Beyond the Science of Reading

Why I decided to write another book

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I don’t want to bury my lede, as they say in the journalism biz. So: I have a new book coming out soon, called Beyond the Science of Reading: Connecting Literacy Instruction to the Science of Learning.

I say “soon” rather than naming a specific date because there are two different publication dates. The date I was given by my publisher, ASCD, is January 21. But if you look at Amazon or Barnes and Noble, they say the release date is February 3, apparently because it takes a while for those vendors to stock their warehouses. In any event, you can pre-order it now from any of those places—and probably your local bookstore as well, if you’re lucky enough to have one.

Why write another book? Frankly, I wasn’t planning to. My books The Knowledge Gap and The Writing Revolution (which I co-authored with Judith Hochman, and the second edition of which came out last year) were still selling well. I was still traveling around speaking about them. I had a long list of ideas for posts. It wasn’t like I was looking for something to do.

But about two years ago, I was asked to provide a blurb for a book by Mike Schmoker that was being published by ASCD (and was happy to oblige). The editor of that book mentioned he was looking for someone to write a book on the science of reading, “perhaps one that goes beyond just a focus on decoding.” Did I know anyone who might be interested? Or might I be interested?

Pretty much immediately, I knew that yes, I was interested. One of the things that has happened since The Knowledge Gap came out in 2019 is the emergence of the term “science of reading,” or “SoR,” and the movement that has come with it. That movement has trained a spotlight on some serious problems with reading instruction, which is great. But the focus has been almost entirely on problems with “decoding,” or phonics, instruction.

Stories in the media have routinely defined SoR as though it were only about phonics. States and districts have adopted reforms like teacher training in phonics instruction and dyslexia screening.

All of this has given rise to the assumption that if we just “fix” phonics—or maybe just spend more time on it—all our reading problems will be solved. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. There’s a lot of science related to reading that goes beyond decoding words to focus on reading comprehension. And, as I’ve discussed at length before, typical comprehension instruction conflicts with that science.

Briefly, the problem is this (you can skip the next three paragraphs if you’ve heard it before): Elementary schools (and some middle schools) have been trying to teach comprehension as though it were a set of skills, like “making inferences”—the kinds of skills that appear to be measured by standardized tests. Kids spend hours every week practicing the “skill of the week” on texts on random topics that have been deemed to be at their individual reading levels.

But evidence from cognitive science indicates that knowledge is hugely important to reading comprehension; it’s not a matter of applying an abstract skill. A student might have no trouble making an inference about a simple story but be unable to do that with a complex text on a topic that’s unfamiliar.

So if we want to equip children to understand the texts they’ll be expected to read in years to come, we need to systematically build their knowledge—including knowledge of social studies and science, subjects that have been marginalized to make more time for reading comprehension instruction—and familiarize them with the complex syntax of written language.

What’s New in the New Book

I covered all of this in The Knowledge Gap, and it wouldn’t have made sense for me to write another book just to say the same thing. Instead, I wrote the new book basically to make the following points:

• Expanding the definition of SoR to include knowledge-building could help resolve persistent conflicts over reading instruction. Skeptics of systematic phonics instruction argue that phonics drills will “kill” students’ love of reading. But an expanded definition of the term makes it clear that the reading block—which is typically about two hours—shouldn’t be devoted entirely or even mostly to phonics.

And practicing the same round of comprehension skills year after year, using brief excerpts or passages followed by comprehension questions, is a sure-fire way to get students to associate reading with drudgery. If, on the other hand, teachers read aloud to kids from engaging text that is more complex than what they can read themselves, they’ll be building students’ knowledge and introducing them to the pleasurable experience that reading can be.

• Cognitive scientists have largely overlooked the way typical comprehension and writing instruction conflict with scientific evidence. There’s been a lot of research on how to make teaching more effective, although teachers rarely learn about it during their training. Most of this research points to the fact that building students’ knowledge is crucial to both reading comprehension and learning in general.

Something called cognitive load theory explains why. Working memory, the aspect of our consciousness that tries to make sense of new information, is extremely limited in its capacity. But if you have relevant knowledge stored in long-term memory, and you can retrieve it when you need it, you reduce the cognitive load on working memory, thereby expanding your capacity to learn. Unfortunately, prospective teachers are often told that enabling students to retain information is relatively unimportant as compared to teaching comprehension or critical thinking skills (which you also can’t teach in the abstract).

There’s a lot of evidence to support cognitive load theory, but the studies usually focus on math or science. To the extent that researchers think about its applicability to literacy, they generally limit themselves to decoding: if students practice phonics enough that decoding becomes automatic, their cognitive load will be lightened and they’ll have the cognitive capacity needed for comprehension.

But cognitive scientists haven’t really looked at reading comprehension and writing instruction through the lens of cognitive load theory. If you do, though, it becomes obvious that the typical approaches have only been making reading and writing much harder for students than they need to be.

That’s because we routinely ask kids to read, and often write, about topics they’re not familiar with. If you’re not yet a proficient reader or writer, that adds a crushing burden to the already significant cognitive load imposed by the tasks of reading and writing themselves.

• Evidence-based instructional practices can’t be applied to typical comprehension instruction. Let’s say you’re a literacy teacher who has discovered the various principles of instruction backed by cognitive science—for example, retrieval practice. That means having students retrieve information stored in long-term memory they may have slightly forgotten. The more they practice retrieving an item, the more likely they are to be able to retrieve it when they need it in the future.

But if you’re teaching comprehension skills, what do you have them practice retrieving? There’s no common content to retrieve, because each student is using a different book to practice the skill of the week. If you were teaching a truly transferable skill like phonics, you could have kids practice applying the sound-letter patterns they’ve been taught (this might be more accurately called “deliberate practice” rather than retrieval practice). But since something like making inferences, or finding the main idea of a text, is not truly transferable, there’s no point in having them practice it.

• Writing instruction can provide all the benefits of cognitive science-informed instruction—and more—if it’s taught in a manageable way. There’s not much cognitive science research on writing per se, but there are studies that happen to incorporate writing. The iconic retrieval practice experiment, for example, had students read a text, put it aside, and then write down everything they could remember about it. A week later, those students remembered far more of the concepts than students who had just read the text once or twice or created a concept map. Other studies have found that “elaboration”—for example, explaining information in your own words—boosts comprehension. At least some of those studies have had participants elaborate in writing.

These studies suggest that writing can provide a powerful boost to learning. But most have been done with college students who are presumably experienced writers (a presumption that, alas, may be growing less valid). For students in K-12, many of whom are not experienced writers, writing itself can impose such a heavy cognitive load that they don’t have the capacity to understand and retain what they’re writing about.

If, however, students are explicitly taught how to write about what they’re learning—beginning at the sentence level to modulate cognitive load, and engaging students in deliberate practice—they can enjoy all the benefits of science-informed instruction and more. In addition to providing retrieval practice and elaboration, writing instruction can familiarize students with the complex syntax of written language, boosting their reading comprehension. If you learn to use a structure like a subordinating conjunction, you’re in a much better position to understand it when you encounter it in a text.

Content-Rich Curriculum Plus Writing Instruction

I cover a lot more in the new book—for example, why science-informed teaching is crucial for achieving equity, and how schools can avoid political battles over the content of the curriculum. But my basic hypothesis is this: if teachers combine a content-rich curriculum with explicit writing instruction, beginning in the early grades, student achievement will improve markedly, especially for kids who struggle the most.

To test that hypothesis, I visited Monroe, Louisiana, a high-poverty school district that has been implementing that combination for several years. If you want a detailed account of what I saw there, you’ll need to read the book. But I can tell you I was not disappointed.

I’ll confess I was a little nervous about this book. As I mentioned, cognitive load theory hasn’t been applied to reading comprehension and writing by cognitive scientists—and I’m just a writer, not a cognitive scientist. What if the scientists thought I didn’t know what I was talking about? But I’m relieved, and gratified, that several cognitive scientists who specialize in cognitive load theory have provided enthusiastic blurbs for the book—including Australian professor John Sweller, considered the father of the theory.

My hope is that in the near future cognitive scientists will conduct studies applying cognitive load theory to aspects of literacy beyond phonics. I also hope the book will help educators and policymakers see that if we want all kids to reach their full potential, we need to break down the artificial walls that have been erected between reading and writing—and between both of those aspects of literacy and learning in general.

Visit the Beyond the Science of Reading page of my website for more information about the book and links to podcast interviews, etc.