Education, MY Classroom
Why Children Fail to Learn to Read
It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog post, but I’ve come across a few excellent pieces of reading-related news this week so all is set to change!
First up – a newly-released, open-access (hurray!) Australian study makes for interesting reading and provides yet more evidence highlighting the importance of teaching reading well and the urgency of reforms in teacher training in this regard.
I have linked the study but include a summary of it below.
Graham, L.J., White, S.L.J., Tancredi, H.A. et al. (2020) A longitudinal analysis of the alignment between children’s early word-level reading trajectories, teachers’ reported concerns and supports provided. Read and Writing. [online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-020-10023-7 Accessed 23/02/2020.
Summarising the available research to date, the authors explain children who experience early reading difficulties face a wealth of challenges in accessing the school curriculum. In turn, this undermines self-worth, often leading to disruptive behaviour, under-achievement, early school drop-out and increases the risk of mental health difficulties. Too many children are being failed at school by not being taught how to read proficiently, undermining their future by limiting their employment prospects.
A percentage of children (5% – 10%) will experience reading difficulties even if provided with high-quality teaching. The numbers failing to read proficiently far exceeds these percentages unfortunately. Too many children are failing because they are not being taught well. These children are referred to as “instructional casualties.”
The authors proceed to examine why this is so. They point to gaps in initial teacher training, specifically highlighting weaknesses in preparing teachers to teach early reading; a consequent failure on the part of teachers to understand phonics or teach decoding skills well and knowledge deficits in relation to identifying and addressing learning difficulties.
It is apparent teachers quickly pinpoint children exhibiting behavioural difficulties but struggle to accurately identify the possible causes of externalising behaviours. Frequently, other difficulties, e.g. reading or language difficulties are overlooked, preventing children from accessing appropriate support in a timely manner. Too many children are receiving interventions for behaviour, including wobble chairs, behaviour plans, time-out rooms, counselling, social skills interventions, and shortened school days, while academic needs go unrecognised and unaddressed.
The authors examined teachers’ concerns about individual students and the supports provided for them and compared this with students’ early word-reading trajectories (defined as the ability to decode and identify printed words with the goal of reading for meaning). The study reports on the outcomes for 118 children who were recruited in their first year of school and tracked until the end of Grade 5. All attended schools in disadvantaged communities around Brisbane.
The children underwent a suite of assessment measures in each year of the project assessing development, language skills, relationships, attitudes, behaviour, and literacy and numeracy skills. Based on this, they were divided into 3 attainment groups – above average, average and below average – and tracked year-on-year. Teachers were interviewed each year and their concerns about behaviour and learning recorded, together with information on teaching strategies, their levels of experience and beliefs, supports put in place in the areas of reading, learning, behaviour, language and other (to include peripatetic specialist support or time with a ‘special needs teacher’), perceived strengths of each child and their target development areas.
In reporting their findings, the authors have re-categorised the children into new groups according to changes in their attainment over time. They report the findings for groups 3-5.
- Staying Average or Above
- Consistently Borderline
- Improving: Were below average and improved to average or above
- Declining: Were average but declined to below average
- Persistently Below Average
The authors note inconsistencies in the reporting of concerns for children over the course of the study. They also note that some children for whom teachers reported no concerns were in receipt of additional support while others, about whom they had concerns, received none. They link this to a false belief amongst teachers that children must have a diagnosed impairment in order to access additional support.
In the Persistently Below Average group, the numbers receiving no additional support increased as the children got older and moved up class grades. Deficits in reading interventions for this group are highlighted. The authors note few teachers mentioned reading as a cause for concern during their interviews. This, despite children presenting with below-average word-reading ability throughout the study. Rather than see behaviour as a possible indicator of underlying academic difficulties, teachers believed it affected learning; thus, key underlying language or reading difficulties were overlooked and support focused on behavioural interventions.
The results show “a significant decline in word-level reading scores over time relative to age norms.” Word recognition and phonemic decoding both declined – the latter markedly so. They extrapolate insufficient phonics-based instruction is the likely cause and refute any suggestion it is based on social background, pointing out that children in the declining group were initially achieving average or above average scores. A number of children in the improving group were learning English as an Additional Language (EAL), meaning EAL status is not an explanation for poor reading proficiency.
To address this situation, the authors are emphatic early teacher education and ongoing professional learning must be examined in light of the knowledge now available re. child development and the science of reading. They point to the research stating knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondence must be explicitly taught as decoding skills are critical when unfamiliar words are encountered. They highlight the weaknesses of visual memorisation strategies for learners, instead calling for teachers to be explicitly trained in the five components of reading. Furthermore, it is essential teachers are upskilled such that they can view behaviour as communication and appropriately consider the antecedents to it in order to appropriately identify the supports children need. They conclude there is a role for the Phonics Screening Check in supporting teachers in identifying children with weaknesses in decoding.
Being research-informed enables us all to better support children. You may find it helpful to chat with your child’s school to see what their approach to literacy teaching is and how you can promote your child’s development. As always, I am happy to answer questions you may have. Simply leave a comment below.
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