The Science (and Art) of Implementation: Using Research To Improve Outcomes

Narrator:

Welcome to EDVIEW360. 

Margaret Goldberg: 

I want to make sure that teachers are advocates. That we are part of the planning process when it comes to district initiatives and state initiatives, so that we can ensure that the planning is done really well and it will actually be feasible in our classrooms to make the kind of changes that are being discussed.

Narrator:

You just heard from Margaret Goldberg, respected educator, literacy expert, and co-founder of The Right to Read Project. Margaret is our guest on the EDVIEW360 podcast.

Pam Austin: 

Hello, this is Pam Austin. Welcome back to the EDVIEW360 podcast series. We are so excited to have you with us today for our latest literacy conversation. I'm conducting today's podcast from my native New Orleans, LA. Before we dive into conversation, let’s take a moment to introduce our guests, a true force in the literacy landscape. Margaret Goldberg is a literacy coach at Nystrom Elementary School in California, where she works shoulder to shoulder with educators to align instruction with the science of reading. Her career spans classroom teaching, reading intervention, district leadership, and statewide coaching initiatives, including her role as a network facilitator for California’s Early Literacy Block Grant. But Margaret’s influence reaches far beyond her school walls. As co-founder of The Right to Read Project, she’s helped galvanize a national movement of teachers, researchers, and advocates committing to equity through literacy. Her work has shaped how educators think about reading research, implementation, and a moral imperative of literacy for all. Margaret brings not only deep expertise, but also a rare ability to translate research into practice with clarity, compassion, and conviction. Today, we’ll explore how educators can move from being consumers of research to active contributors and why that shift is essential for sustaining progress in the science of reading movement. Because that’s where we are, right, Margaret? Let's get started.

Sounds good. That was probably the nicest introduction I have ever heard. I need to swim away with tears, but here thank you.

PA:

It just reflects you and who you are. Margaret, you’ve been called a literacy hero. Can you share what first drew you to the science of reading and what keeps you committed today?

MG:

Well, first and foremost, I’m a teacher. I was teaching for about 10 years or so. And around 2015, I started to realize there was something off about the instruction that I was doing. I was using a balanced literacy program. And I started to realize that something wasn’t quite working for the students that I was supporting and the teachers I was trying to help at my school. And once I started asking questions, I kind of couldn’t stop. I began to learn about this vast body of research and about how reading skill is acquired and about how reading is best taught. And I found myself getting really upset that the information I was learning hadn’t been given to me in teacher preparation or in the PDs that I was receiving from teachers college and other providers from my district, from curriculum publishers. So, I really wanted to try to figure out, like how, do I get this information that I’m learning out there to other teachers. And that journey that I was on was captured in Emily Hanford’s podcast, At a Loss for Words. And from there, I just felt more connected to more and more teachers and educators who are reaching out to me. So, I’m still learning. I’m learning about how to teach comprehension and about how to teach writing. I’m certain that I’m gonna stay committed for as long as I’m learning because I feel this need to try to disseminate the information to ensure that all of our kids learn how to read.

PA:

And it starts with asking questions, right

MG:

It does. And once you start, you kind of can’t stop.

PA:

Right. No, I do understand. Well, The Right to Read project has become this powerful voice in literacy advocacy. What inspired this founding? And how has its mission evolved over time?

MG:

So, I was actually working in this balanced literacy school district, and I was learning about all these things that just weren't quite right with the initiative. My job was to be a literacy coach and to be an interventionist, and then eventually to do district-level work running a pilot of schools. And what I realized was that what I was learning wasn’t jibing with the balanced literacy initiative of the district. And at one point in time, district leadership gave me the set of talking points, and they were like, you need to stay on message. And the talking points included things like, we will not engage in judgment of the three-queuing method, even if we’ve learned differently. And we will not actively tell staff to stop using guided reading. And I was like, “I can’t do this. Like, I can’t honor these talking points.” So, basically, The Read to Read project was born out of necessity because I needed to figure out a way to obviously distinguish when I was working as a district employee and was responsible for staying on district messaging, and when I was actually free to share what I was learning about the science of reading.

PA:

Free to share. What a term. That disconnect that took courage as well, wouldn't you say, Margaret?

MG:

Well, at first I wasn't all that courageous because it was anonymous. It started as, like, an anonymous blog where I was writing about what I was learning and just trying to, like, share information. And then that anonymity was taken away from me because Reading Rockets reached out and they were like, “We’d like to run your blog. So can we do that? You need to have a name and a picture attached to it.” And that’s, I think, where I started to realize, “Oh, I have to be a little braver than the way I feel inside.” So, yeah, so I did. And then from there, once it was clear that I was a teacher and the mission of the organization is to bring teachers like me with the advocates that I was meeting, because I was starting to meet people who are passionate from decoding dyslexia, from the NAACP, like bringing those people together. And then also the researchers who are super eager to connect their work with classroom practice. So, it was like this way of trying to bring everybody together in service of one goal to ensure that all of our kids get their civil right to read. And I think you asked, like, how has it changed over time? And that's interesting because I, when I look back, I feel like in the early days, it was about like just building this basic level of awareness. Like there is this vast body of research that teachers don't know about. Here are some of the basics of it. But now that’s been pretty cracked open. Like even the general public has heard about the term, the science of reading. So, it’s allowed our organization to shift our focus a little bit more. Instead of just raising awareness, now it's about, like, more deeply understanding the research and more deeply understanding how it can impact classroom instruction.

PA:

All right. That is wonderful to hear. As I’m listening to you, I was thinking how powerful. And it’s the power of truth, right? And what works. You can’t put that back in the box as soon as it grows. And take a look at the people that you’ve been connected to to help that growth and pull you along to do the work that you’re doing, an awareness, and then moving on to that deep level of impact. That is just so great to hear you just detailed in that way. As you said, it’s out of the box now. And there are so many who are familiar with the science of reading, that body of reading research. But then here we’re looking at fewer people themselves, maybe contributing to that. How does it shift into practice? How do they use, take that awareness and transfer it to that impact on their students and an impact on their teaching?

MG:

Yeah, so there’s kind of this idea of teachers being consumers of reading research, like we are supposed to absorb the knowledge that has been generated by scientists, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, speech and language pathologists who are doing research, all that stuff. And like we’re supposed to somehow make sense of it on our own. But I really want to try to shift that and start thinking about how teachers can participate in the research process so that we can make sure that we get our questions answered and that we know how to make sense of the findings. And I feel like that starts with the issue of our training. So, teachers are typically trained to do things like inquiry projects or like case studies that are focused on observational data. And that’s important, like absolutely. And I’ve come to learn that there’s this value to larger-scale studies that focus on objective data points. And that was a new area of learning for me. So, I need to learn about concepts that hadn't been taught in my teacher-preparation program, like about statistical significance, which tells us whether or not results are just due to chance. Because a lot of times you’ll notice something happening in the classroom and you can’t actually put your finger on, like, why that’s happening. So, when studies are analyzing the data to determine statistical significance, they’re able to say, like, concretely, we are very sure that this is a cause and an effect. The other one that I’ve gotten really focused on is educational significance, because just because sometimes there’s a sign of growth there, that doesn’t mean it’s actually a worthwhile thing for us to pursue as classroom teachers. Educational significance, it considers factors like cost and the resources and the time. And it lets us determine whether or not, like, the actual impact on student learning is worth our effort. So, as I’ve been learning about these things that I had not been taught in teacher preparation, I’ve begun to have, like, a lot more empathy for researchers and to understand how much work it takes to develop good studies, to run and analyze the studies. It helps me better understand the hoops that they have to go through. It’s also helped me to consume research in a different way because I’m able to see, like, what are the things that are settled science when it comes to reading instruction, and then what are the areas that actually require more research.

PA:

Right. So, really looking at what’s happening behind the scenes itself in the research, but at the same time getting teachers involved more actively. So, right now, we can say that maybe we’re passive participants when research is being done, but becoming more active participants in a variety of ways. But you’re so right, it will take knowing and understanding and getting more professional learning in that area.

MG:

Yeah, it’s like we need teachers to be able to ask teachery questions and get good research answers back. And then, we also need to be able to understand when research is delivering answers, how do we make sense of that?

PA:

What is worth our effort and pursuing? That is just wonderful. Thank you so much. That is a different avenue to look at things now that we understand what the research is, how do we digest it? How do we consume it and use it in a meaningful way on a regular basis? Thinking about educators as a whole. We might have some misconceptions here and there, just like we had some misconceptions about how we teach reading. Thinking about how they might participate maybe in this research. You mentioned some things that you are understanding now. What were some of the barriers maybe from before that you didn’t understand that made you ingest it differently now? How do we demystify the process?

MG:

Yeah, so part of it is this need for a common language. There’s a lot of terms that are used in research that are not familiar to teachers. And then, there are also terms that teachers use that are not familiar to research. So, sometimes we are, like, missing each other in our conversations. So, there’s this need for a common language. There’s also a need for understanding what research has been done already and why. So, for example, one of the big misconceptions I hear about the science of reading is a lot of people think that it is limited to phonics. And so, like, if you know about teaching explicit systematic phonics, you’ve got the science of reading down, you’re good to go. And that is such a misconception. I didn’t realize the amount of research that had actually been done on language development and on comprehension. So, when I first started getting into being more active in the science of reading, it was because my now research partner, Tiffany Hogan, who’s a speech and language pathologist, she was telling me about this huge governmental initiative that I knew nothing about. It was the Reading for Understanding Research Initiative. And it was an enormous governmental investment in trying to understand how do we improve students’ reading comprehension. So, it was like over $100 million that went into it and like hundreds of publications that were produced by the Reading for Understanding Initiative. And most teachers don’t know anything about it.

PA: 

Because it stayed in the realm of research and hasn’t been disseminated for us.

MG:

Exactly. And so, one of the reasons why I love my research partner so much is that Tiffany is willing to be able to think critically about, like, where have we misstepped as researchers? What are some things that we need to do to improve the transmission of information? And so we were talking about how one of the outputs of the Reading for Understanding Initiative was curriculum. It was researcher-designed language comprehension curriculum. And so, they developed these great lessons. They found out that they actually really work. They were seeing students increase in their language abilities on objective measures. And so, they’re like, this is great. We’ve done our job. We’re going to post it open access on the internet, and teachers are going to be able to find it. And what actually happened is that without a big marketing budget, there is nobody who is disseminating the lesson plans. And as a result, teachers didn’t know anything about them. And so, they kind of sat on a website there. And so, I think one of the things that we need to think more critically about is we can’t assume that just because researchers are researching and they’re putting their findings out in peer-reviewed journals or on websites for teachers to access, that teachers know to look for it and then know how to use those things. So, we need to get better at the dissemination part for sure.

PA:

Yes. Is this what you would call your last mile between research and practice?

MG:

Yeah, I suppose it is. Like, I think one of the things that comes to mind when I think about the last mile is that we’ve done a whole lot of research to try to figure out, like, the efficacy of instruction and of interventions. That means that we know what works out in ideal circumstances. So, when the circumstances are right, when the conditions are great, the dosage of the instruction is high, the implementation matches the design that was planned for the intervention. Like, we know quite a lot about efficacy. But we have so much less when it comes to effectiveness trials, which are actually the kind of research that happens in the wild. So, we still have so much to learn about what we need to do to ensure that school systems, like school districts, are going to be able to reliably produce skilled readers. So, we don't know enough about what’s needed in order to make effective practices the norm. We don’t know enough about how to ensure that teachers pick up those practices and sustain using them. What curriculum and training is needed to make sure that average teachers get really good results? When I think about the last mile, it’s the like, what do we need to do to ensure that kids become readers in our school system, not just hypothetically or in specific trials?

PA:

Right. So, those effective trials will be the types of strategies or frameworks that have been shown to work in various types of environments. Is that what you’re saying?

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MG:

Yeah, and I think that one of the things that I’m really excited about when it comes to research-to-practice partnerships is that what teachers have is a deep understanding of our setting. We know what our classrooms are like. We know what it’s like to try to manage classroom management at the same time that you’re trying to implement effective strategies. We know how much planning time we’ve got. So, we know, like, we need to teach math and science and reading and writing and all of these things. So, we know the parameters that are in place. And if we can help researchers understand those parameters, then they’re better able to create studies that are of use to us, which makes it easier for us to then apply those findings to our instruction.

PA: 

Right, very good. Speaking of parameters and thinking about teachers want practical. Show me what it is that has worked, show me how to do it, how can I tweak it so it works in my situation? What are some practical ways when I think just overall that educators can bridge that gap from the research to the schools to the classrooms in districts across the country?

MG:

Yeah, and I love that you use that word gap to try to describe it because I feel like we’ve got at least two gaps. We’ve got this research-to-practice gap, which has gotten a lot of attention, where there’s this vast body of research and it wasn’t filtering into the curriculum and the instruction that teachers were using. But we also have this practice-to-research gap where researchers may not know enough about what is happening in schools to be able to do the kind of research that will then become widely applicable to classrooms everywhere. So, I think the responsibility lies on both sides of things. It’s important for researchers to try to get involved into their local school systems to be able to conduct research in environments that they can increasingly learn about. I also think when teachers have the capacity, we should be reaching out to researchers as well. So, I mean, for me personally, I was listening to a podcast and someone had sent it to me and was like, Tiffany Hogan was talking about a blog that you wrote. Just wanted to let you listen to it. And I listened to it and I was like, she's talking about this thing, like, bring a scientist to school day. This is fascinating. I’m gonna call her bluff. Like, let’s see. Like, does she actually really want to come to school? So, I sent her an email and I was like, “I was listening to this. It sounds like you’re really interested in understanding what teachers are doing and working with us. Are you interested in talking?” And what I learned was she was not bluffing. She did actually want to engage in our research-to-practice partnership. So, that kind of reaching out and saying, “I was listening to you, I'm curious about it. Would you be willing to talk with me more? Talk with the teachers at my school, teachers in my district.” Sometimes you don’t get a response at all. Not everybody is a Tiffany. Sometimes, their in boxes are full and they don’t have the capacity to take on that work. But a lot of times you do actually get a response, and people will actually be excited about the idea of explaining their research directly to teachers. From there, sometimes you can ask about their upcoming projects and see if there’s some overlap between the needs that your students have and the research that’s being conducted and see if there’s actually so close of a match that you can be part of their upcoming study.

PA:

Oh, that's wonderful. So, this whole idea of getting the researchers to think like teachers and then having the teachers think like researchers, right? We want our teachers to think like scientists so that they’re both fine-tuning. They’re fine, the researchers are fine-tuning the research, and the teachers are fine-tuning their practice of teaching their students to get the biggest bang for your buck, right? How do we get our teachers to think like a scientist? Can you share any examples of how that mindset shapes instruction?

MG:

So, I was actually just talking with a newer career teacher the other day about how when you first start teaching, it’s like there’s just so much to manage, and you’re trying to think like, “What do I do next? What do I say next in this moment?” It feels like everything is going very fast, and sometimes it feels a little bit out of control. But when you get to be a more experienced teacher and classroom management is feeling stronger, things seem to slow down. It’s like the whole game slows down and you’re able to see the variables that are in place. And so, one of the next steps that we can take is shifting our focus from, like, looking at individual students and being like, “What about the student do I need to know?” And instead start thinking about, like, “I know my students. I know what I'm trying to do. So, what about the interaction between the curriculum and the instruction and my students and the learning environment? What about those things can I alter so that students will learn?” And so, you start thinking about them, those factors as variables where you can turn up the volume on things like opportunities for practice, or you can turn up the volume on trying to make sure that you are providing the most explicit instruction possible so that there’s no room for doubt for kids to understand exactly what you’re asking them to do. I feel like the shift that happens for teachers, if we’re going to start thinking like a scientist in the classroom, is looking at the variables that are within our control and starting to tweak those variables so that we get the outcomes that we want. It starts to seem more like an experiment than an art in some way. It’s not that the art is gone, but it’s a different way of thinking about it and a different way of thinking about your role in this interaction with curriculum and with students. Does that make sense?

PA:

Yes, it does because the end result is student success, right? Yeah. I love that you focus on the interaction. What is it that you can do to get the best results for your students, that explicit instruction? What is it that I can do to get that end result that I’m seeking? And all teachers want their students to learn. Absolutely. That’s beautiful. I love the way you said that, Margaret. Are there any particular strategies that you’ve seen work to keep the momentum and the excitement about, “Oh, now I know what it is that I need to do. I understand the research. I'm going to put this into practice.” How do we keep that momentum alive, especially right now when resources and constraints or competing priorities are in place? And we know that happens everywhere in every school across our country.

MG:

Yeah, I think part of the problem that we're experiencing in a lot of different places is that teachers are kind of all on our own trying to figure things out. So, we’re trying to read Facebook posts that are about the science of reading and find journal articles that will start to answer some of our questions. And we’re listening to podcasts and we’re watching webinars and we’re doing all of this. And what can actually happen is each teacher in a school building starts approaching instruction in his or her own way. And the result for kids is a piecemeal of instruction, so that there becomes a lack of through line from kindergarten to first grade to second grade to third grade. And if what we’re trying to do is actually ensure that every kid becomes a skilled reader, we need alignment across the grade levels in a school. Because it takes longer than 180 days, which is how long we have in one school year in my district. It takes longer than 180 days to ensure a skilled reader. So, what it ends up coming down to is good leadership at the school level, at the district level, and hopefully we’ll get there at the state level. But it means having a vision that we’re all aligned with. It means that we all have this willingness to prioritize, to make sure that reading is always a focus of every school day and of our time that we have together for collaboration, for planning, for staff meetings, etc. And then, it takes good leadership to protect that time that is for literacy instruction, to protect our focus from competing priorities. One of the things that has been really powerful at my school is just norming on the fact that every kid will get taught to read every single day at school. There is nothing that is going to interrupt our dedicated literacy block. And I don’t think that we’re going to be able to get such great results unless we’ve got really great leadership that is bringing all of our energy together, harnessing it, and then making sure that we’re running in step together.

PA:

Harnessing it. I love that phrase. Just the idea of working together is so important. You talk about equity, and equity, this is just paraphrasing Dr. Anita Archer, is that quality of instruction for all in every class, every day, is what we're looking at. And I know Wright’s Reproject emphasizes equity through literacy. How does implementation science intersect with that equity in the work that you do?

MG:

I feel like this is an issue where it’s like if we’re relying on teachers seeking out training, relying on teachers paying for their own professional development, effective instruction is never going to reach our most vulnerable students. Schools that have high teacher turnover, that have fewer resources, that have greater implementation challenges are always going to have to defy all the odds in order to get good results. So, I focus more now on implementation science, which is about systematic change. It’s about ensuring that effective implementation happens in a school building, happens, hopefully, at the district level, because leaders create these enabling conditions that allow effective instruction to happen in every classroom, regardless of the level of experience of the teacher, regardless of the teacher’s capacity to seek out learning on his or her own. I think that what it’s going to take to ensure that all students become good readers is thinking about the kids who are most dependent on school to become skilled readers. How do we make sure that they get their needs met, despite the conditions that we know are in place in typically higher-poverty schools, where there’s a lot more turnover of teachers, of staff, where you need to try to figure out how do we ensure really solid foundation baseline level of teaching in order to make sure that every kid is able to make at least a year’s worth of progress every year that they’re in school.

PA:

All right. So much to think about. You said defy the odds. So much needs to be in place to defy the odds, right? When we’re looking at knowledge from the teacher, being able to implement what they’ve learned, having a structure there and that support. Those partnerships are so important. When we think about all the things you’ve discussed, what is that one thing, that one step that educators can take tomorrow to become more engaged in the science of reading movement?

MG:

I think it's the step that I keep taking over and over again, which is talking to other teachers about what you’re learning. The more that we’re able to talk with our colleagues and our school building about what we’re learning and what we’re trying, the more we can try to rope in our principal or district leadership and talking about what we’re learning, the more we can create this collaborative environment where it becomes safe to try new things, where there’s some accountability to make sure that those things work because we’re helping each other fine-tune our practice, opportunities to look at data together to be able to see how those choices that we’re making are paying off our students. The thing that I come back to over and over again is the step that we need to do is bring other people along. With us and our learning so that our impact is able to spread.

PA:

All right, wonderful. Discuss, share, refine, repeat, and pull in more people and do it again.

MG:

We need everybody in this big job.

PA:

Yes, it is a very big job. I agree with you there, but it can be done. We will defy the odds. Well, what gives you hope right now about the future of literacy instruction?

MG:

I feel pretty cautiously optimistic, both optimistic, because I feel like teachers are seeking out information more than ever before. We’re trying to learn about effective literacy instruction. And this is happening at a time when districts and states are actually putting in place early literacy legislation. So, for example, I'm in California and this is the first year ever that there has been a requirement for universal screening so that all primary grade teachers will administer an assessment to find out reading risk amongst their students. That’s a huge step forward. So, I feel optimistic because there’s this chance that teachers and our curiosity will actually be met by leadership at district and state levels. So, that together there’s a chance of us being able to implement well. When I feel cautious, it’s because I worry about sometimes there’s a lack of communication in that planning process. So, I want to make sure that teachers are advocates, that we are part of the planning process when it comes to district initiatives and state initiatives, so that we can ensure that the planning is done really well and it will actually be feasible in our classrooms to make the kind of changes that are being discussed.

PA:

Wonderful. Hope in conjunction with what you do over and over again, talk to teachers, keep that communication going. Lastly, how can our listeners learn more about your work with The Right to Read project?

MG:

Oh, thanks for asking. Well, you can always read about what we’re thinking. So, we have a blog that has tons of posts on it. So, you can always read about what’s brewing in our minds now. You can also look on our website to see the resources that we’ve developed. So, for example, there’s these videos that are there that we designed for kids to be able to learn about the science of reading. So, like at my school, we show these brain-builder videos to kids at the start of each school year so that they understand more about what’s going on in their brains as they’re learning to read, as they’re developing fluency with their reading, understanding what role vocabulary plays in their reading or phonics plays in their reading. So, there’s resources there that are for kids, for teachers, for advocates. Another thing that I might suggest is that everybody is totally welcome to email and ask to be a part of the Lunch and Lit. It’s a space that is intended for educators and researchers. So, if you fall into one of those two categories. On Fridays, we have pretty much weekly meetings where people will present research that they’re conducting and get feedback from practitioners about how that is landing with them. Or the reverse can be true, where we have practitioners who are posing problems of practice to get answered by researchers. So, that’s called the Lunch and Lit. And there’s information on our website about how to request to join those pretty much weekly meetings to be able to bring together research and practice in one safe space to ask questions.

PA:

All right. This sounds like you’ve got it actively going already. That partnership between researchers and teachers, very inspiring. Thank you so much, Margaret, for sharing. I’m sure that you’ve inspired teachers to reach out and learn a little bit more and dive into being an advocate themselves, to think like a scientist, is where I was going with that one. Thank you, Margaret. This has been such a wonderfully informative and insightful conversation. We thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience with our audience today. That's it for another great EDVIEW360 podcast. Please join us again next month and visit voyagersopris.com/edview360 to learn about our webinars, blogs, and other podcasts. This is Pam Austin, and we hope to see you all again very soon.

Narrator:

This has been an EDVIEW360 podcast. For additional thought-provoking discussions, sign up for our blog, webinar, and podcast series at voyagersopris.com/edview360. If you enjoyed the show, we’d love a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts and to help other people like you find our show. Thank you.