From Dyslexia to the Science of Reading: How Special Education and Elementary Education Blurred Boundaries

• In Event: Toward the Extralinguistic: New Emergences With Foucault’s Unpublished Writings in Educational Research Methodologies

Abstract

One common assumption that guides the current movement of the Science of Reading is that “what works for dyslexic students works well for all students in terms of reading instruction,” as one teacher mentioned (Author, 2023). This premise is not only from teachers’ perceptions today but has been historical (Baker, 2002). At least since the 1920s when the “word-blindness” of school children was examined by psychopathologists in association with brain (mal)functionality (Orton, 1925; 1929; see also Johns, 2023), the issues of reading difficulty have been understood as “a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin” (International Dyslexia Association, 2002; see also Chall, 1967; Elliott, 2020; Mathews, 1966).
This paper explores how dyslexia and other characteristics of reading difficulties have become the Science of Reading today, shaping the universalized pedagogical practices of scientizing the reading instruction for all students (i.e., structured literacy). I follow Foucault’s (2023) ways to historicize the madman, which highlights the “reversal” of the discourses of the socially deviant divisions (e.g., madman, dyslexia) from those who are outside of the norm into an object responsible for speaking the truth about the man. Like the madman, the student with dyslexia “holds the truth, but as an object” (Foucault, 2023, p. 15), which gives the ways to understand the “true” process of reading development. This study makes it intelligible how the “reversal” from learning disability to learning ability happens through the normalization as education research and practices get medicalized, specialized, and pathologized (Milner, 2020; Snow, 2019).
I take what Foucault (2023) terms as “extralinguistic” (theme of this session) to shift the analytical focus from finding the “scientific facts” to the “scientific styles of reasoning” (Hacking, 2004; Popkewitz, 2022; Stanovich, 2003) that make people believe the Science of Reading as a “true” way to teach reading today. I move beyond discussing the “reading war” that often finds the contestation through the binary logics such as phonics vs. whole language approaches, or decoding vs. comprehension (Castles et al., 2018; Reinking et al., 2023; Wyse & Bradbury, 2022; Yaden et al., 2021), which happens within the intralinguistic boundary of English language and its instruction. Instead, I draw on interdisciplinary research literature on psychology, neuroscience, sociology of language, and curriculum and instruction on dyslexia, Orton-Gillingham teaching methods, Science of Reading, and structured literacy. The findings explain the current discourse of the Science of Reading as the outcome of the extralinguistic assemblages of ocularcentrism in scientizing the reading development and the ableism of the learning disabilities, which now functions as the generalized theories for reading development and pedagogy while hiding its “special education lens” (Milner, 2020, p. 250).
This postfoundational study contributes to dismantling the epistemic foundations of the current scientizing discourse in education research by conceptualizing the “extralinguistic ableism” that has been historically working through the double gestures of making the socially deviant divisions the normative object of generating the truths. It suggests historicizing as a method to resist the continual coloniality of knowledge production in education research.

Author

• Sun Young Lee, Wichita State University