ResearchPDF Available

Teachers’ Knowledge about Beginning Reading Development and Instruction

April 2015

DOI:10.13140/RG.2.1.2560.6567

Project: Foundations of Teacher's Disciplinary Knowledge of Langague and Literacy

Authors:

University of California, Berkeley

Cunningham, A.E., & Ryan O’Donnell, C. (2015). Teacher Knowledge in Early Literacy. In Alexander Pollatsek & Rebecca Treiman (Eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Reading. (pp. 447-462). New York: Oxford University Press.

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CHAPTER

447

ose who can, do; those who understand,

teach.

—Shulman, 1986

In most academic subjects, it is obvious to the

layperson why teachers need disciplinary compe-

tence in order to be eﬀective. For example, most

people would agree that it would be diﬃcult to pro-

vide high-quality instruction about the principles

and concepts of physics without deep knowledge

and understanding of those principles and concepts.

A physics teacher must be able to guide students

in the creation of detailed conceptual frameworks,

respond to student inquiries, and provide nuanced

clariﬁcations—tasks that would be impossible with-

out deep understanding of the ﬁeld. However, the

need for discipline-speciﬁc knowledge or compe-

tence can be less obvious when considering a teach-

er’s ability to provide high-quality instruction in

more fundamental academic tasks such as reading.

It is easy to assume that being a skilled reader creates

a suﬃcient knowledge base for providing reading

instruction. Although the connection may be less

obvious, content-speciﬁc knowledge may be par-

ticularly important in the teaching of fundamental

academic skills such as reading and associated skills

including spelling and writing (Brady & Moats,

1997; Wong-Fillmore & Snow, 2003). A convinc-

ing body of empirical research provides strong evi-

dence that successful reading instructors need to

have highly specialized skills and knowledge—skills

akin to those required of a physics teacher, but

speciﬁc to literacy (Connor, Son, Hindman, &

Morrison, 2005).

High-quality reading instruction is partially

deﬁned by the knowledge that teachers of read-

ing must possess to provide eﬀective instruction

for their students (Snow, Burns, & Griﬃn, 1998;

National Early Literacy Panel, 2008; National

Reading Panel, 2000). Speciﬁcally, the research

suggests that, like teachers of physics, teachers of

reading require domain-speciﬁc knowledge and

expertise—expertise, for example, in the language of

instruction, knowledge about reading development

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the body of disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge required to provide

high-quality beginning reading instruction to young children. The chapter examines quality literacy

instruction from a historical perspective, reviews what science tells us about the successful teaching of

reading, explores why teachers are not consistently teaching beginning reading in ways that are aligned

with best practices, and provides recommendations for how the eld can support teachers in developing

the knowledge needed to improve student reading outcomes. The goal is to provide research-based

suggestions for strengthening both the content and delivery of teacher professional development in the

area of literacy, and to demonstrate that these suggestions have the power to affect child outcomes.

Key Words: teacher knowledge, teacher education, professional development, reading, word recognition

Anne E. Cunningham and Colleen Ryan O’Donnell

Teachers’ Knowledge about Beginning

Reading Development

and Instruction

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448 TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE ABOUT BEGINNING READING

and its component skills, and the ability to use that

knowledge in educational encounters with children

(Connor et al., 2005; Cunningham & Zibulsky,

2009; Cunningham, Etter, Platas, Wheeler, &

Campbell, in press; Foorman & Moats, 2004).

e content knowledge required for eﬀective

instruction and intervention in the United States

includes knowledge of the American English spell-

ing system. English is a morphophonemic or deep

alphabetic orthography (Venezky, 1999), which

means that its spelling is bound by meaning (as in

magician) as well as sound (as in magic). Although

its spellings map onto speech sounds quite predict-

ably, especially for words encountered during the

earliest years of reading instruction, the correspon-

dences can be complex and variable. In order to

provide explicit and complete explanations of both

predictable and less predictable relationships (only

some of which are caused by meaning overriding

predictable sound-symbol correspondences), we

argue that teachers must be knowledgeable about

the complex English spelling system (Moats, 1994;

Wong-Fillmore & Snow, 2003). Because decoding

problems underlie the diﬃculties of most primary

grade students who struggle with reading (Catts,

Hogan, & Adlof, 2005), explicit and accurate word

recognition instruction is necessary. Instruction

of sound-symbol correspondences is particularly

important, as well as instruction about less predict-

able words that are of high frequency (such as was

or from). Knowledge of the spelling system, along

with facility in methods known to be eﬀective in

teaching it, is fundamental background knowledge

for teachers. us a prerequisite knowledge base

for the delivery of high-quality beginning read-

ing instruction in the United States must include

understanding reading development, linguistic con-

cepts, and features of the English language and its

spelling. is type of specialized disciplinary knowl-

edge, referred to as pedagogical content knowledge by

Shulman (1987), captures the particular amalgam

of disciplinary knowledge and pedagogy needed to

eﬀectively teach a skill such as literacy.

Equipped with the understanding that there is

indeed a prerequisite knowledge base for the deliv-

ery of quality literacy instruction, a complementary

question is whether the average teacher recognizes

the need for these competencies, possesses the

required knowledge, and values the pursuit of this

knowledge. e goal of this chapter is to review the

literature regarding the disciplinary and pedagogi-

cal knowledge that is necessary to teach beginning

reading in English to young children (see Goldman

& Snow, this volume, for discussion of teaching for

adolescents, what teachers know, what informa-

tion they lack, and what further opportunities they

need in order to acquire this critical knowledge.

We begin by examining quality reading instruction

from a historical perspective, review what science

tells us about the successful teaching of reading, and

then deﬁne and contextualize aspects of learning to

read and discuss teachers’ need for knowledge of

American English spelling system. We then outline

the prerequisite knowledge base for the delivery of

quality beginning literacy instruction, explore why

teachers are not consistently teaching reading in

ways that are aligned with best practices, and pro-

vide recommendations for how the ﬁeld can sup-

port teachers in developing knowledge needed to

improve student reading outcomes.

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High quality reading instruction makes a diﬀer-

ence in the literacy development and performance

of students, and in this section we discuss the nature

of such instruction.

Historical Perspectives on Quality

Reading Instruction

To provide context for our discussion of the cur-

rent understanding of quality reading instruction,

a brief historical perspective on the factors that

have traditionally driven reading instruction in the

United States may be helpful. For the better part of

the twentieth century, prominent ﬁgures in the ﬁeld

of education debated vehemently about the most

eﬀective way to teach children to read (Chall, 1967,

1992; Stanovich & Stanovich, 1995). eorists and

educators generally adopted one of two perspectives

with respect to their thinking about how children

learn to read, and what unit of language (i.e., the

sentence, word, or phoneme) should be the focus of

instruction. In one camp were those who advocated

a whole language approach, arguing that learning to

read is analogous to learning to speak and that the

most eﬀective means of teaching children to read

is to immerse them in print, eschewing more ana-

lytic approaches (Goodman, 1986 Smith, 1971).

In the other camp were those who subscribed to

the skill-based and more analytic phonics approach,

which involves the direct teaching of letter-sound

correspondences and combinations of letters and

their corresponding sounds. ose in this camp

emphasized the importance of providing children

with direct instruction in the alphabetic principle.

According to the alphabetic principle, letters and

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449 TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE ABOUT BEGINNING READING

combinations of letters are the symbols used to

represent the speech sounds of a language based on

systematic and predictable relationships between

written letters, symbols, and spoken words (Adams,

1990; Bond & Dijkstra, 1967; Chall, 1967; Ehri,

this volume).

Toward a Scientiﬁc Deﬁnition

of Quality Reading Instruction

Because the ﬁeld of education in the 1970s and

1980s was yet to be inﬂuenced by the idea that

instruction should be guided by scientiﬁc inquiry

and converging empirical evidence, educators in the

United States were easily persuaded by movements

that were driven predominantly by deeply rooted

philosophical perspectives, observation, and per-

sonal experience (Stanovich, 2000). Across much of

his writing, Stanovich (e.g., 1993) maintained that

a reliance on a political/ideological rather than a sci-

entiﬁc model for making instructional decisions has

created endless problems for reading education. He

argued that the extreme pendulum swings that have

characterized reading education in particular might

be avoided by equipping teachers with a scientiﬁc

model of decision-making. Concomitantly, the

end of the twentieth century brought nationwide

concern in the United States regarding academic

achievement, especially among disadvantaged

students (Lyon, 1999a; National Assessment of

Educational Progress, 1995). As a result, there was a

push to end the “reading wars” and identify, from a

scientiﬁc perspective, the most eﬀective approaches

to reading instruction.

Research Regarding the Critical Features

of a Quality Reading Curriculum

One of the most notable large-scale investiga-

tions in the United States was conducted by the

National Research Council (NRC) in 1998. Noting

the increasing demand for literacy in a techno-

logically advanced society and the repercussions

for those who have low levels of literacy, the U.S.

Department of Education and the US Department

of Health and Human Services asked the National

Academy of Sciences to establish a committee

focused on determining, from an empirical perspec-

tive, how to best support the reading development

of children and prevent reading diﬃculties. e

committee reviewed the research on reading devel-

opment and instruction, the factors associated with

reading failure, and the interventions and instruc-

tional approaches known to prevent reading diﬃ-

culties and promote optimal reading outcomes. In

summarizing the results of their research, the com-

mittee argued that a greater focus must be placed

on improving the quality of reading instruction for

both struggling readers and beginning readers. ey

noted that, although the needs of struggling read-

ers vary depending upon their skills and abilities,

eﬀective teachers use evidence-based materials and

strategies to craft an appropriate mix of learning

opportunities for every student. e NRC (1998)

argued that the ability to craft an ideal combination

of instructional techniques requires, at a minimum,

deep knowledge and understanding of reading

development as well as familiarity and facility with

the pedagogical strategies known to be most eﬀec-

tive in supporting reading development (or remedi-

ating delay).

Multiple skills have been shown to be essential

for successful reading acquisition. ese include

phonological awareness (the ability to detect and

manipulate the sounds or phonemes in language),

print knowledge (the combination of elements of

alphabet knowledge, concepts about print, and

early decoding), ﬂuency (the ability to quickly and

eﬃciently process text), vocabulary, background

knowledge, and comprehension (the ability to derive

meaning from written text). For beginning reading

acquisition, the NRC (1998) report highlighted the

importance of accurate word identiﬁcation and the

role of explicit instruction to help children develop

an appreciation for the sound structure of language

to facilitate decoding. is included knowledge of

speciﬁc letter-sound correspondences, common

spelling patterns, and high-frequency irregular

words. Additionally, according to the NRC report,

repeated opportunities to practice both silent and

oral reading in high-quality engaging texts promote

children’s reading ﬂuency. Moreover, when chil-

dren receive explicit instruction in comprehension

strategies, their understanding of texts is facilitated.

Finally, the facilitative eﬀects of reading exposure

across a wide variety of topics provide a level of dis-

tributed practice that promotes ﬂuency and read-

ing comprehension. Such exposure across a variety

of texts further promotes children’s vocabulary and

conceptual knowledge.

Research Regarding the Pedagogical

Methods Known to be Eﬀective

in Supporting Student Learning

e report of the NRC (1998) provides more

than a theoretical approach to reading instruction.

It draws attention to the fact that teachers must

have deep understanding of the process of reading

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CUNNINGHAM, O’DONNELL 450

development and provides a synthesis of the research

supporting the claim that teachers must be able to

provide quality instruction in ﬁve areas: phonologi-

cal awareness, phonics, ﬂuency, comprehension, and

oral language development including vocabulary.

Although the report of the NRC (1998) provides

an analysis of the skills, environments, and experi-

ences that are critical to the acquisition of reading,

the committee did not address the speciﬁc instruc-

tional approaches that are most eﬃcacious in bring-

ing about positive outcomes. us, Congress asked

the National Institute of Child Health and Human

Development (NICHD), in collaboration with

the Secretary of Education, to convene a panel of

experts to review the research on reading instruction,

including the eﬀectiveness of common approaches

to teaching children to read. e National Reading

Panel (2000) (NRP) engaged in a comprehensive

review of the major variables found to contribute

to skilled reading. Based on the consensus synthesis

of the NRC (1998), the NRP (2000) focused on

research pertaining to word recognition (i.e., phono-

logical awareness, learning the alphabetic principle

through phonics instruction, vocabulary, ﬂuency,

and comprehension). is work diﬀered from the

NRC (1998) report in that it attempted to synthe-

size experimental and quasi-experimental work in

reading instruction through a meta-analysis of the

research on reading instruction. Meta-analyses are

eﬀective tools for summarizing the research in a spe-

ciﬁc area in that they provide a statistical analysis of

the results of multiple individual studies and inte-

grate ﬁndings more rigorously than traditional nar-

rative or descriptive review methods (Glass, 1976).

e NRP (2000) concluded that there was an

impressive body of converging evidence in the area

of the word recognition to guide the ﬁeld. e

meta-analysis suggests that speciﬁc skills must be

mastered along the course of reading development

and that not all strategies or forms of instruction are

eﬀective for all students at all levels of development.

For example, the NRP found that teaching chil-

dren to manipulate phonemes in words was highly

eﬀective and that teaching phonemic awareness

improves reading signiﬁcantly more than instruc-

tion that does not include instruction in segment-

ing and blending phonemes. Moreover, this ﬁnding

extends to a variety of learners across a range of

grade and age levels. Likewise, after reviewing 38

independent studies on the teaching of phonics, the

NRP (2000) found that systematic phonics instruc-

tion beneﬁts students in kindergarten through sixth

grade who are having diﬃculty learning to read.

Yet phonics instruction had the greatest impact for

students in kindergarten through second grade. e

NRP argued, based on converging evidence from a

variety of studies, that explicit, systematic phonics

instruction that includes phonological awareness is

an essential part of a beginning reading curriculum.

In addition to word recognition, the NRP

(2000) reviewed data on reading ﬂuency and com-

prehension. One instructional procedure they

found to be highly eﬀective was guided repeated oral

reading, which encourages students to read pas-

sages orally with systematic and explicit guidance

and feedback from teachers. e NRP reviewed

16 studies of this approach and found that guided

repeated oral-reading procedures had signiﬁcant

beneﬁts (weighted eﬀect size average of 0.41) for

the development of word recognition, ﬂuency,

and comprehension across a range of grade levels.

Furthermore, these results apply to all students,

including those having diﬃculty reading. e NRP

also reviewed 205 independent studies of reading

comprehension and found that text comprehension

improved when readers actively related the ideas in

print to their own knowledge. ere was substantial

evidence to suggest the need for direct instruction

in text comprehension strategies such as question-

ing, summarizing with words and pictures, drawing

maps of stories, cooperative work, and monitoring

one’s own comprehension. It was determined that

a combination of comprehension strategies was

most eﬀective. Supporting reading comprehension

through vocabulary development—both explicit

teaching of vocabulary and incidental exposure to

vocabulary—was also found to be critical.

Across a number of domains, the National

Reading Panel (2000) provided speciﬁc informa-

tion about which instructional strategies were most

eﬀective at which level of development, for which

speciﬁc reading skills, and with which types of stu-

dents (e.g., typically developing children, children

at risk for reading failure, and second language

learners). ese detailed ﬁndings highlight the

importance of ensuring that teachers have a deep

knowledge base that can be skillfully woven into

the acts of teaching—from explicit instructional

opportunities to the ability to supply fruitful expla-

nations, analogies, examples, and materials to each

student at the right time. at is, if teachers are to be

eﬀective, they must be equipped to evaluate, under-

stand, and respond to each student’s instructional

needs. us, when it comes to having demonstrated

competence in reading instruction, it is insuﬃcient

for a teacher to be able to identify the essential

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451 TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE ABOUT BEGINNING READING

components of an eﬀective reading curriculum or

deﬁne literacy-related terms. Instead, competence

in teaching reading entails a wider variety of factors.

In the area of word recognition, the primary focus

of this chapter, teachers of beginning reading in the

United States must possess a good knowledge about

the American English spelling system to be able

to provide this level of instruction (Moats, 1994;

Brady & Moats, 1997).

e Need for a Deep Knowledge of the

American English Spelling System

Expert teaching of reading requires knowledge

of language structure, and in this section we discuss

the nature of American English spelling and teach-

ers’ knowledge about it.

e Complex American English

Spelling System

English is considered a deep orthography because

it has a lower degree of letter-sound correspon-

dence than many other alphabetic writing systems

(Besner & Smith, 1992). is letter-sound irregu-

larity leads to a complex spelling system, which is

the main hurdle for beginning readers. e com-

plex letter-sound system of English must be taught

because it is not necessarily intuitive to beginning

readers. Although describing each rule in the spell-

ing system is beyond the scope of this chapter, two

main concepts of the American English spelling sys-

tem are discussed below.

Cummings (1988) suggested that spelling rules

are of at least two types, tactical and procedural.

Ta c t i c a l r u l e s cover the rules for letter–sound cor-

respondence and contextual constraints of spell-

ing. For example, there are a number of ways to

spell the /k/ sound (i.e., ‹c›, ‹k›, ‹ck›, ‹ch›, ‹q›, and

‹cq›), which, interestingly, depend on the context

in which the phoneme occurs. Procedural rules

govern the way preﬁxes, bases, and suﬃxes com-

bine to form written words. In other words, pro-

cedural rules underlie the morphological structure

of spelling. For example, the spelling of “running”

is run+n+ing rather than run+ing, the doubling

of the n serving to reinforce the pronunciation

of the ﬁrst syllable as closed (run) not open (ru).

Cummings notes, “the important products of these

tactical and procedural rules are correspondences,

the conventionalized relationships that exist

between sounds and their spellings” (p. 10). ese

relationships assist beginning readers learning new

words, and instruction about these relationships

should be based on a solid understanding of how

the spelling system works (see Kessler & Treiman,

this volume).

Knowledge of the Spelling System

Is Not Intuitive for Teachers

e knowledge and skills required to imple-

ment an eﬀective early literacy curriculum are

not necessarily intuitive to skilled readers. Once a

reader becomes ﬂuent, attention moves away from

code translation toward comprehension (Oakhill,

Berenhaus, & Cain, this volume). e vast major-

ity of teachers became skilled readers far too long

ago to rely on their intuitive knowledge of pho-

nology and orthography as guides for instruction.

Knowledge of conventional spelling can obscure

the ability to attend to language at the sound level,

thus making a teacher believe, for instance, that /s/

is the third sound in the word music rather than

/z/. Consequently, awareness of subtleties of word

structure needed to guide students is, ironically,

often obscured by the teacher’s personal reading

competencies.

In her seminal study, Moats (1994) found that

teachers’ knowledge of phonology, orthography,

and morphology was “surprisingly poor”. She

was one of the ﬁrst to suggest that many teachers

“understand too little about spoken and written

language structure to be able to provide suﬃcient

instruction in these areas” (p. 81). is does not

mean that teachers lack reading and spelling abil-

ity; instead, her initial results suggested that teach-

ers’ own literacy does not guarantee them detailed

insights into structural aspects of phonology,

orthography, and morphology. For example, when

administered a series of multiple choice questions,

Moats (1994) found that only 27% of the teach-

ers could successfully count the number of mor-

phemes in a word (e.g., salamander = 1, pies = 2,

unbelievable=3). Also, only 10% could identify a

consonant cluster (i.e., two or three consonants

that blend together to make a distinct consonant

sound such as /sk/ in scratch and /st/ in ﬁrst), and

0% consistently identiﬁed consonant digraphs

(i.e., two consonant letters that together make a

single sound such as /θ/ in think). ere was like-

wise substantial evidence that many experienced

teachers have misconceptions about the principles

of grapheme-phoneme correspondence, such as

the number of ways to spell /k/, the reason for

doubling the ‹m› in words such as comment and

commitment, and the way in which the following

vowel signals whether the letter ‹g› is pronounced

as /g/, /dʒ/, or /ʒ, as in god, gem, and rouge.

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CUNNINGHAM, O’DONNELL 452

Subsequent studies provided converging evidence

that teachers generally lack suﬃcient knowledge of

many of the linguistic concepts needed to success-

fully teach beginning readers (e.g., Bos, Mather,

Dickson, Podhajski, & Chard, 2001; Cunningham,

Zibulsky, & Callahan 2009; Cunningham, Perry,

Stanovich, Stanovich, & Chappell, 2001; Piasta,

Connor, Fishman, & Morrison, 2009). ese stud-

ies have similarly shown that teachers have diﬃculty

counting phonemes and morphemes in words, rec-

ognizing phonetically irregular words, classifying

words by syllable type (open, as in hi, closed as in him,

r-controlled as in bird, silent-e as in mate, vowel team

as in bread, consonant-le, as in lit/tle), and under-

standing how syllable-division patterns aﬀect pro-

nunciation (for example, a vowel-consonant-vowel

(VCV) sequence can be divided in two ways to

produce diﬀerent syllable types—VC/V, as in wom/

an [the ﬁrst syllable is closed] and V/CV, as in hu/

man [the ﬁrst syllable is open]). e implications

of this are that teachers are limited in their ability

to interpret and respond to students’ errors, pick

appropriate examples for teaching decoding and

spelling, eﬀectively organize and sequence instruc-

tion, use morphology to demystify various aspects

of spelling, and integrate the components of literacy

instruction (Cunningham, Zibulsky, Stanovich, &

Stanovich, 2009; Moats, 1999).

Why Teachers Need Deep Knowledge

of the American English Spelling System

To illustrate how limited knowledge of these

concepts may result in weak instruction, con-

sider the following examples. A teacher who can-

not consistently count phonemes in a word might

mistakenly believe that a child who spelled exit as

‹eksit› was not successfully representing each of the

sounds in the spoken word in the spelling. A teacher

who mistakenly believes that /θ/ is a blend of /t/

and /h/ might not provide corrective feedback to

a student who attempts to sound out the written

word thin by saying, /t/ /h/ / ɪ/ /n/. A teacher

who does not know that ‹c› is pronounced like /s/

when followed by the letters ‹e›, ‹i›, and ‹y› is less

equipped to support a student who haphazardly

uses the sounds /k/ and /s/ when decoding. Or a

teacher who is unable to consistently recognize an

irregular word as irregular may cause confusion by

including the word give as an example of a typical

word with a silent ‹e› or encouraging a student to

sound out the word was. ese practices are prob-

lematic given that, as mentioned earlier, the ability

to decode words is the source of reading diﬃculty

among many beginning readers (Catts et al., 2005;

Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997). Without train-

ing, many teachers cannot explain the underlying

system of the English spelling system to students

(Treiman, Kessler, & Evans, 2007).

What Teachers Know

BCPVU-JUFSBDZ*OTUSVDUJPO

As compared to disciplines such as mathemat-

ics and social studies, studies of teachers’ declarative

knowledge in the domain of literacy are not well

developed. With only a few exceptions, the majority

of research in this area has occurred within the last

two decades (Bos et al., 2001; Brady et al., 2009;

Cunningham et al., 2001; Mather, Bos, & Babur,

2001; McCutchen et al., 2002; Moats, 1994).

ere has recently been a substantial increase in

the amount of research going beyond the docu-

mentation of knowledge levels to investigating the

underlying factors related to variations in teacher

knowledge as they relate to classroom practice (e.g.,

Cheesman, McGuire, Shankweiler, & Coyne, 2009;

Cunningham, Perry, Stanovich, & Stanovich, 2004;

Mather et al., 2001; Lopes, Spear-Swerling, Gabriela

Velasquez, & Zibulsky, 2014; Spear-Swerling,

Brucker, & Alfano, 2005).

For example, Mather et al. (2001) examined the

potential impact of years of experience on teach-

ers’ attitudes and knowledge of eﬀective class-

room practices for the teaching of reading. ey

explored teachers’ awareness of the importance of

direct, explicit, code-based literacy instruction and

their knowledge of phonics terminology, such as

consonant blend, diphthong, digraph, and schwa.

Speciﬁcally, 293 teachers attending a university to

receive their teaching credential (preservice teach-

ers) and 131 teachers in the ﬁeld (in-service teach-

ers) were asked to complete a rating scale inquiring

about their beliefs about various practices in lit-

eracy instruction along with an assessment of their

knowledge of the structure of language. Results of

the study suggested that more experienced teachers

generally had a more positive view of the role that

explicit, code-based instruction plays in supporting

the reading development of children. Mather and

her colleagues hypothesized that this ﬁnding might

indicate that experiences with beginning and strug-

gling readers increased teachers’ appreciation for the

importance of code-based instruction. Less encour-

aging was that neither group of teachers had a clear

understanding of the importance of letter-sound

correspondences as a foundation for accurate word

recognition. Instead, the large majority of teachers

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453 TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE ABOUT BEGINNING READING

believed that the use of context was the most ben-

eﬁcial strategy for identifying an unknown word.

Moreover, consistent with the ﬁndings of Moats

(1994), neither preservice nor in-service teach-

ers had suﬃcient knowledge of the phonological,

orthographic, and morphological structures of the

English language to eﬀectively teach reading at a

basic, code-based level. In other words, although

experience may have supported teachers in the

development of an appreciation for the importance

of code-based instruction, it had less impact on the

development of the knowledge required to success-

fully provide that instruction.

%P5FBDIFST,OPX8IBUǰFZ%POU,OPX

It is counterintuitive to think that teachers might

recognize the importance of a particular instruc-

tional approach yet fail to develop their own skills

in a manner that would enable them to provide

that instruction. However, this recognition may

be an important precursor to knowledge gain, and

it is therefore crucial to evaluate whether teachers

are aware of what they do not know (Cunningham

et al., 2004). Cunningham et al. argued that it

is only when individuals recognize gaps in their

knowledge that they are inclined to seek out and

attend to the information they do not possess.

Well-calibrated thinking about one’s own knowl-

edge has signiﬁcant consequences in terms of how

likely one is to improve the quality of instruction by

targeting the areas of weakness through professional

development.

To investigate this aspect of teachers’ knowledge,

Cunningham and her colleagues (2004) assessed the

actual and perceived reading-related subject matter

knowledge of 722 teachers of kindergarten through

third-grade pupils. e researchers evaluated teach-

ers’ actual knowledge through the use of direct mea-

sures of knowledge of phonemic awareness (e.g.,

the number of speech sounds heard in the word

exit=5 and sun=3), and phonics (multiple choice

questions related to concepts such as syllables and

speech sounds). Perceived knowledge was evaluated

by asking teachers to respond to the following ques-

tions: How would you describe your current skill

level, based on past success, in your (1) knowledge

of children’s literature, (2) ability to provide instruc-

tion in phonemic awareness, and (3) ability to pro-

vide instruction in phonics? Teachers were asked

to make one of four choices: (1) no experience,

(2) minimal skills, (3) proﬁcient, or (4) expert.

Based on their responses, two subgroups of teach-

ers were identiﬁed for each category of knowledge.

Consistent with previous research, teachers had

limited knowledge in all these domains. However,

this study made an additional contribution to the

literature: the majority of teachers overestimated

their levels of knowledge in word recognition, but

not children’s literature. Teachers were particularly

poorly calibrated in the essential domains of pho-

nemic awareness and phonics, with the majority

of kindergarten to third-grade teachers failing to

recognize the limits of their knowledge of skills

known to be critical to quality literacy instruction.

Spear-Swerling et al. (2005) replicated this study

and obtained similar ﬁndings for general and special

educators (teachers who educate atypical students).

e limits of teacher knowledge in this area are

not unique to elementary school teachers. Given

their involvement with children at a critical time

of language development, teachers of children

aged three to ﬁve in preschool represent an impor-

tant bridge to literacy acquisition. ey are in a

unique position to begin helping children develop

an awareness of the linguistic elements of language.

As the demands of schooling and literacy increase,

preschool teachers are increasingly called on to pro-

vide explicit and systematic instruction that helps

students develop the phonological skills necessary

for later efﬁcient word recognition. Cunningham,

Zibulsky, and Callahan (2009) examined the

knowledge of early childhood educators to deter-

mine whether they possess the necessary compe-

tencies to guide the literacy development of their

students. Similar to the results of studies investi-

gating the knowledge of elementary school teach-

ers, Cunningham, Zibulsky, and Callahan (2009)

found that preschool teachers lack the disciplinary

knowledge required to promote early literacy and

also overestimate what they know. e researchers

made the case that overconﬁdence in one’s ability to

teach young children essential language and literacy

skills creates a potential obstacle for seeking addi-

tional information or professional training.

Attitudes Toward the Teaching of Phonics

e elusiveness of foundational concepts of lan-

guage may aﬀect teachers’ attitudes about their

instructional responsibilities. Cunningham, Zibulsky,

Stanovich, et al. (2009) investigated ﬁrst-grade teach-

ers’ priorities and preferences in beginning reading

instruction, and showed that this group’s preferred

time allocation for instruction typically did not

conform to models of reading instruction substanti-

ated by the National Reading Panel report (2000).

Cunningham, Zibulsky, Stanovich, et al. (2009)

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CUNNINGHAM, O’DONNELL 454

found that teachers preferred to spend their reading

instruction time on literature-based activities and

independent reading and writing. Although teach-

ers with more knowledge of letter-sound correspon-

dences were somewhat more inclined to spend time

teaching phonics, the majority of teachers did not

allocate their time in ways consistent with research

recommendations. Surprisingly, even special educa-

tion teachers’ overall content knowledge was quite

low and they did not favor intensive code-based

instruction for struggling readers. ese ﬁndings

have been replicated by Lopes et al. (2014).

*NQBDUPG5FBDIFST,OPXMFEHF

on Practices and Student Outcomes

In response to evidence that teachers lack the

knowledge to provide quality instruction in early

literacy, research eﬀorts turned toward investiga-

tions of the relationship between teachers’ knowl-

edge, classroom practices and students’ outcomes.

McCutchen et al. (2002) proposed that if knowl-

edge of phonology is essential for children as they

acquire literacy (Adams, 1990; Cunningham &

Stanovich, 1997; National Reading Panel, 2000),

then knowledge in this area must likewise be

important for teachers. ey examined the con-

tent knowledge of teachers of children ages six to

nine in phonology, evaluating the extent to which

teachers’ knowledge varied based on grade level

or classroom placement (i.e., regular education

vs. classrooms of children with special needs) and

investigated the impact of teacher knowledge on

student’s learning.

Results of this study provided further evidence

that all grade level teachers generally lack suﬃcient

knowledge of phonology (McCutchen et al., 2002).

Furthermore, signiﬁcant relationships were observed

between teacher content knowledge and instruc-

tional practices. Across all three grades, teachers’

reading-related content knowledge was correlated

with their observed instructional practices. For

example, knowledge of phonology was related to the

instructional practices utilized in focusing children’s

attention on sounds and letter-sound relationships.

However, in exploring the relationship between

teachers’ content knowledge and student outcomes

signiﬁcant relationships were only observed between

kindergarten teachers’ phonological knowledge and

their students’ reading achievement (i.e., the more

teachers knew about phonology, the better the per-

formance of their students). is linkage was not

observed among ﬁrst- and second-grade teachers.

e researchers argued this ﬁnding may be due to

methodological reasons. ey also noted that the

link between kindergarten teachers’ phonological

knowledge and their students’ reading performance

was troubling because overall, teachers’ phonologi-

cal knowledge was quite low.

Spear-Swerling and Brucker (2004) conducted

a study involving 147 novice teachers of special

education students. ey examined the impact of

teacher training and direct instruction emphasizing

basic linguistic concepts on teacher knowledge and

the progress of their students in the development

of basic reading and spelling skills. Teacher instruc-

tion was focused on the importance of systematic

and explicit teaching of word decoding to begin-

ning readers and children with reading diﬃculties.

Teachers were also taught about the characteristics

of language that are reﬂected in the writing system

such as phonemes, graphemes, and morphemes.

Additional central concepts included phonemic

awareness, the role of orthographic and morphe-

mic units in reading and spelling, common syllable

types in English, multi-syllable words, and com-

mon phonetically irregular words. e results of the

study suggested that teachers who received direct

instruction about the English spelling system had

greater knowledge of how writing reﬂects language

than teachers who had not received such instruc-

tion. A similar pattern of results were observed by

McCutchen, Green, Abbott, and Sanders (2009)

following teacher training among a sample of teach-

ers of older students (ages 10–12 years old). ey

found that teachers’ linguistic knowledge uniquely

predicted lower-performing students’ end-of-year

performance in reading, spelling, writing, and

vocabulary.

Although some of the data suggest a link

between teacher knowledge and student outcomes,

investigations of this nature have also produced

null results. For example, two experimental studies

by Carlisle and her colleagues (Carlisle, Correnti,

Phelps, & Zeng, 2009; Carlisle, Kelcey, Rowan, &

Phelps, 2011) demonstrated only small and nonsig-

niﬁcant relationships between teachers’ knowledge

of early literacy and students’ performance on tests

of decoding, word recognition and reading compre-

hension. In interpreting these results, the research-

ers point to methodological weaknesses in the ﬁeld’s

approach to studying teacher knowledge and to

the complexity of the factors that inﬂuence teacher

knowledge acquisition. For example, Carlisle and

colleagues highlight the potential for limited align-

ment between measures of teacher knowledge (e.g.,

knowledge of linguistics) and their knowledge of

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455 TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE ABOUT BEGINNING READING

how to eﬀectively embed this information into

their reading instruction (e.g., understanding of

how to eﬀectively utilize knowledge of linguistics

in instructing students, or what Shulman, 1987

described as pedagogical content knowledge).

Piasta et al. (2009) sought to examine these link-

ages between teacher knowledge, classroom prac-

tice, and student growth. ey examined ﬁrst-grade

teachers’ knowledge about early literacy concepts

such as phonological awareness and the alpha-

betic principle, the amount and type of decoding

instruction teachers provide, and their students’

outcomes. Piasta et al. hypothesized that teachers’

knowledge impacts students’ outcomes through the

type of instruction teachers provide. eir results

suggested that students’ gains were predicted by the

interaction between the teachers’ knowledge and

the amount of explicit decoding instruction stu-

dents received. Students with more knowledgeable

teachers demonstrated stronger gains with increased

time in explicit instruction. Conversely, even with

an explicit code-focused curriculum, teachers pos-

sessing low levels of knowledge produced weaker

gains in skill with increased time in explicit phonics

instruction. Piasta et al. maintained that their data

demonstrated that explicit code-focused curricula

cannot replace the expert teaching of highly knowl-

edgeable teachers.

Explaining Gaps in Teacher Knowledge

As the science of reading development has

matured over the past thirty years, a convincing

body of evidence has emerged regarding how chil-

dren learn to read and best practices in the teaching

of reading. is research base is now coupled with a

growing literature suggesting that many teachers do

not possess the knowledge and skills needed to pro-

vide quality early reading instruction. In many ways,

the ﬁeld of teacher education has not kept up with

the literature on reading development and instruc-

tion. Necessarily, we turn to the role that teacher

preparation at the university level may play in the

development of disciplinary content knowledge.

For over a decade, researchers and policymak-

ers have been investigating the types of educational

opportunities that are aﬀorded to and required of

trainee teachers. Lyon (1999b) cautioned that most

teachers receive insuﬃcient formal instruction in

reading development and reading disabilities or

disorders during their undergraduate preparation.

Speciﬁcally, the average teacher completes just one

or two reading courses prior to receiving a degree.

Although noted to be insuﬃcient, the statistics

presented by Lyon also beg the question of whether

the courses oﬀered to or taken by preservice teachers

align with our knowledge of instructional best prac-

tices. Additionally, it is unclear whether the content

of these courses provides the necessary instruction in

reading development, the eﬀective components of

literacy instruction, and suﬃcient knowledge of the

English language (Walsh, Glaser, & Wilcox, 2006).

In 2001, a study of teacher preparation programs

was ordered by the National Center for Education

Evaluation and Regional Assistance at the U.S.

Department of Education’s Institute of Education

Sciences (No Child Left Behind Act, 2002). In

addition to a direct evaluation of preservice teach-

ers’ knowledge about the essential components

of early reading instruction, the study included a

survey of preservice teachers’ perceptions of the

extent to which their training programs focused

on the essential components of literacy instruction.

Speciﬁcally, 2,237 preservice teachers from 99 insti-

tutions responded to a survey inquiring about the

degree to which their teacher education programs

emphasized the ﬁve essential components of eﬀec-

tive reading instruction of phonemic awareness,

phonics, ﬂuency, vocabulary, and comprehension

(National Reading Panel, 2000), and provided ﬁeld

based practica. On average, preservice teachers rated

their training programs as placing only little or

moderate emphasis on the essential components of

reading instruction. Interestingly, preservice teach-

ers were twice as likely to report that there was a

stronger focus on the essential components of read-

ing in their ﬁeld experiences, whereas they reported

the opposite emphasis when answering about their

coursework.

e National Council on Teacher Quality

(NCTQ) (2006) also examined what preservice

teachers learn about reading instruction in their

undergraduate teacher preparation programs. In

this study, analyses were not limited to preservice

teacher’s perceptions of their coursework. Rather,

NCTQ (2006) examined the content of coursework

by reviewing the course syllabi and texts for the

reading-related courses required of students train-

ing to be teachers of children ages six to twelve years

old at 72 of the nation’s 1,271 elementary education

programs. Courses were analyzed to assess the extent

to which they provided instruction in the ﬁve essen-

tial components of eﬀective reading instruction.

e results suggested that education schools are

not consistently teaching the principles and prac-

tices that recent evidence has demonstrated to be

eﬀective. Of the 72 randomly selected schools, 85%

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CUNNINGHAM, O’DONNELL 456

earned what the study called a failing grade for their

instruction of students in the scientiﬁc evidence

related to reading development and instruction.

is ﬁnding is noteworthy given that schools could

earn a passing grade even if less than 20% of the

lectures in a reading-related course were devoted to

the science of reading. Additionally, passing grades

merely mandated that course materials reference

each of the ﬁve essential components of reading

instruction and did not require any demonstration

that the information was presented accurately or

suﬃciently. What is perhaps of greater concern is

that much of the instruction discussed approaches

to literacy instruction that were not scientiﬁcally

based as if they were as eﬀective as approaches

which research does support. e NCQT (2006)

report made the additional point that not only are

the majority of teacher candidates not receiving suf-

ﬁcient exposure to scientiﬁcally based methods of

reading instruction but that teacher candidates are

often advised to develop their own unique approach

to teaching reading.

One hypothesized explanation for why teacher

preparation programs are not adequately preparing

their students is that the professors who teach the

students lack suﬃcient awareness or knowledge of

these critical elements of reading development and

instruction. In a 2009 investigation, Joshi et al.

examined whether instructors in teacher train-

ing programs have suﬃcient knowledge of read-

ing development, linguistic concepts, and features

of the English language and spelling system. Joshi

et al. found that although teachers in these train-

ing programs could provide the deﬁnition of and

manipulate syllables, many had insuﬃcient knowl-

edge of phonemes and concepts related to mor-

phemes. In addition, many instructors of preservice

teachers were unable to deﬁne phonological aware-

ness (erroneously identifying it as letter-sound cor-

respondence) and failed to recognize phonics as a

desirable method for beginning reading instruction.

Joshi et al. concluded that professional develop-

ment opportunities for professors and instructors

in teacher preparation programs may be necessary

for ensuring proper training of elementary school

teachers (see also Binks-Cantrell, Washburn, Joshi,

& Hougen, 2012).

Teacher preparation programs are not solely

to blame for the fact that teachers lack suﬃcient

knowledge to provide quality literacy instruction.

In order to be considered highly qualiﬁed under the

laws established in the United States, such as the

Elementary and Secondary Education Act: No Child

Left Behind (2002), teachers must not only hold a

degree from a four-year institution but must also be

fully certiﬁed or licensed by the state in which they

work and demonstrate competency in the core aca-

demic subjects in which they teach. us, teacher

preparation programs do not operate in isolation.

Licensing criteria and licensing exams must also

do their part to verify that teachers have suﬃcient

knowledge. Although in the United States there are

state-by-state diﬀerences in licensing exams and the

requirements for the number of reading courses that

must be taken, research by Stotsky (2009) suggests

that in general, licensing exams do not adequately

assess the extent to which teachers know the critical

information they must possess in order to eﬀectively

teach reading (Wayne & Youngs, 2003).

8IFSF%P8F(P'SPN)FSF

Having established that many teachers lack the

skills to provide quality reading instruction, we

must now address the gaps in teachers’ content

knowledge. Teacher preparation programs are the

ﬁrst line of defense. Highly speciﬁed training in

empirically based understanding of literacy devel-

opment, eﬀective literacy instruction, and the ele-

ments of the English language should be required

components of any teacher preparation program.

However, adjustments to professional education

programs are only eﬀective in ensuring that future

teachers have adequate disciplinary knowledge and

concept mastery. In isolation, this approach fails to

target current educators, some of who may be in

the classroom for 30 or 40 more years. Additionally,

simply targeting preservice teachers fails to antici-

pate that our understanding of the teaching of read-

ing will continue to develop. As a result, we must

also rely on the education of teachers through ongo-

ing professional development.

Developing Eﬀective Professional

Development Interventions

Professional development refers to the acquisition

of skills and knowledge, both for personal develop-

ment and for career advancement. ere are numer-

ous models, including training provided by outside

experts such as consultation and coaching, commu-

nities of practice (educators working collaboratively

to achieve better learning outcome of students), les-

son study (small group, inquiry-based approach),

mentoring, and reﬂective supervision (Kennedy,

2005). Because research demonstrates that iso-

lated professional development experiences, such as

one-day workshops taught by outside professionals,

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457 TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE ABOUT BEGINNING READING

do not generally result in lasting change in teacher

practices and student achievement (for a review see

Joyce & Showers, 1995; Lonigan, Farver, Phillips, &

Clancy-Menchetti, 2011), alternative approaches

to professional development must be explored.

Although it is beyond the scope of this chapter to

address this topic in depth, recent syntheses of adult

learning and teacher development have identiﬁed

several key features of eﬀective professional develop-

ment. Professional development is most successful

when it (1) is intensive and ongoing, (2) includes

a sequence of active learning experiences such as

explaining to a peer what one has learned or prac-

ticing teaching activities that build on each other,

(3) emphasizes speciﬁc skills and goals rather than

general ones, (4) provides opportunities for applica-

tion and practice of newly acquired knowledge and

skills, and (5) incorporates feedback to participants

about their errors or successes as well as reﬂection

and self-assessment (Darling-Hammond, Wei,

Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009; Fukkink &

Lont, 2007).

As the demand in the ﬁeld for skilled and respon-

sive teachers grows, systematic and sustained models

of professional development with the above compo-

nents are needed. An examination of current models

to identify the active features involved in teachers’

development of targeted competencies, leading to

improvements in children’s school readiness, is also

necessary. Because researchers in the ﬁeld of teacher

professional development have called for a shift

away from isolated, single, or one-day workshops

and training as the primary mode of delivery, a

movement toward more sustained models as exem-

pliﬁed by relationship-based professional development

models has grown (Bowman, Donovan, & Burns,

2001; Fukkink & Lont, 2007). Relationship-based

professional development refers to using relation-

ships to improve the quality of adult learning and

can take the form of mentoring, coaching, profes-

sional learning communities, and consultation. e

goal of relationship-based professional development

is to use the skills of experts to provide support

and opportunities for learning to those who are

less experienced, to promote change, and to sup-

port improvement in professional knowledge and

pedagogy (National Council on Compensation

Insurance (NCCI), 2008). Diﬀerences in the type

of relationship-based professional development are

based on the form of relationship, the purpose of

the activity, and how information is shared between

the expert and teachers (NCCI, 2008). Research

suggests that relationship-based professional

development approaches can increase teachers’

knowledge and use of eﬀective classroom practices

(e.g., Cunningham et al., in press; Hepburn et al.,

2007; Isner et al., 2011; Neuman & Cunningham,

2009; Powell, Diamond, Burchinal, &

Koehler, 2010).

In addition to these general features of eﬀective

professional development, research has indicated

that there are additional characteristics of profes-

sional development designed to promote student’s

emergent literacy and language skills. In a recent

review of 37 studies evaluating professional devel-

opment programs focused on emergent literacy and

language among prekindergarten and kindergarten

age students, Zaslow, Tout, Halle, Whittaker, and

Lavelle (2010) identiﬁed several promising prac-

tices. First, successful programs provided teachers

with recommendations for research-based prac-

tices and also encouraged teachers to set their own

goals and engage in self-reﬂection. e provision

of instructional resources was another key element.

Providing teachers with useful, accessible materials

such as activity guides, references for further read-

ing, and summaries of key principles may increase

the likelihood of sustainability and ﬁdelity to the

approach. Another common thread among eﬀective

professional development programs is the notion

of establishing a cohort of educators, often from

the same school, who collaborate toward a shared

long-term goal and learn from each other.

e Teacher Study Group Model

e teacher study group model provides a

framework for incorporating the features of eﬀec-

tive professional development that we have out-

lined. is approach is in keeping with principles of

relationship-based professional development. In this

form of professional development, a small group

of teachers meet regularly with a highly trained,

knowledgeable facilitator. e goal is to work col-

laboratively toward deepening content knowledge

and integrating research-based practices into teach-

ing. Teachers participating in teacher study groups at

the elementary school level reported strong, positive

attitudes toward the experience of being included

in a supportive, collaborative, and reciprocal pro-

fessional learning environment and appreciated the

opportunity to gain knowledge of research-based

strategies to promote children’s literacy develop-

ment (Foorman & Moats, 2004; Gersten, Dimino,

Jayanthi, Kim, & Santoro, 2010).

In addition to teachers’ positive responses to

this approach, teacher study groups have been

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CUNNINGHAM, O’DONNELL 458

shown to increase teachers’ content and pedagogi-

cal knowledge, transform pedagogical practices in

the classroom, and positively inﬂuence child out-

comes (Cunningham et al., in press; Foorman &

Moats, 2004; Gersten et al., 2010; Saunders et al.,

2001). For example, Cunningham et al. (in press)

conducted a study of the teacher study group model

of professional development. eir goal was to

support teachers’ development of the knowledge

and practices that promote children’s emergent

literacy in the preschool classroom. ree sequen-

tial cohorts involving a total of 19 teachers in a

high-need community participated in yearlong

interventions. ere was no comparison group.

Two-hour meetings were held twice monthly, for a

total of 16 sessions over the academic year. In the

biweekly meetings, disciplinary and pedagogical

content knowledge in oral language, phonologi-

cal awareness, and print knowledge was explored.

Outcome measures included teacher knowledge

and observational measures of instructional practice

and child outcomes for 101 randomly selected pre-

school children. Consistent with previous research,

teachers demonstrated low initial levels of knowl-

edge of phonological awareness, and phonologi-

cal awareness activities in classrooms were of low

quantity and quality. However, pre-, and post-test

analyses revealed signiﬁcant changes in teachers’

own phonological awareness ability, content knowl-

edge, and pedagogical content knowledge. Increases

were also observed in the quantity and quality of

phonological awareness activities in the classroom.

e preschool children were assessed on a standard-

ized measure of phonological awareness, the Test of

Preschool Early Literacy (TOPEL; Lonigan, Wagner,

Torgesen, & Raschotte (2007). Before interven-

tion, 64% of the children scored in the below

average range or lower. According to the TOPEL

test developers, scores in this range “indicate that

a child is below the expected developmental trajec-

tory on at least one of the key skills that predict suc-

cess in learning to read and write” (Lonigan et al.,

2007, p. 20). After the intervention, the number

of children who scored below average or lower

decreased to 36%. Paired-sample t-tests compar-

ing pre- and post-test standardized TOPEL scores

indicated that the children’s phonological awareness

abilities improved signiﬁcantly (pretest M = 86.42,

SD = 11.58, posttest M = 91.99, SD = 11.58;

t(100) = 5.12, p < .001). e mean change repre-

sents a movement from the twenty-third percentile

to the thirty-fourth percentile. Although the study

lacks a control group, the results oﬀer initial support

for the use of relationship-based models of profes-

sional development as a means to address many of

the challenges inherent in providing teachers with

the knowledge needed to aﬀect child outcomes in

literacy.

To date, the majority of legislation aimed at

educational reform has focused on improving

student outcomes by mandating quality instruc-

tion. Policymakers must now turn their attention

toward building an infrastructure for supporting

the development of teachers at both the preser-

vice and in-service level in order to ensure that

they are equipped with the skills they need to

provide that quality instruction (Aaron, Joshi, &

Quatroche, 2008).

Conclusion

In an appendix to George Bernard Shaw’s Man

and Superman (1903), he wrote, “He who can, does;

he who cannot, teaches.” It is not known in what ﬁt

of pique George Bernard Shaw wrote these words),

but they have plagued the teaching profession since

they were oﬀered. e statement assumes a com-

plete separation between knowing and teaching, as

if the two were somehow irrevocably separated.

Almost a century later, Lee Shulman (1986)

reframed Shaw’s words to provide a less damning

aphorism: “ose who can, do; those who under-

stand, teach” (p. 14). Here the division between

knowledge and teaching is restored, for as Shulman

suggests, in order to teach, one must know. Shulman

(1986) proﬀers a conception of teaching and teacher

knowledge that includes content knowledge, gen-

eral pedagogical knowledge, curriculum knowl-

edge, pedagogical content knowledge, knowledge

of learners and their characteristics, knowledge of

educational contexts (i.e., the workings of the class-

room, the district, and the character and culture

of the community), and knowledge of educational

ends, purposes, and values.

If we consider the movement toward qual-

ity teaching and quality educational opportuni-

ties, we can see that the split between knowing

and teaching has ﬁnally gone by the wayside: To

teach, one must know. As a research community,

we are well on our way to understanding the types

of educational experiences that students need to

become competent readers. Likewise, we have

made great strides in our understanding of what

teachers must know in order to provide students

with the opportunities that lead to positive out-

comes. Despite these advances, there is much

work to be done. e 2013 National Assessment

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459 TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE ABOUT BEGINNING READING

of Education Progress report on reading (NAEP,

2013) showed that only 34% of US students

scored at the proﬁcient level, suggesting a level

of reading skill commensurate with grade level

expectations. It appears that we have fallen short

in seeing to it that our research serves its ultimate

purpose of informing practice.

e research–practice divide may be knit-

ted together by employing a common metric

or method for educational decision-making.

e ﬁrst step may be to expose teachers to sci-

entiﬁc research on reading in their preservice or

in-service preparation programs (Spear-Swerling

& Sternberg, 2001). By sharing the values and

methods of science—such as gathering evidence

through systematic observation and testing and

considering alternative explanations—powerful

tools for settling disputes and for educational

decision-making will be available to teachers.

As Stanovich (1993) pointed out, reliance on a

political/ideological rather than a scientiﬁc model

for making decisions has hampered the ﬁeld of

reading education. e controversies that have

plagued the ﬁeld would have been better adju-

dicated by equipping teachers with a scientiﬁc

model of decision-making.

e second step in bridging theory and practice

is ensuring that all teachers in the United States are

exposed to the aspects of language discussed in this

chapter. e types of professional development we

provide our preservice and in-service teachers should

be reconsidered. We recognize that the evidence

surrounding the most eﬀective content and meth-

ods to teach teachers is far less robust than the base

of evidence on reading development and instruc-

tion. But an emerging body of research is demon-

strating that certain aspects of language related to

the teaching of reading are elusive concepts to many

teachers. We also recognize that most of the work

examining teachers’ knowledge of their spelling sys-

tem has been conducted in the United States (cf.

Lopes et al., 2014). e relationship between teach-

ers’ knowledge of more shallow orthographies (e.g.,

Spanish, German, Turkish) and children’s reading

growth may be diﬀerent than that observed in the

less transparent English spelling system.

ird, methods to impart this knowledge to

teachers must be explored. Many research-based

professional development programs give teachers

the what to do, but often neglect to provide the why

or how—the critical background knowledge needed

for eﬀective teaching of reading. ere is a growing

recognition that teachers require mentoring in order

to grasp these concepts. Just as teacher–child rela-

tionships are integral to children’s learning (Curby,

Rimm-Kaufman, & Ponitz, 2009; Mashburn et al.,

2008), relationship-based models of professional

development may serve as a means to address many

of the challenges discussed. Recognizing the com-

munal nature of adult learning, and fostering sup-

portive, collaborative, and reciprocal professional

learning environments, may help teachers gain

knowledge of research-based strategies to promote

children’s literacy development.

As Moats argued in her seminal work Teaching

Reading Really is Rocket Science (1999), the ﬁeld

has come to acknowledge the complexities of what

teachers of reading should know and do. Just as we

would not expect a physics teacher to be successful

without deep content knowledge and training from

supportive and knowledgeable mentors, we should

expect the same level of knowledge is necessary for

teachers of reading. Eﬀorts must now be made to

ensure that this critical information makes its way

into the hands of those responsible for the provision

of quality literacy instruction, that is, teachers.

Author Note

is research was supported by the Institute of

Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education,

through the Goal 2 Development & Innovation

Grant R305A090183 to PI Anne Cunningham,

University of California, Berkeley. e opinions

expressed are those of the authors and do not rep-

resent views of the U.S. Department of Education.

We gratefully acknowledge the careful reviews of

this manuscript provided by Dr. Ruth Nathan,

Dr. Jamie Zibulsky, and Yi-Jui Chen.

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