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Background Reading

These articles are what sparked this post. Check them out before reading my ramblings.

• https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/education/595743/children-s-enjoyment-of-reading-writing-and-maths-drops
• https://substack.com/home/post/p-198625294

The Science of Everything

In 2020, a shift was beginning to happen in NZ schools. Schools were continuing to see the same story in their achievement data year after year, without much shift, despite increased efforts and implementations of systems like Learning through Play and Student lead Inquiry cycles. Schools began searching out something different.
Many found this thing called “Structured Literacy”, a return to phonics based teaching in reading and writing that many of us received in our education in the 80’s and early 90’s. Teachers of the bygone era loved it; digging out their resources to revamp, update and digitise and sell to whoever came along, happy to see the old adage that everything goes in circles in education. Everything goes around and comes around again eventually.

Structured Literacy was just the beginning of course. Minister Stanford hilariously coined the phrase ‘Structured Maths’ in an effort to put Maths into the Literacy bandwagon that most schools were now on. And even though many schools were implementing elements of Structured Literacy into their classroom programmes and developing consistency throughout, the government had to claim credit for it by mandating that every school implement this way of teaching.
Now, what the Minister actually meant by ‘Structured Maths’ was simply applying a structured method to teaching Mathematics. One of the key aspects of ‘Structured Literacy’ Is that the learning has a scope and sequence. That means a beginning point and end goal, and a specific sequence of required knowledge that builds on each other with adequate review of new concepts built in throughout that creates a sequence from beginning to end. The method for teaching moved from getting students to guess answers based of what they know, to teaching the students concepts explicitly and getting them to practice what they have learned, so that they can apply it later.
This is what has come to be known as ‘explicit teaching’. It is counter-opposite to the ‘inquiry’ based model schools have been operating with for the best part of 20 years.
To get my head around the shift, I use the following:
Instead of asking students “What do you think this colour is? How do you think you could make it?”, you would explicitly teach “This colour is Pink. It is made up of Red and White”.

The proponents of Structured Literacy were all too happy to promote their ‘new’ way of teaching. They also had to back up their method with research.
Cleverly, this was coined as “The Science of Reading”. Automatically, the whole thing sounds legitimate and unquestionable. It sounds evidence based, backed by research and the answer of truth. All because it has the word “Science” in it. It meant that it has been picked up and implemented very quickly, usually without question, purely because of it’s name.

It all pointed to ‘evidence based practice’ that unpacked how the brain learns, was sympathetic to cognitive load, how the brain retains and recalls information and how this can all be implemented within the classroom.
Explicit teaching became the norm, and with it a whole range of practices that were deemed to be ‘High-Leverage’ in being able to reach learners and be effective. Practices like whole class instruction, call and response, gradual release of autonomy, fast paced, roam and check, teacher arena and more would completely change the way in which teachers did their job. Teachers returned to the front and centre of the class, giving instruction and stating facts for students to sit and listen to – known as the ‘Teacher’s Arena’. Students returned to desks all facing the front and set lesson routines that chop through each part quickly with no time to allow for distractions, and expected to read along and quickly jot responses on individual whiteboard to show they have understood the concept being taught. The teacher speaks almost constantly, because if there is ‘dead air’ then the students will fill it with their own chatter, assumed to be off task. The pace of the lesson is snappy, in an effort to keep students engaged and no time to distract themselves.

Before long, this methodology was expected to be applied across all subject areas, and the Science of Reading was supplemented with the Science of Learning and the Science of Writing. No doubt the Science of Mathematics exists somewhere, and eventually we’ll have the absurdity of the Science of Science and God-forbid the Science of Art.

The explicit teaching model was no longer just being rolled out for phonics and spelling. Now the entire Reading programme was built around the method. Teacher at the front. Students listening and absorbing the information, responding to show they were paying attention. Quickly. Chop chop. Get it done. Onto the next.

Then they do it all over again in Writing now. Same process. Different subject, but all linked and all the same.

Then Mathematics.

Skeptical at Best

It became very clear to those of us with an ounce of skepticism that there are questions that need to be asked.

Age Appropriate?

One in particular that those of us in the senior school (Year 5-6, 7-8) were having was how long does this go on for? The phonics based lessons seemed incredibly young and well better suited to those in the earlier years of school. This may just be a case of early adoption and intervention, where by those in the senior primary school who missed out on the Structured Literacy lessons need to be caught up to speed with what they missed because it wasn’t taught to them earlier.
But when spelling programmes are being developed up to Year 8, with increasingly difficult words, or instructions for using ‘age appropriate texts’, the expectation of continuing this for upper primary looks set to stay.

Reading for Enjoyment?

When the expectation was to expand the spelling and phonics into reading, I was immediately concerned about the Literacy well-being of students at the upper primary age.

My reason is simple – In my 15 years of teaching this subject in low socio-economic communities, I’ve seen the importance of students needing to be able to read for enjoyment. Yes, they need to know how to read – but if they don’t see that reading can actually be enjoyable and valuable beyond just information gathering, then part of the intrinsic motivation to learn to read will not be there. They might know they have to be able to read because they see their parents struggling to read, or maybe there’s generations of (usually undiagnosed) dyslexia in the family, and they know they HAVE to learn to read; but if they can’t do it and enjoy it, then their struggle is only going to multiply and compound.
My concern was immediate because I could see that the method of explicit instruction of Reading in the Structured Literacy model did not lend itself to enjoyment. Routine is all well and good to build consistency and certainty and predictability for students, but when it becomes repetitive in every single aspect of the day, the spark dies. The repetition becomes stale. Boring. Students switch off and enter the ‘why-do-we-have-to-do-this” mindset quicker than you can say “I do, we do, you do”.
The ability for a teacher to foster a love for reading is severely diminished. Reading becomes a task and a chore. Reading becomes purely fact gathering about a topic we’re inquiring into as a class (and rarely something that the student is ACTUALLY interested in). There’s no enjoyment. There’s no entertainment. There’s no getting lost in another world of whimsy or relatable characters in gritty situations.
These reservations were almost instant upon being encouraged to teach in this manner, and the writing was on the wall when it was mandated in the curriculum of HOW teachers should be teaching Reading.

A mere year later, on the 20th May 2026, and an unsurprising headline came across my newsfeed.
“Children’s enjoyment of reading, writing and maths drops”.
Curriculum Insights did a study regarding students perceptions of the subjects, their interest in them and their perceived ability in them. They conducted one in 2018/19, interestingly and thankfully around the time that this Science of Learning movement was gaining traction but certainly wasn’t widespread. Upon comparing the results from 2025, there has been significant shifts in the way children see these subjects.

“They showed the percentage of Year 8s who said they did not like reading climbed from 8 percent in 2019, to 11 percent in 2023 and 16 percent in 2025.”
Thats no small feat. In the space of 6 years(the time it takes for a student to go through primary school) the percentage of Year 8 students who do not like reading doubled. Yes. Doubled.
Then there’s the individual mentality. How do the Year 8’s perceive themselves as readers? In 2018/19, 6 percent of the Year 8’s did not agree they were good at reading. This dropped to 4 percent in 2023 before climbing to 13% just two years later.
There’s a similar story for the Year 6 students who were surveyed.

Sue McDowall, a researcher at NZCER surmises some of the findings. There’s a myriad of speculations as to why there is a spike in the lack of enjoyment in reading. She suggests Screen time as one of those possibilities. However, anecdotally, I’d say that screen time has remained vastly the same over the given timeframe. One thing is for certain, that one thing that has changed in that time, is how we are teaching those subjects. She stops short of pointing at Structured Literacy as a reason, but does lay out some important considerations for Reading in education moving forward.

“It really matters. Let’s take reading again as an example. We know there’s a bi-directional relationship between being motivated to read and your achievement as a reader.”. This is what I have been outlining in the paragraphs above. Motivation and achievement are strongly linked in Reading.
“So it’s really important that teachers not only focus on teaching children how to read texts and to make meaning of them and to critically analyse them and to use them to meet their own needs.
“It’s also important that teachers provide children with opportunities to engage with texts and to read for pleasure, to read to meet their own interests and needs, to become motivated readers and see reading as something that they want to do in their own time.”

Further down the article, some are willing to point at Structured Literacy and its possible impact on the enjoyment of reading. Ruth Boyask from Auckland University says “…she had examined the NMSSA data in depth and it showed that children enjoyed reading more if they had control over what they read and less direction from teachers.”
“She said the government’s focus on structured literacy approaches to reading might be affecting that.
“There are differences of approaches that are being promoted within the educational and school environment at the moment that perhaps are moving away from children being more actively involved and engaged in their reading.”

Continuing down the article we see comments from Stephen Lethbridge, an outspoken and well renowned principal in the Auckland region, who I have respect for in my limited interactions with him, who says, whilst it is too early to place sole blame on Structured Literacy, the trends are there:
The principal of Point Chevalier School in Auckland, Stephen Lethbridge, was critical of strict adherence to the structured approach but said it was too early to know if that was driving down children’s love of learning.
“What we do know as good teachers is that having quality books, talking about what kids are learning, especially at Years 4, 5 and 6 we’re getting into talking about themes, talking about what’s going on in stories and that may not be happening as much in the senior school anymore as they are also doing structured literacy at the moment.”

This is happening across the globe. Read this for yourself

• https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/reading-pleasure-5-key-challenges

And that sums it up in a nutshell. Teachers are being pulled in the direction of “Science of Learning”, somewhat blindly (in that I don’t believe half the teachers ‘following’ the research have actually read any of the research – I’m in this camp!), and even more so now that HOW we teach Reading has been mandated in the curriculum (See under the heading ‘Structured literacy approaches’ here). And so, jumping in the pool with both feet, we are drowning the students in explicit instruction, unpacking vocabulary and asking search and find comprehension questions, focusing on fluency and reading out loud in a whole class setting, regardless of what level of reader you are, and completely eliminating any aspect of enjoyment from reading – or even suggesting that reading could be enjoyable at all.

Void of Motivation

Earlier I mentioned about reading for enjoyment and the motivation that comes with it.

Motivation is such a huge factor in learning.

Motivation isn’t something that science can measure. The evidence behind the Science of Learning looks only at what helps the brain to learn, and the most effective practices that utilises these pathways. But I would challenge this and say that those pathways are only open if the student is motivated to learn. A student who isn’t motivated simply isn’t going to learn, regardless of how effective your practice is or what shortcuts into the brain science we utilise.
You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.

Explicit instruction and High-Leverage practices can be implemented all they like, but all the talking from the teacher, the gestures and signals, the focus on the front, will only maintain the attention of the students for as long as they want to give attention.

And attention is not motivation.

I can tell you now, that the students in my class generally dislike spelling. They’ve learned to endure it, and put up and shut up. I’ve worked tirelessly on encouraging the right attitude, to try and circumvent the lack of motivation towards spelling lessons. But there is only so much you can do once they’ve made up their minds.
This is a similar case in Reading, where students are genuinely engaged in their Inquiry and finding out about a topic and making a quiz or a presentation or any number of follow up inquiry tasks. In order to access that, they know they have to do the reading first. So it is done as quickly and reluctantly as possible.

Even that term, ‘High-Leverage’ suggests there is an admission that there is going to be resistance from students, and they need to be ‘leveraged’ into the effective learning that the Science of Learning provides.
You know what circumvents any need for ‘leverage’ with your class?
Motivated students.
And before you try to shift blame that I must not be teaching them enthusiastically enough, or setting the right tone in my class, or not making it interesting for them – It’s not that.

In what seems like a previous life; even though it was only five years ago – I used to teach using a programme called Daily 5. It is a programme developed out of the United States by two teachers who had reached the end of their tether with the copious amount of planning that Reading groups required.
Daily 5 centres around independent choice. Five activities that are designed to increase Literacy practice in students. And through that choice, comes motivation.

It wasn’t perfect by a long shot, and there was a lot of room for opting out. But I’ve seen what motivation looks like. I’ve seen a struggling reader in Year 3, become a competent and independent reader in Year 4 and the only thing that changed was using Daily 5 as my Reading and Writing programme. But the biggest piece of evidence I have for motivation, comes from the students themselves, who on multiple years, have asked; yes, ASKED, to do Daily 5 on the last day of school. I can tell you now, that does not happen with any other reading and writing programme I’ve tried.

Why?

Motivation.

Students had choice. They had agency in their learning. They could choose what they read. They could choose what they wrote. They could choose when they read, and when they wrote.
Through that choice; through that agency – came motivation. In spades.

What choice do students have in explicit instruction?
What choice do students have in a teacher arena?
What choice do students have in any high-leverage functions?

Reservations

These are just a few of the reservations I have about everything to do with the Science of Learning, the Science of Reading, the Science of Writing, the Science of anything and everything.

Don’t get me wrong; despite these reservations, I am still teaching using these methodologies. I am still implementing this because having taught for as long as I have, I am not too proud to acknowledge that I don’t have all the answers. I will give most things a go, because over the course of many years, I’ve yet to find a way to teach that creates amazing progress in low-achieving learners. I do not wish to be a disservice to my students if the evidence and research is accurate and repeatable in many, if not every instance.

But remember; Science is not always the truth.

It’s well known that Science is the opposite of Art. And maybe it’s the fact that I’m a creative, an artist, that has me opposing this despite being told about the mountain of research that supposedly backs the Science of Learning.

It may well be the Science of Learning, but it is, and always will be, the Art of Teaching.