LangCog Seminar - Kathy Rastle

Learning to read is the most important milestone in a child’s education.  Reading provides access to knowledge, work, culture, and civic participation; and on a societal level, high levels of literacy contribute to poverty reduction and economic growth. Psychological science has taught us a great deal about how children learn to read and how they can best be taught.  This literature stretches back over 100 years and hundreds of new articles are published each year.  However, this research has focused principally on English-speaking, high-income, monolingual contexts. This narrow focus raises important questions about the extent to which our knowledge base applies to the full diversity of languages and contexts in which children around the world learn to read.  I present several examples of instances in which reading systems reflect salient information present within writing systems and I show why it is difficult to apply existing research to certain major world languages.  Finally, I present a new large-scale study of reading across 48 low- and middle-income countries. I argue that a full understanding of reading and reading acquisition requires us to think deeply about what writing is and the type of information that it conveys, and critically, to move beyond the narrow focus of the past.  If the science of reading is to have a global impact, then we need to develop a global science based on partnerships that bring expert local and linguistic knowledge to the table.