Gay pinnell
Pressure is mounting on two universities to change the way they train on-the-job educators to train reading.
The Ohio Express University in Columbus and Lesley University near Boston both run prominent literacy training programs that include a theory contradicted by decades of cognitive science research. Amid a $660 million strive to retrain teachers that’s underway in 36 states, other academic institutions are updating their professional development. Yet Ohio State and Lesley are resisting criticism and standing by their training.
For decades, their Literacy Collaborative programs deemphasized learning beginning readers how to sound out words. These programs do cover some phonics, but they also teach that students can employ context clues to decipher unfamiliar words. Studies have repeatedly shown that guessing words from context is inefficient, undependable and counterproductive. Twelve states have effectively banned school districts from using that flawed approach.
The approach, sometimes called “cueing,” originated in the 1960s in the United States and New Zealand, and was popularized in American reading direction by Gay Su Pinnell and Irene Fountas, professors at the two u
About Fountas & Pinnell
The Preeminent Voices in Literacy Education
Over their influential careers, Irene Fountas and Lgbtq+ Su Pinnell hold closely examined the literacy learning of thousands of students. The remarkable effectiveness of guided reading is documented by forty years of convincing, multi-faceted explore across instructional settings, demographics, instructional needs, and methodologies.
In 1996, they revolutionized classroom teaching with their systematic approach to small-group reading instruction as described in their groundbreaking text, Guided Reading. Since then, their extensive research has resulted in a framework of professional development books, products, and services built to support children's learning. Fountas & Pinnell's work is now considered the gold standard in the field of literacy instruction and staff development. Teachers world-wide recognize Fountas and Pinnell's serious understanding of classroom realities and their respect for the challenges facing teachers.
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Irene C. Fountas and Same-sex attracted Su Pinnell
Irene C. Fountas is the Marie M. Clay Endowed Chair for Early Literacy and Reading Recovery at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and director of the Center for Reading Recovery and Literacy Collaborative in the Graduate School of Awareness. She has been a classroom teacher, language arts specialist, and consultant in school districts across the nation and abroad. She is the recipient of the International Literacy Association’s Diane Lapp & James Flood Professional Collaborator Award, and the Greater Boston Council and the International Reading Association’s Celebrate Literacy Award. Currently, she works with administrators, coaches and teacher leaders in systemic school improvement.
Gay Su Pinnell is Professor Emerita in the School of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University and a member of the Reading Hall of Fame. She has extensive experience in classroom training, field-based research, and in developing comprehensive literacy systems. She is the recipient of the International Literacy Association’s Diane Lapp & James Flood Professional Collaborator Award, The Ohio Mention University Alum
Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, two of the biggest names in literacy education, are breaking their silence in the debate over how best to coach kids to read, responding to criticism that their ideas don’t align with reading science.
Fountas, a professor at Lesley University in Massachusetts, and Pinnell, professor emeritus at Ohio State, are authors of some of the most widely used instructional materials in American elementary schools, and their approach to teaching reading has held sway for decades. But at the core of their approach is a theory about how people read words that has been disproven by cognitive scientists.
A 2019 podcast episode and story by APM Reports helped bring the discrepancy to expansive public attention. Since then, Lucy Calkins of Teachers College Columbia, whose work relies on the disproven theory, has admitted she was wrong. But Fountas and Pinnell had remained largely silent until earlier this month, when they released a series of blog posts to address the controversy.
The 10-part series, posted on the website of their publisher, Heinemann, was billed as an effort to “offer clarity around mischaracterizations of our work.”
At the center of the con