Science of reading

The science of reading (SoR) is the discipline that studies the objective investigation and accumulation of reliable evidence about how humans learn to read and how reading should be taught. It draws on many fields, including cognitive science, developmental psychology, education, educational psychology, special education, and more. Foundational skills such as phonics, decoding, and phonemic awareness are considered to be important parts of the science of reading, but they are not the only ingredients. SoR also includes areas such as oral reading fluency, vocabulary, morphology, reading comprehension, and more. In addition, some educators feel that SoR should include digital literacy; background knowledge; content-rich instruction; infrastructure such as curriculum; adaptive teaching; bi-literacy development; and, social justice. Some researchers suggest there is a need for more studies on the relationship between theory and practice. They say "We know more about the science of reading than about the science of teaching based on the science of reading", and "there are many layers between basic science findings and teacher implementation that must be traversed". Furthermore, the determination of policy or practice should "depend on studies that directly evaluate the effectiveness of a practice or policy" using empirical evidence, rather than basic research alone. Research in cognitive science and neuroscience has made significant progress in reading. Yet, one researcher asks "if the science is so advanced, why do so many people read so poorly?". Regarding reading levels, in the United States, the 2019 Nation's Report Card reported that 34% of grade-four public school students performed at or above the NAEP proficient level and 65% performed at or above the basic level. As reported in the PIRLS study, the United States ranked 15th out of 50 countries, for reading comprehension levels of fourth-graders. In addition, according to the 2011–2018 PIAAC study, out of 39 countries the United States ranked 19th for literacy levels of adults 16 to 65; and 16.9% of adults in the United States read at or below level one. As to why reading levels are low, neuroscientist Mark Seidenberg suggests it may be the result of three factors:

the English language has a deep alphabetic orthography linguistic variability contributes to the "Black-White achievement gap" how reading is taught. With respect to #3, many researchers point to three areas:

Contemporary reading science has had very little impact on educational practice—mainly because of a "two-cultures problem separating science and education". Current teaching practice rests on outdated assumptions that make learning to read harder than it needs to be. Connecting evidence-based practice to educational practice would be beneficial, but is extremely difficult to achieve due to a lack of adequate training in the science of reading among many teachers.

Foundational skills instruction Foundational reading skills are those generally taught from kindergarten through grade 3. However, 30% or more of US students, up to grade 12, failed to perform at or above the basic reading level of the Nations Report Card (e.g., grade 4: 37% in 2022; grade 8: 30% in 2022; and grade 12: 30% in 2019). As a result, many secondary school teachers devote some class time to activities related to foundational reading skills. The following chart shows the percentage of K-12 English language arts teachers who engaged in foundational reading activities with students.

Secondary ELA teachers in states with reading legislation were significantly more likely to report frequently engaging their students in these activities than secondary ELA teachers in states without such legislation, even though only one-quarter of states with these laws include requirements around secondary ELA instruction.

Suggested reading instruction by grade level Some education researchers suggest the teaching of the various reading components by specific grade levels. The following is one example from Carol Tolman, Ed.D. and Louisa Moats, Ed.D. that corresponds in many respects with the United States Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Oral language skills Spoken language is the foundation of learning to read (long before children see any letters) and children's knowledge of the phonological structure of language is a good predictor of early reading ability. Spoken language is dominant for most of childhood; however, reading ultimately catches up and surpasses speech.

Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness

Phonological awareness relates to oral language. It involves the detection and manipulation of sounds at three levels of sound structure: (1) syllables, (2) onsets and rimes, and (3) phonemes. Phonemic awareness (PA) is a sub-set of Phonological awareness. It is the process by which the phonemes (sounds of oral language) are heard, interpreted, understood and manipulated – unrelated to their grapheme (written language). The National Reading Panel (NRP) concluded that phonemic awareness is a means rather than an end. Its value is in helping learners understand and use the alphabetic system to read and write. This is why it is important to include letters when teaching children to manipulate phonemes. When teaching phonemic awareness, the NRP found that better results were obtained with focused and explicit instruction of one or two elements, over five or more hours, in small groups, and using the corresponding graphemes (letters). See also Speech perception. In one instance, a 2014 program of advanced phonemic awareness training (without using the corresponding letters) improved the PA but not the word reading. Some research has concluded that "reading outcomes are stronger when phonemic awareness is taught with print", and as mentioned earlier, the most effective way of teaching phonemic awareness is through segmenting and blending, a key part of synthetic phonics.

Systematic phonics

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