I can’t teach what I don’t know. This statement may seem redundant, but I think it’s worth reiterating. From experience I’ve learned that I need to feel confident in my knowledge and understanding of curriculum and instruction to support student learning and teacher professional development. When the Ministry of Education released the revised Grades 1 – 8 Language curriculum (2023) that changed the way we teach students to read, one of my initial questions was: What was wrong with the way that I and other elementary teachers had taught students to read? I had some insight from my own educational experiences learning to read and from my experience in the role of special education support teacher working with students in junior/intermediate grades who had yet to consolidate their foundational reading skills. However, I read the full report seeking to gain a more informed understanding to support my work with students and teachers.
The inquiry found that thee cueing instructional approach included in the 2006 version of the Grades 1 – 8 Language curriculum to be an ineffective method for teaching students to read words accurately and efficiently. The three cueing system taught students to use strategies to predict words based on context clues from pictures, text meaning, sentences, and letters in addition to a belief that simply immersing students in spoken and written language was enough to build their foundational reading skills. The way teachers often assessed students reading skills was through running records and miscue analysis.
The inquiry also shared that researchers in reading development have studied how children learn to read for decades. From their collective body of research, they have found that due to our innate human capacity for oral communication, the best way for children to develop their word reading skills (decoding) is by making explicit connections between oral and written language. This looks like first explicitly teaching children phonemic awareness. The sounds of the language. Alphabetics, the symbols of the language. Phonics, the ability to connect the sounds of the language to the symbols of the language. Fluency, the ability to decode words accurately, automatically, and with prosody. Vocabulary, the meanings of words and phrases. They also shared that reading comprehension, the goal of reading, is an outcome of these combined skills and knowledge in addition to an understanding of the parts of speech, sentence structures, sentence types, capitalization, punctuation, and background knowledge.
The findings from the inquiry provided the insight I needed to reconsider the instructional approaches I use, and advocate teachers use to support students reading development. The information also convinced me that shifting my instructional approaches while also encouraging teachers to shift theirs, could lead to more students developing the knowledge, skills, and strategies needed to be proficient readers.
Yet I like other teachers know that our work with students is complex, meaning there is no single approach that will work for every student. We as teachers know that that assessment data and students’ learning needs must always inform the instructional approaches we use to support student learning. Our professional judgement rooted in our knowledge of curriculum, pedagogy, students, interpretations and insights to assessment data, and our understanding of which instructional approach to utilize to best support student learning at any given time should consistently inform our practice. The more experienced we become by reflecting on our practice then revising it as needed, learning what we don’t know, and monitoring our instructional impact on student learning, the more proficient we become at knowing which instructional approach we need to utilize to support student learning at any given time. Of course, remaining aware that this is a continuous and ongoing process.
Knowing and understanding terminology is essential for me to feel competent and confident in my work. I know that I need a clear conceptual understanding of terms to ensure I use them accurately and appropriately in my work with students and teachers. In the Right to Read Inquiry it states, “This report uses terms like the “science of reading,” “reading science,” “research-based,” “evidence-based” and “science-based” to refer to the vast body of scientific research that has studied how reading skills develop and how to ensure the highest degree of success in teaching all students to read”. This led me to believe that the terms were analogous. Yet in the curriculum context section of the revised Grades 1 – 8 Language curriculum (2023) there are numerous specific references to evidence-based instruction. This then led me to question the differences between the terms and why the revised curriculum seems to exclusively focus on evidence-based instruction. In chapter 17 titled, Evidence-Based Practices in Education, in the APA Educational Psychology Handbook: Vol.1 Theories, Constructs, and Critical Issues, researchers Bryan Cook, Garnett Smith, and Melody Tankersley provide some clarity,
“As far as we are aware, there is no commonly acceptable definition for any of these terms, and they have been used for different purposes by different authors. Nonetheless, in this chapter we consider best practices to mean instructional approaches recommended by experts or others that may or may not be evidence-based or effective […] We use research-based as a broad term referring to educational approaches that are supported by research findings of some sort […] The term evidence-based practices represents a systematic approach to determining which research-based practices are supported by a sufficient number of research studies that (a) are of high methodological quality, (b) use appropriate research designs that allow for assessment of effectiveness, and (c) demonstrate meaningful effect size [positive impact on student learning] that merit educators’ trust that the practice works”.
From the Cook, Smith, and Tankersley chapter, I gained the insight I needed to understand why the curriculum focuses on evidence-based instructions. I now know that what the Ministry, through the curriculum, requires that we ensure the instructional approaches and practices that we use, are those that have shown to have a proven positive impact on students’ language and literacy development.
Yet, as educational researcher Steven Graham explains in his lecture on Research-Based Writing Interventions, the purpose of evidence-based practices is to share with educators’ things that have worked with other teachers and students, and for educators to use their professional judgement when applying them. The sharing of these practices is not meant to degrade or deny the knowledge, skills, or experience that teachers have developed from their practices.
I use and advocate for the use of evidence-based practices. For me, in my daily work these include practices that I know support the growth and development of early readers. I encourage all educators to consider doing the same.
