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There is currently intense national and international interest in which particular methods of teaching reading are the most effective for early literacy acquisition. The great bulk of research work that is cited in these debates, however, focuses almost exclusively on the evaluation and comparison of particular programmes underpinned either by phonics or whole language approaches (Soler and Openshaw, 2006). Despite the fact that policy makers and literacy educators around the world are able to draw upon a common body of literacy research, there is a huge variation in the extent to which phonics is adopted as the major programme in different national contexts. This article provides a comparative study of the widely differing reception accorded the teaching of phonics in England and New Zealand respectively. Introduction: The politics of early literacy instructionDebates over the place of phonics in early reading instruction currently rage in most English-speaking countries and nowhere more than in England and New Zealand where, wide geographical separation notwithstanding, there is a shared tradition in literacy policy and pedagogy. In order to provide insight into the specific contexts that have surrounded the debates over teaching of phonics in both countries we have drawn upon the work of critical literacy theorists such as Luke, Freebody and Muspratt, which illustrates how the teaching of reading arises from social activity that, in turn, is shaped by historical, social and political concerns (see for example a rt i c l e 333 Journal of Early Childhood Literacy

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