Waiting for teachers to 'choose change' is a luxury children cannot afford - especially when teachers are badly misled

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Waiting for teachers to 'choose change' is a luxury children cannot afford - especially when teachers are badly misled

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

As IFERI followers know, Australia is in the throes of investigating the possibility of introducing an official (obligatory) phonics check - the equivalent to the statutory Year One Phonics Screening Check in England.

Rather predictably (sadly - and, arguably, wrongly), there is resistance to this suggestion in Australia - just as we have experienced in England.

One protestor to the check is circulating the idea that teachers should be allowed to "choose change" rather than have it imposed on them. I'm afraid that in this case I cannot agree.

In response to this suggestion, I wrote the following for one of my networks which I think is worth sharing more widely as I feel very, very strongly about this issue:
It’s all very well waxing lyrical about teachers wanting to ‘choose change’ – but in this field it’s taking a very long time for them to want to do so.

Further, teachers don’t know what they don’t know.

They are also continuously being misinformed and/or misguided as we know only too well – including via the latest video footage we’ve discussed.

The phonics check is the tip of the iceberg of really knowing what children can do at a certain stage (that is, not that challenging, nor comprehensive) but it is invaluable to raise teachers’ awareness that they just might be tinkering around the edges with their phonics provision and not doing a great service to all the children in their care.

I think I may have mentioned before about a phonics-friendly Reception teacher who uses the official Year One Phonics Check every year after the Year One children have completed it. She routinely finds that 66% of her children reach or exceed the benchmark – one full year before they need to do the check as a national assessment.

And, what indulgence that children’s foundational literacy can go on being weakly taught or not taught, simply because of the suggestion that the teachers need to want to 'choose change'.

If I was teaching now, and I thought or realized that various professional people and organisations were leading me against improving my own professional knowledge and expertise – I’d be doing my utmost to do something about that and to hold them to account.

Ah yes, I did that some time ago when the National Literacy Strategy was rolled out along with its ‘Searchlights’ – and who can believe that teachers and others are STILL having to raise awareness about these issues – in my case this is 19 years later. For others, many probably in the ..... network, I believe you can add a few decades on to that record!!!!!!!

Yet the clock ticks for each and every child.

The status quo suggests that the majority of children being deemed ‘dyslexic’ because they’re struggling with phonics/foundational literacy or failing to reach the benchmark in the Year One phonics check are being dreadfully failed by the teaching profession.

How can I say this? Because 1,138 schools in England achieved 95% to 100% of their children reaching or exceeding the benchmark. Some schools are achieving 100% year on year (St George’s for example). This number of schools is growing year on year. Join the dots.

This does not equate to the indulgent luxury and privilege of teachers ‘choosing change’.

Bah humbug.
It is children's education and welfare at stake here, but also their teachers' (whether they realise it or not) and the parents/carers of the children.

There is so very much to lose by waiting for teachers to 'choose change' when some, perhaps many, will never choose change.
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Waiting for teachers to 'choose change' is a luxury children cannot afford - especially when teachers are misled

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Here is an example of teachers being badly misled by professional teachers' organisations, working in collaboration, to undermine/challenge the introduction of a phonics check in Australia. This post focuses on the same 'video' that I mentioned in my message in the previous post (above).

Alison Clarke of 'Spelfabet' has spent considerable time unpicking the issues raised in the video (created by members of professional teachers' organisation in Australia). Alison's review, in effect, shows that their protestations about implementation of a phonics check are unfounded.

I would go so far as to say the description of phonics provision on the video actually misinforms and misguides teachers in Australia.

This is not a small issue, it is a huge one, and requires challenging. Please watch the video footage and read Alison's response even if you are not based in Australia - as this is actually an international issue - that is, the undermining of quality phonics provision and the need to check not only how the children are faring - but, to be frank, how effectively the teachers are teaching which 'informs' their professional development MASSIVELY.

The video footage shows how teachers continue to be misinformed and misled.

Thank goodness Alison has taken the time to start the ball rolling here:

http://www.spelfabet.com.au/2017/05/que ... fomercial/
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Waiting for teachers to 'choose change' is a luxury children cannot afford - hot topic!

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

I hope you have watched the video footage and read Alison's review - and then you can read my comments in response to the commentators in the video.

My comments below were copied and pasted by different people belonging to a FaceBook group. These comments were then deleted twice and I don't think they are there at all now.

However, I said this with reference to the video footage:
The phrase 'teaching phonics in context' is meaningless without further explanation of what that means. One of the biggest setbacks for children to become accurate, efficient readers with regard to lifting the words off the page is the promotion - by specific teaching or by default - of multi-cueing reading strategies which amount to little more than guessing words based on the various cues - word shape, pictures, context and initial letter (partial phonics). This does not mean that text content and context are not important – they are essential when reading texts to support meaning-making.

The research evidence is very clear, however, that explicit, systematic phonics teaching is an essential ingredient for quality reading instruction. The English alphabetic code is complex and to try to teach it 'in context' is a feat indeed. To guarantee that each and every teacher manages this 'in context' sufficiently for each and every child is to risk a lack of quality control and good coverage of the alphabetic code and embedding of phonics skills. For professionals to produce video footage without any expansion of what they really mean by 'in context' and how this can fully address the teaching of the complex English alphabetic code is not really informative or reassuring.

I would add,

‘Furthermore, an objective phonics check similar to England’s Year One phonics check is not an onerous test and such a simple snapshot taken nationally is very important for informing the profession of the bigger picture – not just for finding out how each child is faring with regard to application of alphabetic code knowledge and the blending skill to real and pseudo-words.’

By the way, we see on the video footage a few children with the inevitable mini whiteboards tinkering with magnetic letters – supposedly this represents the picture of phonics practice in schools. Note my emotive word ‘tinkering’ – used deliberately.

I’m so sorry to sound disparaging, but if ‘phonics’ amounts to mini whiteboard work and letter manipulation I suggest that this is in danger of being superficial phonics, very transient and not content-rich.

This may well mean that many teachers' notion of phonics provision is very shallow and they do not know the potential of content-rich provision via a good phonics programme (body of work).

It seems to me that this is potential material for some research or at least an explorative review of how phonics provision and phonics programmes can look very different.

By the way, the reason I am so outspoken is based on real children and real teachers. I am actually distraught that the method and content of good systematic synthetic phonics teaching has been available for many, many years and the true window of opportunity for that type of good teaching and learning opportunity is so short in the scale of things (start as infants) that we waste countless time by this persistent resistance and ignorance (galling and unnecessary in the teaching profession) which is truly life-chance stuff for many children.

Years ago, when I was just discovering about phonics provision, and at a time when I was teaching a Year 1-2 mixed class, and the Searchlights Reading Strategies were being rolled out very heavily via the, then, National Literacy Strategy, my Year 2 children came top in reading and writing national tests in the local authority where I worked.

I was known to refuse to do multi-cueing reading strategies, and just as an ordinary teacher in the classroom began to ask my local authority advisors, and the people heading up the NLS, what was the research basis for their guidance. They could not provide me with any.

I knew nothing about reading reseach at that time – and when I got to know people such as Sue Lloyd of Jolly Phonics and Dr Marlynne Grant of Sound Discovery and Mona McNee (who founded the UK Reading Reform Foundation in 1989), I was astonished, but not surprised, to discover that the research findings backed up my common sense phonics practice and findings in the classroom.

I was calling upon the phonics resources of a number of phonics programmes because I found that nothing was quite right, or went on long enough, or rigorously enough, for my children.

Or, I struggled when children joined my class in year 2 but hadn’t got the basics of phonics which should have been provided in Reception and Year 1.

For example, I remember a couple of boys who were clearly incredibly bright, articulate and great at maths, but their poor reading and writing was mystifying. Except it wasn’t mystifying, it was clearly a case of lack of phonics teaching/learning and trying to guess their way through any reading material, and not having any code knowledge to express their thoughts. It’s heartbreaking for me to know this is a replicated scenario for so many children to this day.

If teachers are providing some phonics, or weak phonics, it isn’t ‘as bad’ as it could be, but I still maintain, strongly, that the better the phonics provision, the better the children are equipped for the whole curriculum and for life.

Perhaps in Australia, the battle at the moment is to get systematic synthetic phonics fully on the map in an official way, but in England, the battle is to look at the actual quality and content of the phonics provision which is supposed to be systematic synthetic phonics provision but in some cases it is weak provision and in other cases there are still multi-cueing word-guessing strategies and insufficient reading practice of decodable material.

So, we just have to keep on battling.

Oh, by the way, the battle is also re the glorifying of ‘dyslexia’ as a gift and attributing weak literacy to within-child difficulties rather than taking a truly close look at the literacy provision itself.
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Waiting for teachers to 'choose change' is a luxury children cannot afford - especially when teachers are badly misl

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Yvonne Meyer provides some history re the teachers' organisations who made the video footage undermining the notion of a phonics check in Australia. This certainly sets the context:
The teachers’ Union is the AEU - Australian Educators Union.

ALEA (Australian Literacy Educators Association) & PETAA (Primary English Teachers Association Australia) are teacher professional associations. ALEA’s focus is high school English teachers, while PETAA is for primary teachers.

In the mid-80’s, PETA ( subsequently re-named e-lit, then PETAA), was infiltrated by Brian Cambourne from the University of Wollongong Ed School and Ken Goodman/Whole Language devotee. Cambourne promoted not only WL in Australia and worldwide, but also what we now know as the 'Social Justice’ agenda. Cambourne, as PETA’s President, claimed that PETA was the voice of primary teachers and promoted himself & PETA to Education politicians and bureaucrats & journalists as such. He also worked hard to engage with the teachers Union.

Cambourne acolyte, Jan Turbil, took over the Presidency in the early 2000’s. Current President is Robyn Ewing, also a devotee of Whole Language and Social Justice.. All these Presidents are/were Ed School, not classroom teachers.

During the NITL in 2004, I was told that we had to be very careful not to offend PETA because they were so powerful. I checked their annual reports and found the Turbil’s President’s statement that PETA was better known amongst politicians & journalists than primary teachers, and membership was so low that the existence of the association was threatened.

Turbil then required her students at Wollongong Ed School join PETA which saved the association.

The umbrella association is the International Reading Association (IRA), now re-named the Intenational Literacy Association, (ILA). ILA has affiliates in most countries worldwide including the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA), Reading Association of Ireland (RAI) and New Zealand Literacy Association. These national and international teacher professional associations largely control the education agenda because they promote themselves hard, and as the voice of teachers. They not only influence classroom teachers, but also curriculum developers and textbook publishers.

Sol Stern writing about how WL re-named Balanced Literacy took over in New York wrote, “ ..dominated by the pedagogical principles of a radical education guru from Australia named Brian Cambourne, who believes that teachers ought to encourage their students to achieve a “literacy for social equity and social justice.”

For a better understanding of the Social Justice agenda and how it infiltrated teacher education and Ed Schools, read about Bill Ayers. Of course, most teachers who are influenced by the philosophy promoted by Cambourne et al have no idea about how their political beliefs of the 70’s (anti-Vietnam War, social upheaval etc) have devolved to the passionate belief that explicit instruction turns students into robots who accept social injustice and ‘constructivism’ creates radical thinkers who will overturn the Elites who control the world.

Sigh!

Yvonne
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Waiting for teachers to 'choose change' is a luxury children cannot afford - especially when teachers are badly misl

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Picking up on Yvonne's potted history...
For a better understanding of the Social Justice agenda and how it infiltrated teacher education and Ed Schools, read about Bill Ayers. Of course, most teachers who are influenced by the philosophy promoted by Cambourne et al have no idea about how their political beliefs of the 70’s (anti-Vietnam War, social upheaval etc) have devolved to the passionate belief that explicit instruction turns students into robots who accept social injustice and ‘constructivism’ creates radical thinkers who will overturn the Elites who control the world.
Kerry Hempenstall contributed the following historical statements to show just what teachers are up against when it comes to influences in their organisations:
Some of the more extreme examples relevant to your sentence are below:

"At a meeting of the International Reading Association four years ago Ken Goodman attacked Marilyn Adams [a phonics advocate] as a 'vampire' who threatened the literacy of America's youth" (p. 42).
Levine, A. (1994, December). The great debate revisited. Atlantic Monthly, 38-44.
________________________________________
“Doug Carnine's and Reid Lyon's back-to-brutality direct instruction reading model for behavioral control is now out of the shadows and into the limelight … . Doug Carnine's stable of mercenary professors housed at the University of Oregon, UT, and Florida State … .”
Horn, J. (2007). University of Oregon: Ground zero for Reading First corruption investigation. Schools Matter, Saturday, February 03, 2007. Retrieved from http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2007/02/u ... o-for.html
________________________________________
“Where there is political interference there are lobby groups, and one that has become very strong during this era includes those who never quite left the focus on the skills such as explicit decoding. These groups have been beavering away, many with their own small research projects that prove categorically that children must have a well-developed sense of phonemic awareness, must know the alphabetic principles, and must be taught phonics through systematic and explicit instruction. Their message has been passed down since the 60s. What is frightening is that the spin these people have put on their message today has convinced so many in positions of power and financial control that this narrow (and, we would argue, out of touch with the real world) view of literacy is the only pedagogy for the teaching of literacy (Teaching Reading Report, 2005)” (p.23).
Cambourne, B. & Turbill, J. (2007). Looking back to look forward: Understanding the present by revisiting the past: An Australian perspective. International Journal of Progressive Education, 3(2), 8-29.
________________________________________
“Sadly, because of the money to be made from phonics programs, and the ease with which these programs can be tested and ‘researched’ phonics has been claimed in the USA in particular to have been ‘scientifically proven’ to be the best method to teach reading. If we scratch a quick-fix, sure-fire method of ‘curing’ reading difficulties we will often (but not always) find behind it a core group from an education publishing house, or a government department, or an institute in a university which stands to gain massively, financially, from their endeavours.”
Fox, M. (2008). The folly of jolly old phonics: A phonics tale of three children (with morals for teachers of reading). http://www.memfox.com/the-folly-of-joll ... onics.html
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Teachers are … “wise to the often tortuous attempts of educational, psychological, and cognitive researchers to cloak themselves in the sometimes ill-fitting garb of ‘science’.” … the interlocking directorate of the right-wing back-to-basics movement: John Saxon, Chester Finn, William Bennett, Diane Ravitch, Jeanne Chall, Charles Sykes.”
Zemelman, S., Daniels, H., & Bizar, M. (1999, March). Sixty years of reading research -- But who's listening? Phi Delta Kappan. Retrieved December 4, 2004, from http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kzem9903.htm
________________________________________
“It just seems to me that the real "Nation at Risk" involves the threat to the control of public education by conservatives who fear the future and employ phonics and testing to cripple the youth of today. I don't see this as an idle exercise in pedagogical thought. There is a reason why disinformation is promulgated by conservatives against public education. I have written here before about the "commoditization of children" as part of this process to turn the populace into little more than tractable farm animals as "labor inputs" for an international elite.”
Martin, M. (2008). Reading first fails. Education Disinformation Detection and Reporting Agency.
________________________________________
“It (direct instruction) is a scripted pedagogy for producing compliant, conformist, competitive students and adults.”
Coles, G. (1998, Dec. 2). No end to the reading wars. Education Week Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/vol-18/14coles.h18
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“Now the forces aiming to destroy social justice and limit democracy have learned to use their money and power and the processes of democratic institutions to accomplish their goals. They no longer confront, they co-opt and subvert the very groups whose interests they attack. They don t stand in the school house door, they close down the failing neighborhood schools using test scores as their bludgeons.”
Goodman, K. (2002). When the fail proof reading programs fail, blow up the Colleges of Education
Retrieved December 4, 2004, from http://tlc.ousd.k12.ca.us/~acody/goodman.html
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“How is it that Reid Lyon, of whom most of us never heard before this year, has become the media superstar on reading? The best way to make sense of this is to view it through Chomsky's notion of manufactured consent: a concerted and strategic campaign to manipulate and instruct public opinion.”
National Council of Teachers of English. (1999). Elementary school practices. Retrieved from http://ncte.org.
________________________________________
“His (Reid Lyon) whole 15 minute presentation is an amazing set of lies, clichés, and exaggerations.”
Goodman, K. (2002). When the fail proof reading programs fail, blow up the Colleges of Education
Retrieved December 4, 2004, from http://tlc.ousd.k12.ca.us/~acody/goodman.html
________________________________________
"The political Far Right's agenda is well-served," she writes, "by promoting docility and obedience-on the part of the lower classes." Ultraconservatives advocate phonics teaching because it is authoritarian, she says, and serves to socialize "nonmainstream students, especially those in so-called lower ability groups or tracks . . . into subordinate roles."
Weaver, C. (1994). Reading process and practice. Portsmouth: Heinemann.
________________________________________
According to Weaver, who directed the Commission on Reading for the National Council of Teachers of English in the late 1980s, right-wing extremists believe that kids who study phonics will get "the words 'right'" and thus read what the Bible actually says rather than approximate its meaning. Moreover, she writes, "Teaching intensive phonics. . . . is also a way of keeping children's attention on doing what they're told and keeping them from reading or thinking for themselves."
Weaver, C. (1994). Reading process and practice. Portsmouth: Heinemann.
________________________________________”
The research the (National Reading) panels summarized excluded 95 percent of the important reading research, including my own 40 years of research.
Goodman, K. (2004). No: The Whole-language method really works and has led to a golden age of children's literature. Insight on the News - Symposium Issue, 8(47), p.8, 3/30/04. Retrieved from http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/artic ... literature
________________________________________
“The antagonism of the Christian Right to these (WL) programs is based on a fear of losing control over their children's thinking, rather than any compelling empirical data.”
Berliner, D.C. (1996). Educational psychology meets the Christian right: Differing views of children, schooling, teaching, and learning. Retrieved from http://courses.ed.asu.edu/berliner/read ... eringh.htm
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"Whole language teachers need not be defensive or apologetic. They believe in kids, respect them as learners, cherish them in all their diversity, and treat them with love and dignity. That's a lot better than regarding children as empty pots that need filling, as blobs of clay that need moulding, or worse, as evil little troublemakers forever battling teachers." p. 25
Goodman, K. (1986). What’s whole in whole language. Portsmouth, NH : Heinemann.
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Waiting for teachers to 'choose change' is a luxury children cannot afford - especially when teachers are badly misl

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Molly de Lemos shares her thoughts regarding the opposition of ALEA to the idea of implementing an official phonics check in Australia:
Maybe it is time someone wrote an article on “Why is ALEA so implacably opposed to the administration of the Phonics check’.  This is a simple 5-minute test that will provide a clear answer to the question as to how well children in Australia are being taught to read.  If children can’t read real words ‘out of context’ and can’t decode easily decodable nonsense words, how can they read unfamiliar text?
 
Why is ALEA, and the teachers they represent, so afraid of the Phonics check?  Is it because they fear that this test may reveal that teaching of reading in Australia is not as good as everyone thinks it is?
 
If reading is being well taught in Australia, surely ALEA, and teachers more generally, would welcome a measure that should confirm their success in teaching reading.  If all Australian children were able to reach the benchmark set for children in England in their first attempt on the Phonics check, would that not be something for ALEA and Australian teachers to celebrate?  It would be vindication of their good teaching methods, and how successful they are in teaching phonics in a meaningful context. 

Maybe if only 80 per cent of Australian children achieved the benchmark, as is currently the case in England, that would also be good news.  If only 58 per cent achieved the benchmark, that would put Australia in the position that England was in in 2012, the first year that the Phonics check was introduced.  But what if less than 50 per cent of Australian children were able to achieve the benchmark on this test?  That might give us all something to think about.  Maybe our reading instruction is not as good as we think it is?
 
Is this what ALEA fears?
 
If this is the case, the best way of knowing where Australia stands is to administer the check.
 
Then we will all know if we have a problem in Australia in the teaching of initial reading, or if everything in the garden is just fine.
 
Let’s just find out, so we all know what we are talking about.
 
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