Bad teaching kills reading skills

The major influences on teaching methods in schools are the university education faculties that produce teachers and the government education departments that produce literacy policies and programs.

There appears to be an ideological hegemony among these two agencies of influence that actively or passively works against implementing effective evidence-based reading instruction.

For some people there is a vested or professional interest in preserving the whole-language status quo, while for others whole-language philosophies are inseparable from a broader economic and political ideology.

Another key factor is that scientific techniques are not privileged in education research, practice or policy. Few teacher education courses provide teachers with the statistical skills to evaluate and interpret data or to critically appraise research. Attitudes to scientific studies in education research and policy-making vary from disdain to indifference.

The problems in educational academe might be mitigated if government policies and programs were rigorous. Unfortunately, policy is often based on flawed information from people without expertise in the highly specific, scientific disciplines of initial and remedial reading research.

Literacy policy has been consistently undermined by the vagaries of the political cycle, a reliance on non-expert "experts", and misallocation of resources into ineffective programs, partly because of a failure to evaluate programs properly.

- See more at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/bad-teaching-kills-reading-skills/story-e6frgd0x-1226729534319#sthash.wK41P8xH.dpuf