Implications of The Rose Report
In
June 2009 a report was published by Sir Jim Rose entitled, “Identifying and Teaching Children and Young People with Dyslexia and
Literacy Difficulties”.
The Rose report can be read here:
http://publications.dcsf.gov.uk/eOrderingDownload/00659-2009DOM-EN.pdf
Recommendations came from it including training more
specialist dyslexia teachers and using synthetic phonics as the medium for
teaching reading. The emphasis on synthetic phonics comes after looking at
research cited in the report. However, when you look at the bibliography and
read the research cited the picture becomes a little different.
Some of the research is from America and 2 studies are from
the UK. When you read the research it is clear that in all cases they were
comparing different phonic methods of teaching reading. In none of the studies
was any of the children screened for dyslexia.
This study is particularly revealing:
http://www.york.ac.uk/res/crl/nyreadingintervention.html
Click on the option that says:
Click here to download a PDF version of the RI Full Report including Follow-Up
This research was carried out in North Yorkshire.
Page 7 of the PDF says:
Is the R+P intervention suitable for children who are dyslexic?
Rather than targeting individuals who had already been assessed as `dyslexic' the intervention study described above followed a whole class screening procedure. An interesting question, therefore, is what proportion of the sample would fulfil typical criteria used to identify dyslexia?
Data were available from the intervention group at the beginning of the study on two key markers of dyslexia (phoneme awareness and letter sound tasks).
The data are as follows:
letter sound knowledge mean = 15.82/26 (range 3-26)
alliteration mean = 9.53/16 (range 3-16)
phoneme completion mean = 2.71/8 (range 0-8).
Although there was variation in the group, it seems likely that many of the
children could be described as `at-risk' of dyslexia.
Definitions of dyslexia acknowledge that for a minority of children, reading
problems are severe and persistent and response even to effective,
well-implemented intervention is poor. In the R+P intervention study reported
here 28% of the 20-week and 21% of the 10-week Intervention group had standard
scores below 80 at the end of the intervention (2% of the Year 1 population
that was sampled). Moreover, children varied in their responsiveness to the
teaching they received and about a quarter could be defined as treatment
`nonresponders'
These children were typically those
with more severe phonological impairments and poor vocabulary skills, and
although their speed
of processing was broadly within the normal range they tended to have problems
in attention control.
Figure 2 (a graph) shows the progress of the
`non-responders' in the intervention cohort against the progress of those who
responded. Although most children showed improvement Figure 2 shows that, over
the period, non-responders performance went down.
The other interesting UK study, also cited in
the Rose Report as supporting his recommendations, was carried out in
Clackmananshire:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/02/20682/52383
Again, no
pre-screening for dyslexia, again a comparison of different phonic methods;
this time no mention of dyslexia at all. In the conclusions and graphs on the
last page the cohort is described as doing exceptionally well when presented
with synthetic phonics; however…5.6% of the sample cohort are more than 2 years
behind there age for word recognition and a significant 14% are more than 2
years behind for comprehension.
The work of Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte, Rose et al (1999), a
US study, also cited in the Rose Report, compares the usefulness of 3 different
phonologically based methods – it does not mention dyslexia.
The North Yorks study was of an "at risk" group
who had NOT been identified
as dyslexic -- so they did not know which students in their study were dyslexic
or not. The 25% non-responders was the group with the "more severe
phonological impairments" --- and a "phonological impairment"
would be a marker for or key symptom of dyslexia.
So another way of looking at that study is to conclude that
the phonologically based tutoring may help 75% of "at risk" students,
but it is unknown whether it will help dyslexic students at all. Given that
phonological impairment is itself an indication of dyslexia, it is very
possible that the "non-responders" represent the bulk of the truly
"dyslexic" students –so, ideally, a further study would be needed.
One possible interpretation of the North Yorkshire study is
specifically that phonetic tutoring is NOT effective for dyslexic students,
although it appears effective for non-dyslexic, "at risk" students.
The Rose report calls for the education system to say’ “No”
to failure’ but makes no recommendations about what to do to support these
non-responders.
Davis methods work from the premise that phonological
methods will not help dyslexics to learn to read but, rather, are likely to
make reading ever more difficult, though, once a dyslexic is reading, phonics
may have a useful place.
Davis Learning Strategies and Davis Correction Methods can
offer a constructive alternative for those non-responders and does not hinder
the non-dyslexic learner as they learn to read.