There is some consternation amongst academics and those in the literacy field stirred up by Dominic Wyse and Charlotte Hacking’s book, The Balancing Act: An Evidence-Based Approach to Teaching Phonics, Reading and Writing.
Harriet notes that this book, 'recommends replacing systematic, synthetic phonics instruction with contextualized phonics embedded within “literacy rich” lessons. The book’s title promises an “evidenced-based approach,” and It is this purported evidence-base that requires close scrutiny if we are to guard against being sold more stories about reading instruction as we have been in the past.'
Please take the time to read Harriett's review in full including references to the reviews of others:
https://highfiveliteracy.com/2024/08/28 ... ncing-act/The Vanishing Act in The Balancing Act
A review of The Balancing Act: An Evidence-Based Approach to Teaching Phonics, Reading and Writing by Dominic Wyse and Charlotte Hacking’
Reading Instruction That Ignores Orthographic Mapping and Cognitive Load Theory is a Setback for Students
Guest blogger, Harriett Janetos, Reading Specialist
Author, From Sound to Summary: Braiding the Reading Rope to Make Words Make Sense
Harriett's review is thorough and very important. She provides a link to Jennifer Buckingham's review which is also very important and a 'must read':When a pendulum swings in education, how do we track its collateral damage? If what lies in disarray under its arc is a practice informed by research, this is concerning. When systematic and explicit phonics instruction decontextualized from literature is blamed for failing to improve comprehension, do we toss out those instructional practices—or do we make sure we have equally robust comprehension-building lessons? And if we do keep those foundational skills activities, does that mean we cease to examine their efficacy? Or do we continue to monitor student progress and evaluate our instruction in light of that progress?
Dominic Wyse and Charlotte Hacking’s new book, The Balancing Act: An Evidence-Based Approach to Teaching Phonics, Reading and Writing, recommends replacing systematic, synthetic phonics instruction with contextualized phonics embedded within “literacy rich” lessons. The book’s title promises an “evidenced-based approach,” and It is this purported evidence-base that requires close scrutiny if we are to guard against being sold more stories about reading instruction as we have been in the past.
Tug of War: Phonics Fallacies
First, it should be noted that the purpose of this review is not to refute Wyse and Hacking’s assertion that decontextualized phonics instruction does not yield the positive results claimed by its proponents—though many others have put forth such a refutation. In Jennifer Buckingham’s review, Groundhog day for reading instruction, of the Wyse and Bradbury paper, “Reading wars or reading reconciliation: A critical examination of robust research,” she cites three important studies that were left out of their synthesis. Moreover, several meta-analyses find mean effect sizes averaging .48 for decontextualized phonics instruction (12 meta-analyses comprising 426 studies) while whole language effect sizes average .09 (5 meta-analyses comprising 81 studies).
https://fivefromfive.com.au/blog/ground ... struction/
And, as you can see, Jennifer provides links for further important reviews. All these authors/reviewers are pioneers and specialists in the field of literacy instruction. You get a measure of the alarm of the academic community in response to the Wyse and Bradbury suggestions and claims.Groundhog day for reading instruction
There are few things more disheartening in my work life than having to spend precious time unpicking and rebutting the destructive work of high status academics in elite institutions, in the hope that it won’t undo years of hard-won progress toward better reading instruction and outcomes.
The latest example is a paper by Professor Dominic Wyse and Professor Alice Bradbury. Wyse and Bradbury are from the Institute of Education, University College London. Wyse and Bradbury have written a paper called ‘Reading wars or reading reconciliation: A critical examination of robust research’, published in Review of Education and described in a report in The Guardian as a “landmark study”.
It is not a landmark study. It’s groundhog day — another paper in a long line of studies and reports that try to prove that synthetic phonics is ineffective.
This is not the first time that I have written about work of a questionable standard from UCL’s Institute of Education. In 2019, researchers from the IoE published a study purporting to show extremely large, long-term benefits of participation in Reading Recovery. In reality, the study deliberately excluded an entire inconvenient group of students whose results undermined this conclusion, without declaring this omission of data in the published reports. When the methodological parlour trick was revealed, the people involved did not deny it was the truth. What happened to them and the report in the aftermath? Nothing. Everyone just carried on like it had never happened and Reading Recovery carries on unscathed.
It is therefore with a sense of resignation that I am going to nevertheless go to the effort of pointing out the critical problems with Wyse and Bradbury (2021). Greg Ashman has written a critique that picks up some similar issues as well as some others. EDIT: Since publishing this post I have seen a great response from Julia Carroll published in TES. EDIT #2: More excellent responses from Kathy Rastle, Michael Tidd and Rhona Johnston.
These are the main flaws in Wyse and Bradbury (2021) as I see them.