Paper by Prof. Pamela Snow 'Language is literacy is language'

[Susan Godsland]

Every now and again an academic paper appears that makes you want to say '' Everybody, please read this now''.

Here is one such paper (open access), written by Prof. Pamela Snow.

Elizabeth Usher Memorial Lecture: Language is literacy is language - Positioning speech-language pathology in education policy, practice, paradigms and polemics.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10. ... 15.1112837

Abstract
This paper is concerned with the fundamental and intrinsic links between early receptive and expressive oral language competence on the one hand and the transition to literacy in the early school years and achievement of academic (and life) success on the other. Consequently, it also concerns the professional knowledge base of two key disciplines whose work is central to children’s early language and literacy success: teachers and speech-language pathologists (SLPs). Oral language competence underpins the transition to literacy, which in turn underpins academic achievement. Academic achievement is significant in its own right, conferring opportunities for further education and training post-secondary school, contributing to psychological health and mitigating some of the mental health risks and adversities that can be associated with adolescence and early adulthood. The central thesis is that the linguistic basis of the transition to literacy makes early reading success core business for SLPs. Further, SLPs need a firm grasp of the political and ideological factors that have exerted historical and continuing influence on reading instruction in western nations such as Australia, the US and the UK. This will facilitate the establishment of meaningful working relationships with teaching colleagues, to achieve optimal education outcomes for all children.

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

I second your view of this excellent paper, Susan, and thank you for flagging it up.

Someone has already contacted me about using this very paper to support in addressing the all-too-commonplace challenges to implementing phonics in a thorough, systematic, explicit way.

We know it is common to receive the 'Ah but...' moment followed by, 'Not everyone needs phonics' or, 'We provide a balanced approach to literacy' and other common, but ill-founded and misunderstood mantras.

Here are some little taster extracts from Pamela's paper. In the section:

Early reading instruction: What does the evidence say?

She writes (my red colouring):

Instead of conveying a sense of equilibrium and distributed emphasis, as one might expect from the word “balance”, this term means different things to different users. At its worst, it simply means that decoding skills associated with phonemic awareness and phonics are allowed to be in the room, albeit in diluted form. It does not necessarily mean, however, that systematic synthetic phonics must be the approach of first choice and, ipso facto, teachers should be properly prepared in their pre-service education to teach reading using systematic synthetic phonics. As Emeritus Professor Kevin Wheldall (2015) of Macquarie University has recently observed:

"Even the most rabid adherents of the old school whole language philosophy today claim (at least in public) that there is clearly room for phonics in the mix—some even claim that they have always said this … But here is the rub: they typically do not advocate phonics instruction as the method of first choice for teaching decoding and prefer, if it has to occur at all, that it be incidental as opportunity arises."

It is not appropriate in the twenty-first century for education (or any other) academics to promulgate the idea that research evidence is like religion: one can choose to follow and believe in one doctrine, while turning one’s back on others. The scientific method requires that the same level of scrutiny, critical appraisal and scepticism is applied to all research, irrespective of its paradigm or its authors. It is similarly not appropriate to attribute political alignment as a function of support (or not), for Whole Language.

Do read the whole paper!