Event Details

"The Case of the Ontario Right to Read Inquiry: A Trans-national Dialogue on Literacy, Disability, and Pedagogy in a Science of Reading Era" Seminar with Rachel Heydon, Western University and Shelley Stagg Peterson, OISE, University of Toronto at the Literacy Research Centre

The term the Science of Reading has been identified as “a dominant part of discourse in education” (Goodwin & Jiménez, 2020, p. 3); one whose influence has been felt soundly on literacy curricula, policy, and pedagogies across the globe. While cogent arguments have been put forth to diversify conceptualizations of what research can be considered part of the “sciences of reading” (e.g., International Literacy Association, 2020, p. 1), understandings and uses of the term have been “much narrower” (Goodwin & Jiménez, 2020, p. S8) causing new divisions in the field of literacy education (e.g., Goodwin & Jiménez, 2020). The mandating and/or proliferation of synthetic phonics in early literacy curricula, to the exclusion of teachers’ professional discernment of what a particular child requires in a given circumstance to read (e.g., Flewitt, 2013), is but one example. Recently, invoking the discourse of the Science of Reading, the Ontario Human Rights Commission launched the Right to Read Inquiry (OHRC, 2019). The starting point for the Inquiry is the concern that Ontario’s public education system may be failing to meet the needs of students with reading disabilities. As two teacher educators and researchers in literacy, we use the case of the Inquiry to invite a trans-national dialogue on reading, literacies, disability, and pedagogy in an era of the Science of Reading. The symposium will start with a presentation introducing the Inquiry and the role that teacher education programs have been mandated to play. We will then move to conversation about how literacy research and education might avoid polarizing discourses in favour of those that respect the complex, diverse, and living nature of reading within literacies (e.g., Pahl & Rowsell, 2020). Our goal is to co-develop with participants resources for thinking with the “entanglements that render [all] children capable” (Murris, 2019, p. 56) in reading.