Thanks so much for sharing the blog--great explanation. Carl Hendrick calls what she describes the "transfer paradox":
"Carl Hendrick, author of How We Learn, emphasizes that the Transfer Paradox might possibly be 'the most difficult challenge teachers face in instructional design . . . the deceptive trade-off between immediate performance vs. long-term transfer.' This is a good explanation for why we should not use predictable text during beginning reading instruction. The 'immediate performance' that comes from memorizing a sentence pattern and then reading the picture rather than the word (I see a giraffe, a rhinoceros, a wooly mammoth, etc.) is offset by a failure to achieve 'long-term transfer' due to the many missed opportunities to orthographically map spelling patterns and words in the text, a necessary step in the transfer process. This orthographic mapping is achieved through the act of decoding by linking letters to sounds. Hendrick explains that 'what helps students perform well during initial learning may not prepare them well for applying that knowledge in different situations or problems they haven’t encountered before.'"
That is so true, Harriett! As someone who used to teach students to use many strategies as their first line of attack--reading the research wasn't enough for me to change. The reason for that is because what I saw in front of my eyes was success-short term success (They read the book, they figured out the word). It seemed child centered and responsive and even systematic in a certain way. (As the text got harder certain scaffolds went away.) In my mind the research that I was reading didn't match what I saw in the classroom. I had to commit trying it differently to see the long term success. When I actually tried it with children that was when I saw the long term success and the efficiency of the research. My piece of advice then to teachers who see this differently is to commit to trying it differently in the classroom. If you are a coach or principal lead with that inquiry (What positive differences do we see in the long run when we ask students to decode the word first?)
"I had to commit trying it differently to see the long term success."
And this is where teachers need support and encouragement from administrators, colleagues, and coaches because making that commitment can seem so scary.
I still would like to know how prevalent this persistence in using such unproductive teaching practices is. I think most of us in the classroom or intervention practice are up to date with the knowledge of the importance of using phonics as the first and primary method. I do see that "over-teaching" of phonics is crowding out other strands of the literacy rope, as well as other subjects like social studies and science. Does this point to improving teacher ed as a remedy? The participants in my study, as well as all of my colleagues and teachers I have mentored over the years, have all said that they were not adequately prepared to teach their students how to read.
Personally I think it's more prevalent than you'd like to think. Someone just sent me an article from the Reading Teacher. Here's the abstract: "Some readers thrive more than others because they are more actively involved in their learning. All students can become active participants in their learning through quality teacher prompting. In this article, teachers will learn how to promote emergent learners' active participation as they decode and comprehend, while problem- solving unknown text. The authors show how to support students by incorporating appropriate prompting determined by student needs." You might be able to infer what article's orientation is toward teaching reading. If not, here's the citation: The Reading Teacher, 2025; 78:380–386 https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2383. Besides this, I'd suggest asking Harriett and Marnie how often they see such unproductive teaching behaviors. I'd be surprised if they didn't say "very often," but I've been wrong before.
Yes, teachers, as we seem to all agree here, have not been trained well in how to teach reading--by and large. And the curricula is changing rapidly towards systematic, explicit phonics approaches...but not everywhere. This 2023 RAND survey shows many balanced literacy options still filling a lot of classrooms, for instance:
As Emily Hanford has explained, it's a lot harder to persuade teachers to drop a practice than it is to get them to add one. I see that every day with the teachers in our PD program...old habits die hard.
Interesting, Marnie. I guess it's just my perspective from teaching where I do. Also, with all the SOR legislation that is happening, I thought that it would change teachers' classroom practices. We are always heavily scrutinized and told to teach with fidelity to the scripted programs we have had (which change every 5-7 yrs.).
Another concern I have: if we don't start to improve teacher ed., we surely won't see a difference. The participants in my study all agreed that they did not know how to teach reading until they had PD associated with the adoption of a new reading program. They told me they were unaware of research that had been in place 20 years ago (NRP) and only recently learned of SOR through CKLA, UFLI, and Heggerty training. If teachers don't have any pedagogical underpinnings, they are at the mercy of whatever the program du jour says is best practice.
Yes, I have noticed it's highly variable. I went to one general elementary teacher conference and asked a room of 40 teachers if they'd heard of the NRP. Just 2! This was last year.
100% agree change starts in the universities. And the rest of us should be trying to create streamlined PDs.
I hear you, Dr. Goldenberg. I’m sure that in other areas it was or maybe still is prevalent. Hard to fathom with all the SOR legislation that has passed. I can only speak from my experience over 30 years in my “large, urban school district,” but we have had phonics since I started. If these practices do persist, maybe they’re being reinforced by programs in schools and/or colleges teaching prospective teachers. 🤔🤷🏻♀️🏳️
"I think most of us in the classroom or intervention practice are up to date with the knowledge of the importance of using phonics as the first and primary method."
You make an important point about an understanding of the "importance of using phonics," but there's still confusion about best practices in phonics instruction in addition to confusion over the use of context. Teachers in districts like mine have been trained in Fountas & Pinnell's LLI and have used their recommended practices over many years, so cueing practices related to using graphemes/phonemes for word IDENTIFICATION and context for word CONFIRMATION haven't (yet) negated this training, proof of which are all my first graders who come to me frantically searching the pictures to figure out words.
But there are some other important issues related to the "importance of using phonics". First, as you know, I agree with you that we are overteaching it. But we are also underteaching our teachers when it comes to a nuanced understanding of what phonics instruction should look like. Here are two examples. First, I've had extensive communication with Marianne Rice, who conducted a meta-analysis of phonemic awareness instruction that concluded that PA instruction both with and without letters improved phonemic awareness, but it was PA instruction with letters that improved reading and spelling--which is our goal. She speculated that experts who are still recommending oral-only PA might be doing so because they fear teachers will leave it out of their phonics instruction if they don't prioritize it on its own. I wrote about this conflict in "When the Experts Disagree: What do the teachers do?" (https://harriettjanetos.substack.com/p/when-the-experts-disagree).
Secondly, an interventionist from another district shared with me that she had pushback from structured literacy proponents about the importance of flexible pronunciations (set for variability) because it seemed to them like advocating "guessing". I was shocked to hear this, and it shows how this crucial concept hasn't been widely disseminated even though it's essential if we are to help students tackle unknown words, as my English Learner did yesterday reading a title with three different pronunciations of 'ea': Dreaming of Great Ideas.
Thanks to both Marnie and Harriett. So, whats the answer to Gina’s question: How prevalent is persistence in using such unproductive teaching practices (ie excessive reliance on context for word identification)? Imposible to quantify, I assume. But can we say something like it’s probably less than before (eg 10 years ago??), but still more prevalent than it should be? Or how to nutshell it?
I agree with all of this Claude: hard to quantify without national gov't research !! and we have much fewer context-first strategies in play than 10 years ago. But the ship is not at a complete 180 degrees yet.
Yes, I wholeheartedly agree that teachers do not know enough about best practice with phonics or phonemic awareness. I regularly see teachers doing PA with that well-known program. They do the whole thing orally, and it takes a lot of time, rather than focusing on blending and segmenting. We already knew to use letters from the NRP...but teachers I speak with have never heard of the NRP.
I teach my students to use flexible pronunciations, and I don't see it as "guessing," because I have directly taught that if there is no clear indication of which sound to use, they should try the other one(s) they know. I have almost exclusively taught English learners throughout the course of my career.
Btw, I've bookmarked your Substack, and I look forward to reading soon...my dissertation is calling! 😂😂😂
I was at the recent Reading League Summit in Chicago. One of the panelists, Dr. Julie VanDyke said something that's been on my mind ever since: “Understanding the evidence base may be there, but practitioners need a system in which to implement it.” She prefaced that by saying that doctors knew about the benefits of hand washing long before they implemented it in practice because, initially, they didn't have a system within which to implement that new practice. I think there may be something similar happening in education, with many teachers learning about better practices but still not operating in a system that supports them making the needed changes. But true that there are still very many who are holding on to poor practices. Teacher leaders really need to step up here.
Marnie and others: I’m looking for some video with ELs we can use for another video zoom session. I’m sending out our feelers.
Thanks so much for sharing the blog--great explanation. Carl Hendrick calls what she describes the "transfer paradox":
"Carl Hendrick, author of How We Learn, emphasizes that the Transfer Paradox might possibly be 'the most difficult challenge teachers face in instructional design . . . the deceptive trade-off between immediate performance vs. long-term transfer.' This is a good explanation for why we should not use predictable text during beginning reading instruction. The 'immediate performance' that comes from memorizing a sentence pattern and then reading the picture rather than the word (I see a giraffe, a rhinoceros, a wooly mammoth, etc.) is offset by a failure to achieve 'long-term transfer' due to the many missed opportunities to orthographically map spelling patterns and words in the text, a necessary step in the transfer process. This orthographic mapping is achieved through the act of decoding by linking letters to sounds. Hendrick explains that 'what helps students perform well during initial learning may not prepare them well for applying that knowledge in different situations or problems they haven’t encountered before.'"
That is so true, Harriett! As someone who used to teach students to use many strategies as their first line of attack--reading the research wasn't enough for me to change. The reason for that is because what I saw in front of my eyes was success-short term success (They read the book, they figured out the word). It seemed child centered and responsive and even systematic in a certain way. (As the text got harder certain scaffolds went away.) In my mind the research that I was reading didn't match what I saw in the classroom. I had to commit trying it differently to see the long term success. When I actually tried it with children that was when I saw the long term success and the efficiency of the research. My piece of advice then to teachers who see this differently is to commit to trying it differently in the classroom. If you are a coach or principal lead with that inquiry (What positive differences do we see in the long run when we ask students to decode the word first?)
"I had to commit trying it differently to see the long term success."
And this is where teachers need support and encouragement from administrators, colleagues, and coaches because making that commitment can seem so scary.
I still would like to know how prevalent this persistence in using such unproductive teaching practices is. I think most of us in the classroom or intervention practice are up to date with the knowledge of the importance of using phonics as the first and primary method. I do see that "over-teaching" of phonics is crowding out other strands of the literacy rope, as well as other subjects like social studies and science. Does this point to improving teacher ed as a remedy? The participants in my study, as well as all of my colleagues and teachers I have mentored over the years, have all said that they were not adequately prepared to teach their students how to read.
Personally I think it's more prevalent than you'd like to think. Someone just sent me an article from the Reading Teacher. Here's the abstract: "Some readers thrive more than others because they are more actively involved in their learning. All students can become active participants in their learning through quality teacher prompting. In this article, teachers will learn how to promote emergent learners' active participation as they decode and comprehend, while problem- solving unknown text. The authors show how to support students by incorporating appropriate prompting determined by student needs." You might be able to infer what article's orientation is toward teaching reading. If not, here's the citation: The Reading Teacher, 2025; 78:380–386 https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2383. Besides this, I'd suggest asking Harriett and Marnie how often they see such unproductive teaching behaviors. I'd be surprised if they didn't say "very often," but I've been wrong before.
Yes, teachers, as we seem to all agree here, have not been trained well in how to teach reading--by and large. And the curricula is changing rapidly towards systematic, explicit phonics approaches...but not everywhere. This 2023 RAND survey shows many balanced literacy options still filling a lot of classrooms, for instance:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA134-20.html
And even when a program claims to be aligned with the SOR, it often has not fully abandoned elements of 3-cueing as discussed in this article:
https://www.apmreports.org/story/2025/03/06/edreports-reading-curriculum-reviews-science-of-reading
As Emily Hanford has explained, it's a lot harder to persuade teachers to drop a practice than it is to get them to add one. I see that every day with the teachers in our PD program...old habits die hard.
Interesting, Marnie. I guess it's just my perspective from teaching where I do. Also, with all the SOR legislation that is happening, I thought that it would change teachers' classroom practices. We are always heavily scrutinized and told to teach with fidelity to the scripted programs we have had (which change every 5-7 yrs.).
Another concern I have: if we don't start to improve teacher ed., we surely won't see a difference. The participants in my study all agreed that they did not know how to teach reading until they had PD associated with the adoption of a new reading program. They told me they were unaware of research that had been in place 20 years ago (NRP) and only recently learned of SOR through CKLA, UFLI, and Heggerty training. If teachers don't have any pedagogical underpinnings, they are at the mercy of whatever the program du jour says is best practice.
Yes, I have noticed it's highly variable. I went to one general elementary teacher conference and asked a room of 40 teachers if they'd heard of the NRP. Just 2! This was last year.
100% agree change starts in the universities. And the rest of us should be trying to create streamlined PDs.
I’d love to be a part of that! 😁😁😁
I hear you, Dr. Goldenberg. I’m sure that in other areas it was or maybe still is prevalent. Hard to fathom with all the SOR legislation that has passed. I can only speak from my experience over 30 years in my “large, urban school district,” but we have had phonics since I started. If these practices do persist, maybe they’re being reinforced by programs in schools and/or colleges teaching prospective teachers. 🤔🤷🏻♀️🏳️
"I think most of us in the classroom or intervention practice are up to date with the knowledge of the importance of using phonics as the first and primary method."
You make an important point about an understanding of the "importance of using phonics," but there's still confusion about best practices in phonics instruction in addition to confusion over the use of context. Teachers in districts like mine have been trained in Fountas & Pinnell's LLI and have used their recommended practices over many years, so cueing practices related to using graphemes/phonemes for word IDENTIFICATION and context for word CONFIRMATION haven't (yet) negated this training, proof of which are all my first graders who come to me frantically searching the pictures to figure out words.
But there are some other important issues related to the "importance of using phonics". First, as you know, I agree with you that we are overteaching it. But we are also underteaching our teachers when it comes to a nuanced understanding of what phonics instruction should look like. Here are two examples. First, I've had extensive communication with Marianne Rice, who conducted a meta-analysis of phonemic awareness instruction that concluded that PA instruction both with and without letters improved phonemic awareness, but it was PA instruction with letters that improved reading and spelling--which is our goal. She speculated that experts who are still recommending oral-only PA might be doing so because they fear teachers will leave it out of their phonics instruction if they don't prioritize it on its own. I wrote about this conflict in "When the Experts Disagree: What do the teachers do?" (https://harriettjanetos.substack.com/p/when-the-experts-disagree).
Secondly, an interventionist from another district shared with me that she had pushback from structured literacy proponents about the importance of flexible pronunciations (set for variability) because it seemed to them like advocating "guessing". I was shocked to hear this, and it shows how this crucial concept hasn't been widely disseminated even though it's essential if we are to help students tackle unknown words, as my English Learner did yesterday reading a title with three different pronunciations of 'ea': Dreaming of Great Ideas.
Thanks to both Marnie and Harriett. So, whats the answer to Gina’s question: How prevalent is persistence in using such unproductive teaching practices (ie excessive reliance on context for word identification)? Imposible to quantify, I assume. But can we say something like it’s probably less than before (eg 10 years ago??), but still more prevalent than it should be? Or how to nutshell it?
I agree with all of this Claude: hard to quantify without national gov't research !! and we have much fewer context-first strategies in play than 10 years ago. But the ship is not at a complete 180 degrees yet.
Yes, I wholeheartedly agree that teachers do not know enough about best practice with phonics or phonemic awareness. I regularly see teachers doing PA with that well-known program. They do the whole thing orally, and it takes a lot of time, rather than focusing on blending and segmenting. We already knew to use letters from the NRP...but teachers I speak with have never heard of the NRP.
I teach my students to use flexible pronunciations, and I don't see it as "guessing," because I have directly taught that if there is no clear indication of which sound to use, they should try the other one(s) they know. I have almost exclusively taught English learners throughout the course of my career.
Btw, I've bookmarked your Substack, and I look forward to reading soon...my dissertation is calling! 😂😂😂
I was at the recent Reading League Summit in Chicago. One of the panelists, Dr. Julie VanDyke said something that's been on my mind ever since: “Understanding the evidence base may be there, but practitioners need a system in which to implement it.” She prefaced that by saying that doctors knew about the benefits of hand washing long before they implemented it in practice because, initially, they didn't have a system within which to implement that new practice. I think there may be something similar happening in education, with many teachers learning about better practices but still not operating in a system that supports them making the needed changes. But true that there are still very many who are holding on to poor practices. Teacher leaders really need to step up here.