John Kenny: 'No Room in Ed for the Psycholinguistic Guessing Game'

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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John Kenny: 'No Room in Ed for the Psycholinguistic Guessing Game'

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

I nearly entitled this new thread: 'This one is close to my heart' reflecting a personal perspective because I, too, (like many others) have lived through a similar experience to the one John describes in his post via his blog 'The Search for Great Education'.

But when I joined the reading debate, I did so purely from the position of an already-worried primary teacher - perplexed by the level of illiteracy in junior-aged children in schools where teachers were so hardworking and dedicated. I intentionally investigated infant teaching and the teaching of reading by acquiring a full-time teaching job in infants (that is, instead of juniors). I had only just discovered the notion of systematic synthetic phonics teaching by chance despite having been a primary teacher -with grave concerns - for many years. Please bear in mind, however, that during those years, we did not have access to the internet and the social networks that are the norm nowadays.

https://johnkennyweb.wordpress.com/2017 ... sing-game/
No Room in Ed for the Psycholinguistic Guessing Game

The 3 cueing system is a model used widely in Australian schools to teach reading. It was made famous by Lady Marie Clay and her Reading Recovery program. This approach was the one favoured by my initial teacher education and is still the one favoured by most of the profession.

I was once one in favour too. Why wouldn’t I be? My whole education at the beginning of my career was in favour of the 3 cueing system, I did not know any better. That was until I left to teach in the UK, where The Simple View of Reading is favoured. My journey to changing my mind was a long one and had a lot to do with the overwhelming evidence for approaches that largely contradict the 3 cueing model and its overarching philosophy – namely, synthetic phonics.


John's post reminded me of a piece I wrote for the very first Reading Reform Foundation newsletter that I edited back in 2001. At that time, England had rolled out a new 'National Literacy Strategy' that was based first and foremost on 'the literacy hour' and 'the searchlights reading strategies' - that is, the multi-cueing word-guessing reading strategies.

As a primary teacher subjected to the national training (we all had to attend), I was utterly horrified when I was instructed in the 'searchlights strategies' as these were telling us all to tell children to guess the words rather than to decode them by sounding out and blending all-through-the-printed-word. I had to point out to the high-status NLS advisors that it was my weakest children who were desperately clutching straws and trying to get through their reading books by word-guessing - and it was wild guessing at that with the guessed word invariably the wrong word. This invariably skewed meaning-making - not enhancing comprehension at all - nor reading ability, nor 'love of books'.

Unlike John, however, this was not a case of me changing my mind about multi-cueing reading strategies, as I had no training in any form of reading instruction (that I can recall). Thus, the National Literacy Strategy 'searchlights' were the first time I had formally encountered multi-cueing reading strategies. The added complication with regard to children practising their reading was that teachers still had to give them reading books in which the words were largely not decodable - they did not correspond with the 'code' that the children had been taught to date.

Subsequently, I went on a quest to approach publishers of children's educational books to urge them to produce cumulative, decodable reading books - of which we now have a number of quality series of books from various publishers - thank goodness!

We were also instructed in the 'miscue analysis' approach associated with Reading Recovery - and we had to conduct a version of this if we were Year 2 teachers to inform our official teacher assessments for the end of Year 2 statutory national assessments. At that time, the official 'points score' for the children could be EITHER the teacher assessment OR the official Year 2 test results - WHICHEVER WERE THE HIGHEST!!! So how could this be an objective assessment for national information purposes? I found it ludicrous that I was trained to teach my 5 to 7 year olds about 'fair tests' in science - and yet was allowed to give my subjective teacher assessments for national information if I wanted to. Of course this totally skewed the comparative effectiveness of infant teaching because national results were a mixture of subjective teacher assessments and objective reading test results. Crazy!

You can imagine that the more I learnt about guidance from those in authority, the more I was horrified - as this contradicted everything I could see under my nose - and everything that I had been taught myself about science, fair testing and objectivity.

Thus, one thing led to another, and fate seemed to lead me to learn about people with the same concerns as me - and I became the editor of the UK Reading Reform Foundation newsletter in 2001 even though I know very little about research and who were the leading academics in research at that time. And what a journey I've experienced ever since.....

John and others now inherit, however, a wealth of information via the internet - it's amazing. There are no excuses left for those in educational and political authority to keep getting their guidance so very wrong....

For teachers, however, it is a more complicated matter than being informed by access to the internet. They are often overwhelmed by their workload in the classroom and their schools - and they may continuously be given flawed guidance, or out-of-date guidance, or merely ideologies rather than good research-informed information, or even simply 'weak' guidance. If they don't spend hours trawling the internet to become fully self-informed, how are they really to know better when those in authority over them are themselves misguided or misinformed or lacking in the best experiences - and academics and teacher-trainers contradict one another's advice?

John - if you read this - thank you for your further contribution to the reading debate by describing your experiences and your worries.

See from page 18 in this, my first RRF newsletter, where I describe a similar experience, and draw a similar diagram, but from NEARLY TWO DECADES AGO. Chilling, isn't it!

http://rrf.org.uk/pdf/nl/45.pdf
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: John Kenny: 'No Room in Ed for the Psycholinguistic Guessing Game'

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

For anyone who is interested, here is the link to the RRF newsletter archives. These give an indication of how people tried to address the promotion of the flawed 'searchlights strategies' in the National Literacy Strategy. During that time, more and more official National Literacy Strategy programmes/initiatives were rolled out - at great financial cost to the country (they were all very glossy).

The RRF and others undertook reviews of various official programmes to draw attention to the flaws of their content. This took considerable time and effort. It is no small thing that those in political and educational authority were actively mistraining the country's teachers and teaching assistants on a vast scale. Oh - and by the way - the Reading Recovery organisation prevails at the 'Institute of Education' to this day in England! What do I keep saying about 'what are teachers to believe' when this is the state of affairs!

Eventually, the work of the RRF and others led to a parliamentary inquiry in England followed by the, then, Department for Education and Science commissioning Sir Jim Rose to conduct an independent review:

http://rrf.org.uk/resources/newsletter-archive/

Sir Jim Rose is a committee member of the International Foundation for Effective Reading Instruction and you can read about his contribution to education here:

http://www.iferi.org/members/sir-jim-ro ... a/#more-51

It was thanks largely to Sir Jim Rose's report and his recommendation of the 'Simple View of Reading' (Gough and Tumner 1986) as a 'useful conceptual framework' that the Simple View of Reading as a concept reaches more of the teaching and teacher-training profession. Note that John has helpfully included a graphic of the Simple View of Reading in his blog post as an alternative to the 3-cueing, or multi-cueing, reading system.

Here is a printable pdf that teachers might find helpful of the Simple View of Reading - and I've also included a diagram for the Simple View of Writing as a practical tool for teachers to consider the broad reading and writing profiles of their pupils:

https://phonicsinternational.com/The_Si ... _model.pdf
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: John Kenny: 'No Room in Ed for the Psycholinguistic Guessing Game'

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

BUT - here are the most incredible developments which should be considered hugely significant historic events...

Anne Glennie, a founding committee member of IFERI, has launched a petition in Scotland as a consequence of the lack of professional understanding she has encountered in Scotland, and the persistent undermining by academics and officials in Scotland of the need for systematic synthetic phonics teacher-training and provision in all the schools.

There is representation from people in many countries around the world in support of Anne's petition and the point of principle she has raised - this petition has an international audience, not just a Scottish one - see 'View all' on the petition site (and please sign if you haven't already done so!):

http://www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewto ... ?f=3&t=821

Not only that, events are developing in Australia thanks to the amazing pioneering work of Dr Jennifer Buckingham, and others, (including various members of IFERI's Advisory Group and Committee) promoting the need for evidence-informed teacher-training and reading instruction and urging the adoption of a Year One Phonics Screening Check - either England's or similar, see here:

http://www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewto ... ?f=2&t=688
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