Here are a few links to key information about the science of reading. This page is in no way comprehensive (the field is huge) but I hope it is an accessible start:
- Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition from Novice to Expert by Profs Anne Castles, Kathleen Rastle and Kate Nation reviews the science of learning to read and recommends instruction that is scientifically, developmentally and linguistically informed. Related articles and videos are here, here and here, and my blog post about a Prof Rastle seminar is here.
- Reading in the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene. Watch him on video here and here, and my blog post about a Prof Dehaene seminar is here.
- Effective reading Instruction in the early years of school is a plain-English, 18-page 2017 report and audio file by NSW’s Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation.
- Read all about it: Scientific Evidence for Effective Teaching of Reading by Melbourne’s own living encyclopaedia of the reading science, Dr Kerry Hempenstall, is freely available.
- Essentials of Assessing, Preventing and Overcoming Reading Difficulties by David Kilpatrick, is a useful, practical text, and Dr Kilpatrick has also co-edited a 2019 book called Reading Development and Difficulties.
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Three presentations by David Kilpatrick at the 2017 Reading in the Rockies conference are available free online. For the time-poor, I have summarised them here, here and here.
- Early Reading Instruction: What science really tells us about how to teach reading, by Diane McGuinness. By the same author is the out-of-print Language Development and Learning to Read, available free here.
- Articles by Louisa Moats (many available free online – just search by title and author). Two video lectures by Dr Moats are here and here.
- Language at the Speed of Sight by Mark Seidenberg.
- The US-based Reading League has a list of other recommended books here. We have almost all of them at the Spelfabet office, if local professionals would like to browse post-pandemic, and we also have all Lyn Stone’s books.
Literacy statistics
How literate are Australians? Recent large-scale international studies suggest that far too many Australians are struggling with reading and spelling. Click here for more information and links to these studies.
National Inquiries
National inquiries into the teaching of reading have been held in Australia, the UK and the USA.
All the reports are online so you can read them yourself – click here for the links and what I regard as a few key excerpts.
Dyslexia reports
Dyslexia is part of Specific Learning Disability in the latest edition of the diagnostic manual used by medical and allied professions (DSM-5). In Australia and the UK there have been recent reports describing about the difficulties and needs of people with decoding problems. Click here for more information and the relevant links.
Literature reviews
A useful literature review on literacy-teaching in Australia was published by ACER in 2002, called Closing the gap between research and practice – foundations for the acquisition of literacy.
Scottish Studies – Clackmannanshire and West Dunbartonshire
Two key, long-term studies into literacy-teaching methodology in Scotland have been published in recent years and are worth highlighting – one conducted in Clackmannanshire and one in West Dunbartonshire. Click here for a brief overview and links to their reports.
Exercise caution
It’s often hard to know whether or not an approach is backed up by good evidence. Click here for more information to help you figure out what is likely to be effective, and what isn’t.
Hi Alison,
I enjoyed your talk at the LDA presentation of Maryanne Wolf. I remember you showed a review of research, from memory, about Levelled Literacy Intervention showing that it does not make much of an impact. Could you please send me this link?
I am an LDA consultant member who is doing Year One intervention in a school that has purchased all the F&P kits (against my recommendation). I have said it does not have good results and the head of English would like to see where I’ve got that idea from because she has only heard positive things!!
Kind regards,
Helen
Hi Helen, I put the links to the things I was talking about at the Wolf seminar in this blog post: http://www.spelfabet.com.au/2016/09/filling-the-gaps.
The F&P publicity all says that it’s research/evidence-based, but if you look at THEIR OWN RESEARCH (published on their website but not in a peer-reviewed journal, so whether we really call it research anyway is arguable), it found that improvements that could be attributed to the program were not statistically significant, see http://www.heinemann.com/fountasandpinnell/research/lliefficacystudyreport2012.pdf. But they bury this in a lot of verbiage explaining this away, and a lot of glossy marketing, because they know teachers are not taught how to critically evaluate research.
All the best, Alison C
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