Cognitive load theory and Reading Recovery

“Look at the picture”: cognitive load theory and Reading Recovery

Using cognitive load theory, this article seeks to explain the failure Ian Milligan of Reading Recovery as an effective instructional technique.

What is Reading Recovery? Reading Recovery (RR) is a one-to-one reading intervention for six- to seven- year-olds. It is based on a ‘constructivist’ belief that reading is a natural, meaning- making process, akin to learning to speak, of which phonics and decoding are only an incidental aspect. Early readers are encouraged to make use of a ‘multi- cueing’ system, wherein they are taught to process the semantic, syntactic and visual information in highly predictable and repetitive (mostly narrative) texts, in order to able to read with increased fluency. The text is often ‘speech-like’ and words are often remembered as whole units. In practice, if readers can’t process particular words, they are most often directed away from the grapho- phonic information. Instead, they are prompted to look at the corresponding picture, to consider, “What would make sense here?”, to look at the first letter of a word and ‘strategically reason’ what the word could be, to think about what is happening in the sentence or narrative or about how the character is feeling, and so on. The above instruction in attending to ‘meaning, structure and visual’ (MSV) elements is made explicit to learners and is used in preference to them being systematically and explicitly taught sound-letter correspondence. The latter is regarded as essential for writing, but not for reading.

What is the evidence? There is, in fact, a paucity of quality evidence supporting RR. The National Clearing House in the US found that only three studies out of 202 were sufficiently well-constructed to be included in their resource base. Those three (with a total of 227 students) all showed short-term benefits, but did not measure long-term effects. As a NSW-based teacher, this author is familiar with, and shall summarise below, a quality NSW study published in 2015 by the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation (CESE) part of the NSW Department of Education (NSWDoE). This study was a longitudinal evaluation of the reading progress of thousands of children – one group treated by RR and another cohort matched for achievement and socio-economic status but not treated by RR. The study found that, after receiving RR in their second Reading Texts level RR effect of NAPLAN p-value year of schooling, these students, having ended their first year at Term 4 K Reading score of schooling with the same broad level of reading achievement Level 1 or below -25.2 <.001 as the matched non-RR cohort, were significantly worse off Level 2 -24.9 <.001 by the time a nation-wide, standardised reading assessment Level 3 -53.1 <.001 was administered in the fourth year of schooling. The table opposite, from the CESE evaluation, summarises Level 4 or above -86.7 <.001 the relatively poor reading performance of the cohort treated Note. Results coloured in red show that RR students achieved lower NAPLAN reading by Reading Recovery. scores compared to non-RR students.

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Cognitive load theory and Requiring learners to counter-intuitively, several researchers Reading Recovery have found that beginning readers learn Which tenets of cognitive load theory attend to irrelevant, to read better when there is no picture (CLT) could explain this failure? redundant foci on a page provided. By continually expecting is encouraged through readers to refer to pictures that Biologically primary and biologically correspond closely to the written text, secondary learning RR instruction RR requires readers to do additional This concept, introduced by Geary mental processing, imposing a higher and now enmeshed within CLT, holds cognitive load than desirable. that biologically primary skills such as Requiring learners to attend to speaking grammatically in one’s native irrelevant, redundant foci on a page is language, walking, recognising faces encouraged through RR instruction. It etc. do not need to be taught. Any skill directs students to take their attention that humans have not evolved to learn away from the written word towards effortlessly may be difficult to acquire a picture, or to cogitate on semantic, and need specialised instruction. Schools syntactic or contextual information, then were invented to teach these biologically expects students to mentally integrate secondary skills, which include reading. them. Attending to irrelevant information By regarding learning to read as makes automatic word reading less similar to learning to listen to a first on a page). A means-end analysis achievable. As Stanovich et al. have language, advocates for RR are ignoring approach to problem-solving means noted, automatic, context-free word the distinction between biologically that learning may not occur if the recognition is the fundamental difference primary and secondary knowledge. learning goal is to solve the problem between weak and strong readers. Anyone As a consequence, instead of explicitly itself (reading and understanding the who has sat with a struggling 6- or teaching phonemic awareness leading text), rather than to enhance long-term 7-year-old reader knows that the first to word decoding skills, RR proponents memory storage about how to solve thing most do when they don’t recognise a encourage learners to talk and guess that problem (learning how to decode word is to look at the picture. The second their way through books, often at the written text). thing is to appeal to the teacher. Neither expense of accurate word reading. For By effectively being prompted to assists in learning to decode written example, it would be appropriate in talk and guess their way through books text but for many students treated with RR for a reader to utter “home” when by referring to pictures and a highly Reading Recovery-type methodology, this the word is actually “house”. Learners predictable and repetitive storyline in an happens so automatically, it presents like thus fail to develop word decoding skills obvious context, RR pupils are often at disordered learning behaviour. they will later need when texts are less risk of being left with little or nothing repetitive and predictable, and where the in long-term memory at the end of a Element interactivity/isolated context is less obvious. “Constructivist” learning sequence. They have uttered elements effect teaching deliberately withholds the words “look(ing)” and “owls” Requiring beginning readers to important information, such as sound- because they are repeated multiple simultaneously consider diverse letter correspondence, from learners. times in a highly predictable story with elements of language (semantic, It is clear that reading is not acquired corresponding pictures, but will not syntactic, contextual, grapho-phonic) naturally and needs to be taught directly, recognise “took/cook” or “howls/down” in order to ‘read’ words imposes explicitly and systematically for the vast in a different context, because these are a heavy cognitive load, as readers majority of early readers. beyond their word-reading ability and then have to process these elements they have been taught nothing about the simultaneously in working memory. The problem with problem solving sound-letter correspondence. Of course, Conversely, beginning reading Beginning reading is problem solving. failure of long-term memory storage can instruction is more successful when CLT has pointed out – and in fact owes happen with any learning, but the multi- element interactivity is kept low, i.e., its genesis to the observation – that cueing system of RR instruction, the by only requiring readers to consider solving a problem does not necessarily lack of explicit instruction in phonics one element at a time when word lead to learning. Problem solving is and the high level of text predictability reading – primarily the grapho-phonic a biologically primary skill. Humans make this failure more likely. information. Word recognition needs are primed to use means-end analysis, to quickly become a low-cognitive- a generalised attempt to reduce the Redundancy effect demand skill – stored in long-term difference between goal states (e.g., Providing unnecessary information memory and accessed automatically. finishing and understanding a simple comes at a cost, as a learner has to The acquisition of such skills should book, reading and understanding a devote precious cognitive resources to not be over-complicated by using simple word or sentence) and present processing information that is actually working memory for other purposes states (e.g., seeing a series of squiggles not needed for the task. Somewhat more than is necessary.

30 | Nomanis | Issue 10 | December 2020 Intrinsic and extraneous historical believers in a flat earth. The 2 The NSWDoE evaluation was cognitive load science has continued to move beyond the first and only time they had All of the above factors contribute them, but they can’t accept the evidence. attempted to determine the value of to the imposition of an extraneous They teach weak readers the word- the tens of millions of dollars spent cognitive load. Intrinsic cognitive load reading methods that are used by weak every year for decades on RR. The refers to the content to be learned, while readers – to guess, to be over-reliant on NSWDoE, to its credit, accepted extraneous cognitive load refers to the context and to ignore grapho-phonic the evidence and stopped centrally instructional procedures used to learn/ information in words. funding the program, although still teach that content. Unfortunately, the above reading permits schools to spend taxpayer funds on RR if they so choose. How Learning to read necessarily comes pedagogy has become dominant in the many (or few) RR teachers in NSW with a high intrinsic cognitive load; that early years of school in most anglophone have read this evaluation, much less is to say, the process of deciphering an countries, leading to high levels of accepted its findings? alphabetic code to automaticity is long unnecessary reading failure. Even and daunting. A greater than desirable where teachers do not receive Reading 3 Reading Recovery spawned a extraneous load is placed upon RR Recovery training, they too often learn whole-class offshoot, Language, pupils, who are subject to instructional to teach reading as a multi-cueing Literacy and Learning (L3) in NSW, procedures which overload working guessing game, sometimes through where all students in a class/school memory and withhold important whole-class offshoots like Language, are treated with a RR methodology. information. Start trying to learn to Literacy and Learning (L3) in NSW. Until very recently, this approach read Russian, Hindi, Thai, Chinese Cognitive load theory is an was generously funded, despite etc. without being given sufficient having no evidentiary basis. information about what the symbols important contribution to the scientific mean and you will walk in the shoes of framework which can account for both N.B. Many thanks to Professor John a RR student. the failure of Reading Recovery-based Sweller (UNSW) for his helpful feedback pedagogy and the greater efficacy of on, and improvements to, this article. Learning science or an phonics-based reading instruction for educational flat-earth? beginning/struggling readers. Ian Milligan (@IanMilligan5) No one, least of all this author, is is a Nationally Certified Highly claiming RR pupils learn nothing, but it Notes Accomplished Teacher from NSW, 1 The quote “Look at the picture” is clear they make less reading progress Australia, currently working as a K-2 from this article’s title comes from a than early readers who are explicitly and Mentor at Granville Public School, systematically taught phonics or even common prompt given to RR pupils, a low-SES, high-refugee population, than readers who are taught anything and also to their common response suburban Sydney primary school, where but RR methodology, as the NSW study when asked what they should do if reading failure has significantly declined makes clear. RR proponents are like the they can’t read the word. in recent years.

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