Science of Reading Explained: Is It Just a Fad?

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Hello everybody and welcome to the TeacherCast educational network. My name is Jeff Bradbury. Thank you so much for joining us today and making TeacherCast your home for professional development. In this episode of TeacherCast, we start our very first episode of a brand new series called Literacy with Laura. I invite today on my show the chief academic officer of the 95 % group, Ms. Laura Stewart to come on today and she's going to be tackling the tough questions asked by you, our listeners. For more information on this program and everything that's going to be happening in this

brand new series you can head on over to [teachercast.net](http://teachercast.net/) forward slash literacy with Laura and check out all the great resources from the 95 % group. Laura, how are you today? Welcome to TeacherCast.

Well, Jeff, it's great to see you and I'm so excited to be here. So thanks for welcoming me to the TeacherCast podcast.

I am so excited to have you on today. It has been a while. How are things going at the 95 % group this summer?

You know what? Really great. mean, I look at summer as a time for teachers to kind of refresh and renew, and I think this is a really great opportunity to have some of their burning questions answered. So we at 95 % group are really proud and excited about supporting that.

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Well, I'm excited to have you on this episode today. You know, last year we launched a six part series all about the science of reading. Not only was it a great success, but we had a lot of people reach in and ask us a bunch of questions. Are you ready for some of the more popular questions?

am ready, Jeff.

Well, the first question that we have today is all about this concept of the science of reading. Many people responded to our video series saying, is the science of reading just a fad? Is it just about fun?

I really get this question because, you know, I've been in education for four decades and it feels like we've had movements that have come and gone. But I'm going to say, Jeff, I think this is really different because I like to remember that the science of reading does not refer to one specific thing that we do, such as phonics instruction. I'd like to go to the reading leagues science of reading defining guide and really look at this kind of

collaborative definition around the science of reading. And the science of reading, I'm going to read from this defining guide, is a vast interdisciplinary body of scientifically based research about reading and issues related to reading and writing. And it's interesting to note that this research has been done over five decades in multiple disciplines. And it informs all aspects of reading, not just the foundational skills,

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that's taught the phonics instruction and actually the Reading League booklet, which you can get from their website, by the way, everyone, the Reading League organization, fleshes out what we mean by interdisciplinary bodies of research, multiple fields of research, cognitive psychology, communication sciences, development, psychology, education, special education, implementation, science, linguistics, neuroscience, school psychology. So

It's important to remember that this is a body of research that informs all aspects of reading. And it's not an ideology or philosophy. It's not a fad, a trend, a new idea or a pendulum swing. It's not a political agenda. It's definitely not a one size fits all approach. And it's not a single specific component of instruction such as phonics. I also want to emphasize when I think about the science of reading is this body of knowledge that it's not

static, it's dynamic. So continuing to look at the evolving evidence is really important when we think about the science of reading. Now though, I want to get back to the question about phonics. Does it feel like in some ways the focus has been on phonics? It does sometimes feel that way, but here's why. I believe that when we first started looking at our profession as a profession that is based on evidence, this was really back in

around 2000 when we had the National Reading Panel research. during that time, the research really had us paying very close attention to phonemic awareness and phonics and fluency and those foundational skills because those were the areas in which we needed to urgently address instruction because we'd kind of gotten it wrong for a long time. And so we really had to right that shift.

So I think there has been a tension on those foundational skill areas, but it doesn't mean that the science of reading is only about that. The science of reading is this body, again, of research around all aspects of reading. So as a person who's been in this work for decades, I do feel that this is different. I also wanna say another thing about the science of reading. I mentioned that it's dynamic, and I also wanna mention the science of reading

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I think is really a first step, like learning about the knowledge base, developing an awareness that there is a knowledge base out there that can inform what we do. But really the next frontier is, I think, kind of two things. One, how do we integrate that science of reading research with the implementation science in order to think through how we are bridging knowledge to practice? That's a question I get a lot. Many people say,

You know, I've been through training. I understand the theoretical underpinnings of the science of reading research, but how does that translate to practice? I like to think of it, Jeff, as kind of like a, here's what? Science of reading, now what? What do we do with this? And so that's actually what the Science of Reading 2.0 booklet is all about. It's a booklet that we published in 2023 that I wrote really to help look at the implementation science.

and think about how we can bring that body of knowledge to help us craft, you know, kind of what's this next step? What's this now what? So that's, you know, that's a place I think that we're looking at that evolving or dynamic science. And another thing I think we have to really think about is how we're integrating the science of reading and the implementation sciences, science with the other sciences.

of teaching and of learning because those are other bodies of research. Science of instruction, science of learning. We have a new book coming out, Jeff, later on this year, it's Science of Reading 3.0, and that's really what that book is going to be about, so stay tuned for that. I think that's really important because when we're thinking about research to practice, we have to think about the science of reading and all those other sciences really to

to help us formulate effective instruction. So then the last thing I think I would want to say about this topic is that, the science of reading is really important and the bodies of research that I just mentioned really important. But I also want to mention that teaching is both a science and an art. And that art of teaching, what we bring to the table in building relationships and

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the nuances of instruction that we as educators bring to the table based on our students. I don't ever want us to forget that there is an art to teaching as well. And I've been fortunate in my career to have experienced beautiful examples of teachers who meld together both that science and that art.

So one of the questions that has come up often is this concept of understanding the terms deeply rooted in science and research based. How would you describe those two terms to somebody?

So thank you for that. That's a great question. I'm happy for the opportunity to talk about this because actually this just came up recently. I had a really good conversation with a gentleman named Claude Goldenberg and I think many of our listeners probably know Claude. Claude is a prominent voice. He's an expert in the area of English learner instruction and he came to a session that I was conducting on this Courage to Leave, which is another ebook that I want to make available to our listeners.

And afterwards he and I had a really good discussion because I had used the term evidence based in my session and he said, you know, Laura, we can find evidence for a lot of practices or programs that don't really work well for students. In other words, there could be a poorly designed study that someone cites or an older study that someone cites that supports something that isn't really strong. So.

One thing I like to remember when we think about deeply rooted in the science is we have to think about the body of research and the preponderance of evidence. So the multiple fields of study and the five decades of research resulted in a preponderance of coherent evidence in support of some very specific instructional practices. So when we say, you know, deeply rooted in the science or research-based,

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Let's remember we're talking about a vast body of interdisciplinary knowledge that provides conclusions at this point in time based on the preponderance of evidence. Let me give a contrast to that because I think that might help clarify. So when I came up as a teacher, one of the most prevalent theories around teaching kids to read was this theory called the three queuing systems.

And it was a way to teach kids to develop their decoding and word recognition skills. And this was kind of during the whole language years. It gained popularity as a theory because it was supported by people who became somewhat celebrities. Now, or popular figures, I guess I would say in reading, this practice was not supported by research, much less a preponderance of research.

from multiple disciplines over time. So now we know that we can hold our profession up to scrutiny as a research-based profession, and we can dislodge this as a practice that is not deeply rooted in science and not effective for all of our students.

Laura, you know, when we're looking at the science of reading, many questions pop up in addition to these. Where can somebody go if they're looking to get more information about the science of reading and also connect with you at the 95 % group?

Sure, so I encourage people to go to our website, 95 %[group.com](http://group.com/), and we have just a plethora of information around science of reading, and we have many, lots of content around this in specific topic areas. We have recorded webinars that people can access. I would also encourage people, as I've been referring to this,

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the Science of Reading Defining Guide from the Reading League. And as I mentioned, you know, couple of our key publications that we have published at 95 % groups. So we've got a lot to explore on our website and I would encourage people to go there first for more information.

and if you're looking for all of these links, can find everything over at [teachercast.net](http://teachercast.net/) slash literacy with Laura. And that wraps up this first of four episodes of our great new professional development series. Laura Stewart, thank you so much for your time. I'm looking forward to having you on the next episode. And that wraps up this episode of Teacher Cast on behalf of Lauren, everybody here on Teacher Cast. My name is Jeff Bradbury, reminding you guys to keep up the great work in your classrooms and continue sharing your passions with your students.