Diane McGuinness

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Diane McGuiness (born 1933) is a cognitive psychologist who has written extensively on sex differences, education, learning disabilities, and early reading instruction. Her published books are as follows:

• When Children Don't Learn, Basic Books (New York City), 1985.

• (Editor) Dominance, Aggression, and War, Paragon House Publishers (New York City), 1987.

• Evolution: The Transdisciplinary Paradigm, ICUS Books, 1987.

• Why Our Children Can't Read, and What We Can Do about It, Free Press (New York City), 1997.

• My First Phonics Book, Dorling Kindersley (New York City), 1999.

• Growing a Reader from Birth: Your Child's Path from Language to Literacy, W.W. Norton and Co. (New York, NY), 2004.

• Early Reading Instruction: What Science Really Tells Us about How to Teach Read, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 2004.

• Language Development and Learning to Read: The Scientific Study of How Language Development Affects Reading Skills, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 2005.

McGuinness is an outspoken critic of whole language instruction but also of phonics as traditionally taught in the United States. She favors an approach to early reading instruction known as linguistic phonics, or synthetic phonics, in which the starting point for instruction is the 40-odd phonemes of English. In synthetic phonics instruction, each sound is introduced initially with a single "basic code" spelling, e.g. the /ee/ sound is connected to the 'ee' spelling. Students are taught to read by blending all of the sounds in the word. Spelling alternatives for sounds (e.g. for /ee/ the spellings 'y' as in funny, 'ea' as in eat, 'e' as in reflex, 'ie' as in cookie, etc.) are taught later. McGuinness has also introduced the term "code overlap" to describe a spelling (or grapheme) that can stand for more than one sound (phoneme), e.g. the spelling 'ow' can stand for the /ou/ sound as in the word now, or for the /oe/ sound as in the word snow.

Synthetic phonics has recently gained traction in the U.K. as a result of the Rose Report but appears to be little used in the U.S.

McGuinness has stirred up controversy for her views on dyslexia and teaching letter names. She argues that dyslexia is not a biological condition but a socially-created problem that results from a complex spelling code and ineffective teaching methods. She has argued against teaching the letter names in the early phases of instruction on the grounds that letter names can confuse students. What is important, McGuinness argues, is that students be taught the relationships between letters and sounds.

For more information:

A synopsis of McGuinness's views on reading instrcution [1].

Brief Biography: Contemporary Authors Online, Thomson Gale, 2005.