phonics research articles uk

Phonics teaching in England needs to change – our new research points to a better approach

Professor of Education, UCL

Professor of Sociology of Education, UCL

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Dominic Wyse receives funding from The Helen Hamlyn Trust; the Nuffield Foundation; the Leverhulme Trust; and The Monday Charitable Trust.

Alice Bradbury receives funding from the Helen Hamlyn Trust, Economic and Social Research Council, and the Monday Charitable Trust. She is a member of the Labour Party and has worked with the More than a Score campaign.

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Arguments about the best way to teach children to read can be intense – they’ve even been described as “ the reading wars ”. In England, as in many other countries, much of the debate has been over the use of phonics, which helps children understand how sounds – “phonemes” – are represented by letters.

The government requires teachers to use a particular type of phonics teaching called “ synthetic phonics ”, and the emphasis on this technique has become overwhelming in English primary schools.

Supporters of synthetic phonics teaching have argued that teaching of phonemes and letters should be first and foremost. On the other side have been supporters of whole language instruction, who think that reading whole texts – books for example – should come first and foremost.

Our new research shows that synthetic phonics alone is not the best way to teach children to read. We found that a more effective method is to combine phonics teaching with whole texts, meaning that children learn to read by using books as well as learning phonics.

Current synthetic phonics lessons typically have an exclusive focus on phonemes, and how these are represented by letters. For example in the word “dog” each letter stands for a different phoneme: /d/ /o/ /g/. In the word “teach” there are three phonemes: /t/ /ee/ /ch/. Phonemes can be represented by one letter or sometimes by more than one letter, like the /ee/ phoneme represented by the two letters “ea” in “teach”.

The teaching of synthetic phonics is done separately from other English teaching. Children read “decodable books”: books with a limited vocabulary of words designed to emphasise use of the letters and sounds taught in phonics lessons.

Our research included a survey of more than 2,000 primary school teachers. When asked a question about their approach to reading, 66% responded: “Synthetic phonics is emphasised first and foremost in my phonics teaching.”

The Department of Education enforces the policy of teaching synthetic phonics in various ways. It vets published teaching schemes, creating a list of approved synthetic phonics schemes. Ofsted, the government office responsible for educational standards, has a strong focus on synthetic phonics teaching in their inspections of schools.

Furthermore, children in year one (aged five to six) in England take a national statutory test, the phonics screening check . This is used to emphasise phonics teaching and hold teachers to account. This test includes the requirement for children to learn to read nonsense words, called “pseudo words”. These could include, for example, “meck”, “shig”, “blem” and “sut”.

It is clear from our research that the phonics screening check is narrowing teaching. For example, 237 teachers in our survey said that they were giving extra phonics lessons to help children pass the test. The word “pressure” appeared 97 times in teachers’ comments about the phonics screening check. One teacher felt that they had to “live and breathe phonics”.

Existing evidence

Our research also reviewed the best existing evidence on phonics teaching and reading. Previous research – a systematic review, which analyses the findings of a number of research papers – not only questioned an emphasis on synthetic phonics but also on other systematic phonics teaching. It found that there is no evidence that synthetic phonics teaching is better than other methods of teaching phonics and reading.

Other main methods of teaching reading include the “whole language” approach. In this approach, teaching reading with whole texts is the priority. Encouraging children’s motivation for reading is another main aim of whole language teaching. In the whole-language approach phonics is not taught systematically.

Another main method of teaching reading is “balanced instruction”. With this approach the importance of comprehending the meaning of written language is carefully balanced with the acquisition of a range of skills and knowledge. Balanced instruction combines systematic teaching of whole texts and other linguistic aspects such as sentences and words.

Another systematic review found that integrating phonics teaching with comprehension teaching resulted in the best impact on children’s reading.

As part of our research we carried out a new analysis of all 55 research papers that were part of this systematic review. In summary, it was clear that in effective teaching approaches phonics teaching was connected with whole texts in every lesson.

One study, carried out in Canada, was particularly compelling because the tests of children’s reading comprehension showed that the approach had been effective four years after the intervention had ended. The effective approach was driven by helping children to make sense of reading using whole texts.

A different approach

We found that England’s emphasis on synthetic phonics is different compared to high performing English language countries in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests. None of these other countries mandate synthetic phonics.

Canada has consistently performed the best of English language dominant nations in the PISA tests. Canada’s approach at national and state level is very different from England’s because it emphasises whole texts, and phonics is not emphasised as much.

The approach to teaching reading in England means that children in England are unlikely to be learning to read as effectively as they should be. Teachers, children, and their parents need a more balanced approach to the teaching of reading.

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• Phonics screening test

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Reconsidering the Evidence That Systematic Phonics Is More Effective Than Alternative Methods of Reading Instruction

• Review Article
• Open access
• Published: 08 January 2020
• Volume 32 , pages 681–705, ( 2020 )

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There is a widespread consensus in the research community that reading instruction in English should first focus on teaching letter (grapheme) to sound (phoneme) correspondences rather than adopt meaning-based reading approaches such as whole language instruction. That is, initial reading instruction should emphasize systematic phonics. In this systematic review, I show that this conclusion is not justified based on (a) an exhaustive review of 12 meta-analyses that have assessed the efficacy of systematic phonics and (b) summarizing the outcomes of teaching systematic phonics in all state schools in England since 2007. The failure to obtain evidence in support of systematic phonics should not be taken as an argument in support of whole language and related methods, but rather, it highlights the need to explore alternative approaches to reading instruction.

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There is a widespread consensus in the research community that early reading instruction in English should emphasize systematic phonics. That is, initial reading instruction should explicitly and systematically teach letter (grapheme) to sound (phoneme) correspondences. This contrasts with the main alternative method called whole language in which children are encouraged to focus on the meanings of words embedded in meaningful text, and where letter-sound correspondences are only taught incidentally when needed (Moats 2000 ). Within the psychological research community, the “Reading Wars” (Pearson 2004 ) that pitted whole language and phonics is largely settled—systematic phonics is claimed to be more effective. Indeed, it is widely claimed that systematic phonics is an essential part of initial reading instruction.

The evidence for this conclusion comes from various sources, including government panels that assessed the effectiveness of different approaches to reading instruction in the USA (National Reading Panel 2000 ), the UK (the Rose Review; Rose 2006 ), and Australia (Rowe 2005 ), 12 meta-analyses of experimental research, as well as nonexperimental studies that have tracked progress of students in England since the requirement to teach systematic phonics in state schools since 2007. The results are claimed to be clear-cut. For example, in his review for the English government, Sir Jim Rose writes

“Having considered a wide range of evidence, the review has concluded that the case for systematic phonic work is overwhelming …” (Rose 2006 , p. 20).

Similarly, in a recent influential review of reading acquisition that calls for an end to the reading wars (in support of systematic phonics), Castles, Nation, and Rastle ( 2018 ) write

It will be clear from our review so far that there is strong scientific consensus on the effectiveness of systematic phonics instruction during the initial periods of reading instruction.

Countless quotes to this effect could be provided.

Importantly, this strong consensus has resulted in important policy changes in England and USA. Based on Rose ( 2006 ), systematic phonics became a legal requirement in state-funded primary schools in England since 2007, and to ensure compliance, all children (ages 5–6) complete a phonics screening check (PSC) since 2012 that measures how well they can sound out a set of regular words and meaningless pseudowords. Similarly, based on the recommendations of the National Reading Panel (NRP 2000 ), systematic phonics instruction was included in the Common Core State Standards Initiative in the USA (http:// www.corestandards.org/ ). The Thomas Fordham Foundation concluded that the NRP document is the third most influential policy work in US education history (Swanson and Barlage 2006 ).

Nevertheless, despite this strong consensus, I will show that there is little or no evidence that systematic phonics is better than the main alternative methods used in schools, including whole language and balanced literacy. This should not be taken as an argument in support of these alternative methods, but rather, it should be taken as evidence that the current methods used in schools are far from idea. Once this is understood, my hope is that researchers and politicians will be more motivated to consider alternative methods.

Structure of Paper

The remainder of the paper is organized in three main sections. First, I review the most common methods of reading instruction. There are some points of overlap between the alternative methods, but a commitment to systematic phonics entails some specific claims about what constitutes effective early reading instruction. Second, I explore the experimental evidence taken to support of systematic phonics by providing a detailed and exhaustive review of all meta-analyses that have assessed the efficacy of systematic phonics. The conclusion from this review is simple: There is little or no evidence that systematic phonics is better than the most common alternative methods used in schools. The problem is that (a) the findings are often mischaracterized by the authors of the reports, and these mischaracterizations are passed on and exaggerated by many others citing the work and (b) that the designs of the meta-analyses often do not even test the hypothesis that systematic phonics is more effective than whole language and other common methods. Third, I review the outcomes of a large naturalist experiment, namely, the impact of requiring systematic phonics in all English state schools since 2007. Again, the findings provide little or no evidence that systematic phonics has improved reading. Together, this should motivate researchers to consider alternative teaching methods.

What Is Systematic Phonics and What Are the Common Alternatives?

All forms of reading instruction are motivated by one or more of the following facts: (1) Written words have pronunciations; (2) written words have a meaning; (3) words are composed of parts, including letters and morphemes; (4) written words tend to occur in meaningful text; and (5) the ultimate goal of reading is to extract meaning from text. Different forms of instruction emphasize some of these points and downplay or ignore others, but there is nevertheless some overlap between different methods, and this complicates the task of comparing methods. For example, whole language instruction focuses on understanding words in the context of text, but it also includes some degree of phonics (e.g., Moats 2000 ; NPR, 2000), and this has implications for how the meta-analyses described below can be interpreted. A further complication is that it is widely claimed that systematic phonics should be embedded in a broader literacy curriculum. For instance, the NRP (2000) emphasizes that systematic phonics should be integrated with other forms of instruction, including phonemic awareness, fluency, and comprehension strategies, and again, this makes it more difficult to make claims regarding systematic phonics per se. Because of these complexities, it is important to review systematic phonics and its relation to alternative methods in some detail so that the claims regarding the importance of systematic phonics can be evaluated.

As noted above, systematic phonics explicitly teaches children grapheme-phoneme correspondences prior to emphasizing the meanings of written words in text (as in whole language or balanced literacy instruction) or the meaning of written words in isolation (as in morphological instruction). That is, systematic phonics is committed to the “phonology first” hypothesis (Bowers and Bowers 2018a ). It is called systematic because it teaches grapheme-phoneme correspondences in an organized sequence as opposed to incidentally or on a “when-needed” basis. Several versions of systematic phonics exist (most notably synthetic and analytic), but they all adopt the phonology first hypothesis.

The main alternative to phonics is whole language that primarily focuses on the meaning of words presented in text. Teachers are expected to provide a literacy-rich environment for their students and to combine speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Students are taught to use critical thinking strategies and to use context to guess words that they do not recognize. Importantly, whole language typically includes some phonics, but the phonics instruction is not systematically taught (e.g., children are taught to sound out words when they cannot guess the word from context). For example, the authors of the NRP (2000) report write

Whole language teachers typically provide some instruction in phonics, usually as part of invented spelling activities or through the use of graphophonemic prompts during reading (Routman, 1996 ). However, their approach is to teach it unsystematically and incidentally in context as the need arises. The whole language approach regards letter-sound correspondences, referred to as graphophonemics, as just one of three cueing systems (the others being semantic/meaning cues and syntactic/language cues) that are used to read and write text. Whole language teachers believe that phonics instruction should be integrated into meaningful reading, writing, listening, and speaking activities and taught incidentally when they perceive it is needed. As children attempt to use written language for communication, they will discover naturally that they need to know about letter-sound relationships and how letters function in reading and writing. When this need becomes evident, teachers are expected to respond by providing the instruction.

The fact that whole language (and related methods) includes nonsystematic phonics turns out to be critical to the evaluations of the meta-analyses that follow.

Another approach to reading instruction called balanced literacy is designed to combine whole language with its focus on reading for meaning with systematic phonics. However, it is often claimed that balanced literacy is effectively just another name for whole language given that the phonics in balanced literacy is not taught first, not given enough emphasis, nor is it taught systematically (e.g., Moats 2000 ).

Another teaching method is called whole word or sight word training in which children are taught to identify individual words (out of context) without breaking down the words into phonemes or other sublexical parts. For instance, in order to improve word naming, children might be given a list of written words and then one of the words is read aloud. The child’s task is to select the corresponding written word, with the goal of improving their ability to read the word later (McArthur et al. 2013 , 2015 ). Similarly, the look-say-cover-write method is commonly used in whole word instruction to teach children the spelling of words. In this method, a child looks at a word, reads it aloud, covers the word up, and then attempts to spell the word (for review, see Browder and Xin 1998 ). Although whole word and whole language methods are different in many ways (most notably in whether some or no phonics is included), the two methods are often treated equivalently in the meta-analyses described below, and this has important implications for how the meta-analyses can be interpreted.

Morphological instruction, like whole language or balanced instruction, emphasizes the importance of attaching meaning to words, but it also teaches children to break down words into their meaningful parts (prefixes, bases, and suffixes). For review of this method, see Carlisle ( 2000 ). Related to this, structured word inquiry (SWI) teaches children the interrelation between all the sublexical components of written words (phonology, morphology, and etymology) in order to make sense of word spellings with the aim of improving all aspects of literacy, including reading, spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension (Bowers and Kirby 2010 ). Like systematic phonics, this approach explicitly teaches children the mappings between graphemes and phonemes, but children are taught how these mappings are organized within morphemes from the start (Bowers and Bowers 2017 , 2018a , 2018b , 2018c ).

The overlap between methods and the claim that systematic phonics should be embedded with other methods makes the task of assessing the efficacy of systematic phonics per se more difficult. Nevertheless, proponents of systematic phonics are committed to two specific claims about what does and does not constitute good instruction, meaning that this approach can be evaluated.

First, it is claimed that systematic phonics should be taught before meaning-based approaches that focus on the meaning of written words in the context of sentences or focus on the meaningful sublexical structure of words (e.g., morphological instruction). For example, Castles, Rastle, and Nation ( 2018 ) write

…morphological instruction… may detract from vital time spent learning spelling-sound relationships. Instead, we would predict that the benefits of explicit morphological instruction are more likely to be observed somewhat later in reading development…

The claim that grapheme-phoneme correspondences should be taught prior to any morphological instruction is widespread (e.g., Adams 1994 ; Ehri and McCormick 1998 ; Henry 1989 ; Larkin and Snowling 2008 ; Taylor et al. 2017 ).

Second, it is claimed that grapheme-phoneme correspondences should be taught systematically (as the name suggests). That is, there should be a program of instruction in which all the relevant grapheme-phoneme mappings are taught explicitly in an ordered manner. This is not possible when teaching the grapheme-phoneme correspondences of words embedded in meaningful texts as typical with whole language (given that order of grapheme-phonemes in meaningful texts is too variable). The main justification for systematic phonics is empirical, namely, the widespread claim that studies support systematic phonics over alternative methods, as summarized in multiple meta-analyses detailed below.

To summarize, there are a number of different forms of reading instruction, some of which emphasize letter-sound mappings before other properties of words (e.g., systematic phonics), others that emphasize meaning from the start (e.g., whole language), and others that claim that the phonology and meaning of word spellings should be the focus of instruction from the beginning (structured word inquiry). There is no disagreement that reading instruction needs to ultimately incorporate both meaning and phonology, but the widespread consensus in the research community is that instruction needs to systematically teach children the grapheme-phoneme correspondences before meaning-based strategies are emphasized. Accordingly, almost all researchers today claim that systematic phonics is better than whole language, balanced literacy, and all forms of instruction that consider morphology from the beginning. The evidence for this claim is considered below and found wanting.

A Critical Examination of the Meta-Analyses Taken to Support Systematic Phonics

A total of 12 meta-analyses have assessed the efficacy of systematic phonics for individuals of different ages and abilities. In most cases (although not all), the meta-analyses are taken to support the conclusion that systematic phonics is an essential component of initial reading instruction and more effective than common alternatives such as whole language. As detailed below, this conclusion is not justified by any of the meta-analyses. The results have been mischaracterized by the authors themselves (summarizing the results in ways that mislead the reader), and in most cases, the design of the meta-analyses was not even designed to test the conclusions that were drawn by the authors.

National Reading Panel ( 2000 ) and Ehri et al. ( 2001 ) Meta-Analyses

The seminal report most often taken to support the efficacy of systematic phonics compared with alternative methods was a government document produced by the National Reading Panel (NRP, 2000), with the findings later published in peer review form (Ehri et al. 2001 ). The authors carried out the first meta-analysis evaluating the effects of systematic phonics compared with forms of instruction that include unsystematic or no phonics across a range of reading measures, including word naming, nonword naming, and text comprehension tasks. The meta-analysis included 66 treatment-control comparisons taken from 38 experiments, and the main findings can be seen in Table 1 . Based on these findings, Ehri et al. ( 2001 ) concluded in the abstract:

“Systematic phonics instruction helped children learn to read better than all forms of control group instruction, including whole language. In sum, systematic phonics instruction proved effective and should be implemented as part of literacy programs to teach beginning reading as well as to prevent and remediate reading difficulties.”

The NRP report has been cited over 24,000 times and continues to be used in support of systematic phonics, with over 1000 citations in 2019. In addition, the Ehri et al. ( 2001 ) article has been cited over 1000 times. However, a careful look at the results undermines these strong conclusions.

The most important limitation is that systematic phonics did not help children labeled “low achieving” poor readers ( d  = 0.15, not significant). These were children above first grade who were below average readers and whose cognitive level was below average or not assessed. By contrast, children labeled “reading disabled” who were below grade level in reading but at least average cognitively and were above first grade in most cases did benefit ( d  = 0.32). Note, by definition, half the population of children above grade 1 will have an IQ below average, and it is likely that more than 50% of struggling readers above grade 1 will fall into this category given the comorbidity of developmental disorders (Gooch et al. 2014 ). Of course, additional research may show that systematic phonics does benefit low achieving poor readers (the NRP only included eight comparison groups in this condition), but there is no evidence for this from the NRP meta-analysis.

Second, based on the finding that effect sizes were greater when phonics instruction began by first grade ( d  = 0.55) rather than after first grade ( d  = 0.27), the authors of the NRP wrote in the executive summary “Phonics instruction taught early proved much more effective than phonics instruction introduced after first grade” (pp. 2–93). But in the body of the text, it becomes clear that findings do not support this strong conclusion. One problem is that the majority of older students (78%) in the various studies included in the NRP analysis were either low achieving readers or students with reading disability, and as noted above, systematic phonics was less effective with both these populations (especially the former group). With regard to the normally developing older readers, the NRP meta-analysis only included seven comparison groups, and four of them used the Orton-Gillingham method that was developed for younger students. As noted by Ehri et al. ( 2001 ):

“The conclusion that phonics instruction is less effective when introduced beyond first grade may be premature… Other types of phonics programs might prove more effective for older readers without any reading problems.” (p. 428)

This is straightforwardly at odds with the above executive summary and explains why so many authors cite the NRP as providing evidence that early phonics instruction is important.

Third, although the authors of the NRP emphasized that the systematic phonics had long-term impact, the effect size declined from d  = 0.41 when children were tested immediately following the intervention to d  = 0.27 following a 4 to 12-month delay. However, the authors did not assess whether the long-term benefits extended to spelling, reading texts, or reading comprehension. Given that the short-term effects on spelling, reading texts, or reading comprehension was much reduced compared with the overall short-term effect (Table 1 ), there is no reason to assume these effects persisted.

Fourth, the evidence that that systematic phonics is more effective than whole language is weaker still. This claim is not based on the overall effect size of d  = 0.41, but rather, on a subanalysis that specifically compared systematic phonics to whole language. This analysis was based on 12 rather than 38 studies, and not one of these 12 studies used a randomized control trial (RCT) design. This analysis showed a reduced overall effect of d  = 0.31 (still significant), with the largest effect obtained for decoding (mean of the reported effect sizes was d  = 0.55) and smallest effect on comprehension (mean of the reported effect sizes was d  = 0.19), with only two studies assessing performance following a delay. And although the NRP is often taken to support the efficacy of synthetic systematic phonics (the version of phonics legally mandated in the UK), the NRP meta-analysis only included four studies relevant for this comparison (of 12 studies that compared systematic phonics with whole language, only four assessed synthetic phonics). The effect sizes in order of magnitude were d  = 0.91 and d  = 0.12 in two studies that assessed grade 1 and 2 students, respectively (Foorman et al. 1998 ); d  = 0.07 in a study that asses grade 1 students (Traweek & Berninger, 1997 ); and d  = − 0.47 in a study carried out on grade 2 students (Wilson & Norman, 1998 ).

In sum, rather than the strong conclusions emphasized the executive summary of the NRP ( 2000 ) and the abstract of Ehri et al. ( 2001 ), the appropriate conclusion from this meta-analysis should be something like this:

Systematic phonics provides a small short-term benefit to spelling, reading text, and comprehension, with no evidence that these effects persist following a delay of 4–12 months (the effects were not reported nor assessed). It is unclear whether there is an advantage of introducing phonics early, and there are no short- or long-term benefit for majority of struggling readers above grade 1 (children with below average intelligence). Systematic phonics did provide a moderate short-term benefit to regular word and pseudoword naming, with overall benefits significant but reduced by a third following 4–12 months.

And even these weak conclusions in support of systematic phonics are not justified given subsequent work by Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 ) and Torgerson et al. ( 2006 ) who reanalyzed the studies (or a subset of studies) included in the NRP, as described next.

Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 )

Camilli et al. ( 2003 ) identified a number of flaws in the NRP meta-analysis, but here I emphasize one, namely, it was not designed to assess whether there is any benefit in teaching phonics systematically. Similar design choices were made by all subsequent meta-analyses taken to support systematic phonics, and this has led to unwarranted conclusions from these meta-analyses as I detail below.

As noted above, the headline figure from the NRP analysis is that systematic phonics showed an overall immediate effect size of d  = 0.41. What needs to be emphasized is that this figure is the product of comparing systematic phonics with a heterogeneous control condition that included (1) intervention studies that used unsystematic phonics and (2) intervention studies that used no phonics. As elementary point of logic, if you compare systematic phonics to a mixture of different methods, some of which use unsystematic phonics and other that use no phonics, then it is not possible to conclude that systematic phonics is more effective than unsystematic phonics. In order to assess whether the “systematic” in systematic phonics is important, it is necessary to compare systematic phonics to studies that included unsystematic phonics, something that the NRP ( 2000 ) did not do.

The reason why this is important is that unsystematic phonics is standard in common alternatives to systematic phonics. Indeed, in addition to the widespread use of unsystematic phonics in the USA prior to the NPR ( 2000 ) report (as shown above in a quote from NRP), Her Majesty’s Inspectorate ( 1990 ) reported that unsystematic phonics was also common in the UK prior to the legal requirement to teach systematic synthetic phonics in England in 2007, writing

“...phonic skills were taught almost universally and usually to beneficial effect” (p. 2) and that “Successful teachers of reading and the majority of schools used a mix of methods each reinforcing the other as the children’s reading developed” (p. 15).

Accordingly, the important question is whether systematic phonics is more effective than the unsystematic phonics that is used in alternative teaching methods.

In order to assess the importance of teaching phonics systematically, Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 ) coded the studies included in the NRP as having no phonics, unsystematic phonics, or systematic phonics. In addition, the authors also noted that some moderator variables were ignored by the NRP analysis that may have contributed to the outcomes. Accordingly, the authors also coded whether or not the intervention studies included language-based reading activities such as shared writing, shared reading, or guided reading, whether treatments were carried out in the regular class or involved tutoring outside the class, and whether basal readers were used (if known). Both the experimental and control groups were coded with regard to these moderator variables. It should also be noted that the Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 ) analyses were carried out on a slightly modified dataset given problems with some of the studies and conditions included in the NRP report. For example, the authors dropped one study (Vickery et al., 1987 ) that did not include a control condition (an exclusion condition according to the NRP) and included three studies that were incorrectly excluded (the studies did fulfill the NRP inclusion criterion), resulting in a total of 40 rather than 38 studies. The interested reader can find out more details regarding the slightly modified dataset in Camilli et al. ( 2003 ), but in any case, the different datasets produce the same outcome as discussed below.

The Camilli et al. ( 2003 ) analysis showed that effect size of systematic phonics compared with nonsystematic phonics was significant, but roughly half the size of the effect of systematic phonics reported in the NRP report ( d  = 0.24 vs. d =  0.41). Interesting, the analysis also found significant and numerically larger effects of systematic language activities ( d  = 0.29) and tutoring ( d  = 0.40). The subsequent analysis by Camilli et al. ( 2006 ) was carried out on the same dataset but used a new method of analysis (a multilevel modeling approach) and included three rather than two levels of language-based reading activities as a moderator variable (none vs., some, vs. high levels of language-based activities). This analysis revealed an even smaller effect of systematic phonics ( d  = 0.12) that was no longer significant. Camilli et al. ( 2006 ) took these findings to challenge the strong conclusion drawn by the authors of the NRP.

These analyses were subsequently supported by Stuebing et al. ( 2008 ) who reanalyzed the Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 ) dataset and showed that the different outcomes were not the consequence of the slightly different studies included in the Camilli and the NPR meta-analyses. However, Stuebing et al. ( 2008 ) drew a different conclusion, writing

The NRP question is analogous to asking about the value of receiving the intervention versus not receiving the intervention. The Camilli et al. ( 2003 ) report is analogous to asking what is the value of receiving a strong form of the intervention compared to a receiving weaker forms of the intervention and relative to factors that moderate the outcomes. From our view, both questions are reasonable for intervention studies.

But the two questions are not equally relevant to teaching policy. The relevant question is whether systematic phonics is better than preexisting practices. Given that unsystematic phonics was standard practice, and given the Camilli et al. ( 2006 ) analysis failed to show an advantage of systematic over unsystematic phonics, Camilli et al. analysis challenges the main conclusion that schools should introduce systematic phonics.

To avoid any conclusion, it is important to highlight that the Camilli et al. ( 2006 ) reanalysis of the NRP dataset does not suggest that grapheme-phoneme knowledge is unimportant. Indeed, their reanalysis suggests that systematic phonics is significantly better than a nonphonics control condition. Rather, their key finding is that systematic phonics was no better than nonsystematic phonics as commonly used in schools.

Torgerson et al. ( 2006 )

The Torgerson et al. ( 2006 ) meta-analysis was primarily motivated by another key limitation of the NRP report not touched on thus far, namely, the fact that the NRP included studies that employed both randomized and nonrandomized designs. Given the methodological problems with nonrandomized studies, Torgerson et al. ( 2006 ) carried out a new meta-analysis that was limited to randomized control trials (RCTs). But it is worth noting two additional limitations of the NRP report that motivated this analysis.

First, the authors were concerned that bias played a role in 13 RCT studies included in the original NRP report given that the NRP report only considered published studies (studies that obtained null effects may have been more difficult to publish). Indeed, the authors carried out a funnel plot analysis on these 13 studies and concluded that the results provided: “…prima facie evidence for publication bias, since it seems highly unlikely that no RCT has ever returned a null or negative result in this field.” Accordingly, Torgerson et al. ( 2006 ) searched for unpublished studies that met their inclusion criteria. They found one additional study that reported an effect size of − 0.17 that they included in their analyses. Note that this bias would have inflated the small effects reported in the NRP ( 2000 ) and the Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 ) meta-analyses. Second, Torgerson et al. removed two studies that should have been excluded from the NRP analyses (Gittelman and Feingold 1983 , because it did not include a phonics instruction intervention group; Manzticopoulos et al., 1992 , because the children in the control condition did not receive a reading intervention, and the attrition rate of the studies was extreme, with 437 children randomized and only 168 children tested). This led to 12 studies that compared systematic phonics to a control condition that included unsystematic phonics or no phonics instruction control. The key positive result was with regard to word reading accuracy with an effect size estimated to between 0.27 and 0.38 (depending on assumptions built into the analyses). By contrast, no significant effects were obtained for comprehension ( d estimates ranging between 0.24 and 0.35), or spelling ( d  = 0.09).

There are, however, reasons to question the significant word reading accuracy results. This result was largely due to one outlier study (Umbach et al. 1989 ) that obtained a massive effect on word reading accuracy ( d  = 2.69). Footnote 1 In this study, the control group was taught by two regular teachers with help from two university supervised practicum students, whereas the experimental group was taught by four Masters’ degree students who were participating in a practicum at a nearby university. Accordingly, there is a clear confound in the design of the study. Torgerson et al. themselves reanalyzed the results when this study was excluded and found that the word reading accuracy result was reduced ( d estimates between 0.20 and 0.21) with the effect just reaching significance one analysis ( p  = 0.03) and nonsignificant on another ( p  = 0.09). For summary of findings, see Table 1 . And even these findings likely overestimate the efficacy of systematic phonics given the evidence that bias may have inflated the estimate of effect sizes in this study. As Torgerson et al. wrote

In addition, the strong possibility of publication bias affecting the results cannot be excluded. This is based on results of the funnel plot... It seems clear that a cautious approach is justified (p. 48).

The conclusions one can draw are further weakened by the quality of the studies included in the meta-analysis, with the authors writing

…none of the 14 trials reported method of random allocation or sample size justification, and only two reported blinded assessment of outcome… all were lacking in their reporting of some issues that are important for methodological rigor. Quality of reporting is a good but not perfect indicator of design quality. Therefore due to the limitations in the quality of reporting the overall quality of the trials was judged to be “variable” but limited.

Nevertheless, despite all the above issues, the authors concluded

Systematic phonics instruction within a broad literacy curriculum appears to have a greater effect on childrens progress in reading than whole language or whole word approaches. The effect size is moderate but still important.

This quote not only greatly exaggerates the strength of the findings (which helps explain why the meta-analysis has been cited over 250 times in support of systematic phonics), but it again reveals a misunderstanding regarding the conclusions one can draw from the design of the meta-analysis. The study continued to use the design of the NRP ( 2000 ) meta-analysis that compared systematic phonics to a control condition that combined (1) nonsystematic phonics and (2) no phonics. Accordingly, it is not possible to conclude that systematic phonics is more effective than whole word instruction that uses unsystematic phonics. That would require a direct comparison between conditions that was not carried out.

To summarize thus far, a careful review of the NPR ( 2000 ) findings show that that the benefits of systematic phonics for reading text, spelling, and comprehension are weak and short-lived, with reduced or no benefits for struggling readers beyond grade 1. The subsequent Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 ) and Torgerson et al. ( 2006 ) reanalyses further weakens these conclusions. Indeed, Camilli et al. ( 2006 ) found no overall benefit of systematic phonics over nonsystematic phonics, and Torgerson et al. ( 2006 ) did not find any benefit of systematic phonics in the subset of RCT studies included in the NRP for word reading accuracy, comprehension, or spelling (when one outlier study was excluded). The null effects in the Torgerson et al. ( 2006 ) meta-analysis were obtained despite evidence for publication bias and flawed design that combined unsystematic and no phonics studies into a control condition (with both of these factors serving to inflate the benefits of systematic phonics).

McArthur et al. ( 2012 )

This meta-analysis was designed to assess the efficacy of systematic phonics with children, adolescents, and adults with reading difficulties. The authors included studies that use randomization, quasi-randomization, or minimization (that minimizes differences between groups for one or more factors) to assign participants to either a systematic phonics intervention group or a control group that received no training or alternative training that did not involve any reading activity (e.g., math training). That is, the control group received no phonics at all. Based on these criteria, the authors identified 11 studies that assessed a range of reading outcomes, although some outcome measures were only assessed in a few studies. Critically, the authors found a significant effect of word reading accuracy ( d  = 0.47, p  = 0.03) and nonword reading accuracy ( d  = 0.76, p  < 0.01), whereas no significant effects were obtained in word reading fluency ( d  = − 0.51; expected direction), reading comprehension ( d  = 0.14), spelling ( d  = 0.36), and nonword reading fluency ( d  = 0.38, the unexpected direction). Based on the results, the authors concluded that systematic phonics improved performance, but they were also cautious in their conclusion, writing

…there is a widely held belief that phonics training is the best way to treat poor reading. Given this belief, we were surprised to find that of 6632 records, we found only 11 studies that examined the effect of a relatively pure phonics training programme in poor readers. While the outcomes of these studies generally support the belief in phonics, many more randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are needed before we can be confident about the strength and extent of the effects of phonics training per se in English-speaking poor word readers.

But there are reasons to question even these modest conclusions. One notable feature of the word reading accuracy results is that they were largely driven by two studies (Levy and Lysynchuk 1997 ; Levy et al. 1999 ) with effect sizes of d  = 1.12 and d  = 1.80, respectively. The remaining eight studies that assessed reading word accuracy reported a mean effect size of 0.16 (see Appendix 1.1, page 63). This is problematic given that the children in the Levy studies were trained on one set of words, and then, reading accuracy was assessed on another set of words that shared either onsets or rhymes with the trained items (e.g., a child might have been trained on the word beak and later be tested on the word peak ; the stimuli were not presented in either paper). Accordingly, the large benefits observed in the phonics conditions compared with a nontrained control group only shows that training generalized to highly similar words rather than word reading accuracy more generally (the claim of the meta-analysis). In addition, both Levy et al. studies taught systematic phonics using one-on-one tutoring. Although McArthur et al. reported that group size did not have an overall impact on performance, one-on-one training studies with a tutor showed an average effect size of d  = 0.93 (over three studies). Accordingly, the large effect size for word reading accuracy may be more the product of one-on-one training with a tutor rather than any benefits of phonics per se, consistent with the findings of Camilli et al. ( 2003 ). In the absence of the two studies by levy and colleagues, there is no evidence from the McArthur et al. ( 2012 ) meta-analysis that systematic phonics condition improved word reading accuracy, word reading fluency, reading comprehension, spelling, or nonword reading fluency, leaving only a benefit for nonword reading accuracy.

But even putting these concerns aside, the most important point to note is that this meta-analysis compared systematic phonics to no extra training at all, or to training on nonreading tasks. Accordingly, it is not appropriate to attribute any benefits to systematic phonics. Any form of extra instruction may have mediated the (extremely limited) gains. So once again, this analysis should not be used to make any claims that systematic phonics is better than standard alternative methods, such as whole language that do include unsystematic phonics.

Galuschka et al. ( 2014 )

Galuschka et al. carried out a meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies that focused on children and adolescents with reading difficulties. The authors identified 22 trials with a total of 49 comparisons of experimental and control groups that tested a wide range of interventions, including five trials evaluating reading fluency trainings, three phonemic awareness instructions, three reading comprehension trainings, 29 phonics instructions, three auditory trainings, two medical treatments, and four interventions with colored overlays or lenses. Outcomes were divided into reading and spelling measures.

The authors noted that only phonics produced a significant effect, with an overall effect size of g ′ = 0.32, and concluded

This finding is consistent with those reported in previous meta-analyses... At the current state of knowledge, it is adequate to conclude that the systematic instruction of letter-sound correspondences and decoding strategies, and the application of these skills in reading and writing activities, is the most effective method for improving literacy skills of children and adolescents with reading disabilities

However, there are serious problems with this conclusion. Most notably, the overall effect sizes observed for phonics ( g ′ = 0.32) was similar to the outcomes with phonemic awareness instruction ( g ′ = 0.28), reading fluency training ( g ′ = 0.30), auditory training ( g ′ = 0.39), and color overlays ( g ′ = 0.32), with only reading comprehension training ( g ′ = 0.18) and medical treatment ( g ′ = 0.12) producing numerically reduced effects. The reason significant results were only obtained for phonics is that there were many more phonics interventions. In order to support their conclusion that phonics is more effective, the authors need to show an interaction between the phonics condition and the alternative methods. They did not report this analysis, and given the similar effect sizes across conditions (with small sample sizes), this analysis would not be significant. Of course, future research might support the author conclusion, but this meta-analysis does not support it.

To further compromise the authors’ conclusion, Galuschka et al. reported evidence that the published phonics studies were biased using a funnel plot analysis. Using a method called Duval and Tweedie’s trim and fill they measured the extent of publication bias and estimated an unbiased effect size for systematic phonics to be greatly reduced, although still significant, g ′ = 0.198. And yet again, the design of the meta-analysis did not assess whether systematic phonics was more effective than unsystematic phonics (let alone show that systematic phonics is more effective than the alternative methods they did investigate). Nevertheless, the meta-analysis is frequently cited as evidence in support of systematic phonics over whole language (e.g., Lim and Oei 2015 ; Treiman 2018 ; Van der Kleij et al. 2017 ).

Suggate ( 2010 , 2016 )

Suggate ( 2010 ) carried out a meta-analysis to investigate the relative advantages of systematic phonics, phonological awareness, and comprehension-based interventions with children at-risk of reading problems. The central question was whether different forms of interventions were more effective with different age groups of children who varied from preschool to grade 7.

The meta-analysis included peer-reviewed randomized and quasi-experimental studies, with control groups receiving either typical instruction or an alternative “in-house” school reading intervention. They identified 85 studies with 116 interventions: 13 were classified as phonological awareness, 36 as phonics, 37 as comprehension based, and 30 as mixed. Twelve studies were conducted with participants who did not speak English. A range of dependent measures were assessed, from prereading (e.g., letter knowledge, phonemic/sound awareness), reading, and comprehension measures.

Averaging over age, similar overall effects were for phonological awareness ( d  = 0.47), phonics ( d  = 0.50), meaning based ( d  = 0.58), and mixed ( d  = 0.43). The critical novel finding, however, was that there was a significant interaction between method of instruction and age of child, such that phonics was most useful in kindergarten for reading measures, but alternative interventions were more effective for older children. As Suggate ( 2010 ) writes

If reading skills per se are targeted, then there is a clear advantage for phonics interventions early and—taking into account sample sizes and available data—comprehension or mixed interventions later.

However, this is not a safe conclusion. First, the difference in effect size in phonics compared with alternative methods was approximately d  = 0.10 in kindergarten and 0.05 in grade 1 (as estimated from Figure 1 in Suggate 2010 ). This is not a strong basis for arguing the importance of early systematic phonics. It is also important to note that 10% of the studies included in the meta-analysis were carried out on non-English children. Although the overall difference between non-English ( d  = 0.61) and English ( d  = 0.48) studies was reported as nonsignificant, the difference approached significance ( p  = 0.06). Indeed, the phonics intervention that reported the very largest effect size ( d  = 1.37) was carried out in Hebrew speakers (Aram & Biron, 2004 ), and this study contributed to the estimate of the phonics effect size in prekindergarten. Accordingly, the small advantage of phonics (the main novel finding in this report) is inflatedwhen applied to English. And once again, the treatments were compared with a control condition that combined a range of teaching conditions, and accordingly, it is again unclear whether there was a difference between systematic vs. unsystematic phonics during early instruction.

But the most critical limitation is that Suggate’s ( 2010 ) conclusion regarding the benefits of early phonics instruction is contradicted in a subsequent Suggate ( 2016 ) meta-analysis. This meta-analysis included 71 experimental and quasi-experimental reading interventions that assessed the short- and long-term impacts of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and comprehension interventions on prereading, reading, reading comprehension, and spelling measures. The analysis revealed an overall short-term effect ( d  = 0.37) that decreased in a follow-up test ( d  = 0.22; with mean delay of 11.17 months) with phonics producing the most short-lived benefits. Specifically, the long-term effects were phonics, d  = 0.07; fluency, d  = 0.28; comprehension d  = 46; and phonemic awareness, d  = 0.36.

As with the other meta-analyses, there are additional issues that should be raised. For example, a funnel plot observed evidence for publication bias, especially in the long-term condition, and once again, the study does not compare systematic to unsystematic phonics. It is striking that long-term benefits of systematic phonics are so small despite these factors that should be expected to inflate effect sizes.

Other Meta-Analyses and a Systematic Review of Meta-Analyses

There are a number of additional relevant meta-analyses and reviews of meta-analyses that should be mentioned briefly as well.

Hammill and Swanson ( 2006 )

These authors took a different approach to Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 , 2008 ) in criticizing the NRP ( 2000 ) report. Rather than challenging the logic and analyses themselves, they noted that the effect sizes reported in the NRP were small and questioned their significance.

The NRP reported that systematic phonics instruction was effective across a variety of conditions, with 94% of the d ’s supporting the superiority of phonics instruction over other approaches. However, as noted by Hammill and Swanson, the standard convention in evaluating the magnitude of d sizes ( d  = 0.2 is small, d  = 0.5 medium, and d  = 0.9 large) reveals that 65% of the significant d ’s were small. In order to get a better intuitive understanding of the practical significance of the results, the authors converted all these d ’s values to r -type statistics. They noted that the overall effect of 0.44 corresponds to an r 2 value of 0.04. That is, 96% of the variance in reading achievement can be attributed to factors other than the systematic phonics instruction. Footnote 2 The r 2 value for the follow-up analysis (4–12 months later) was 0.02.

What Hammill and Swanson do not acknowledge, however, is that these small effect sizes translate into real benefits when considering an entire population of children. The real problem is not with the size of the effects; it is that many of the critical contrasts were not significant or not assessed, that the small effects that were significant were inflated for the reasons noted above, and perhaps most importantly, the main meta-analysis did not even test the critical hypothesis of whether systematic phonics is better than unsystematic phonics that is used in alternative methods such as whole language.

Han ( 2010 ) and Adesope, Lavin, Tompson, and Ungerleider (2011)

These authors reported meta-analyses that assessed the efficacy of phonics for non-native English speakers learning English. Han ( 2010 ) included five different intervention conditions and dependent measures and reported the overall effect sizes as 0.33 for phonics, 0.41 for phonemic awareness, 0.38 for fluency, 0.34 for vocabulary, and 0.32 for comprehension. In the case of Adesope et al. ( 2011 ), the authors found that systematic phonics instruction improved performance ( g  = + 0.40), but they also found that an intervention they called collaborative reading produced a larger effect ( g  = + 0.48) as did a condition called writing (structured and diary) that produced an effect of g  = + 0.54. Accordingly, ignoring all other potential issues discussed above, these studies do not provide any evidence that phonics is the most effective strategy for reading acquisition.

Sherman ( 2007 )

Sherman compared phonemic awareness and phonics instruction with students in grades 5 through 12 who read significantly below grade-level expectations. Neither method was found to provide a significant benefit.

Torgerson et al. ( 2018 )

Finally, Torgerson et al. carried out a systematic review of all meta-analyses that assessed the efficacy of systematic phonics (unlike the papers discussed above, this is not a meta-analysis itself). They identified 12 meta-analyses, all of which were considered above. The authors raised several concerns regarding design and publication bias of studies included in these meta-analyses and argued that more data (in the form of large randomized controlled studies) are needed before strong conclusions can be made. Nevertheless, the authors still conclude the evidence support systematic phonics, writing

Given the evidence from this tertiary review, what are the implications for teaching, policy and research? It would seem sensible for teaching to include systematic phonics instruction for younger readers – but the evidence is not clear enough to decide which phonics approach is best.

Despite their modest conclusions, the authors are still far too positive regarding the benefits of systematic phonics. In part, this is due to the way the authors summarize the findings they do report. But more importantly it is the consequence of ignoring many of key limitations of the meta-analyses discussed above.

With regard to their own summary of the meta-analyses, they stated that 10 the 12 meta-analyses showed that there were significant benefits of systematic phonics on at least one reading measure, with effect sizes ranging from small to moderate effects (Ehri et al. 2001 ; Camilli et al. 2003 ; Torgerson et al. 2006 ; Sherman 2007 ; Han 2010 ; Suggate 2010 ; Adesope et al. 2011 ; McArthur et al. 2012 ; Galuschka et al. 2014 ; Suggate 2016 ). Furthermore, they note that positive effects were found in the remaining nonsignificant meta-analyses (Camilli et al. 2006 ; Hammill and Swanson 2006 ). They take this to support the conclusion that teaching should include systematic phonics.

One problem with this description of the results is that it does not indicate which measures tended to be significant over the meta-analyses. In fact, as discussed above, most meta-analyses failed to obtain significant effects for the measure we should care about most. For example, only 1 of 12 studies reported significant effects in comprehension, and there is no evidence that this effect survived a delay (NRP 2000 ). And this characterization of the findings obscures the fact that the benefits did not always extend to the children who are below average in their cognitive capacities (NRP 2000 ).

This summary also does not highlight the fact that many of 12 meta-analyses observed larger effect sizes for non-phonics interventions. For example, from Table 3 of Torgerson et al. ( 2018 ), you find out that systematic phonics did not produce the largest effect in 5 of the 12 meta-analyses (Adesope et al. 2011 ; Camilli et al. 2003 ; Camilli et al. 2006 ; Han 2010 ; Suggate 2016 ). And this table does not include the Galuschka et al. ( 2014 ) meta-analysis that reported similar-sized effect sizes for phonics, phonemic awareness instruction, reading fluency training, and auditory training, with the largest numerical effect obtained with color overlays.

In addition, when claiming that 10 of the 12 meta-analyses reported significant benefits of systematic phonics, this included the Suggate ( 2010 ) meta-analysis that was challenged by a subsequent Suggate ( 2016 ) meta-analysis that failed to obtain long-term benefits of systematic phonics. Furthermore, the claim that 10 of the 12 meta-analyses reported a significant benefit for systematic phonics does not incorporate a key point highlighted by Torgerson et al. ( 2018 ) elsewhere in their review, namely, the evidence that publication and method bias have inflated these effect sizes in at least some of these meta-analyses.

The conclusion that systematic phonics is better than alternative methods is further compromised by additional factors not considered by Torgerson et al. ( 2018 ). As detailed above, there were multiple examples of methodological errors in the meta-analyses (e.g., excluding studies that should have been included given the inclusion criteria; Camilli et al. 2003 ; and including studies that should have been excluded given the exclusion criteria, Camilli et al. 2003 ; Torgerson et al. 2006 ), examples of including flawed studies that strongly biased the findings in support of systematic phonics (e.g., the Umbach et al. 1989 ; Levy and Lysynchuk 1997 , Levy et al. 1999 ), including non-English studies that biased the results in support of systematic phonics (Suggate 2010 ), amongst others. These errors consistently biased the estimates of systematic phonics upwards.

Most importantly, however, Torgerson et al. ( 2018 ) did not address the key point identified by Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 , 2008 ) that compromises all meta-analyses used in support of systematic phonics, namely, systematic phonics was compared with a control condition that included both nonsystematic phonics and nonphonics conditions (or only included a nonphonics condition in the case of McArthur et al. 2012 ). Accordingly, these meta-analyses did not even test the hypothesis that systematic phonics is more effective than unsystematic phonics as used in whole language and other methods. For all these reasons, Torgerson et al.’s are unwarranted in their conclusion that systematic phonics is effective for young children.

Summary of Meta-Analyses

In sum, the above research provides little or no evidence that systematic phonics is better than standard alternative methods used in schools. The findings do not challenge the importance of learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences, but they do undermine the claim that systematic phonics is more effective than alternative methods that include unsystematic phonics (such as whole language) or that teach grapheme-phoneme correspondences along with meaning-based constraints on spellings (morphological instruction or structured word inquiry). There can be few areas in psychology in which the research community so consistently reaches a conclusion that is so at odds with available evidence.

The Systematic Phonics Experiment in England

One possible response to the many null results is to note that many of the studies included in these meta-analyses were flawed. On this view, the null results can be attributed to a limitation of the studies rather than any problems with systematic phonics per se. This is hard to reconcile with the fact that these meta-analyses have been cited thousands of times in support of systematic phonics. Nevertheless, the quality of the studies included in the meta-analyses has been repeatedly questioned (e.g., McArthur et al. 2012 ; Torgerson et al. 2006 , 2018 ), and accordingly, it is possible that systematic phonics is effective, but the meta-analyses are simply not picking his up. Another possible response is to note that systematic phonics needs to be taught in combination with many other skills, and the fact that phonics by itself does not improve reading outcomes is not surprising. Again, this is hard to reconcile with the claims that are drawn from the meta-analyses, but these concerns raise the question as to whether there are other sources of data that can be used to assess the benefits of systematic phonics when embedded in a broader literacy environment?

There is. In 2006, Sir Jim Rose wrote a UK government report concerned with the teaching of reading in primary schools in England where he concluded that “... the case for systematic phonic work is overwhelming …” (Rose 2006 , p. 20). Although this conclusion is unwarranted (see above), the report led to the legal requirement to teach synthetic systematic phonics in English state schools since 2007. And since 2012, a PSC was introduced in order to encourage better teaching of systematic phonics and to assess how well children decode regular words and pseudowords. Over 650,000 children took the PSC in 2018 alone. This constitutes a massive naturalistic experiment that can be used to assess the efficacy of systematic phonics, and indeed, it is widely claimed that the experiment has been a success with systematic phonics improving literacy. But once again, a careful look into the findings shows that the data do not support this conclusion. I summarize the findings next.

Machin et al.’s ( 2018 ) Analysis of Standard Assessment Test Results in England Provides Little or No Evidence in Support of Systematic Phonics

The authors took advantage of the fact that systematic phonics instruction was phased in slowly in different local authorities in England, and accordingly, it was possible to compare how children who were part of the systematic phonics trial compared with children who received standard instruction on various standardized language measures. In 2005, the “ Early Reading Development Pilot ” (ERDp) that involved 18 local authorities and 172 schools began with each school receiving funding for a dedicated learning consultant who trained teachers in systematic phonics (typically for 1 year). Then in 2006, the “ Communication, Language and Literacy Development Programme ” (CLLD) that included a further 32 local authorities began, again with each school receiving 1-year funding for a dedicated learning consultant.

In order to assess the immediate efficacy of introducing systematic phonics, scores from the communication, language, and literacy components of foundation stage assessment were collected (when children completed year 1 at age 5). And in order to assess the long-term effects of this intervention, reading scores from SATs key stage 1 (when children were 7 years of age) and reading scores from stage 2 test (when children were 11) were collected. These are standardized tests given to all students in state schools, with teachers providing the assessment in the foundation stage and key stage 1, and the tests externally marked in key stage 2. Various statistical methods were used to control for the differences between the schools included in the trials and those not included, and moderator variables included the impact of language background (native English or not) and economic background (operationalized as children receiving or not receiving a free school lunch).

For the ERDp sample, the authors reported highly significant effect of systematic phonics on the foundation stage assessment immediately after the intervention (0.298), but the effect dissipated on key stage 1 tests (0.075), and was eliminated on the key stage 2 tests (− 0.018). Similarly, with the CLLD treatment, an initially robust effect (0.217) was reduced on the key stage 1 tests (0.017), and then was lost on the key stage 2 tests (0.019). So much like the Suggate ( 2016 ) meta-analyses, the overall systematic phonics intervention effect did not persist. However, Machin et al. ( 2018 ) highlighted that the effects did persist in the key stage 2 tests in the CLLD treatment condition for non-native speakers (0.068) and economically disadvantaged children as measured by their receipt of free school meals (0.062), with both effects significant at the p  < 0.05 levels. They took these small effects to show that phonics does provide long-term benefits for children who are in the most need for literacy interventions, writing

Without a doubt it is high enough to justify the fixed cost of a year’s intensive training support to teachers. Furthermore, it contributes to closing gaps based on disadvantage and (initial) language proficiency by family background.

However, there are both statistical and methodological problems with using these findings to support the efficacy of systematic phonics. With regard to the statistics, apart from the fact that there were no overall long-term effects in either sample, it is important to note that the ERDp sample of children did not show significant advantage for non-native speakers (.045) or for economically disadvantaged children (.050) on the key stage 2 tests. Indeed, for the ERDp sample, there was a tendency for more economically advantaged native English children (not in receipt of free school meals) to read more poorly in the phonics condition in the key stage 2 test (− 0.061), p  < 0.1. As the authors write: “It is difficult to know what to make of this estimate” (p. 22). Note, the long-term negative outcome economically advantaged native English children in the ERDp sample was of a similar magnitude to the long-term benefits enjoyed non-native speakers (.068) and economically disadvantaged children (.062) in the CLLD treatment condition, and accordingly, is difficult to brush this finding aside.

More importantly, this study did not include the appropriate control condition. The advantages in foundation and key stage 1 were the product of intensive training support in systematic phonics to teachers in year 1, but it is possible that similar outcomes would result if intensive training support was given to teachers in whole language instruction, or any other method. As was the case with most of the above meta-analyses, the conclusion the authors made was not even tested.

The Recent Success of English Children on PIRLS Provides Little or No Evidence for Systematic Phonics

A great deal of attention in the mainstream and social media has been given to the recent success of English children in the “Progress in International Reading Literacy Study” (PIRLS) carried out in 2016. PIRLS assesses reading comprehension in fourth graders across a wide range of countries every 5 years: 35 countries participated in 2001, 38 in 2006, 48 in 2011, and 50 in 2016. Many supporters of systematic phonics have noted how far up the league table England has moved since 2006 given that systematic phonics was mandated in English state schools in 2007, and phonics check was introduced in 2012. Specifically, England was in 15th position in 2006 (with a score of 539), joint 11th position in 2011 (score 552), and joint 8th in 2016 (score 559).

In response to the most recent results, Mr. Gibbs, the Minister of State at the Department for Education, said

The details of these findings are particularly interesting. I hope they ring in the ears of opponents of phonics whose alternative proposals would do so much to damage reading instruction in this country and around the world.

A Department for Education report for the UK (December, 2016) reported

The present PIRLS findings provide additional support for the efficacy of phonics approaches, and in particular, the utility of the phonics check for flagging pupils’ potential for lower reading performance in their future schooling.

Sir Jim Rose, author of the Rose ( 2006 ) report, used “the spectacular success of England shown in the latest PIRLS data” as further evidence in support of systematic synthetic phonics (Rose 2017 ).

However, once again, these conclusions are unjustified. One important fact ignored in the above story is that English children did well in 2001, ranking third (scoring 553). Of the six countries that completed all the PIRLS tests from the beginning (England, New Zealand, Russian Federation, Singapore, Sweden, and USA), England has gone from second to third position. If the introduction of systematic phonics is used to explain the improved performance from 2006 to 2016, how is the excellent performance in 2001 explained? In addition, the results of the 2016 PIRLS were based on combing the performance of state and private schools (private schools were not required to implement systematic phonics or use the phonics check). When only state schools are considered, performance dropped to 11th (rather than joint 8th), same as the 2011 PIRLS rating (Solity 2018 ). Note that one of the common criticisms of systematic phonics is that the focus on phonology makes instruction less engaging. The PIRLS 2016 also ranked English children’s enjoyment of reading at 34th, the lowest of any English-speaking country (Solity 2018 ).

It is also interesting to note that Northern Ireland participated in the last two PIRLS, and they did better than England, ranking fifth and sixth in 2011 and 2016, respectively. This is relevant as the reading guidance for key stage 1 published by the “Northern Ireland Education & Library Boards” does not include the words “systematic phonics,” nor do children complete a phonics screening check that was introduced in the UK to improve the administration of phonics in English schools. Of course, reading instruction in Northern Ireland does teach children letter-sound correspondences, but this is carried out along with a range of methods that encourage children to encode the meaning of words and passages. For instance, according to the reading guidance for key stage 1, when children encounter an unknown word, various strategies for naming the word are encouraged, including phonics, using knowledge of context (semantics), and using knowledge of grammar (syntax). This is similar to National Literacy Strategy in place in England from 1998 to 2006 that recommended phonics as one of four “searchlights” for learning to read, along with knowledge of context, grammatical knowledge, word recognition and graphic knowledge. If the introduction of systematic phonics is used to explain the strong performance of England in 2016, how is the even better performance of Northern Ireland explained?

A final point worth emphasizing is that the PIRLS test assesses reading comprehension, and as noted above, only 1 of the 12 meta-analyses reported a benefit for comprehension (NRP 2000 ), and only at a short delay (ignoring the problems of this meta-analysis that question robustness of the short-term effect as well). Attributing any PIRLS gains to phonics is hard to reconcile with existing experimental research.

The Improving Performance on the Phonics Screening Check in England Provides Little or No Evidence that Systematic Phonics Improves Literacy

Since 2012, the UK government has required all children in state schools in England to complete a PSC in year 1 in order “to confirm that all children have learned phonic decoding to an age-appropriate standard” (Department for Education, 2012; p. 4). The phonics screening check is composed of one- and two-syllable real words (e.g., day, grit, shin) and 20 pseudowords that can only be read on the basis of learned grapheme-phoneme correspondences (e.g., fape, blan, geck). Children near the end of year 1 are asked to read the words and pseudowords aloud, with each item marked correct or incorrect. A child who correctly names aloud 32 items (80% of all items) is said the “meet the standard,” whereas a child who misses the standard is to be given further support to improve their phonics knowledge (and complete the phonics check again in year 2).

Strikingly, the performance on the task has improved from 58% students meeting the standard in 2012 to 82% in 2018. This is taken to show that the PSC has improved the teaching of systematic phonics, and this in turn has improved decoding skills. The critical question is whether this has translated into better reading.

The obvious way to test whether the improved decoding skills translate to better reading is to compare the PSC results to the SATs carried out at key stages 1 and 2 during the years 2012–2017. These are the same tests analyzed by Machin et al. ( 2018 ) above (although they analyzed data from before 2012). And in fact, there have been some claims that improved performance on the phonics screening check is associated with improved performance on the SATS. For instance, Buckingham ( 2016 ) writes

There has also been an improvement in Key Stage 1 (Year 2) reading and writing results since the introduction of the Phonics Screening Check. The proportion of students achieving at or above the target reading level hovered around 85% from 2005 to 2011 but steadily increased to 90% in 2015. There was an even greater improvement in writing in the same period—a seven percentage point increase. (p. 16)

The results of the phonics check and the key stage 1 SAT scores are displayed in Fig. 1 .

Results on key stage 1 SAT tests in reading, writing, maths, and science from 2006 to 2018 as well as the results of the phonics screening check from 2012 to 2018. SAT scores to the left of vertical dashed line were achieved without having completed the phonics screening check in year 1, and SAT scores to the right of the vertical dashed lined were achieved after having completed the phonics check in year 1. Accordingly, the improved SAT results on reading and writing between 2011 and 2012 cannot be attributed to the improved administration of phonics

But this characterization of the findings is inconsistent with a report from the Department for Education (Walker, Sainsbury, Worth, Bamforth, & Betts, 2015 ). The authors analyzed the reading and writing scores for the KS1 for the 2 years preceding and following the introduction of the screening check and concluded:

The evidence offered by these analyses is therefore inconclusive in identifying any impact of the [phonics screening check] on literacy performance at KS1 or on progress in literacy between ages five and seven.

Why the different conclusions? One key point to note is that although the SAT scores did start slowly increasing in 2012 (consistent with Buckingham 2016 ), it is not possible to attribute these gains to the phonics screening check because these children completed year 1 in 2011, and accordingly, were never given the PSC. As noted by Walker et al. ( 2015 ):

These analyses of national data therefore indicate small improvements in attainment at KS1, which were a feature before the introduction of the check and continued at a similar pace following the introduction of the check.

In addition, as can be seen from Fig. 1 , there is little evidence that SAT scores for reading and writing improved more than SAT scores for maths or science between 2013 and 2015 or between 2016 and 2018. Footnote 3

Results on key stage 2 SAT tests in reading, writing, maths, and science from 2007 to 2018 as well as the results of the phonics screening check from 2012 to 2018. SAT scores to the left of vertical dashed line were achieved without having completed the phonics screening check in year 1, and SAT scores to the right of the vertical dashed lined were achieved after having completed the phonics check in year 1. The finding that SAT reading results did not improve between 2016 and 2018 indicates that the improved administration of phonics in year 1 (starting in 2012) did not have a long-term impact on the SAT scores

Another important question that can be asked is whether the introduction of the phonics check was associated with improved reading skills at key stage 2 when children were in year 6 (age 11). That is, did the improved teaching of phonics in year 1 (in response to the PSC) have any long-lasting effect on reading outcomes? The results from 2017 provide the first relevant data given that children who completed these key stage 2 SATs were the first to complete the phonics check in 2012 in year 1. As can be seen in Fig. 2 , the reading results when slightly down between 2016 and 2017 (while writing results went slightly up), and despite the large gains in the phonics check between 2012 and 2013 (an increase of 11%), there was no corresponding benefit in the reading and writing performance between the 2017–2018 (e.g., the reading results improved 1% whereas the math results improved 2%). These findings show that the decoding skills of children (as measured by the PSC) did not support short- or long-lasting reading improvement as measured by the key stage 1 and 2 SAT results. Note that the fact that the PSC scores have improved so dramatically demonstrates that systematic phonics instruction has improved in recent years in England. The fact that there is such a stark disconnects between PSC and SAT scores undermines the common claim that systematic phonics has improved literacy in England.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) Results Provide Little or No Evidence that Systematic Phonics Improves Literacy

PISA assesses the scholastic performance of 15-year old students on mathematics, science, and reading. It has been carried out every 3 years since 2000, and critically, the 2018 version is the first to assess the reading outcomes of children in England who were taught systematic phonics in year 1 as legally required post 2007. There is little or no evidence that this cohort of children has benefitted from this new policy as summarized in the PISA 2018 executive summary “The mean scores in reading and science in England have not changed significantly over successive PISA cycles, but in mathematics, England’s overall mean score showed a statistically significant increase compared with PISA 2015.” It is also worth comparing the English results to other countries that use a range of teaching methods, with none requiring systematic phonics: Canada, Singapore, and Northern Ireland did better, whereas the USA, Australia, and New Zealand did equally well. So again, this challenges the claim that systematic phonics has improved reading outcomes in England.

In summary, despite the widespread claim that children are reading better in England since the mandatory inclusion of systematic phonics in state schools in 2007 and the introduction of the PSC in 2012, there is little or no evidence to support this conclusion. Indeed, the only noticeable change in performance is on the PSC itself, with no discernable effects on reading more generally. This is despite the fact that children in England have received early systematic phonics in the context of a broader literacy environment as recommended by the NRP ( 2000 ).

Despite the widespread support for systematic phonics within the research literature, there is little or no evidence that this approach is more effective than many of the most common alternative methods used in school, including whole language. This does not mean that learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences is unimportant, but it does mean that there is little or no empirical evidence that systematic phonics leads to better reading outcomes. The “reading wars” that pitted systematic phonics against whole language is best characterized as a draw. The conclusion should not be that we should be satisfied with either systematic phonics or whole language, but rather teachers and researchers should consider alternative methods of reading instruction. For example, one possibility is that reading instruction in English should focus more on the role that meaning plays in organizing spellings (via morphology) and that English spelling system makes sense once the interrelation between phonology, morphology, and etymology are considered (Bowers and Bowers 2017 , 2018c ). Of course, other possibilities need to be considered as well, but the first step in motivating more research into alternative forms of instruction is to realize that there is a problem with the current approach.

For some reason, the NRP report estimated the word reading accuracy effect size to be 1.3 whereas Torgerson et al. reported it to be 2.69. Umbach and Darch did not report standardized effect sizes themselves, but reported that the word identification scores from the Woodcock Reading Master subtest were 30.43 and 10.36 in the experimental and control conditions, respectively.

Note, the overall effect size reported in the NRP is estimated as .44 or .41, depending on the specific tests that are included in the analyses.

Note, the tests changed in 2016, and this accounts for the large dip in performance.

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I would like to thank Patricia Bowers, Peter Bowers, Rebecca Marsh, Kathy Rastle, and Gail Venable for comments on previous drafts and Abla Hatherell for help on compiling the data for Figures 1 and 2.

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Bowers, J.S. Reconsidering the Evidence That Systematic Phonics Is More Effective Than Alternative Methods of Reading Instruction. Educ Psychol Rev 32 , 681–705 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09515-y

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Opinion: Phonics lessons aren’t working - here’s a better way to teach children to read and write

28 May 2024

Research proposing a new model called the "Double Helix of Reading and Writing" is better for young children than the latest international trend in teaching synthetic phonics, explains Professor Dominic Wyse (IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education & Society) in The Conversation.

Since 2010, five and six-year-old children in England have been taught to read using a particular variant of “systematic phonics”. 

“Phonics” describes methods of teaching reading that emphasise teaching how phonemes – the smallest sounds in the words of oral language – are represented by letters. In England, the type of phonics teaching is best described as “narrow synthetic phonics”. 

This is because England’s curriculum policies and guidance have restricted phonics lessons to an overwhelming emphasis on phonemes and letters at the expense of other aspects of reading, and writing, that are not to be covered in phonics lessons. Phonics is taught using special “decodable books”, rather than real books. 

Aspects such as comprehension, engaging with real books, and writing activities, are all to be taught in different lessons. Yet my research and other studies have found that a more effective way of teaching reading would see phonics and decoding taught with these other main elements, in lessons that should focus on reading and writing at the same time. 

One consequence of England’s synthetic phonics is that children are likely to be less motivated to read because synthetic phonics lessons are not focused on motivation and real purposes for reading. 

Models of reading

The way reading is taught in England stems from the interpretation of an influential theory known as “The Simple View of Reading”. This proposed that reading comprises two elements: decoding and comprehension. In England, this has led to the separation of the teaching of decoding from other parts of the curriculum subject of English. 

In spite of some positive aspects, the main limitation of the Simple View of Reading – and some other, similar models for learning to read – is that the original evidence base was research done with children who struggle with reading, rather than research done with more typical readers. 

What’s more, the models do not include various elements that are important for effective teaching because they are more focused on a limited range of elements of children’s learning. For example, the different languages and dialects that children may speak are not accounted for. 

My new research with colleague Charlotte Hacking proposes a new model of reading, which we call the “Double Helix”.

The starting points for teaching inspired by our Double Helix model are children, their languages, their experiences in homes and communities, and the texts that they have encountered. Lessons focus first and foremost on motivating children through the use of real books – standard books written for children rather than texts specially produced for phonics schemes. 

The lessons integrate the teaching of reading and writing. All lessons are driven by the need to motivate children and to ensure that the purposes of reading and writing, to comprehend and compose texts, are first and foremost.

Phonemes and letters are taught, but this teaching is integrated with other vital components of reading. For example, lessons should always use whole texts – books with stories rather than decodable books – to stimulate children’s interest. A focus on a particular phoneme to be taught is done by selecting a word and sentence in the text and then identifying how the letters in the word represent the phoneme. A range of other discussions and activities are also part of this phonics teaching. 

During a lesson using this approach, children would be asked to comment on all kinds of questions about the pictures and the story, not just questions about phonemes and letters. They would do writing in the lesson. Phonics teaching would be part of the new approach to teaching, but balanced with all the other elements, so that reading and writing made sense. 

There is an international trend towards an increasing use of synthetic phonics, seen in Australia, provinces of Canada and the USA. In some countries, this trend has been influenced by the narrow approach to synthetic phonics in England that intensified from 2010 onwards. 

But as an expert in reading education, I think that this trend is not backed up by a balanced and rigorous appraisal of the evidence of what works in the teaching of reading and writing. There are other, better ways than England’s focus on synthetic phonics.

This article first appeared in  The Conversation  on 28 th  May 2024.

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The fight for phonics in early years reading

July 4th 2018

There is extensive research on how children learn to read and how best to teach them. One of the most consistent findings from methodologically sound scientific research is that learning to decode words using phonics is an essential element of early reading instruction. 1 Language comprehension (vocabulary and understanding of semantics, syntax, and so on) is also essential to gain meaning from reading, of course. But children must first be able to accurately identify the words on the page or screen before they can bring meaning to what they are reading. 2

Many high-quality studies over the last two decades in particular, including systematic reviews, have shown that classroom programmes and interventions with an explicit, systematic phonics instruction component are more effective in teaching children to read than those without such a component. 3 More recently, a teaching method called systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) has garnered strong evidence in its favour. 4 In synthetic phonics, teaching starts with a sequence of simple letter-sound correspondences, building to the more complex code as children master the skills of blending and segmenting. 5

Systematic synthetic phonics is well-researched in school classrooms and in clinical settings. It is also supported by cognitive science research on the processes that take place in the brain when children learn to read. This research shows that reading is not like speaking: the human brain is not innately wired for reading to develop automatically with exposure to print. Making the cognitive connections between print, sound and meaning requires making physical neurological connections between three distinct areas of the brain. 6 Some children create these neural connections relatively quickly but others require methodical, repeated and explicit teaching. 7 This is particularly true for a complex language like English where the relationships between letters and sounds is not uniform in all words.

Despite the clear evidence supporting systematic phonics instruction, there is still debate about the role of phonics in learning to read and how to teach it effectively. The reasons for this are many, and interrelated. While the points listed here are drawn from the Australian context and experience (particularly in the state of New South Wales), they are also relevant in other countries.

• Many teachers do not have sound knowledge of language constructs and the most effective ways to teach reading, and generally overestimate what they know. 8 A recent study of prep teachers (first year of formal schooling), found that only 53% could correctly define a morpheme and only 38% could correctly define phonemic awareness. 9 The latter is a powerful predictor of reading ability and a critical element of initial reading instruction. 10
• Initial Teacher Education courses do not consistently provide graduate teachers with evidence-based reading instruction strategies and this is often compounded by low-quality professional learning. 11
• Contradictions within one department lead to teachers being given strongly conflicting messages.
• For example, the NSW government reading programme ‘L3’ is inconsistent with a document on effective, evidence-based reading instruction produced by the same government. 12
• Important policy decisions are frequently made by education ministers and department executives who don’t have a good understanding of the evidence and research. They are often guided by people whose knowledge and experience is in literacy more broadly, or even just primary education generally; while early reading instruction and intervention is a highly specialised field of research and expertise. An example of this was the NSW Ministerial Advisory Group on Literacy and Numeracy (MAGLAN), which produced a report that misrepresented important educational strategies such as response to intervention. 13
• Very few literacy teaching programmes and interventions are subjected to rigorous trials or evaluations. 14
• Endorsement of expensive and unproven interventions that invoke neuroscience or involve computers, or both. There are numerous programmes that claim to help children learn to read by doing anything but actually teaching them to read. 15

Despite the clear evidence supporting systematic phonics instruction, there is still debate about the role of phonics in learning to read and how to teach it effectively.

• The influence of people in both the public and private sectors who continue to promote theories of reading that do not reflect current research on effective reading instruction. 16
• Rejection of research-informed policy proposals without careful consideration of the evidence, instead relying on conspiracy theories and ad hominem attacks. 17
• The perception of some programmes and policies as being ‘too big to fail’. It can take years, and sometimes even decades, to replace them even after research has shown them to be ineffective (for example: reading recovery). 18
• Significant investment in resources, buildings and furniture that are connected to outmoded and ineffective ways of teaching. For example:
• Schools have spent thousands of dollars building up libraries of levelled readers and other resources designed for reading methods based around whole language and ‘three-cueing’ approaches. This makes it difficult for those schools to make dramatic changes to reading instruction.
• School furniture and buildings are frequently designed in ways that do not accommodate explicit instruction pedagogies. The open classroom is one example of this: research has shown that noise levels in open classrooms are a problem for students. 19 Yet many new government and Catholic schools are being built with open classrooms that exacerbate these problems.
• Widespread misinformation about effective teaching methods, including the misrepresentation of synthetic phonics and the misuse of terms like ‘explicit teaching’. 20

Despite all of this, there are reasons for optimism. The NSW government has recently allowed public schools to use funding that was earmarked for the reading recovery programme for other reading interventions; the Australian government is negotiating with the state and territory governments to introduce a Year 1 Phonics Check; and the newest version of the Australian Curriculum has a much greater emphasis on phonemic awareness and phonics. Acknowledgement of the importance of explicit instruction is growing and becoming more accepted, even if it is not always put perfectly into practice. Much has been achieved but there is still much to be done.

Dr Jennifer Buckingham is a senior research fellow and director of the FIVE from FIVE reading project at The Centre for Independent Studies ( www.fivefromfive.org.au ). Jennifer’s doctoral research was on effective instruction for struggling readers and she has written numerous reports and peer-reviewed articles on reading instruction and literacy policy. She is a board member of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, an Associate Investigator at the Centre for Cognition and Its Disorders at Macquarie University, a member of the Learning Difficulties Australia Council, and recently chaired an Australian Government expert advisory panel on the introduction of a Year 1 literacy and numeracy check.

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[ddownload id=”15750″] a PDF version of this issue.

1 Hulme, C. & Snowling, M. J. (2013) ‘Learning to read: what we know and what we need to understand better’, Child Development Perspectives, 7 (1) pp. 1–5.

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4 Johnston, R. S., McGeown, S. & Watson, J. E. (2011) ‘Long-term effects of synthetic versus analytic phonics teaching on the reading and spelling ability of 10 year old boys and girls’, Reading and Writing, 25 (6) pp. 1365–1384. doi.org/10.1007/s11145-011-9323-x; Seidenberg, M. (2017) Language at the speed of sight . New York, NY: Basic Books.

5 Five from Five (no date) ‘Explicit phonics instruction’. www.fivefromfive.org.au/explicit-phonics-instruction/

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7 Rupley, W. H., Blair, T. R. & Nichols, W. D. (2009) ‘Effective reading instruction for struggling readers: the role of direct/explicit teaching’, Reading & Writing Quarterly, 25 (2–3) pp. 125–138. DOI: 10.1080/10573560802683523; doi.org/10.1080/10573560802683523

8 Snow, P. (2016) ‘Elizabeth Usher Memorial Lecture: language is literacy is language – positioning speech-language pathology in education policy, practice, paradigms and polemics’, International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 18 (3) pp. 216–228. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/17549507.2015.1112837

9 Stark, H. L., Snow, P., Eadie, P. A. & Goldfeld, S. R. (2016) ‘Language and reading instruction in early years’ classrooms: the knowledge and self-rated ability of Australian teachers’, Annals of Dyslexia, 66 (1) pp. 28–54. link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11881-015-0112-0

10 Melby-Lervåg, M., Lyster, S. A. & Hulme, C. (2012) ‘Phonological skills and their role in learning to read: a meta-analytic review’, Psychological Bulletin, 138 (2) pp. 322–352. dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0026744

11 Meeks, L. J. & Kemp, C. R. (2017) ‘How well prepared are Australian preservice teachers to teach early reading skills?’, Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 42 (11) pp. 1–17. dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2017v42n11.1

12 Neilson, R. & Howell, S. (2015) ‘A critique of the L3 Early Years Literacy Program’, Learning Difficulties Australia Bulletin 47 (2) pp. 7–12; NSW CESE (2017) ‘Effective reading instruction in the early years of school’. Sydney: NSW Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation. www.cese.nsw.gov.au//images/stories/PDF/Effective_Reading_Instruction_AA.pdf

13 Buckingham, J. (2012) ‘Mistakes writ large if reading goes wrong’, The Sydney Morning Herald , 7 May. www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/mistakes-writ-large-if-reading-goes-wrong-20120506-1y6ry.html; Ministerial Advisory Group on Literacy and Numeracy (2012) ‘Report on the outcomes of consultation: literacy and numeracy action plan – initial framework’.

14 Meiers, M., Reid, K., McKenzie, P. & Mellor, S. (2013) Literacy and numeracy interventions in the early years of schooling: a literature review: report to the Ministerial Advisory Group on Literacy and Numeracy. research.acer.edu.au/policy_analysis_misc/20

15 Han, E. (2013) ‘Brain Gym claims challenged’, The Sydney Morning Herald , 13 January. www.smh.com.au/nsw/brain-gym-claims-challenged-20130112-2cmes.html; Wood, P. (2017) ‘Experts question Arrowsmith program for kids with learning difficulties’, ABC News Online , 21 March www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-21/experts-question-arrowsmith-program-for-learning-difficulties/8363690

16 Emmitt, M., Hornsby, D. & Wilson, L. (2013) ‘The place of phonics in learning to read and write.’ Australian Literacy Educators’ Association. www.alea.edu.au/documents/item/773

17 Mulheron, M. (2017) ‘President writes: the darker purpose’, Education NSW Teachers Federation website. www.education.nswtf.org.au/education27/news-and-features-1/president-writes/

18 NSW CESE (2015) Reading recovery: a sector-wide analysis. Sydney: NSW Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation. www.cese.nsw.gov.au/publications-filter/reading-recovery-evaluation

19 Mealings, K. (2015) ‘Students struggle to hear in new fad open-plan classrooms’, The Conversation , 10 February. www.theconversation.com/students-struggle-to-hear-teacher-in-new-fad-open-plan-classrooms-37102

20 Adoniou, M. (2017) ‘How the national phonics test is failing England and why it will fail Australia too’, EduResearch Matters , Australian Association for Research in Education. genius.it/www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=2533

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A commentary on Bowers (2020) and the role of phonics instruction in reading

Jack m. fletcher.

Department of Psychology, University of Houston

Robert Savage

Department of Psychology and Human Development, Institute for Education, University College- London

Sharon Vaughn

Department of Special Education, University of Texas-Austin

Bowers (2020) reviewed 12 meta-analytic syntheses addressing the effects of phonics instruction, concluding that the evidence is weak to nonexistent in supporting the superiority of systematic phonics to alternative reading methods. We identify five issues that limit Bowers’ conclusions: 1. Definition issues; 2. What is the right question? 3. The assumption of “phonics first”; and 4. Simplification of issues around systematic versus explicit phonics. We then go on to consider 5. Empirical issues in the data from meta-analyses, where Bowers misconstrues the positive effects of explicit phonics instruction. We conclude that there is consistent evidence in support of explicitly teaching phonics as part of a comprehensive approach to reading instruction that should be differentiated to individual learner needs. The appropriate question to ask of a 21st science of teaching is not the superiority of phonics versus alternative reading methods, including whole language and balanced literacy, but how best to combine different components of evidence-based reading instruction into an integrated and customized approach that addresses the learning needs of each child.

Introduction

This paper is a commentary on the analysis provided by Bowers (2020) of the effects of systematic phonics instruction. Bowers concludes that the evidence supporting the superiority of systematic phonics to what he describes as alternative reading methods is weak to nonexistent. He argues that any presumed scientific consensus on how to teach reading is premature and based on unsettled science devoted to rhetoric on the superiority of systematic phonics. He concludes:

Despite the widespread support for systematic phonics within the research literature, there is little or no evidence that this approach is more effective than many of the most common alternative methods used in school, including whole language. This does not mean that learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences is unimportant, but it does mean that there is little or no empirical evidence that systematic phonics leads to better reading outcomes.

In this paper, we suggest that in drawing this conclusion, Bowers (2020) is not asking the correct question, makes a number of unwarranted definitional assumptions, and partly because of these problems, misconstrues the available evidence. The title of Bowers paper and his narrative above implies that he will compare phonics approaches with all other available methods. However, Bowers does not present data on all other methods, but instead revisits and attempts to re-analyze existing reviews that have in the main, but not exclusively, contrasted phonics with wider language arts interventions. Most broadly, we thus argue that the question of systematic versus incidental or no phonics instruction is outdated. Furthermore, this question does not build on the knowledge and evidence of the other methods Bowers briefly mentions. These views do not help legislators, educational leaders, researchers, or teachers make the decisions needed to implement effective reading practices.

While we seek to surface some of the problems we identify with Bowers’ analysis, wherever we can, we identify points of agreement. We argue, for example, that Bowers is correct that the value of systematic phonics over morphological training or meaning-based training in isolation is often exaggerated. However, as the difficulties both Bowers and Camilli et al. (2006) observed in coding experimental studies to isolate the effects of phonics instruction, most reading interventions are rarely restricted to a monolithic view of systematic phonics. We conclude that the correct question to ask with the evidence that we now have is: How do we best combine different components of evidence-based reading instruction into an integrated, comprehensive approach that can be customized according to the needs of each learner? This question recognizes the 21 st century science of teaching reading that will involve explicit phonics, other forms of sublexical instruction, and all aspects of language and knowledge.

We first provide an overview of Bowers (2020) , and then identify five issues that limit his conclusions. Three of these are conceptual issues related to definition, the question of interest, and the assumption of “phonics first.” We also discuss two challenges involving simplification of issues concerning systematic versus explicit phonics instruction and empirical issues related to interpreting the meta-analyses. We provide data that supports our contention that contemporary instructional research has moved beyond the comparisons made by Bowers.

Overview and Background

Bowers (2020) constructed the paper in three sections. First, he reviewed different methods of reading instruction, defining systematic phonics as an approach that

explicitly teaches children grapheme-phoneme correspondences prior to emphasizing the meanings of written words in text (as in whole language or baelanced literacy instruction) or the meaning of written words in isolation (as in morphological instruction). That is, systematic phonics is committed to the “phonology first” hypothesis. It is called systematic because it teaches grapheme-phoneme correspondences in an organized sequence as opposed to incidentally or on a “when-needed” basis. Several versions of systematic phonics exist (most notably synthetic and analytic), but they all adopt the “phonology first” hypothesis.

Second, Bowers provided an extended review of 12 meta-analyses of “experimental” reading research addressing the role of systematic phonics instruction. Third, he interpreted the results of what he described as a large, naturalistic experiment emanating from a mandate in England in the United Kingdom (UK) to teach systematic phonics. We do not address findings arising from US or UK government policy. While important, policy issues raise distinct questions that deserve separate treatment. Instead, we focus on the scientific research and the meta-analyses that potentially inform evidence-based practice in teaching of reading worldwide.

Definition Issues

We interpret Bowers (2020) statement about phonics approaches to reading instruction as being driven by phonology first and meaning second – whereas, whole language and balanced literacy approaches are meaning first – as being an inaccurate portrayal of reading instruction research in the last several decades. Most approaches to reading instruction that include explicit phonics are also focused on meaning and understanding the words and texts used. The misunderstanding of “meaning first” in whole language/balanced literacy instruction is the over emphasis on teaching students to guess rather than using what is known about the alphabetic principle to read the word(s). The assumption that explicit phonics is based on phonics first and meaning second and whole language/balanced literacy is meaning first and phonics second does not accurately reflect our interpretation of intervention research nor of educational practice. Bowers also seems to mix his concerns about phonics first versus meaning first with a different issue, which is whether phonics instruction should precede instruction in morphology, which is suffused with meaning ( Bowers & Bowers 2017 ).

Whole language and its current iteration, balanced literacy, mean different things to different people and are difficult to define. These approaches often stem from the misunderstanding that skilled adult readers do not explicitly use sublexical strategies to identify words. Therefore, beginning readers should not break words apart. Instead, they should focus on the whole word and its meaning. Instead of “teaching” children to read, the teacher facilitates reading development by providing rich and authentic reading experiences through immersion in age-appropriate literature. Phonics instruction, if provided at all, should be minimal and incidental depending on children’s needs as they encounter text ( Fountas & Pinnel 2012–2013 ). Although some balanced literacy programs are shifting, they do not clearly embrace explicit phonics instruction ( Student Achievement Partners 2020 )

Although Bowers defines whole language as an inclusive approach that incorporates some phonics among other approaches, whole language is a broad label for a range of pedagogical philosophies, often associated with an understanding of learning to read that does not routinely require application of the alphabetic principle. It is not hard to find influential advocates who eschew the teaching of phonics altogether (e.g., Smith 2004 ). If one really were set on coding the phonics delivered within whole language interventions (and we are not), it might justifiably span from none at all to unsystematic, incidental, and infrequently used. The extent to which teachers followed the extreme version of whole language advocated for example by Smith behind their classroom doors is ultimately unknowable.

Bowers’ starting point is to question the findings of Chapter 2 Part II of the 2000 US National Reading Panel report (NRP; NICHD 2000 ) that addresses the role of phonics instruction. As part of multiple meta-analytic and narrative summaries of different domains of reading instruction, the NRP report found through meta-analysis that systematic phonics is an effective component of early reading instruction compared to some/no phonics instruction. The comparisons in the NRP report were studies that examined the relative effects of approaches to reading that emphasized systematic phonics compared to conditions in which incidental or no explicit phonics was utilized. As Bowers acknowledges, the conclusions reached by the NRP were much broader than those involving the single chapter on phonics. The NRP recognized that learning to read required multiple competencies in phonics, phonological-awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, and considering the role of teacher professional development and the role of technology in six equally detailed chapters.

What is the Right Question?

Like many contemporary accounts of the best methods for reading instruction, we interpret many of Bowers’ (2020) arguments as establishing, perhaps unintentionally, a dichotomy of reading methods (i.e. phonics versus whole language). Bowers states in his main conclusion that, “The “reading wars” that pitted systematic phonics against whole language is best characterized as a draw.” Although Bowers also uses broader terms such as “alternative reading methods,” simple comparisons of phonics versus meaning versus morphology for teaching reading to determine which one is best is an outmoded comparison ( Snow & Juel 2005 ). Most empirically minded reading researchers, seemingly including Bowers, would argue that none of these approaches is adequate in isolation. In fact, as Bowers (2020) and Camilli et al. (2006) demonstrated, it is hard to find pure comparisons of approaches that could be called “phonics-only,” “morphological-only,” and “meaning –only.” Even in these comparisons, the interventions are more complex than simply teaching phonics or meaning. We believe current reading intervention research generally embraces this complexity, recognizing the value of both explicit phonics instruction integrated with fluency, language, and comprehension practices that reflect the necessary complexity of reading instruction at both the sublexical and lexical level.

Beyond this broad position, Bowers first correctly claims that in some systematic phonics programs, all of the relevant grapheme-phoneme mappings are first taught explicitly in a prescribed, ordered manner. He then claims, “ This is not possible when teaching the grapheme-phoneme correspondences of words embedded in meaningful texts as typical with whole language (given that order of grapheme-phonemes in meaningful texts is too variable). ” However, there is no shared position among all advocates of systematic phonics requiring that practices such as using authentic “real” books be eschewed. Indeed, it is quite possible to find many examples of studies carried out in England, Canada, New Zealand, and Hong Kong that show that highly systematic prescribed phonics instruction is more effective when integrated with real books compared to more de-contextualized phonics ( Chen & Savage, 2014 ; Hatcher, Hulme, & Ellis, 1994 ; Shapiro & Solity, 2008 ; Tse & Nicholson, 2014 ; Yeung & Savage, 2020 ).

There are very good scientific reasons for asserting that the whole language/balanced literacy argument that learning to read is a “natural” process is misguided. This misguided idea promotes the misunderstanding that all teachers and parents need to do is provide youngsters with supporting materials and environments and reading will develop. Unlike language, reading is not an evolutionary process that is simply activated by immersion in literature or exposure to words ( Liberman 1996 ; Seidenberg 2017 ). Thus, learning to read is not a developmental process that occurs for all individuals as long as the environment is conducive. Rather, reading development is an acquired skill that for most students requires carefully organized instruction and for some students, very explicit and customized instruction.

As noted above, contrasting systematic phonics with reading approaches that teach phonics incidentally or not at all cannot be adequately addressed through empirical syntheses and inadequately addresses the range of learners and their instructional needs. We expect that Bowers would agree that few studies provide adequate information so that they can be coded well enough to characterize all the components of reading instruction to determine the contrasting conditions. One issue that reading researchers struggle with is incorporating sufficient detail within the ever-restricted academic journal word count restrictions. As McArthur et al. (2019) noted, this lack of detail impedes meta-analysis generally and needs to be improved. It is particularly hazardous to try to code papers post hoc into new categories based on such limited information ( Camilli et al. 2006 ). Furthermore, many intervention studies utilize phonics as one of several components in the intervention. The phonics component varies and may vary in systematicity, but the approaches that show the strongest effects are explicit and intentional ( Stuebing et al. 2008 ). The reading program may include instruction at the sublexical level that includes work on morphology, syllables, and larger units of words. However, phonics instruction typically includes word work that teaches common rules regarding phoneme-grapheme correspondence. There are additional moderators to consider that affect outcomes, such as group size, other language and literacy activities, and the amount of time in general education and supplemental intervention ( Camilli et al. 2006 ).

To illustrate some of these complexities, we summarize findings from a study that examined the relative effects of three treatment conditions with various emphases of systematic phonics with and without an emphasis on deeper analysis of words, including morphology and meaning, beyond teaching phoneme-grapheme rules for decoding ( Morris et al. 2012 ). We selected this study because the conditions approximate the effect of systematic phonics versus a no phonics control and shows the advantages of more comprehensive approaches to sublexical and meaning-based instruction.

Utilizing a randomized controlled trial (RCT), 279 children in Grades 2–3 with significant word reading problems were randomly assigned to one of three small group treatment conditions or a comparison condition in which the researchers provided no reading instruction (see Morris et al. 2012 , Figure 1, p. 103 for a flow diagram of the assignments in the study). Morris et al. used a program called Phonological Analysis and Blending/Direct Instruction (PHAB) that teaches grapheme-phoneme relations using Direct Instruction methods ( Engelmann & Bruner 1988 ). PHAB was compared with Phonological and Strategy Instruction (PHAST; Lovett et al. 2000 ), which includes PHAB and strategy-based sublexical instruction. Children are taught five strategies for word recognition: phonological letter- sound decoding through PHAB (Sounding Out); word identification by analogy (Rhyming), how to separate affixes in multisyllabic words (Peeling Off), how to seek familiar parts of unfamiliar words (I Spy), and how to attempt variable vowel pronunciations (Vowel Alert). A third treatment condition was the Retrieval, Automaticity, Vocabulary, Engagement with language, and Orthography program (RAVE-O; Wolf et al. 2000 ). The RAVE-O program included systematic decoding instruction through PHAB, but also targeted four linguistic systems essential to reading proficiency: orthography, semantics, syntax, and morphology. Both PHAST and RAVE-O are based on empirical research and theory showing that the more a child knows about the structures of words, including meaning, the faster the child can decode and understand the word ( Lovett et al. 2000 ; Seidenberg, 2017 ; Wolf & Katzir-Cohen 2001 ). The study also included a comparison group that received no reading instruction from the researchers, instead receiving 70 hours of math instruction and “classroom survival skills” (CSS).

Altogether, there were four groups in the study: PHAST (+ PHAB), RAVE-O (+ PHAB), PHAB+ CSS, and Math + CSS. The relevant comparisons for this paper involve PHAB + CSS with + Math + CSS to estimate the effects of systematic phonics instruction and PHAST (+PHAB) with PHAB + CSS to estimate the effects of the more complex approaches to word reading. We did not include comparisons of PHAST and RAVE-O or PHAST and RAVE-O because PHAST and RAVE-O showed similar outcomes after 70 hours of instruction.

Table 1 shows effect sizes (Hedge’s g ) for outcomes involving word attack, word identification, word reading fluency, spelling, a cloze-based passage comprehension measure, and measures of reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. These effect sizes were computed from Table 3 in Morris et al. (2012) , which provided raw scores for each of these measures at baseline, 35 and 70 hours of intervention, and a one-year follow-up. We focused on outcomes at the end of treatment (i.e., 70 hours) as the most reasonable estimate of effectiveness.

Effect Sizes And Confidence Intervals for Comparisons of Interventions for Poor Readers that Taught Systematic Phonics and Classroom Survival Skills (PHAB + CSS) Versus no Reading Instruction and Classroom Survival Skills (MATH + CSS)

Note. WRMT-R = Woodcock Reading Mastery test- Revised; TOWRE = Test of Word Reading Efficiency; GORT-3 = Gray Oral Reading Test (3 rd Ed.)

Possible Points of Agreement and Disagreement with Tenets of Bowers (2020) Argument

For the PHAB+CSS compared with Math+ CSS comparison, Table 1 shows effect sizes that are consistently positive, with the largest for word attack skills ( g =0.32), word identification ( g = 0.22), spelling (g = .25), and text reading fluency ( g = 0.24) and comprehension (g = 0.25). These effect sizes meet conventional levels for practical significance, but the confidence intervals include 0 and would not meet conventional standards for statistical significance. Although these are not robust differences in a single study for a single component of reading instruction, the study is underpowered to detect significant effect sizes in this range, especially in older poor readers. Bowers would interpret these findings as consistent with his argument that there is no advantage of systematic phonics. However, the effect sizes are consistent with the meta-analytic evidence of a positive effect size for systematic phonics and large enough to be practically significant, cautioning against acceptance of the null hypothesis. These effect sizes should not be construed as effect sizes for Direct Instruction, which is a more complex reading program with good evidence of efficacy in general education and as a remedial intervention ( Stockard & Wood 2017 ).

When comparing PHAST (+PHAB) and PHAB+CSS, Table 2 shows much larger effect size advantages for PHAST (+ PHAB) across multiple outcomes involving decoding, fluency, and comprehension, with confidence intervals that do not include 0. The effect for text-based comprehension are negligible, although the effect size for a cloze-based comprehension measure was larger. Note that comparisons of PHAST (+ PHAB) to MATH+CSS would be even larger.

Effect Sizes and Confidence Intervals for Comparisons of Interventions for Poor Readers that Taught Multiple Reading Strategies and Systematic Phonics (PHAST+PHAB) Versus Systematic Phonics and Classroom Survival Skills (PHAB+ CSS)

These results show the benefits of more in-depth instruction in word work for poor readers compared to systematic phonics instruction. However, both PHAST (+PHAB) and RAVEO (+ PHAB) programs spent half the lesson time on systematic phonics (PHAB), controlling the amount of phoneme-grapheme training in the three groups. Despite major differences in PHAST and RAVE-O, the latter providing much more explicit instruction in morphology and vocabulary, outcomes were generally similar for the two programs, with both clearly superior to PHAB+CSS. In evaluating the conditions, would Bowers characterize all three interventions as examples of systematic phonics? How would he deal with the fact that the extended activities occur simultaneously and are interactive, in contrast with the phonics-first idea? Is it plausible to conclude that poor readers selected for inadequate word reading do not benefit from explicit instruction in phonics? This study is an example of the complexity of coding the next generation intervention approaches that recognize the importance of more complex approaches to sublexical instruction that incorporate meaning based instruction with explicit phonics instruction.

The Assumption of “Phonics First”

Morris et al. (2012) blended systematic phonics instruction with other approaches to accessing the sublexical structure of the word and its meaning. These activities are combined in many reading programs. For example, Savage et al. (2018) taught at-risk readers both ‘direct mapping’ of grapheme-phoneme rules to authentic texts and a meaning-based “set for variability” strategy for inconsistent rules. However, Bowers argues that proponents of systematic phonics assert that phonics instruction should (and indeed, must) occur before any focus on larger units of words (e.g., morphology) or on meaning. Bowers argues:

There is no disagreement that reading instruction needs to ultimately incorporate both meaning and phonology, but the widespread consensus in the research community is that instruction needs to systematically teach children the grapheme-phoneme correspondences before meaning-based strategies are emphasized. Accordingly, almost all researchers today claim that systematic phonics is better than whole language, balanced literacy, and all forms of instruction that consider morphology from the beginning.

We agree that grapheme-phoneme correspondence as a mechanism for learning about the form of a word is valuable and that knowing word meaning while learning to read words is valuable. We also recognize that the units in which phonics approaches are used vary. For example, many instructional practices use the “rime” as the building block for phonics applying consonants, blends, and digraphs to extend decoding and generalize phonics rules, e.g., /at/extended through /c/ to cat or /b/ to bat or /ch/ to chat. Co-teaching mechanisms for better capitalizing on word meaning and at the same time teaching students to acquire word reading practices are valuable. However, we do not agree that the phonics first approach Bowers alludes to represents the widespread view of reading scholars – even those who recognize the impact of phonics instruction. If Bowers is questioning the idea that phonics instruction is limited without attention to other forms of sublexical instruction and word meaning, including morphology, we agree. If he is questioning the idea that all phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules must be learned before exposure to spellings and meanings of words, we agree. If he is arguing that initial reading instruction can proceed based solely on morphology, we disagree. Spellings can only be learned initially through phonological recoding because the child needs to link written word forms with spoken language ( Seidenberg, 2017 ). Shortly after initial instruction, explicit teaching of morphology can be part of a comprehensive reading program and does not need to emphasize phonics before morphological training or exposure to word meanings ( Morris et al., 2012 ). After all, youngsters come to school with an abundance of knowledge of word meanings that serve as valuable capital for teaching words and understanding text.

The role of morphology may be somewhat different and involves how and when exposure to increasingly large units of words should occur. Both the PHAST (+ PHAB) and RAVE-O (+PHAB) programs included morphological (and other strategy) instruction simultaneously with systematic phonics, varying the emphases as the child proceeded through instruction. This issue may also have to do with the transparency of the language, its orthographic representation in the written word, and the size of the sublexical unit. In more transparent languages, access to larger sublexical units may occur more quickly in beginning reading because there are fewer exceptions to letter-sound correspondence rules compared to a less transparent language, such as English. Even in English, and even if phonics is emphasized, children are taught and exposed to vocabulary; they engage with grammatical forms including inflectional morphology routinely; they learn new things about the world, improving their background knowledge as they increase their word knowledge. This symbiotic relation between word knowledge building and world knowledge building is an essential feature of schooling and a necessary foundation for enriching text comprehension. If children are exposed to “real books,” they will necessarily engage with both morphology and phonology. Inspection of the children’s printed word database ( Masterson et al. 2008 ) shows that some 32% of words in texts written for children in kindergarten are bi-syllables (including common morphemic inflections: “–ing,” “-ed,” and “-s”), 5% are trisyllables, and 0.7% have four or five syllables.

There should be a focus on both language development and strategies for understanding what is heard and read in any evidenced and truly “balanced” model of reading, such as in the Simple View of Reading (e.g., Gough & Tunmer 1986 ) and its expression in reading instruction ( Savage 2020 ). Similarly, children learn to read print by accessing sublexical parts of words, linking what words sound and look like. This is true in a beginning reader and in an illiterate adult ( Seidenberg, 2017 ). From a theoretical view, the Simple View is a theory of reading comprehension that shows that children must learn about the form and meaning of the word. These occur in parallel, although children vary in their capacity for learning decoding and language comprehension and the developmental process of dealing with print emphasizes word learning more in early grades and comprehension in later grades. The Simple View is consistent with Perfetti’s (2007) lexical quality hypothesis, where acquiring and integrating information about both word form and meaning are necessary for on-line reading comprehension. In computational models of reading (See Seidenberg, Borkenhagen, & Kearns 2020 ), the well-known triangle model specifies pathways involving orthography, phonology, and semantics to compute word meanings. These pathways are trained using computational modeling and statistical learning theory. The models show that in order to deal with a written input (spelling of words in an alphabetic language), the models initially use an orthographic to phonologic to semantic pathway. With training, the direct pathway from orthography to semantics becomes more prominent, but the orthographic to phonology pathway continues to contribute. Models that train the orthography to semantics pathway take much longer than models that involve phonology. At some point, as the brain begins to pick up on the statistical regularities of the spellings, learning becomes more implicit than explicit, consistent with Share’s (1995) self-teaching hypothesis. According to Share, orthographic representations are acquired by self-teaching through phonological recoding of new letter strings that becomes increasingly implicit. In all these theoretical perspectives, orthography and phonology serve to access meaning and are interactive.

Empirical evidence on the relative role of morphological, phonetic, and other teaching strategies comes from a recent systematic review ( Galuschka et al. 2020 ). The authors directly investigated what we know about the “phonics first” question in spelling interventions for children with dyslexia, where similar arguments have been made. Galuschka et al. report an exploratory analysis of the limited number of available studies. This analysis suggested no significant advantage for early phonics over other programs, where RCTs exist. Interestingly, non-significant trends towards declining effectiveness of phonics and rising effectiveness of morphological training were evident with both age and severity of disability. Galuschka et al. concluded that we need more studies to resolve this question definitively. It is important to recognize that Galuschka et al. also reported robust main effects of spelling approaches based on phonics on both reading ( g = .62) and spelling ( g = .68), with morphological and orthographic approaches having moderate effects on spelling, but much smaller effects on reading. This work both further confirms but also contextualizes the role of phonics instruction in struggling readers.

Bowers is correct if he equates “phonology first” with a requirement to learn the entire corpus of phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules before dealing with morphology or meaning, but wrong in denying that phonics is an effective way of facilitating the implicit learning that must occur for the child to become an efficient reader ( Seidenberg et al. 2020 ). It is also not obvious how children would learn spelling-sound correspondence rules initially through “morphology first,” which is likely why Bowers indicates in different places that learning phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules is important. We encourage Bowers to design and conduct the studies needed to address his hypotheses but not to advance his hypotheses as facts until his findings support this view. Phonological awareness is likely necessary in early reading, but not sufficient, alongside morphological and orthographic awareness, but the phonological component made explicit by phonics is likely to be essential for children with poor initial phonological awareness to adequately progress in reading ( Berninger et al. 2010 ).

Systematic versus Explicit Phonics

Although the term systematic phonics is widely used, it is instructive to think about what systematic really means and whether the NRP question of systematic phonics versus less systematic phonics is outmoded. In general, systematic refers to an organized structure – in this case, the organized structure for teaching the grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules. It is presumed that these rules are prescribed and often taught in an accepted sequence. However, the necessary sequence is not well established through research but rather derived from practices that provide ready access to reading words. Consonants such as /m/ and /s/ are taught early as they make sounds that sound like their letter names, are readily learned by young readers, and provide ready access to word reading- as do short vowels such as /a/ and /e/. These approaches are epitomized by the different methods under the umbrella of structured literacy ( Moats, 2019 ).

We agree with Bowers’ recognition of the limited evidence in support of a specific scope and sequence in which the child has to learn grapheme-phoneme rules as a prerequisite for decoding. As Morris et al. (2012) demonstrated, there are many ways to teach decoding, and the level of systematicity is related to the needs of the learner. Some students inferentially learn the pattern and rules through exposure to common word types; other students need more explicit instruction that is facilitated by an organized set of lessons. However, this organized sequence of lessons does not require that particular sound units be taught in any particular order as long as they are taught in ways that readily allow children to access print, words, and text.

We also agree with Bowers (2020) that phonics instruction can be effectively accomplished with approaches that would not meet the definition of systematic phonics that he provided, but not with the idea that any approach to phonics instruction will be effective. There is research that shows little difference in reading outcomes for methods based on a rigid scope and sequence versus methods in which the phonics instruction is explicit and mandatory, but embedded in reading and writing ( Mathes et al. 2005 ; Torgesen et al. 2001 ), at least for many learners. Effective methods share explicit instruction in phonics, other sublexical approaches, and language-rich activities, that through differentiated instruction responds to students’ needs ( Stuebing et al. 2008 ). Effective approaches to phonics instruction provide word work that is explicitly lead, intentional, and demonstrated by the teacher using a lesson that can be scripted or embedded, but which is explicit. It provides opportunities for students to respond, teacher feedback, and examples that both extend the principle as well as challenge it. It differs from what is undertaken for word work in many balanced literacy programs because of the amount of time spent on word work and the intentional nature. Instruction is likely to vary across individual children. The seven randomized trials by Carol Connor and colleagues (summarized in Connor & Morrison 2016 ) clearly demonstrate the value of differentiating the relative emphasis of code-based and meaning-based instruction for the individual child using materials in place in the school as opposed to a specific curriculum. In these studies, the amount of time devoted to each broad component was leveraged in the general education classroom such that less capable decoders spend more time on teacher directed code-related activity and more capable decoders spend more time on student directed meaning-related activity). As Stuebing et al. (2008 , p. 132) stated,

…the explicitness of instruction may be more important than systematic, scripted lessons in accounting for the effect of systematic phonics. Creating a scope and sequence, using decodable text, and engaging in other ways of systematizing instruction make instruction explicit, but explicitness can be achieved in other ways. Where a teacher operates on the instructional continuum may depend on factors like preparation, experience, the base rate of struggling readers, the school context, and related factors. However, teachers need to be intentionally clear about how the alphabet relates conventionally to sound segments in speech. The supporting materials that are used may vary depending on teacher and student knowledge and skills.

Rather than minimizing the effects of phonics instruction, we should be thinking more about how individual learners are responding to the methods that are used and be prepared to change instructional approaches based on their response to instruction ( Connor & Morrison, 2016 ).

Empirical issues in the Data from the Meta-Analyses

At the heart of Bowers’ analysis is his critique of the evidence from 12 meta-analyses of reading interventions. We argue that the Bowers analysis of these meta-analyses does not accurately represent the findings. We treat each of the 12 analyses in the order Bowers considers them describing his substantive analysis and with reasoned responses to each of his points.

The National Reading Panel (NRP; NICHD, 2000 ) and Ehri et al. (2001) meta-analyses.

The NRP phonics chapter considered RCT, matched control trials of typical and atypical development, and interventions for word reading, fluency and comprehension outcomes. Ehri et al. (2001) published the chapter as a peer-reviewed paper. We will refer to both as NRP hereafter. Bowers makes four points in his criticism:

In making sense of this critique, the first thing to note is that a non-zero effect size was still evident even in students with demonstrated multiple risk factors and who struggle with any learning. The effect size of d = .15 is for a minority of children with lower IQ scores and low reading from grades 2 to 6, not for the effect of phonics instruction overall or even for older poor readers as a whole. One also has to contextualize this effect to make sense of it. This effect size may be large for these children in relative terms if they made modest or no progress before then and sets the bar for contrasts with alternative pedagogies for this distinct multi-need group. A key issue in evaluating any intervention against a counterfactual is: What might the expected progress be for this sample? Even without such considerations, an effect size of d = .15 places about 6% more of the intervention group clearly above the control group mean at post-test. Thus, even a small effect size of .15 can still be very practically important if played out at national scale, as Bowers himself acknowledges elsewhere in his article. The authors of the NRP noted (Part II, p. 117) that among a range of plausible explanations, many of the studies contributing to this effect involved regular whole class teaching. This delivery method may simply have not been sufficient to meet the literacy needs of this multiply at-risk group ( Connor & Morrison, 2016 ). Finally, it is also important to recognize that later reviews (including meta-analysis of responsiveness to intervention studies) show that IQ is not a strong predictor of the responsiveness of poor readers to reading intervention, including experimental studies that explicitly controlled for IQ (e.g., Morris et al. 2012 ) and in a meta-analysis ( Stuebing et al. 2009 ). As is expected in all professions (e.g., medicine), we cannot minimize visible, consistent effects of any size in education, particularly for those students with multiple learning needs.

• The NRP analysis showed that the effects of explicit phonics are larger in grade 1 than after grade 1, where programs focused on phonics are often targeted for older struggling readers. We start by noting that the NRP report executive summary does, as Bowers observes, exaggerate the more cautious interpretations found in the chapter on phonics. The authors also acknowledged that the NRP report could not say anything strongly about the effect of grade per se on intervention because there were insufficient number of articles across each of the appropriate grade levels. Here Bowers uses the NRP acknowledgement of not being able to differentiate by grade level as a criticism of the NRP findings, when failing to interpret grade level effects because of a limited number of studies is the only empirically defensible approach. Phonics is an approach to teaching beginning readers and children who struggle to access sublexical components of words by learning the alphabetic principle, i.e., the relation of the shared phonemic structure of oral and written language. Once a child has mastered the alphabetic principle, what rationale is there to offer ever more phonics to capable readers in the later grades: Age and ability will always be confounded except in very rare cases.
• Bowers points to a reduced effect size of d = .27 on word reading in the studies available of the effects of phonics between 4 months and a year after the interventions closed. He also notes that the authors of the NRP did not assess whether the long-term benefits extended to spelling, reading texts, or reading comprehension. In contextualizing these comments, meta-analyses always reflect the available independent and dependent variables in the underlying studies. Perhaps the most important point is that the long-term effect sizes are positive and practically significant on the primary outcome – which is not a common finding in studies that conduct follow-up assessments. Rather than criticize the long-term effects, most researchers would find this long-term effect noteworthy. We would thus agree with Bowers only in the specific sense that more research is needed on a range of longer-term outcome measures potentially affected by phonics instruction.
• Bowers’ fourth point is a cluster of criticisms we consider together. Bowers concludes, “ the evidence that systematic phonics is more effective than whole language is weaker still.” In his analysis Bowers appears to be looking at the subset of 12 studies from the NRP that compared systematic phonics to so-called whole language approaches when he reports a d = 0.31 effect size. Again, we note the positive effect is still evident. Bowers also correctly notes that there is very modest evidence for synthetic phonics versus alternative methods. However, we would also note that his comment here appears less to be aimed at the authors of the NRP (who explicitly acknowledge the fragility of the evidence base available on this specific point), but at the actions of some consumers of it in some UK policy circles.

Camilli et al. (2006) ; Hammill and Swanson (2006) .

Bowers re-describes the views from Camilli et al. (2006) about the contrasts within the NRP and the possible role of other features of pedagogy such as wider language and tutoring in driving reported effects. It is not clear to us that Bowers adds any new substantive points to the discussion. Bowers uses Camilli et al. (2006) and Hammill and Swanson (2006) to rebut the NRP conclusions about phonics (though it is here in the context of the Hammill and Swanson (2006) study that he correctly notes that small effect sizes can be practically important if played out across whole populations). Bowers cites Stuebing et al. (2008) as a replication of Camilli et al. (2006) , but does not report that Stuebing et al. raised questions about the Camilli et al. (2006) analysis of their recoded NRP database and that the purpose of the paper was to empirically defend and contextualize the NRP report – not to agree with Camilli et al. Stuebing et al. concluded that the effect size for systematic and unsystematic phonics ( d = .123) could not be compared to the NRP d = .41 for systematic phonics versus unsystematic/no phonics instruction because of Camilli’s use of moderator variables. As Bowers noted, Stuebing interpreted comparisons of no phonics, unsystematic phonics, and systematic phonics as a dosage effect, supporting this conclusion in their Table 2 where the effects of systematic phonics ( d =.49) is larger than the effect of some phonics ( d =.31) when the moderators coded by Camilli et al. are excluded from the comparisons.

Stuebing et al. (2008) showed that the Camilli et al. (2006) dataset of NRP findings actually yielded effect sizes similar to the NRP depending on the question that was asked of the data. In the re-analysis, the effect size for reading interventions that included systematic phonics interventions versus programs that include unsystematic or no phonics was d = .39, close to the NRP report ( d = .41). Although Camilli et al. (2008) raised questions about the re-analyses, any interpretation depends on how the NRP studies are recoded and whether moderators are used. Stuebing et al. (2008 , p. 131) concluded,

The comparisons by Camilli et al. (2006) ask questions that are different from the primary question asked by the NRP, but the results of the two sets of analyses can be reconstructed to yield comparable effect sizes for the effects of systematic phonics versus either unsystematic phonics or no phonics controls when the same study parameters are estimated.

Importantly, Stuebing et al. concurred with Camilli et al. (2006) on the value-added effects of additional literacy-related activities as well as tutoring. The largest effect sizes in Camilli et al. (2006) recoding of the NRP database occurred when systematic phonics is combined with additional language and literacy activities and delivered through tutoring ( d = 1.35, see Table 2 of Stuebing et al. 2008 ). Again, none of this shows that phonics does not in and of itself make a distinct and important contribution to early literacy. Nor does it suggest that students only need phonics instruction. To reiterate, Stuebing et al. showed in their Table 2 (line 14) that if one only considers the relatively pure cases of interventions involving what the NRP defined as systematic phonics and compares these against conditions where Camilli et al. had coded the absence of both tutoring and wider language activities (85 contrasts in 17 studies), the effect size is d =.49.

In response to Hammill and Swanson (2006) , Stuebing et al. (2008) also emphasized the contextual nature of effect sizes, showing that even smaller effect sizes were practically significant and could improve reading outcomes for many children depending on the base rate of reading failure, a point on which Bowers seems to agree. Yet throughout his paper, Bowers presents conventions for the interpretation of effect sizes, sometimes drawing attention to their statistical significance as crucial and sometimes not, but never to the confidence intervals that surrounds effect sizes. Bowers does not consistently acknowledge that these conventions are arbitrary and must be contextualized. The real issue is their replicability, their practical significance given an estimated counterfactual, and their precise role in reading instruction. We do not understand the motivation for discounting the consistently positive effects in favor of “systematic” phonics approaches. Arguing about whether the effects are small, medium, or large is not the relevant issue when making educational decisions about whether some level of explicit phonics instruction is beneficial to learning to read. Encouraging educators to discount positive effects of explicit phonics instruction is simply not helpful, but is potentially harmful to many children struggling to access appropriate reading instruction ( Seidenberg et al., 2020 ).

Reflecting their wider finding of the combinatorial effect of phonics with language and tutoring, Stuebing et al. (2008 , p. 133) thus concluded,

Although it seems difficult to move beyond the historic dichotomy of reading instructional approaches, it is time to embrace comprehensive approaches to reading instruction and work toward determining how to integrate different components of reading instruction into classroom practice so that the diversity of students and their individual needs can be addressed.

As the NRP ( NICHD 2000 , p. 2–97) stated, “Phonics instruction is never a total reading program,” and it “should be integrated with other reading instruction.” The monolithic view of phonics versus meaning-based instruction current when the NRP report was published is not a contemporary platform for discussing reading instruction.

Torgerson et al (2006) .

Torgerson et al. considered only RCTs on phonics and explicitly considered a range of other indictors of methodological quality in the phonics literature. Bowers’ primary concern is his issue with the contrasts of systematic versus a combined unsystematic or no phonics control, which we have discussed. Beyond this, he simply draws attention only to the limitations in the research base identified by the authors themselves (possible effects of outlier study removal, publication bias, lack of detail on randomization processes for example). After assessing the evidence contextualized against rigorous inclusion criteria including randomization, Torgerson et al. (2006 , p. 42) argue, “ none of the findings of the current review were based on strong evidence because there simply were not enough trials (regardless of quality or size)” before drawing extremely cautious conclusions. The precise wording of the primary conclusion was that there was “ No warrant for NOT using phonics ” (p. 43). The authors also observed that the effect sizes from the selected RCTs were generally small and that the evidence quality for all phonics related questions was “moderate” (e.g., for the overall effects of phonics on typical and atypical learner’s word reading) or “weak” (e.g., the effects of analytic or synthetic phonics on outcomes). It is not clear what Bowers adds in the absence of these nuances.

McArthur et al. (2012) .

These authors sought to explore the effects of phonics on outcomes for struggling readers. In particular, they sought RCTs and matched control studies that allowed an analysis of the unique effects of phonics independent of content often taught with phonics such as sight words. Bowers criticizes this review based on his observation that the overall effects reported may have been driven by the impact of two atypical interventions ( Levy & Lysynchuk 1997 ; Levy et al. 1999 ). There are several points to be noted. First, Bowers reports from the 2012 McArthur et al. review rather than the most recent McArthur et al. (2019) updated review that adds further studies to the analysis from the most recent 6 years of studies. The two papers by Levy and colleagues are included among the 14 studies. The rubric of the McArthur et al. (2012) review makes it clear that reading was assessed through “various outcomes.” The outcomes used in the Levy studies included measures of both novel word and pseudoword reading, so they do provide measures of generalizable phonic skills. Indeed, they assess exactly the mechanism of transfer expected from an analytic phonics approach. The Levy and colleagues studies are certainly not alone amongst the studies in this review in using bespoke researcher-developed outcome measures of grapheme-phoneme knowledge, so these two studies should not be excluded based on outcome measure used.

All good meta-analyses statistically test for the homogeneity of effects within the included studies. McArthur et al. (2012) show that there was statistically significant heterogeneity in the reported studies. However, McArthur et al. also noted that this heterogeneity could equally have been due to another study with an untypically low score on primary outcomes. The study could possibly have been, but was not, excluded. We note that the purpose of meta-analysis as an empirical synthesis is potentially undermined if studies are included or excluded post hoc. As a further insurance against effects of heterogeneity, random effects and fixed effects models were both run within the meta-analysis and both gave very similar results, suggesting the findings are robust.

Finally, given the weight Bowers (2020) attaches to the influence of studies by Levy and colleagues, it is important to understand that the overall effect sizes for outcomes involving word and pseudoword reading accuracy were not the largest effects reported. McArthur et al. (2012) concluded the evidence base on these two specific outcomes across all studies was weak. Because the outcomes used by Levy and colleagues were specific to word and pseudoword accuracy, these two studies did not feature at all in the five other outcome analyses reported by McArthur et al. (2012) : exception word reading, where the largest effect size of the entire study was .84 standard deviation (SD) for phonics treatment over controls; regular and exception word reading fluency (the second and third largest effect sizes), spelling; and reading comprehension. The strongest of the modest claims made by McArthur et al. (2012) are thus of the “moderate-quality” evidence of impact of phonics on exception word reading accuracy and word and pseudoword reading fluency. The Levy studies cannot explain these effects.

Bowers (2020) goes on to state that his most important point here is that the McArthur meta-analysis compared systematic phonics to no extra training at all, or to training on nonreading tasks, such that it is not appropriate to attribute any benefits to systematic phonics. He argues that any form of extra instruction may have “mediated” the gains observed. In making sense of this analysis, it might first be noted that Bowers appears to have moved from his purported original question about systematics versus less systematic or no phonics instruction to a more general critique of all aspects of phonics interventions. We should also note that the stated purpose of the McArthur et al. (2012) review was not to compare phonics against other interventions but to establish the role of phonics as it stands alone, and independent of other possible intervention teaching. Levy and colleagues featured tutoring in both treatment and control conditions and thus allow an analysis of the unique effect of phonics. Of course, the interventions did not occur in a vacuum in that all of the children were in school receiving business as usual teaching. In general, business as usual comparisons are not as intensive or structured as the interventions in most research studies and is heterogeneous across schools and classrooms, making it hard to code, but controlled in a randomized trial.

Finally, just doing something in an RCT rarely works in and of itself. Lortie-Forgues and Inglis (2019) recently reviewed 144 principled, well-executed, large-scale RCT trials funded by the Education Endowment Foundation in England and the National Center for Educational Evaluation and Regional Assistance in the United States. An average effect size of 0.06 SD was found across all trials. The trials involved a much broader performance range of children, not the lowest performing tail of the distribution addressed by McArthur et al. (2012) . The smallest effect reported in McArthur on reading comprehension is 0.28 SD, and all six other effects reported are above 0.45 of an SD. The critical issue here is that effect sizes such as 0.28 SD for comprehension are not common in well-conducted interventions and they are meaningful.

Galuschka (2014) .

Galuschka et al. explored the widest base of evidence of RCT interventions of any kind that impact reading in poor readers. Bowers (2020) contention with this study is that the reported effect size for phonics interventions ( g = 0.32) was no bigger than for other intervention components such as reading fluency training ( g = 0.30), auditory training ( g = 0.39), and colour overlays ( g = 0.32). Bowers summarizes, “ The reason significant results were only obtained for phonics is that there were many more phonics interventions. ” This is a genuinely startling conclusion. The combined evidence from a meta-analysis of 29 RCTs on phonics reported by Galuschka et al. is of a qualitatively different kind to the evidence from other trials (e.g., two on medical treatments, three on colored overlays, auditory training, and comprehension). Bowers conflates the gross size of an effect with the security (likely replicability) of the findings they represent. This security of the findings for phonics across multiple trials is the reason why it is the only treatment that is statistically significant for reading outcomes. Bowers also notes that the estimated effect size for phonics adjusting for possible publication bias ( g = 0.198) was smaller than the overall estimate. Again, this effect is both positive in favour of phonics intervention (as coded) and remains statistically significant and practically important. Finally, Bowers repeats his earlier views, criticizing Galuschka et al. for not exploring direct contrasts of interventions as rivals and of not exploring contrasts of systematic versus unsystematic phonics. This critique is made despite the difficulties of such comparisons given the limited number of trials of other approaches beyond phonics that Bowers has already noted. Further, neither of these goals was the purpose of the Galuschka et al. review.

In the spirit of the Stuebing et al. (2008) analysis discussed above and based on well-established theory (e.g., the Simple View of Reading; Gough & Tunmer 1986 ), it seems likely that phonics interventions will both have a discernible unique effect and interact with fluency and comprehension interventions to support reading comprehension. Again, it is troubling to consider why Bowers discounts the consistently positive effects in favour of explicit phonics-type approaches. When treatments in any domain (medicine, counselling, and education) are associated with consistently significant effects, it is wise for professionals in those fields to consider ways to integrate these treatments into their protocols. We are not suggesting that asking empirical questions and further investigating these treatments is unwarranted. However, empirical investigations and naysaying are two completely different pathways. The question that Bowers would be required to answer is whether the bulk of the evidence on the impact of systematic or explicit phonics instruction (not first or solely) is associated with greater impact on student’s learning to read. According to the evidence the answer is yes.

Suggate (2010 , 2016 ).

Bowers (2020) considers two reviews by Suggate. The 2010 study explored the effects of student grade severity of impairment and intervention modality on outcomes for at-risk and disabled readers. Suggate (2010) provides evidence of an interaction between modality of intervention and student grade of students, concluding that there is (a) an appreciable effect of phonics in the early elementary years only and (b) that a comprehension focus yields large effects in later elementary years. Bowers contests even this finding about the potential limits of phonics by arguing that the effect size difference between phonics and other approaches is modest in size in kindergarten and grade 1. Bowers focuses on a minority of studies (10%) as being carried out in non-English language contexts as problematic, emphasizes “near-significant” contrasts of English ( d = .48) and non-English language learning context outcomes ( d = .61), and identifies a single study amongst these with potential outlier effects.

Contextualising this analysis again, it is important to look at the effects of phonics across languages to avoid pervasive Anglocentrism in our theorizing ( Share, 2008 ). The differences across languages ( Suggate, 2010 ) are not great in magnitude. Indeed, an “outlier,” if accepted as such, further reduces this difference (note there were 85 studies in this meta-analysis). Bowers draws attention to the modest differences between preliminary effect sizes for overall contrasts of comprehension and phonics in Suggate’s Table 1 . Bowers does not mention that the absolute effect of phonics or comprehension interventions was mediated by an interaction – the final model in Suggate’s Table 2 and Figure 1, with no significant main effect of phonics. While emphasizing the early role of phonics, Suggate (2010 , p. 1596) is careful to conclude that: “ This does not suggest that other interventions, such as language interventions or dialogic book reading, are superseded in importance by phonics interventions in kindergarten or earlier.” There is no obvious reason to set up the “alternative methods” as rivals.

Suggate (2016) examined longer-term outcomes of the impact of 71 phonics and other reading interventions. Overall, the analysis revealed an overall short-term effect ( d = 0.37) that decreased in a follow-up test around a year later ( d = 0.22) with phonics producing the weakest overall effects (phonics, d = 0.07; fluency, d = 0.28; comprehension d = 46; and phonemic awareness, d = 0.36). Suggate also noted design features and treatment dosage affect outcomes.

A number of important points need to be born in mind here. First, the absolute number of contrasts, and participants available in each case varied widely. For phonics, compare the n = 4045 and k = 22 contrasts with fluency, which has an n = 736 and k = 2 contrasts. The “weighted d ” reported by Suggate (2016) and re-reported by Bowers adjusted for these large differences in sample size and thus reduces the observed effect sizes asymmetrically. The unadjusted observed effect for phonics at the just under one-year follow-up from Suggate’s Table 3 is d = 0.30 on word reading ( k = 20 studies, n = 3895 students) and d = 0.25 over all measures ( k = 22 studies, n = 4045 students). Ultimately, we simply have much more data on phonics interventions and word reading outcomes at delayed post-test in the studies within the meta-analysis than we have on pretty much anything else in reading intervention research: It is a highly replicated pattern.

Finally, Suggate (2016) excluded both designs with nested analyses and very long-term follow up studies from his review, the latter on the somewhat surprising grounds that they were unrepresentative. However, such studies are highly informative. Suggate specifically excluded Blachman et al. (2014) as an outlier because it was a 10-year follow up of their RCT intervention trial ( Blachman et al. 2004 ) for struggling 2 nd and 3 rd grade readers. The children had received a 1:1 tutoring intervention for 50 minutes daily each day for 8 months, focusing on unscripted, organized lesson plans for phonics, phoneme blending, fluency, oral reading practice, and spelling. In comparison with a business as usual condition, the intervention yielded large effect sizes at immediate and 1-year post-test on measures of reading accuracy, speed and comprehension. Fully10 years later, Blachman et al. (2014) located 33 treatment and 25 comparison participants from the original sample of 37 treatment and 32 comparison children. Blachman et al. found that of 12 measures of reading the intervention children significantly outperformed the controls on two: Word identification ( d = .53) and a basic skills cluster scores made up of the word identification and a word attack measure ( d = .62). Across seven reading and spelling measures, the mean effect size was d = .24, which is positive and practically significant. We know of no other paper reporting long-term effects of an RCT in English (although see Kjeldsen et al. (2014) , a kindergarten intervention to Grade 9 in Swedish learners).

It is not strictly necessary to prove such long-term effects to show that phonics is useful. A medical metaphor has sometimes been used here (e.g. Coyne et al. 2004 ). Do we construe phonics (or indeed, any intervention) as akin to “insulin” or “inoculation” models? We would not say insulin ‘does not work’ for diabetic patients. For some children though, phonics might be akin to inoculation or at least sustained ‘symptom’ improvement. While we have limited evidence of long-term effects beyond fairly good evidence at the one-year post-test, there is no need to accept that somehow phonics is not efficacious.

Other meta-analyses and a systematic review of meta-analyses.

Bowers (2020) clusters five other studies, so we will consider these as he does, as a group, excluding. Hammill and Swanson (2006) , which we discussed above. Bowers reports the overall effect sizes from two theses ( Han 2010 ; Sherman 2007 ), and a published paper ( Adesope et al. 2011 ). Sherman reports an effect size of d = 0.53 for word reading in older struggling readers. Han and Adesope et al. both looked at phonics among non-English speakers. In both cases these analyses showed positive effects of phonics ( d = 0.41 and d = 0.40 respectively), but Bowers notes that there were other interventions such as structured writing interventions with slightly larger overall effects ( d = 0.48). We are not sure what the point is here, unless it is to suggest that other practices such as structured writing are also associated with improved outcomes. We fully agree that there is no evidence to suggest “phonics-only” is optimal. We recognize that other practices such as “structure writing” might well be integrated within a reading approach to yield significant reading and writing outcomes. We do not think the issue is which one approach should be used but rather how do we integrate and leverage evidence-based practices (e.g., phonics, fluency) to meet the range of learning needs in the classroom.

In Adesope et al. (2011) the “phonics” interventions included guided reading so are not a pure comparison. As in his consideration of some previous reviews, Bowers (2020) does not report that there are many more studies in the case of phonics ( k = 14 studies, n = 1647 students) versus all other interventions ( k = 2 – 5, largest n = 648). Unlike Bowers, Adesope et al. (2011 , p. 648) do not place these different interventions in opposition to each other, concluding quite reasonably that “The evidence presented in this meta-analysis suggests that cooperative reading, systematic phonics instruction, and diary and structured writing interventions have the potential to enhance the teaching of English literacy to ESL immigrant students.” Finally, Adesope et al. also wisely conclude that contextual factors such as school contexts as well as minority language learner characteristics may influence the effectiveness of any of these strategies. Again, Bowers ignores this entire important authorial nuance.

The final section of Bowers (2020) is devoted to a critique of Torgerson et al. (2018) , a tertiary review that concludes cautiously that phonics has received support, but that more work is still needed to be certain about its effects. Here Bowers repeats his arguments about the absolute size of non-phonic effects, the inclusion of non-English studies, and the purported effects of studies such as those of Levy et al. (1999) on outcomes that we have already considered.

Interpretation of Empirical Research

Measured in conventional terms, there is consistent evidence of positive effects for explicit phonics-based intervention on reading outcomes. These positive effects are persuasive because of the large sample size across studies and the range of investigators, settings, and participants. Bowers (2020) perceives that this effect has been exaggerated and we agree there are examples of this being the case. We are also aware of professionals who deny that phonics has a role in improving learning to read ( Smith 2004 ). While we appreciate many of the significant points that Bowers makes, we are aware of the potential dangers of denying the impact of phonics as well as the dangers of overemphasizing its effect. We do not agree that the impact of systematic or explicit phonics instruction is modest and unimportant. This advantage is consistently reported, spanning the 14 meta-analyses reviewed above executed across many countries worldwide over at least eight decades (e.g., Scammacca et al. 2016 ). Effects are reliably still present up to, on average, one year after the interventions have ended ( Suggate, 2016 ). We even have some evidence of the very long-term impacts of reading programs that include phonics on word reading up to 10 years after interventions in children with word-level reading disabilities ( Blachman et al. 2014 ). The effect of phonics is evident for typical and atypical readers and across alphabetic languages in the 14 meta-analyses; for second language learners ( Vaughn et al. 2006 ) and for immigrant children ( Adesope et al. 2011 ), and across RCT trials and other controlled studies. There is evidence that instruction that includes explicit phonics affects fluency and comprehension, even in the most struggling readers, but the latter are more inconsistent ( Morris et al., 2012 ). At a certain level, however, we must ask how comprehension proceeds in struggling readers if they cannot access the print. Table 1 shows a modest effect of PHAB on reading comprehension, which is even larger for comparisons involving RAVE-O. In Torgesen et al. (2001) , one of the interventions was an intense 80-hour sublexical tutoring program with children severely impaired in word reading. It was associated with major gains in decoding and text-based comprehension, but little gains in fluency because these upper elementary children had little access to print before the intervention because of their severe decoding problems.

While sometimes presented otherwise by Bowers (2020) , the reality of the research base is a serious effort from international scientists who, mindful of the strengths and limitations of the outcomes evident in their own data, cautiously explain and contextualize their findings. At best, they know that effect sizes are estimates of effects. Despite the 14 meta-analytic studies supporting explicit phonics, like many of the other researchers involved in this work, we recognize that the relative effects of phonics require conditioned application including such terms such as “may” and “probably” to any causal claims about the role of phonics. On the other hand, when Bowers suggests in the concluding paragraph of his review that the effects of systematic phonics instruction versus alternative reading methods including whole language are a “draw,” we think this conclusion is tantamount to acceptance of the null hypothesis and is not helpful to educators or their students. Not only is this statement not supported by the evidence from which Bowers claims to derive his judgements, it unnecessarily arouses controversy in a field that needs to focus on the best practices available.

Areas of Agreement

Throughout the paper we have highlighted areas of agreement with Bowers (2002). We agree that design and content aspects of many studies is inconsistent and hard to code in meta-analysis. This is an issue across intervention studies and not specific to phonics interventions. We agree that publication bias may be evident: Torgerson et al. (2018) show that of 12 meta-analyses of phonics, six explore publication bias and three report evidence consistent with there being some bias (see also Galuschka et al. 2020 ). While we agree that there remain some significant weaknesses in the empirical data, we note some of these issues span the social and natural sciences broadly – not specifically to this topic. These issues also apply to candidate “alternative treatments.” Furthermore, the bar is set high here for any credible intervention: RCTs, with clear contrast with alternatives, clear (replicable) contrasts of content, clear impacts on comprehension, no publication bias (we assume to this end, widespread trial registration and CONSORT-quality reporting of all trials), then later, clear evidence from meta-analysis of all such RCTs, possibly even 10 year follow ups! We eagerly await such platinum standard data more generally in reading intervention: There is much work to be done! Finally, we also suspect we would share common cause with Bowers against overly strong uses of evidence by some advocates of phonics and some policy makers, and wherever this leads to denuded and impoverished curricula. We prefer a focus on “explicit” instruction and agree with Bowers that word work does not necessarily require a particular scope and sequence or that any particular method for delivering phonics is strongly supported, although we think effective phonics instruction is facilitated by an organized lesson plan that is intentional and not incidental.

What Are the Right Questions?

What we do not have is a sufficiently strong science of teaching children to read ( Seidenberg 2017 ). Although it would be nice to be able to break down the teaching of reading into a very precise package outlining the role of each component and the best way to teach it, unpacking these components is difficult to do and would potentially yield small effects, as in the PHAB condition in Morris et al. (2012) . In the teaching world, there are many factors affecting children and learning to read. What is clear is that the questions posed by Bowers (2020) , as well as extreme proponents of phonics, is an artificial one that does not support progress in the science of teaching children to read. In the US and UK, legislation is passed mandating certain approaches to reading instruction, and even worse, prescribing specific commercial programs for children identified with dyslexia ( Petscher et al. 2019 ). However, we would do well to ask the right questions about how to teach effectively the range of learners in our classrooms to read. This requires embracing the complexity and multiple competency view of reading. Even in the area of phonics, there are many ways to help children access sublexical components of words and one approach does not work with all children, even those identified with dyslexia. We also recognize that while phonics instruction is associated with improved reading outcomes, the amount of phonics instruction required, the level of explicitness, and how phonics instruction is integrated into other important elements of reading instruction requires further investigation.

We agree with Bowers (2020) that alternative approaches to teaching reading need to be studied and suggest that the current research base will be enhanced by comprehensive approaches that integrate- not balance- different components of reading instruction with ample consideration of the range of learners and their instructional needs. For many children, these components need to be taught explicitly. In particular, children who have trouble accessing words because of problems with phonological processing need explicit code-based instruction. They also need to practice to build automaticity. Children learning to read English will need to learn how to navigate both the morphemic and phonemic aspect of the spelling system of English. Comprehension instruction recognizing the critical roles of word meaning and world knowledge also requires a more explicit approach because many children do not develop vocabulary, background knowledge, and comprehension strategies through passive reading.

Focusing on the integration of these activities in a comprehensive approach to reading instruction would be beneficial. Reading instruction should not occur in the absence of opportunities to read and write and oral language development. These opportunities are usually present in reading instruction, making it hard to isolate the effects of systematic phonics instruction. However, these successful integrated approaches rely on facilitating students’ access to word reading and meaning through effective instructional practices that demonstrate the ways in which phonemes map to print in regular and irregular ways providing many opportunities to read words so that the structure of language is acquired both explicitly and implicitly. How to integrate comprehensive programs and use them to differentiate and customize instruction for individual children is a much better question. Programs should package components with known efficacy and evaluate intervention outcomes when the package permits differentiation (e.g., Connor & Morrison, 2016 ).

The dichotomy of systematic phonics versus less systematic/no phonics instruction is artificial because these activities exist on a continuum, representing an outmoded question that is hard to address from the available studies ( Stuebing et al. 2008 ). The issue is how to consider the reading development of the learner and to integrate these components into a comprehensive reading program that permits differentiation for the individual learner. As Seidenberg (2017) pointed out, many children come to school primed to learn to read. However, because of environmental factors as well as biological factors that make it harder for the brain to mediate reading, many children struggle to learn to decode and therefore are less able to access print. Much of what Bowers (2020) calls exaggeration is a reaction to the need of these children for explicit phonics instruction. Many children do not get the word work they need, partly because it is not intentional, explicit, and well organized.

In the spirit of seeking clarity and maximal consensus, we map out seven major claims made by Bowers underpinning his original review and the roughly equal number of points of agreement and disagreement in Table 3 along with relevant evidence. Table 3 acts only as a summary overview of the multiple issues discussed here to aid a reader in mapping the broad arguments, and should only be interpreted in light of the nuances we elaborate in the main text throughout this article. We finish with three claims in points 8–10 that are not explicitly made by Bowers (2020) but which might potentially serve as unifying statements and underpin the most productive future work on reading interventions to meet the needs of all learners.

The 21st century challenge is to meet the distinct needs of students who are “primed” for reading as well as those requiring much more explicit access to the alphabetic principle, while also engaging all children with the complexity of their language and their literature. To this end, a suitably nuanced and evidenced science of teaching reading is a work in progress. This ambitious enterprise may involve healthy friendly professional disagreement, but it will also need a mindset among all research leaders that acknowledges this complexity over old binary modes of the 20th century, the importance of this goal to the wide community, and also the importance of communicating it accurately and effectively to all of the users of our science. To stimulate this type of discussion was the goal of this paper.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Professor Genevieve McArthur for discussion of ideas in this paper and Dr. Yusra Ahmed for assistance with the computation of effect sizes.

Funding: Grant P50 HD052117, Texas Center for Learning Disabilities, from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, supported Fletcher and Vaughn. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development or the National Institutes of Health.

Conflicts of Interest: None

Declarations

Ethics approval, consent to participate, availability of data, code availability: Not applicable

Publisher's Disclaimer: This Author Accepted Manuscript is a PDF file of a an unedited peer-reviewed manuscript that has been accepted for publication but has not been copyedited or corrected. The official version of record that is published in the journal is kept up to date and so may therefore differ from this version.

Contributor Information

Jack M. Fletcher, Department of Psychology, University of Houston.

Robert Savage, Department of Psychology and Human Development, Institute for Education, University College- London.

Sharon Vaughn, Department of Special Education, University of Texas-Austin.

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The Reading Reform Foundation

Examining the evidence on the effectiveness of synthetic phonics teaching: the ehri et al (2001) and c.torgerson et al (2006) meta-analyses by rhona johnston, emeritus professor of psychology, university of hull.

Examining the evidence on the effectiveness of synthetic phonics teaching: the Ehri et al (2001) and C.Torgerson et al (2006) meta-analyses Rhona Johnston, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Hull

Introduction

In a recent article, Castles et al (2018) have concluded that there is insufficient evidence as yet to determine whether the synthetic phonics approach is superior to the analytic phonics approach, citing the meta-analyses of Ehri et al ( 2001) and C.Torgerson et al (2006).

Studies of synthetic versus analytic phonics teaching

The experiments comparing the effectiveness of synthetic versus analytic phonics teaching by Johnston and Watson (2004) were carried out on children in their first year of school (equivalent to kindergarten in the U.S.). Johnston and Watson’s (2004) synthetic phonics approach was taken from the method used in Austria, as described by Feitelson (1988), where sounding and blending was introduced at the start of reading tuition. Children learnt to read and spell very much better when taught by the synthetic phonics method compared with the typical analytic phonics method used in Scotland.

When the UK Education Select Committee recommended to the government that it consider introducing the synthetic phonics method into schools in England, it referred to it as ‘phonics first and fast’. A later introduction of sounding and blending means that other methods are used first, approaches which often undermine the synthetic phonics approach. Therefore, in order to examine the evidence supporting the effectiveness of the method, only studies where the synthetic phonics method was introduced in kindergarten should be examined.

Meta-analyses of phonics teaching

a) Ehri et al (2001)

It should be noted that Ehri et al’s (2001) analysis compared synthetic phonics programmes with those containing unsystematic phonics or no phonics (page 400), not analytic phonics, which is systematic. They did compare the effect sizes for synthetic phonics (d=0.45) and larger-subunit programmes (d=0.34), which was not statistically significant. However, in the UK analytic phonics is taught at the grapheme to phoneme level, after establishing an initial sight word vocabulary, so it is not a larger subunit approach in the early stages. In Scotland, the approach traditionally progressed to teaching sounding and blending at the end of the first year at school. In our research, the defining feature of synthetic phonics was that sounding and blending should be taught right from the start.

An examination is made here of all of the kindergarten studies using synthetic phonics included in Ehri et al (2001), with the exception of one study that did not measure word identification so cannot be directly compared to Johnston and Watson’s (2004) experiments (see Table 1). It should be noted that two of these studies carried out phonological awareness training prior to teaching participants to read via synthetic phonics (Blachman et al, 1999; J.Torgesen et al, 1999, see Notes 1 & 2). These studies have very low effect sizes at the kindergarten post-test. When these data are included (see column 3) the mean effect size is low (0.28). A different picture emerges at the next post-test, after synthetic phonics teaching had commenced, see column 4. When these data points from these two studies (see column 5) are used, a mean effect size of 0.49 is found.

The two studies by Johnston and Watson (2004) comparing synthetic phonics teaching with the analytic phonics approach used in Scotland yielded large effect sizes (see Table 2); these studies were not included in the Ehri et al (2001) meta-analysis. In the Clackmannanshire study (Experiment 1), over a 7 year period the effect sizes for word identification versus chronological age increased year after year (Johnston, McGeown and Watson, 2012).

Table 1 Effect sizes for word identification scores from kindergarten synthetic phonics studies included in Ehri et al (2001); synthetic phonics versus little or no phonics teaching

Table 2 Effect sizes for word identification scores from Johnston and Watson’s (2004) studies comparing synthetic and analytic phonics teaching

b) C.Torgerson et al (2006)

This meta-analysis was designed to compare synthetic with analytic phonics teaching, so included only 3 studies; it also deselected any studies which were not randomised controlled trial studies (unlike Ehri et al, 2001). They included Experiment 2 from Johnston and Watson (2004).

However, one of the studies included was an unpublished one that had an incorrect implementation of the synthetic phonics method (50% of the taught words were silent ‘e’ words, which cannot be accurately blended by initial readers). Furthermore, C.Torgerson et al (2006) put into the analysis the post-test data from the trained items, where there was a difference favouring analytic phonics, not the data from the untrained items, where there was no difference.

C.Torgerson et al (2006) also included the J.Torgesen et al (1999) study, but put in the kindergarten data from when the children were largely being taught phonological awareness. At this stage, the embedded (not analytic) phonics control condition included a lot of word reading, whereas the PASP method did not. It can be seen that when the children were exposed to the synthetic phonic element of the programme, the effect size in favour of the method was much greater (see Table 1).

We have published our critique of the C.Torgerson et al (2006) meta-analysis in our book Teaching Synthetic Phonics, and the relevant section can be read online, page 14: https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=WOOICwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA14

Conclusions

The US National Reading Panel meta-analysis reported in Ehri et al (2001) included studies with a late implementation of synthetic phonics teaching, an approach which is not compatible with the method used by Johnston and Watson (2004). Even when the studies of synthetic phonics that started in kindergarten were examined, two of them were found to have a late introduction of sounding and blending for reading as phonological awareness was taught first. In both cases, the introduction of synthetic phonics later on led to a very large increase in effect size. No study in this sub-analysis self-identified itself as having an analytic phonics control condition. Furthermore, the comparison in the meta-analysis between synthetic and large subunit phonics does not encompass the analytic phonics approach used in the UK for the initial teaching of reading.

A close examination of the C.Torgerson et al (2006) meta-analysis shows evidence of multiple errors in the selection of the studies to be included and in the selection of the data entered into the analysis. The number of studies included was also too small to allow for a meaningful meta-analysis.

It cannot be concluded that these two meta-analyses showed evidence against the superiority of the synthetic over the analytic phonics method.

The synthetic phonics method as implemented in our studies involved, right from the start of school, children learning a small number of letter sounds and using that knowledge right away to sound and blend the letters to find out how to pronounce unfamiliar words. They then rapidly learnt more letter sounds and continued to use the strategy. We found that these children had much better reading and phonological awareness skills than those taught either by analytic phonics, or by analytic phonics plus phonological awareness (Johnston and Watson, 2004, Experiment 1, the Clackmannanshire Study). Unlike broad-based meta-analytic comparisons, there was strict control of the new printed words used to teach all of the groups compared in our studies, so issues of pace of print exposure between studies do not arise. Furthermore, we have demonstrated that the early rigorous start of synthetic phonics teaching led to the children making increasing gains in reading ability compared with age long after the intervention ended (Johnston et al, 2012).

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Castles, A., Rastle, K, and Nation, K (2018) Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest , Vol. 19(1) 5–51.

Ehri et al (2001) Systematic Phonics Instruction Helps Students Learn to Read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel’s Meta-Analysis. Review of Educational Research ,71, No. 3, pp. 393–44.

Feitelson, D (1988) Facts and fads in beginning reading: A cross-language perspective. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Johnston, R.S and Watson, J. (2004) Accelerating the development of reading, spelling and phonemic awareness. Reading and Writing , 17 (4), 327-357.

Johnston, R.S, McGeown, S, and Watson, J. (2012) Long-term effects of synthetic versus analytic phonics teaching on the reading and spelling ability of 10 year old boys and girls. Reading and Writing , 25, part 6, 1365-1384.

Johnston, R. and Watson, J. (2014) Teaching Synthetic Phonics , 2nd edition. Sage (Learning Matters): London.

Torgesen, J., Wagner, R., Rashotte, C., Rose, E., Lindamood, P., Conway, T., & Garvan, C. (1999). Preventing reading failure in young children with phonological processing disabilities: Group and individual responses to instruction. Journal of Educational Psychology , 91, 579–593.

Torgerson, C., Brooks, G., & Hall, J. (2006). A systematic review of the research literature on the use of phonics in the teaching of reading and spelling (Research Report RR711). U.K. Department for Education and Skills. Retrieved from http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/14791/1/RR711_.pdf

1Blachman et al (1999) ‘From February to May (Semester 2) of kindergarten, treatment children participated in 41, 15 to 20 minute phonological awareness lessons (adapted from the shorter, 28 lesson program used in Ball and Blachman, 1991), delivered over an 11 week period to small, heterogeneous groups of four or five children. Classroom teachers and their teaching assistants were responsible for teaching all of the lessons. Each lesson followed the same daily format: (1) a phoneme segmentation activity (called say-it-and-move-it) in which children learned to move disks to represent the sounds in one-, two-, and three phoneme words spoken by the teacher, (2) a segmentation-related activity, such as grouping words on the basis of shared sounds (e.g., hat and hot go together because they share the same initial sound), and (3) one of a variety of activities to teach the letter names and sounds of eight letters (a, m, t, i, s, r, f, b).

Grade 1, for the treatment children ‘Instruction in phoneme analysis and blending skills….Children were taught to pronounce as a single unit a consonant (continuant) followed by a vowel. To begin, the teacher represented this strategy on the board as follows: The teacher pointed to the first letter, and the child was taught to produce that letter’s sound and hold the sound until the teacher’s finger reached the second letter. When her finger touched the second letter, the second sound was produced and held. With each successive practice opportunity, the length of time between sounds was decreased until the two sounds were pronounced as a single unit. By adding final consonants (initially, stop consonants) and pronouncing the whole word, a set of real words was built (e.g., sat, sam). Words containing new short vowels were also introduced in this manner.’

2J.Torgesen et al (1999) PASP (Phonological awareness plus Synthetic Phonics) condition. Started in Semester 2 of Kindergarten. ‘This group received the Auditory Discrimination in Depth Program as developed and outlined by Patricia and Charles Lindamood (1984). The program provided explicit instruction in phonemic awareness by leading children to discover and label the articulatory gestures associated with each phoneme. This discovery work was followed by activities to build skills in tracking the phonemes in words using mouth-form pictures, colored blocks, and letters to represent the phonemes in words

• ← A Review of “The Word Wasp” and “The Word Wasp Hornet Literacy Primer” by Elizabeth Nonweiler
• Phonics Developments in England from 1998 to 2018 by Jenny Chew →

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It’s time to stop debating how to teach kids to read and follow the evidence.

Too many teachers are using the wrong approach

Many U.S. teachers are not using the most science-based approaches to teach reading.

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By Emily Sohn

April 26, 2020 at 7:00 am

On a chilly Tuesday back in January, my 7-year-old son’s classroom in Minneapolis was humming with reading activities. At their desks, first- and second-graders wrote on worksheets, read independently and did phonics lessons on iPads. In the hallway, students took turns playing a dice game that challenged them to spell out words with a consonant-vowel-consonant structure, like wig or map .

In another part of the classroom, small groups of two or three children, many missing their two front teeth, took turns sitting on a color-block carpet with teacher Patrice Pavek. In one group, Pavek asked students to read out loud from a list of words. “Con-fess,” said a dimpled 7-year-old named Hazel, who sat cross-legged in purple boots and a black fleece. Pavek reminded Hazel that a vowel sound in the middle of a word changes when you put an e at the end. Hazel tried again. “Con-fuse,” she said. “Beautiful!” Pavek beamed.

When Hazel returned to her desk, I asked her what goes through her mind when she gets to a word she doesn’t know. “Sound it out,” she said. “Or go to the next word.” Her classmates offered other tips. Reilly, age 6, said it helps to practice and look at pictures. Seven-year-old Beatrix, who loves books about unicorns and dragons, advocated looking at both pictures and letters. It feels weird when you don’t know a word, she said, because it seems like everyone else knows it. But learning to read is kind of fun, she added. “You can figure out a word you didn’t know before.”

Like the majority of schools in the United States, my son’s district uses an approach to reading instruction called balanced literacy. And that puts him and his classmates in the middle of a long-standing debate about how best to teach children to read.

The debate — often called the “reading wars” — is generally framed as a battle between two distinct views. On one side are those who advocate for an intensive emphasis on phonics: understanding the relationships between sounds and letters, with daily lessons that build on each other in a systematic order. On the other side are proponents of approaches that put a stronger emphasis on understanding meaning, with some sporadic phonics mixed in. Balanced literacy is one such example.

The issues are less black and white. Teachers and reading advocates argue about how much phonics to fit in, how it should be taught, and what other skills and instructional techniques matter, too. In various forms, the debate about how best to teach reading has stretched on for nearly two centuries, and along the way, it has picked up political, philosophical and emotional baggage.

In fact, science has a lot to say about reading and how to teach it. Plenty of evidence shows that children who receive systematic phonics instruction learn to read better and more rapidly than kids who don’t. But pitting phonics against other methods is an oversimplification of a complicated reality. Phonics is not the only kind of instruction that matters, and it is not the panacea that will solve the nation’s reading crisis.

Cutting through the confusion over how to teach reading is essential, experts say, because reading is crucial to success, and many people never learn to do it well.

According to U.S. government data, only one-third of fourth-graders have the reading skills to be considered proficient, which is defined by the National Assessment of Educational Progress as demonstrating competency over challenging subject matter. And a third of fourth-graders and more than a quarter of 12th-graders lack the reading skills to adequately complete grade-level schoolwork, says Timothy Shanahan, a reading researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Those struggles tend to persist. As many as 44 million U.S. adults, or 23 percent of the adult population, lack literacy skills , according to U.S. Department of Education data. Those affected may be able to read movie listings, or the time and place of a meeting, but they can’t synthesize information from long passages of text or decipher the warnings on medication inserts. People who can’t read well are less likely than others to vote, or read the news or secure employment. And today’s technology-based job market means students need to achieve more with reading than in the past, Shanahan says. “We are failing to do that.”

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Lessons in decoding

The vast majority of children need to be taught how to read. Even among those with no learning disabilities, only an estimated 5 percent figure out how to read with virtually no help, says Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and author of Raising Kids Who Read . Yet educators have not reached consensus on how best to teach reading, and phonics is the part of the equation that people still argue about most.

The idea behind a systematic phonics approach is that children must learn how to translate the secret code of written language into the spoken language they know. This “decoding” begins with the development of phonological awareness, or the ability to distinguish between spoken sounds. Phonological awareness allows children, often beginning in preschool, to say that big and pig are different because of the sound at the beginning of the words.

Once children can hear the differences between sounds, phonics comes next, offering explicit instruction in the connections between letters, letter combinations and sounds. To be systematic, these skills need to be taught in an organized order of concepts that build on one another, preferably on a daily basis, says Louisa Moats, a licensed psychologist and literacy expert in Sun Valley, Idaho. Today, phonics proponents often advocate for the simple view of reading, which emphasizes decoding and comprehension, the ability to decipher meaning in sentences and passages.

Support for phonics has been around since at least the 1600s, but critics have also long expressed concerns that rote phonics lessons are boring, prevent kids from learning to love reading and distract from the ability to understand meaning in text. In the 1980s, this kind of thinking led to the rise of whole language, an approach aimed at making reading joyful and immersive instead of mindless and full of effort.

By the 2000s, a more all-around and phonics-inclusive approach called balanced literacy was gaining popularity as the leading theory in competition with phonics-first approaches.

In a 2019 survey of 674 early-elementary and special education teachers from around the United States, 72 percent said their schools use a balanced literacy approach , according to the Education Week Research Center, a nonprofit organization in Bethesda, Md. The implementation of balanced literacy, however, varies widely, especially in how much phonics is included, the survey found. That variation is probably preventing lots of kids from learning to read as well as they could, decades of research suggests.

In the late 1990s, with the reading wars in full swing, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development brought together a panel of about a dozen reading experts to evaluate the evidence for how best to teach reading. The National Reading Panel’s first task was to figure out which types of teaching tasks to include in the analysis, says Shanahan, a panel member. Ultimately, the group chose eight categories and conducted a meta-analysis of 38 studies involving 66 controlled experiments from 1970 through 2000. The results showed support for five components of reading instruction that helped students the most.

Five essentials

A meta-analysis of 38 studies found five components of reading instruction were most helpful to students.

Phonemic awareness Knowing that spoken words are made of smaller segments of sound called phonemes

Phonics The knowledge that letters represent phonemes and that these sounds can combine to form words

Fluency The ability to read easily, accurately, quickly and with expression and understanding

Vocabulary Learning new words

Comprehension The ability to show understanding, often through summarization

Source: National Reading Panel

Two components that rose to the top were an emphasis on phonemic awareness (a part of phonological awareness that involves the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words) and phonics. Studies included in the analysis showed that higher levels of phonemic awareness in kindergarten and first grade were predictors of better reading skills later on. The analysis couldn’t assess the magnitude of benefits, but children who received systematic phonics instruction scored better on word reading, spelling and comprehension, especially when phonics lessons started before first grade. Those children were also better at sounding out words, including nonsense words, Shanahan says.

Vocabulary development was another essential component, as was a focus on comprehension. The final important facet was a focus on achieving fluency — the ability to read a text quickly, accurately and with proper expression — by having children read out loud, among other strategies.

Even before the panel released its results in 2000 , numerous studies and books from as early as the 1960s had concluded that there was value in explicit phonics instruction. Studies since then have added yet more support for phonics.

In 2008, the National Early Literacy Panel, a government-convened group that included Shanahan, considered dozens of studies on phonological awareness (including phonemic awareness) plus phonics instruction in preschool and kindergarten. Children who got decoding instruction scored substantially bette r on tests of phonological awareness compared with those who didn’t. The benefit was equivalent to a jump from the 50th percentile to the 79th percentile on standardized tests, suggesting those students were better prepared to learn how to read.

Likewise, a 2007 meta-analysis of 22 studies conducted in urban elementary schools found that minority children who received phonics instruction scored the equivalent of several months ahead of their minority peers on several academic measures. Studies have not addressed whether phonics might help close demographic achievement gaps, but research suggests that whole language approaches are less effective in disadvantaged populations than in other groups.

“There are several thousand studies at least that converge on this finding,” Moats says. “Phonics instruction has always had the edge in consensus reports.”

It is difficult to quantify how substantial the gains are from explicit phonics instruction, partly because the bulk of published research is full of ambiguities. Randomized trials are rare. Studies tend to be small. And in schools where teachers have autonomy to respond to students at their discretion, control groups are often not well-defined, making it hard to tell what phonics-focused programs are really being compared with, or how much phonics the control groups are getting. The reality of instruction can differ from classroom to classroom, even within the same school. And students who aren’t getting intensive phonics at school may have the blanks filled in at home, where parents might sound out words and talk about letters while reading bedtime stories.

The data that are available suggest that kids who get systematic phonics lessons score the equivalent of about half a grade level ahead of kids in other groups on standardized tests, Shanahan says. That’s not a giant leap, but it helps. “Overwhelmingly in studies, both individually and in a meta-analysis where you’re combining results across studies, if you explicitly teach phonics for some amount of time, kids do better than if you don’t pay much attention to that or if you pay a little bit of attention to [phonics],” he says.

Real experiences

Some of the most compelling evidence to support a phonics-focused approach comes from historical observations: When schools start teaching systematic phonics, test scores tend to go up. As phonics took hold in U.S. schools in the 1970s, fourth–graders began to do better on standardized reading tests.

In the 1980s, California replaced its phonics curriculum with a whole language approach. In 1994, the state’s fourth-graders tied for last place in the nation: Less than 18 percent had mastered reading. After California re-embraced phonics in the 1990s, test scores rose. By 2019, 32 percent achieved grade-level proficiency.

Those swings continue today. In 2019, Mississippi reported the nation’s largest improvement in reading scores ; the state had started training teachers in phonics instruction six years earlier. For the first time, Mississippi’s reading scores matched the nation’s average, with 32 percent of students showing proficiency, up from 22 percent in 2009, making it the only state to post significant gains in reading in 2019.

England, too, started seeing dramatic results after government-funded schools were required in 2006 to teach systematic phonics to 5- to 7-year-olds. When the country implemented a test to assess phonics skills in 2012, 58 percent of 5- and 6-year-olds passed. By 2016, 81 percent of students passed. Reading comprehension at age 7 has risen, and gains seem to persist at age 11. These population trends make a strong case for teaching phonics, says Douglas Fuchs, an educational psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

A boost with phonics

After adding explicit phonics instruction statewide in 2013, Mississippi reported the nation’s largest improvement in reading scores among fourth-graders.

Mississippi fourth-grade reading proficiency

Source: National Assessment of Educational Progress 2019

Despite the evidence that children learn to read best when given systematic phonics along with other key components of a literacy program, many schools and teacher-training programs either ignore the science, apply it inconsistently or mix conflicting approaches that could hinder proficiency. In the 2019 Education Week Research Center survey, 86 percent of teachers who train teachers said they teach phonics. But surveyed elementary school teachers often use strategies that contradict a phonics-first approach: Seventy-five percent said they use a technique called three cuing. This method teaches children to guess words they don’t know by using context and picture clues, and has been criticized for getting in the way of learning to decode. More than half of the teachers said they thought students could understand written passages that contained unfamiliar words, even without a good grasp of phonics.

The disconnect starts at the top. In a 2013 review of nearly 700 teacher-training institutions, only 29 percent required teachers to take courses on four or five of the five essential facets of reading instruction identified by the National Reading Panel. Almost 60 percent required teachers to complete coursework on two or fewer of the essentials, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality, a research and policy group based in Washington, D.C.

Teacher’s choice

In a random sample of almost 700 U.S. early-elementary and special education teachers, most reported using a method called balanced literacy to teach reading. The simple view of reading, focused on phonics, was a distant second.

Balanced literacy Instruction includes a bit of everything, usually with some phonics.

Simple view The emphasis is on phonics, with a focus on two skills: decoding and language comprehension.

Whole language Instruction emphasizes whole words and phrases in meaningful contexts, including a strategy called three cuing.

How U.S. educators teach reading

Source: EdWeek Research Center 2020

In 2019, the Education Week Research Center also surveyed 533 postsecondary educators who train teachers on how to teach reading. Only 22 percent of those educators said their philosophy was to teach explicit, systematic phonics. Almost 60 percent said they support balanced literacy. And about 15 percent thought, contrary to evidence, that most students would learn to read if given the right books and enough time.

“The majority of classrooms in this country continue to embrace instructional practices and programs that do not include systematic instruction in foundational skills like phonemic awareness and phonics and spelling,” Moats says. “They just don’t do it.”

At my son’s Minneapolis school, reading specialist Karin Emerson told me about her early days teaching kindergarten, first and second grades in the 1990s. She was trained to use a whole language approach that included the three cuing technique.

Emerson described a typical reading lesson: “I’m going to show you a big book, and I’m going to cover up all of the letters of the word except the b , and I’m going to say, ‘Look at this page. It says this is a …’ What do you think it’s going to say?” Then she would point out the butterfly in the picture and ask the students to think about whether the b sound could refer to anything in the picture. “What does butterfly start with? A ‘b-uh.’ Do you think it’s going to be butterfly? I think it is going to be butterfly. It is.”

Eight years later, Emerson switched from classroom teacher to reading specialist, helping third-graders who weren’t reading yet. Many were the same students she had taught to read in younger grades. After reviewing the reading research, she implemented systematic phonics. By the end of third grade, students in her groups advanced an average of two grade levels. She now encourages early-grade teachers to add at least 20 minutes of phonics a day into literacy lessons.

Looking back to her classroom-teaching days, Emerson says parents often told her they were concerned that their children weren’t reading yet. “I would say, ‘Oh, they’ll be fine because they’re well spoken, they’re bright and you’re reading to them.’ Well they weren’t fine,” Emerson says. “Some people learn how to read super easy, and that’s great. But most people need to be taught, and there’s a pretty big chunk who need to be taught in a systematic way.”

While learning about ongoing battles over reading instruction, I have been marveling at my son’s transformation from nonreader to reader. One recent afternoon, he came home from school and told me that he had learned how to spell the word “A-G-A-I-N.” I asked him how he would spell it if it looked like it sounded. He worked it out, one sound at a time: “U-G-E-N.” We agreed the English language is pretty strange. It’s amazing anyone learns to read it at all.

This is your brain on reading

Reading is a relatively new activity for the human brain, which hasn’t had time to evolve specialized areas devoted to the task. Instead, our brains enlist areas, such as the visual system, that originated for other reasons, says Guinevere Eden, a neuroscientist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. An object like a tree or a lion needs to be recognizable from any angle, she says. But when we read, we need to override that kind of pattern recognition to distinguish, say, b from d , two letters that look identical to a beginning reader.

To translate squiggles and dots into sounds, several key brain areas, in both the visual and language systems, get involved. And how involved those areas are during reading shifts with increasing mastery, according to brain-imaging studies from the last two decades. When early or experienced readers sound out an unfamiliar word, they tap into the posterior and superior temporal lobes and inferior parietal lobe, which are involved in language and sensory processing. When the brain encounters a familiar word, on the other hand, the visual cortex takes over, suggesting that known words become like any other object that the brain recognizes instantly. As a person’s reading skills improve and the mental menu of familiar words grows, activity is more pronounced in the visual cortex during reading, Eden says.

Eden uses brain scans to understand what goes wrong in children with reading disabilities, who have trouble sounding out words. One of her goals is to evaluate interventions for children with dyslexia to see if the interventions target the brain processes that are most impaired.

Despite heavy marketing by companies that sell reading products using brain scans as evidence that the companies’ methods help children learn to read, Eden says that imaging studies cannot yet answer questions about which types of reading instruction are best for children, with or without reading disabilities.

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Reading Elephant

Helping children reach their reading potential.

Why Teach Phonics? Research that Explains a Lot

posted on April 3, 2019

In many English-speaking countries, people are not convinced that kids need phonics instruction. The media continues to promote stories that whole language—a method that encourages guessing, looking at pictures and memorizing—and incidental phonics is the answer. In teacher training programs, future teachers learn all about the glories of “student-centered” teaching, that the ability to read is inherently within the child, and phonics is not just a waste of time, but perhaps harmful.

Meanwhile, over the last 50 years, there’s been a growing body of research that shows the following:

Explicit, systematic phonics instruction is the best way to teach early reading skills. Phonics is NOT a mere superfluous add-on. Instead, phonics is essential. Phonics builds a strong reading foundation, and allows all children to read and spell independently.

Why teach phonics? The research on the benefits of phonics is rock-solid. You could even say it’s steel-solid.

At this point, the research is rock-solid. Mark Seidenberg, author of Language at the Speed of Sight , states:

“For reading scientists the evidence that the phonological pathway is used in reading and especially important in beginning reading is about as close to conclusive as research on complex human behavior can get” (Seidenberg, 2017, p. 124).

In other words, the science is clear: kids benefit from explicit, systematic phonics instruction. Reading scientists are often in Psychology and Cognitive Science departments. Unfortunately, many Education departments are oblivious to what reading scientists have discovered. Education departments don’t tend to focus on research and science: they like to focus on theory. The theory they inculcate in future educators is largely that reading is natural. Seidenberg states:

“The gulf between science and education has been harmful. A look at the science reveals that the methods commonly used to teach children are inconsistent with basic facts about human cognition and development and so make reading more difficult than it should be. They inadvertently place many children at risk for reading failure” (Seidenberg, 2017).

Stanislaus Dehaene, a neuroscientist and author of Reading in the Brain , explains that even expert readers use the phonological pathway. Our ability to read, however, is so automatic, that we hardly realize that we use phonics knowledge:

“Today, we know that the immediacy of reading is just an illusion engendered by the extreme automaticity of its component strategies, which operate outside our conscious awareness” (Dehaene, 2009, p. 225)

We read so rapidly we hardly realize that we still decode.  Some have the idea (I used to) that even if a beginning reader first learns phonics, eventually she tosses out phonics for a more efficient method: reading by sight. However, this isn’t true. We never toss phonics aside. Instead, phonics becomes automatic.

How do we really know explicit, systematic phonics is research-based?

If we’re wondering, “Why teach phonics?” we need to look at a very broad body of research. This question points to a larger problem in human behavior studies.  When we look at research, we can’t just look at one study or a handful of studies. It’s easy to cherry-pick research to argue for something we’re comfortable with.

However, reading is too important. When we look at the studies, we should not stay within our comfort zone. Instead, we have to look at a very broad view of the research. This has been done. The National Reading Panel (2000) consisted of several committees of scholars. They reviewed thousands of reading studies to aggregate statistical data. They wanted to find out what actually works.

Early reading achievement predicts later reading achievement

They found that explicit, systematic teaching of phonemic awareness and phonics improves reading scores. Many studies show that early reading scores correlate with later reading achievement. For example, Dykstra (1968) found in a study of 960 children that:

“Reading achievement at the end of second grade correlated with reading at the end of first grade at values ranging from .60 or higher, showing that reading achievement is the best predictor of reading achievement” (McGuiness, Diane, 2000, p. 103).

This makes sense because kids who learn the code early on tend to read more voluminously later. Stanovich and Cunningham (1997) did a unique 10-year longitudinal study. They found that 1 st grade decoding skills predicted 11 th grade reading volume. They teased out any differences due to intelligence. That is, intelligence does not determine 11th grade reading volume, but 1 st grade decoding skills do. They write:

“This is a stunning finding because it means that students who get off to a fast start in reading are more likely to read more over the years” (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997).

This study and countless others that demonstrate the importance of early decoding skills have not seemed to penetrate school curricula. Currently, in many English-speaking classrooms, kids are expected to break the code on their own. Or they’re given incidental phonics lessons, which are sloppy and sporadic. The research has shown that incidental phonics, though better than no phonics, is not effective.

Most programs send contradictory messages to the student

Most districts don’t use explicit, systematic phonics programs. Instead, many use “balanced-literacy.” This means students are taught to guess, look at pictures, and decode. In theory, this sounds good. Balanced is good, right? We try to follow balanced diets, have balance in our daily lives…etc. But in this case, however, balanced means inserting unscientific practices into reading instruction. Kids get two messages at once. Let’s say the child has to read:

Frog was lonely. He walked down the path to visit his friend Toad.

In whole language, the child would look at a picture of Frog walking, then the teacher would say, “What makes sense there?” The child would proceed to guess. Frog went for a walk or Frog was going to see his friend. This guessing method breaks down quickly. How is the child supposed to guess lonely or visit for example? Furthermore, how is the child supposed to guess on more sophisticated texts: Photosynthesis is the process in which green plants use sunlight to synthesize food and water.  

In contrast, phonics teaches kids to understand sound-symbol correlations. They are also taught the first 100 or so sight words systematically. With phonics, the child would be able to read the above sentences confidently. They wouldn’t need to guess. Furthermore, the child could read difficult texts with new content later on. They could read the news, their science and math books, more sophisticated literature and content that isn’t even guessable.

Reading Elephant systematic phonics books

If you’re interested in helping a struggling reader, Reading Elephant offers systematic phonics books . In Reading Elephant books, sounds are introduced one at a time. The child can practice each new phonics sound extensively.

References:

Cunningham, Anne E. & Stanovich, Keith E. (1998) What Reading Does for the Mind . American Educator/American Federation of Teachers.

Dehaene, Stanislas. (2009). Reading in the Brain: the New Science of How We Read.

Seidenberg, Mark (2017) Language at the Speed of Sight.

Reader Interactions

January 23, 2023 at 7:11 am

It’s nice that you mentioned how systematic phonics instruction is the best way to teach early reading skills. Early education would surely be good for our daughter, so we are thinking of having her learn as early as possible. I heard a home school phonics program is pretty nice so we should probably try that.

December 16, 2021 at 4:16 am

It feels reassuring that research entails early knowledge of phonics in children can help develop later reading proficiency. This is why I’d want my 1-year-old to learn even simple English sounds. I might buy a book to help guide him until he becomes a preschool student.

August 19, 2019 at 12:41 am

This entire article is on point! And I like that you talk about sight words, too. Phonics plus sight words equals reading.

April 6, 2019 at 4:48 am

April 10, 2019 at 4:22 pm

Thank you Keith! 🙂

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Phonics Books With a Proven Approach

Reading Elephant phonics books are based on proven approaches and sound research. Furthermore, their sequential, progressive nature eases kids from easy to more challenging reading territory. Kids can have fun with phonics by starting simple and moving methodically toward complex. The gradual progression of the stories allows students to gain confidence. In addition, they build fluency and become more precise readers.

Reading Elephant printable books are easy to use. Simply move through the sets and watch your student master each new phonics sound. In each set, there are numerous stories that allow kids to gain fluency.

Each printable book includes the set number and focus sound, allowing the teacher to easily navigate the product.

Our books are appropriate for kindergarten through second grade, but preschoolers can also learn from the simpler ones. The phonics stories are meant to engage and entertain, all while establishing fundamental building blocks for a bright reading future.

Thank you for visiting Reading Elephant!

• Jun 26 2024

UK neurologist advocates for AI, ultrasound to help prevent blindness from giant cell arteritis

A  recently published article  by  UK HealthCare’s   Jagannadha (Jay) Avasarala, M.D., Ph.D. , professor of neurology, outlines the promise of point of care ultrasound (POCUS) in the diagnosis of Giant Cell Arteritis (GCA). Misdiagnosis or a missed diagnosis of GCA can result in blindness that is preventable. Avasarala’s recent article published in the Journal of Rheumatology calls for a rapid, “on-the-spot” diagnosis and treatment as the only way forward to prevent blindness caused by the disease. Since GCA is linked to aortic diseases, a diagnosis of GCA could lead to a search for aortic diseases that may be silent. 

GCA is an inflammation of the lining of the arteries. Most frequently, it affects the arteries in the head, particularly those in the temples. For this reason, GCA is sometimes called temporal arteritis. The condition frequently causes headaches, scalp tenderness, jaw pain and vision problems but the key to diagnosis is that any new eye symptom at or above the age of 50 can signal the onset of GCA. Delay in treatment can lead to blindness and prompt treatment with IV corticosteroids usually relieves symptoms and can help prevent loss of vision. Unfortunately, once the damage is done and vision loss occurs, it is usually permanent. 

GCA is the most common autoimmune systemic vasculitis of older adults and affects more women than men. About 20% of patients become blind or visually impaired due to misdiagnosis/delayed diagnosis. It is estimated that by 2050, three million people worldwide will be diagnosed with GCA and half a million of those are projected to become visually impaired or blind.  

Currently, there are no standardized guidelines for healthcare providers that recommend a specific pathway to use ultrasound as a screening tool for patients with symptoms suggestive of GCA. There also is not currently a protocol for prevention of blindness in GCA across Europe or North America. Avasarala believes a universal practice based on a centralized cloud-based data collection system modeled from POCUS data acquisition and an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven diagnostic platform that provides instantaneous results for a clinician are urgently needed to prevent blindness. 

Avasarala, director of the  Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunology Center  within UK HealthCare’s  Kentucky Neuroscience Institute , is believed to be the first researcher and physician to outline this novel concept. He believes that combining POCUS with AI algorithms could lead to a quick diagnosis for patients and their providers.

“The disease is not new; the approach to an instant diagnosis using POCUS has been done in other diseases, but not in GCA and certainly not on a global scale,” said Avasarala. “Considering that POCUS and AI-driven diagnostics already exist and are in use, it is shocking that we are not doing it for GCA since the consequences of delay are blindness or death from stroke/aortic disease. The need to standardize GCA diagnosis is urgent.”

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), vision impairment severely impacts the quality of life among adult populations. Adults with vision impairment may experience lower rates of employment and higher rates of depression and anxiety. In the case of older adults, vision impairment can contribute to social isolation, difficulty walking, a higher risk of falls and a greater likelihood of early entry into nursing or care homes.  

Avasarala believes combining POCUS with AI, in some ways akin to what Viz.AI does, could have huge benefits. Viz.AI is a state-of-the-art and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-cleared AI-based technology used in stroke care. The technology can auto-detect large vessel occlusion strokes. Its platform leverages FDA-cleared algorithms to analyze medical images and data, echocardiogram and electrocardiograms to accelerate diagnosis and treatment. “It is time to move GCA to a ‘stroke of the eye’ category or risk blindness in a significant percentage of patients due to delayed treatment or diagnosis,” writes Avasarala. This is unacceptable in this day and age, he says. 

He explains in his article how the widespread commercial availability of handheld probes and pocket ultrasound transducers makes it feasible to acquire images at the bedside across many clinical scenarios. Since the devices possess the capability to synchronize and upload images to web-based cloud servers compliant with HIPAA, real-time feedback is possible. Avasarala says because of this the tool can be used anywhere — from an ambulance to out in the field — and image interpretation, specifically in underserved areas, can be instantaneous, based on AI algorithms. 

“There is no reason why POCUS combined with AI algorithms cannot do the trick for GCA,” said Avasarala. “The goal is to save patients from becoming blind. An instant diagnosis of GCA is the only way to prevent blindness.” 

Avasarala is working with leaders in both the ultrasound and AI field to make this concept a reality. “It has a long way to go, but is promising,” he said.

Words: Hillary Smith (Public Relations & Strategic Communication) Photo: UK HealthCare Brand Strategy

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Japanese emperor to reconnect with the River Thames in state visit meant to bolster ties with UK

Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako smile at the media walk through a guard of honour after arriving at Stansted Airport, England, Saturday, June 22, 2024, ahead of a state visit. The state visit begins Tuesday, when King Charles III and Queen Camilla will formally welcome the Emperor and Empress before taking a ceremonial carriage ride to Buckingham Palace. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Emperor Naruhito is saluted by a member of the honour guard as he and Empress Masako arrive at Stansted Airport, England, Saturday, June 22, 2024, ahead of a state visit. The state visit begins Tuesday, when King Charles III and Queen Camilla will formally welcome the Emperor and Empress before taking a ceremonial carriage ride to Buckingham Palace. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

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Emperor Naruhito is greeted by dignitaries has he and Empress Masako arrive at Stansted Airport, England, Saturday, June 22, 2024, ahead of a state visit. The state visit begins Tuesday, when King Charles III and Queen Camilla will formally welcome the Emperor and Empress before taking a ceremonial carriage ride to Buckingham Palace. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Japan Empress Masako smiles as she disembarks at Stansted Airport, England, Saturday, June 22, 2024, ahead of a state visit. The state visit begins Tuesday, when King Charles III and Queen Camilla will formally welcome the Emperor and Empress before taking a ceremonial carriage ride to Buckingham Palace. (Chris Radurn/PA via AP)

Emperor Naruhito is greeted by dignities as he and Empress Masako arrive at Stansted Airport, England, Saturday, June 22, 2024, ahead of a state visit. The state visit begins Tuesday, when King Charles III and Queen Camilla will formally welcome the Emperor and Empress before taking a ceremonial carriage ride to Buckingham Palace. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako disembark their aircraft as they arrive at Stansted Airport, England, Saturday, June 22, 2024, ahead of a state visit. The state visit begins Tuesday, when King Charles III and Queen Camilla will formally welcome the Emperor and Empress before taking a ceremonial carriage ride to Buckingham Palace. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Emperor Naruhito, left, and Empress Masako walk down from their aircraft as they arrive at Stansted Airport, England, Saturday, June 22, 2024, ahead of a state visit. The state visit begins Tuesday, when King Charles III and Queen Camilla will formally welcome the Emperor and Empress before taking a ceremonial carriage ride to Buckingham Palace. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako walk through a guard of honour after arriving at Stansted Airport, England, Saturday, June 22, 2024, ahead of a state visit. The state visit begins Tuesday, when King Charles III and Queen Camilla will formally welcome the Emperor and Empress before taking a ceremonial carriage ride to Buckingham Palace. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako are greeted by dignitaries as they arrive at Stansted Airport, England, Saturday, June 22, 2024, ahead of a state visit. The state visit begins Tuesday, when King Charles III and Queen Camilla will formally welcome the Emperor and Empress before taking a ceremonial carriage ride to Buckingham Palace. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Empress Masako gestures as she speaks to dignitaries as she and Emperor Naruhito arrive at Stansted Airport, England, Saturday, June 22, 2024, ahead of a state visit. The state visit begins Tuesday, when King Charles III and Queen Camilla will formally welcome the Emperor and Empress before taking a ceremonial carriage ride to Buckingham Palace. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

The Japanese flag flies form the cockpit window of the plane carring Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako as it arrives at Stansted Airport, England, Saturday, June 22, 2024, ahead of a state visit. The state visit begins Tuesday, when King Charles III and Queen Camilla will formally welcome the Emperor and Empress before taking a ceremonial carriage ride to Buckingham Palace. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

The plane carrying Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako arrives at Stansted Airport, England, Saturday, June 22, 2024, ahead of a state visit. The state visit begins Tuesday, when King Charles III and Queen Camilla will formally welcome the Emperor and Empress before taking a ceremonial carriage ride to Buckingham Palace. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

LONDON (AP) — Before Emperor Naruhito of Japan attends a banquet hosted by King Charles III , lays a wreath at Westminster Abbey or tours one of Britain’s premier biomedical research institutes, he’ll kick off this week’s trip to the U.K. by visiting a site that has special meaning for him: The Thames Barrier.

While the retractable flood control gates on the River Thames don’t top most lists of must-see tourist sights, the itinerary underscores the emperor’s fascination with the waterway that is the throbbing heart of London.

Emperor Naruhito, left, and Empress Masako walk down from their aircraft as they arrive at Stansted Airport, England, Saturday, June 22, 2024, ahead of a state visit. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

That interest was born 40 years ago when Naruhito studied 18th-century commerce on the river as a graduate student at the University of Oxford. But those two years, chronicled in his memoir “The Thames and I,” also forged a special fondness for Britain and its people. The future emperor got a chance to live outside the palace walls, seeing the kindness of strangers who rushed to help when he dropped his purse, scattering coins across a shop floor, and experiencing traditions like the great British pub crawl.

“It would be impossible in Japan to go to a place where hardly anyone would know who I was,’’ Naruhito wrote. “It is really important and precious to have the opportunity to be able to go privately at one’s own pace where one wants.’’

Naruhito and the Empress Masako, who studied at Oxford a few years after her husband, returned to the U.K. on Saturday for a weeklong stay combining the glitter and ceremony of a state visit with four days of less formal events that will allow the royal couple to revisit their personal connections to Britain.

The visit comes at a time when the U.K. is seeking to bolster ties with Japan as it aims to be the most influential European nation in the Indo-Pacific region, said John Nilsson-Wright, the head of the Japan and Koreas program at the Centre for Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge. In October 2020, Britain touted an economic partnership with Japan as the first major international trade agreement it had struck since leaving the European Union earlier that year.

“The U.K.-Japan relationship is hugely important. … It’s based on shared common experience. It’s based also on the affinity between our two peoples,’’ Nilsson-Wright said. “Britain and Japan can act as a source of stability and, hopefully, mutual reassurance at a time when political change is so potentially destabilizing.”

The trip, originally planned for 2020, was intended to be the emperor’s first overseas visit after he ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne in 2019. But it was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. He later attended Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral.

The state visit begins Tuesday, when Charles and Queen Camilla will formally welcome the emperor and empress before they take a ceremonial carriage ride to Buckingham Palace. Naruhito will also lay a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier in Westminster Abbey then return to the palace for a state banquet.

But before the pomp and circumstance begins, Naruhito will visit The Thames Barrier, a series of retractable steel gates that protect London from flooding while allowing ships to continue navigating the river. After the state visit, he and his wife will have time to tour their old colleges at Oxford.

It was at Merton College that the future emperor, who was born Hironomiya Naruhito, was known simply as Hiro because it was easier for faculty and students to remember the nickname (and because the prince liked the sound of it), he wrote in “The Thames and I.”

One of his greatest joys at Merton was to go to the Middle Common Room, a meeting place for graduate students, to drink coffee and talk with other students after lunch.

“These moments, with my fellow students, brief as they were, were very important for me,’’ Naruhito wrote.

Britain in the 1980s was a revelation to Naruhito because it seemed to respect the past even as it embraced the future, he said, remembering the peaceful co-existence of scholars in traditional caps and gowns with young people wearing punk rock garb.

Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako disembark their aircraft as they arrive at Stansted Airport, England, Saturday, June 22, 2024, ahead of a state visit. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

“I did not feel that was out of the ordinary,’’ he said. “It seemed to me that both reflected the spirit of the place. This was, after all, a country which produced the Beatles and the miniskirt. I felt that while the British attach importance to old traditions, they also have the ability to innovate.’’

Naruhito also wrote about the novelty of walking through the streets of Oxford without being noticed, of spending hours in the local records office doing his academic research and of having the chance to do his own shopping and other mundane chores that most people take for granted.

And he remembered climbing a hill northeast of the city just to take in the view.

“It was best toward sunset,’’ he wrote. “I can never forget the moment when the silhouettes of the spires of Oxford one by one caught the evening light and seemed to float above the mists. This mystical sight, which has aroused so much admiration, is called Oxford’s dreaming spires.’’

But behind it all there was always the River Thames, which flows southeast from Oxford to London before emptying into the North Sea.

Naruhito began studying river commerce as a boy when Japan’s roads and rivers offered a glimpse of travel and freedom outside the confines of the palace. So when he arrived in Oxford, it was logical to study the Thames.

Looking back at the research papers he wrote 40 years ago, he’s flooded with nostalgia, Naruhito told reporters in Tokyo before returning to Britain.

“The memories of my time with the Thames come back to me,’’ he said. “The list goes on and on, including my hard work in collecting historical materials … the beautiful scenery around me that healed me from my fatigue from research, and the days I jogged along the river.’’

Associated Press writers Mari Yamaguchi and Mayuko Ono in Tokyo contributed.