Geri Lee Sayers, an elementary school teacher, in her classroom at St. Joseph Elementary School in Kelowna, B.C., on Oct. 24.Aaron Hemens /The Globe and Mail
University students who are studying to become teachers could correctly answer only 60 per cent of the questions on phonics, according to a new survey that highlights how equipped future educators are to teach children how to read.
The results, shared with The Globe and Mail, showed that the student teachers could answer 64 per cent of questions on phonological awareness, which is the ability to identify and manipulate the speech sounds in language. And they correctly answered only 35 per cent of the questions on morphological awareness, which is the ability to identify how words are formed in English.
The survey of literacy concepts was administered by a University of Alberta education professor to more than 600 students, many of whom had completed the language course required to graduate and receive certification.
George Georgiou, who specializes in reading challenges in elementary-school children, connected with colleagues at 11 universities in seven provinces to administer the survey last fall and through the winter term earlier this year.
“We have to take this seriously. Otherwise, the number of struggling kids will continue to rise, and we will be in front of a literacy crisis very soon,” Prof. Georgiou said.
There has been widespread criticism in recent years over how children are taught to read. The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) released a scathing report two years ago, saying that the province’s approach to early reading was failing many students. Children with dyslexia and special education needs, for example, struggle with guessing and predicting text.
Although Canada is a strong performer in reading when compared with other countries, the latest results from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment showed test scores have slipped over the years.
Learning to read is at the heart of school success. However, the way children are taught has swung between different approaches over the years.
On one side is a phonics-based program, where children decode each letter of the alphabet to form a word. On the other side, whole-language proponents argue that by immersing children in spoken and written language, through classroom read-alouds and small guided reading groups, they will discover how to read and the words on the page will become more meaningful.
In Canada, most provinces have adopted a “balanced literacy” program, which is supposed to weave phonics into classroom lessons. However, in many instances children are encouraged to predict or guess words on a page using context, pictures and cues. Critics say the curriculum plays down the importance of word-level decoding and spelling and many children are not learning how to read.
Ontario revamped its language curriculum last year for Grades 1 to 8 to include more structured, explicit instruction that focuses on foundational reading skills, which the OHRC has lauded as “significant progress.”
However, the OHRC said in a report last month that progress has been slow among officials in addressing reading instruction in both teacher education programs and in providing additional qualification courses to educators.
Prof. Georgiou described reading as “one of the most crucial skills” in early education. “We need to seriously think of how we teach reading and prepare our undergraduate students for the profession of teaching students how to read,” he said.
Robert Savage, dean of the faculty of education at York University, said that U.S. studies have found teacher candidates performed poorly on similar surveys. Teacher candidates at his university participated in Prof. Georgiou’s survey.
Prof. Savage has seen the results and said that they showed a structural issue across institutions.
“If teachers know only 60 per cent of the correct responses, then they can only teach with 60 per cent accuracy to their students at best. So, it clearly does have impacts,” he said.
“It also tells us, across the faculties, that whatever we’re doing, we’re not quite doing enough,” he added. “We need to do more here to make sure that our teachers are well prepared for the schools.”
The challenge, he said, is trying to cover the teaching of foundational word-reading skills within the existing language arts curriculum in teacher-education programs. He said that his university is looking at developing an elective class on reading methods in the absence of a mandated course from the province’s teacher accreditation body.
When asked why reading instruction courses were not made mandatory, the Ontario College of Teachers, which regulates and licenses teachers, responded by saying that teacher education programs should enable educators to teach the Ontario curriculum, including math, reading and literacy.
In the meantime, some school districts are taking steps to change teaching practices in reading.
Pamela Guilbault, superintendent of the Catholic Independent Schools of Nelson Diocese in Kelowna, B.C., said she invited Prof. Georgiou to her district to conduct professional development sessions in recent months. He also ran literacy intervention training sessions earlier this month and worked with individual schools as they implemented structured reading concepts.
Her district has roughly 1,400 students. It has implemented literacy screeners, which measure foundational skills required to read proficiently, including identifying letters and sounds, as well as decoding words and reading texts.
“We don’t have time to waste with our students,” she said, adding that all teachers have a deeper understanding of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and comprehension.
Geri Lee Sayers, who teaches Grade 5 in the district, has pulled together resources on her own over the years around structured literacy.
Ms. Sayers has taught for about 25 years and has seen the pendulum swing around how reading is taught. In her classroom, she has always taught phonics, decoding strategies and vocabulary.
“I have always intrinsically known that this is what we’ve had to do, but that’s just because I’ve done a lot of introspection and I’ve done a lot of research on my own,” she said.
Ms. Sayers added: “If they [children] don’t have the building blocks of reading, everything else is going to be hard.”