Across a carefully detailed argument, the shortcomings, inconsistencies and contradictions of the government's recent "Reading Framework" are made clear in the light of a substantial body of academic research on the nature of reading and the development of literacy. The dogmatic approach taken towards these issues by government and by…

This paper recounts the authors' journey of changing practice from teaching adult literacy to helping other teachers by creating digital and printed learning resources and tutor training materials to support a foundational literacy program designed to help those who teach English speaking adults to read and write.

The Ofsted report entitled Bold Beginnings: the Reception curriculum in a sample of good and outstanding primary schools is part of a research programme aimed at reviewing the primary curriculum and its implementation. Although the report highlights the 'uniqueness' of the Reception year, it also undermines the principles of Early Years Foundation…

Although the recent publication of the Rose Report appears to draw a line in the sand that privileges synthetic phonics over other methods in the UK, history indicates a pendulum swing of preference between whole-word and phonics since the advent of mass education. Suggesting that the current "victory" for exponents of synthetic phonics…

The "Rose Review", a so-called "Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading", was published by the British Government's Department for Education and Skills in March 2006, as a result of criticism from Members of Parliament and others, and dissatisfaction with certain aspects of the National Literacy Strategy in England.…

The Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg and Patterson (1996) connectionist model of reading was evaluated at two points early in its training against reading data collected from British children on two occasions during their first year of literacy instruction. First, the network's non-word reading was poor relative to word reading when compared with the…