Are We Teaching Too Much Phonics?

Tim Shanahan

Teacher question:

I saw that Mark Seidenberg was complaining that there is now too much phonics instruction. What do you think of that?

Shanahan replies:

I have great respect for Dr. Seidenberg’s work but have long been critical of his tendency to ignore research on reading instruction. In his wonderful book, he argues for the teaching of phonics with barely a nod to any of the studies of phonics teaching.

Being an experimental psychologist, he was convinced of the value of phonics based on computer simulation studies. Me, being a teacher, am more persuaded of the value of phonics because of the many studies showing that kids do better with reading when taught decoding explicitly (e.g., August & Shanahan, 2006; NICHD, 2000; NIFL, 2008). For me, instructional evidence is essential. For Seidenberg, it doesn’t seem to matter.

I think that may explain his current reaction. Just as he proclaimed the importance of phonics, now he asserts there is too much phonics. I don’t necessarily disagree with either statement, but neither seems especially helpful.

Admonitions to teach phonics are almost certain to get somebody to overdo it, just as cautions against too much phonics will likely encourage some to pull back too much.

I figured that one out about 35 years ago, after years of experience in schools. Since then, I’ve tried to be more helpfully specific.

For years I’ve called for 2-3 hours of daily literacy instruction. Unlike most such schemes, I don’t recommend one duration for all.

My reasoning?

If everyone is guaranteed 90-minutes or 2-hours of instruction, then we are ensuring that the most at-risk will never catch up. Low reading ability is not something that only happens to a few kids in each school. It befalls entire neighborhoods. Neighborhoods scourged by poverty. If the poor schools teach only as much reading as the more advantaged ones, then kids in the poor schools can never catch up. In any other endeavor, being behind means that you must work harder and smarter.

The reason for the 3-hour limit is because of the need to protect instructional time for math, science, social studies, and the arts. I concur with “knowledge-building” advocates about the importance of these subjects.

Unlike those who plead for less reading time, I’m convinced that all these can be addressed sufficiently in a 6.5-hour school day, even when reading maxes out. Research shows that low reading ability undermines later progress in those subjects, so if the goal is high knowledge then this is a wise investment (e.g., Caponera, Sestito, & Russo, 2016; Cromley, 2009; Martin & Mullis, 2013). 

Learning to read is a complex matter as models of reading illustrate (Duke & Cartwright, 2021; Scarborough, 2001). It does include decoding and language comprehension (Gough & Tunmer, 1986)– but those entail multiple components and complex interrelationships.

Many instructional schemes are explicit about the total amount of reading instruction, but vague about how to distribute this time.

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