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)…

This article is a rejoinder to J.S. Bowers (2020), 'Reconsidering the evidence that systematic phonics is more effective than alternative methods of reading instruction', "Educational Psychology Review" (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09515-y). There is strong agreement among reading scientists that learning the phonological…

In this webinar, Janice A. Dole, Professor and Director of the Reading and Literacy Program in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Utah, discussed different strategies for delivering literacy instruction to meet a range of student needs, including the ways in which teachers can collaborate with reading specialists to…

A recent article by Stuebing, Barth, Cirino, Francis and Fletcher critiqued the findings of Camilli, Vargas, and Yurecko (2003) and Camilli, Wolfe, and Smith (2006). With a methodological argument, they attempted to resolve the conflict between these studies and the original report Teaching Children to Read (National Reading Panel, 2000). In…

As a result of the Reading First Program of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the view of reading has narrowed. Individual state's Reading First professional development programs, and hence reading teachers across the United States, have spent the six years since the funding of the program in 2002 focusing beginning and developmental reading on…

In this article, the author argues that there is minimal scientific support for the pedagogical approaches promoted for low-income students in the federal Reading First initiative. In combination with high-stakes testing, the interpretation of the construct "systematic phonics instruction" in Reading First has resulted in highly…