La Trobe University SOLAR Lab aims to improve phonics teaching in education degrees

Learning to read isn’t as easy as learning to talk, because it is not an innate ability — it has to be taught.

At least, that’s the battle cry of phonics advocates on one side of the ‘reading wars’.

If you turn the debate book over, you’ll find other literacy experts who disagree and believe that reading is a natural ability.

But with student literacy levels falling across all states last year, both sides concede that it is time for a rethink on how trainee teachers are being instructed to teach Australian children to read — because they are clearly struggling.

The La Trobe University’s new Science of Language and Reading (SOLAR) Lab, co-founded by professor of cognitive psychology Pamela Snow, aims to fill what it sees as a crucial…