December 8 marked the 10th anniversary of the highly anticipated findings of the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy (NITL). Conducted in 2005 at the height of the so-called Reading Wars, the Inquiry probed how children learn best and how teachers are trained. A decade on, what impact has the Inquiry had on the way Australian children are taught to read?
A war of words
The debate about how children should learn to read goes back decades. At its heart is the divide between the whole-language and phonics based approaches. The argument over which teaching method should take precedence, or even be mandated, in Australian schools was ramped up in 2004 when The Australian newspaper published an open letter to then Education Minister Brendan Nelson by 26 literacy academics who complained that the dominance of a whole-language approach in Australian schools ignored research and was leading to a fall in literacy standards.
Soon after, Nelson established the National Inquiry into the Teaching Literacy (NITL) in early 2005 headed by the late Dr Ken Rowe, then a Research Director at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER).
At the time of the Inquiry I too worked at ACER, as its media and communications manager. The irrepressible Dr Rowe was my colleague and I had the often challenging task of handling his media commitments, including requests for him to comment on the Inquiry. I was a very interested observer of the Inquiry and the discussion around it.
The first thing I noticed was the animosity. It has always baffled me that people who all genuinely want every Australian child to learn to read well and go on to prosper in our society, sometimes seem to really dislike each other. Language was at times emotive, hostile and divided along political lines. Standing on the sidelines in 2005 I imagined watching a linguistic prize fight with each side trying to knock the other out.
Ding. Ding.
“In the left corner: proponents of whole-language. They think children can learn to read by osmosis just by sitting next to a book. They refuse to listen to research that proves they’re wrong. They’re failing our kids and sending functionally illiterate youth into the workforce where no employer wants them.”
“And in the right corner: the pro-phonics lobby. These stale ‘educrats’ haven’t been in a school for years and are completely out of touch with what goes on in a classroom. They want classrooms to become research laboratories where they’ll test their research on your children like lab rats. The literacy panic they’re sprouting has been invented by the teacher bashing commentators of the Murdoch press.”
“Let’s get ready to rumble!”
It wasn’t a boring time to be around education research. For much of 2005 media interest in the inquiry and its findings was immense. There were leaks on drafts and speculation about what the final report would say. There were weekend phone calls from journalists claiming to know what the findings would be and urging me to ‘just confirm’ them. I wasn’t much help since the callers always seemed to know more than I did anyway.
As the release date drew nearer, I felt a growing sense that people on the pro-phonics side could sense victory and expected the Inquiry would hand them a wooden stake to drive through the heart of whole- language and kill it. But did they get what they wanted?
The evidence is clear…
While the Inquiry’s findings and recommendations came down firmly on the side of phonics, it did not condemn whole-language to death. The Inquiry’s report, Teaching Reading stated:
“The evidence is clear, whether from research, good practice observed in schools, advice from submissions to the Inquiry, consultations, or from Committee members’ own individual experiences, that direct systematic instruction in phonics during the early years of schooling is an essential foundation for teaching children to read. Findings from the research evidence indicate that all students learn best when teachers adopt an integrated approach to reading that explicitly teaches phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary knowledge and comprehension. This approach, coupled with effective support from the child’s home, is critical to success.” (Page 11).
Although a clear endorsement of phonics, the report also labelled the dichotomy between phonics and whole-language false, stating: “Teachers must be able to draw on techniques most suited to the learning needs and abilities of the child.”
The Inquiry’s committee supported a balanced or mixed approach to teaching reading with Recommendation 2:
The Committee recommends that teachers provide systematic, direct and explicit phonics instruction so that children master the essential alphabetic code-breaking skills required for foundational reading proficiency. Equally, that teachers provide an integrated approach to reading that supports the development of oral language, vocabulary, grammar, reading fluency, comprehension and the literacies of new technologies.(page 14)
A decade on, where are we now?
Bill Louden, Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Western Australia, was a member of the NITL committee. Ten years later he’s sure the Inquiry got it right.
“I always thought at the time that we were on the right side of history in calling for more evidence-based approaches in the teaching of reading,” he recalls.
“And we were right because a decade later everyone talks about the need for evidence-based approaches in teaching but that wasn’t the case 10 years ago. Ken Rowe brought the case for evidence-based teaching practices to the fore.
“There is now a greater recognition that for very small children there are five things that need to be done for them to learn to read: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, oral and written vocabulary and reading comprehension in an appropriate balance. The right balance is don’t wait for kids to fail.”
Not everyone agrees. Dr Eileen Honan, Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Queensland, questions the Inquiry’s focus on evidence.
“The National Inquiry focus on ‘evidence-based teaching’ drew heavily from reports in the USA (the No Child Left Behind Act called for ‘evidence-based’ teaching) and in the UK (the Rose report also made use of similar terms). There was little discussion about what counted as evidence; while there have also been grand and misguided claims about ‘evidence’. These days, ‘evidence’ is reduced to the NAPLAN scores received in a particular school/class/state. Little longitudinal research is done to show how the teaching of reading in the early years of school affects students’ progress throughout their schooling.”
Honan points to a statement following Recommendation 2 in the Inquiry’s report that she says is crucial but often ignored.
“It says ‘Such instruction arising from these two recommendations (1 and 2) must be part of an intellectually challenging literacy environment that is inclusive of all children.’ This sums up really what ‘effective’ literacy instruction is about. Teachers use a range of approaches that best suit their students at a particular time when engaging with a particular text. As well as helping children learn how to ‘break the code’ of words, teachers also help students learn how to make meaning from what they are reading. They provide students with rich reading experiences either digitally or in books, that help them make sense of who they are and the world around them. They prepare students to engage with the reading and writing required in an ‘innovative’ nation as well as helping them understand how other people in different situations and contexts from their own see the world.”
Here we go again…
Moves to act on the Inquiry’s findings and recommendations after they were handed down were slow at best. In the 10 years since the Inquiry, arguments about the standards of childhood literacy in Australia, and how to teach reading, have continued.
So how much impact did the Inquiry have? Very little says Honan.
“The recommendations made in the report are mainly directed at state education authorities. Education policy in Australia is impacted by federalism. So, for example, recommendation 16 was that a national program of literacy action be established.
“This outstanding idea was never taken up, and I believe was never referred to again by federal or state governments. Instead since 2005 we have been given NAPLAN, AITSL and the National Curriculum. All of these ‘initiatives’ have done nothing to improve the teaching of literacy.”
In December 2012 The Australian reported that a group of 36 educators, scientists and clinicians, some of whom had signed the letter to Brendan Nelson in 2004 prompting the Inquiry, had again written to politicians bemoaning a lack of action in implementing the NITL’s findings. They blamed lack of progress for Australia’s worse than expected showing in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) that saw one in four Australian children meet only the lowest international benchmark for reading.
Research Fellow with the Centre for Independent Studies Jennifer Buckingham believes tens of thousands of Australian children fail to learn to read to a level that will enable them to succeed in education and prosper in a society that demands a highly-skilled and educated workforce.
In a 2013 paper entitled Why Jaydon can’t read, based on the final chapter of her PHD thesis, Buckingham and co-authors Kevin Wheldall and Robyn Beaman-Wheldall, blame government policies and university education faculties for failing to advance phonics-based teaching methods that have been proven by research to be most effective in teaching children to read. They cited a ‘research-to-practice gap’ in which teachers have insufficient knowledge and skill to translate evidence-based theory into classroom practice.
The 2014 review of the Australian Curriculum in English conducted by Kevin Donnelly echoed the Inquiry’s support for phonics-based reading education. It called for a greater emphasis on more structured and systematic phonics during the early years of reading.
In 2015 the head of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), Robert Randall, the man in charge of the country’s controversial NAPLAN tests, told the Sydney Morning Herald that 2015 NAPLAN data did not show the levels of improvement that he would hope to see.
Today, Buckingham believes progress has been made over the past 10 years but there remains a “consistent disconnect between what we know is effective and actually putting it in place.”
Buckingham has initiated a campaign called Five from Five, based on the five keys to literacy (phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension) that children need to have from the age of five, which for most children is their first year of school. A website will soon be launched aimed at policy makers, principals, teachers and parents.
“The idea is to get all the evidence around reading instruction into classrooms. The website will help put that evidence in front of the right people,” she explains.
Looking back on the last decade Bill Louden is not terribly surprised that changes in teaching practices have been gradual.
“It takes a lot to unseat practices that have been established for many years,” Louden says. “Politicians have expectations that things can change overnight but I never expected change would come quickly.”
“There are still variations in practice. When some teachers have spent 30 years not teaching phonics it can take a long time for the evidence to reach their ears.”
When the message does get through, it can bring positive results. Louden recently conducted a study for the Western Australian government of nine high-performing schools that have been making rapid improvements in successive Year 3 NAPLAN results.
“What they each had in common was structured teaching of phonics and phonemic awareness,” he explains.
“The reading wars continue because some people want to bang their drum. Teachers can take a long time to change. I’m pretty heartened by what I have seen in those schools.”
First published 8 December 2015
Updated 10 January 2016
References
Buckingham, J., Wheldall, K. & Beaman-Wheldall, R. (2013). Why Jaydon can’t read: The triumph of ideology over evidence in teaching reading. Policy, Vol. 29. No. 3. Spring 2013. Accessed from: https://www.cis.org.au/app/uploads/2015/04/images/stories/policy-magazine/2013-spring/29-3-13-jennifer-buckingham.pdf
Donnelly, K. & Wiltshire, K. (2014) Review of the Australian Curriculum: Final Report. Australian Government. Retrieved from: https://docs.education.gov.au/documents/review-australian-curriculum-final-report
Ferrari, J. A decade of lost action on literacy. The Australian 22 December 2012. Accessed from:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/a-decade-of-lost-action-on-literacy/story-fn59niix-1226542150781
National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy 2005 Teaching Reading Report and recommendations, Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training.
Smith, A. NAPLAN 2015: Education chiefs warn students are not improving, The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 August 2015. Retrieved from :
http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/naplan-2015-education-chiefs-warn-students-are-not-improving-20150803-giq6v8.html#ixzz3tXWaSHp6