Commons Select Committee: Invitation to comment on strength of evidence for phonics instruction

Last week I was directed to this by Susan Godsland (thank you Susan).  Deadline is 12^th December if you’d like to submit a comment, my contribution is below (note: maximum 5000 characters):

The Education Committee invites views on the strength of the evidence in relation to the current policy on Phonics and various methods of learning to read.   http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/education-committee/dfe-evidence-check-forum/phonics/

My comment:

In terms of additional research focusing on synthetic phonics instruction in UK schools, I would like to direct the Education Committee to the following papers (see below).  I believe the strength of evidence for synthetic phonics instruction is increasing; however we need to be critical of the evidence, impartial and ensure we rely on high quality research to inform this debate.  In response to the paper produced by the UK Parliament, I’ve also commented on a couple of points:  

The following papers may be of interest to inform the discussion of phonics in UK schools:

Papers A and B below examine synthetic phonics in depth and show that this is a particularly effective method for children starting school with weak reading readiness skills (e.g., poor letter-sound knowledge) and also for children with weak language (i.e., vocabulary) skills.  Therefore it is important to consider individual differences (see point below) when considering the effectiveness of phonics instruction. In addition, for schools implementing a systematic synthetic phonics method of instruction, these papers show the skills children are relying upon as they learn to read by this approach:

A) McGeown, S. P., & Medford, E.  (2013). Using method of instruction to predict the skills supporting initial reading development: insight from a synthetic phonics approach.  Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 27, 591-608.

B) McGeown, S., Johnston, R., & Medford, E.  (2012).  Reading instruction affects the cognitive skills supporting early reading development.  Learning and Individual Differences, 22, 360-264.

Paper C compares the long term effects of synthetic phonics vs analytic phonics instruction in UK schools. 

C) Johnston, R. S., McGeown, S., & Watson, J. E. (2012).  Long term effects of synthetic versus analytic phonics teaching on the reading and spelling ability of 10 year old boys and girls.   Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 25, 1365-1384. 

Papers D and E deal specifically with concerns regarding the irregular nature of the English orthography and show that use of decoding skills/a phonological approach is actually beneficial, not detrimental, to irregular word reading.  This is evidence against the idea that the English writing system is too irregular for a phonics focused approach to be effective:

D) McGeown, S. P., Johnston, R. S., & Moxon, G.  (2013).  Toward an understanding of how children read and spell irregular words: the role of nonword and orthographic processing skills.  Journal  of Research in Reading, 37, 51-64.

E) McGeown, S. P., Medford, E., & Moxon, G. (2013).  Individual differences in children’s reading and spelling strategies and the skills supporting strategy use.  Learning and Individual Differences, 28, 75-81. 

Copies of papers can be accessed via: https://edinburgh.academia.edu/SarahMcGeown

Comments on points within the UK Parliament document specifically:

“UK and international research shows overwhelmingly that systematic phonics teaching,

in a language-rich curriculum….”. 

I think it is critical that you continue to highlight that phonics is an effective way to teach children to read new/unfamiliar words, but is not a method to teach children the meaning of these words.  I think this distinction is often confused (i.e., phonics is criticised because children don’t learn word meanings through this approach; however that is not the function of phonics).  Therefore phonics needs to be presented to teachers within a context; phonics is an effective method to teach children to read new words; however children should also be exposed to literature and a rich linguistic environment to develop their language and reading comprehension skills (e.g., via story book activities etc). 

“Sound evidence that systematic synthetic phonics programmes produce greater growth in reading than other reading programmes, and this is especially effective for younger, at-risk readers (National Reading Panel, 2000b)”

Again, I think this point is crucial.  There is huge variation among children in the reading-related and cognitive skills that they start school with and a systematic synthetic phonics method of instruction is potentially most effective for children starting school knowing very few letter-sounds and with weak language skills (see Papers A and B above).  However, teachers are experiencing very different student intakes and this may explain the differing views regarding the effectiveness of phonics instruction.  We need to appreciate that the effectiveness of a synthetic phonics approach may differ based on student cohort.  The argument that ‘one size does not fit all’ does not mean that we should be teaching children a range of strategies to read new words (e.g., former ‘searchlight’ model), but rather that we should be finding the most effective method to teach children based on their cognitive profiles (i.e., reading and language skills).

Acquiring reading and spelling skills – what’s the difference?

Being able to read and spell are two essential literacy skills which children acquire during their primary schooling.  Indeed, there is often a close correlation between children’s ability to read and spell (i.e., children who are good readers are typically good spellers and likewise poor readers are typically poor spellers).  Despite reading and spelling being similar skills (in that they are both literacy skills), they are different in several respects.  For example, of the two, spelling is typically harder; while reading requires the recognition of printed word(s), spelling requires the production of word(s).  In addition, in English, the writing system exhibits bidirectional asymmetry; that is, phoneme-to-grapheme mapping is more ambiguous than grapheme-to-phoneme mapping (Fletcher-Flinn, Shankweiler, & Frost, 2004).  In other words, there are more phonetically plausible ways to misspell words than there are to misread them.  Anyone who has seen children’s spelling errors, or carried out an analysis of children’s spelling errors will understand this.  For example, the word ‘circle’ can be spelt by children in a variety of interesting ways - serkul, sirkil, sircul, sercil, circel, cricel, cricle, and many more…..  Indeed, these different spelling errors provide us with good insight into the skills and strategies children are drawing upon as they attempt to spell (see McGeown et al., 2013).  In contrast however, the number of different ways in which the word ‘circle’ can be read (incorrectly) is fewer. As a result, higher quality lexical representations (i.e., a better ‘visual’ image of the word’s spelling pattern) are arguably more important for spelling than for reading. 

In a recent study, my collaborators and I distinguished between two different types of reading and spelling strategies (phonological and orthographic) using children’s reading and spelling errors and examined the relationship between children’s (n = 172, aged 6-8) use of these strategies and their performance on tests of word reading and spelling (words were chosen to be unfamiliar to children).

A phonological strategy reflected a greater dependence on using letter-sound rules (e.g., reading ‘pint’ to rhyme with ‘mint’ or spelling ‘tuna’ as ‘choona’), while an orthographic strategy reflected greater use of the visual/letter information in words (i.e., errors were orthographically (i.e., visually) similar to the target word, e.g., reading ‘wart’ as ‘want’ or spelling ‘knife’ as ‘knif’).  We assessed how use of these strategies correlated with irregular and standardised word reading and spelling performance. 

In reading, while a phonological reading strategy correlated strongly and positively with word reading skills, an orthographic reading strategy was inversely related with word reading skills.  Therefore, making use of letter-sound information seems to be a much more effective way to read unfamiliar (including irregular) words, than attempting to recognise the word as a visual whole.  On the other hand, for spelling, greater use of an orthographic strategy was positively correlated with spelling performance, while use of a phonological strategy was unrelated to spelling performance. 

So what are the educational implications of this research?  Firstly I would argue that children should be taught and supported to use a phonological strategy to read; that is, be given phonics instruction so that they can learn to effectively use letter-sound rules to read new and unfamiliar words.  This approach will be more effective than teaching children to recognise words as visual wholes and encouraging them to use a strategy based on this. However, the results for spelling were different; children need to have good ‘visual’ representation of the word to be able to spell it correctly.  How do they achieve this?  One way is through reading; once a child has read a word several times within text they will then have a better visual representation of that word and therefore be better placed to accurately spell it.  Therefore good reading skills can precede good spelling skills; ensuring children receive guidance in effective reading strategies is therefore crucial.

 

Correct spelling:  circle, tuna, knife

 

Examples of orthographic spelling error:  cricle, tunea, knif

Examples of phonological spelling error:  serkul, choona, niyf

 

References:

Fletcher-Flinn, C. M., Shankweiler, D., & Frost, S. J. (2004). Coordination of reading and spelling in early literacy development: An examination of the discrepancy hypothesis.  Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 17, 617–644.

McGeown, S. P., Medford, E., & Moxon, G.  (2013).  Individual differences in children’s reading and spelling strategies and the skills supporting strategy use.  Learning and Individual Differences, 28, 75-81.

See link for Teacher Summary Poster: “Children’s strategies for reading and spelling irregular words”

https://edinburgh.academia.edu/SarahMcGeown/Summaries-for-teachers

 

Sex/gender differences in reading and education

I am in the process of preparing a conference paper discussing gender differences in reading (and education more widely).  However, in need of a break from it, so thought a quick post about the topic would provide a welcome rest….

I’ve carried out quite a bit of research exploring gender differences in reading.  While my initial publications referred to ‘gender’ differences, my preference now is to refer to ‘sex’ differences as I am becoming increasingly interested in the distinction between the two.  Indeed, the terms sex and gender are typically used interchangeably in the research literature; however while sex refers to biological differences between boys and girls (and is typically the focus of research exploring sex/gender differences), gender refers to the characteristics typically associated with being male or female. Both boys and girls will vary in the extent to which they identify with traditional/stereotypical masculine and feminine traits (i.e., their gender identity).  It is this variation among boys and girls that interests me more – i.e., can sex differences commonly found within education be better understood from a gender identity perspective?

To date, I have carried out two studies on this topic (see references below).  In Study 1 (McGeown et al., 2012) we explored sex differences in children’s  motivation to read (girls, on average, typically report greater reading motivation) and in Study 2 (McGeown, 2013) explored sex differences in book choices (comparing books ‘aimed’ at boys, girls or gender neutral).  In the first study, we found that children’s (both boys and girls) identification with feminine traits was more closely related to their motivation to read, than their identification with masculine traits.  In the second study, we found that children’s identification with feminine traits was more closely related to the likelihood that they would read gender neutral books (and books aimed at girls).  In addition, girls were more likely to transcend gender boundaries when it came to book choices (i.e., were more likely to read books marketed towards boys, than boys were to read books marketed towards girls).

What both studies illustrate however, is that for both boys and girls, identifying with traditional/ stereotypical ‘feminine’ characteristics (e.g., being kind, caring, compassionate, etc – see Boldizar 1991 for questionnaire used) is associated with greater motivation to read and greater book reading.  This suggests that reading is still perceived as a more feminine activity.

In terms of educational significance, I have suggested that interventions to de-feminise reading, such as providing male role models as readers or more male orientated environments for boys to develop their reading skills could be useful. Also, interventions that are focused towards promoting reading between fathers and their children may also be effective at reducing children’s early perceptions that reading is a more feminine activity.   I also suggest that careful consideration should be given to the types of books available in schools; boys in particular will benefit from having access to books predominately aimed at males, as they are less likely to transcend gender boundaries and may still perceive ‘gender neutral’ books as more feminine than masculine.

Beyond these two studies however, I believe that this focus on gender identity could be a helpful one for studying other ‘gender’ trends within education, as it removes this dichotomy between boys and girls.  Indeed, any psychology/educational researcher interested in sex/gender differences knows that there is greater within group variance (i.e., variation among girls or variation among boys) within specific aspects of education (e.g., attainment, motivation, etc) than there is between group variance (i.e., differences between boys and girls).  As noted by Hyde’s (2005) ‘gender similarities hypothesis’ an over emphasis on studying or discussing gender differences suggests that males and females are more different than they actually are.  Perhaps studying gender identity instead is a better way of understanding the gender trends that are typically found within education.

 

References:

Boldizar, J.P. (1991). Assessing sex typing and androgyny in children: The Children’s Sex Role Inventory. Developmental Psychology, 27(3), 505–515.

Hyde, J. S.  (2005).  The gender similarities hypothesis.  American Psychologist, 60, 6

McGeown, S., Goodwin, H., Henderson, N., & Wright, P.  (2012).  Gender differences in reading motivation:  Does sex or gender identity provide a better account?  Journal of Research in Reading, 35(2), 328-336. 

McGeown, S. P.  (2013).  Sex or gender identity?  Understanding children’s reading choices and motivation.  Journal of Research in Reading. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9817.2012.01546.

 

Collaborative research between teachers, researchers (and students)

I attended a lunch a few months ago aimed at improving collaborative research between teachers and researchers.  While I appreciate that this distinction may not be helpful - the boundaries between the two are very much blurred (i.e., teachers in schools often engage in research/practitioner led enquiry, similarly University based academic researchers also teach), the principle behind the meeting was to improve the nature and quality of relationships between school based teachers and University based researchers. 

This was an exciting event for me as it is something which is very close to my heart.  I’ve published quite a bit in the academic literature now, almost all my research being focused on different aspects of children’s learning; however had never truly collaborated with teachers in the research process.   In my first post of this Blog, I discussed the challenges involved in this process; on re-reading this post, it is perhaps more negative than I would have wished it to be!  However, these challenges do exist, and need to be overcome, to attain, what I think could be substantial benefits (to teachers, researchers, and ultimately students) from research collaboration.

Since the lunch, I have had meetings with a number of Head teachers and teachers, speaking openly and honestly about the research we plan to conduct together and the nature of our working relationship.  Teachers main concerns are typically the amount of time they will need to invest in this (given their existing high workloads) and to what extent the research will be truly collaborative.  With regard to this last point in particular, we’ve discussed teachers and even students becoming researchers of the topic we plan to study (mental toughness – see earlier blog for more info).  To me, this latter suggestion is particularly exciting: engaging students in research from the beginning and allowing them to become active researchers, co-creating knowledge on this topic, has enormous potential (for both the research and the student).  As a researcher, regardless of the topic under study, I’m aware of the skills that can be developed from conducting research, as well as the enjoyment and satisfaction (usually!) found in doing so.  Developing student’s curiosity and interest in a topic and then allowing them the opportunity to create or further knowledge of that topic has the potential to be both an exciting and rewarding process.  

While I appreciate that this ‘student as researchers’ approach will not always be appropriate (i.e., the nature of the research will determine whether this is suitable or even feasible), as a researcher interested in student’s learning and education, I believe that students (and teachers) could have a more substantial role both in the process of research, but also in our research decisions (i.e., the types of research questions we ask, our methods, our understanding of educational implications etc).  Indeed, by working more closely with teachers and students, and truly collaborating on research projects, we benefit from both the expertise of a knowledgeable researcher and the educational insights of teachers and students. 

Designing digital books to support children’s reading and language

The question of whether traditional or digital books are more effective at supporting and developing children’s literacy skills is an important one and one that has been examined in several studies (e.g., De Jong & Bus, 2002).  However, as digital books are predicted to be used increasingly at home and within schools, perhaps a more interesting question is not whether traditional or digital books are more effective, but rather which design features of digital books are most likely to support children’s literacy skills and development.   I’ve provided below a short discussion of some of the features to consider in the design of digital books:

1. Text placement and attention to text

Like many traditional books, digital books typically present the text separately from the picture (usually underneath the picture, and often within a specifically designed text box). However, if there is an opportunity to embed the text within the picture, this may influence the amount of time children spend looking at the text. Embedding text within the picture has two advantages: 1) It helps the child to realise that the text is not separate from the picture – the two combined create the story; 2) It may increase the amount of time that children spend looking at the text. Researchers interested in multimedia learning often refer to the ‘split attention effect’ (Mayer & Moreno, 2003). When the text is separate from the picture, children have to split their focus/attention across the screen; integrating the text within the picture is therefore beneficial in this respect.

Interestingly, research with traditional books has shown just how little time young children actually spend attending to print. For example, in an eye tracking research study with pre-schoolers comparing picture and print salient books (Justice et al., 2005), in picture salient books, pre-school children spent approximately 2.7% of their fixations focused on print and 2.5% of their time looking in regions of print. In print salient books, this only increased slightly: 7% of fixations focused on print and 6% of time was spent in print zones. Therefore, young children are not naturally inclined to focus on print, thus highlighting even more the importance of embedding print within pictures.

However, it is important to note that shared reading experiences with adults can increase children’s attention to print. For example, Justice et al., (2008) found that when adults provide verbal and nonverbal references to print, pre-schoolers attention to print increased significantly. Within digital texts, this can be done automatically; words can be highlighted (e.g., by changing colour), thus potentially increasing children’s attention to print.

2. Narrator

Digital texts potentially allow children to independently access more cognitively advanced books, as the feature of a narrator can provide a helpful aid to support children with new/unfamiliar words.  However, heavy reliance on a narrator is not ideal.  Many digital books only have a “read to me” option, rather than a “read by myself” option, or an option for children to only highlight specific words they cannot read themselves.  It is important to note that when the narrator is reading, the text essentially becomes redundant; in multi-media learning, this is known as the ‘redundancy effect’ (Mayer and Moreno, 2003).  If the text becomes redundant, children will arguably spend less time looking at it, thus reducing opportunities to develop their word reading skills. 

 

3. Coherence

 

A common error often made in the design of digital books is checking the level of coherence between the text and the picture/dynamic images/interaction points.  Take for example a screen shot, where the text reads: “The boat sailed out to sea” and children have the option to click on the boat.  If the boat starts sailing into the distance, this is supportive of children’s language and comprehension skills.  Indeed, dynamic images are a very useful feature of digital texts as they visually illustrate the time course of events and therefore can support children’s story understanding.  If, however, after clicking on the boat, a monkey starts jumping up and down on the deck; this undermines an opportunity to develop/support children’s language and comprehension skills and could, importantly, impede them.  As a result, it is a good idea to check whether the dynamic images/interaction points within digital books are supportive of children’s learning (i.e., coherent with the story or text) or an unhelpful distraction. 

 

4. Opportunities for interaction 

 

Positive effects of shared book reading on children’s vocabulary growth result when adults do not just read a story but also pause and pose additional questions.  For example, children learn 10 - 18% more words when their reading experiences include extra questions (Smeets & Bus, 2012).  However, do computer generated questions produce similar benefits for language skills?

 

Smeets and Bus (2012) recently contrasted the effects of questions (multiple choice questions posed by the computer – ‘computer pal’) interspersed throughout the story with questions posed at the end (after the entire story had been read without interruptions).  They found that multiple choice questions significantly contributed to children’s vocabulary.  While children learned approximately 15% of the target words (i.e., words of interest) with no additional instruction, multiple choice questions added another 18% gain to vocabulary (amounting to an average gain of 33%) which is comparable to the reported additive value of adult questions during adult–child book. 

 

References:

 

De Jong, M. T., & Bus, A. G.  (2002).  Quality of book-reading matters for emergent readers: An experiment with the same book in a regular or electronic format.  Journal of Educational Psychology, 94, 145-155. doi: 10.1037//0022-0663.94.1.145

 

Justice, L. M., Skibbe, L., Canning, A., & Lankford, C.  (2005).  Pre-schoolers, print and storybooks: an observational study using eye movement analysis.  Journal of Research in Reading, 28, 229-243.

 

Justice, L. M., Pullen, P. C., & Pence, K.  (2008).  Influence of verbal and nonverbal references to print on preschoolers’ visual attention to print during storybook reading.  Developmental Psychology, 44, 855-866.  doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.44.3.855

Mayer, R. E., & Moreno, R.  (2003).  Nine ways to reduce cognitive load in multi-media learning.  Educational Psychologist, 38, 43-52. 

 

Smeets, D. J. H., & Bus, A. G.  (2012).  Interactive electronic storybooks for kindergartners to promote vocabulary growth.  Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 112, 36-55. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2011.12.003

 

Speaking up for children's reading motivation!

I’m a reading researcher and my research interests initially concerned different methods of reading instruction and the implications of these methods of instruction for children’s reading attainment and word recognition processes.  Therefore my interests in reading were primarily within the cognitive domain, rather than focused on the role of children’s attitudes and motivation towards reading (often referred to as the affective domain).

However, as a researcher conducting reading assessments among children of different ages and in different schools, it started to become clear that children’s reading attitudes and motivation could have a significant influence on their reading attainment (over and above their cognitive abilities).  This led me to carry out a series of research studies (see here for access to published academic papers: https://edinburgh.academia.edu/SarahMcGeown) exploring children’s motivation to read in the UK. 

Indeed, there is now mounting research evidence that both cognitive (e.g., language, decoding skills) and affective (e.g., reading motivation, attitudes) factors independently predict variance in children’s reading skills and reading development; therefore both the ‘skill’ and ‘will’ are important.  Furthermore, it is suggested that children’s reading motivation, attitudes etc have both direct and indirect influences on their reading skill and development. Direct, as children with higher levels of reading motivation are more cognitively engaged when reading and are more likely to implement strategies which lead to deeper processing of the text (e.g., spend more time deciphering unfamiliar words, look back to ensure they are accurately comprehending the story).  These strategies used by more motivated children are considered advantageous to their reading skill over time.  In addition, there is also an indirect relationship between children’s reading motivation and their reading skill: children who are more motivated to read typically read more frequently (and may be more likely to select challenging texts to read); these reading activities then benefit their reading skill. 

However, the relationship between reading motivation and reading skill is also reciprocal as children’s reading skills also influence their motivation to read (i.e., children with better reading skills report greater motivation to read). This highlights how difficult it is to disentangle cognitive and affective influences on reading skill and development.  Despite this, there are very few researchers studying both; I’d consider myself among a handful of researchers doing so.  This is particularly noticeable within the UK, where the majority of psychologists examining different aspects of children’s reading (e.g., different methods of reading instruction, word recognition processes, comprehension skills, reading difficulties etc) focus almost exclusively on aspects of cognition.

So I’d like to speak up for reading motivation and the affective aspects of reading, particularly in the UK, where it is given relatively little attention and focus among researchers.  We need to understand more about the multi-dimensional nature of children’s reading motivation (i.e., the various reasons why children read), the changing nature of children’s reading motivation (i.e., as digital texts are being more widely used) and whether reading programmes or interventions with a greater focus on developing these affective aspects of reading (reading for pleasure, to learn, to share stories with friends) are as effective (or more effective) than cognitive focused programmes/interventions, when it comes to developing children’s reading skills.

I have recently written a minibook on this topic as I am interested in sharing this research area with teachers: (http://www.ukla.org/publications/view/reading_motivation_and_engagement_in_the_primary_school_classroom/). The minibook draws upon a strong research literature (approximately 60 peer reviewed research papers) but shares this information is an accessible and easy manner, providing an introduction to reading motivation theory, research and implications for education.   

 

Reference:

McGeown, S. (2013).  Reading motivation and engagement in the primary school classroom: Theory, research and practice.  United Kingdom Literacy Association.  http://www.ukla.org/publications/view/reading_motivation_and_engagement_in_the_primary_school_classroom/

Mental toughness and education

Mental toughness refers to a set of positive psychological characteristics that have almost exclusively been studied within sport; however their potential to understand non-cognitive attributes which may be important within education are now being considered.  I wrote a short article on this for Character Scotland earlier in the year (see here: http://www.character-scotland.org.uk/featured-articles/item/383-what-does-it-mean-to-be-mentally-tough#.U8PMNZ1waUk), which describes the concept of mental toughness and its underpinning attributes (confidence, challenge, control and commitment), which I will briefly describe again here:

Commitment refers to setting goals or targets and working hard to achieve them.  Challenge refers to seeing new activities or situations as opportunities for self-development, rather than as threats. Control is divided into life control and emotional control; life control refers to feeling that we have the power to shape our own life and future, while emotion control refers to being able to manage emotions (e.g., anxiety, anger) to an appropriate level of intensity. Confidence is divided into confidence in abilities and interpersonal confidence; confidence in abilities refers to being confident to attempt new or difficult tasks, whereas interpersonal confidence refers to levels of confidence within social situations.

Children and adolescents will vary in the extent to which they report high levels of mental toughness and their reported levels are likely to vary across each of the attributes (e.g., a student may report high levels of commitment, but low levels of interpersonal confidence).  Recent research has found a relationship between these mental toughness characteristics and adolescents’ school attendance, attainment, classroom behaviour and peer relationships (see here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01443410.2014.895294)

I have recently written a review paper on this topic (along with collaborators) which considers the extent to which the mental toughness may be a useful framework to study non-cognitive attributes within education (see earlier blog for discussion of non-cognitive attributes: http://www.drsarahmcgeown.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/non-cognitive-attributes-and_1.html).  Within this review paper, we discuss the extent to which mental toughness attributes overlap with a number of non-cognitive attributes already demonstrated as important within education (e.g., resilience, motivation, self-control, confidence).  Among students, we discuss the role of these positive psychological traits across a range of educational contexts (e.g., managing exam stress/anxiety, developing positive peer relationships, influences on academic attainment etc).  However, we also consider the value in studying and developing mental toughness among teachers.  As a high number of teachers leave the teaching profession early in their career, often citing stress as the cause, developing mental toughness type attributes may increase retention, but perhaps more importantly, enhance teacher well-being, effectiveness and professional satisfaction.

References:

McGeown, S. P. (2013).What does it mean to be mentally tough?  Character Scotland: http://www.character-scotland.org.uk/featured-articles/item/383-what-does-it-mean-to-be-mentally-tough#.U8PMNZ1waUk

St Clair-Thompson, H., Bugler, M., Robinson, J., Clough, P., McGeown, S. P., & Perry, J.  (2014).  Mental toughness in education: exploring relationships with attainment, attendance, behaviour and peer relationships.  Educational Psychology: An International Journal of Experimental Educational Psychology. DOI: 10.1080/01443410.2014.895294

 

Synthetic phonics and irregular word reading: Cause for concern?

There have been numerous concerns about the introduction of a phonics focused synthetic phonics approach to the teaching of reading in England.  One of the concerns often highlighted is that a phonics focused approach does not suit the opaque (i.e., irregular) nature of the English writing system.  For example, words such as ‘aisle’, ‘pint’, ‘yacht’ are all irregular and pose difficulties for children learning to read.  Indeed, of all the alphabetic writing systems, English is one of the most irregular and research has shown that the ease with which a child learns to read is related to the orthographic depth of the writing system (Ellis et al, 2004).  Therefore learning to read English is challenging.

However, the argument that a phonics focused synthetic phonics approach is unsuitable to teach children to read English is an argument from which I have seen no research evidence.  Examples have been given of children being unable to read ‘high frequency’ words such as ‘the’ – sounding out ‘t’’h’’e’ then blending them together and forming an inaccurate pronunciation.  However, to me, this is better than I’ve seen prior to the introduction of synthetic phonics, where the first three words of the reading test that I used to administer (British Ability Scales II) were ‘the’ ‘up’ and ‘on’, and read by a number of students as ‘Biff’ ‘Chip’ and ‘Floppy’.  Surely teaching children about the alphabetic nature of the writing system, illustrating that there is a relationship (albeit not perfect) between the letters and sounds, is better?

In my own research, I have found no evidence that relying on a phonological reading strategy impairs children’s ability to read irregular words.  In fact, I have found the opposite.  In two studies briefly described below, I have examined a) the extent to which relying on a phonological reading strategy influences irregular word reading and b) the skills supporting children’s irregular word reading.

In the first, we found that children aged 6 -8 who took a more phonological approach to reading (i.e., relied more heavily on using phonics rules to read) performed better on assessments of irregular word reading.  In this study, irregular words were selected to be unfamiliar (i.e., low frequency), thus requiring a strategy to read them as opposed to immediate recognition.  This study was carried out with 172 children who varied in their strategy use and there was clearly a very strong relationship between dependence of a phonological reading strategy (use of phonics rules) and performance on assessments of irregular word reading (r = .66, p<.001) and standardised assessments of reading (r = .65, p<.001). 

In the second study (McGeown, Johnston & Moxon, 2014), among 180 children aged 6-9, we found that children’s nonword reading skill (ability to decode using letter-sound correspondences) was a very strong and significant predictor of their ability to read irregular words.  Indeed, it was a stronger predictor than their frequency of reading or language skills, suggesting that direct instruction in decoding skills may be appropriate to support children’s ability to read irregular words.

So why would this be the case?  Rather than categorising regular and irregular words as different word types, my collaborators and I have argued that even irregular words contain regular elements that provide a cue to pronunciation.  This is the essence of Seidenberg’s theory of quasi-regularity (Seidenberg, 2005).  For example, words such as ‘aisle’ ‘pint’ and ‘yacht’ are not completely irregular and a child with good phonics knowledge and using a phonological reading strategy will be better able to make use of the regular elements of irregular words to read.  It will not be a perfect strategy – the English writing system will not allow it; however this extra cue appears to be helpful and supportive as children face the challenging task of reading irregular words.

 

References:

 Ellis, N. C. Natsume, M., Stavropoulou, K., Hoxhallari, L., Van daal, V. H. P., Polyzoe, N., Tsipe, M-L., & Petalas, M. (2004). The effects of orthographic depth on learning to read alphabetic, syllabic, and

logographic scripts.  Reading Research Quarterly, 39, 438-468. doi:10.1598/RRQ.39.4.5.

 McGeown, S. P., Johnston,R. S., & Moxon, G. E.  (2014).  Towards an understanding of how children read and spell irregular words: the role of nonword and orthographic processing skills.  Journal of Research in Reading, 37, 51-64.  doi:10.1111/jrir.12007. 

McGeown, S. P., Medford, E., & Moxon, G. (2013).  Individual differences in children’s reading and spelling strategies and the skills supporting strategy use.  Learning and Individual Differences, 28, 75-81. doi: 10.1016/j.lindif.2013.09.013.

 Seidenberg, M.S. (2005). Connectionist models of word reading. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 238–242. doi: 10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00372.x

 

Non-cognitive attributes and educational outcomes

Research is accruing on something that teachers probably already knew…. that non-cognitive attributes (e.g., student confidence, motivation, personality, resilience) are significant predictors of a range of educational outcomes.  Indeed, there is an excellent (and very accessible) review of this topic within a recent Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) publication (http://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/uploads/pdf/Non-cognitive_skills_literature_review.pdf).

This review considers a range of non-cognitive attributes (termed ‘skills’) - namely self-perceptions, motivation, perseverance, self-control, metacognitive strategies, social competencies, resilience/coping and creativity.  The review very helpfully provides definitions of these terms, existing measurement tools to examine these attributes and correlational and causal evidence between these attributes and educational outcomes.  Furthermore, the extent to which each non-cognitive attribute is malleable (i.e., may respond to intervention) is discussed.

However, despite what seems to be increasing recognition of the importance of non-cognitive attributes, there is still, in my opinion, greater time and attention spent on studying aspects of cognition (i.e., language, memory etc) amongst psychology researchers in the UK.  This could be for a number of reasons.  From my experience as a researcher, I know that non-cognitive skills are often underestimated and are regarded (by some) as less worthy of attention than aspects of cognition.  However, they are also arguably harder to define and measure than aspects of cognition (at least at present) and this poses difficulties for conducting high quality research.  Of course, one could argue that we cannot define or measure motivation, resilience or confidence etc.  As a psychologist, I appreciate the complexity of these attributes, but I also believe that we have to develop high quality measurement tools if we want to better understand the role non-cognitive attributes play in children and young people’s lives. 

If we are genuinely interested in supporting students to achieve their potential (i.e., educational and personal success), researchers need to invest more time and effort studying non-cognitive attributes.  My research has developed in this way; from beginning my research career as someone solely interested in the cognitive skills associated with reading development, I now consider the relative importance of both cognitive and non-cognitive skills.

While understanding the relationship between non-cognitive attributes, educational and personal success is important, equally important are studies identifying home, school and community environments conducive to fostering positive attributes (e.g., motivation, perseverance), and effective interventions for those students who may be in need of support. 

However, we need more research from the UK.  While the EEF review is helpful and relatively comprehensive for teachers, it did highlight to me (from my familiarity with this field), the lack of research studies from the UK.  We need to understand the role and importance of these attributes as children proceed through the UK’s education system(s).

Reference:

Morrison Gutman, L., & Schoon, I.  (2013).  The impact of non-cognitive skills on outcomes for young people.  Education Endowment Foundation/Cabinet Office.

http://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/uploads/pdf/Non-cognitive_skills_literature_review.pdf