Structured Literacy – How Rigidity Flows From Ideology

Tuesday, 9 July 2024, 5:09 pm
Opinion: Ian Powell

On 18 June an earlier Political Bytes post discussed the ideological framework in which the government has required schools to restrict their teaching of literacy to what is called ‘structured literacy’ (ie, exclusively phonics): Hegemony, meaning and structured literacy.

I used hegemony in the context of when those who rule (or govern) a society or country successfully ensure that their values and ideas are also those of the ruled (or governed).

Triggered by a government instruction to primary schools in Aotearoa New Zealand’s education system, we now have an example of when the impetus for hegemony underpinned by ideological dogma leads to retrogressive rigidity.

The core of structured literacy

I argued that:    

If the teaching of literacy includes meaning (combined with phonics) it can encourage enquiring minds more able to question hegemonic beliefs and positions.

However, structured literary was:

…based on a prescribed synthetic phonics approach; it is the opposite of learning by meaning (in combination with other strategies and supported by quality texts).

Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching where words are broken up into the smallest units of sound (phonemes).

Children learn to make connections between the letters of written texts (graphemes, or letter symbols) and the sounds of spoken language.

Phonics has in various ways previously formed part of literacy learning in New Zealand. It can be a useful additional aid for some children. However, structured literacy places it at the centre; the be-all and end-all. Meaning is a casualty.

This, along with the lack of evidence to justify this political decision, led me to conclude that:

Using the understanding of meaning as part of literacy learning enhances the ability to question and even challenge existing mores that either are no longer applicable or were never justified in the first place. This is the antipathy of hegemony.

The imposition of structured literacy into New Zealand’s education system is part of a conscious endeavour to impose hegemonic control over how children are taught.

Depending on the extent of its ideological implementation it will also ensure that when these children becomehttps://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/govt-delivers-consistency-assessing-kiwi-kids young adults they will be more likely to comply with the prevailing hegemony of Aotearoa New Zealand’s rulership.

Education Minister instructs schools

On 3 July Minister of Education Erica Stanford made a major announcement (aka instruction) on how primary schools assess their children: Education Minister’s assessments announcement.    

Her statement focussed on the mandatory testing of children by schools. This was despite warnings from education experts and teachers that this was over the top and counterproductive.

Children are already effectively tested in a way that can also be both learnt from and usefully compared internationally.

This new imposed additional testing is the outcome of rigid thinking that believes somehow it will improve, or lead to a better understanding of, children’s performance. It gives little more than the impression of being seen to do something.

What primary schools need are more teaching and learning resources, not more testing. The latter increases the pressure on both teachers (increased transaction costs with no additional value transacted) and children.

The revelation

In respect of literacy it was the media coverage, particularly by Radio New Zealand, rather than the Minister’s media statement, that was most revealing.

On 4 July the national public radio station brought this out revelation in an item that included a link to Checkpoint interviews the previous evening: Revelations over structured literacy. 

Dr Jae Major, education senior lecturer at Canterbury University warned that phonics was only one part of the reading assessments required and could also create stress and anxiety. Further it is:

…only a narrow part of the whole reading process, and so it needs to be taken along with assessment of comprehension, reading comprehension, and vocabulary development and a raft of other things that are just as important as phonics in the development of reading with young children.

Her concern was that “…this preoccupation with phonics and phonics testing is going to put a lot of attention on one element of what is required for young children to learn to read, and it isolates that one element and seems to ignore the others.”

She referred to two critical missing elements in this narrow approach to literacy – comprehension (meaning) and vocabulary development. Although. as an academic, her description was more gently expressed than mine, she is right.

My focus was the on removal of ‘meaning’ or ‘comprehension’ from literacy learning. But the removal of ‘vocabulary’ is also a serious concern; these two elements are interconnected, however.

Rigidity the kindest description

Dr Major also identified the inexplicable cessation of the evidence-based reading recovery programme

She described the programme as focussing on those children who are struggling with reading. It involves one-to-one work with individual children by teachers trained in reading recovery.

Erica Stanford’s response to the abandonment of this successful programme could not have been more revealing. She was terminating reading recovery “…because it was not based on structured literacy.”

Rigidity is the kindest word to describe when the ideological use of an unproven and highly questionable exclusively phonics programme (structured literacy) is used to preclude the additional use of a successful programme for struggling children (reading recovery).

There are several more ‘Anglo Saxon’ descriptors that might be used.

© Scoop Media

Ian Powell

Otaihanga Second Opinion is a regular health systems blog in New Zealand.

Ian Powell is the editor of the health systems blog 'Otaihanga Second Opinion.' He is also a columnist for New Zealand Doctor, occasional columnist for the Sunday Star Times, and contributor to the Victoria University hosted Democracy Project. For over 30 years , until December 2019, he was the Executive Director of Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, the union representing senior doctors and dentists in New Zealand.

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