Phonics boosters receive apology

A national association representing English teachers has been forced to apologise to the founders of a popular phonics program.

Kevin and Robyn Wheldall with the Multilit educational package.

A national association representing English teachers has been forced to apologise to the founders of a popular phonics program and a respected literacy advocate over false assertions they had fostered a “culture war” to promote their own commercial interests.

The Australian Literacy Educators’ Association has apologised to Macquarie University spin-off MultiLit, its founders Kevin and Robyn Wheldall, and research director Jennifer Buckingham, in the wake of a Zoom webcast held in August.

The presentation, titled The grammar wars in Australia today: How they are affecting teacher education, was led by Canberra University senior lecturer Rachel Cunneen, who took aim at MultiLit and Dr Buckingham over alleged “conflicts of interest”.

Dr Cunneen, who lectures teacher education students, is understood to have criticised Dr Buckingham’s roles at MultiLit and as the founder of the Five from Five reading project — which she mistakenly described as a “commercial program” — as well as her role as a non-executive director of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, where she was part of a task force commissioned by the federal government to advise on ways to ensure that phonics was included in teacher education.

Claiming that debates over how to teach reading in Australia were “confected”, Dr Cunneen singled out Dr Buckingham’s 2013 research paper, Why Jaydon Can’t Read, which examined the gap between research and practice in the teaching of reading, suggesting it was an example of “class signalling”.

“Jaydon — and I’ll say it just really bluntly here — is a bogan name,” Dr Cunneen said.

“What’s being signalled here is that it’s the ordinary, white Australian kid that is struggling.”

It is understood Dr Buckingham’s paper was named in reference to the book, Why Johnny Can’t Read — And What You Can Do About It, by Rudolf Flesch, with the name Jaydon ­selected because it was popular at the time.

In a statement on its website, ALEA acknowledged that the webcast had included defamatory statements. “Those statements include that Dr Buckingham has conflicts of interest in using her access to the media and her involvement in a federal government commission of inquiry to nefariously promote her private commercial interests, and fosters a culture war in respect of teacher education, and that Professor Wheldall, Dr Wheldall and Dr Buckingham improperly seek to further their commercial interests in support of a class agenda aligned to extreme political views,” the apology reads.

“ALEA recognises that the statements were not accurate, and were damaging and hurtful.”

Dr Cunneen, who did not respond to requests to comment, is listed as a “friend” of the Foundation for Learning and Literacy, which is opposed to the push for synthetic phonics programs in classrooms.

MultiLit also declined to comment.