What Research Tells Us About Reading Instruction.

Parents, educators, reading researchers, and policy makers all agree that children must learn to read to participate fully in a modern society. They agree, moreover, that much of this learning will take place in school. Beyond this, agreement breaks down. There have been many debates about how children should learn to read; those between proponents of phonics instruction and proponents of whole-language instruction have sometimes been so heated that they have been called the “reading wars.” What can psychological science tell us about the issues? This is the question that Castles, Rastle, and Nation (2018) set out to answer in their article. They provide a wide-ranging review of how reading develops, from beginners to experts, and consider the implications of the research for how reading should be taught.