Mark Seidenberg on Science, Reading, and “the Science of Reading”

Shortly after my reading book was published, I heard from a teacher who was agitated because her students were very good at reading words, she said, but poor at comprehending texts.

Discussions of the alphabetic principle and phonemic awareness on social media make me wonder, has anyone read the original sources for these ideas?

The purpose of these posts is to bring more of what is known from basic research on reading, language, and learning into decisions about how to teach children to read.

A friend has sent me a post about misspelled names on the uniforms of professional athletes.

Is there too much phonics instruction in the “science of reading” approach?

A recent article in Education Week raises an issue I’ve been concerned about for some time and I was glad they contacted me about it: Phonics Is Crucial—But How Much Is Too Much?

Last month I enjoyed attending the 2026 Research to Practice symposium at the AIM Institute for Learning and Research.

The New Yorker article “Alphabet Soup” (Dec 29/Jan 5 issue) did a good job of conveying the complexity of dyslexia, the frustrations of dyslexics and their families, and the promise of schools such as the Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy.

Teaching Phonemic Awareness (PA) is a prominent component of the “science of reading” approach to reading instruction.

Structured Literacy is one of the core concepts in the "science of reading” approach to instruction as adopted in most states in the US.

An index of published articles by Mark Seidenberg and/or Maryellen MacDonald, with links to PDFs.

Maryellen MacDonald and I wrote this letter in response to the article by Helen Lewis about Lucy Calkins in the December 2024 issue of the Atlantic.

In light of the Dec 2024 article in the Atlantic about Lucy Calkins, I am reposting this piece of mine from a few years ago.

AI tools that do remarkable things are appearing so often it's impossible to keep up.

There has been an extensive discussion of phonemic awareness instruction on the SPELLtalk list.

This post is part of an exchange about phonemic awareness that originated on the SPELLtalk listserve.

This post is a response to a recent post on the SPELLtalk discussion from Dr.

I wrote this article to expand on issues about the “science of reading” approach that I’ve discussed in many talks.

I gave a talk on this topic at the Yale Child Study Center on 12/4/23 which was not recorded.

I have a short piece about the Science of Reading in Edweek, here.

This is the third (and thankfully the last) of my posts on the Simple View of Reading and its relevance to instruction.