/2021/09

I had commented on her post as follows: