Is phonics instruction effective Evidence from a systematic review of randomised controlled trials

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Is phonics instruction effective?Evidence from a
systematic review of randomised controlled trials

• Carole J. Torgerson Greg Brooks Jill Hall
•  University of York
• University of Sheffield
• Address for correspondence Dr Carole Torgerson,
  Senior Research Fellow, Dept of Educational
  Studies, University of York.
• Email cjt3_at_york.ac.uk

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Phonics and Whole Language

• Phonics instruction a set of approaches to the
  initial teaching of reading and writing which
  focus on the relationships between letters and
  sounds
• Synthetic phonics instruction sounding out and
  blending e.g. kuh-a-tuh cat
• Analytic phonics instruction inferring sound
  symbol relationships from sets of words which
  share a letter and sound e.g. pet, park, push,
  pen
• Whole language approaches, including whole word
  recognition and use of syntactic, graphical and
  semantic clues

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Methods

• Replication and update of previous meta-analysis
  (Ehri et al, 2001)
• Inclusion criteria
• Meta analyses
• Publication bias
• Sensitivity analysis

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Findings

• 12 individually randomised trials were identified
• All were very small and only one was from the UK
• Putting all the trials together in a
  meta-analysis found a small, statistically
  significant effect, on reading accuracy (moderate
  weight of evidence).
• 3 trials directly compared synthetic with
  analytic phonics instruction. No difference
  between the two approaches was found, although
  this was based on weak evidence

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Meta-analysis Forest plot
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• Sensitivity analysis
• Phonics meta-analysis had significant
  heterogeneity.
• Removal of a single, small, outlier reduced this
  heterogeneity. However, removal of this study
  (Umbach) showed that the advantage of phonics
  teaching was no longer statistically significant.
• Publication bias
• Funnel plots

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Different types of phonics

• Three small trials compared synthetic vs
  analytical phonics.
• A meta-analysis of these trials found no
  difference between the two approaches of teaching.

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Synthesis synthetic vs analytic
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Conclusions

• The evidence from the meta-analysis of RCTs for
  phonics teaching is moderate, but it does favour
  systematic supplementary phonics teaching
• Little evidence from the meta-analysis of RCTs
  supports any particular method of phonics
  teaching or the amount of phonics teaching
  required
• Ideally a large school-randomized trial is needed
  to assess whether introducing systematic
  synthetic phonics teaching is effective

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• I am clear that the synthetic phonics should be
  the first strategy in teaching all children to
  read.
• Ruth Kelly Times Mar 21st 2006.
• The case for synthetic phonics is overwhelming.
• Jim Rose Times Mar 21st 2006.

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Phonics Review Report

• http//www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/R
  R711_.pdf
• Email cjt3_at_york.ac.uk