This is The Reading Instruction Show. I am your
host, Dr. Andy Johnson. The topic of today's
podcast is about reading instruction and think
tanks and having differences and other stuff
like that. Let's just jump right into it and
see if we can learn a little something today.
Now, humans are a most interesting species. we
walk around with some of the nuttiest ideas bouncing
around in our head. But according to the Education
Science Reform Act of 2002, the ideas in our
head cannot be said to exist because they're
not based on quote, systematic empirical methods
that draw on observation or experiment unquote.
So, It's more accurate to say that we walk around
with a variety of types of electrical activities
in our cerebral cortex. Neurons connect with
other neurons to form and strengthen neural pathways.
And neural networks are activated and expand
to create some pretty interesting networks. And
if we really want to use empirical methods drawn
on observation or experiment as our ontological
standard, we might even say that humans are merely
skin bags full of chemicals sloshing about. But
sometimes the chemicals are a little off. They
may be too much of one thing and not enough of
the other. And when this happens, The neural
networks branch off in unintended directions.
Other times we pour, inject, smoke, or ingest
various chemicals into our skin bags. And when
this happens, our neural networks can come up
with all sorts of shit. Which is a long -winded
way of saying that people hold a variety of positions
related to reading instruction. natural human
tendency. It seems that whenever a person takes
a position on something, there's this natural
human tendency to want to go out into the world
and convince others of the rightness of their
views and the wrongness of others. We insist
that if they just had our knowledge and could
see things our way, They'd understand and all
the problems would be solved. It's so simple
really. We just get the knowledge in our heads
into their heads. Then they would see things
the right way, which is our way, and the problem
would be solved. So we spend our time talking.
We talk loudly. We talk a lot. We talk over people.
We talk and talk and talk. And I admit that I
am as guilty of this as the next person regarding
this natural human tendency. I am convinced that
people who have vastly differing ideas from me
are misguided and full of baloney. But at the
same time, I realize that they're convinced of
the same about me. And it's all good. Like frogs
in a pond, having different views on things can
be a sign of a healthy academic ecosystem. But
only if the entities within the system are willing
to listen to differing ideas and continually
reflect on and evaluate their own. This is what
enables us to evolve our thinking. Now differences
become problematic when people create bubbles
around themselves to insulate their group from
all these, quote, bad ideas. This results in
an inbreeding of ideas that can lead to some
rather disturbing mutations. And you ask, are
we talking about politics, religion, or reading
instruction? and I would say all of the above.
Academic discourse. In academia, having differing
ideas about things is a good thing. The greater
academy is based on having differing ideas followed
by argument. And as stated before, argument here
is not the yelling disagreeing kind. Rather,
it's the academic kind, where you state your
case and support your position using reason and
research. We don't try to silence opposing ideas.
We don't try to demean opposing ideas. We let
our ideas carry the day, not the volume of our
voices or the harshness of our words. And this
has worked pretty well in academia. You put forth
an idea and you expect lively discussion. And
at the end of the day, the idea is supported
or rejected. Within the academy at large, you
conduct research or write an academic article
and submit it to a jury of your peers. These
are experts in your field. who do a blind peer
review. This means your name is removed from
the article so the jury won't know who wrote
it. And the names of the jury are concealed as
well. And it's either accepted or rejected based
on the quality of your work. And if it's accepted,
it will be published. It then becomes available
to all in the field, who then can conduct research
or write articles to either support or refute
your ideas. The same process is used for conference
presentations and book contracts. Your work becomes
public. People react to your ideas using research
and reason. Then they go on to make careers,
explaining to other people how right or wrong
you are. However, they do this using reason and
research. And it was a pretty good system until
it wasn't. Today the words of a journalist carry
more weight than that of a serious scholar in
the field. Journalists are even invited to speak
at academic conferences. What's up with that?
The reading was. As stated before, there never
was a reading ward in the academic field known
as literacy instruction. The term reading wars
was coined by the media. Now you might see this
term used in academic circles today, but it originated
outside the field of literacy instruction. There
wasn't a reading war until the media decided
they wanted to invent one. Instead, there was
a natural clash of theories as psycholinguistic
reading theory began to emerge and expand in
the 70s and 80s. And like all theories, this
new theory didn't show up fully formed. It took
a while for it to grow and to take shape. and
it continues to evolve to this day as new research
knowledge is generated. Now let's take a look
at basals. This new emerging theory began to
crowd out the behavioral learning theories of
the day which were used to support a basal approach
to reading instruction. And a basal is the name
used for a teacher's manual for reading instruction.
It's called a basal because it was originally
designed to deliver a base level of reading instruction.
And when I started teaching second grade in 1983,
teachers were given basals. We used our basals
to deliver a scripted reading program to students
who sat passively at kidney -shaped tables so
they could be learned at. Learning was something
we did to children, not something children did.
These Basel reading programs contained a variety
of skill and drill activities, round -robin read
-alouds, an approved canon of leveled stories,
and comprehension questions focusing on the recall
of story details. Sadly, the current science
of reading mandates have us rushing forward to
the past. In 1983, I followed the basal and taught
all the skills. I met all my behavioral objectives.
The students completed all the worksheets and
most of them passed the end of the unit test.
And I thought I was a good reading teacher because
I was doing what the teacher's manual told me
to do. And it wasn't until I saw a good reading
workshop classroom that I realized how incredibly
wrong I was. Meaning -based approaches. Theories
aren't designed to be eternal entities. They
exist for as long as they continue to explain
facts and help us understand phenomena. Then
they either evolve or slowly fade away. And it's
natural to have multiple explanations of the
same thing. This does not mean there's a war.
It means there's an academic discussion going
on. Bottom -up theories of reading and behavioral
learning theories began to be replaced by interactive
reading theories, psycholinguistic reading theories,
and constructivist learning theories. These resulted
in a variety of meaning -based approaches to
literacy instruction, such as reading workshop,
writing workshop, and literature -based reading
instruction. And not only were these effective,
but they were infinitely more enjoyable for teachers
and students. And they did not cause scores to
go down. And when I say this, the user responses,
oh yeah? Well, show me the research. And I say,
show you the research for what? Show me the research
that proves that whole language didn't cause
reading scores to go down. Well, first, you can't
disprove a negative through research. Second,
a single study or even a couple of studies doesn't
prove anything. That's a simplistic understanding
of research. Third, there is no the research
that's read like a holy canon. Fourth, we've
been showing you the research all along. But
anecdotal evidence that journalists have a louder
voice than a body of research and research scholars.
Fifth, the proposition that whole language caused
reading scores to go down. That was the proposition.
The onus is on the proposition maker to support
it. And sixth, searching for causes by making
random correlations to things occurring at the
same time. is superstition, not science. Again,
there never was a reading war. A war assumes
there are two armies meeting on a field of battle,
and this didn't happen. But there was a reading
coup. There was a hostile takeover of the field
of literacy instruction by profiteers who saw
public education as their own private ATM machine.
This group of profiteers is part of the educational
industrial complex, and it includes Cambria Lexi
learning, Pearson education, Cengage learning,
McGraw -Hill education, Voyager Sopras learning,
TAL education group Bright Horizons, and such.
They're armies of well -paid toadies, or consultants,
Promise schools simple solutions to complex problems.
Just buy our shiny new products, they say. Pay
for our services, they say. Get trained by our
experts, they say. And all your literacy problems
will go away. All your students will be reading
above grade level. Well, I don't know, the school
says. That's a lot of money. Look they say look
at all the colorful charts and graphs look at
all the pretty pretty numbers Well, the school
says you do have numbers that must mean the real
Wouldn't you like to have colorful charts and
graphs like this? Wouldn't you like wouldn't
wouldn't you like that? Wouldn't you like to
have pretty pretty numbers? Yes, the school says
yes, I would And that, my friends, is how education
lost its soul. Think tanks, the hostile takeover
of literacy instruction, also included those
who wanted to control public education for their
own political or philosophical purposes. These
includes conservative organizations, such as
American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation,
Brookings Institute, Rand Corporation, and the
Thomas B. Fordham Institute. However, there can't
be a lot of thinking going on in these think
tanks if you're expected to come to predetermined
conclusions about things. For all their questions,
they have a predetermined list of answers. For
all their problems, They have a predetermined
list of solutions. These include privatization,
testing, accountability, competition, mandated
curriculum, mandated teaching strategies and
approaches, getting rid of unions, parental control,
charter schools, prayer in the school, vouchers,
and the Ten Commandments. These think tanks fund
these non... fund non -profit organizations who
then claim their non -profit status as a badge
of objectivity. However, these non -profit organizations
would lose their special funding friends in a
heartbeat if their think tanks didn't bark like
trained seals. Now let's look at the Education
Science Reform Act. In the 80s and 90s, there
was an influx of qualitative research and education.
Brian Camborn, Shirley Bryce Heath, and others
helped us go beyond the numbers to understand
the people behind the numbers. The lens of qualitative
research enabled us to see things that simply
were not visible when looking through the narrow
lens of controlled experimental research. Instead
of measuring, quantifying, and comparing, qualitative
researchers used observations, interviews, action
research, surveys, ethnographies, grounded theory,
case studies, and phenomenology. The result was
that real people began to appear on the pages
of our academic journals. These real people were
much more than pre - and post -test numbers.
The real people moved from being subjects to
participants, and the quiet voices of teachers,
students, and parents began to be heard. As the
who's in Whoville said in Horton Hears a Who,
we are here. The rich conversations that were
taking place within the Academy in the 90s were
disrupted by the Education Science Reform Act
of 2002. The federal government made a decree
declaring what research in education must be.
The result was a narrow, parochial view of educational
research. Only knowledge generated by controlled
experimental research was counted as valid. Only
projects and programs supported by this very
restricted view of educational research would
be funded. It wasn't long before the Who's and
Whoville were squashed by a giant federal Grinch
foot. The Education Science Reform Act of 2002
represents a simplistic understanding of research
in the social sciences. It says that research
methods used to study bacteria in a petri dish
must be used to study children in a classroom.
Controlled experimental studies is the only way
of establishing causal relationships, it says.
And the result was that researchers began asking
only questions that could be answered by controlled
experimental research. Questions like, is this
thing better than that thing? And does this thing
make scores go up? The frogs are no longer chirping
in the ponds. We don't have the healthy academic
ecosystem we once had. This has been The Reading
Instruction Show. I'm your host, Dr. Andy Johnson.