What Research Tells Us About Reading Instruction

There have been many debates about how children should learn to read; those between proponents of phonics instruction and proponents of whole-language instruction have sometimes been so heated that they have been called the “reading wars.” What can psychological science tell us about the issues? Castles, Rastle, and Nation (2018) provide a wide-ranging review of how reading develops, from beginners to experts, and consider the implications of the research for how reading should be taught.