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If you are a serious educationalist, this is worth reading from beginning to end:
Why Jaydon Can’t Read: A Forum on Fixing Literacy
Jennifer Buckingham, Justine Ferrari, and Tom Alegounarias
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY No. 144 • 18 February 2014
This is current, and is pertinent to everyone - not just the teaching profession in Australia.
Here in England, the reading wars and phonics detractors go on and on.
It is as if the media is only interested in the stories which stem from phonics detractors - and yet this is not just about 'phonics' or 'reading' but about science, professional development, professional knowledge and understanding - and profound responsibility required from bureaucrats, politicians, teacher-educators and teachers.
Last edited by debbie on Fri Feb 21, 2014 3:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
This collection of edited speeches is from a CIS policy forum held on 14 November 2013 to discuss the article ‘Why Jaydon Can’t Read: The Triumph of Ideology over Evidence in Teaching Reading’ published in the Spring 2013 issue of Policy.
Jennifer Buckingham, Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies and co-author of ‘Why Jaydon Can’t Read’:
• Billions of dollars of public money have been spent trying to improve literacy levels of school students over the last decade in Australia, and yet hundreds of thousands of students are barely literate.
• Almost all children can learn to read with effective, evidence-based reading instruction. Unfortunately, many teachers still use unproven methods based on whole-language philosophy or ad hoc ‘balanced literacy’ programs.
• Pre-service teacher education has not prepared teachers in effective reading instruction strategies, and government policy has not promoted the use of evidence-based teaching methods.
Justine Ferrari, National Education Correspondent, The Australian
• The reading or literacy wars have been waging inside the teaching profession for the best part of three decades.
• Rather than examine the reasons thousands of teenagers can go through school barely able to read, defenders of the existing system continue arguing about what is reading. Or they focus on the children who can read—the 90% plus. If doctors were losing 10% or 20% of their patients each year, they would re-examine their practice, rethink their treatment plans, and change the medicine.
• In Australia, any observer would recognise that there’s a defensive, evangelistic zeal among many literacy educators and an ideological blindness that makes them cling to their beliefs in the face of the evidence of what is NOT working and what is.
Jennifer Buckingham is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies; Justine Ferrari is National Education Correspondent at The Australian; Tom Alegounarias is President of the NSW Board of Studies.
Jennifer Buckingham gratefully acknowledges the contribution of her doctoral supervisors and co-authors of the Policy article ‘Why Jaydon Can’t Read,’ Professor Kevin Wheldall and Dr Robyn Beaman-Wheldall.

Tom Alegounarias, President of the NSW Board of Studies
• The ‘research to practice’ gap in reading instruction is due to a lack of engagement with evidence and data in the teaching profession and a lack of confidence in dealing with empirical research. Moreover, ideologies, belief systems, and entrenched practices often overwhelm evidence of what works for particular students in particular circumstances.
• This disconnection between research and teaching practice is not a result of a recalcitrant, self-serving, wilful and ideological teaching workforce. Rather, it is a lack of professional, policy and academic leadership. Too often, bureaucrats have found a safe place at the side of the reading wars and watched with detached curiosity.
• The days of generic constructivist homilies masquerading as teaching techniques for reading are over. With regard to reading, the teaching profession needs to evolve to place the responsibility of direct instruction and its contingent relationship to learning at its heart.
Research by my Centre for Independent Studies colleague Jennifer Buckingham has shown that when it comes to reading, there are very few unteachable kids but there is plenty of ineffective teaching.
With few exceptions, all kids can learn to read - but not by themselves. The misapprehension that reading can be taught through experiencing the fun of books and stories has left many kids falling behind and feeling stupid.
Like most things in life, when it comes to teaching kids to read, different methodologies get different results.
Reading instruction that is explicit and systematic can improve outcomes for all children. It is particularly effective for children most at risk of falling behind - those from low-SES and indigenous communities.
While some have questioned the need for a new education inquiry while the ink is barely dry on Gonski, one may equally note that recommendations remain outstanding from the 2005 National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy.
That inquiry recommended teachers be equipped with strategies to instruct kids in reading based on rigorous, evidence-based research.
Ideological promoters of the discredited "whole language", or osmosis method, of teaching children to read have been unmasked this week. The whole language lobby's devious and irrational opposition to evidence was exemplified in a bid to derail the State Government's trial of MULTILIT, a successful remedial reading program based on explicit phonics teaching.
In an email stream last week from Associate Professor Brian Cambourne, of Wollongong University, to literacy educators who subscribe to a university mailing list, strategies for winning the "reading wars" were laid bare. Cambourne, regarded as the "godfather" of whole language in Australia, urges his network to "flood Verity's [the Education Minister, Verity Firth's] office" with messages designed to denigrate MULTILIT and undermine the trial "at an almost subconscious level". He also suggests linking the program to "readicide", which he defines as "the systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools".
Confronted this week by The Australian's education writer, Justine Ferrari, Cambourne came up with this extraordinary quote: "When you rely on evidence, it's twisted … We rely on the cognitive science framing theory, to frame things the way you want the reader to understand them to be true."
“The way we went down the road to whole language is really a story of stupidity” (Lyon, 2005).
But, has it actually disappeared or even waned? According to a strong critic, Moats (2000, 2007), whole language has continued to be highly influential in education training and practice.
“Whole language still pervades textbooks for teachers, instructional materials for classroom use, some states' language-arts standards and other policy documents, teacher licensing requirements and preparation programs, and the professional context in which teachers work” (Moats, 2000, para 1).
In Australia, its success was long lived: “For several decades, whole language has been the predominant teaching approach for early literacy learning” (Rowe, Purdie, & Ellis, 2005, p.7).
Two prominent Australian whole language advocates Cambourne and Turbill (2007) agreed, though noting a move away from using the term whole language. “To us the principles underpinning the word literacy were similar but did not bring with it the negative connotations … whole language is still with us, strongly embedded in current curriculum, pedagogy and assessment strategies. Adversaries of whole language still complain that the term whole language may not be used however the philosophy is alive and well in each state system” (Cambourne & Turbill, 2007, p. 23, 25).
Yetta Goodman, one of the whole language pioneers, as recently as 2005 was reported to exclaim “whole language is still alive and well!” (Taylor, 2007, p.2). Certainly, the Whole Language Umbrella, a group within the National Council of Teachers of English, 2014) continues to promote the model: “Encouraging the study of the whole language philosophy in all aspects …” (NCTE, 2014)
