Culture and language shape the way people read. Yet, within many popular reading models of reading development, culture is a component, if featured at all. Illustrated through examples of pro-Black, culturally sustaining, emancipatory practices of one teacher, this article highlights the Cultural Sustenance View of Reading, a reader model that can…

The science of reading refers to the extensive body of research on how we learn to read and the most effective methods for teaching reading. Our knowledge of what works in reading instruction is based on decades of rigorous, scientifically based research in the fields of education, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience. This research digest…

A number of studies have examined the effects of reading interventions for younger readers; however, there does not appear to be any existing syntheses examining the effect of reading interventions on students in Years 7--12. The purpose of this study was to establish whether such a synthesis is feasible by reviewing the methodological quality of…

Teachers are asked to use reading science to inform how they teach phonics and phonological awareness. As teachers look to the research base to guide their practice, some questions and concerns regarding what best practice looks like have come up. This article starts with a brief description of phonics and phonemic awareness and then discusses…

A growing, research-based consensus supports addressing our nation's literacy crisis through instruction aligned with the Science of Reading (SoR). We recognize, however, that the complexity of SoR content, alongside the multiplicity of instructional decisions and practices, and the unique features of each classroom and school, make simple…

Two recent articles from authors in Britain have attempted to show that the evidence in favour of systematic phonics in initial literacy instruction is weak; here, their arguments are disputed. Bowers ('Reconsidering the evidence that systematic phonics is more effective than alternative methods of reading instruction', "Educational…

In this article, we contend that in media stories on the science of reading, journalists have relied on strategic metaphorical framing to present reading education as a public crisis with a narrow and settled solution. Drawing on data from a critical metaphor analysis of 37 media stories, we demonstrate how frames used in recent media reporting…

Reading instruction has been the subject of significant controversy for more than five decades, and Kappan has allowed advocates of many different types of reading instruction to make their cases in the magazine's pages. Teresa Preston chronicles the history of the reading wars as they played out in Kappan. Researchers and scholars have debated…

Purpose: Converging evidence demonstrates that robust academic vocabulary and morphology instruction improves literacy outcomes of multilingual adolescents. However, few interventions have focused on teaching word analysis using bound Latin roots, the major meaning-carrying constituents of academic words (e.g. voc meaning "speak" in…

The reading wars were fought over the importance of sentence- versus word-level information to students' reading. As the field considers new debates on the science of reading, we argue here that sustained empirical inquiry into the role of sentence-level information in students' reading skill is needed. These investigations could be particularly…

Reading, like all areas of human learning, is complex and multidimensional. Educational psychology has an opportunity to contribute further to a science of reading, and potentially to a science of reading instruction, by expanding its traditional theoretical and methodological orientations to embrace this complexity. Topics central to this effort…

This article considers the distinctive contribution that sociological perspectives have made to understanding reading as a profoundly social and cultural activity, differentiated by the specifics of time and place. Literacy researchers, using a social lens, have sought to explore, explain and redress inequalities in access to and uses of literacy…

In this article, we critique the science of reading when it is positioned within the reading wars as settling disagreements about reading and how it should be taught. We frame our argument in terms of troublesome binaries, specifically between nature and nurture. We interpret that binary in relation to Overton's distinction between split and…

We situate education, and the science of reading (SOR) specifically, in the midst of a broad, evidence-based revolution involving an array of disciplines focused on improving the health and well-being of individuals and populations. Low and stagnant levels of reading proficiency, massive reading disparities, and a robust SOR knowledge base suggest…

In this article, I provide an examination of research evidence concerning the effects of classroom instruction (Tier 1) for students with dyslexia and other reading problems. I discuss the suitability and limitations of different types of research evidence that may be used to determine how best to support the learning of these students in the…