A Commentary on Bowers (2020) and the Role of Phonics Instruction in Reading
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A Commentary on Bowers (2020) and the Role of Phonics Instruction in Reading Jack M. Fletcher 1
2
& Robert Savage & Sharon Vaughn
3
Accepted: 18 October 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract
Bowers (Educational Psychology Review, 32, 681-705, 2020) reviewed 12 meta-analytic syntheses addressing the effects of phonics instruction, concluding that the evidence is weak to nonexistent in supporting the superiority of systematic phonics to alternative reading methods. We identify five issues that limit Bowers’ conclusions: (1) definition issues; (2) what is the right question?; (3) the assumption of “phonics first”; and (4) simplification of issues around systematic versus explicit phonics. We then go on to consider (5) empirical issues in the data from meta-analyses, where Bowers misconstrues the positive effects of explicit phonics instruction. We conclude that there is consistent evidence in support of explicitly teaching phonics as part of a comprehensive approach to reading instruction that should be differentiated to individual learner needs. The appropriate question to ask of a twenty-first century science of teaching is not the superiority of phonics versus alternative reading methods, including whole language and balanced literacy, but how best to combine different components of evidence-based reading instruction into an integrated and customized approach that addresses the learning needs of each child. Keywords Phonics . Whole language . Reading instruction . Morphology . National Reading Panel . Dyslexia
Introduction This paper is a commentary on the analysis provided by Bowers (2020) of the effects of systematic phonics instruction. Bowers concludes that the evidence supporting the superiority
* Jack M. Fletcher [email protected]
1
Department of Psychology, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA
2
Department of Psychology and Human Development, Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK
3
Department of Special Education, University of Texas-Austin, Austin, TX, USA
Educational Psychology Review
of systematic phonics to what he describes as alternative reading methods is weak to nonexistent. He argues that any presumed scientific consensus on how to teach reading is premature and based on unsettled science devoted to rhetoric on the superiority of systematic phonics. He concludes: Despite the widespread support for systematic phonics within the research literature, there is little or no evidence that this approach is more effective than many of the most common alternative methods used in school, including whole language. This does not mean that learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences is unimportant, but it does mean that there is little or no empirical evidence that systematic phonics leads to better reading outcomes. In this paper, we suggest that in drawing this conclusion, Bowers (2020) is not asking the correct question, makes a number of unwarranted definitional assumptions, and partly because of these problems, miscons
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