This podcast describes the following:Words - sound groups that represent things in the real world.Buzzwords - are words used to elicit an emotional response rather than accurately transmitting information. Propagating lexiconic locution – an overuse of academic buzzwords.Weasel words - words are used to give the impression of something without really saying something. Strawman argument – Creating a cartoonish or distorted version of something then arguing against the cartoon.
In a recent show, I referred to Emily Hanford as the Alexa App of reading instruction. This was a metaphor, a common literary device in which one makes a comparison without using the words ‘like’ or ‘as’. It creates an image. When we say America is a melting pot, we don’t literally mean there’s a big pot bubbling somewhere. Metaphors create images and communicate things that lists of words cannot. Recently, somebody took great umbrage of my use of metaphor. This was selective umbrage. If you want to take umbrage at something, take umbrage at the money wasted to pay for commercial products and services. Take umbrage at over-crowed classrooms and poor teaching conditions. Take umbrage at low teacher pay and lack of legitimate professional development opportunities. Take umbrage at tax cuts that make tuition costs rise. Take umbrage when the public cannot afford to go to our public colleges and universities. Take umbrage at the lack of health care, food insecurity, and mass shootings.
If somebody makes the claim that research says something, one has an obligation to have read a research article at least once in their life. And if somebody says, “Show me the research,” that person should know what research is and how to read and interpret it.
Legitimate professional development for teachers is necessary. I used the term ‘legitimate’ to exclude programs and services that are profit-based. These are usually little more than infomercials disguised as professional development. Here, there is no check and balance. There is no blind peer review of the information provided. Only the information that supports their product or service is presented. Information that does not is not. The best example of this is LETRS professional development for teachers. As described in earlier chapters, there is no legitimate research provided to suggest that using LETRS (a) enhances students' reading achievement, (b) enhances teachers’ ability to teach effectively, and (c) is more effective than other types of professional development. (Remember, having elements that are supported by research doesn’t make the program research-based. Every program has some element that can be supported by research.)
Toadys sometimes call themselves “consultants”. They promote methods and say things that just happen to coincide with the products and services being sold by Big Publishing. Quite a coincidence, yes? Right and wrong are not determined based on what’s right and wrong; rather, by what will sell.
Despite having the word “science” in their title, the proposals put forth by the SoR are not grounded in science at all, but in pseudo-science, I-think-isms, and anecdotal evidence. In fact, they are promoting an ideology. Real science. Real science puts forth conclusions and recommendations based on a wide body of research. Real science uses systematic methods to collect and analyze data. Real science draws conclusions only from data collected. And real science uses blind peer review for an objective system of checks and balances.Ideology. An ideology is a system of ideas and beliefs. An ideology puts forth a dogma based on a very narrow range of data that must be adhered to. What the SOR promotes is based far more on a reading belief system than reading science. Hence, the SOR would be more accurately named, the Ideology of Reading.
One of the reasons why the Science of Reading people have been so successful is that they’ve been writing to the people over there. They’ve used stories and radio documentaries that sound very much like the way people talk. They’ve enabled the people over there to see and hear real people while our quiet very reasoned third-person voice has been ignored
This is a conversation with another master teacher, Daphne Russell
There never was a reading war. A war assumes there are two armies meeting on a field of battle. This didn’t happen. But there was a reading coup. There was a hostile takeover of the field of literacy instruction by profiteers who saw public education as their own private ATM machine. This group of profiteers is part of the educational industrial complex which includes Cambium-Lexia Learning, Pearson Education, Cengage Learning, Hough Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill Education, Voyager Sopris Learning, TAL Education Group, Bright Horizons, and KinderCare Learning. Their armies of well-paid toadies (consultants) promise schools simple solutions to complex problems. “Just buy our shiny new products,” they say. “Pay for our services,” they say. “Get trained by our experts,” they say, “and all your literacy problems will go away. All your students will be reading above grade level.”“Well, I don’t know,” the school says. “That’s a lot of money.” “Look,” they say, “look at all the colorful charts and graphs. Look at all the pretty, pretty numbers.”“Well,” the school says, “you do have numbers. That must mean it’s real.” “Wouldn’t you like to have colorful charts and graphs like this? Wouldn’t you like to have pretty, pretty numbers?”“Yes,” the school says. “Yes, I would.”And that, my friends, is how education lost its soul.
Neuroscience is a study of the nervous system including the brain, spinal cord, and neurons (NIH, 2025). The neuroscience of reading looks at how the brain functions during reading using imaging techniques to detect blood flow and electrical energy (Gotlieb, et al., 2022). Cognitive science is based on the word ‘cognition’ which means thinking. Cognitive science looks at human thinking (Robinson-Riegler & Robinson-Riegler, 2012). One studies the physical brain as it thinks and the other studies the thinking the brain does. But we can’t observe thinking directly. We can only observe the effects of thinking. Thus, both fields look at the effects of thinking to make deductions about thinking itself.The first part of this podcast is designed to help you understand how reading works from a purely cognitive perspective. This provides an important context for the second part where I examine the theory of orthographic mapping (Ehri, 2014). Orthographic mapping is a theory based on logical deductions made from research. The questions we must ask are how robust is the theory, how valid are the data upon which it is based, and how logical are the deductions? My conclusions are, not very, not very, and not very.
In this podcast, I try to make sense of orthographic mapping, a term invented by Linnea Ehri and introduced in Chapter 15 (Ehri, 2014). We’ll start with her definition: “Orthographic mapping occurs when, in the course of reading specific words, readers form connections between written unit, either single graphemes or larger spelling patterns, and spoken units, either phonemes, syllables, or morphemes. These connections are retained in memory along with meanings and enable readers to recognize words by sight. An important consequence of orthographic mapping is that the spellings of words enter memory and influence vocabulary learning, the processing of phonological constituents in words, and phonological memory” (Ehri, 2014, pp. 5-6) This is written with all the stunning clarity of a Rorschach inkblot. Let’s do a bit of unpack-O-rating.
The term “direct and explicit instruction” is often used to sell products or to persuade state legislators to make bad decisions. But everybody already uses direct instruction in some form. It's not the 'what' of direct instruction that is in question; it's the 'how' and 'how much' of direct instruction. T
Our big human brains have evolved to become very efficient predicting machines (Hawkins, 2004). They are constantly accessing multiple data sources in order to give us a sense of what will happen next. Most of this is done at levels below our conscious awareness. For example, baseball players are able to run to the right spot to catch balls in the outfield because they can predict where it’s going to come down. Their big human brains instantly process a variety of information related to the sound of the bat hitting the ball as well as the height, speed, and angle of trajectory. The same prediction process is used in language comprehension and reading (Gavard & Ziegler, 2022; Lupyan & Clark). Here, our prediction machine uses semantic, syntactic, and phonological information to make micro-predictions about words and meaning during the process of reading (Goodman, 1967; Laroche & Decon, 2019). Very much like baseball players catching pop flies, this enables us to efficiently and effectively create meaning with the print before us.
The problem with Orton-Gillingham and similar for-profit products (Lindamood, Wilson Language Training, Barton System, etc.) is that they try to reduce teaching to an algorithm. An algorithm is a formula for solving problems in which you follow a step-by-step set of procedures (with fidelity) to achieve a specific outcome. In other words, by correctly following a prescribed set of steps in the specified order, you will be led to a predefined solution. Algorithms are useful in mathematics and computer science for calculation, data processing, and automatic reasoning. For teaching of any kind? Not so much.However, Orton-Gillingham would have you believe that if the teaching algorithm is followed explicitly, the teacher can be assured that students will learn to read. And if the algorithm does not work, you run them through the algorithm again … and again … and again. What these algorithmic programs offer is a false sense of certainty. Despite all the certainty thrown about, research to support the long-term effectiveness of these “direct, explicit, multi-sensory, structured, sequential, diagnostic, and prescriptive” instruction, it is simply not evident (Compton, et. al., 2014).
When somebody askes you, “What’s the Science of Reading?” what do you say? Is it a process? Is it a set of strategies? An approach or method? A reading program? A group or organization? In this chapter, I will attempt to define the Science of Reading. And notice that I’m using capital letters. This enables us to differentiate between a science of reading as one of several sciences of reading and the Science of Reading as a proper noun or title,The Science of Reading seems to refer to a general consensus related to the strategies and practices that lead to improved reading outcomes. These strategies and practices have been determined to be effective using experimental or quasi-experimental research and conducted in authentic learning environments. Also, this research has established a causal link between strategies or practices and student outcomes (reading achievement). Thus, the Science of Reading can be thought of as a process that uses the standards in Figure 16.2 when making decisions related to reading instruction and policy. However, the SoR might best be described today as a self-defined movement that advocates these standards be used for making decisions related to reading policy and instruction.
The really big point is this: It’s the semantic connections that are most important, not orthographic, graphemic, or phonemic connections. When you encounter the words ‘elephant’ you don’t connect with short /e/ words. You don’t activate words containing the /ant/ letter pattern or words with silent ‘ph’ blends. You connect with elephant things, regardless of the letter sounds or patterns.Just hearing the word ‘elephant’ brought some of the elephant things in your elephant schemata to consciousness. Meaning that, if elephant were followed by the words sock, trunk, swallow, you’d be able to identify the word ‘trunk’ microseconds faster than the other non-related words (Higgins, Rholes, & Jones,1977). This is called priming. Priming looks at how something that comes before primes or impacts what follows. The very word ‘elephant’ primed the pump so that I would be able to identify elephant words quicker and more efficiently. We’ll be looking at some of these research studies below.
1. It’s not a strategy to teach students.2. It’s not a pedagogical strategy that teachers use.3. It doesn’t exclude phonics instruction.4. It doesn’t encourage children to use picture clues to figure out words.5. It’s not an approach to teaching reading.6. It’s not a method of “decoding” printed text.7. It’s not a “staple of early reading instruction”.8. It’s not whole language9. It doesn’t exclude explicit and systematic instruction.
In his book, Global Mind Change (1989), Willis Harman describes three views of reality which he calls metaphysical perspectives. Metaphysical here refers to ontology or the question of the origins of the universe and the nature of reality. These perspectives are materialistic monism, dualism, and transcendental monism.
Why do we sometimes believe the unbelievable? Why is it our views are sometimes data-resistant? We like to think that reality determines our beliefs; however, at higher levels of belief systems, our beliefs determine reality. It's just the way of things.
There’s a difference between (a) reading research related to reading instruction and (b) reading what others have said about research related to reading instruction. It’s important to know the difference. When you read research articles, you get to evaluate the methodology and interpret that data. When you read what somebody else has written about research, you must trust that their evaluation is fair, and their interpretation of the data is accurate. You are reliant on the relative clarity of their lens.So, far too often you’re left with people like me whose job it is to continually read and evaluate research. But this chapter is written so that you will be able to do this. It’s written to make me obsolete.