S7 E01: Navigating the noise with Claude Goldenberg

Claude “Skeptic” Goldenberg, professor of Education at Stanford, rejoins Susan Lambert to kick off season seven of this Science of Reading podcast—all centered around “tackling the hard stuff.” In this week’s episode, Claude and Susan take on the topic of what is actually true when it comes to the Science of Reading and how to navigate the noise to find it! Together they discuss the opportunities and challenges of social media, the importance of limitations of foundational skills, and striving to maintain hope even when the journey towards success gets overwhelming.

Show notes: 

• Tim Shanahan’s blog
• The New England Journal of Medicine: “Physicians Spreading Misinformation on Social Media — Do Right and Wrong Answers Still Exist in Medicine?”
• Bloom’s Taxonomy
• “Reading Wars, Reading Science, and English Learners,” by Claude Goldenberg
• “Stages of Reading Development,” by Jeanne S. Chall
• “Scientific Basis of the Art of Teaching,” by N.L. Gage 

Quotes:

"I wish there were a simple solution, but I don't really think there is."—Claude Goldenberg

"It's really gonna take leadership and clear communication and less one-sidedness by people who are influential thought leaders."—Claude Goldenberg

"We know that coaching and professional development and training and observations, we know all those things are important, but it's very important to be efficient because we don't have enough time."—Claude Goldenberg

"We've gotta be really scrupulous and careful about what we mandate and require and expect of teachers and provide them with the knowledge, information, and training that is really important."—Claude Goldenberg

"You can think of literacy as a structure, as something that gets constructed in your mind."—Claude Goldenberg

"If all you have is a foundation, you don't have much."—Claude Goldenberg

"It's really about the kids. I mean, it's really about the students, particularly those kids who are so dependent on schools because they don't have the resources and the opportunities and the affordances at home and in their communities."—Claude Goldenberg

"There are millions of those kids. They're so deeply dependent on the schools to do the right thing. We really owe it to them to get it right."—Claude Goldenberg

"We owe it to the teachers, we owe it to the kids, we owe it to the communities. That's my hope, that people will see the responsibility that we bear, to acknowledge the uncertainties, to acknowledge that we don't know everything."—Claude Goldenberg

Transcript

Susan Lambert: 0:35

This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science of Reading: The Podcast. Well, I'm thrilled to officially launch our brand new seventh season. A little while back, we asked listeners to share their thoughts on the podcast and to tell us about the topics they'd most like to hear covered. We got hundreds and hundreds of responses from all over the world. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Something that stood out was just how many fantastic and very difficult questions you had about the Science of Reading and literacy instruction. You all raised so many complex issues, from teaching children with dyslexia to helping older readers, that we've decided to spend this seventh season exploring many of these topics. So, we're calling this season, Tackling the Hard Stuff. In each upcoming episode, we'll take a different tough issue related to literacy instruction. And as you may have noticed for this new season, we've updated our artwork. As we prepare for this season of tackling difficult issues, I'd like to thank our new art is a visual reminder of the importance of continuing to grow. To kick off this new season, we're bringing back a guest who certainly doesn't sugarcoat things. Dr. Claude Goldenberg, professor Emeritus in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Last time he joined me to discuss the importance of skepticism in the conversation on reading science. And now he's back to kick off our season of tackling the hard stuff. Here's the return of Claude Goldenberg. Claude Goldenberg, you have joined us for another episode of Science of Reading: The Podcast. Thank you for joining us.

Claude Goldenberg: 2:33

Susan. It's my pleasure. Thank you.

Susan Lambert: 2:36

We are here to talk about a really important topic, which is, you know, there's been really a lot of attention lately to the Science of Reading, so that's great news. The problem is, though, it seems like it's a really messy right now, and I wonder what is an educator supposed to do to navigate all of this noise?

Claude Goldenberg: 3:01

Well, as usual, that's an excellent question that I suspect we'll be spending most of this time trying to navigate because it's a toughie and it's a challenge. There's no doubt about it. And for lots of reasons. I'm not gonna avoid your question, but let me just enumerate <laugh> some of the reasons.

Susan Lambert: 3:23

Great <laugh> .

Claude Goldenberg: 3:25

First of all, you know, student needs and strengths are very variable. And I was reminded of this by Noel Gunther of WETA Reading Rockets and Colorín, Colorado fame. And what he reminded me is that you can have some success almost regardless of what you do with some kids. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> and it's just human nature to claim those successes and minimize or rationalize when things go south. So, we tend to generalize and take full credit <laugh> for when things go well that we're involved with and then kind of ignore or forget about the ones when they don't go well. Another factor is that teachers, and certainly most administrators or policymakers, they haven't been trained, nor do they really have the time to evaluate research. And then that leads to another problem, and that's their misrepresentations and outright falsehoods throughout the land. You know, you have, for example, some people saying that Science of Reading, and I'm not gonna go down that rabbit hole of why it gives me the creeps. Last time we talked <laugh> , you asked me what did I think about Science of Reading? And I said , well, I think it's a bog. And, you know, people didn't like that, so I'm not gonna say it this time. So I'm just gonna say Science of Reading and just imagine air quotes or scare quotes whenever I say it. And there are some people who say that Science of Reading is just about phonics. Well, that's obviously wrong. Or that Science of Reading research is just with monolingual English speakers. That's wrong. Or just with kids with learning disabilities. That's wrong. Or some kids, for example, emergent bilinguals or English learners need three cueing instruction. That is very, very wrong. Or that we know how to get 95% of all kids on grade level and reading. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Science of Reading too often is just invoked as either a salvation or a curse by people who, you know, either don't know any better or who should know better. And, you know, truth be told, the research on reading, if you look at it comprehensively, can get pretty complicated. You know, there's some pretty straightforward things we can say big picture-wise. And you know, you and I are gonna touch on those over the next few minutes. But when you get down to details, particularly, you know, the operational details, like what the curriculum and the instruction need to look like day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, year-to-year, it gets much tougher. You know, and teachers are really not adequately prepared to deal with this complexity, either in their teacher training or in their on-the-job professional development. So, they're pretty susceptible to appealing sounding things that are not fact-based or are exaggerations or distortions or as I said, you know, successes that have been overgeneralized. You know, I wish there were a simple solution, but I don't really think there is. We should talk about some of the things that can be done, but I think it's gonna involve academics such as Tim Shanahan, who you've had on the, on your podcast more than you've had me. But I'm not gonna take that personally.

Susan Lambert: 6:47

<laugh>,

Claude Goldenberg: 6:48

You know, his blog is a continual source of information and even some wisdom, I would say. So we need to have academics, researchers, and advocates for sure, being better informed and more accurate and less one-sided and what they say and what they advocate for. And without that, unfortunately, I don't really think there's much that teachers can do to cut through the noise. So I don't wanna start off pessimistic, but that's kind of my take on it. And, you know, I want to go back to this notion that it's really gonna take, you know, leadership and clear communication and less one-sidedness by people who are, you know, influential, you know, thought leaders, so to speak.

Susan Lambert: 7:31

Yeah. We did sort of start on a real negative tone, didn't we Claude?

Claude Goldenberg: 7:38

<laugh> . Yeah . Sorry, I didn't do it on purpose, but you want me to be truthful, right? You don't want me to pretend problems don't exist.

Susan Lambert: 7:44

And hang on, to our listeners, because we will end on a better note than what we started. But, I mean, the next connection point with this, and it's not just in the field of education, so we're just gonna lay it down there because you're gonna give us an inside scoop here, but I mean, I really feel like social media has been a blessing. I mean, look at this podcast, right? It's gotten a lot of reach because of social media. The attention to Science of Reading, air quote , whatever you called the air quote. What was the other thing you called it?

Claude Goldenberg: 8:19

Scare quotes.

Susan Lambert: 8:21

Scare quotes, yes. Yeah, Science of Reading , has gotten a lot of traction because of social media. Teachers are learning things from Facebook groups and even being pointed in good directions from Twitter. The problem is, bad information is also being shared that way. So, I alluded to, this is not just a problem in our field, because you actually shared with me, because you don't have anything else to do, you also read the New England Journal of Medicine.

Claude Goldenberg: 8:53

Oh gosh. That was just between us. People are gonna think I'm a nerd or something.

Susan Lambert: 8:57

Gosh, they already knew it. You know, <laugh> , sorry, spoiler alert. We know you're a nerd, <laugh> , but you actually shared an article from the New England Journal of Medicine with me that after I read it, I said to you, all we would have to do is cross off medicine and put education in there. And it's scarily similar to what's happening to us. Would you like to share with our listeners what that article was all about?

Claude Goldenberg: 9:22

<laugh>? Well ,

Susan Lambert: 9:24

And you can't say no, because ...

Claude Goldenberg: 9:26

<laugh> Yeah . You've done the damage already. Well, no, I mean, I think you're right. And just, you know, full disclosure, I don't read all the New England Journal of Medicine, just the ones I can read for free. But there was this article that really caught my attention. The title is, Physician Spreading Misinformation on social media, do Right and Wrong Answers Still Exist in Medicine? Now, little disclaimer here, I know people have gotten tired of getting education and teachers compared to medicine and doctors. I understand they're tired of that. And there's a good reason to be tired of it. For one thing, it's not a fair comparison because physicians spend a lot of time being trained to be physicians, you know, on top of their four years of undergraduate. They go to medical school from, what, four to six years. Then they have internships, then they have residencies. I mean, the amount of training and time that's devoted to training up our docs mm-hmm . <affirmative> is just incomparably more than the time we allocate for training teachers. You know, that's going way off our subject matter, strictly speaking, but it is part of the problem. I mean, there is a lot that the teachers need to know, learn, understand, be able to use, and deploy and practice. Right. And we don't allocate nearly enough time to honor that, to respect that, I mean, to respect our kids sufficiently mm-hmm . <affirmative> . So we give teachers the time and resources they need. So that's just a chronic problem. And I think it's one of the reasons we want to run into these problems with one-sided appraisals of what's needed with respect to the Science of Reading. Because we just can't shoehorn in everything that needs to be shoehorned in. So it just creates a capacity problem. But I'm interrupting myself as I usually do. So let me go back to this article. The very first sentence here says, "Medicine has a truth problem in the era of social media and heavily politicized science. Truth is increasingly crowdsourced. If enough people like, share, or choose to believe something, others will accept it as true." And then it goes on to say that the surgeon general, and this is a direct quote, and as you said, you know, we could substitute education in a lot of these passages, that "the Surgeon General has identified medical misinformation as a major public health threat. And many professional societies, including the American Medical Association, have called for action to combat it." Now, the extent to which you can substitute education here is there have been efforts over the years to kind of discern the truth and push forward the frontiers of knowledge and understanding and education. So there have been efforts to do this, but what we haven't had is the second part of this sentence. "... many professional societies, including the American Medical Association, have called for action to combat it." I'm not sure that exists in our field, and I'm not exactly sure where to begin, and I'm not going to sort of call on particular organizations, American Educational Research Association, the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, and, you know, various others, National Association of Bilingual Education should obviously be involved in this. But we need to get a handle on some of the things that are out there that are simply untrue. Now, I wanna make a distinction between things that are untrue and things where we have differences of agreement. We have different interpretations. I mean, we're gonna talk a little bit later about, you know, skepticism and science and so forth. So there are areas of disagreement, you know, legitimate areas of disagreement. But there are some things that are just blatantly untrue that are just out there, you know, and misleading. And I can give you examples. Would you like some examples?

Susan Lambert: 13:26

I think we would love some examples of that, yes.

Claude Goldenberg: 13:30

Okay. So I'm an equal opportunity, annoyer, and I don't want anyone to think that I'm picking on, you know, I was gonna say picking on any one side. I mean, there, there's so many sides now in the reading discussions, you know, we don't wanna talk about reading war. It's a terrible metaphor, but unfortunately, in some cases, it's actually war-like, what's going on. But let's just call 'em the reading kerfuffles, okay? So I wanna be precise here. So let me just pick a couple examples, and to the point, one from social media. I , you know , recently heard a webinar from one of my colleagues who is an advocate and a researcher for children who we call, you know, English learners or emergent bilinguals. And she made the claim that Science of Reading is an English-centric program. Now that's just nonsense. I mean, it's not even wrong. It's so preposterous to call Science of Reading a program. You know, it's like calling the science of Botany a park. Mm-hmm . And aside from this, calling Science of Reading English-centric is simply false. There's a worldwide literature that includes many languages, first and second language speakers. The world's most eminent neuroscientist who studies reading is Stanislas Dehaene from France. He's done studies in many languages, including non alphabetic ones, such as Japanese and Chinese, of course, French and other European languages. They're reading scientists from Spain, Israel, Arab, the Scandinavian countries. I mean, there's a recent journal, the Journal of Neuro Linguistics, that I've drawn on that includes languages from around the world. Lots of first and second languages. So that's a problem. Another problem is this statistic that you and I have talked about, and I've discussed with other people, that some people claim that we have the knowledge to help 95% of kids read on grade level. Well, that's simply untrue. Not that they're not capable of it, but we don't know how to do that. You know, we know how to get 95% of the kids, at least at basic word recognition skills in first or second grade. I mean, we have pretty good evidence on that. But to claim anything beyond that is just a misrepresentation. And these misrepresentations are out there and people believe them. And for better or for worse, you know , they don't have the wherewithal, the training to kind of dig into the research and say, okay, is this true? Is it sort of true but misleading? Or is it flat out wrong?

Susan Lambert: 16:11

You know, we're gonna extend this and talk a little bit about skepticism in a minute, 'cause that's like your middle name, I think <laugh>.

Claude Goldenberg: 16:18

I'll take that as a compliment.

Susan Lambert: 16:20

<laugh> It is a compliment, <laugh> . But we have been also talking about this idea of deep knowledge versus shallow knowledge. Do you remember that conversation that we were having about, and maybe this is part of, like, when you're a doctor and you go to medical school, you get a, you know, a really deep level of knowledge, and then you get some application with that. But you made mention of the fact that our teachers, our educators, not just teachers, I would say our administrators, our district level folks, aren't necessarily getting the depth of knowledge they need to have to be able to recognize when our social media soundbites might not quite be right.

Claude Goldenberg: 17:05

Yeah, no, I think that's true. I would completely agree with that observation.

Susan Lambert: 17:11

And so along with that, I wanna talk about how skepticism relates to this entire conversation. Because it's like, like, what does it mean to be skeptical about what you're hearing? Does that mean I need to be negative about everything?

Claude Goldenberg: 17:28

No. No, no, no. Of course not. I mean, it's too easy and wrong <laugh> to be negative about everything. You know, skepticism requires some discernment. Let me read another quote that I came across not too long ago. And this is from the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Right? So it's not about any particular field. And if we as a profession aspire to some sort of scientific , how should I say? I don't know, legitimacy or grounding, and let me just pause here for a second and just say a word or two about the role of science in teaching and in education. You know, Nate Gage wrote this terrific little monograph. I mean, it's almost 50 years old. It's almost as old as I am. I was gonna say as we are. But I'm just gonna say as almost as I'm old, as I am <laugh> , it's called the scientific basis of the art of teaching. And like medicine, medicine is often called an art, and deservedly so. And teaching is usually called an art and deservedly so. But the point that Gage made in this really terrific little monograph is that even if you regard teaching as an art, and I have no problem regarding it as an art , you can put it on firmer footing. Right? You can give it some scientific grounding. And there's nothing unusual about this. I mean, think about professions that, that are renowned for their artistic features, like architecture, for example. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> Architecture's an art. But you know, as an architect, you better not design a building that uses balsa wood instead of rebar. There's a science to constructing things that will stand. And if an architect isn't mindful of that <laugh> , he's not gonna be a very successful architect. Or at least he better have a good engineering team on his side advising him not to use balsa wood . So all professions, you know, whether it's engineering, whether it's medicine, whether it's physics , I mean, I have a physics friend who years ago told me , you know, people in the social sciences make a big deal about science. But I'll tell you, designing a good experiment has much to do with art and nuance as it has to do with what you consider science. You know, your kind of rigid notion of science is a hypothesis and hypothesis testing, you know, you guys have two rigid a notion of what science is. So the line between science and art, I think we make way too firm. Back to the, the skepticism that you asked me about. The point here is that skepticism is an inherent part of science. And in this quote from the National Academy of Sciences, which I love to use, I mean, begins with "all science has uncertainty. All science has uncertainty." And beyond that, the quote goes on to say, "a healthy scientific community rewards members who raise problems before their critics and penalizes those who overstate results."

Susan Lambert: 20:37

Ooh . You've gotta read that one more time because that sentence is pretty powerful. So listeners get ready, he's gonna read it again.

Claude Goldenberg: 20:45

Okay . Here he goes . "A healthy scientific community rewards members who raise problems before their critics and penalizes those who overstate results."

Susan Lambert: 20:57

Thank you. That's big.

Claude Goldenberg: 20:59

You know, sad to say, and again, I don't wanna pick on anyone or name names, but we have lots of instances of overstating results.

Susan Lambert: 21:09

Hmm . I was gonna ask you another question. And I'm skeptical. I almost used that word, <laugh> . I'm ...

Claude Goldenberg: 21:15

Susan, it's not my word.

Susan Lambert: 21:17

Oh , it's not? I thought ...

Claude Goldenberg: 21:18

And if it were, I would give it to you. No charge .

Susan Lambert: 21:21

Thank you, <laugh> . But I just wonder, like if you were king of the world, king of the literacy world, what would you say would be important? 'Cause like with all that you just said, there's so much there. Like teachers need to be knowledgeable, but how knowledgeable do they need to be? We need to make sure that we pay attention not to the small sound bites , like put it in a bigger context. Oh my goodness. Right? Like, it's messy stuff.

Claude Goldenberg: 21:52

It absolutely is. And I'm gonna try to dodge, you're not gonna let me , but I'm gonna try to dodge your king of the world question.

Susan Lambert: 21:59

King of the reading world.

Claude Goldenberg: 22:01

King of the reading world. Okay. Thank you very much for that downgrade. Yeah, I appreciate that. <laugh>. This is why I started off rather pessimistically. Because of how big this is and how messy and how complex it is that we are really dependent on people who should be knowledgeable. Academics certainly, and researchers, advocates, you know, journalists of course, you know, they play a role here to be really informed and not just sort of pick out the part of the research that speaks to them and pretend the rest of it doesn't exist or they don't have to read it. I mean, I've been involved in a lot of discussions about looking at the different facets and the different interest groups and the different advocacy groups. Very few people that I know, I mean, I don't mean to pick on Tim again, but he's maybe one of the few people I know. And then maybe you as well, Susan, I'll kind of give you that, are really have any familiarity with the many facets of reading research. I mean, some people still think about left brain and right brain. But they've never heard the name, Stanislas Dehaeneand. <affirmative> and international research on first and second language reading and different orthographies. I mean, it's complicated out there. And you can't expect teachers to be familiar with that research or to dig through archival journals. Right? And it's just not realistic. So it's a tremendous obligation on the part of people who are thought leaders, thought shapers, to know the research on reading, even if that contradicts their most cherished assumptions. There's a lot out there. And anyone who speaks to teachers, educators, policy makers , who doesn't make it their business to ( A) realize that it's a vast knowledge base, and they're probably unfamiliar with lots of parts of it. And (B), that they have a responsibility to accept that. And even if they can't read anything, they need to be open to hearing, learning, and understanding from people who do know about it. I mean, I've been in conversations about, you know, among the bilingual education community, there's this thing about the bilingual brain. And because bilingual kids have a bilingual brain, then you can't apply the results of Science of Reading to English learners. Now, I have my doubts about whether there's such a thing is a bilingual brain, but I'm not a neuroscientist. So I've been consulting neuroscientists. I don't know the answers. I'm skeptical, I gotta tell you the truth. For one thing, if there were such a thing, it'd be part of the Science of Reading, and then we by definition could apply it, but it gets all sort of tangled, you know? So I'm waiting to find out, I mean, I will readily acknowledge there's lots of stuff in the knowledge base here that I don't know intimately. Another thing that Reid Lyon said in on a call we had a few days ago, was that we need more humility. You know, people state things with too much certainty. They forget. They forget the first phrase in the National County of Science statement, "All science has uncertainty". They forget that, you know, if we knew everything, we didn't know , we wouldn't need science anymore. And you know what drives addressing this uncertainty? Skepticism, but informed skepticism. Skepticism that's informed by what is known, what can be claimed with some degree of certainty, what can't be claimed, what is completely unknown, what we know bits and pieces of. If you don't know that you don't have a right to be skeptical, you really don't. Because it's just too easy to be skeptical, to say no. We have a responsibility to know the research and to be skeptical about things about which there's reason to be skeptical, where there is uncertainty. That's what drives science forward, not ignorant skepticism.

Susan Lambert: 26:03

And so if I would say to you , " we know what works," what would you say?

Claude Goldenberg: 26:10

I would, I would ...

Susan Lambert: 26:11

... run for the hills?

Claude Goldenberg: 26:12

<laugh>. I would <laugh>

Susan Lambert: 26:15

I think that's what you told me before <laugh> .

Claude Goldenberg: 26:17

Well, I would start with a very deep sigh. And if I'm feeling generous and upbeat, I would say, "Really? What do we know what works? Tell me specifically what you're referring to, and then tell me based on what." And then heading for the hills would be less constructive, but I reserve the right.

Susan Lambert: 26:36

Okay. <laugh> . All right . Listen, in presentations I quote you. So I'm gonna read this quote that I have on a slide that I use often, and I want you to unpack it because I think it holds for us sort of a next step, right? In getting to this reading science thing. So here's the quote, "Full fledged literacy certainly requires more, but there is a reason this group of skills is called foundational. It is required for the literacy edifice under construction. As with any building, if all you have is a foundation, you do not have much. Yet a solid foundation is essential." So can you unpack that for our listeners? First of all, did you wanna be an architect back in the day? Because you use this example a lot.

Claude Goldenberg: 27:27

<laugh> Actually , my friend and writing partner Margaret Goldberg, some years ago, heard me use it. And she emailed me and told me she loved that metaphor. And so it just stuck. So you can think of literacy as a structure, you know, as something gets constructed in your mind. Now literally what happens is, and I've learned this from Maryanne Wolf other neuroscientists, that the reading circuit in your brain is what gets constructed. Because one of the things that's been a source of confusion, I think, is that people don't realize the difference between oral language and written language. Both are language, but they enter our brain in different ways. Now, we are programmed from the very beginning of life. It's part of our DNA. It's part of our human evolution to make sense of oral language, which we call speech. In fact, it's known by evolutionary human development biologists, that human speech is the thing that gets most attention from newborn children, right? Mm-hmm . <affirmative> Human speech. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> is immediately, it's not necessarily meaningful to them yet, right? Because, you know, a one-day-old doesn't really understand anything coming from the outside, but they immediately sort of , get alert to that or pay attention to that. So, we're programmed to make sense of speech or a language. Right? We are not programmed to make sense of written language, aka text. We have to learn, in other words, create in our brain the reading circuit, the neurological connections. And I'm not a neuroscientist, right? So anything I get wrong is not my fault. <laugh>. The neuro circuits that connect the visual, the letters to the sounds of the language, to the meaning that those sounds in the language carry. Those things have gotta be connected, have gotta be constructed, because those connections don't exist at birth. So there's a construction that needs to happen in the brain. So when I talk about the foundational literacy skills, then it just naturally sort of evokes to me kind of a structure, a construction. And the foundation of that construction are those skills that connect the oral sounds of the language with their written representations in text. Those are the literacy foundational skills. It begins with an awareness of the sounds of the language, and then an awareness of the individual sounds in words known as phonemic awareness. And it progresses to being in recognized letters and associating letters with their corresponding sounds. And then putting those letters and sounds together to form words so that whatever can be said can be written in a written representation. Using an alphabetic languages, letters, and other languages, you know, different kinds of representations. And whatever is written in letters can be figuratively pulled off the page and said orally as a meaningful word. Right? Those are the foundational literacy skills. Without those, you cannot have literacy. You can't read, you can't write if you don't have those foundational skills. But that's the foundation. If all you have is a foundation, you don't have much. I mean, I would not like to live in a really solid foundation that doesn't have a bathroom and bedrooms and kitchen and, you know, living room libraries and all those other affordances of a real building. But you need that foundation, right? If you don't have that foundation, the building is at risk. The whole edifice is at risk. So that's kind of a metaphor or heuristic, if you wanna use a fancier word that I use to kind of communicate my conception of the relationship between foundational literacy skills and everything else that's required for full fledged literacy. We should not be satisfied with just a solid foundation. At most, it's just a starting point. But the other thing that gets complicated is, and people like to caricature my metaphor, the Science of Reading this way, you don't wait until you have a full fledged foundation before you also start thinking about the other parts of the building. Now it's true when you build the building, you get the foundation down, but while you're building the foundation, you're also setting down the pipes for the electricity and for the water and for the gas and the other things. Similarly, in literacy, while you're laying down those foundational literacy skills, you need to engage kids, or anyone learning to read for that matter, in vocabulary knowledge building, awareness of the world, all those things that go into the language part of literacy. You know, we have this simple view of reading. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> , which is a brilliant conceptualization, which you have the word recognition part. You gotta be able to pull those words off the page. And then you have the language comprehension, the communication part. You need to know what those words mean and have the background knowledge make sense of it. That simple view, kind of in a very simple, yet profound way, describes what's necessary to become fully literate. And then along came Hollis Scarborough's Reading Rope, which is, again, a brilliant elaboration of the simple view, because she spelled out the various components: what's involved in word recognition skills, what's involved in the language and comprehension part of the simple view. And so my building metaphor, kind of, pardon the expression, kind of builds on that in a way that, I don't know, I mean, I find kind of useful, and I mean, I've got other metaphors I can trot out if you want, but maybe one per podcast is sufficient.

Susan Lambert: 33:44

<laugh> One per podcast. And I know the other thing that I hear you talk about a lot too, and this is where I think how a Scarborough's Rope is super helpful, is that different things matter at different times in the developmental progression of literacy. So it matters a lot when kids are in kindergarten, to talk about some of those early foundational skills as well as some oral language development skills. But different things matter over time, right? And I think that's a missing piece of the conversation.

Claude Goldenberg: 34:17

Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm so glad you brought that up. Now again, I think Hollis's Rope was a brilliant conceptualization, but it really doesn't have that kind of developmental component to it. You know, I've been looking at it and looking at other things. It makes no differentiation. I mean, it goes basically left to right, but everything is everywhere all the time. <laugh> Isn't that a movie <laugh> ? So there's no developmental progression there. And I think Susan, what you're referring to is , Jeanne Chall's stages of reading development, which she published, I don't know , 30, 40 years ago--which to me has been one of the most important, how should I say, insights into the reading process, the reading acquisition process, and then at the same time the reading, teaching curriculum and instruction process. Mm , mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Because what has to happen if you go back to preschool, which a lot of times our Science of Reading discussions sort of overlook. You know, I've been having series of conversations with Jim Cummins, you know, the great scholar of bilingual education, trying to sort through some of these issues. And he repeatedly points out the importance of the preschool years, which the Science of Reading has not done a really good job including. And there's no reason for this, because, you know, the Mount Rushmore of Science of Reading , Marilyn Adams, Mark Seidenberg , Reid Lyon , other people. They've all acknowledged, they've all said in print and in presentations that what happens in the preschool years is like really, really important. But, you know, we tend to silo things. There's this preschool, you know, in state department education, in the federal government, there's Department of Education, which does K-12, and there's Health and Human services that does preschool and Head Start. So we silo these things. They don't talk to each other. And it's really to kids' and teachers' detriment. Because at the very beginning of the reading development process is the preschool years. And Jeanne Chall, she called this stage zero. Stage zero lays a very important, you can also say language foundation. See, we talked about foundational literacy skills, but they're also foundational language skills. In fact, phonemic awareness is a foundational language skill, as much as it is a foundational literacy skill. And in preschool years before anything remotely, like formal literacy instruction takes place. You want language, you want lots of read alouds, you want what Jim calls literacy socialization, which I think is an excellent, excellent concept. Mm-hmm . And you want kids exposed to literacy. You want to have them have lots of pens and paper and scribble, and they might learn to write their name, but you're not gonna be doing drills and stuff. But you're gonna have letters around. You're gonna read to them, you're gonna talk to them. It's about language, about vocabulary, and you're gonna teach them lots of rhymes and songs and play word games that alert them to the fact that the words, 'cause see, we're programmed, as I said before, we're programmed to make sense of speech. We're not really programmed to think about the sounds, you know, the sounds we kind of get over right away because we wanna , you know, what are you saying? What are you trying to say and what are you saying to me? That's what we focus on. But in order to learn to read, you gotta focus on the sounds of the words. That needs to come first. Unfortunately, we know a lot of kids don't have those experiences, and so they begin school at a disadvantage compared to kids who come to school with those experiences. So we need to think about that developmentally. And then when kindergarten or first grade, whenever the formal reading process begins, that's when the foundational literacy skills really need to kick in. But in a way that's appropriate, you know, for five- and six-year-olds. And five- and six-year-olds, you know, they can do drills and practice and flashcards and so forth. I know that gets denigrated as killing and drilling, but that's just rhetoric, you know, that's just stuff that people say when they don't like what someone is doing. Kids like to play games where they recognize words. I mean, I've seen teachers play these kind of drills with the kids, and the kids get excited when they know the letters, when they know the sounds when you're actually teaching them things. So that has to happen in what Jeanne Chall called stage one. But at the same time, don't forget language and vocabulary and background knowledge and all those things that have to happen in other times of the day. You still do read alouds with them. You still show them videos and films. You still take 'em on field trips, you know, if your school district is fortunate enough to still have enough money to do field trips, which is like the 19th century or something like that. So all those things that promote language comprehension, background knowledge, they don't get shunted aside, but the, how should I say, the primary agenda--and I know there's a lot of controversy when I say the primacy of foundational skills, or I say anything about foundational skills that begins with P R I M. People get all hot and bothered by that. But they have to take primacy. They have to be the focus, because that is the key to literacy. If you can't pull those words off the page, you can't read, you can't write. It's as simple as that. But don't forget the other stuff, because after those foundational skills are pretty much nailed down and there's a certain amount of fluency, that knowledge and vocabulary and language and comprehension skills, boy, they are gonna kick in and they're gonna kick in with a vengeance. So none of those things is ever unimportant. But in the first stage of literacy development after stage zero <laugh>, I wish she renamed it 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 instead of zero . But anyway, she was a brilliant theorist, and this is I think, one of the most important contributions that Jeanne Chall made. And if I had really, honestly, Susan, if I had one wish , just one, I wish I had more mm-hmm . <affirmative> , I'd want people to understand the developmental stages of literacy development and how different things have got to be prioritized at different times. Not that the other things go away. They never go away. But they've gotta be prioritized because they're particularly important at that stage of literacy development.

Susan Lambert: 40:37

Hmm , hmm . You know, one thing that I really worry about is that educators are really gonna get frustrated with all the debates, all the conversation that feels sometimes like confusion, hopefully we're not adding to their confusion, but, but mostly just like recognizing that it can be messy. All this stuff is really playing out in social media, and I just wonder if they're gonna close their doors and say, this is too much for me. I'm just gonna go back to what's familiar. How can we encourage them not to do that?

Claude Goldenberg: 41:08

Yeah. Well I think that's a real danger. And honestly, I mean, I don't think I'd blame them. You know, the den is so loud, the confusion's so profound and pronounced. I don't think I'd blame 'em if they did that. But you're right, we have to hope they don't. But beyond hoping they don't, we have to somehow get to our colleagues, the academics, the researchers, the advocates, the thought leaders, you know, the journalists as well. And I'm not blaming journalists because they try to report. They've got their own perspective, of course. But even a lot of journalistic accounts, I mean, tend to be kind of one-sided. You know, they tend to be kind of either or and dichotomous, you know, and I think it would be so helpful if journalists were to acknowledge, look, this article or my podcast, or whatever the medium is, is about this particular thing. But don't forget this other stuff is also important. Keep in mind there's a broader context. So I think the first order of business is try to communicate to all these thought leaders and influential people in different communities. That we have to be more conscientious, make a concerted effort to read, understand, become familiar with the research in a more comprehensive way, acknowledge if there are big chunks that we don't know or don't understand, and seek out individuals who can help fill in those gaps. I really think the onus is on us to do that. Us as a community. Both to take that responsibility, to find out what we don't know, rather than ignore it or pretend it doesn't exist. And us as a community to call out those who are making representations that are either misleading, inaccurate, downright wrong, taking people down the garden path, whatever. I mean, we have to do this, you know, we have to do it. Ideally, hopefully, you know, if, if we're skilled--which is a big hope--in a way that isn't confrontational, doesn't get into personalities, and we have to do it in a way that's responsible. Because, I mean, listen, this is a cliche, but <laugh> , I'm gonna give you a cliche if I haven't already. It's really about the kids, <laugh> . I mean, it's really about the students., Particularly those kids who are so dependent on schools because they don't have the resources and the opportunities and the affordances at home and in their communities. And as you well know, there are millions of those kids. They're so deeply dependent on the schools to do the right thing. We really owe it to them to get it right or as right as we can. And if we don't, we are just failing generation after generation. Now, what can teachers do?

Susan Lambert: 43:51

Yeah. Is there hope? Are you gonna give us some hope here, Claude?

Claude Goldenberg: 43:55

Well, here's the hope. And I guess the reason I'm shying away from that is, I don't wanna put one more thing on teachers <laugh>.

Susan Lambert: 44:03

That's fair. It's fair.

Claude Goldenberg: 44:04

I've been a teacher. You've been a teacher. My wife is a teacher. She teaches preschool, she's taught first , second grade and so forth. The load , the burden on them, particularly now in the time of Covid . I mean, they are under such pressure that to tell them something like, "You have to hold academics accountable. You have to challenge these advocates who say whatever." I mean, it's kind of unfair to put the burden on them. But I guess I'll say that what you need to do if you're a teacher is to ask a lot of questions. And when someone says something that you think this may or may not be true, then ask them, what exactly are you talking about? Right? Because lack of precision's another big problem we can talk about in our next podcast. And then how do you know? Is there a study? Are you thinking it through logically? Now that's not a cure-all The answer may be as fraught and uncertain and even wrong as the statement that prompted the question. You know, if I tell you, well, five studies have been done on why synthetic phonics is better than analytic phonics, which is actually not true, but if I were to say that, five studies have been done, where do you go next? How do you follow up ? How do you say, well, show me the studies. Well, you could do that, but how many teachers are gonna do that realistically? And it's not a dis. And even if they did give you the articles from the Journal of Educational Psychology or American Educational Research Journal, most people can't read that stuff, <laugh>. It's not written ...

Susan Lambert: 45:37

Or don't have time to!

Claude Goldenberg: 45:39

with cognitive conception. Or, of course, don't have time. So I come back to the idea that's really our responsibility. And by our, I mean researchers, academics, advocates, and journalists, to really get it right. We owe it to the teachers, we owe it to the kids, we owe it to the communities. So that's my hope. That's my hope that people will see the responsibility that we bear , to acknowledge the uncertainties, to acknowledge that we don't know everything, that, I don't know everything that's been published for God's sakes. And if people say, you should take a look at this, then I try to look at it. I mean, I have the luxury of time, but I'll tell you, when people make statements about their program and they say, oh yeah, yeah, we've done 25 studies. Literally someone has said this, 25 studies of this bilingual education program. And you know, we find the kids who get this program, their English outcomes are better than kids who didn't get it. And so I go on this person's website, and there's no article that actually says that, that finds that there's no data there. Articles say it, but there's no data to support it. In fact, the articles that I found contradicted that. And so I email and say , can you tell me where these are, because I can't find them . I emailed twice.

Susan Lambert: 46:57

You still haven't found them.

Claude Goldenberg: 46:59

I'm still waiting for an answer.

Susan Lambert: 47:02

<laugh>. So a couple things that I wanna highlight that you said. First of all, is I really appreciate that you just sent this message to our listeners who are teachers to recognize the fact that they have an important job--and that's for the kids that are in front of them in the classroom every single day. And to put this on them, to try to weed through and figure it all out. The other thing that I think that we've weaved in and out throughout the whole thing is this idea that it's messy. It's not just so easy. And be careful about what you're hearing and how quickly you try to change your instruction or, you know, do something different in the classroom based on one thing that you heard. That we have to be careful and skeptical, but there are some things we know, right? There's some things we know that teachers can do in the classroom. So what are those things from Claude Goldenberg's perspective? What are those things, the things that we know?

Claude Goldenberg: 47:59

Well here are the couple of things that we know, and I would even go so far as to call them settled science. Right? Which is a term I use advisedly.

Susan Lambert: 48:08

Advisedly, yes.

Claude Goldenberg: 48:09

With scare quotes. We know that foundational literacy skills are absolutely essential. If you cannot connect the oral sounds of the language to their written representation, if you don't know that system, you cannot be literate. You can't read, you can't write.

Susan Lambert: 48:31

Do we call that the alphabetic principle?

Claude Goldenberg: 48:34

Yes. That's right. You may be able to memorize, maybe even, you know, a few hundred words, but it's not a success strategy. You just don't learn to read that way, with any kind of flexibility or anything. So that is one of , I think maybe Keith Stanavich said it, I mean, it's one of the most settled science principles in the whole of settled science. <laugh> Dumb certainly in the social and behavioral sciences, right? Number two, you also need a lot of other stuff. You need to know the meanings of the words that you're reading, and you need the background knowledge to connect what you're reading with what you already know. It's useful also to have metacognitive skills, such as monitoring your reading, such as summarizing, such as predicting all those things on the language comprehension, communication side of the rope or the simple view. Those things are essential. Now, you may be able to read at a very rudimentary level just by knowing the alphabetic principle, but you can't get much past what we would call , I don't know , a first or second grade level if you don't have the vocabulary, the background knowledge, the comprehension skills, the motivation. I mean, we haven't talked about motivation. I mean, they're affective aspects, socio-affective aspects of reading that are really, really important to propel reading forward. So those things are, I would say, completely settled science. And anyone who doesn't acknowledge those, I mean, I don't know what to say to them. Now, where it gets tricky are the practical things. You know, the details of curriculum and instruction. Some things are pretty well known, like there's no definite order in which letters and sounds need to be learned. Now, it's probably the case that the more common things should be learned first, but there's no set or determined order in which a lot of these things should be learned. And that's true for a lot of, you know, how we teach things is, you know, I wanna make a distinction between the Science of Reading and the science of teaching reading. We know more about the Science of Reading--what it takes to be a successful, proficient reader--then we know about the instructional routines, the curriculum that are best geared to get us there. So there's lots more we need to learn in terms of the science of teaching reading. And that's true whether you're an English speaker, you know, native English speaker, you know, most kids learn to read in the language that they already know. And it's maybe even more true for English learners or emergent bilinguals or multilingual learners or different terms that are used. You know, kids who are learning to read in the language that they're simultaneously learning to speak and understand, which is a situation for most English learners. Now, as you know, I'm hugely in favor of bilingual education, but there's a lot of stuff we don't really know about how to optimize literacy development for English learners. You know, kids are learning to read in a language or simultaneously learning to speak and understand. One thing that I do know that I think is pretty close to settled science, if you'll permit that <laugh> , is that they require the same kind of instruction that other kids, you know, kids who are English proficient, but they need additional language support. So that they understand the words they're being taught to read. And understand the words that are being used to teach them phonemic awareness. If you can't understand the words that you're being taught to read, you're at a disadvantage in learning how to read them. Because the mental process that we need to teach is for kids to recognize words by using their phonics and decoding skills. That's the first pass at them. And then once you make a first pass, you say, okay, does that make sense? Is that a word I know? So English learners need that language support in order to be successful, even in very beginning reading. And then of course, as they go on in their development, the language support becomes even more important. So these are the sort of things, you know, big picture, that I think we can rely on. We the importance of fluency, for example. You know, fluency is critical for comprehension development because if you've forgotten the first word after you read the last word in a sentence, you know, you're disfluent, then there's no way you can understand what you're reading. But it works both ways, because fluency also reflects comprehension. Anyway, I could go on some more, but I think you get the idea. Those are things that we have pretty good evidence, I would say comes about as close to settled science as we can come. And then lots of other things that we have questions about. And I'll tell you my most fervent wish, Susan, is that we could get some alliances going. You know, get some people, you know, who speak for and advocate for different groups of kids who have different needs, but some overlapping needs. All kids have common needs. But then different kids have different kinds of needs that we need to be mindful of. And we wanna be careful that we don't, don't displace one group of kids' needs because we value more, this group of kids' needs. And we see too much of that happening.

Susan Lambert: 54:04

That's a great point.

Claude Goldenberg: 54:05

And legislatures in departments of education. Advocates for this group of kids are pitted against advocates for that group of kids as if it's like some kind of zero sum game. And again, time is such a monster here, doing this kind of zero sum game calculations, partly a reflection of there's not enough time to do everything. And there's a concern if we spend too much time on English learners, that we won't really pay attention to dyslexic kids. And if we spend too much time on dyslexic kids, we won't have time for the English learners. We've gotta get past that kind of thing because it's not doing anyone any favors.

Susan Lambert: 54:49

Mm . Mm-hmm . <affirmative> . Well, you know, this new season of the podcast episode is called, Tackling the Hard Stuff. And we are going to try to dig into some of these topics and bring our listeners a little bit of hope and just affirmation that what they're feeling in the classroom is true. Right? That there is a lot of work that we need to do to understand the nuances in this world of the Science of Reading. So, I really appreciate a couple of things about you , Claude Goldenberg.

Claude Goldenberg: 55:21

<laugh>

Susan Lambert: 55:22

One is that you are working to do just that, to like, let's just come together. We sort of laughed about the, it's all about the kids, which we talked a lot about that last season actually in the podcast. That it's a little cliche, but we really like to put that at the center of what we're doing because we really believe, why would we be doing all of this if it wasn't for the kids? And so I appreciate that you're an advocate to bring people together to , you know, sort of start talking about what we do know and then help to figure out those things that we don't. So with all that, whew, to say, thank you again for joining us on this episode and helping us kick off this season of affirming and tackling the hard things in the Science of Reading.

Claude Goldenberg: 56:08

Well, Susan, you are more than welcome. And on the contrary, thank you for the work that you've done and continue to do to help kind of enlighten all of us. Thank you.

Susan Lambert: 56:20

Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Dr. Claude Goldenberg. Check out the show notes for links to some great resources Claude and I discussed. We'd love to know what you thought of this episode. The best place to keep in touch is our Facebook discussion group, Science of Reading the Community. Over the course of this season, we're going to continue tackling many of your Science of Reading questions. Next time on the show, we're going to finally take on an issue I've gotten asked about a lot. How to incorporate the Science of Reading into a Montessori setting.

Speaker 3: 56:59

In schools and in education. Whether it's Montessori, not Montessori, we're brothers and sisters in this work. And if we are not working together and we're busy labeling and siloing, then we really aren't gonna have the collective impact we might have otherwise.

Susan Lambert: 57:14

That's next time on Science of Reading: The Podcast. And thanks so much for listening.