Aus: New organisation 'Foundation for Learning and Literacy' promotes flawed 'touchstones'

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Aus: New organisation 'Foundation for Learning and Literacy' promotes flawed 'touchstones'

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An organisation that is in opposition to the developments for teaching and teacher-training, and assessing systematic phonics, in Australia has been founded - I suspect this thread will grow over time as the battle continues for evidence-informed reading instruction in Australia:
Foundation for Learning and Literacy
https://foundationforlearningandliterac ... uchstones/
FOUNDATION TOUCHSTONES

Alice Springs Education (Mparntwe) Declaration:

Education plays a vital role in promoting the intellectual, physical, social, emotional, moral, spiritual and aesthetic development and wellbeing of young Australians, and in ensuring the nation’s ongoing economic prosperity and social cohesion. They need to deal with information abundance, and navigate questions of trust and authenticity. They need flexibility, resilience, creativity, and the ability and drive to keep on learning throughout their lives. (Education Council, 2019, p.3)
The Foundation for Learning and Literacy supports the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration. We are particularly concerned with the role literacy plays in ensuring our children become compassionate, confident, competent and creative citizens in an increasingly complex world. Literacy is about making and communicating meaning. It is a powerful, wide-ranging life skill that includes the traditional notions of speaking, reading and writing as well as new kinds of communication that continue to arrive with new technologies.

The Foundation provides information about relevant research and classroom practices that establishes an evidence base for effective literacy teaching and learning. Our aim is to support teachers and parents who work everyday with children to give them the power, the joy and the skills of reading and writing. The Foundation’s resources will also be of interest to anyone concerned with educational policy making, including politicians, business and the media.

The following touchstones for effective literacy teaching and learning are supported by research, and classroom success. To read more about the research evidence base, or see examples of classroom practice which exemplify each touchstone, have a look around this site.
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Aus: New organisation 'Foundation for Learning and Literacy' promotes flawed 'touchstones'

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Pioneer for evidence-informed reading instruction, Stephen Parker, does an excellent job of addressing each of the 'Foundation Touchstones' as you can see via this Twitter link:
Stephen Parker @ParkerPhonics

Robyn Ewing, Jo Padgham, David Hornsby, and friends have recently created the “Foundation for Learning and Literacy.”

At its heart are 11 “touchstones for effective literacy teaching.” https://foundationforlearningandliterac ... uchstones/

My commentary on each follows.

https://twitter.com/ParkerPhonics/statu ... 5375526912

There have been various threads featuring Robyn Ewing and David Hornsby which can be found using the 'search' facility of IFERI. The links below provide a short cut for anyone interested in the 'back story', see here:

Robyn Ewing:

search.php?keywords=robyn+Ewing&terms=a ... mit=Search

David Hornsby:

search.php?keywords=david+hornsby&terms ... mit=Search
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Aus: New organisation 'Foundation for Learning and Literacy' promotes flawed 'touchstones'

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Dr Jennifer Buckingham finds herself constantly having to respond to misinformation spread by various academics in Australia (and even beyond Australia).

Do you remember this from 2018?:
Putting the record straight about research on reading

80 corrections, clarifications and comments on Ewing, R. (2018)

“Exploding SOME of the myths about learning to read: A review of research on the role of phonics”. Sydney: NSW Teachers Federation

Dr Jennifer Buckingham, Senior Research Fellow, The Centre for Independent studies
https://fivefromfive.com.au/wp-content/ ... raight.pdf
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Aus: New organisation 'Foundation for Learning and Literacy' promotes flawed 'touchstones'

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Here is the youtube video of the launch of the 'Foundation for Learning and Literacy' flagged up via Twitter - with a comment to take note of the responses to the launch of this organisation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7YOGAy ... e=youtu.be
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Aus: New organisation 'Foundation for Learning and Literacy' promotes flawed 'touchstones'

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Teacher-blogger, Greg Ashman, writes a post about the foundation via his 'Filling the Pail' blog:
The very much elite and most highly regarded experts at the Foundation for Literacy and Learning
https://gregashman.wordpress.com/2020/0 ... -learning/
The Foundation endorses this definition.

Interestingly, the claim that, “Balanced literacy, like whole language approaches, also includes phonics instruction,” makes balanced literacy sound like it is pretty much the same thing as whole-language. After all, what is left that balanced literacy does that whole language does not do?

The mystery may perhaps be resolved. The patron of the Foundation is Dr Brian Cambourne AM who is closely associated with the whole-language movement.

So perhaps, ‘Explicit and systematic phonics instruction in context’ is the same thing as ‘balanced literacy’ which, in turn, is pretty much the same thing as ‘whole language’.

If so, we’ve known for at least 20 years that it does not work. I’m surprised that such a celebrated and elite group of experts in the field are unaware of this.
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