Contesting Science That Silences: Amplifying Equity, Agency, and Design Research in Literacy Teacher Preparation

Abstract

In this article, we argue that the “science of reading” (SOR) construct is being used to shape the future of literacy teacher preparation and silence the voices and work of literacy teacher education researchers to the detriment of quality science, quality teaching, and quality teacher preparation. First, we briefly inspect the SOR movement in terms of its historical roots in experimental psychology. Next, we examine the claims being made by SOR advocates regarding the absence of attention to the SOR literature in teacher preparation programs, and the related claims for the negative consequences that occur when these so‐called underprepared teachers enter the workforce. Then, we present literature reviews, drawn from a large and dynamic database of research on literacy teacher preparation (over 600 empirical studies that were published between 1999 and 2018); the studies in the database have been excluded from the SOR. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of equity, agency, and design as a pathway forward in improving literacy teacher preparation.

Resisting Positionings of Struggle in “Science of Teaching Reading” Discourse: Counterstories of Teachers and Teacher Educators in Texas

“…Narrative 3 is that teacher educators, in general, have a deficit in terms of their knowledge of the science of reading and the STR (Hoffman, Hikida, & Sailors, 2020, this issue). This narrative was born in the research of Moats (2009) and Joshi et al (2009), who conducted surveys of knowledge of reading teacher educators at preservice and inservice levels on items related to language, such as phoneme segmentation, stages of phonemic awareness, articulation, morphology, and orthography.…”

Neuroscience and Literacy: An Integrative View

“…School literacy teaching should continue to develop such foundations and build on them, in ways which respond sensitively to children's ongoing meaning-making endeavours. Integrative neuroscience offers evidence to support this, implying the value of teacher education programmes which problematise narrow interpretations of the science (Hoffman et al 2020), renewing attention to and research on teaching approaches and methods currently eschewed or straight jacketed to fit reductive neuroscience understandings. All teachers, especially those in under-served settings, need overt, systemic support to provide children in their first years of formal school with the kind of culturally responsive, rich learning opportunities that are currently afforded in reasonable quality only to children from affluent communities.…”

Conflict or Conversation? Media Portrayals of the Science of Reading

“…The constriction and misrepresentation of science as truth (Hoffman, Hikida, & Sailors, 2020)-as settled-is what has enabled it to be weaponized to manufacture crisis (Berliner & Biddle, 1995) within the political spectacles of READING EDUCATION IS WAR and READING EDUCATION IS THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM. This has led to moral panic (i.e., delinquent teachers are unscientific), prompting the public's willingness to support narrow and misguided policies.…”

“…Thomas (2020b) explicitly called out the SOR for "weaponizing the term 'science'" (para. 40), and Hoffman et al (2020) asserted that the SOR community's reductionist framing of science has "be[en] used to shape public policy and silence other perspectives" (p. S258). When shrouded in equity discourse (Willis, 2019), the weaponization of science also has constricted how inequities have been addressed in reading policy, funneling equity into "a single story" (Adichie, as cited by Willis, 2018, p. 31) of minoritized students' educational access and opportunity that has excluded cultural, linguistic, and affective aspects of reading.…”