Strong scientific case to roll out phonics instruction, expert says

There is “incontrovertible” scientific evidence to back widespread adoption of phonics teaching in classrooms.

“The incontrovertible finding from extensive research is that teaching children the alphabetic code early, explicitly and systematically is most effective”.

Rigorous and systematic phonics instruction underpins the effective teaching of reading and writing at high-performing schools, a leading global education publisher has said, highlighting “incontrovertible” scientific evidence to back widespread adoption of the teaching method in classrooms.

With South Australia kicking off its Year 1 phonics screening checks this week, Oxford School Improvement has released a report summarising the extensive evidence to support the adoption of phonics, which teaches children to read by breaking down words into their most basic sounds.

The Phonics is Knowledge report, written by education consultant trainer Hayley Goldsworthy, lists other factors common among high-performing schools, identified in an independent audit of schools in Britain, including high-quality and expert teaching and a school-wide belief that all students can learn to read, regardless of socio-economic background, ­cultural background, or additional needs.

Ms Goldsworthy said research had shown it was unlikely that most children would come to understand the relationship between letters and sounds, and learn to read, on their own.

“There are a number of different approaches to teaching phonics, all with varying levels of effectiveness,” she said.

“The incontrovertible finding from extensive research is that teaching children the alphabetic code early, explicitly and systematically, is most effective.”

Systematic Synthetic Phonics, or SPP, has garnered significant attention of late, with the federal government pushing for nationwide phonics screening, a move resisted by teachers’ unions and proponents of the whole language approach, where children are taught to read within the context of a text, taking clues from words they know and pictures. Phonics instruction tends to be incidental.

A phonics debate in Sydney last week, hosted by the Australian College of Educators and the Centre for Independent Studies, saw supporters of each approach clash, signalling long-running reading wars are far from over.

In a recent journal article published by the Association of Psychological Science in the Public Interest, co-author Macquarie University cognitive scientist Anne Castles called for an end to the reading wars.

Professor Castles, a participant in last week’s debate for SSP, said the quality and scope of scientific evidence available meant “reading wars should be over”.

She said prevailing myths about phonics instruction — such as it taught children fake words, was boring and interfered with reading comprehension — prevailed despite being debunked.

One of the issues preventing the research becoming practice was education practitioners typically had limited knowledge about the nature of writing systems, meaning they were not equipped to understand why phonics works.

“One clear message is that teaching and research must be informed by a detailed knowledge of the writing system being learned and the broader language system it represents,” Professor Castles wrote. “In relation to teaching, teacher training programs are doing future educators a huge disservice if they do not equip them with this knowledge.”

Ms Goldsworthy said programs varied and schools should consider whether they had a school-wide consistent approach, how often they were teaching phonics and their use of decodable readers to reinforce students’ knowledge.