Aligning the Science of Reading With Adaptive Teaching

The authors discuss the tension between the science of reading and adaptive teaching. The discussion focuses on the ways in which the science of reading emphasizes the teaching of reading as decontextualized and compartmentalized aspects of literacy acquisition that are distant from culturally sustaining and relevant pedagogies and restrict teachers in their efforts to teach reading. The authors demonstrate that adaptive teaching is a vital characteristic of effective reading teachers and recommend that scholars—those who study reading processes and reading acquisition (i.e., the science of reading) and those who study effective literacy instruction—work across paradigms to research the nuances of these processes, particularly in ways that study diverse student and teacher populations in various real-world classroom contexts.