Science of Reading and Learning Science
Understanding how children learn changes everything. The Science of Reading and broader learning science give us a research-based picture of how the brain develops, how children acquire skills, why some students struggle, and what instructional approaches make the biggest difference. Explore our articles to dig into the evidence.
Midweek Mini: Struggling Readers Aren’t Lazy. Here’s What’s Actually Going On.
The child staring out the window, finding every excuse to avoid the page, is not lazy — they are protecting themselves from an experience that has taught them, reliably, that reading ends badly. Research shows struggling readers are often working significantly harder than their peers just to get through the same text, spending so much mental energy on decoding that meaning slips away before the paragraph ends. Once you see avoidance as self-protection rather than defiance, everything about how you respond changes.