Science of Reading: The Podcast

S9 E10: Phonology as a settled science, with Jane Ashby, Ph.D.

• Amplify Education • Season 9 • Episode 10

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In this episode of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Susan Lambert is joined by Jane Ashby, professor in the Reading Science doctoral program at Mount St. Joseph University. They define the concept of “settled science” as a jumping-off point before digging into phonology and the argument for not always basing your teaching practice on the newest research. Dr. Ashby touches on the impact of phonology on comprehension, the Matthew Effect, and why the term “instant words” is more accurate than “sight words.” You’ll walk away from this episode with two practical exercises Dr. Ashby recommends for teaching students to transfer oral segmenting and blending to reading and writing tasks.

Show notes

Quotes

“To store a vocabulary word, it's not enough to have the meaning. You have to have the entry for it, and the entry for it is the sound form of the word.” —Jane Ashby

“The greatest gift you can give a kid is letting them know that you see that they're special and that they have something unique that they bring to the world. But the second piece is really, can you help them become a confident, independent reader?” —Jane Ashby

Episode timestamps*

2:00 Introduction: Who is Jane Ashby?
6:00 Defining and contextualizing “settled science”
13:00 Phonology as settled science
17:00 Instant words vs sight words
20:00 How phonology impacts comprehension
26:00 Connection to the Matthew Effect
31:00 Listener mailbag question: How do you suggest teachers teach students to transfer oral segmenting and blending to reading and writing tasks?
37:00 Teaching phonemic awareness guide
39:00 Research that should influence teacher practice
41:00 The greatest gift you can give a child

*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute


Jane Ashby:

If there's a problem with the phonological system, it's gonna percolate all the way up through learning how to read, learning how to spell, learning how to write.

Susan Lambert:

This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science of Reading: The Podcast from Amplify . Today we have another episode in our season-long reading reboot, reexamining and building on foundational literacy concepts. This time we're focusing on phonological awareness. I'm joined by Dr. Jane Ashby, professor in the Reading Science doctoral program at Mount St . Joseph University and co-author of the 2012 book, "Psychology of Reading." Dr. Ashby is among the co-authors of "Teaching Phonemic Awareness in 2024, A Guide for Educators." And on this episode, she discusses why phonology is so critical in reading, and how it impacts all aspects of the Simple View of Reading. She also takes on another great question from our listener mailbag, and discusses the concept of settled science. I'm now thrilled to welcome Dr. Jane Ashby. Dr. Jane Ashby, thank you so much for joining us on today's episode.

Jane Ashby:

Thanks for the invite, Susan. I've been looking forward to this.

Susan Lambert:

I've been looking forward to this as well. And we've sort of pushed this recording off a while, because, full disclosure, you have been one of my professors at Mount St . Joseph University and you are currently my dissertation chair. So, thank you for the work that you're helping me do.

Jane Ashby:

It's been a wonderful journey <laugh>.

Susan Lambert:

And it's still in process <laugh> . And definitely we've had some great conversations about my interests versus your interests. And sort of your story about how you got interested in what you're interested in. And I think our listeners are going to love hearing your journey. So before we do that, how about you just introduce yourself a little bit, and tell us who you are, what you do, how you got into this world of literacy.

Jane Ashby:

Just stop me if I yammer on <laugh> . It's been a long journey, right? I've been doing this work for about 35 years.

Susan Lambert:

Wow.

Jane Ashby:

I came to it early, and it just kind of captivated me and never let me go. So right now I'm a professor in the Reading Science Program at Mount St . Joseph University. That has been wonderful, and rewarding. I've been doing that for a few years. Before that, I was a professor in psychology at Central Michigan University, where I had an eye movement laboratory. I conducted a bunch of research where we use eye movements to measure how people are processing words. How they're getting words off the page when they're reading sentences silently. That's been my research career, and that was the past 20 years or so. Before that, I was working in Columbus at a school for children who have reading disabilities, and working with their faculty and Columbus Public Schools interventionists to teach them how to help dyslexic children learn to read. Before that, where I really got my start, where I really got bit by the reading bug hard, was in an adult literacy program where I was working with inner city students in Boston, 18 to 22 years old. And typically, in these adult literacy classes, all students are just grouped together. There isn't any assessment to figure out where their reading is. And they're all trying to pass the GRE. But, of course, they come to it from different places. And what we decided to do was to assess our students, shockingly, and see what their reading level is. What we found from that is that about half of our students were reading in the fourth to sixth grade level. Well, the GRE is written at the eighth or ninth grade level. And I taught the students reading at the fourth or sixth grade level. I did that for three years. I taught them content area. We did science, we did earth science, we did history. Taught them about the reconstruction. All designing curriculum at their reading level using primary source materials. And so, it was very fun, and I learned, kind of, how to boost their reading while I was doing that, by pre-teaching new vocabulary, by teaching them how to sound out multi-syllabic words, by pointing out the meanings of prefixes and suffixes. But it was kind of anecdotal, and incidental, right, as we went along. And their reading skills, even with that little bit of instruction, grew substantially. It was really exciting to see how they could take off with just a little bit of instruction. But of course, these students were not reading disabled. And, at that time, I wanted to take a position in Columbus at this school. And the headmaster said that he would be happy to hire me if I went to Massachusetts General Hospital and took this training, specifically to teach children who have dyslexia. And so it was a year-long training. So I did that. And that's where I got my Orton-Gillingham training, the start of it. And I've done a lot of it since then. But that's how I have this joint expertise, both in reading research and in teaching children and adults who are struggling to read.

Susan Lambert:

What I'd like to do is make a quick turn. But, I think it's really important, and I think you have a point of view about this, and have seen research develop over time. We hear people say the term settled science. I'm not sure how I feel about the term, because I think it's another one of those things that we can use in helpful ways and ways that maybe aren't helpful. But when you think about the term settled science, in the broader context of the Science of Reading movement, why do you think it's important that we use that term? And how we use that term? And how would you define it? That's a lot of questions.

Jane Ashby:

But important questions. When I think of settled science, I tend to go along with the great Keith Stanovich and his definition of settled science. He talks about science, the scientific process being like a mosaic. That we have a set of questions, that we answer. And once those questions have been answered by several experiments, then we set that piece of tile in the mosaic. And we move to the next tile, and then we investigate that set of questions. And so, settled science is all the tiles that have been laid down already. Settled science has two criteria, at least. One is that there's replication. So, similar findings have been found again and again. And the other thing is convergence, meaning that the findings fit together. Whether you're measuring brainwaves, or looking at eye movements, or measuring reaction times. Or, you can also have convergence between different labs. So, sometimes for a long time you'll see a research strand that is just looked at by one group of people, right. And that's OK, but it's not really settled science until you have convergence from other labs also finding the same thing. And this is the self-checking nature of scientific inquiry. And that is surprisingly slow. It is so slow. I mean, the time from asking a research question to answering it in a publication is often two to four years.

Susan Lambert:

And that's just one study.

Jane Ashby:

And that's just one study. But the reason why this is important is because we don't want to make decisions based on faulty assumptions. That's how we got to this point in the field. With a lot of children not being taught how to read appropriately based on faulty assumptions, not because anyone had ill will or anything. Everybody wanted to do the right thing, but it was based on faulty assumptions that existed because not enough research had been done. So we have a tension here between the practitioner and the researcher. Researchers get money, attention, and promotion for coming up with the next new thing.

Susan Lambert:

The next new question, yeah.

Jane Ashby:

The next new question. The next new area. They are always trying to innovate. Alright, and that's very exciting. That's what pulls us forward. However, practitioners, you might have a study that shows one thing, and then you have another study the next year that shows the opposite. And that's the self-correcting nature of science. And it isn't until you have enough studies accumulated that you can really see what you have and draw conclusions. So the practitioner doesn't necessarily want to follow the latest research, because you don't know if the latest research is going to replicate or not. Is it going to hold up over time or not? If you've always followed the latest research, you can find yourself zigzagging a lot in your practice, OK. Meanwhile, we have a whole beautiful sandcastle of 30 years of grains of sand in the Science of Reading, very solid research, about the things that we need to be doing. Both for Tier 1 readers and for children who are really going to struggle, even if they get good systematic instruction.

Susan Lambert:

That's a really helpful explanation, because I know we had this conversation. Social media is a great thing. It's brought practitioners and researchers closer together. However, it's really tempting for a practitioner to grab the latest and greatest, try to implement that in their classroom, and it may or may not be the right direction in which to go.

Jane Ashby:

Absolutely. And there is really no way to tell until more research comes in. And when I'm talking about research, I'm talking about primary source, collecting data. I'm not talking about re-analyzing old studies in different ways. I mean, that's its own contribution. But, to establish something new, that is promising. Just because it makes sense doesn't mean that it is necessarily correct. So for example, here's one, back in the sixties, people saw a bunch of kids who had all these reading problems, and they also had all these other social emotional issues. And they thought that reading problems were caused by social emotional issues. And it took a lot of research, about 20 years of research, into that core phonological deficit to establish that, guess what, even though those two things connected, that is not the cause of the reading problem. It is actually the result of the reading problem. So the core phonological deficit is the cause of many reading problems. And the result of that a re the social e motional difficulties.

Susan Lambert:

That's a great example. And an example in your world of phonology. So, you would say that phonology, in particular, is a really good example of a topic with solid scientific basis that we could call settled science? Yes?

Jane Ashby:

Yes, I would. Not that there still isn't more work to be done, in terms of implementing that settled science, to create effective instruction. Especially at the classroom level. There is much more work to be done. But, in terms of the concepts, what is causing what, what types of instruction are going to be effective, all of this has been established for decades now.

Susan Lambert:

So to introduce this big picture, what is phonology and how important is it in reading?

Jane Ashby:

Oh, I'm so glad you asked that <laugh>! Because a lot of times people don't ask, what is phonology? It's a little tricky. You're gonna hear me say that phonology is the system, it's a sound system of a language. That's what the technical definition is. It's how all of the sounds, meaning the single sounds, we say the phonemes, like in cat there are three, but also the syllables, in syllable there are three syllables, how the whole sound system in the language and how it fits together and how that is processed in the brain. So, we go back to the fact that learning to read is acquired, it is not natural. Children are born with spoken language. And spoken language is that phonological and semantic, those two systems, together. So those are the bedrock linguistic processing systems in the brain. If there's a problem with the phonological system, it's gonna percolate all the way up through learning how to read, learning how to spell, learning how to write, and even subtle problems that aren't detected when a child is speaking. Known words that are familiar to them, for example. Those will create problems. Those problems can create issues as they learn how to read. I think there was a second part to that question, but I've lost track of it now.

Susan Lambert:

I maybe did too. Oh, so what is phonology, and then how is it important in reading? I think you sort of answered both of them.

Jane Ashby:

I'd like to take one more pass, if I could.

Susan Lambert:

Please do.

Jane Ashby:

So, phonology is the sound system. That's the linguistics of the language. It is important in reading for two key reasons. One is that it helps skilled readers get the word off the page when they're reading silently. Phonology and orthography work together at the front end of word recognition, to get the word up off the page.

Susan Lambert:

Say that again. Phonology and orthography ...

Jane Ashby:

Work together. Those two systems work together to get the word up off the page, and uploaded into the mind of the reader THROUGH working memory.

Susan Lambert:

OK, ohh. Wow!

Jane Ashby:

So the way the word goes from the page into our language systems is through working memory and, specifically, THROUGH the phonological loop.

Susan Lambert:

OK.

Jane Ashby:

So it means that the doorway to the linguistic processing of text happens through phonology. So words, even if they're recognized very quickly, and it appears to be instantaneous, skilled readers are processing both the sound and the letters of the word.

Susan Lambert:

So when we talk about ... I think I have a misconception that's being revealed here. When we talk about automatic word recognition, we're still processing that through the phonological mechanism, we're just doing it really, really fast?

Jane Ashby:

We are doing it really fast. Orthography and phonology are working together, at the front end of word recognition, in automatic word recognition. That's exactly right. That's why I try to say instant words rather than sight words.

Susan Lambert:

Yeah. I love that.

Jane Ashby:

Because, for decades and decades, we've talked about reading as being visual, and relying on visual memorization, and all of this . And it turns out, again, logically you would think it works that way, but it does not. Because the doorway to the language system is through phonology. It's through the abstract representations of the sounds that people have in their head.

Susan Lambert:

And I like using the word instant recognition, or instant words, rather than sight words, because I don't know if there's a flashcard, like the memories of flashcards, to get to sight words. Or there's the misconception I think that I've always had, which is know the more that you practice these words, they actually just become sight words similar to if we would memorize 'em . And that's not quite right. That's a tiny bit of a misconception. So, I think I'm gonna grab that idea of instant words and start using that instead of sight words.

Jane Ashby:

Well, I would love that. Now, the other problem with thinking that those turn into sight words is that it does feed the thought that we leave decoding and phonics and phonology behind, as we become skilled readers. And although we are not decoding words, because decoding is intentional, right? That's when you sound it out, sound by sound . You are what we call recoding words into their sound form, all right, as a skilled reader. And then, the other piece of it is, if you don't have the ability to decode, you can't expand your vocabulary with new words that you encounter during silent reading. So, it's just so important to understand how phonology affects decoding and recoding. And really affects reading all the way up through the grades. Even at the post-graduate level.

Susan Lambert:

And I'm just going to reframe, slightly, because I know about decoding, and I know about recoding, I've heard those terms used. But, the way that you just explained that makes so much more sense. About what happens when we are instantly recognizing words. That recoding is a phonological process. And this just ... wow! It's a big aha for me today <laugh>.

Jane Ashby:

Excellent.

Susan Lambert:

And here I am working on my dissertation in reading science, and I just had a big aha about how word recognition works.

Jane Ashby:

Isn't reading science such a huge area?

Susan Lambert:

It's big, yeah.

Jane Ashby:

It is vast.

Susan Lambert:

Yeah. There is a lot to learn. And so you said something about decoding or recoding This word recognition is so critical. And it has an impact on how we grow our vocabulary, or grow our understanding of text. Can you talk a little bit about that? This is really how phonology impacts, then, the other side of the rope, if we wanna call it that.

Jane Ashby:

Oh, yeah. I love that. That's such an exciting topic. So, I like to approach this from the perspective of the self-teaching hypothesis. I remember Share, Jorm and Share, the self-teaching hypothesis. And the idea there is as readers encounter unfamiliar words, and they sound them out accurately, and they store them, then they can connect that sound form to the meaning. And the next time they encounter that word, it's processed faster, and then the next time they encounter that word, until that word is processed instantly. So what is exciting and unusual about that is we often think about familiar words being so important. The main words you need to know in kindergarten. The main words kids need to know in first grade It turns out, that's a symptom of being able to read well. The key to developing your reading mind is being able to feed it unfamiliar words. Figure out the pronunciation. Store that unique pronunciation along with the meaning. And then carry on making meaning of what you're reading. And so, it's just that phonology is that first step. So to store a vocabulary word, it's not enough to have the meaning. You have to have the entry for it. And the entry for it is the sound form of the word. You need the sound form and you need the meaning. And oftentimes people teach vocabulary, and they focus a lot on the meaning, and not so much on the sound form. And, really, that's the initial exposure. Because the first part to learning a new word is just noticing it, right? You notice it in print, or you notice it in conversation, and then you figure out the meaning. So if a student has a core phonological processing problem, and therefore they don't decode well, they might read the words consistent, content, and confident all as the same word. And you see this a lot in middle school. The result of that is that they're not detecting new vocabulary words as they're reading. And that misreading is also interfering with their comprehension. It's actually the mis-decoding of the word that is interfering with their comprehension of the text that they're reading. So having strong phonological processing is not only affecting vocabulary, it's also having a strong impact on comprehension. Because the root to comprehension is paved with words.

Susan Lambert:

Yep , yep .

Jane Ashby:

And those words need to be translated into sound.

Susan Lambert:

Oh, that makes so much sense. What a great explanation. And I think somewhere in there, for those folks that are in the Science of Reading world just learning, you were talking about the processing model, right? So the Four-Part Processing Model, was that a little bit in your explanation?

Jane Ashby:

Oh, let's connect it to the Four-Part Processing Model. I understand why people talk about the Four-Part Processing Model. The original part of that model was a three-part model. The triangle model. That's the original Seidenberg and McClellan model, and that's the one that I use. So context does play a role. But at the core of word recognition, we have orthography, phonology, and meaning. And all of those processors are cooperating, They are working together, when you look at any letter string, in order to get to that unique word, the unique lexical entry that you're seeing in front of you. So it's the cooperation. And if one of those pieces is missing, the others are going to jump in. Like the orthographic processor, with the examples I gave you, is saying, "Well, it matches the first syllable. It matches the last syllable in terms of the letters. So that's probably it." And it isn't until you get all the processors working together that you're able to process and store those unfamiliar words, so they can be recognized more quickly in the future.

Susan Lambert:

That makes sense. So, I wanna make another connection. This is like defining literacy lingo with Dr. Ashby <laugh> . That's what this is turning into <laugh>. But, another thing this makes me think of. If phonology is the entry point, and it's super important that we get this right, that we're encountering unique words, unfamiliar words, to sort of develop our reading chops, if you will, there's a connection here to Matthew Effects, right?

Jane Ashby:

There is a connection there to Matthew Effects.

Susan Lambert:

Can you help us understand that connection to the Matthew Effects, which, very broadly, is the idea that advantaged readers will improve at a faster rate. So the gap between slower-developing readers and faster-developing readers actually grows over time.

Jane Ashby:

OK, and you have like four hours, right?

Susan Lambert:

Um, we do <laugh>, but you can do it in two to three minutes <laugh>.

Jane Ashby:

I could do it in two to three minutes < laugh>. OK. Matthew Effects . That's huge, because Matthew Effects are a large set of things. But let's just talk about some ways that having problems processing phonology could lead to Matthew Effects. One way is if you continue ... most students at some point are slow and labored at decoding. And reading takes a lot of effort for them. And it's agonizing to listen to. And it's important to remember this is part of their process. And they need to go through that. And accuracy matters at that point, more than speed. But then, eventually, you see them transition out of that. Where their reading becomes more prosodic. And you get the sense that they're understanding more of what they read, because they're not spending as much time and energy recognizing the words. And when that happens, then they're reading faster. Reading faster is the end point, it is the result of being able to decode more smoothly and recognize more words instantly. So when they're reading faster, if they read for 15 minutes, they're gonna read more text than a child who is continuing to struggle with decoding, who's reading slower. They're just not going to encounter as many words. The child who's reading slower. So that's one way that Matthew Effects play out, which is a huge difference in text exposure. Over time. And that's why there's this emphasis on fluency. Developing accuracy first and then gradually becoming faster as you learn how to process text, and decode words, and recognize words instantly. And all those systems come together. Another way that it happens, and this is important, especially for students who seem to be reading well early on, lots of students in kindergarten and first grade and even second grade seem to have a huge instant word vocabulary, But if you put a three letter non-word in front of them, they don't know what it is. Those are students who are orthographically very strong. So if you tell them what a word is, how to pronounce it, they will remember what it looks like and how it's spelled. And they just memorize it. But they don't have any skills to read new words that they encounter. And this is really the foundation of what it means to be a reader, is to be able to pick up any book, not a book you've read before, any book, and read the text confidently and understand its meaning. In order to do that, you have to be able to read unfamiliar words. So if you don't have those decoding skills, and you read confident, consistent, and content all as the same word, your vocabulary is not expanding as you read. And I'm sure teachers have heard this before, seen this before, this is going to be familiar to them, that students who read at that fifth or sixth or seventh grade level, and they read sort of performatively, like their voice is kind of dead, and they're kind of like getting the words out, but there's no phrasing. There's no intonation. They've kind of lost the purpose of it. It isn't meaningful to them as an activity anymore. And part of that is all the effort that is involved. And the other part of it is, if you're misreading words, it doesn't make any sense. They're just a bunch of words in a string. Because they don't fit together. And think how frustrating that must be for students. So, those are a couple of ways that problems with phonological processing can lead to problems with decoding, can lead to Matthew Effects.

Susan Lambert:

OK. Well, we've come all the way through this sort of development cycle with this phonology. I wanna pause for just a minute, because we have a question from a listener, our listener mailbag, that I would love to read to you. And this one comes from Gail S. She is a coach and specialist in Oregon who has noticed that working on phonemic awareness in isolation, some students aren't transferring their skills to a reading and writing task. And she mentions having to explicitly teach a student how to use segmenting skills to spell words. And so, that's the context. Here's the question. How do you suggest teachers teach students to transfer oral segmenting and blending to reading and writing tasks?

Jane Ashby:

Oh, I love this question. It's so well thought out.

Susan Lambert:

It's big too, isn't it?

Jane Ashby:

It's huge. It's huge, and timely, right? Very timely. This is something that's on people's minds. And so, now I am speaking from my practitioner view. From my experience working with kids, and I'll have to answer the question in two ways, One if the child is younger, like a four- or five-year-old, and another one if they're older and still struggling with this, like if they're eight or nine, OK. So let's say with the four- or five-year-old ... so she doesn't specify how she's teaching segmenting. Some teachers use fingers to teach segmenting. And others use chips or tokens. All right . I would say if you're using fingers, and you're trying to connect the sounds to the letters, ultimately, is what you want to teach the kid, this is all part of the same system, then transfer to tokens first. Blanks. So that they have a visual representation. So when they're marking out the word frog, they have four tokens that are down. All right . And then, you could have them do another word, let's say the word is clap, and they repeat it, they segment it, and then they blend it back together. And now they're just looking at the blank tokens, right? And then you say, "Oh, look, I've got ..." start with an easy one, "I've got an A." And that could go right here. You move the token out of the way. You put the A in there, and then you say, "So what is the word?" And they're like, "Clap." And you have them go through and give the sounds again. So that's one way that you could do it for a little kid. And I would do it with just one letter per item. So this is how Benita Blachman did it in her research. I call it using a sprinkling of letters. Sprinkle some letters in . So here's a P. Where would that go? That's the next step is have the student identify where would that go? Which token would that stand in for? You're keeping it really low level. And you're continuing to give them oral activities. That's what all the research did. And you're occasionally doing some where they put in a letter. So that's for a younger student. I'll just finish that up with one more level. And then now you have three letters off to the side, and the word is spot. And the letters you have off to the side, you have an S, you have an R, and you have an N. So they mark out the word spot, they give you the four sounds, and then you say, "So here are some letters. Which of these letters would go in that word?"

Susan Lambert:

Oh, OK. Got it.

Jane Ashby:

And then they put it in there. So that's for the younger student. And then when they can do that confidently, and they know the letter sounds, then you can increase the number of letters that are there that you're using. Now, for an older student, this is very tricky, because for older students, one of the reasons why you're teaching phonemic awareness is because they're not learning. They've stopped learning phonics, or learning phonics is really, really hard for them. It's really hard to learn the letter-sound correspondences. And so for that student, I find that using letters is just a roadblock in phonemic awareness, because they don't know the letter sounds . So, literally, for every item you have to make sure that they know the letters and their sounds that are in every one of those words that you use. Makes it very complicated to teach that way. So what I would do is I'd try to make the connection through spelling. So, if I had them using tokens during the phonemic awareness task, I would have them use the same tokens during spelling. We dictate the word. They mark it out. Get the sounds. And then they write the letters. And that's how they know that each one of those tokens stands for not only a sound, but also a letter.

Susan Lambert:

Interesting. Now, I know that you have written, along with some others, a guide for educators called "Teaching Phonemic Awareness." You have a new one, "Teaching Phonemic Awareness in 2024," an updated version with some of this kind of guidance in that guide for educators.

Jane Ashby:

It is indeed. So this guide for educators we made as a supplement. Whatever phonemic awareness program you're using, there's things in there to provide guidance. For teaching phonemic awareness to multilingual students. There's a whole section in there about connecting sounds and letters. There's a lot of nice tips in there. And what we did in this version was we took the teaching routines and we brought them up front . So they're in the second part of the guide. So the guide is like 20+ pages, but it's not really designed to be read from front to back. You just look at the table of contents, figure out what your question is, go to that section, and get the information that you want.

Susan Lambert:

Well, the nice thing is that if you did wanna read it front to back , I have the PDF open right now, it's 31 pages, but I'm sure that includes the cover page, the end page, and all that.

Jane Ashby:

The references.

Susan Lambert:

Yeah. It's a nice short guide. Thank you for putting it together, and to the colleagues that helped you with it, because I think right now, this is just my sense, my sense is there's a lot of misconceptions when we are talking about phonemic awareness, and the foundational elements, the phonology system. I think this is just really helpful for educators, to give them a better sense and grounding in what we really mean.

Jane Ashby:

That is a really good point. And that was the intent of the guide. And to achieve that, we had several educators read each version of the guide and provide us with feedback. So we tried to keep out the jargon. Tried to keep things very clear. You know how sometimes, as researchers, we can get all tangled up in the fancy terms? So we tried not to do that <laugh>.

Susan Lambert:

I won't make the side note that my favorite Jane Ashby comment is, in my dissertation proposal was, can you use any more jargon <laugh>?

Jane Ashby:

<laugh> Right?!

Susan Lambert:

It's true though.

Jane Ashby:

How do you think I know that <laugh>?

Susan Lambert:

Oh man. Well, thank you Gail , for the question. It was a great one. It made some connections. I think as we start to close out, what is your big picture thoughts on the kind of research that should influence teacher practice? Focusing on the settled science versus a recent study. How can we be sure, as practitioners, that what we're doing is basing our decisions on the right kind of research?

Jane Ashby:

The short answer is if you're basing your decisions on the right kind of research, you will see growth in your students that is measurable. Is it working? And I don't think educators are encouraged to put enough emphasis on that. You need to see measurable growth. And that's how you know something is working for a student. Sometimes that can be hard, because sometimes we think we see change, but then, when we go to measure it, it's not there. So that's one piece. I think one of the reasons why I left my research career behind when I made this recent transition to Mount St . Joseph University is because I feel like there's a good 10-20 years of solid work that needs to be done just implementing what we already know from research. What is already the settled science. Teaching phonics is not difficult, but it is also not obvious, and it is also not easy. Learning how to do that effectively in fun and meaningful ways for kids, with high enough response rates, and high enough engagement to make them excited about these new skills that they're acquiring. We still need to develop that. I strongly feel that teachers could focus their attention on the settled science of the five pillars, and really focusing on that. Other things are certainly important. And one thing that comes to mind, of course, is morphology. That is certainly important. But we don't quite yet know how, when, for whom, how often. And so focusing on those five pillars, focusing on developing that ability to be a confident reader of any word early on, in the early grades, that's like the second greatest gift you can give a kid. The greatest gift you can give a kid is letting them know that you see that they're special, and that they have something unique that they bring to the world. But the second piece is really can you help them become a confident independent reader ?

Susan Lambert:

That's great. Great advice. What about any final thoughts?

Jane Ashby:

Well, just to follow up on that, I think that teachers who have come into the Science of Reading, and maybe are just getting started, oftentimes there are feelings of guilt for things that you did not know, and you didn't do, and kids that you didn't help in terms of reading. And I think it's always important to remember that that educator's role is really twofold. It's also to psychologically care for our children, and be kind, and to be encouraging. So maybe you didn't do 100% for those kids, but you did the best that you could, and you played a really, really important role in their lives, which is encouraging them to achieve and explore what they want. And that's just so important.

Susan Lambert:

Well, Dr. Jane Ashby, thank you for your wisdom and all the great definitions you provided us with. We are certainly happy that you were willing to be a guest on today's episode. Thank you so much.

Jane Ashby:

Thank you, Susan. I really enjoyed talking with you.

Susan Lambert:

That was Dr. Jane Ashby, professor in the Reading Science Program at Mount St . Joseph University. For so much more on phonemic awareness, do yourself a favor and check out the guide for educators that she co-authored, Teaching Phonemic Awareness in 2024." We'll have a link to that and other resources in the show notes. Also, we did something a little different this time. We recorded some bonus content with Dr. Ashby. If you'd like to hear more from Dr. Ashby on Orton-Gillingham eye tracking research and more, you can find a link to this special bonus content right in the show notes. Next up in our reading reboot, I have the great honor of speaking with Dr. Judith Hochman, founder of the nonprofit, The Writing Revolution.

Judith Hochman:

This is not learned by osmosis, and it's not learned by vague feedback, like make it better or add more details. You've got to be very granular. This is not a naturally occurring skill in human development.

Susan Lambert:

That's coming up next time. And on the latest episode of the Beyond My Years podcast, host Ana Torres goes deep with Kareem Weaver about his life as a literacy champion. And he'll explain why early career teachers should prioritize being ready to teach reading.

Kareem Weaver:

You have to make that your number one priority, because when you do, your experience as a teacher changes fundamentally. Your peace of mind, how you show up as a teacher, your level of stress, your enjoyment of your day-to-day, and your effectiveness.

Susan Lambert:

That's available now in the Beyond My Years podcast feed. Remember to subscribe to Science of Reading: The Podcast on the podcast app of your choice, and share it with your friends and colleagues. Science of Reading: The Podcast is brought to you by Amplify. I'm Susan Lambert. Thank you so much for listening.