I thought I would try my hand at writing the occasional blog post where I will critique papers, take opinionated positions on various topics, discuss some of my own work, and so forth. I welcome any and all responses!
Cognitive Science
17/05/2022 | The machine learning community has a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of falsification in science
27/10/2017 | The persistent and unreasonable confusion regarding grandmother cells (My first post criticises a recent high-profile paper by Chang and Tsao (2017) that claims to falsify the grandmother cell hypothesis. It only falsifies a straw-man hypothesis)
Reading and Literacy Instruction
09/08/2023 | Really, another catastrophically flawed response to Bowers (2020) published in peer-reviewed journal without first asking me to review it?
08/02/2022 |How best to respond to the “science of phonics” politics?
25/01/2022 | The impressive motivated reasoning of the ‘science of reading’ experts
16/11/2021 | Now I Can Read! Illustrated Book Introducing Structured Word Inquiry
20/04/2021 | It is hard to get someone to understand SWI if his/her job (or theory) depends on not understanding it
23/03/2021 | Key lesson from my recent debate on phonics: Don’t Talk about the evidence!
09/02/2021 | Responding to the Fletcher, Savage and Vaughn (2020) article entitled: “A Commentary on Bowers (2020) and the Role of Phonics Instruction in Reading”
26/01/2021 | Responding to the Buckingham (2020) article entitled: “Systematic phonics instruction belongs in evidence-based reading programs: A response to Bowers”
12/02/2020 | Responding to Buckingham’s post entitled: “The grass is not greener on Jeffrey Bowers’ side of the fence: Systematic phonics belongs in evidence-based reading programs”
17/12/2019 | Bowers (in press). Reconsidering the evidence that systematic phonics is more effective than alternative methods of reading instruction. Educational Psychology Review.
29/03/2019 | A case for why both sides in the ‘reading wars’ debate are wrong – and a proposed solution. (By Jeffrey S. Bowers, School of Psychological Science, University of Bristol and Peter N. Bowers, WordWorks Literacy Centre, Kinston, Ontario. This is an article published in the Washington Post but thought I would post here as well).
13/07/2018 | There is no evidence to support the hypothesis that systematic phonics should precede morphological instruction: Response to Rastle and colleagues.
25/05/2018 | There is little evidence that systematic phonics is better than whole language and other common methods used in schools (and no, this is not evidence for whole language)
02/02/2018 | Educational neuroscience, phonics, and a more promising way to teach reading (Here I post a recent discussion I had with Scott Mills regarding educational neuroscience and reading instruction, topics that relate to Bowers (2016) and Bowers and Bowers (2017).
I welcome any and all responses!
