“Statistics and their interpretation by experts show only the surface dimension
of the difficulties we face. Beneath them lies a tension between hope and
frustration that characterizes current attitudes about education at every level.”
A Nation at Risk, 1983, p. 10
In today’s rapidly evolving digital and multicultural landscape, literacy education must broaden beyond traditional debates and embrace an all-encompassing dynamic framework we all can accept. Rather than viewing the science of reading and the holistic treatment of literacy as opposing forces, we must recognize their contributions to an integrated, broader, and more comprehensive vision of multiliteracies. This perspective acknowledges that literacy is no longer confined to print; on the contrary, it is shaped by multiple modes of communication and multiple languages, cultural contexts, and technological advancements.
The primary purpose of this article is to explore the literacy perspectives of the science of reading, holistic language, and multiliteracies through the lens of multilingual learners. Beginning by outlining overlapping influences including federal law and significant national literacy reports, prevailing learning theories, and standards, I then propose how these perspectives work in tandem to create the relational metaphor of a blooming flower. Finally, I suggest how this metaphor can serve to diffuse the eternal literacy debate.
Historicizing Literacy Education: Implications for Multilingual Learners
Historicizing literacy envisions research as a double-edged sword—both as an enabler and a constrainer (Gutiérrez, 2007). The heralded 1983 report A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform spurred hope of transforming US schools, which were painted as plummeting in reputation and performance. Countering this trend, two schools of thought, supported by research, have since prevailed, both asserting their efforts yield positive results for student literacy. The first, under the umbrella of whole language, claims over six decades of research on meaning-making, highlighting language in use and defending its effectiveness in teaching reading and writing (Edelsky, 1994; Daniels and Bizar, 1999). The second school, the science of reading or structured literacy, has accrued a body of brain-based research that underscores the foundational skills of reading. Its roots stem from the “simple view of reading” (Gough and Turner, 1986), which attributes reading disability to students’ inabilities to decode, comprehend, or both, and Scarborough’s Rope, a model based on a large body of research studies of the 1970s–80s on reading and reading disabilities (The Reading League, 2023).
I will not debunk either of these perspectives nor favor one over the other. In fact, I offer a truce, proposing a neutral stance to this rivalry by introducing a third perspective—that of multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996). Multiliteracy expands traditional print-driven literacy by incorporating a wide range of modes of communication (see Figure 5 for a sampling) as contributors to students’ identity formation and literacy development.
It values and applies ongoing technological advances and highlights the interplay of cultures and languages within the learning environment.
Marked by prevailing theory and historical events that have impacted the fields of literacy, technology, and multilingual education, multiliteracies represent the most current thinking about student learning in today’s classrooms and beyond (Gottlieb, 2023). In introducing multiliteracies to the current literacy mix, I attempt not to further incite but instead to quell the ongoing controversy between the lingering tenets of whole language and those of the science of reading. How? By acknowledging the legitimacy of having multiple views of literacy drawn from multidisciplinary bodies of research.
Expanding the robust evidence base, I present a series of charts to situate literacy within the greater educational arena. The first of these, Figure 1, speaks to how federal legislation, major litigation, and reading commissions have offered foundational knowledge that informs the literacy stances of the last half century. With the deep impact of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) on K–12 public education, I highlight the interplay among bilingualism/biliteracy, learning disabilities, and educational policies that have affected multilingual learners, students who are or have been exposed to languages other than English in daily interaction.
Fueled by findings from the National Reading Panel (2000), the No Child Left Behind era (2003–2015) rekindled the science of reading by incentivizing states and districts to adopt “science-based reading research” (Leider and Proctor, 2024) while quashing the flames of bilingual education. At the same time, the nation saw vestiges of language in use relit as states and consortia crafted/adopted language proficiency/development standards with the intertwining of content and language. Adding to this base, in the 1990s, the popularization of the internet and the world wide web stimulated interest in technologies, ushering multiliteracies onto the educational scene.
While legislation offers a legal precedent, tenets of learning theories guide educators in designing curriculum, instruction, and classroom assessment. In Figure 2, we see these theories in relation to their handling of literacy, where each perspective reflects a distinct school of thought. In large part, the science of reading is equated with behaviorism, a holistic approach is represented by cognitive and social constructivism, and multiliteracy is threaded throughout the humanism and connectivism learning theories.
To better understand additional factors affecting literacy views, beginning in the 1990s, we must also account for the effect of the standards movement on educational policy. Standards have been a driving engine of education reform, a vehicle for educational parity, and a metric to measure progress. However, over time it has become apparent that standards are only one aspect of a broader agenda to strengthen the educational infrastructure (Gottlieb, 2009).
No one educational innovation operates in a vacuum; rather, to be effective, it must be integrated into a well-conceptualized system. Figure 3 illustrates the dovetailing of standards frameworks in anchoring a multidimensional literacy-focused learning system.
While multiliteracies are an outgrowth of the standards of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), the science of reading operates within the academic content standards of language arts along with the Knowledge and Practices Standards for the Teaching of Reading, and language-development standards frameworks draw from academic content standards in conjunction with the process-oriented language of linguistic theory. The convergence of these sets of standards releases the full power of literacy perspectives for multilingual learners.
Metaphorically Speaking: The Confluence of Literacy Perspectives
Ultimately, we must be creative in designing pedagogical spaces inclusive of multiliteracy practices and perspectives that support student voice and choice. In that way, students can interact with information and each other through an array of modes that encompass communication, culture, and context to connect with their immediate local and global worlds (Esperat, 2024).
This article began with a dismal outlook for education; however, it concludes with a brighter forecast. Admittedly, there has been a long-standing, often contentious debate within the education community about what constitutes effective evidence-based reading pedagogies—a phonics-based approach vs. one of meaning-making in context. By inserting multiliteracies, the dichotomy is broken so that we can attend to our students and tailor instruction to help them become “empowered learners, digital citizens, and creative communicators” (Crompton and Burke, 2024).
To celebrate the convergence of literacy perspectives, let’s marvel at the beauty of a flower in bloom. As shown in Figure 4, this metaphor represents the interdependence of literacy perspectives, parallelling the layout of standards in Figure 3 and working together to contribute to the biodiversity of our educational ecosystem. In it, the science of reading forms the root structure of foundational skills, anchoring and bracing the stem. The stem, in turn, provides support, transporting nutrients within an intertwined system of bi/literacy, encompassing content, language, and technology, that ultimately blossoms into multiliteracies, a flower of colorful petals.
Agreeing to Compromise Positions
Today’s students are entering an information and communication age unlike that of previous generations. As educators, it is our responsibility to revisit how our literacy practices ensure that, from the onset, our students have the skills, dispositions, and ingenuity tailored to their unique needs and those of their communities. It is also critical that our multilingual learners’ multilingualism and multiculturalism become the norm in this increasingly interdependent world to drive their multiliteracy and language development.
No one can deny the existence, explosive evolution, wide-spread use, and importance of artificial intelligence (AI), the internet, and other forms of information bombarding our daily lives. In redefining the nature of reading to be inclusive of these advances in communication tools, the International Reading Association (2009) supports the rights of students and urges educators to embed these new literacies into curriculum by:
- Offering students opportunities to collaboratively read, share, and create content with peers from around the world;
- Incorporating culturally sensitive thinking into print and digital literacy practices;
- Adapting reading and writing standards and assessments to include new literacies; and
- Giving students opportunities to access information and communication technologies.
As educators, we must shape literacy education and practices to reflect the reality of the 21st century—one that values structured reading skills alongside critical thinking, digital literacy, and multicultural awareness. By expanding our definition of literacy beyond a single theoretical framework, we can better equip all students, particularly multilingual learners, with the skills to thrive in a technologically driven world (Giampapa, 2010). It is not a matter of choosing between competing literacy models but rather of synthesizing their strengths to build a more future-focused educational system. The educational community begs transformation, and it is our obligation to remain steadfast in best preparing our multilingual learners and all students to face the uncertainties that lie ahead.
References
A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. A report to the nation and the secretary of education, United States Department of Education (1983). Washington, DC. National Commission on Excellence in Education.
Daniels, H., and Bizar, M. (1999). “Whole Language Works: Sixty years of research.” ASCD, 57(2).
Edelsky, C. (1994). “Research about Whole Language: Research for whole language.” In A. D. Flurkey and R. J. Richard, Eds. Under the Whole Language Umbrella: Many Cultures, Many Voices. National Council of Teachers of English, pp. 64–82.
Esperat, T. M. K. (2024). “Multiliteracies in Teacher Education.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. https://oxfordre.com/education/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264093-e-1890
Giampapa, F. (2010). “Multiliteracies, Pedagogy, and Identities: Teacher and student voices from a Toronto elementary school.” Canadian Journal of Education, 33(2), 407–431.
Gottlieb, M. (2023). Right from the Start: Enriching Learning Experiences for Multilingual Learners through Multiliteracies. Center for Applied Linguistics.
Gottlieb, M. (2009). “Standards: A metric for language teaching and learning in pre-K–12 education.”TESOL Symposium on ELT Standards, Panama City, Panama.
Gough, P. B., and Tunmer, W. E. (1986). “Decoding, Reading, and Reading Disability.” Remedial and Special Education, 7(1), 6–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/074193258600700104
Gutiérrez, K. (2007). “Historicizing Literacy.” Counterpoints, 310, ix–xiii.
International Dyslexia Association (2010). Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading. https://dyslexiaida.org/knowledge-and-practices
International Reading Association (2009). “New Literacies and 21st-Century Technologies: A position statement.” www.literacyworldwide.org/docs/default-source/where-we-stand/new-literacies-21st-century-position-statement.pdf
ISTE Standards. https://iste.org/standards
Leider, C. M., and Proctor, C. P. (2024). “Toward a Dynamic Idiolect: Multilingual perspectives on the ‘science of reading.’” Educational Psychologist, 59(4). https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2024.2394026
National Reading Panel and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction. US Dept. of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
New London Group. (1996). “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing social futures.” Harvard Educational Review, 66(1).
The Reading League (2023). “The Reading Rope: Key ideas behind the metaphor.” www.thereadingleague.org
Margo Gottlieb, PhD, is a consultant and best-selling author. Her latest of more than 20 books include Assessing Multilingual Learners: Bridges to Empowerment (3rd Ed.) (2024) and Collaborative Assessment for Multilingual Learners and Teachers: Pathways to Partnerships (with A. Honigsfeld, 2025). Margo has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar, honored for her significant contribution to the field by TESOL, and has recently been inducted into the inaugural Multilingual Education Hall of Fame by K12 Summit–NABE. She is grateful to Dr. Joel Gómez for feedback on an earlier version of this article.