How Children Learn to Read and How Phonics Helps

Learning, Teaching and the Whole of Reading

A major reason why controversy exists about how best to develop reading (or indeed any area of the curriculum) is that fundamental differences exist in our [Page 10]views about knowledge and how we come to know. If one sees knowledge as fixed and certain and ‘out there’, separate from the knower, literacy can be viewed as an individual and linear accomplishment, made up of a discrete set of skills like phonics, fluency and comprehension. If one takes this perspective one is more likely to see teaching as a prescriptive business in which curriculum content is presented, unmediated by context or the nature of learning relationships, in small increments to the learner. In addition, one is more likely to accept the possibility of there being just one best way to help all pupils learn to read.

If, on the other hand, one sees knowledge (including knowledge about the alphabet) as something that is actively built up and appropriated by learners' active participation in tasks, if one sees learners as intentional beings whose wider knowledge, feelings, experiences and identities constantly filter their understanding, if one considers that what learners see as significant in a task or particular learning situation influences what they can take away from it in terms of new learning, then one is more likely to see teaching as a process which must engage with the learner's take on the world, especially the learner's view of themselves and the learning context. Here teaching, learning and knowledge are viewed as intimately related. In this perspective, literacy involves more than merely an interest in whether children can read and write; it involves questions about what learners do with their literacy, the literacy practices that are meaningful to them and the literacy practices they engage in in their day-to-day lives. If one goes along with this line of thinking, one is less likely to accept directives about there being one best way of helping pupils to read. These fundamental beliefs and assumptions are often ignored in discussions about the best way to teach reading, and they very often underlie controversies about teaching methods.

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