GUEST BLOG: Ian Powell – Structured literacy – how rigidity flows from ideology

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On 18 June an earlier Political Bytes post discussed the ideological framework in which the government has required schools to restrict their teaching of literacy to what is called ‘structured literacy’ (ie, exclusively phonics): Hegemony, meaning and structured literacy.

Hegemony: how the rulers rule the ruled

I used hegemony in the context of when those who rule (or govern) a society or country successfully ensure that their values and ideas are also those of the ruled (or governed).

Triggered by a government instruction to primary schools in Aotearoa New Zealand’s education system, we now have an example of when the impetus for hegemony underpinned by ideological dogma leads to retrogressive rigidity.

The core of structured literacy

I argued that:

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If the teaching of literacy includes meaning (combined with phonics) it can encourage enquiring minds more able to question hegemonic beliefs and positions.

However, structured literary was:

…based on a prescribed synthetic phonics approach; it is the opposite of learning by meaning (in combination with other strategies and supported by quality texts).

Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching where words are broken up into the smallest units of sound (phonemes).

Children learn to make connections between the letters of written texts (graphemes, or letter symbols) and the sounds of spoken language.

Phonics has in various ways previously formed part of literacy learning in New Zealand. It can be a useful additional aid for some children. However, structured literacy places it at the centre; the be-all and end-all. Meaning is a casualty.

This, along with the lack of evidence to justify this political decision, led me to conclude that:

Using the understanding of meaning as part of literacy learning enhances the ability to question and even challenge existing mores that either are no longer applicable or were never justified in the first place. This is the antipathy of hegemony.

The imposition of structured literacy into New Zealand’s education system is part of a conscious endeavour to impose hegemonic control over how children are taught.

Depending on the extent of its ideological implementation it will also ensure that when these children becomehttps://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/govt-delivers-consistency-assessing-kiwi-kids young adults they will be more likely to comply with the prevailing hegemony of Aotearoa New Zealand’s rulership.

Education Minister instructs schools

Education Minister issues instruction masquerading as an announcement to schools

On 3 July Minister of Education Erica Stanford made a major announcement (aka instruction) on how primary schools assess their children: Education Minister’s assessments announcement.

Her statement focussed on the mandatory testing of children by schools. This was despite warnings from education experts and teachers that this was over the top and counterproductive.

Children are already effectively tested in a way that can also be both learnt from and usefully compared internationally.

This new imposed additional testing is the outcome of rigid thinking that believes somehow it will improve, or lead to a better understanding of, children’s performance. It gives little more than the impression of being seen to do something.

What primary schools need are more teaching and learning resources, not more testing. The latter increases the pressure on both teachers (increased transaction costs with no additional value transacted) and children.

The revelation

In respect of literacy it was the media coverage, particularly by Radio New Zealand, rather than the Minister’s media statement, that was most revealing.

On 4 July the national public radio station brought this out revelation in an item that included a link to Checkpoint interviews the previous evening: Revelations over structured literacy.

 

Dr Jae Major, education senior lecturer at Canterbury University warned that phonics was only one part of the reading assessments required and could also create stress and anxiety. Further it is:

…only a narrow part of the whole reading process, and so it needs to be taken along with assessment of comprehension, reading comprehension, and vocabulary development and a raft of other things that are just as important as phonics in the development of reading with young children.

Her concern was that “…this preoccupation with phonics and phonics testing is going to put a lot of attention on one element of what is required for young children to learn to read, and it isolates that one element and seems to ignore the others.”

She referred to two critical missing elements in this narrow approach to literacy – comprehension (meaning) and vocabulary development. Although. as an academic, her description was more gently expressed than mine, she is right.

My focus was the on removal of ‘meaning’ or ‘comprehension’ from literacy learning. But the removal of ‘vocabulary’ is also a serious concern; these two elements are interconnected, however.

Rigidity the kindest description

Dr Major also identified the inexplicable cessation of the evidence-based reading recovery programme

She described the programme as focussing on those children who are struggling with reading. It involves one-to-one work with individual children by teachers trained in reading recovery.

Erica Stanford’s response to the abandonment of this successful programme could not have been more revealing. She was terminating reading recovery “…because it was not based on structured literacy.”

Rigidity is the kindest word to describe when the ideological use of an unproven and highly questionable exclusively phonics programme (structured literacy) is used to preclude the additional use of a successful programme for struggling children (reading recovery).

There are several more ‘Anglo Saxon’ descriptors that might be used.

 

 

Ian Powell was Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, the professional union representing senior doctors and dentists in New Zealand, for over 30 years, until December 2019. He is now a health systems, labour market, and political commentator living in the small river estuary community of Otaihanga (the place by the tide). First published at Political Bytes

37 COMMENTS

  1. My generation was taught phonics. We can read, spell and speak properly. I can also spot silly arguments very easily.

      • Phonics work. That isn’t ideological. My children learned the whole language approach and can’t spell.

        • They need both and should be exposed to both, all methods in fact. People learn in different ways.

          However, wasn’t it a pretty bright person who said something along the lines of, ‘It’s a damned poor mind that can’t think of at least two ways to spell a word.’

          I too, think that spelling should be correct for good communication, but we have to wade through some dreadful spelling on this site alone and we’re presumably mostly adults who should know the difference between there and their, less and fewer, etc.
          It doesn’t stop people having some very enlightening ideas, does it?
          It’s those ideas, conjecture and comprehension which is important.

  2. Ian, it’s a reaction to the pointy headed ideologues in the Ministry who were previously pushing ‘whole word’ literacy which was far worse.

    In a more ideal world, we should be letting go of the 4,000 plus people in the ministry and use the money saved to implement an education voucher system like some of the Scandinavian countries have. Then parents can choose what sort of education their children receive then idealogues from either side cannot easily interfere.

  3. I notice the government has to do a u turn and needs to build 300 plus new class rooms ,just after cancelling all the previous governments building program .The sinking ferries comes to mind .How much money and momentum has been wasted by yet another back flip .Now all the new tradies have skipped the country who will build these schools .While we are at it Cigaretti needs to back flip on the hospitals they have stopped .I note they closed down half north shore hospital to staff the new one ,the previous government built without fanfare .Bunch of incompetent pricks .While in opposition they were going to wave their magic wand and fix all of NZ in 6 months .

  4. How ironic – leftist craps on proven methodology to raise our dire reading levels. Reading recovery is a joke that doesn’t work, and there’s nothing in the governments announcement that precludes comprehension in reading teaching – it instead emphasises learning the basics at a young age.

  5. Nearly everyone has been taught and they remember bad and difficult teaching methods. With good teaching the students are oblivious to good teaching methods. Thus we have badly taught people promoting their ignorance of good teaching.

  6. Rigid phonics as a core strategy is plainly inferior to mixed and balanced approaches.
    Since the great vowel shift about 500-600 years ago English spelling has, to a significant extent, borne little relation to pronunciation, and regional dialects have compounded the disconnection.
    And in regard to meaning, I would contend the old fashioned assertion that studying Latin and etymology bears greater fruit than phonics in learning language. And no one seriously advances a return to reciting tables of amo, amas, amat, etc
    Phonics can probably be useful in introducing the beginner to the fundamental principles of the relationship between speaking and writing, but the relationship quickly breaks down, – in English at least.

    • Studying Latin and French is definitely good for advanced English spelling and comprehension. For my generation it undoubtedly assisted.

  7. “… the ideological framework in which the government has required schools to restrict their teaching of literacy to what is called ‘structured literacy’”

    Restrict? Is it really that prescriptive, hegemonic? A one size fits all approach will not work for many, but arguably will for some. That criticism of course could be leveled at whole language approaches. The reality is that most teachers recognize the complexity (although the focus of initial teaching training and ongoing professional development around literacy development is very different can of worms). But I suspect primary school teachers are under immense pressure, class sizes, individual differences (prior knowledge of the students, language background, cognitive abilities, learning difficulties, socio-economic, to name a few). And ‘reading recovery’ specialists would definitely appreciate these differences among those that struggle with initial reading.

    Nah, like all ideological positions, restricting the teaching of initial literacy to ‘structured literacy’ is an ideal. In this case a government directed policy to appease voters on the basis the evidence stacks up. There may well be evidence, but as the saying goes, it depends what you’re looking for in the first place and the methods used to obtain the data. Other ‘experts’ of a different hue would be looking at other factors besides numerical test scores and would be using different methods to obtain insights. But conservative right-leaning governments and their voters just love the certainty of numerical data obtained from testing. At ground level, it could be argued the reality is that teachers worth their salt will recognize those who may benefit from more phonics instruction, but continue to integrate a meaning-based approach to extend the more capable.

    Hopefully this will be the case, not the proposed yet another one size fits all.

    • The elephant in the room is that something is clearly wrong in NZ education, our PISA scores show this, and the teaching profession has had its head in the sand for over a decade and done nothing about it. I’ve witnessed this first hand at my kids local primary school in reading, writing and maths.
      Why don’t you people focus on this issue? Something has to change.

      • The elephant in the room. Now that’s a nice turn of phrase, tesseract. Without doubt something is amiss. But what that might be could be what academics call a wicked problem, an issue that is multifaceted and has no one silver bullet.

        Yes, its true, PISA scores are on the decline, comparatively speaking. A few years back, officials from the Scandi countries doing best in these comparative test scores referred to ‘PISA tourism’, overseas educationalists flocking to these countries to understand the secrets of a high PISA rating. I don’t really know what was found, but possibly a combination of smaller class sizes, adequate educational funding, student homogeneity, the absence of wide socioeconomic disparity, the quality of teacher training and ongoing professional development, and yes, the curriculum and teaching methods. Combined, this is the elephant in the room. Focusing on structured literacy and more standardized testing is the easy way out. The current Coalition govt surely know this. But in the face of “the crisis” they need to be seen to be doing something about it. And why not take the advise of (some) education academics who have long advocated for a phonics based approach to early literacy. These advocates for phonics instruction evidently have the evidence to support their claims, although the public are never quite told what this evidence looks like or how it was constructed – all we are told is that the current system is “failing”, not for all it should be said, but for a significant number, whose identity is never quite made explicit. The current Coalition are hoping there is a silver bullet but their efforts fall short of addressing what is a wicked problem. The elephant in the room is pretty big.

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