Susan Godsland on 'Ideology and Reading' - a must read

Downloads and links to relevant research and articles, along with book recommendations.
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Susan Godsland on 'Ideology and Reading' - a must read

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Susan Godsland is the author of dyslexics.org.uk - a site packed full of references and commentary on the international reading debate plus information about spelling. I have described Susan as the most amazing sleuth and publicly acknowledge that I could not do without her elephant-sized memory and constant information and support.

In response to Dame Alison Peacock (who heads up the Chartered College in England) endorsing the work of Professor Dominic Wyse and associates in their promotion of 'contextual phonics', Susan has alerted people to the following information:

https://t.co/z9gAaskDm3
Ideology and Reading

Many educational academics remain vehemently opposed to synthetic phonics. Even today they campaign to overturn the 2006 Rose report's recommendations (Wyse/Styles.Editorial), and every course of action taken by every colour of government following the Rose report, each designed to increase the take-up of teaching synthetic phonics as the only decoding strategy: a Labour government commissioned the Rose report (2006), accepted its recommendations and said they would ensure they were implemented. It also commissioned the Letters and Sounds programme (2007). A Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government piloted and then implemented (2012) the Phonics Screening Check. It also embedded synthetic phonics in the National Curriculum (2014). A Conservative government has continued to support synthetic phonics since 2015.

After the Rose report's publication, Dominic Wyse (a professor of Early Childhood and Primary Education) wrote that those opposed to synthetic phonics should ''Work politically and professionally to change this direction in policy'' (Wyse. Rose Tinted Spectacles ppt. underline in original)

In their book 'Thinking Reading', James and Dianne Murphy describe how ''The political tenets of whole language were inextricably grafted into its methodology... emotive arguments about freedom from authority, autonomy of the individual and subjective construction of reality'' (p34)

''The idea that different teaching methods are political is faintly absurd. And yet it is an idea that has taken quite a hold within education itself'' (Greg Ashman)
Do read the whole page!
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