The Beacon Fall 2022

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Beacon

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M. Adlof,

PhD, CCC-SLP

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Understanding Dyslexia in the Context of Developmental Language Disorders

By Suzanne M. Adlof and Tiffany P. Hogan

This article was excerpted from its complete version published in Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools October 2018. Used with permission. To read the complete article, visit https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_LSHSS-DYSLC-18-0049

Althoughthe term dyslexia is familiar to most of the lay public, there is no consensus on precise diagnostic criteria. Most definitions of dyslexia agree on primary inclusionary criteria, including marked difficulties with word reading, decoding, and spelling as evidenced by low accuracy and/or fluency on standardized assessments. There is also a general agreement that these difficulties should be inconsistent with or “unexpected” in consideration of other aspects of development, including general intellectual abilities (American Psychiatric Association[APA], 2013; Lyon, Shaywitz, & Shaywitz, 2003; National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, 2017; Tunmer & Greaney, 2010). For example, children with hearing or vision impairment or with neuro developmental syndromes or who have had a prior head injury may experience reading and spelling difficulties as a result, but they would not be considered to have dyslexia. Some definitions further specify that poor instruction should be ruled out as a cause of reading and spelling difficulty (APA, 2013; Lyon et al., 2003). In research and practice, the operationalization of these inclusionary and exclusionary criteria varies widely, leading to sizeable variation in estimated prevalence rates—from as low as 3% to as high as 20% of the population (Rutter et al., 2004; Shaywitz, 1996; Spencer et al., 2014).

One source of confusion concerns perceptions about the oral language abilities of children with dyslexia. On the one hand, dyslexia has been described as a “languagebased” disorder for many years; such descriptions have been focused primarily on

Letter from the Director of The Windward Institute

Whenreading proficiency remains a persistently elusive goal for large numbers of children in this country, immediate action is required. Decades of research in the Science of Reading present a clear path forward; yet, literacy instruction based on research remains out of reach for an unconscionable number of students and their families. The Windward Institute’s mission of increasing childhood literacy rates by disrupting the educational status quo could not be more timely or urgent.

I have arrived at my new appointment as the Director of The Windward Institute after many years of direct work with students, teachers, and families in a variety of roles at The Windward School. I have been privileged to witness firsthand the profound impact of research- and evidence-based practices on literacy development and to work among colleagues deeply committed to bringing translational science to the classroom. (See more about how The Windward Institute is advancing translational science in the article, “The Windward Institute: An Exemplar of Translational Science,” by John J. Russell, EdD.)

At The Windward School, teachers receive extensive training in the framework of intensive intervention described in the Head Lines article by Jamie Williamson, EdS. In our rapidly changing world, instructional time is an increasingly precious commodity. Robust, sustained teacher training rooted in evidence equips educators to deliver the efficacious instruction that should be the norm in our schools, not the exception. An important aspect of this training includes a laser focus on the language of instruction, which is far more nuanced than casual conversation, to support student understanding and facilitate the development of language skills across multiple domains.

In this issue of The Beacon, research by The Windward Institute’s Fall Lecturer, Tiffany Hogan, PhD, sheds light on developmental language disorders and the language basis of dyslexia. Since students with reading difficulties often have more widespread language deficits, this is a critical area of attention for researchers, practitioners, and educators. As Lydia Soifer, PhD, points out in her article, “Language: The Vehicle That Drives Curriculum,” school-based learning is a language-dependent and language-intensive experience. It is therefore imperative that language skills are assessed through a comprehensive lens and that interventions are appropriately targeted and monitored. See Dr. Soifer’s article for practical strategies that can be implemented in the classroom to optimize instructional language and promote language skill development.

Language instruction and teacher training are only two of the themes that run throughout this issue of The Beacon. As you explore the featured articles, I hope that you will join The Windward Institute in its commitment to inform teaching and learning with proven research and to sharing the tools and methodologies with a track record of success.

phonological deficits as a core feature of dyslexia (Lyon et al., 2003; Moats, 2008). On the other hand, there is less clarity about the extent to which other aspects of language development, such as vocabulary, syntax, and discourse, are affected in individuals with dyslexia. Although one line of research has established that dyslexia and developmental language disorder (DLD; Bishop, Snowling, Thompson, Greenhalgh, & CATALISE-2 consortium, 2017) are separate disorders that frequently co-occur (Catts, Adlof, Hogan, & Weismer, 2005), some experts have suggested that the presence of DLD would make word reading difficulties no longer “unexpected” and therefore should exclude a child from the classification of dyslexic (Badian, 1999; Silliman & Berninger, 2011; Spencer et al., 2014; Tunmer & Greaney, 2010). In this article, we consider the language basis of dyslexia from a historical and theoretical perspective drawing from pertinent empirical work. We discuss the overlap of dyslexia and DLD and their relative frequency, followed by clinical implications and directions for future research.

Defining Dyslexia as a “Language Based” Disorder

Contemporary researchers have confirmed Orton and Morgan’s notion of dyslexia as a language-based disorder (Elbro, Borstrøm, & Petersen, 1998; Shaywitz, 1998; Snowling, 1998), based primarily on deficits in the phonological domain. In a 1989 article entitled “Defining Dyslexia as a Language Based Disorder,” Hugh Catts stated, “Dyslexia is a developmental language disorder that involves a deficit(s) in phonological processing. This disorder manifests itself in various phonological difficulties as well as a specific reading disability”(Catts, 1989, p. 50; see also Catts, 1996; Catts & Kamhi, 1999). Explicitly labeling dyslexia as a language-based disorder was, in part, a strong and direct response to the misperception that dyslexia is a visually based disorder (cf. American Academy of Pediatrics, 2009). It is noteworthy that Hinshelwood had also presented strong arguments against a visual deficits explanation for word blindness as early as 1900 (Hinshelwood, 1900). The primary phonological deficit associated with dyslexia negatively impacts the specificity at which sounds are stored and recalled in words as well as an individual’s ability to manipulate sounds in words and connect sounds to letters to read words. There is now an abundance of evidence that children with dyslexia, on average, perform poorly on tasks that involve phonology including phoneme awareness, word and nonword repetition, and word retrieval (see review by Vellutino, Fletcher, Snowling, & Scanlon, 2004).

As we have reviewed, dyslexia is defined as a difficulty with word level reading and spelling skills, which are in turn caused by phonological deficits. However, being a good reader involves more than only reading the words on a page. As conceptualized in the simple view of reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; see also Foorman, Petscher, & Herrera, 2018; Language and Reading Research Consortium, 2015), reading comprehension is the product of accurate and efficient word reading and language comprehension.

Alexis Pochna, EdM Director of The Windward Institute

The language comprehension component (sometimes called “linguistic comprehension” or “listening comprehension”) encompasses all of the linguistic knowledge and skills required for a listener to comprehend a text if it was read aloud, including vocabulary and semantic processing, syntax, inferencing, and discourse. In contrast to the large amount of evidence for phonological deficits in children with dyslexia, the status of their broader language abilities in these domains outside phonology is less clear. Many studies have reported that, in addition to phonological deficits, children with dyslexia also have weaknesses in other aspects of language including vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and discourse, often before the onset of formal reading instruction (e.g., Catts, Fey, Zhang, & Tomblin, 1999; Scarborough, 1990; Snowling, Gallagher, & Frith, 2003). However, two factors complicate the determination of language (dis)abilities in children with dyslexia. The first is variation in how the definition of dyslexia is operationalized for diagnosis. The second is variation in the time of onset of oral language difficulties. Noting the time of onset is important because reading difficulties can themselves cause slower language development, as much of language is learned via reading experience (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997; Huettig, Lachmann, Reis, & Petersson, 2017).

Operationalizing the Definition of Dyslexia

Traditionally, an IQ achievement discrepancy approach was used to operationalize dyslexia definitions for diagnosis for educational or research purposes. Under this approach, children were considered to have dyslexia when their word reading skills, as measured by norm-referenced measures of word reading speed or accuracy, were “discrepant” from their intelligence (Pennington, Gilger, Olson, & DeFries, 1992; Shaywitz, Shaywitz, Fletcher, & Escobar, 1990). Under this approach, it was assumed that the IQ score was an indicator of a child’s potential, and a word reading score that fell significantly below an IQ score was viewed as evidence that the child was not performing at his or her full potential. Also under this approach, IQ was often quantified by a full-scale IQ that was a composite of both verbal and nonverbal IQ scores. Thus, under this approach, children with broad language deficits were less likely to qualify for a dyslexia diagnosis than children with normal language abilities because children with broad language deficits would be unlikely to achieve a high verbal IQ score. Instead, children with IQ scores commensurate with their word reading deficits were often referred to as “garden variety” poor readers, and it was believed that that they would not experience the same benefit from reading interventions as children with dyslexia

(Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Stanovich, 1991).

The IQ achievement discrepancy model fell out of favor for several reasons. First, there were statistical issues: The size of the observed discrepancy would depend on the tests used (i.e., some word reading and IQ tests were easier than others), and because of regression to the mean (i.e., extreme scores are statistically more likely to be preceded or followed by less extreme scores), children with high IQs were more likely to qualify as dyslexic than children with low IQs (Francis et al., 2005). In addition, because reading requires formal instruction, it could take several years for test scores to suggest a “significant” discrepancy between IQ and reading achievement (Fletcher et al., 1998), often delaying access to interventions. Finally, there was a lack of evidence that reading profiles were different between discrepant and nondiscrepant poor readers (Siegel, 1989; Stanovich, 1991), and both groups were able to improve their reading skills when provided an evidencebased intervention (Vellutino, Scanlon, & Jaccard, 2003).

As an alternative to the IQ discrepancy approach, a somewhat more liberal approach to diagnosing dyslexia has been to use an IQ cutoff to rule out low cognitive abilities with no stipulation of a discrepancy between IQ and word reading abilities (Vellutino, Scanlon, & Reid Lyon, 2000; Wimmer, Mayringer, & Landerl, 2000). In practice, this meant that children with dyslexia had low word reading in the presence of “normal” intelligence. Although both verbal and nonverbal IQ scores have been used with this approach (e.g., Casalis, Leuwers, & Hilton, 2012; Zoccolotti et al., 2013), most current diagnostic criteria for dyslexia quantify adequate cognition using only nonverbal IQ measures and a liberal cutoff that does not qualify the child as being “cognitively impaired,” for example, within 2 SDs of the mean (e.g., Alt et al., 2017). Relative to the IQ discrepancy approach, the IQ cutoff approach provides a greater opportunity for children with language deficits beyond the domain of phonology to be identified as having dyslexia because it does not require that a child have a high verbal IQ.

As the field grappled with how to operationalize “average intelligence” in the diagnostic criteria for dyslexia, the importance of “adequate instruction” also came into the forefront. An influential study by Vellutino and colleagues (1996) focused on first-grade students with poor word reading abilities. When these children were provided one semester of high-quality, evidence-based reading instruction, the majority of them showed substantial improvement, such that they were no longer considered poor readers. The smaller group of children that did not respond to treatment showed poorer phonological skills before the onset of instruction than those who did respond. The authors recommended that only those who do not

Noting the time of onset is important because reading difficulties can themselves cause slower language development, as much of language is learned via reading experience.

respond to high-quality, evidence-based reading instruction should be considered reading disabled, whereas the others may have demonstrated initially low reading scores due to experiential or instructional deficits. On the basis of the results of this study and others like it (Al Otaiba & Fuchs, 2002; Torgesen, 2000; Wolf, 1999), the reauthorization of the federal special education law in 2004 (Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, 2004; PL 108-446) allowed for identification of learning disabilities based on a student’s failure to respond to scientifically based instruction. The diagnosis of dyslexia then became less important for public schools using this approach because it was a failure to respond to intervention, rather than a specific diagnostic label, that led to special education services. However, children meeting the standard criteria for dyslexia would still be identified for these services if they were not making adequate progress in response to evidence-based instruction in the regular education system. Research that has examined predictors of response to instruction has shown that children with broader language deficits, including problems with vocabulary and grammar, tend to show poorer responses to instruction than children whose language difficulties are restricted to phonology (Al Otaiba & Fuchs, 2006; F. J. Duff et al., 2008; Vadasy, Sanders, & Abbott, 2008; Whiteley, Smith, & Connors, 2007).

The Relationship Between DLD and Dyslexia

To some, the characterization of dyslexia as a language-based disorder may be confusing in light of another prominent language disorder, DLD. Children with DLD have an unexpected deficit in language abilities despite adequate environmental stimulation and cognitive abilities with no neurological impairments (Bishop et al., 2017; L. B. Leonard, 2014; National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, 2017). These children may have language deficits across multiple dimensions of language— phonology, morphology, syntax, vocabulary, and pragmatics—but operational definitions often require deficits in more than one language domain (Bishop et al., 2017; Tomblin et al., 1997). Although DLD is recognized as a persistent disorder with negative impacts on literacy, academic progress, and employment opportunities (Nippold, Mansfield, Billow, & Tomblin, 2008; Snowling, Duff, Nash, & Hulme, 2016; Whitehouse, Watt, Line, & Bishop, 2009), evidence suggests that a large proportion of children who qualify as having DLD are either not identified or are identified in later school grades, based on problems with reading comprehension (Catts, Adlof, & Weismer, 2006; Conti-Ramsden, Simkin, & Pickles, 2006; Nation, Clarke, Marshall, & Durand, 2004; Tomblin et al., 1997). It has been argued that parents and teachers may be more

aware of problems with speech articulation and word reading than problems with understanding and producing oral language (Adlof, Scoggins, Brazendale, Babb, & Petscher, 2017; Catts et al., 2005; Nation et al., 2004; Silliman & Berninger, 2011).

There are clear parallels between the definitions of dyslexia and DLD. First, they both involve a deficit that is “unexpected” given the absence of intellectual disabilities, perceptual deficits, or other medical explanations for the observed deficits. Second, they both stipulate adequate environmental stimulation. In the case of dyslexia, the unexpected deficit is in word reading, and adequate stimulation is appropriate instruction in reading. In the case of DLD, the unexpected deficit is in overall language development, and adequate stimulation is human language interactions. Interestingly, there has been a recent surge of advocacy in the United States to raise awareness about dyslexia (Ward-Lonergan & Duthie, 2018), and internationally to raise awareness of DLD (Bishop, Clark, Conti-Ramsden, Norbury, & Snowling, 2012), but this advocacy is generally conducted in parallel with relatively little attention to co-occurrences.

If dyslexia is a language-based disorder, then do all children with dyslexia have DLD? Although the question appears to be straightforward, the varied criteria used to diagnose dyslexia have made answering this simple question complex. G. M. McArthur, Hogben, Edwards, Heath, and Mengler (2000) pooled study samples from prior research to examine the proportion of children receiving services for DLD or dyslexia who would meet diagnostic criteria for both disorders. They found that 55% of children with dyslexia could be classified as having DLD, and 51% of children with DLD could be classified as having dyslexia. Furthermore, all but 10% of children with dyslexia scored below average on standardized language assessments, and all but 20% of children with DLD scored below average on reading measures. These findings raised questions about whether dyslexia and DLD were different manifestations of the same disorder (Bishop & Snowling, 2004; Catts et al., 2005). Perhaps, the diagnostic label assigned to a child experiencing reading or language difficulties was simply a reflection of the practitioner assigning it (e.g., school psychologist vs. speech-language pathologist).

In a 2004 review of the literature, Bishop and Snowling proposed that a partial distinction between DLD and dyslexia should be maintained, stating, “It is important to distinguish children with relatively pure phonologically based reading problems from those with more global oral language impairments”(p. 862). They proposed a two-by-two model crossing phonological deficits against broader, non-phonological language skills (e.g., morphology, vocabulary, and syntax). As shown in Figure 1b, they hypothesized

If dyslexia is a language based disorder, then do all children with dyslexia have DLD?

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that phonological deficits underlie both dyslexia and DLD, but the two disorders would be differentiated on the basis of broader language skills. Whereas children with DLD would show deficits in both phonological and nonphonological language skills, skills outside the phonological domain would be relatively intact for children with dyslexia. Thus, in Bishop and Snowling’s (2004) model, most children with DLD should have dyslexia, because of presumed underlying phonological deficits, but not all children with dyslexia would have DLD.

Catts et al. (2005) tested Bishop and Snowling’s (2004) partial distinction hypothesis and two competing hypotheses, which we refer to here as the “phonological deficit severity” hypothesis and the “distinct disorders” hypothesis. The phonological deficit severity hypothesis (see Figure 1a) proposed that phonological deficits underlie both DLD and dyslexia, but these phonological deficits are more severe in children with DLD and have negative impacts on the development of broader language skills. Under the phonological deficit severity hypothesis, all children with DLD should have phonological deficits that lead to dyslexia. The distinct disorders hypothesis (see Figure 1c) posited that DLD and dyslexia are fully distinct and separate disorders that frequently co-occur, with dyslexia characterized by phonological deficits and DLD characterized by language deficits outside the phonological domain. The key difference between this hypothesis and Bishop and Snowling’s (2004) partial distinction hypothesis is that the distinct disorders hypothesis predicted that some children with DLD— that is, those without dyslexia—would have phonological skills in the normal range.

Catts et al. (2005) had three important strengths present in few prior or subsequent studies. First, the study involved over 500 children who were drawn from a population-based sample who had participated in an epidemiologic study of language impairment. In contrast, most other studies have involved clinically referred

samples, which likely include participants with more severe deficits and potentially more overlap between DLD and dyslexia. Second, Catts et al. (2005) assessed reading and language skills in the same children from kindergarten through eighth grade. The DLD diagnosis was determined by kindergarten language scores, and children meeting the criteria for dyslexia were identified at the second, fourth, and eighth grades. In contrast, most other studies have examined a single time point, making it difficult to disentangle language problems that may have been caused by reading difficulties. Third, Catts et al. (2005) used seven different methods to classify children as having dyslexia when examining the overlap between DLD and dyslexia: IQ discrepancy models based on (a) full-scale IQ and (b) nonverbal IQ, which did not require low achievement (such that children with word reading abilities in the normal range who still showed a discrepancy from IQ would be classified as dyslexic); IQ discrepancy models based on (c) full-scale IQ plus low achievement and (d) nonverbal IQ plus low achievement; and IQ cutoff models based on (e) full-scale IQ, (f) nonverbal IQ, and (g) low word reading without reference to intelligence.

Catts et al. (2005) found that 17%–36% of children with kindergarten DLD also met criteria for dyslexia in the second through eighth grades, depending on the criteria used to diagnose dyslexia. The lowest rates of overlap were observed when dyslexia was diagnosed using a full-scale IQ discrepancy formula (17.0%–18.8% overlap), and the highest rates of overlap were observed for the low achievement definition with no reference to IQ (31.0%–35.6% overlap). Using IQ discrepancy and low achievement criteria, 14%–19% of children with dyslexia in the second through eighth grades also met the criteria for DLD. Although the rates of overlap were significantly higher than would be expected by chance, they were considerably lower than the rates of overlap that had been reported in prior studies involving clinically referred or convenience samples. In fact, in this population-based sample, the majority of

a. Phonological Deficit Severity ­ypothesis (Kamhi & Ca琀s, 1986; Tallal et al., 1997)

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children with DLD did not have dyslexia and the majority of children with dyslexia did not have DLD.

In follow-up analyses, Catts et al. (2005) found that the vocabulary, morphology, and syntax deficits of children with DLD without dyslexia were just as severe as those of children with both DLD and dyslexia, which indicated that the phonological deficit associated with dyslexia did not translate to more severely impaired language skills in general. On the other hand, children with dyslexia, with or without DLD, consistently showed difficulty with phonologically-based tasks, including phonemic awareness and nonword repetition. Taken together, these results indicated that phonological deficits were more closely associated with dyslexia than with DLD. It is notable that, in the Catts et al. sample, children with both DLD and dyslexia were more likely to have received clinical services in the primary grades, although their language skills were not more severely impaired compared with their peers with DLD without dyslexia. This finding provided additional evidence for the hypothesis that clinically referred samples overrepresent the overlap between DLD and dyslexia.

Considering the three hypotheses for the frequent overlap between children meeting criteria for DLD and dyslexia, Catts et al. (2005) concluded that the evidence best supported the distinct disorders hypothesis. The phonological deficit severity hypothesis was ruled out by the existence of numerous children with DLD without dyslexia.The fact that children with dyslexia, with or without DLD, consistently showed difficulty with phonologically based tasks, whereas those with DLD without dyslexia showed relatively mild and transient difficulties, was contrary to the predictions of Bishop and Snowling’s (2004) partial distinction hypothesis.

Many subsequent studies have provided converging evidence for the existence of these distinct subgroups (Adlof et al., 2017; Alt et al., 2017; Baird, Slonims, Simonoff, & Dworzynski, 2011; Bishop, McDonald, Bird, & Hayiou-Thomas, 2009; De Groot, Van den Bos, Van der Meulen, & Minnaert, 2015; Eisenmajer, Ross, & Pratt, 2005; Fraser, Goswami, & ContiRamsden, 2010; Kelso, Fletcher, & Lee, 2007; Kim & Lombardino, 2013; G. McArthur & Castles, 2013; Ramus, Marshall, Rosen, & van der Lely, 2013).With the exception of Adlof et al. (2017) and Bishop et al. (2009), all studies involved clinically referred or convenience samples, and most studies involved participants from a wide age range (e.g., 7–12 or 6–16 years) measured at a single time point. Only Bishop et al. (2009) followed children longitudinally beginning in preschool, but both DLD and dyslexia determinations were made at the age of 9 years. Across these samples, children with DLD displayed a range of word reading abilities: Some children with DLD exhibited severe word reading deficits consistent with

criteria for dyslexia, whereas others showed average or above-average word reading skills, similar to their typically developing peers. Likewise, children with dyslexia showed a range of language abilities with some severe enough to warrant a diagnosis of DLD.

In summary, current evidence suggests that dyslexia and DLD are distinct disorders, which frequently co-occur.The wide range of co-occurrence observed across studies (17%–71%) is likely due to sampling differences (clinically referred samples vs. those from epidemiological studies of the general population) and time point of the diagnosis of dyslexia and language impairment (at the same time or language impairment diagnosed earlier than dyslexia). Studies that draw from the general population and that diagnose DLD before formal schooling provide the strongest evidence because they avoid bias for comorbidity from clinically referred sampling and they avoid the impact of dyslexia on language skills through decreased reading experience.

Language Abilities in Children With Dyslexia

Although research supports the conclusion that dyslexia and DLD are two separate disorders that frequently co-occur, some studies also suggest that children with dyslexia who do not have DLD may still present with relatively weak language skills compared with typically developing peers (Adlof et al., 2017; Bishop et al., 2009; Ramus et al., 2013). For example, Bishop et al. (2009) examined speech and language skills of children who met criteria for dyslexia and/ or DLD at the age of 9 years. As a group, children with dyslexia who did not meet the criteria for DLD still showed significantly poorer vocabulary, sentence repetition, and syntactic comprehension than typically developing children, although their standard scores were within normal limits. However, other studies evidence a range of language skills in children with dyslexia who do not have DLD, with group means that are not significantly different from the typically developing controls (Eisenmajer et al., 2005; Fraser et al., 2010). In some studies, group means and standard deviations for children with dyslexia but not DLD suggest that many individuals display above-average standardized language scores (e.g., above the 50th percentile; Alt et al., 2017; De Groot et al., 2015; Kim & Lombardino, 2013). As discussed previously, almost all of these studies have involved clinical samples with relatively wide age ranges and have examined language and word reading abilities concurrently at a single point in time. This makes it difficult to determine whether the observed language deficits in children with dyslexia were present before the onset of reading instruction or whether they are a result of limited reading experience (see Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997; Huettig et al., 2017).

A recent study by Alt and colleagues (2017) attempted to

In summary, current evidence suggests that dyslexia and DLD are distinct disorders, which frequently co occur.

overcome this issue by examining word learning abilities in secondgrade children with dyslexia who did not have DLD. In this study, the mean Core Language standard score on the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–Fourth Edition (Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 2004) was 99.96 (SD= 8.75) for the students with dyslexia, and the mean Expressive Vocabulary Test–Second Edition (Williams, 2007) standard score was slightly above average (M=103, SD =11). Despite their strong oral language and expressive vocabulary scores, when presented with opportunities to learn novel words, the children with dyslexia showed poor word learning compared with typically developing peers, especially apparent when learning the phonological aspects of words (i.e., their sounds and sound combinations in expressive and receptive tasks). Interestingly, they also had difficulty on a few visually based word-learning tasks, but note that all tasks involved some aspect of phonology.

Clinical Implications

In light of the surge in advocacy surrounding dyslexia and DLD (see Bishop et al., 2012; Bishop et al., 2017; Ward-Lonergan & Duthie, 2018), it is important that researchers, practitioners, and the public are aware that dyslexia and DLD are distinct but often co-occurring disorders. Although the exact rates of co-occurrence will depend on the specific diagnostic criteria used for both dyslexia and DLD, it is likely that at least half of the children who are identified with reading disabilities in schools or clinics will have co-occurring DLD (G. M. McArthur et al., 2000). In addition, many children with dyslexia who perform within normal limits on standardized language assessments may have subclinical language deficits that warrant monitoring and educational accommodations. As described in the next section, there are numerous questions that remain to be answered by future research. Despite these questions, the evidence we have reviewed points to several important clinical implications for individuals in school settings.

First, although many SLPs are aware that children on their caseloads may have reading difficulties, they (and other special education providers) may not be fully aware that children with identified dyslexia (or a specific reading disability) often have language needs outside the phonological domain. Children with dyslexia, by definition, have difficulties with word reading. However, as we have reviewed, many children with dyslexia will also struggle with other aspects of language that affect reading comprehension (likewise, children with DLD, by definition, struggle with language comprehension; many also struggle with word reading, and most will struggle with reading comprehension;

see Figure 1c). Current assessment frameworks that are used to determine whether a child meets diagnostic criteria for dyslexia and related special education services in the US public schools do not explicitly require that oral language skills beyond phonological awareness be assessed. It is important for SLPs and other school personnel to advocate for the assessment of language skills across multiple domains during the evaluation process and for those skills to be monitored over time. Assessing multiple domains of language would include assessment of phonology, orthography, morphology, semantics, syntax, and discourse processing. Ideally, a thorough investigation of each domain would include both receptive and expressive tasks.

Second, regardless of the specific diagnostic label, intervention should target a child’s strengths and weaknesses across all domains of language because they all impact reading comprehension. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss specific intervention approaches, but we point readers to other sources that recommend and describe evidencebased instruction that explicitly and systematically teaches children phonological awareness, sound–letter associations, orthographic patterns, morphological awareness, vocabulary, syntactic awareness, and narrative and expository text structures (e.g., Al Otaiba, Rouse, & Baker, 2018; Foorman et al., 2016; Gersten et al., 2008). Collaboration between multiple service providers, including classroom teachers, speech-language pathologists, reading specialists, and other special educators, can help ensure that these domains are effectively addressed for all students (Archibald, 2017; Foorman, Arndt, & Crawford, 2011). Interprofessional education may be helpful for facilitating a successful collaboration between these varied service providers in addressing students’ language and literacy needs (Wilson, McNeill, & Gillon, 2015).

Third, those who have dyslexia, regardless of language abilities at the time of diagnosis, are at risk for slower language acquisition and slower growth of world knowledge across their lifetime, as a result of reduced reading experience, a phenomenon known as the Matthew effect. To a large extent, the vocabulary, complex syntax, and general world knowledge that are acquired by adolescents and adults are acquired from texts (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997; Huettig et al., 2017). The most important line of defense to prevent Matthew effects is to provide high-quality, evidence-based reading intervention as early as possible. However, compensatory techniques that build the child’s exposure to rich text and create opportunities to acquire world knowledge may also help to mitigate the risk of Matthew effects (see Rappolt-Schlichtmann, Boucher, & Evans,

It is important for SLPs and other school personnel to advocate for the assessment of language skills across multiple domains during the evaluation process and for those skills to be monitored over time.

2018). For example, students can be encouraged to listen to audiobooks, which provide exposure to the same advanced language structures without the requirement of the child to do the heavy lifting of decoding. Milani, Lorusso, and Molteni (2010) found that children with dyslexia who were provided audiobook versions of their school textbooks showed a significant improvement in reading skills and a significant reduction in emotional or behavioral problems (as measured by parent report) over a 5-month period, relative to a control group who received only printed texts. The authors hypothesized that the audiobooks may have enhanced students’ independence, therefore leading to the reduction in emotional and behavioral problems. In addition to compensatory techniques such as audiobooks, educators can also cultivate a lifelong love for reading and learning by helping children find books that match their interests and expand their knowledge of the world around them.

Directions for Future Research

Studies of children with a family history of dyslexia suggest that more severe oral language deficits in the pre-school years are associated with a higher likelihood of having dyslexia in the school grades (Snowling & Melby-Lervåg, 2016). However, on the basis of the family history studies we reviewed, which are quite comprehensive longitudinal studies of language and dyslexia, it remains unclear to what extent that early oral language deficits persisted in the school grades in children with dyslexia. We hypothesize that deficits in broader language skills such as vocabulary, morphology, and syntax may show peaks and valleys during development (cf. Scarborough, 2009) in children with dyslexia, depending on the time of assessment. Mild language deficits may appear to be remediated or compensated in the early school years as children benefit from high-quality oral language

For a full list of references, see https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_LSHSS-DYSLC-18-0049

input with the onset of schooling. In later school grades, when more vocabulary and complex syntactic structures are acquired through reading experience, children with dyslexia may show Matthew effects, in which broader language skills show slower growth compared with peers without dyslexia due to less reading experience (D. Duff, Tomblin, & Catts, 2015; Pfost, Hattie, Dörfler, & Artelt, 2014; Snowling et al., 2007). Testing this hypothesis will require a longitudinal study that assesses multiple language skills early, at the time of the diagnosis of dyslexia, and years later.

In addition to the need for longitudinal studies that track language development across multiple domains before, during, and after the onset of dyslexia, there is also a need for more research to understand the mechanisms by which dyslexia and DLD manifest both separately and together in specific children. There is clear evidence that both genetic and environmental factors contribute to these disorders (Pennington & Olson, 2005; Rice, 2013) and that the neurobiological profiles of dyslexia and DLD are different (C. Leonard et al., 2002). There is also some evidence that different genetic components may be involved in dyslexia than DLD (Bishop, Adams, & Norbury, 2006). However, it is still the case that studies more frequently ignore the co-occurrence of dyslexia and DLD than account for it in their design or analyses. Accounting for this co-occurrence is of pivotal importance, so that the conclusions drawn about one disorder are not confounded by the unknown presence of the other disorder in the participant sample. There is also a need to attend more closely to factors that contribute to risk and resilience for students with dyslexia and/or DLD (Haft, Myers, & Hoeft, 2016; Rappolt-Schlichtmann, Boucher, & Evans, 2018), including but not limited to malleable environmental factors such as child–caregiver interactions around language and literacy and school instructional practices.

About the Authors

Dr. Suzanne Adlof is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at University of South Carolina. Her focus is on examining the developmental relationships between oral and written language skills, both in typically developing children and in children with language and reading difficulties.

Dr. Tiffany Hogan is Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston, Director of the Speech and Language (SAiL) Literacy Lab, and Research Associate at Harvard University.

Dr. Hogan studies the genetic, neurologic, and behavioral links between oral and written language development, with a focus on co-morbid speech, language and literacy disorders.

Head Lines

Building a Structure for Literacy Part II: Pairing a Solid Intervention Program with Screening for Dyslexia

By Jamie Williamson, EdS, Head of The Windward School

“Short,

sweet, and simple science. Science tells the truth” (McKay, 2021). In the film Don’t Look Up, one character makes this statement in a bid to help scientists convince the public that a planet-killing comet is on a collision course with Earth. In this biting satire, despite herculean efforts of astronomers to alert the population to impending disaster, the establishment is increasingly obtuse to the reality of the situation. The result is both predictable and unfortunate.

For those who study the science of literacy, this scenario may feel painfully familiar. For decades, researchers have contended that learning to read does not come naturally; rather, it is the product of systematic instruction in the Big Five Components of Reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension (National Reading Panel, 2000). The science is clear and has been for a very long time.

Yet, although roughly two-thirds of our nation’s fourth graders continue to score below proficient in reading (NAEP, 2019)— a number that has remained stagnant since reporting began in the 1990s—the status quo of reading instruction persists. The discrepancy model, or “wait to fail” approach, is a relic that deserves to be buried permanently. It is long past time for educators to universally adopt programs that adhere to the Science of Reading, a methodology grounded in the mountain of research that shows how students acquire literacy.

In the first article of this series, “Building a Structure for Literacy Part I: Pairing a Solid Core Reading Program with Reliable Screening Measures,” I outlined the first two elements of an effective framework for reading instruction. This article in the three-part series will explore pairing evidence-based interventions with screeners for dyslexia.

What Does Intervention Look Like in a School­Wide Model?

We know, based on dismal reading scores for the last 30 years (NCES, 2019), that difficulties in learning to read, while most pronounced for students with dyslexia, are not limited to those students with learning disabilities. The first step in improving reading outcomes for all students is recognizing that most learners will struggle at some point in their academic journeys, and there

must be supports in place to address learning gaps as they occur.

Within an effective framework, intervention is integrated with core (Tier 1) instruction for all students, woven into program implementation school wide. Educators deliver an evidence-based foundational reading program with purpose and fidelity, continually monitoring students’ progress to adjust instruction accordingly. In this model, because students are screened early and often for reading difficulties, skills deficits are identified on an ongoing basis, and interventions are implemented before any students fall behind.

Teachers deploy targeted interventions (Tier 2) as needed, in “smallgroup instruction designed to support skills taught in the core instructional program in a way that is more responsive to students than typical classroom instruction” (The IRIS Center, 2015).

Educators then assess students’ responses to intervention in real time through continual progress monitoring. This setting serves up to 90% of students through the core instructional program and targeted interventions, and students progress on grade level.

For the remaining students, however, more intensive interventions may be needed. “The quality and fidelity of Tier 1 and Tier 2 supports, the use of valid and reliable progress monitoring measures, and the implementation of data-based decision rules...set the foundation for successful implementation of intensive intervention” (National Center on Intensive Intervention, 2016).

Effective intensive intervention begins with having school-wide screening protocols in place and an established, validated intervention program, paired with a close examination of the data on student outcomes. (For an in-depth analysis, see my previous

The first step in improving reading outcomes for all students is recognizing that most learners will struggle at some point in their academic journeys, and there must be supports in place to address learning gaps as they occur.

To read the first article in this three-part series, visit thewindwardschool.org/thebeacon

Head Lines article, “Through the Looking Glass: Examining Data to Inform Instruction.”) In these cases, once data reveals a need for intervention that is not being met by the Tier 1 and Tier 2 program supports, educators must establish and monitor appropriate levels of intensity, frequency, and duration of interventions.

Intensity, Frequency, and Duration

Determining intensity of intervention is a fluid exercise. That is, supplemental instruction designed to remediate areas of deficit becomes “increasingly intensive to respond to the instructional needs of the students” (Vaughn, 2013). This is a process, not a static strategy or program, which relies on continuous evaluation of the data on a student’s progress.

There are both quantifiable and observational approaches of intensifying instruction, which can range from least-intensive methods—such as changing time spent on instruction and adjusting the learning environment for maximum attention and

engagement—to most-intensive methods—such as adding supports for cognitive processing strategies and modifying delivery of instruction (The IRIS Center, 2015).

As previously noted, the determination for how and when to intensify instruction should be grounded in student data, the importance of which cannot be overstated. If educators don’t know exactly where their students’ skill deficits lie, or how they are

responding to intervention, it is impossible to adjust instruction to remediate these areas of need. Coyne et al. conducted an extensive, multi-year study on adjusting reading intervention based on student performance, and they found a statistically significant difference in both short- and long-term outcomes for those students whose instruction was adapted based on progress-monitoring data collected (2013). When you follow the data, a clear picture emerges of what is working, what is not working, and what should be changed to improve outcomes.

A process for modifying intensity of intervention is shown in the adjacent flowchart, which is adaptive based on students’ remediation requirements. Some steps of the process may proceed linearly, while others may require reverting to a previous step to gather additional data and potentially adjust instruction.

One quantifiable approach to intensifying intervention is simply changing the dosage and time spent on instruction. This can include increasing the frequency of intervention, increasing the length of instructional time (for example, from 30 minutes to 45 minutes), or increasing the overall duration of the intervention. This enables educators to increase student engagement in the material, as well as cover additional skills and strategies, with opportunities for practice that include corrective feedback.

How do educators decide how much additional time will move the progress needle in the right direction? Practitioners can guide their decision-making by following a self-questioning process, which may entail asking questions such as:

How far beneath grade level is the student performing?

Is the rate of student’s progress slower than necessary?

How much intervention time is currently being devoted to this student, and how complex are the skills being taught?

Based on answers gleaned from this self-questioning process, the intervention team may also need to revisit the prescribed duration of intervention, (for example, increasing from 10 weeks to 20 weeks), based on snapshots of student progress obtained from regular progress monitoring.

“This is a process, not a static strategy or program, which relies on continuous evaluation of the data on a student’s progress.”

Another quantifiable method worth examining, which is tied to increasing instructional time, is examining the educational environment to make changes as needed.

Teachers can change the learning environment by: reducing group size (e.g., from six students to four)

grouping students with similar abilities (i.e., homogenous grouping) rather than grouping students of varying abilities (i.e., heterogeneous grouping)

reducing classroom distractions like noise, and otherwise promoting academic engagement

(The IRIS Center, 2015)

Screening for Dyslexia

For a small percentage of students, the measures described above will not be sufficient for them to progress on grade level with their peers. These are the cases that may require more extensive screening for language-based learning disabilities such as dyslexia, as well as more robust interventions. It is important to make the distinction that screening for dyslexia is not the same as universal screening to identify students at risk of reading failure. The latter is a key component in an effective instructional framework, and it should be applied to all students, both early and often. The former, however, is a critical element within a response to intervention model, as it will help identify those students for whom more drastic intervention is necessary.

What Constitutes a Good Dyslexia Screener?

A dyslexia screener is also not a formal evaluation for the purposes of diagnosis. Rather, it is an interim step that will more clearly illuminate areas of challenge and may lead to a recommendation for an educational psychologist’s assessment.

Components of a good dyslexia screener include:

1. Comprehensive The screening should include the key domains, including phonological awareness, phonological short-term memory, letter (sound) knowledge, rapid automatized naming, receptive vocabulary, listening comprehension, and family history.

2. Developmentally appropriate For the targeted age range, the methods of assessment must be developmentally appropriate.

3. Neurobiology/Genetics Dyslexia occurs in up to 50% of individuals with a first-degree relative who has the disorder. The risk level rises when both parents have dyslexia.

4. Evidence-Based To ensure accuracy of the results, the screening tool should be evidence based, and it should be prepared, delivered, and interpreted by qualified individuals.

5. Time-efficient and cost-effective As the purpose of screening is to determine whether in-depth assessment is required, it should be quick, reliable, affordable, and easy to administer.

(Petscher & Gaab, 2017)

At a glance, a dyslexia screener shares many elements with universal screeners that identify students at risk of reading failure. A key differentiator is that students with dyslexia will show very low scores in certain markers, (for example, RAN, letter (sound) knowledge, and phonological processing) which are persistent and severe despite ongoing supplemental interventions that the student receives.

Additional Methods for Intensifying Intervention

For those students revealed through screening as being most at risk for a language-based learning disability, observational approaches should be considered to intensify intervention. In these cases, educators should implement the most intensive measures, such as including supports for cognitive processing difficulties or modifying delivery of instruction.

Students with executive function deficits, for example, may struggle with organizing tasks in a multi-step assignment. They may have delays in processing information, struggle with retaining or recalling lesson content, or have issues with managing their time.

“It is important to make the distinction that screening for dyslexia is not the same as universal screening to identify students at risk of reading failure.”

In these instances, educators need to provide explicit instruction in how students can strategically approach academic tasks. Instructing students in note taking, utilizing graphic organizers, mnemonics, and verbal rehearsal are all strategies that help alleviate challenges related to executive function. Modeling, repetition, and review are also key areas of focus. Difficulties in executive function are neurobiological in origin, and thus cannot be “taught”; however, these strategies can ameliorate processing differences that would otherwise impede academic progress.

If all the steps outlined previously do not result in adequate student progress, educators must re-evaluate their delivery of instruction and make modifications. The most effective intensive intervention frameworks align with Windward’s pedagogy; that is, in a successful model, educators: align instructional content with student needs as revealed by data provide systematic, sequential instruction that includes scaffolding and reinforcement use direct, explicit instruction in daily lessons to introduce, reinforce, and review skills and concepts prioritize the language of instruction to ensure students comprehend what is being taught continuously monitor students’ understanding offer specific, positive, corrective feedback provide multiple opportunities for both guided and independent practice

Of course, none of these intervention considerations exist in a vacuum. They rely on the delivery, with fidelity, of an effective core reading program, on the implementation of universal screenings, on the placement of multi-tiered supports for students who struggle, on the use of data to inform instruction, and, most importantly, on the willingness of educators to approach challenges with curiosity and a passion to get it right.

Those of us who can see a structure for literacy that serves all children—as clearly as one might see a comet streaking across the night sky—implore those who don’t to look up.

The Science of Reading

What is the Science of Reading, Really?

The Science of Reading provides a framework and evidence to inform how reading and writing skills develop, why some students have difficulty, and best reading/writing teaching practices to promote reading skill development.

What Does the Science of Reading Say?

The Science of Reading underlies the fact that the brain has the ability to change and adapt for skilled reading. Reading comprehension, the goal in skill reading is driven by word level reading and language comprehension.

Why is the Science of Reading Important?

Understanding the cognitive and linguistic processes that are imperative for successful reading has the potential to translate into pre-literacy skill development and effective teaching practices across stages of reading development.

Where Does the Evidence Come From?

What

The

Science of Reading is NOT

Coyne et al., (2013). Adjusting beginning reading intervention based on student performance: An experimental evaluation. Exceptional Children, 80(1), 25–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 001440291308000101

Learn more about how about how Mississippi invested in the Science of Reading: Kristen Wynn, “A Roadmap to Success: Mississippi’s Journey To Improve Literacy Outcomes,” 2021 Fall Community Lecture

READ LISTEN VISIT

READ Podcast, Episode 32: Language and Reading Comprehension with Mindy Bridges, PhD, CCC-SLP

The Windward Institute is pioneering connections in the literacy education community. We're building bridges between leading researchers and school administrators, educators and practitioners. We’ve translated the Science of Reading (SoR) and supported practices into professional development courses that prepare educators to implement proven methodologies in any classroom to improve student outcomes.

The Science of Reading incorporates

from

decades

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RESEARCH ROUNDUP

What It Takes to Win in the Arena of Reading Education

By Danielle Scorrano, MPS, Research and Development Director of The Windward Institute

Readingeducation in this country has long been a hot topic of public and educational discourse, and it has recently intensified as the pandemic has impacted this nation’s children in far-reaching ways. For those who are deeply invested in ensuring all children have access to high-quality literacy instruction, the field of reading education often seems to be playing out in a competitive “arena.” Arenas have historically served as premier stages for heroic competitions, where passionate, gritty teams seek to win in their sport. In my imagined arena of reading education, I envision hardworking, diligent teams of researchers, educators, and advocates working together to win their own championship trophy: a world where every child has the opportunity to become a proficient reader, a fundamental skill toward actualizing one’s academic and personal success.

While this depiction of reading conflict may seem disheartening, valiant efforts across time have already led to victories toward the ultimate goal in reading education. Broad and deep bodies of research have existed for decades, which have informed the understanding of the reading brain and identified evidence-based methods to effectively teach children. At the same time, teams of researchers, educators, advocates, and policy leaders are already in the arena enacting change for children. Winning in reading education means collectively recognizing the efforts already made and looking ahead toward fostering further collaboration to reach more children through a more equitable, scalable, and sustainable lens.

The Role of Science in the Arena

Unlike sports settings, however, the arena of reading education should be inherently different, because teams in reading are operating for the same collective goal: better literacy outcomes. And yet, even with so much at stake, it can feel like this arena is far too vast, loud, competitive, and overpopulated with shouting spectators on all sides, where it seems nearly impossible to sustain real change in the way reading is taught. For example, the deafening sounds of the “reading wars” and other ideological conflicts that emanate from crowds create persistent confusion for teachers. In another section of seats, the voices and gavels of state governments impede progress in policy, making law inconsistent and therefore inequitable for countless children across the nation. The infrastructural barriers to implementation, gaps in teacher preparation, and inconsistent professional development systems fill the seats and aisles at the center of the field.

The field of education has given rise to dynamic and complex issues, as well as racial, socioeconomic, and geographic disparities across history, society, and politics that deserve a thorough examination and enactment of comprehensive solutions. It remains vitally important to understand and address these inequities across the systems of science and education. In addressing the research-topractice gap specifically, translational science offers a lens toward more collaborative implementation of science in school settings. Petscher and colleagues (2020) differentiate between two facets of translational science, with a key area focused on “research aimed at enhancing the adoption of best practices in the community.” Implementation science has similarly advanced school-based research to understand the mechanisms and conditions that either promote or inhibit research-based practices in contexts. While there are certainly advantages to all scientific disciplines—from basic to applied sciences—these areas of research offer new frontiers to how scientists and educators demonstrate their respective expertise and learn from each other in order to deliver outcomes that are feasible for stakeholders in schools.

At the same time, the application of the Science of Reading (SoR) in schools often is not just about the science. Rather, it encompasses leveraging the structures, resources, and knowledge of organizational change to empower diverse stakeholders to apply SoR in actionable and sustainable ways. In her 2021 article, “Delivering on the Promise of the Science of Reading for All Children,” Nicole Patton Terry, PhD, encourages educators to act as “active critical consumers of the science as [they] engage in this space. Interrogate it, ask hard questions of it, demand to know more about it, persist

Winning in reading education means collectively recognizing the efforts already made and looking ahead toward fostering further collaboration to reach more children through a more equitable, scalable, and sustainable lens.

to understand it better, and try it and evaluate its utility in your spaces.” She offers an expansive analysis of applying the research on reading into practice by pointing out the multitude of stakeholders who are involved in ensuring the science reaches children:

“Use our field’s incredible interdisciplinary discoveries about reading, writing, language, and literacy to inform the decisions you make about how you teach your students, engage their families, participate in their communities, support your leaders, and promote policies.”

Certainly, leaders hold enormous power and responsibility to ensure evidence in reading reaches every facet of not only classrooms but also the communities in which these organizations exist. It requires foundational steps and tools to guide progress in reading education.

The Role of Educational Leaders in the Arena

Navigating the arena of reading education toward actualizing our collective goal is possible. Just as translational and implementation researchers have outlined frameworks for action, educators can take definitive steps toward change.

Step 1: Examining the Players, Current Strategy, and Resources

The primary step toward progress requires critical analysis of our own contexts, systems, and processes. “That is the way we have always done things” is perhaps one of the most damaging statements in any school or organization and can inhibit further progress. First, gather as much data as possible to understand the current climate of the school and current stakeholder perceptions of reading education, organizational structures, and resources. Data should address questions like:

What are our organization’s current views about reading instruction and how reading skills develop in children?

What does our school leadership and faculty know about disabilities and disorders that involve reading and language difficulties like dyslexia?

What curriculum are we using for early reading instruction, and does it align with the Science of Reading and evidence-based practices? What supports are in place for children who struggle?

How does professional learning support curriculum implementation?

Action Step: Data collection could involve taking an inventory amongst leadership, faculty, and other actors within the school building, and should include gathering information about existing belief systems toward reading and specifically how these beliefs relate to children who struggle to read. For example, leaders can

conduct needs assessments of the culture, processes, and resources that involve the implementation of reading curriculum as well as a more general analysis of the school’s approach to student learning.

For other leaders in education who have already begun this journey, examining players and strategy may also involve researching other educational groups or researchers already leading change. Progress in this work has expanded across the latter half of the past century. For decades, various groups of researchers, organizations and institutions, and schools have pioneered the work to advancing the Science of Reading in practice (John J. Russell, EdD highlights The Windward Institute and Haskins Global Literacy Global Literacy Hub’s pioneering work to dismantle the “big disconnect” between research and practice on p. 23). The Science of Reading involves decades of well-documented evidence across multiple disciplines, including reading, cognitive science, neuroscience and educational neuroscience, and psychology.

While the resources exist, it is important to think about how they can be effectively translated. One way to advance the Science of Reading in practice is to create collaborative teams of leaders that act as facilitators between research and practice. These teams could include reading specialists, speech language pathologists, building administrators, and faculty leaders with a unified vision to advance the Science of Reading and supporting evidence in practice. They would be responsible for gathering and analyzing data, ensuring feasibility and accessibility of program implementation, and distributing resources.

Action Step: Establish a team of leaders in the school/organization to facilitate research into practice, particularly in discerning the context factors that would enable or inhibit the implementation of evidence-based practice in all classrooms.

Step 2: Developing a Cohesive Strategy

Armed with consistent systems of data collection, analysis, and expertise, the next step is to develop a cohesive strategy. The arena of reading education is filled with sections of barriers and challenges that create a lot of noise. Effective strategy guides the contextual factors that continue to sustain the application of the Science of

Certainly, leaders hold enormous power and responsibility to ensure evidence in reading reaches every facet of not only classrooms but also the communities in which these organizations exist.

Reading and supporting evidence-based practices. Terry (2021) posits that it is “difficult for the Science of Reading to thrive in an environment which learning does not thrive.” Strategy should guide coherence between leadership, professional learning, and student learning, and should align through each lens:

Research

How does the research guide our instruction and teacher learning? Research should be carefully examined to ensure that sufficient evidence exists to support instruction or an intervention. Some considerations include understanding the research methods that were used in studies (i.e., randomized control trials are considered the gold standard), the conditions and populations in which research was conducted, and a consideration of the “unintended consequences” of outcomes (Bamberger et al., 2016).

Equity

To ensure that the the Science of Reading serves all populations, it needs to be driven through a lens of equity. Terry (2021) explains that educators must not just believe but insist that all children can learn to read and that systemic factors inhibit them from achieving their full potential. These factors can include deficits around evidence-based instruction and supports as well as understanding of students’ learning needs and difficulties, and school population.

On a recent episode of the READ Podcast, Dr. Terry (2021) explained that equity also involves increasing stakeholder voices through sharing experiences and data, understanding cultural implications that may exist as a result of systemic disparities, and facilitating greater input within decision-making processes and collaborative partnerships to support all student populations.

Investments

Investments in instruction, core curriculums, and teacher learning should align with methods rooted in evidence. Early core reading programs should align with the fundamentals of explicit, structured, sequential literacy. Core reading programs that do not align with sound-symbol mapping of words would not be considered effective word-level reading programs. Evidence shows that methods of structured literacy are essential for 40-50% of students, and 10-15% of students (i.e., students with dyslexia) need structured literacy with additional time, repetition, and support (Young, 2017).

Leaders should invest in training teachers in core language instruction in addition to their implementation of necessary curriculum and pedagogical methods being used in classrooms (Read more about the importance of language instruction in “Language: The Vehicle That Drives the Curriculum” by Lydia Soifer, PhD, on p. 20.).

Action Step: A cohesive strategy should be driven through a lens of equity and evidence-based practice, and it involves strategic investments that effectively and feasibly serve the community.

Step 3: Balancing Steadfast Commitment with Flexibility and Humility

We have learned that, in any aspect of life, change takes time. In education, action requires steadfast commitment from leaders and communities. It also requires the ability to recognize when something is not working or where/ how we can best serve our teachers and children.

Ultimately, the arena of reading education can feel far more complex, crowded, and noisy than even some of the most competitive sports stadiums across the country. But engaging in this space is always worth it—the status quo of reading education is avoidable, knowledge is available, collaboration is possible, and progress is attainable.

Action Step: Learn more.

In addition to these highlighted resources, you may find an extensive list at thewindwardschool.org/thebeacon for further learning about translational and implementation sciences as well as information about adoption and change of evidence-based practice for educational leaders.

Solari, E. J., Terry, N. P., Gaab, N., Hogan, T. P., Nelson, N. J., Pentimonti, J. M., Petscher, Y., & Sayko, S. (2020). Transla tional Science: A Road Map for the Science of Reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1). https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.357

Patton Terry, N., Petscher, Y., Gaab, N., Hart, S. (2021). Widening the Lens of Translational Science through Team Science. Reading League Journal

VISIT WATCH

READ LISTEN

Learn more about translational science in reading: Emily J. Solari, PhD, “Translational Science in Reading: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going?”, 2022 Robert J. Schwartz Memorial Lecture

READ Podcast episodes: Learn more about integrating equity and partnerships: Episode 31. From Translation to Imple mentation with Nicole Patton Terry, PhD Learn more about implementation science: Episode 42. SeeHearSpeak Podcast Implementation Science with Tiffany Hogan and Rouzana Komesidou accessed at seehearspeakpodcast.com

Q&A with Inspiring Leaders in the World of Dyslexia Emerson and Georgette Dickman

In this Q&A series, we interview individuals from the dyslexia community who are influencers in their respective fields. We hope this series provides insight into how dyslexia impacts our world and inspires our readers to see the potential that dyslexic children can achieve in the future.

By Jana Cook, Content Strategist, and Danielle Scorrano, MPS, Research and Development Director of The Windward Institute

Emerson and Georgette Dickman have been leaders for over four decades in dyslexia education, research, and advocacy—the definition of a power couple in education.

Emerson Dickman, JD, has devoted his career in law to special education and child advocacy, specializing in the representation of children and adults with disabilities. He is past President of the International Dyslexia Association and was a founding member of the consensus committee gathered in 1992 to create the legal definition for dyslexia. Georgette Dickman has dedicated her career to education, as a teacher, Orton Gillingham therapist trainer, Director of the Children’s Dyslexia Center, and professor at the Center of Dyslexia Studies at Fairleigh­Dickson University.

Individually and together, Emerson and Georgette Dickman’s impact on education and in supporting the livelihood of countless individuals with dyslexia is prolific and unmatched.

For the complete interview, go to www.thewindwardschool.org/thebeacon.

Where did your shared passion for education and helping children who struggled to read originate?

Georgette Dickman: My passion for education existed way before I met Emerson. As early as I can remember, I was determined to be a teacher! As one of the oldest of six children, my passion for education seeped into my assigned babysitting chores. I would coax the two youngest to be my students, [even] enticing them with treats on some days. Plopped at desks in my homemade classroom in the cellar, I taught them to write their names. Once that was accomplished, it was on to the alphabet, a commonsense curriculum prepared by a 9-year-old, uncertified teacher! The boys entered first grade with a splash but fizzled out quickly as both struggled with blending and segmenting. Committed to their betterment as a passionate educator, I stayed on as the homework helper with all their assignments through eighth grade. When I looked at colleges, I looked for teaching programs first. I never wanted to be anything else but a teacher.

Emerson Dickman: Our first child was born with a disability. As a result, we both initially gravitated to the field of developmental disabilities.

GD: Yes, my teaching career [had been] proceeding on target with the goal of certification as a foreign language teacher when our son was born with Down Syndrome. Being told there was nothing I could do to help him didn’t sit well; therefore, I switched my area of concentration to special education to learn all possible ways to support his development.

My first teaching job as a NJ special education/nursery school teacher was with the ARC of Bergen & Passaic County. I was hired to develop and direct an innovative program for developmentally disabled infants (birth to three) and their families. For fourteen years, this important work brought me to an understanding that a teacher’s support does not occur in isolation, it exists within a family constellation. The child is the winner when the parents and teacher

work as a team. This is equally true whether the student is an infant or a high school senior.

ED: After leaving the Army, I went to law school and began my focus on special needs planning, guardianships, and educational advocacy. Eventually it became clear that the scientific community in the field of developmental disabilities was more focused on how we can avoid children with disabilities than how we can help them.

On the other hand, the field of learning disabilities and reading in particular was having “wars” and seeking answers as to how to help children with problems learning.

My advocacy practice has turned into an obsession to know what the underlying cause of their difficulties was. Our mutual interest turned to the field of learning disabilities and reading in particular. I was interested in understanding the cause while Georgette was and still is focused on what needs to be done to help.

Georgette, how have you approached your work in changing the educational landscape to better support children who struggle to read?

GD: As a graduate student at the Center for Dyslexia Studies my goal was to develop expertise in the Orton-Gillingham Approach; as the Assistant Director of the FDU Program, my goal was to encourage all teachers to learn and apply the Science of Reading in their classroom instruction. As the Director of the Tenafly Children’s Dyslexia Center, my goal is to provide the best instruction possible to our scholarship teachers and return them to their classroom armed with research to practice expertise for immediate use.

Fairleigh Dickinson University Dyslexia Specialist Certificate Program was one of the first in the nation designed for general and special educators who wished to develop expertise in the OrtonGillingham approach to teaching literacy. Eager cohorts of teachers pursued knowledge and expertise to help students in their classroom who were struggling with the code.

In 1997, a partnership with the Scottish Rite Masons was forged establishing five dyslexia centers. Scholarships were established for both the children to receive tutoring and the teachers to receive Orton-Gillingham teacher training. Over the years, we have witnessed a significant increase in the number of trained teachers who have taken training and return to their classroom with the skill necessary to provide informed instruction to all students not just the students who are struggling.

Emerson, you have shared your experience as an individual with dyslexia, and you are both parents of a son with dyslexia. What challenges did you experience in school and what were the things you wish you knew, both as a student and collectively as parents?

ED: Dyslexia is not a death sentence! I was left back in the first grade, my brother (a highly successful attorney in Miami) in the second grade, and my mother in the second grade. Before there was much knowledge about learning disabilities, the main intervention was to leave the child back until they miraculously caught up. In the early 50s it wasn’t the stigma that it appears to have become today. What I wish the children of today to know is that we are all born with strengths and weaknesses. We don’t feel diminished because we don’t sing like Sinatra or play basketball like LeBron James; why should we feel inadequate because we don’t read as well as Sally or Marc?

Our son worked hard and long to graduate from college. He now has his dream job, two beautiful children, and (like his dad) married a wonderful woman who can spell.

GD: I think it’s also important for parents and children to know that when you’re in public school, services for students with learning disabilities are provided for them. In a secondary setting, however, you have to be prepared to self-advocate, to ask for the accommodations and services that you need to succeed.

What do you wish more people knew about dyslexia?

ED: Dyslexia is neither a curse nor a blessing. Dyslexia is simply a cultural challenge that can reveal our strengths if we confront it and our weaknesses if we despair.

GD: In addition to that, dyslexia does not come in neat little packages; it occurs on a continuum and can co-exist with other weaknesses, such as processing speed and working memory issues that make remediation a slower process.

Dyslexia is not correlated with intelligence. Dyslexia can occur in an individual who has strong talents in art, music, athletic skill, but not always. Above all, early identification and remediation aligned with the Science of Reading delivered by an informed instructor with the proper intensity for the student profile will minimize or (hopefully eliminate!) the struggle in acquiring literacy skills.

A teacher’s support does not occur in isolation, it exists within a family constellation.

Georgette Dickman

How can educators and families empower themselves to advocate for their children?

GD: Knowledge is the key for both educators and parents. Knowledge provides empowerment required for effective advocacy. An educator must acquire a firm grounding and broad knowledge of the research and science of reading to be able to lead and support the Child Study Team in planning effective instruction for students. Even the most gifted teachers cannot be expected to teach what they do not know.

Knowledge is equally important for parents. Knowledge provides empowerment necessary for effective advocacy. Parents must “school” themselves in the science of reading and learn all they can by attending lectures, conferences, and workshops. Knowledge will allow parents to make informed decisions regarding the appropriateness of services offered by the Team. Knowledge will position parents well as they request supports that are a good fit for their child’s educational struggles.

ED: Yes, and we “empower” ourselves by empowering our children. Children who feel empowered wear their self-confidence like a suit of armor that attracts others to them because of its beauty and shields them from harm because of its strength. Like a tulip bulb buried too deep to grow to the surface, overprotection stifles exactly that which we hope to achieve. All

children need to be prepared for, not protected from, the real world. The suit of armor is made up of a feeling of empowerment, a sense of belonging, and concern for the welfare of others.

Tell us more about your goals and hopes for the future of this work.

ED: Thanks to Reid Lyon and many others, we now know how children learn to read, why some children have difficulty, and what needs to be done to help. Unfortunately, there are only small islands of competence, like The Windward School, that reflect that knowledge in their practices.

GD: It is my wish that preschool teacher education is expanded to include information on language development and the science of reading. It is the preschool teacher on the front line of identification of language and literacy delays in 3- and 4-year-old children.

In addition, I would like mandatory Kindergarten screening so proper supports are immediately available in September of the student’s official first school year. We lose precious instruction time in a “wait and see” model.

Let’s change the “wait and see” model to a “find and fix” model.

ED: The challenge now is to cross the bridge from research to practice so that all children have access to effective intervention.

All children need to be prepared for, not protected from, the real world.

Emerson Dickman

Work in the Field: Louisa Moats, Barbara Wilson, Susan Brady, Arlene Sonday, the FDU Dyslexia Certification, C. Wilson Anderson, Jr., Judith Birsh, Phyllis Bertin, Claire Nissenbaum, Betty Levinson, Charley Haynes, Nancy Hennessy, Alice Koontz, Gordon Sherman.

Language: The Vehicle That Drives the Curriculum

By Lydia H. Soifer, PhD

Language is an enormous, multi-faceted gift. Yet, its immense value is all too often taken for granted. Skilled use of language is one of a teacher’s greatest, most valuable, and potent tools, if it is well and wisely used. In fact, language is the vehicle that drives the curriculum. Teachers must use language as their primary means of teaching content. The content itself, concepts, facts, hypotheses, analyses, observations, inferences, nuances—from every aspect of history, to each domain of science, math, and literature—all are shared and reflected upon via language, whether heard, spoken, read, or written. Virtually all school content is language based and mediated. As you read and reflect upon this, you are using language to do so!

In general, when the word language is heard, we tend to think about a specific language: English, Spanish, Hindi, Danish. “How

affect when speaking to babies and the emotions expressed through them are part of the foundation of language and communication.

Language is both aural (heard and interpreted) and oral (spoken and communicative). Babies begin to store the sounds and intonation patterns of the language to which they are being exposed. While they do not have the motor control in the small muscles of their mouths to make the sounds, babies are collecting, organizing, and storing those sounds and the meanings they are intended to communicate. In essence, talking to babies prepares them to learn to read! It is a first step in literacy development that evolves into all the different reasons for which we communicate and aspire to comprehend, from hearing and telling stories, to listening to books and reading them with the intent to understand and learn, to writing for a range of purposes, from thank you notes to doctoral dissertations. The depth and complexity of language cannot be overstated.

many languages do you speak?” is a frequent question. Yet, people are often unaware of the enormous complexity, flexibility, range of ability, and potency that either empower a communicator with robust language skills or inhibit a child with weak language skills.

“Language is code, whereby ideas about the world are represented by a conventional system of arbitrary symbols for communication” (Bloom and Lahey, 1978) was a revolutionary redefinition of language. It helped conceptualize language in all its components: from sounds into words, from words into sentence structures, to knowledge of words and their representation of facts, actions, concepts, thoughts, and feelings—as well as when and how they may or may not be used—to the wide range of reasons and contextual variations in which language is used for communication.

Language and Early Literacy Development

The development of language and the crucial skill for which each of its components, the content, the use, and the form, (as conceptualized by Bloom and Lahey) beginning at birth, lay the foundation for literacy. Language is an active, rule-governed process. Recent research has demonstrated that the pattern adults use to address babies is common across cultures (Haskins Lab, Yale University). The impact of the exaggerated intonation patterns we

The miraculous acquisition of language happens naturally for most children and is largely taken for granted as a normal developmental process. Acquiring the basic components of a first language happens rather quickly. This is an important consideration. Too often a parent concerned about a child’s language acquisition is told, “Don’t worry. He’ll outgrow it,” without being told what it is and when it will be outgrown. The accumulation of deficits in language acquisition happens very quickly and has significant implications for school performance and success.

Levels of Language Learning

Learning the different levels of language meaning (language content) and use continue to evolve over many years as children are taught and learn more about the world as coded into their language system, but the basic foundations are established early and quickly. Moreover, as adults, parents and teachers have little reason to actively reflect on the language they choose to employ when talking to children.

It is so that learning to talk is child’s play! Play for children is quite different than it is for adults. Play for adults is a leisure time activity, a means of relaxing. Interestingly, as an example of the complexity of language, play is a multi-meaning word. Playing tennis is not the same as playing chess. Playing the piano is not the same as idiomatically playing with someone’s emotions. For

Language is an active, rule governed process.

children, play is a thinking, planning, problem-solving, mentally flexible, socially dynamic means of experiencing, understanding, and manipulating the world around them. As in most of a child’s early years, language is the thread in the patchwork quilt of child development.

Challenges to Language Learning

For some children, however, the acquisition of language is not an easy, natural experience. The process of language learning is a complex neurological, cognitive, experiential, and emotionally based process. Add to that temperament and personality style, and the image of “Who is this child?” (Soifer, 2006) manifests as a means of thinking about the learning needs— cognitively, attentionally, academically—and the personality style of each youngster. Early identification of aural and oral language development impediments and impairments is essential, given the role of language in learning. Delays and differences in language acquisition that reduce the rate and efficiency of mastery require facilitation and remediation by a highly-trained language pathologist, many times in coordination with a special educator, who work with both the child and caregivers. Given that school interventions can begin in preschool, it is essential to appreciate the significant difference between the process of remediation and accommodation, modification, and support provisions and services.

Classroom Language Dynamics: The Effective Teaching Model

The Effective Teaching Model, an aspect of Classroom Language Dynamics (Soifer, 2013), trains and empowers teachers to think about both the content and the skills they are teaching. To do so, a teacher must consider and plan accordingly the answers to What am I teaching? How must I teach it? Why must I teach it this way? The answers to these essential questions are predicated on the learning needs of the children in the class. One aspect of this methodology is a focus on what language is used, how it is used, and why it must be used in that way. In school, a register or level of language is used that is referred to as instructional. It is specific to academic environments from preschool through high school and beyond. Instructional language is often grammatically complex, employs content-area words, directs attention and behavior, and makes queries to which teachers may often know the answer. Different than everyday language, which is familiar and more informal, instructional language can be challenging for children who struggle with language processing, or the interpretation and intent of what is being said.

Language of the Classroom

A strong example of classroom language use is questioning. Questions are asked in the classroom for a multitude of purposes, from insuring engagement (“Are you listening?”) to determining comprehension from the basic (“Where was the treasure hidden?”) to obtaining insights into comprehension (“How did you know that the dog did not like mushrooms?”). Questions are more frequently asked within classroom settings than in everyday interactions. Further, from an interpersonal perspective, in everyday language a “correct answer” is not rewarded or acknowledged in the same

manner as in a classroom setting. Questions can and should be asked at different levels of intellectual and linguistic demand according to the needs of the child who is being queried. For example, why and how questions demand a higher level of thinking and language to comprehend what is being asked, as well as the demand to locate, retain, integrate, and formulate responses. What and where questions impose a more modest challenge cognitively and linguistically. Yet, while teachers can adapt the level of questioning according to the need of the student, it is also possible to prepare children to understand higher-level questions by “sandwiching,” or rephrasing a higher-level question. For example, “Why did the children think it was important to tell the teacher what happened?” can be rephrased as “For what reason, did the children want to tell the teacher what happened?” Then, as a “sandwich,” the first form is repeated before expecting a response. It takes virtually no additional time but is a cognitive-linguistic technique that can make a huge difference in a child’s interpretation of meaning. Further, the use of vocal emphasis, stressing key words, alerts the child to key words or phrases. Moreover, grammatical parsing or phrasing of the question provides children with memory or language processing weaknesses additional time to capture, retain, and understand what has been heard. Thus, the question posed would be presented as follows: “Why…did the children… think it was important…to tell the teacher…what happened?”

For children, play is a thinking, planning, problem solving, mentally flexible, socially dynamic means of experiencing, understanding, and manipulating the world around them.

Another aspect of language about which teachers must be fully apprised, the potency of which is often underestimated, is what is commonly called vocabulary. It is important to note the difference between vocabulary, the words you know, and lexicon, what you know about those words in your vocabulary. One may know a great number of words but not be able to use them facilely or

There are numerous techniques for enhancing vocabulary exposure and use that can be so very delightful to children, helping them feel that they have the power of language. One technique that can be taught throughout the school years is introducing “big kid” words to three- and four-year-olds by using synonyms for everyday words such as “big” or “nice,” and then charting each time a synonym is used by the child, with them adding a star next to the synonym to track how often it is used. Teaching children the concept of a semantic continuum is always an appealing way for youngsters to learn new words. Envision a line of words representing size, from microscopic all the way to gargantuan. Perhaps they are written to reflect their relative size, so that the children have a multisensory exposure. Thus, rather than saying, “It was a big surprise”, enormous or monumental can be substituted, reflecting the size and impact of the emotion, as well as enriching the communication.

appropriately. Vocabulary knowledge has been widely discussed in the work of Beck and McKeown (2013), who skillfully identified the three tiers of vocabulary knowledge. Less familiar, subjectspecific vocabulary can pose greater challenges for students with weaker language systems. Moreover, access to words or word retrieval can pose a challenge to students and impact their classroom participation, written language, and social interactions.

When we reflect on the nature of a school day, we can see the richness and complexity of the language that connects us as learners and educators. The components of language and how they are consciously presented by teachers to students—from classroom routines; to acquisition of new knowledge; to its use in speaking, understanding, reading or writing; to the words used; to the grammar and phrasing presented; to the expectations for the nature and quality of questions and answers; to all aspects of academic and social interactions—are essential to appreciate and respect that talking is not teaching. Most importantly, we must understand that language is the vehicle that drives the curriculum.

Isabel Beck's Three Tier Model of Vocabulary

Tier 3

Low frequency, content-specific words: photosynthesis, hypotenuse

Tier 2

Common academic words: establish, examine Tier 1

Basic everyday, familiar words: book, dog

About the Author

Dr. Lydia Soifer is a language pathologist with over 45 years of experience in clinical and private practice, as well as university teaching. As a parent educator, teacher trainer, and staff developer, she specializes in the role of language in the development of children's learning, literacy, behavior, and social-emotional development. Classroom Language Dynamics ©, the teacher training program Dr. Soifer designed, is used in a variety of school settings to empower teachers and invigorate learners of all kinds.

There are numerous techniques for enhancing vocabulary exposure and use that can be so very delightful to children, helping them feel that they have the power of language.

Inside the Institute

The Windward Institute: An Exemplar of Translational Science

By John J. Russell, EdD, Special Projects Advisor at The Windward Institute and Associate Director of the Haskins Global Literacy Hub

In its first iteration in the field of health care, translational science was developed to accelerate the process of turning biomedical research discoveries into real-world applications (National Center for Advancing Translational Science). More recently, translational science has begun to impact education as well, allowing students to benefit from advances in cognitive research and neuroscience more quickly. The Windward School, through the Windward Institute and its affiliation with the Haskins Global Literacy Hub, has played a significant role in the process of translating research findings into research-based and research-informed practices and programs for the benefit of its students and the larger educational community.

The Big Disconnect

In Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It (2017), Mark Seidenberg provides a succinct description of the disconnect that exists between the science of reading and what takes place in classrooms throughout the United States and its devastating results:

The gulf between science and education has been harmful. A look at the science reveals that the methods commonly used to teach children are inconsistent with basic facts about human cognition and development and so make reading more difficult than it should be. They inadvertently place many children at risk for reading failure.

An overwhelming number of research studies clearly and unequivocally identify scientifically based instructional practices as the most effective method for teaching reading (Rayner, et al., 2000; Moats, 2000; National Reading Panel, 2000; Moats, 2000, Moats, 2007; Goswami & Bryant, 2016; Gough, Ehri, & Treiman, 2017; Solari et al., 2020). Often referred to as the Science of Reading (SoR), these scientific findings have increased our knowledge of how children acquire language skills and have identified the most efficacious instructional methods to develop proficient readers. Unconscionably, the use of these research-based instructional practices in schools across the United States is at best a “work in progress.” Decades of abysmal performance on tests of reading (Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA),

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), etc.) confirm the profound adverse effects of this failure to adopt research-based instructional practices to teach reading.

Establishing a Connection: Translational Science and Reading Research

In Translational Science: A Road Map for the Science of Reading (2020), Solari and her collaborators sum up this frustrating problem by positing:

…It is troubling how little the current and past debates have focused on processes that could ensure that the instructional experience students receive in classrooms is informed by existing science. Specifically, we contend that the persistent gap between SOR and its school-based implementation exists because the field has yet to invest in the appropriate methodologies and processes to develop an effective model of translational science.

Mark Seidenberg (2012) confirms the disregard for science that is prevalent in education, stating,

There is an enormous disconnect between science and educational practice. We occupy two different worlds. I believe this is an enormous waste. Many people on the education side dismiss this research as completely irrelevant to their mission. Teachers aren’t exposed to this research as part of their training.

The Windward Institute and the Haskins Global Literacy Hub: A Partnership in Translational Science

The Windward School has long recognized this disconnect, and its mission statement clearly articulates the School’s proactive commitment to addressing this problem, stating, “To meet these goals, the School provides ongoing training to its faculty based on the most current research and shares its expertise with the parent body, other educators, and the broader community.” To this end, in 2020, The Windward School established The Windward Institute (WI) whose mission is “To increase childhood literacy rates by disrupting the educational status quo to save more lives.”

To achieve its mission, the WI engages in activities that Solari and her co-authors (ibid.) identify as key elements of translational science in reading research, including, but not limited to:

• advancing scientific research from basic research science

• testing evidence-based practices in authentic environments

• communicating and disseminating the research and research-based practices widely to improve reading achievement

Advancing Scientific Research from Basic Research Science

The Windward School/Haskins Laboratories Partnership is an excellent example of how the WI is advancing scientific research from basic research science. This partnership began in 2018, after several years of initial discussions that took place among members of the Haskins research team, the Head of School, and the Director of Windward’s Teacher Training Program.

The initial project of this partnership is the in-school research study, Predicting Literacy Outcomes at The Windward School. This study uses neurocognitive measures to better understand which instructional strategies work best for students, a critical step in moving toward individualized brain-based instructional programs.

The immediate goal of this in-school neuroscience partnership is to use electroencephalograph (EEG) technology at frequent intervals as children progress through their Windward education, to identify early indicators of which children will respond to standard researchbased treatment and which children are more likely to have persistent problems. To achieve this goal, in-school neuroscience laboratories were established at Windward. Critically, the hope is

transformations in the ways teachers and learners perceive their roles—moving from the long-held belief of “using the brain” to one of “changing the brain” (Dubinsky et al., 2013). Brain plasticity has resulted in the emergence of a new perspective on instruction, one where teachers come to see themselves as designers of experiences that ultimately change students’ brains. As a result of the increased knowledge gained through this collaborative project, teachers are further motivated knowing that they have the ability to design and provide experiences that will shape students’ brains, and students are empowered by understanding that their experiences in school can actually change their brains.

An article describing this research project entitled Researcher–practitioner partnerships and in-school laboratories facilitate translational research in reading was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Research in Reading (April 5, 2022). The article was co-authored by the project’s principal investigator, Dr. Nicole Landi; Windward faculty members Najah Frazier, Danielle Scorrano, Annie Stutzman, Jay Russell; and researchers from Haskins Laboratories. In this report, the authors discuss the creation of the partnership, the scientific problem that it addresses (variable response to reading intervention), and the epistemological significance of researcher–practitioner bi-directional learning, thus further advancing scientific research.

Testing Evidence­Based Practices in Authentic Environments

Since early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to widespread school closures. Even today, students continue to be taught using distance learning or a hybrid model where in-person instruction is minimal. These changes to the normal way students are taught have had a major impact on academic and socio-emotional development. Researchers estimate that this resulted in a 30% loss in learning by the start of the school year in the fall of 2020 (Kuhfeld & Tarasawa, 2020). This has become known as known as the COVID slide.

to identify new strategies that will improve outcomes for these students. The research team also hopes to use cognitive and brain imaging research to improve early diagnosis of language-based learning disabilities (LBLD) in at-risk preschool children.

As a result of this in-school research study, the research team has observed that exposing teachers to the concept of brain plasticity, the brain's ability to change structure and function, leads to critical

The Windward Institute/Haskins Global Literacy Hub partnership responded to this disastrous situation by providing Windward families and families of New York City public school students with access to a research-based learning program, GraphoGame, that could be used at home to counter some of the effects of the COVID slide on reading. In the process, the researchers that developed the program were able to gather valuable insights by testing their evidence-based program in an authentic environment. As a result of the Windward Institute/Haskins Global Literacy Hub partnership’s lobbying, GraphoGame was able to offer the GraphoGame American English synthetic phonics app free of charge for all U.S. app store users for the 2020-21 school year.

Originally, GraphoGame research focused on Finnish and other languages with transparent writing systems, ones in which each letter corresponds to a single sound and vice versa. In languages with opaque writing systems like English, however, the connections

Brain plasticity has resulted in the emergence of a new perspective on instruction, one where teachers come to see themselves as designers of experiences that ultimately change students’ brains.

between letters and sounds are more complicated. By playing the game, children first learn the letters in the alphabet and their corresponding sounds, gradually moving to short words and then to increasingly longer words. GraphoLearn adapts the difficulty level to the child’s progress. Early research identified which groups of children benefit most from playing GraphoGame: those at risk of reading failure and non-readers that have not yet started learning. Further research showed that playing GraphoGame makes the brain of a non-reader more sensitive to letters and speech sounds, preparing them for the development of higher order reading skills.

as a resource for research-based practices for Windward and the broader educational communities.

The Windward Institute provides professional development for educators and parents and facilitates partnerships with universities and researchers to provide a bridge between research and educational practice. The Institute maintains ongoing and active outreach by providing professional development based on scientifically validated research in child development, learning theory, and pedagogy, including courses, workshops, seminars, and lectures that address a broad range of topics appropriate for both mainstream and remedial educational settings.

Communicating and Disseminating the Research and Research­Based Practices

Widely to Improve Reading Achievement

The Windward School is steeped in the use of research-based practices and has a long history of communicating and disseminating these practices widely to improve reading achievement. The Windward Teacher Training Institute (WTTI) was the immediate predecessor of the Windward Institute. Established in 1986, the Windward Teacher Training Institute played a critical role in The Windward School becoming one of the preeminent schools in the country for the remediation of students’ language-based learning disabilities. Over the 20 years of Sandy Schwarz’s leadership as Director of the Windward Teacher Training Institute (WTTI), it experienced unprecedented growth in its professional development offerings, the scope of its work, and the number of constituents it served. Given the significant impact of these increased responsibilities, in 2018 the Board restructured the WTTI into two separate entities: The Windward Teacher Training Program (WTTP) and The Windward Institute. After almost two years of careful planning, in January 2020 the School officially launched The Windward Teacher Training Program which recruits, hires, trains, monitors, mentors, and retains Windward teachers and The Windward Institute (WI) which focuses on and serves

The annual Schwartz lecture and the monthly READ Podcast are but two examples of the many initiatives that the Institute uses to disseminate research and research-based practices. Recent Schwartz Lectures have included Translational Science in Reading: Where have we been and where are we going? By Emily J. Solari PhD, Early Identification of Dyslexia: Research to Practice by Hugh Catts, PhD, and What Basic Research on Brain Behavior Can Tell Us About Young Children with Learning Challenges by Richard Aslin PhD. There has also been a concerted effort to increase the presence of the Institute on social media that has resulted in extensive postings on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The Institute also sponsors the Research Education ADvocacy (READ) Podcast. Hosted by Danielle Scorrano, READ highlights the work of educational leaders and prominent researchers. With a new episode each month, READ Podcasts offer insights into research, education, and advocacy by applying research in practice across educational contexts and connecting with prominent researchers and thought leaders in education.

To complement the information shared through professional development offerings, the WI regularly offers resources through newsletters and other publications. The WI faculty contributed to the creation of the Haskins Global Literacy Hub’s website, which contains a growing library of recommended educational and social-emotional research papers, articles, webinars, and more.

The Potential of Translational Science

The translational science initiatives of The Windward Institute described in this paper represent only a fraction of the efforts that the Institute’s faculty has made, but they are illustrative of The Windward School’s commitment to the powerful last sentence in its mission statement: “To meet these goals, the School provides ongoing training to its faculty based on the most current research and shares its expertise with the parent body, other educators, and the broader community.” As translational science begins to change the way reading is taught, the Windward Institute is well positioned to contribute to the long-sought goal of improving literacy outcomes for all students through the adoption of the Science of Reading.

The Windward Institute provides professional development for educators and parents and facilitates partnerships with universities and researchers to provide a bridge between research and educational practice.

Turning the Tide

Translating Translational Science to Address the Needs of English Language Learners

By Annie Stutzman, MS, Associate Director of The Windward Institute

In the world of education and the struggle of fixing multiple broken systems, the term “fall through the cracks” is typically used to describe children with undiagnosed learning disabilities; yet there is an even larger population of children, with and without reading disabilities, whose needs are not being met. In the quest to meet the needs of students, inclusion of historically invisible populations such as English Language Learners (ELL) must be at the forefront.

English Language Learners (ELL), or students who have limited-English proficiency and speak one or more languages other than English at home, represent 10.4 percent of the student population in the United States (NCES, 2019). This once-small population continues to grow and diversify as diasporas from numerous countries increase. According to the U.S. Department of Education, English-language-learner enrollment in K-12 schools has increased by more than 1 million students since 2000. It is impossible to ignore how the needs are not being met for droves of children with various literacy difficulties and disabilities, and those most marginalized must be the priority. This demands a holistic approach within the system and for each child. Not only must school programs triage the students who have the highest needs, but they also must consider best practices to overhaul current methodology that is not working and instate preventative measures to facilitate future success of improved programs. Ultimately, how do we begin to mend broken systems to facilitate the building of an equitable education foundation for all children?

Questions to consider when working with ELL populations thoughtfully and in totality are:

• Are the specific needs of the ELL student being met?

• Does the educational team have the knowledge and resources to properly assess the presence of a disability for an ELL student and provide appropriate supports?

• Is culturally responsive education in practice?

In an era where an ever-growing population of teachers, researchers, and families are still fighting for literacy instruction rooted in the Science of Reading for all, it is heartbreaking to realize

the extent of the various large, invisible populations within these broken systems. Educational communities must embrace and elevate English Language Learners by understanding how to instruct, assess, and support their needs.

Just as explicit, structured, systematic literacy instruction (ESSLI) is necessary for children with language-based learning disabilities, yet beneficial to all learners, English Language Learners make gains with multisensory learning, which incorporates a structured literacy approach, like ESSLI. According to Hamayan and colleagues (2013), building and sustaining a strong ELL program should involve considerations including:

• Certified teachers who understand the needs of ELLs

• High quality English language instruction with Language 1 (L1) support

• Multilevel reading materials to support ELLs with content knowledge

• Professional development opportunities to deliver culturally relevant and linguistically responsive pedagogy and support equitable conditions within the school

Before an ELL student steps into a classroom, there must be a foundation with structures in place to support and scaffold their learning, which are unsurprisingly similar to those for non-ELLs. The National Academy of Sciences outlined components in Promoting the Educational Success of Children and Youth

Educational communities must embrace and elevate English Language Learners by understanding how to instruct, assess, and support their needs.

Learning English: Promising Futures (2017) for ELL in grades K-5:

• Provide explicit instruction in literacy components.

• Develop academic language during content area instruction.

• Provide visual and verbal supports to make core content comprehensible.

• Encourage peer-assisted learning opportunities to build on language skills.

• Capitalize on students’ home language, knowledge, and cultural assets, incorporating them into educational engagement.

• Screen for language and literacy challenges and monitor progress.

• Provide small-group academic support in literacy and English language development for students.

Implementing practices rooted in SoR are even more vital in classrooms with ELLs. As ELL students are identified with reading disabilities far later than their English-only peers (McCardle et al., 2005), with the added factors of underdiagnosis in elementary school and overdiagnosis in middle school, in both cases, the student is being failed by the system and being limited in their ability to reach their full potential. When feasible, utilizing evidence-based instructional practices benefit ELLs with or without dyslexia (Sandman-Hurley, 2019). This is why instructional fluency in ESSLI must guide the extent of opportunity for this classroom population.

The other crucial classroom resource is access to proper assessments and interventions. One needs the proper tools and instructional background on how to use them to guarantee a valid diagnosis. Students must be assessed in their primary language (L1). ELL students suspected of being at risk for a language-based learning disability (LBLD) should be checked for phonemic awareness problems in their first language. This approach will be inclusive for students who cannot read in their native language, as these individuals can still be tested on phonemic awareness (Hoeft & Sandman-Hurley 2019). Other features to note are if the student’s L1 is “transparent,” meaning that there is a 1:1 mapping of letter to sound correspondence. Some examples include Spanish, Hindi, and Finnish.

“Fluency and orthography issues are red flags for dyslexia,” while the inability to decode words is a more prominent risk factor for native English speakers. Regardless, despite the range of orthographic depth in a language, fluent literacy acquisition is predicted by phonemic awareness and rapid naming (Caravolas, et al., 2013).

As not every EL student is literate in their native language, educators must ensure appropriate and accurate assessments, and, conversely, bilingual children should be tested for dyslexia in both languages if possible to ensure equity and reliability.

Educators might be apprehensive to identify ELL students with an LBLD due to lack of experience or professional support in distinguishing between a learning disability and a child’s location on the continuum of learning to read in a different language. When cultural and linguistic differences are framed as deficits in the misidentification of ELL students, it impacts a broad range of people from historically marginalized groups (Scott, Haeurwas, & Brown, 2013).

Furthermore, diagnosing EL students with dyslexia can be difficult to navigate, as the challenges of learning English can mask dyslexia risk factors while the additional issues of assessments not encompassing the populations they are being used with is limiting, exclusionary, and brings into question the validity of the data.

Even in a culturally and linguistically diverse world, many test norms are W.E.I.R.D, or based on Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies. Sometimes consisting of more than 80% of test norm subjects, the W.E.I.R.D are not only unrepresentative of humans as a species, but on many measures they’re outliers (Azar, 2010). This means individual’s scores are scaled against and compared with the averages of this specific group of people, which may or may not be representative of all people using the measure. This barrier must be tackled, and knowledge and development of measures for specific populations must be a priority.

Once properly diagnosed, a suitable intervention must be implemented.

• Direct, systematic, scaffolded instruction can be mirrored in ELL classrooms, just as in general education classrooms.

• Where appropriate and supported, use an evidence-based reading program in the student’s L1, such as Aprendo Leyendo for Spanish-speaking children.

• Lessons should have specific, targeted skills, utilizing repetition and review.

• Oral language and vocabulary should be implemented across subjects with cross-linguistic features explicitly taught and used as a resource for 2nd language literacy development.

• Ongoing progress monitoring with direct and immediate feedback will support clarity for students and teachers.

One needs the proper tools and instructional background on how to use them to guarantee a valid diagnosis.

If ELL educators are denied access to suitable professional development, misdiagnosis or application of an unsuitable intervention with a multilingual student is inevitable, and that is an issue of exclusion and inequity.

In addition to basic instruction and assessment support, educators must be mindful of practices that include and interweave cultural differences and nuances. This does not just include leveraging inclusive materials and classroom language, but also considering the learning environment, previous environments (including school), personal/home experiences, and reflection on instructional factors. The literacy Civil Rights crisis affects all but is a more deeply-rooted issue with higher-stakes outcomes for marginalized populations, which includes English Language Learners.

Educators must address the actual needs of their students, over the standards outlined. The moment administration and politicians driving education reform decide to meet students where they are and through a culturally responsive lens, a shift will occur that tells the child, their family, and the community at-large that their achievement is a priority.

Glossary

English Language Learner (ELL)

Defined by Federal Law as “English Learner”: An individual (1) who is aged 3 through 21 (2) who is enrolled or preparing to enroll in an elementary school or secondary school (3)(i) who was not born in the United States or whose native language is a language other than English (ii) who is a Native American or Alaska Native, or a native resident of the outlying areas and who comes from an environment where a language other than English has had a significant impact on the individual's level of English language proficiency or (iii) who is migratory, whose native language is a language other than English, and who comes from an environment where a language other than English is dominant and (4) whose difficulties in speaking, reading, writing, or understanding the English language may be sufficient to deny the individual (i) the ability to meet the challenging State academic standards (ii) the ability to successfully achieve in classrooms where the language of instruction is English or (iii) the opportunity to participate fully in society. (20 U.S.C.A. § 7801)

English Learner (EL)

Used synonymously with English Language Learner (EL) L1

Abbreviation for Language 1, or first language spoken by a person.

Aprendo Leyendo

A reading instruction program in Spanish, based on the Science of Reading, for all beginning readers and for children at risk of learning to read difficulties.

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The WI Co Authors Peer Reviewed Article on In­School Neuroscience Research

Underthe leadership of The Windward Institute, The Windward School joined the Haskins Global Literacy Hub as a pioneering partner for an in-school neuroscience study, which leverages the expertise of scientists and educators to better understand reading outcomes in students. The Windward/Haskins Collaborative Project, Predicting Literacy Outcomes at The Windward School (P.L.O.W.), welcomed back in-person data collection with student volunteers across all three campuses for the 2021/22 school year, which included reading and reading-related skill-based activities through behavioral assessments and electroencephalography (EEG) neuroimaging, a non-invasive brainimaging technology. Students took an active role in contributing to educational neuroscience research and were empowered by the impact this study would have on children just like them.

A description of the research conducted through this collaboration was published in the Journal of Research in Reading titled, Researcher-practitioner partnerships and in-school laboratories facilitate translational research in reading, featuring co-authors from The Windward Institute, Dr. John J. Russell, Annie Stutzman, MS, Danielle Scorrano, MPS, and Najah Frazier, MBA.

The paper and partnership between scientists from Haskins Laboratories and Haskins Global Literacy Hub, The Windward School, The University of Connecticut, and AIM Academy seeks to inform the broader education community about the purpose of in-school neuroscience, address student response to reading interventions, and highlight the benefits of bi-directional translation between scientists and educators.

“When The Windward Institute was created, we aspired to not only disseminate and utilize research, but to also conduct our own

research to help advance knowledge of how students learn best,” explained Dr. Russell, Special Projects Advisor to The Windward Institute.

Head of The Windward School Jamie Williamson, EdS, shared, “At Windward, we know that there are far more than the 1,000 students who walk through our doors each day who need our help. This study marks a critical step in using neuroscience research to inform educational programs and the early identification of reading disabilities, which has the potential to greatly improve literacy outcomes for all children.”

Access the study abstract at Wiley Online Library: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9817.12392

Alexis Pochna Named Director of The Windward Institute

Currentlyserving as Campus Head of Westchester Lower School, Ms. Pochna has been appointed as the new Director of The Windward Institute. For the 2022-2023 school year, Ms. Pochna will continue in her role as Head of Westchester Lower School and will remain actively involved in its day-to-day operations as she gradually assumes increased responsibilities at the WI.

Ms. Pochna’s interest in the work of The Windward Institute began years ago. “In 2006, I was seeking coursework in multisensory reading instruction, and I was consistently referred to the Windward Teacher Training Institute [now the Windward Teacher Training Program].”

That fall, Ms. Pochna officially joined Windward’s faculty as an assistant teacher, moving on to become a lead teacher in language arts and social studies. Passionate about teacher training and curriculum development, she took on greater mentoring

responsibilities, working with assistant, new, and master teachers in staff developer and coordinator roles. She eventually moved into administration and served as the Assistant Division Head of Westchester Lower School before assuming her current position as Campus Head, a role she has held for the last seven years.

Her stellar leadership of the Westchester Lower School has touched countless families and faculty and staff members. Ms. Pochna’s deep commitment to Windward will help bolster the reputation of The WI as the preeminent resource for languagebased learning disabilities, as well as furthering its mission to advance literacy outcomes for all children.

The School will be launching a comprehensive search during the 2022-2023 school year for a new Head of Westchester Lower School, with more information for the community to come.

Spring 2022 Robert J. Schwartz Memorial Lecture Highlight

“Translational Science in Reading: Where have we been and where are we going?” featuring Emily Solari, PhD, draws critical reflection and urgent calls to address the system of reading education.

Critical Analysis. Alignment. Coherence. Collaboration. Empowerment.

These words illuminate the themes of this year’s annual Robert J. Schwartz Memorial Lecture delivered by Emily Solari, PhD., the coordinator and professor in the Reading Education program in the Department of Curriculum Instruction and Special Education at the University of Virginia. Dr. Solari shared her expertise and offered guidance on how we analyze the systemic issues in reading education and move it forward for all students.

The Current State of Reading and Research

Critical Analysis

The current problems highlighted in popular discourse about the reading wars, or the state of reading education, are not new.

In 1997, mainstream news outlets pointed to the “reemergence” of the reading wars, and twenty-five years later, systemic issues that have overwhelmingly affected millions of children’s reading outcomes still exist today. These problems have only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, impacting the nation’s most vulnerable children based on their socioeconomic status, race, and disability status. Dr. Solari called for a critical analysis of the state of reading and education as the issues we face are pressing and hold grave consequences for millions of children.

Alignment

Dr. Solari documented the alignment of evidence supporting the Science of Reading – well-documented research that extends across disciplines and decades. This research clearly explains the following:

• Reading is not a natural process and must be taught.

• The reading process involves explicit mapping of sounds and symbols rather than based in automatic word recognition.

• Reading comprehension encompasses word level and language comprehension skills.

• Effective, evidence-based instruction integrates foundational literacy skills with language instruction.

• Intervention of reading difficulties is most effective when identified early.

Coherence

Referring to “multiple levers,” Dr. Solari urged leaders and administrators to enact coherent, simultaneous change across multiple areas of the education system. These levers include robust implementation in:

• Teacher preparation

• In-service professional development

• State-level adoptions of curriculum, assessments, and early screening

• Teacher evaluation

Collaboration

In order to better engage research and practice, Dr. Solari explained the promise of translational science to:

• create comprehensive research teams

• build more effective paths for researchers

• increase bidirectional communication between scientists and schools

• foster collective sharing and collaboration amongst all stakeholders

Future Directions

Empowerment

Dr. Solari outlined directions for the future toward increased community responsibility, engagement, and empowerment. She identified the need for:

• Opportunities for long-term partnerships between researchers and schools

• Continued critical analysis of reading education

• Strategic use of resources and structures to support change in classrooms

• Increased alignment in accordance with science

• Flexibility to make adjustments across the system

News

Windward

Promise Project Partnership Continues to Expand

Since Spring 2021, the Windward School has partnered with the Promise Clinic to provide tutoring at no cost to identified students who exhibit difficulty with reading and writing and reside in underserved communities. In its first year, 12 tutors provided virtual one-on-one reading instruction 1-2 times per week to improve students’ decoding, accuracy, fluency, and reading comprehension skills. The results have been overwhelmingly positive, with students showing growth in foundational literacy skills based on results of assessments conducted periodically. The goal of this project is to expand both the number of students served by tutors and the continued areas of progress:

• Blending and segmenting syllables

• Decoding and word attack strategies

• Decoding multisyllabic words

• Identifying word ending, suffixes, and spelling rules

• Reading fluency and expression

• Handwriting

• Reading comprehension

• Sentence level writing skills (e.g. sentence-fragments)

Tutor Testimonial

“When I first met Shaun via Zoom, he was a shy student who lacked confidence and was very quick to sign off of our sessions. Shaun initially struggled to decode words and was not a fluent reader. As our sessions became more consistent, not only did Shaun open up and become a talkative and happy student, but his decoding skills greatly improved… As Shaun’s decoding skills improved, his confidence soared.” *pseudonym used to protect student’s privacy

Literacy Academy Collective Continues Summer Practicum

TheWindward Institute (WI), in ongoing partnership with The Literacy Academy Collective (LAC), completed the second Summer Practicum, onsite at a New York City public school Summer Rising Program.

Windward faculty members Emily Benn, Melanie Murphy, and Emma Pippert were paired with teachers who received training in Multisensory Reading Instruction: PAF I and Expository Writing Instruction from The WI 2022 summer professional development offerings. Over 4 weeks, they built empowered learner communities in their small classrooms of rising second and third graders who were most at risk for continued reading difficulties. Students received 2 hours of language arts instruction, followed by 2 hours for teacher prep and professional development reinforcement. With the support of Danielle Ngo, a Language Arts Coordinator at the Windward School, as the onsite LA Coordinator, and Ilia Edwards, School Team member (LAC), teachers received daily feedback, discussion time, lesson planning support, and direct instruction to build on foundational literacy instructional skills. As the children’s reading skills and confidence grew, the teachers strengthened their understanding and application of an evidence-based reading program.

The WI looks forward to continued collaboration with The LAC as they move forward with building South Bronx Literacy Academy.

BTheeacon

The Windward Institute Journal for Educators and Parents

Fall 2022

EDITORIAL BOARD

Jamie Williamson, EdS Head of School and Executive Director of The Windward Institute

Alexis Pochna, EdM Director of The Windward Institute John J. Russell, EdD Special Projects Advisor

Annie Stutzman, MS Associate Director

Danielle Scorrano, MPS Research & Development Director

Najah Frazier, MBA Administrative and Communications Associate

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Tiffany Hogan, PhD

Suzanne Adlof, PhD Lydia Soifer, PhD

EDITOR Jana Cook Content Strategist

PHOTOGRAPHY

Susan Nagib

DESIGN

The Blank Page, NYC

The Beacon is a biannual journal publication for educators and parents of children with language based learning disabilities that will support the Institute in advancing its mission. Every issue will contain manuscripts documenting the latest research, thought pieces by Windward leaders, a Q&A series with inspirational leaders in the world of dyslexia, and stories of how Windward is closing the knowledge gap between proven research and current teaching practices.

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