What kinds of readers should we be developing?
What kinds of readers should we be developing?
Newsletter
“Reading educators and other stakeholders all want children to read well, after all, and we need each other’s voices, perspectives, and research in conversation rather than in battle in order to best make that happen.”
- Maren Aukerman, University of Calgary, “The Science of Reading and the Media: How Do Current Reporting Patterns Cause Damage?” (Literacy Research Association, 2022)
In the third of her three-part article series on the science of reading and the media, Maren Aukerman states that engaging in “dialogue around differing perspectives is critical to a robust educational community.”
She compares unhelpful online exchanges around literacy instruction to other hot-button issues in which people struggle to engage in productive conversation.
“While competing perspectives on reading instruction are hardly new, the vitriol and distrust in the past few years feel different, eerily similar to the frenzied lack of civil discourse in other arenas of public life that some scholars have called a threat to democracy.”
Citing several studies throughout the series, Aukerman makes a strong case that lack of dialogue around this topic is due in no small part to poor journalistic practices.
“Problematic journalism can contribute to the disintegration of genuine dialogue among educators and other stakeholders by increasing polarization.”
Nevertheless, she offers five starting points for the conversations we need to have:
Outcomes – What kinds of readers should we be developing? What is the role of fluency, critical thinking, and imagination?
Methods – What are the pros and cons of different methods of teaching and assessing decoding, comprehension, and students’ motivation?
Equity – How do we ensure that emerging bilingual students and other historically marginalized populations learn to read with understanding?
Student variation – When and how should we differentiate for students with reading disabilities, gifted learners, or those with ADHD?
Values – Do we embrace the importance of children finding reading and writing engaging and meaningful?
Someone needs to start a conversation…
Of the five areas she encourages educators to focus on for dialogue, I found outcomes most relevant right now.
Specifically, I’m interested in the question “What kinds of readers should we be developing?”
My interest is in how we assess readers today and the way the outcomes of these assessments shape our instruction.
I've learned over the last 20+ years that some of the best qualities of a reader - engaged, self-directed, mindful, critical, habitual - are difficult to measure. These qualities (hopefully) grow over time, although not necessarily on our timeline.
So instead, we measure what is more easily measurable.
An example: progress monitoring. It almost feels performative, especially when you know that the typical reader has ups-and-downs. "Your trend line is showing an increased rate of progress. The intervention must be working!" Or, is the measure telling us the student is simply getting better at decoding because we are teaching them how to decode? Is the tail wagging the dog?
I'm guilty of falling into these types of traps. I want closure around my practice. Did our efforts work or not? Time doesn’t always tell, at least right away. Engagement and identity don’t grow in a linear fashion. Even though this is reality, the outcomes don’t always fit snuggly in the “scientific” box.
I suspect a possible source of what Aukerman refers to as “anti-scientific attitudes” within the science of reading movement is a lack of confidence in what is being proposed by the very members within it.
They lack trust in themselves, in readers, and/or in their colleagues.
So they supplant confidence and faith with a clean, linear method to reading instruction.
They think they are controlling the variables, even when the biggest variable - the student - is too complex to be controlled.
This possible lack of professional confidence and trust may also explain why more student-centered approaches to literacy instruction, such as Reading Recovery, have become the “straw men” for confrontations about what is scientific. They represent the antithesis to popular SoR: teachers with confidence in their own expertise, a supportive professional learning community, and faith in the reader and their colleagues to help kids continue their journey in becoming a reader.
All this being said, I believe we can reach a better collective understanding of teaching readers (and writers and thinkers and communicators...) when all voices are heard. By engaging in this space and similar ones, we support a better conversation.
Additional Resources
You can continue this conversation around Parts 2 and 3 by becoming a paid subscriber to this space. Full community members are able to comment in the discussion thread and member chat. They will also have access to all content and resources from the real time Zoom conversation once posted.
Update: Maren Aukerman will be joining us in the 2/21 Zoom conversation!
Texts: “The Science of Reading and the Media: Does the Media Draw on High-Quality Reading Research?” and “The Science of Reading and the Media: How Do Current Reporting Patterns Cause Damage?” by Maren Aukerman (Literacy Research Association, 2022)
Discussion Thread (posted February 14)
Virtual Conversation (Zoom, February 21, 5:30 P.M. CST)
Podcast (recorded video conversation to be posted February 28)
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Thanks to Kim Marshall for organizing Aukerman’s topics and questions, published in The Marshall Memo. Kim was kind enough to allow all readers to access his three summaries of the Literacy Research Association articles for free here.
