What is "Balanced Reading Instruction"?

While searching for an understanding of how to design instruction for developing phonemic awareness in students, a recurring pattern of calling for "balanced reading instruction" emerged. But what does that mean, exactly? Proponents of this approach claim that it is simply a good, evidence-based mix of the best of what whole language and phonics has to offer. However, the details of what that means seems to be a matter of passionate discussion amongst whole language and phonics advocates. Some whole language advocates claim that phonics was already integrated into their program, and therefore a balanced approach has nothing additional to offer (Shafer 1998). Phonics advocates generally agree that while phonics is critical for literacy, it is not intended to be used as the sole tool for teaching reading (Cunningham 2001). When pressed for what balanced instruction looks like, educators and researchers will point in different directions, arguing that the matter is complicated and best left to the discretion of the teacher in the classroom (Zemelman 1999). As neither the National Reading Panel nor the Victorian Teaching Toolkit will define the specific aspects of whole language that should and should not be applied in balanced reading instruction, this essay seeks to explore and define, at least in part, what that does and does not look like.

First, it is worth summarising where academics are in agreement. That way, we can provide a minimum definition for what balanced reading instruction should include. Explicit phonics instruction is of course one of them. While there are various approaches to teaching phonics, the National Reading Panel (Cunningham 2001) claims that systematic phonics appears to be consistently effective, and that every approach tested, including whole language, benefits from such instruction. It also claims that phonics is most effective for early readers, and is especially helpful for struggling readers. However, it also admits that this instruction is best left to about 20 minutes or so of daily instruction, with other activities throughout the day that then reinforce what was learned. Since English has a discrete number of phonemes and the goals of phonics instruction are focused and well-defined, commercial programs offering complete instruction are able to be offered. There is also much to be made of the impact of oral language on this early instruction. Ensuring community and parental engagement, where children have the opportunity to read, be read to, and participate in engaging spoken conversation outside of the classroom is a significant differentiator among student literacy progress (Konza 2014). What the rest of the instruction should consist of beyond this, however, becomes significantly less clear.

Perhaps it is then worth taking a step back to see if we can define the skills that we as educators are trying to build, to see if that helps us better define balanced instruction. The National Reading Panel (Cunningham 2001) defines a set of skills that enable reading ability: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary knowledge, and text comprehension. While useful, this still only helps us evaluate the completeness and correctness of a method of instruction. The educator is still left to their own devices to assemble a suite of tools that will hopefully, at the end of the day, develop all of these skills based on their training and the curriculum they must adhere to. While educators and academics alike can agree that literacy is a complex process through which each student will have their own path to follow, surely we as professionals can admit that there is a way to fail in this process. After all, the Victorian Teaching Toolkit provides a three-tiered Response to Intervention model for when whole class instruction isn't quite working (Victoria State Government Department of Education 2024).

Literacy: Reading, Writing and Children's Literature (2020), a book entirely dedicated to discussing literacy instruction, as an example, puts time aside to address the importance of integrating whole language instruction with phonics instruction in order to fill the gaps that phonics leaves. Before it can define what that looks like, however, it immediately gets distracted about what a "real book" is in the context of providing meaningful context to reading, and subsequently fails to define the gap. Language & Literacy Development in Early Childhood (2016) appears to regard whole language as a historical artifact, mentioning that the approach has since been replaced with balanced instruction, while also failing to define what that means precisely. Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert also mentions whole-language off-handedly, and avoids articulating how it differs from their recommendations. Perhaps, then, whole language instruction is so self-explanatory that how it should be blended with phonics instruction is self-evident.

Unfortunately, whole language instruction, while easily identified, resists definition. Otherwise, it would be trivial to define which aspects of whole language instruction should and should not be applied in balanced reading instruction. As it stands currently, balanced reading instruction does not differentiate itself sufficiently from whole language instruction. Without a more explicit definition, it is a trivial matter to practice whole language instruction and call it balanced reading instruction, since whole language instruction technically includes some phonics instruction (Thomas B. Fordham Foundation 2000). Part of the difficulty is that the whole language approach is both a philosophy and a method of instruction (Thomas B. Fordham Foundation 2000). The philosophy relies on a belief, based on constructivism, that self-directed learning through discovery is superior to explicit instruction. The method of instruction seeks to "omit direct, systematic teaching of language structure (phoneme awareness, spelling patterns and rules, grammark, and so forth) in the name of preserving an unbroken focus on reading for meaning". There are some well-documented failures of whole language instruction, such as the three-cueing system (Roberts-Hull 2023). There are also methods that whole language instruction has pioneered which remain effective, such as encouraging student self-assessment, organising collaborative groups, and making reading meaningful (Hempenstall n.d.). There is no reason why balanced reading instruction cannot explicitly articulate proven good practice, proven bad practice, and best practice guidelines for what is known today.

Whole language and phonics instruction are useful short-hand terms for summarising forms of instruction, along with high level guiding concepts for ironing out details in lesson plans. However, balanced reading instruction cannot share a mixture of those approaches, as they often conflict directly. Whole language advocates do not believe in the primacy of phonics. Phonics advocates do not believe that reading is a natural process. Therefore, balanced reading instruction must then present an alternative philosophy that can represent the intended, desirable aspects of both whole language and phonics in a way that detailed lesson plans can be clearly and reliably derived from. Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert details how to fill in the gap left by phonics, but fails to summarise it in a way that can be easily recalled and discussed by policy makers and educators interested in pushing for better practices in their schools. Language & Literacy Development in Early Childhood (2016), Literacy: Reading, Writing and Children's Literature (2020), and the Victorian Literacy Toolkit all also propose ways of filling that gap in ways that both differ greatly and cover a lot of the same ground. Following the reading wars, there appears to be a reluctance in coining and defining a term that can be used to constructively discuss, merge, and reject approaches, concepts, and exercises that have been verified with extensive study.

Maybe the details do not actually matter. A meta-analysis of historical test scores and 99 accompanying studies across all of the English-speaking countries would have us believe that whole language instruction as it stands is fine, actually (Bradbury 2022). If we look at England's PISA test scores after systematic phonics was introduced, the scores actually went down (Bradbury 2022). It's unclear, however, why exactly that is. If we were to look at newspaper headlines (Duffy 2024), one would be inclined to believe that these are dire days for Australian literacy. Both NAPLAN and PISA results over the last couple of decades fail to provide sufficient supporting evidence of such urgency (AIHW 2020)(Thomson 2023). If we look at the PISA results, Australia's score relative to other countries has not changed substantially in the past two decades (Bradbury 2022). A matter that complicates things further is how advocates, critics, and authors of meta-analyses frequently agree that academic educational studies are deeply flawed. There just seems to be some disagreement as to which studies exactly are flawed (Zemelman, 1999)(Hempenstall n.d.). When searching for studies that could be used to inform national policy in England, Wyse and Bradbury (2022) were unable to find any academic study that met their criteria:

  1. Experimental design with random allocation
  2. Longitudinal design
  3. Sample of children whose reading was typical
  4. Delivered by standard class teachers; reading comprehension measures included
  5. Undertaken in England with the English language.

Perhaps that is not important either, as Weaver says: "It seems futile to try to demonstrate superiority of one teaching method over another by empirical research” (Weaver, 1988, p.220)." Dr. Hempenstall (Hempenstall n.d.), however, establishes an important parallel between research and training in clinical psychology versus education. Both would argue that because all clients are unique, no one method can work for all of them. Both also admit that between people, as brain development has many similarities across them, there is reason to develop evidence-based models that can be applied in the pursuit of their work. Since then, psychologists have developed the cognitive behavioural model, which provides a useful, well-defined framework for working with clients. In education, while many tools for instruction are available, each with their own benefits, governments and schools alike are let adrift to go and define what balanced reading instruction means to them, based on the information they have available to them.

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