The latest straw man - Wyse and Bradbury paper - and responses

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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The latest straw man - Wyse and Bradbury paper - and responses

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

A new paper produced by long-standing phonics detractors, Dominic Wyse and Alice Bradbury has caused great consternation in educational circles leading to immediate critiques by Greg Ashman and Jennifer Buckingham (surprisingly, although perhaps not so surprisingly, quick off the mark).

I have to wonder at the strange choice of the word 'reconciliation' in the title of the paper, as it presents more as a detractor from systematic synthetic phonics and governmental promotion of SSP than any sense of 'reconciliation' in the reading debate!

Wyse and Bradbury:
Reading wars or reading reconciliation? A critical examination of robust research evidence, curriculum policy and teachers' practices for teaching phonics and reading
https://bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wil ... /rev3.3314


Greg Ashman:
Has synthetic phonics been demolished?

I cannot believe we are all doing this again
https://fillingthepail.substack.com/p/h ... YVJWuSo728


Dr Jennifer Buckingham:
Groundhog day for reading instruction
https://fivefromfive.com.au/blog/ground ... struction/


And a Tweet by a perplexed person - as an example of many tweets by people who have read the Wyse & Bradbury paper and are simply mystified:
Read the "Reading Wars or Reading Reconciliation" paper https://bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wil ... /rev3.3314… after the dramatic Guardian story "Phonics is Failing Our Children" https://theguardian.com/education/2022/ ... mark-study… ... I'm struggling to match the data to the rhetoric. UK reading research colleagues, what am I missing?
Phonics: In defence of the systematic approach

Before dismissing the use of systematic phonics in classrooms, the research needs further analysis, warns Julia Carroll
https://www.tes.com/magazine/teaching-l ... c-approach


Note: I'm cross-referencing this thread via the 'Around the World: News and Events' forum but I'll build up the responses via this 'General Forum'.

The other thread I've entitled:

England/International - Wyse and Bradbury paper leads to immediate dismay and responses!
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1432&p=3033#p3033
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Wyse and Bradbury paper - and responses

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Michael Tidd, primary headteacher (England), responds:

Why all the opposition to phonics?
https://michaelt1979.wordpress.com/2022 ... o-phonics/
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: The latest straw man - Wyse and Bradbury paper - and responses

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

This is a well-referenced response written by Rhona Johnson and Jennifer Chew:
Response to Wyse, D. and Bradbury, A. (in press) Reading wars or reading reconciliation? A critical examination of robust research evidence, curriculum policy and teachers' practices for teaching phonics and reading
January 2022

Authors:

Rhona S Johnston at University of Hull

Jennifer Chew


https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... onics_and_
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: The latest straw man - Wyse and Bradbury paper - and responses

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Ex-Minister for School Standards (in England), Nick Gibb, describes his concerns in the Telegraph:

Resist the 'progressive' attack on phonics

The backlash against phonics will result in teachers being misled into practices that will hold many children back
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/0 ... -phonics2/

NICK GIBB PHONICS RESPONSE JAN ’22 TELEGRAPH

I always feared that, when I stopped being a minister at the Department for Education, the proponents of “progressive” education would begin their counterattack. The school reforms that so successfully helped raise academic standards over the last decade have been achieved by a relentless challenge to the prevailing orthodoxies beloved of education professors, local authority advisers and others in the “education establishment”.

At the heart of their analysis lies opposition to testing and exams; a belief that children learn best through self-discovery rather than by direct teaching from a teacher; a dislike of discipline; and a fixation on what they call “learning how to learn” instead of the primacy of imparting knowledge. And most damagingly, adherents of “progressive” education believe that learning to read through phonics is a boring abomination. As schools minister for nearly 10 years, I often felt like the boy with his finger in the dyke, resisting on an almost daily basis pressure to water down our reforms or introduce measures that the evidence was clear had failed children in the past.

Despite expecting the counterattack, I have been taken aback by its speed and by the number of fronts on which the establishment is fighting: the campaign to abolish GCSEs; The Times Education Commission with its clear (to me at least) anti-reform agenda; the 600-page tome from the educationalists Tim Brighouse and Mick Waters published this month which argues against the very changes to the curriculum, assessment and accountability that have been central to raising standards.

The most recent attack came last week with the publication of a report by two academics from the Institute of Education criticising the Government’s focus on systematic synthetic phonics and the requirement that phonics is taught “first and foremost” in the first years of primary school. Phonics is about teaching children the sounds of the alphabet and how to blend those sounds into words. Our reforms were based on evidence from the Clackmannanshire Study published in 2004 and from the huge US National Reading Panel study published in 2000 which conclusively showed that systematic phonics is the most effective method of teaching children to read.

Despite the evidence, last week’s report is critical of phonics “first and foremost” and argues for a “Whole Language” approach through which children learn whole words on sight with the expectation that they will gradually be able to recognise letter sounds. There is no evidence that Whole Language approaches work. There is ample evidence of the effectiveness of phonics.

The IOE report has been heavily criticised by teacher-bloggers. Tom Bennett, founder of ResearchEd, tweeted that the research was, “sadly, rubbish. Sad, because it will lead to more educators being misled into practices that will hold many children back.” Greg Ashman, a British teacher now working in Australia, criticised the selective use of research which presented “a strong risk of bias in their findings”. He also pointed out that the report’s use of the 2006 PISA study in analysing the reading comprehension of 15-year-olds was flawed since phonics was not in widespread use in England’s primary schools when those children were taught to read.

Perhaps, what is most revealing about the IOE report is in its concluding paragraph, which argues that “it is not appropriate for governments and their individual ministers of education to have the power to directly control curriculum and pedagogy.” As Mr Ashman so rightly asks: “Who should have this power? Presumably some unaccountable committee made up of education professors. I disagree. I would rather be able to vote out those who impose educational failure on our children.”

The promotion of phonics in the teaching of reading in primary schools has been one of the most successful reforms introduced by Conservative-led governments since 2010. In the 2016 international PIRLS study of the reading ability of 9-year-olds in 50 countries, England rose from joint 10th place in 2011 to joint 8th. The rise was attributed to the improved reading of boys and lower performing children.

The counterattack has begun. To win this battle, ministers must engage with the argument and maintain a clear focus on the curriculum and on how it is taught. Along with structural reforms and the academies programme, that is how we have transformed the life chances of so many children since 2010. It is the only way we will be able to complete our mission to transform the life chances of every child throughout the country.

Link to a thread of the historic work of Nick Gibb:
Nick Gibb, champion of Systematic Synthetic Phonics in England
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=53
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: The latest straw man - Wyse and Bradbury paper - and responses

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Here is another response to add to the list by researcher, Kathy Rastle:
Some musings on that "landmark" study
https://www.rastlelab.com/post/some-mus ... mark-study

Last week, those of us interested in how children are taught to read woke up to dramatic headlines that England’s approach is “failing children”. The headline appears to have come directly from a UCL press release, which found its way into The Guardian, The Independent and Sky News. The charge relates to a research article by Institute of Education professors Dominic Wyse and Alice Bradbury.

The article and its companion pieces in the press have generated substantial discussion, including critiques by Jennifer Buckingham, Greg Ashman and Julia Carroll. These critiques described the decades of research in support of systematic phonics as part of a wider reading diet and pointed to shortcomings in the target article’s treatment of this evidence base.

I want to focus on the authors’ claims regarding the practice of reading instruction in England’s schools. These claims are based on a survey of 2205 primary school teachers. I focus on claims that the authors have made in the press, and how these relate to their data. Thousands of teachers and parents will have seen these claims, but few will have the ability to evaluate them.
Kathy notes this about UCL (University College London) at the end of her post:
Does this Really Matter?

The evidence base around the effectiveness of systematic phonics is strong and increasingly recognized around the world. It is unlikely that this study will make a material difference in England or anywhere else.

However, one might also argue that these authors are faculty in the best Education school in the world, in one of the best universities in the world. They have a unique platform and reach into the media to communicate their findings; and this is a matter of huge public significance.

It's hard to get the mainstream press to take notice of research findings, and the university will be celebrating another successful press campaign. Yet, the disconnect between the authors’ data and their claims raises questions about whether that campaign has properly served the public in this instance.

I'd like to add there is perhaps more to this backdrop of the Wyse and Bradbury attack on the official promotion of 'systematic synthetic phonics' in England, as UCL is the home of the intervention programme 'Reading Recovery'. The RR programme has had international criticism for many years and some of this has been documented via the IFERI forum here:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=861

A glance at the thread, link immediately above, will show that there was even a parliamentary enquiry (2009) into the efficacy of the Reading Recovery programme including its methodology - which is not in line with the findings and recommendations of the Rose Report (2006) - accepted by the government at that time and subsequent governments. In 2006, England switched from the 'searchlights' multi-cueing word-guessing strategies to a professional understanding of the two main processes of being a reader in the full sense described in the 'Simple View of Reading' model (Gough and Tunmer 1986).
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: The latest straw man - Wyse and Bradbury paper - and responses

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

And here is yet another quick-off-the-mark response published in SchoolsWeek by Tarjinder Gill:
Reading wars: Reconciliation will require more truth

This new paper on the teaching of reading is so set on its conclusions it has failed to make the best argument at its disposal, writes Tarjinder Gill
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/reading-wars- ... ore-truth/
It's hard to imagine their conclusions weren't forgone.


Tarjinder Gill is the Associate director of research and pedagogy for Outwood Grange Academies Trust.
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