Literacy Now

(Photos courtesy of Matthew Pearson)

Sunday, August 30, 2026, brought news that I was simply not prepared to receive—the passing of my dear friend and colleague, P. David Pearson.

I am still trying to absorb the reality that David is no longer with us.

There are some people whose presence in our lives becomes so familiar, so enduring, and so deeply connected to the history of our professional journeys that it is almost impossible to imagine the world without them in it. For me, David was one of those people.

My memories of David go back much farther than many people might realize.

I first had the opportunity to meet David when I was a very young graduate student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and he was a very young assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. Neither of us could have known then where our professional journeys would take us, but I remember being impressed by David.

There was something about his intellect, his curiosity, and the way he thought about reading and learning that made me believe I was meeting someone who was going to make a significant contribution to our field. In fact, I made a prediction: P. David Pearson was going to become a world-renowned scholar. (Spoiler alert: I was right.)

One of the things I admired most about David was his unwillingness to accept simple answers to complicated questions. He understood that literacy learning is complex because children are complex. He knew that teaching is complex because teachers make consequential decisions every day. And he understood that research should illuminate that complexity rather than erase it.

David challenged ideas without diminishing people. He understood that rigorous scholarship did not require intellectual arrogance. He could disagree with you and still make you want to continue the conversation—a truly rare gift.

Years later, when I served as president of the National Reading Conference (now the Literacy Research Association), I invited David to deliver the keynote at our annual conference. I knew what he would bring to that audience: Intellectual rigor, insight, provocation, humor, and an extraordinary ability to make us think differently about questions we thought we already understood.

He did not disappoint.

When David finished speaking, he received a 15-minute standing ovation. And as I watched hundreds of literacy scholars rise to their feet to honor him, I thought about the young assistant professor I had met years earlier when I was a graduate student at Wisconsin.

I will never forget that moment.

It is impossible to talk about David without acknowledging the magnitude of his contribution to our field. He fundamentally changed how generations of educators understood reading comprehension by helping us recognize that comprehension is not something that simply happens after children decode words—that readers actively construct meaning, bringing knowledge, experiences, language, expectations, and purposes to their encounters with texts. And his work on the gradual release of responsibility provided educators with a powerful way to conceptualize teaching: Teachers model and support learning, students participate with guidance, and responsibility gradually shifts until learners can act independently.

Right now, however, I am not thinking first about P. David Pearson, the internationally renowned scholar.

I am thinking about David, the person.

I am thinking about my colleague.

I am thinking about my friend.

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Editor's note: This article is part of a series of reflections honoring P. David Pearson's lasting legacy. For more, read his memorial and Celebration of Life.

On Sunday, August 30, 2026, P. David Pearson, one of the all-time most influential scholars in the field of literacy education, died after a yearlong fight with bladder cancer. He was 85.

His son, Matthew, shared the news in a public post on Pearson’s Facebook page and included a link to the online cancer journal his father had been keeping. The last few entries were not from Pearson, but by Matthew and his sister Susan, whose poignant contribution referenced Pearson’s “epic academic career” only briefly.

“I can't and won't recount his contributions to the field of early childhood literacy here,” she wrote. “That's a task for his colleagues and professional friends.”

Those from the literacy field who spoke at Pearson’s Celebration of Life, however, kept the focus on Pearson the person—and for good reason.

“The culture of academia can sometimes be prickly and competitive,” said Gina Cervetti, Pearson’s longtime friend and collaborator. “But David’s instinct was to acknowledge and include and lift up everyone around him.”

“His attitude toward life and work was ‘the more, the merrier,’” she said. “His deeper instinct was always to make people feel like they belonged.”

To illustrate her point, Cervetti shared an anecdote about helping Pearson put together the invitation list for his Festschrift a few years back.

Cervetti said she panicked when she saw that his list had grown to include 619 people (“Because rooms have maximum capacity,” she quipped). Pearson’s take was a bit different. He told her that he knew not everyone would attend, but regardless, he wanted all 619 to know that he had thought of them.

It was in the same spirit that Pearson’s family issued an open invitation to his memorial, both in person and via livestream. The majority of those who spoke were members of Pearson’s family or personal friends. Even the few who first met Pearson in professional contexts spoke very little about his extraordinary body of work.

Cervetti, for instance, began her remarks with the simple statement that Pearson “changed the way we teach children to read,” then added, “I could speak for hours about David as a scholar and leader, but that isn’t what’s in my heart today.”

The same went for Freddy Hiebert, who recalled how she had once mentioned to Pearson that driving California Highway 1 with the top down was on her bucket list. They were both living in the Midwest at the time, she said, but when they met up at a conference in San Francisco, Pearson was waiting for her with a convertible.

Hiebert and Cervetti both talked about Pearson’s mentorship and the incredible personal recommendations he’d written for them and countless others early in their careers, shaping the trajectory they would follow. It wasn’t unusual for the line between professional and personal to disappear in the process.

“My academic mentor became my collaborator, my collaborator became my friend, and my friend became one of the most important people in my life,” Cervetti said tearfully.

It turns out that Pearson was one of the most important people in a lot of lives. Their stories were punctuated by family members reading poetry Pearson had penned later in life as well as a friend who sang and played guitar. The eclectic, pre-event playlist included everything from “Amazing Grace” to “Graceland.” And for all of these reasons, despite being open to the public, Pearson’s memorial felt intimate and, at times, deeply personal.

More tributes to P. David Pearson will emerge over the coming weeks. And while many of those will include highlights from an extraordinary career, it is almost certain that Pearson’s legacy won’t be limited to what appears on his CV.

As Cervetti said, “David took pride in his accomplishments, but I think he took even more pride in all the people he had helped along the way.”

 

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Editor's note: This article is part of a series of reflections honoring P. David Pearson's lasting legacy. For more, read his memorial and a message from Patricia A. Edwards.

On Sunday, August 30, the field of literacy education suffered a massive loss when two of its most influential scholars, P. David Pearson and Peter Raymond Freebody, passed away within hours of one another.

Pearson and Freebody shared striking parallels across careers that fundamentally changed how literacy is taught around the world.

In 1983, Pearson co-developed the Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) model with Margaret C. Gallagher. The groundbreaking framework, often characterized as “I Do/We Do/You Do,” marked a fundamental shift in teaching by articulating how responsibility for learning can move purposefully from teacher to student.

Seven years later, on the other side of the globe, Australian literacy researcher Freebody and co-author Allan Luke published the first paper on their Four Resources Model, a framework that identified four reader “roles”: Code breaker, text participant, text user, and text analyst. The model recognized each role as necessary but insufficient on its own.

Both were recipients of the William S. Gray Citation of Merit (Pearson in 1990, Freebody in 2014), served on ILA’s Literacy Research Panel, and were inducted into the prestigious Reading Hall of Fame. They will also be remembered for their decades of mentorship to their students and colleagues alike.

The two shared something else: A rejection of the whole language/phonics-first binary central to the so-called Reading Wars, with both resisting efforts to reduce complex questions about literacy teaching and learning to opposing camps.

In 2001, Pearson penned "Life in the Radical Middle: A Personal Apology for a Balanced View of Reading." In it, he described how his positions had led some to characterize him first as a skills-focused cognitive behaviorist and, years later, as a whole language advocate. Neither, he wrote, fit. Instead, he argued for what he called the "radical middle," writing, "I have tried to promote paradigmatic tolerance and respect—not always with resounding success, but always with conviction."

Freebody similarly rejected the idea of opposing sides. Looking back on the Reading Wars in 2012, in an essay he penned for the Primary English Teaching Association of Australia, he referred to the divide as a "spurious dichotomy" that was "more handy than productive."

The deaths of Pearson and Freebody represent a stunning double blow for the field of literacy education. Their influence can be found not only in decades of scholarship, but in classrooms around the world—not to mention the generations of researchers and educators they mentored along the way.

ILA will share more about Pearson and Freebody in the coming days and weeks, including individual tributes celebrating their lives, work, and lasting impact on the field. Those of you who would like to share memories or reflections about Pearson or Freebody are invited to email social@reading.org.

Reading, writing, and discussion are a core part of these practices. Numerous literacy goals—such as constructing explanations or engaging in argument from evidence—can be richly contextualized for students during authentic scientific inquiry. In addition, a variety of different text types can be utilized as children explore scientific phenomena:

• Informational texts
• Lab notebooks
• Narratives connecting science ideas with cultural traditions

Furthermore, when science goals drive the focus of instruction, students' reading and writing capture forms authentic to science. For example, students might formulate specific questions prior to reading or learn to recognize and use the language of procedural text. They might also learn to recognize evidence-claim relationships or construct their own. Thus, opportunities for disciplinary literacy can be developed.

Finally, leading with science inquiry offers a motivational aspect of integration that would be hard to mimic in an ELA unit. It allows space for children to ask questions about the world around them; read to figure out what others have already learned; document their data collection; explain their findings; and even write persuasive proposals to support policy changes. This kind of reading, discussion, and writing is motivational.

If content integration can be viewed as a dance, we argue there is greatest potential for rich knowledge building if we allow science to serve as the lead.

Foundational principles to knowledge building through science

To shift to a more science-centered approach to knowledge building, consider these four basic yet foundational principles:

• Start with science standards, grounding the unit in science and engineering practices. Beginning with a puzzling phenomenon or problem drives the learning and gives literacy learning purpose.
• Use a variety of written and digital sources to support students' inquiry and problem-solving. Using texts authentic to science provides opportunities to practice a wide range of literacy skills.
• Encourage communication of ideas, explanations, and conclusions for authentic purposes. Science-based purposes and audiences expand literacy learning.
• Support students in building disciplinary language as they actively work to make sense of and communicate their science learning. All students benefit from the chance to use and apply academic discourse in the context of meaningful use.

When science leads, students build rich knowledge that supports contextualized literacy learning and richer, deeper, and more coherent scientific understanding.

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Every minute of instructional time is critical. The concise format of small-group lessons facilitates other instructional grouping contexts throughout the day, including whole-class and individual teaching. Small groups are flexible, meaning that students are not locked into a static group; the teacher transitions them to different groups based on developing needs and interests. 

Yet, in recent years, the value of small-group reading instruction (SGRI) has become the subject of debate, causing confusion and misunderstandings about the power of this essential practice. In their September 2025 EducationWeek opinion piece, Mike Schmoker and Tim Shanahan argued that SGRI is not effective because it may limit instructional time for many students. Later that year, Nell Duke and Claude Goldenberg countered that SGRI—when done well—has many benefits and can be an important component of effective literacy instruction. 

When carefully planned and conducted, small-group reading instruction provides the Tier 1 context for effectively enhancing students’ reading achievement. For example, flexibly grouping students based on a specific skill or strategy need (e.g., decoding words or making inferences) allows the teacher to provide short, targeted lessons. This type of targeted instruction accelerates student learning because it provides explicit teaching in areas of need, while allowing the teacher to constantly monitor and assess student progress. 

In March 2026, the Institute of Educational Sciences (IES) released a toolkit for providing differentiated reading instruction in Grades K–3, based on recommendations from their research-based practice guide. The materials highlight evidence-based methods for establishing and managing small groups to provide opportunities for assessment-driven and targeted instruction. 

SGRI is most effective when teachers select texts that align with a specific teaching point and are highly engaging. Karianne Grønli and her colleagues have also demonstrated that SGRI allows teachers opportunities to provide each reader with targeted feedback to develop skills while also fostering student agency and motivation. Finally, well-designed small-group instruction fosters accountable, meaningful student talk and enables deeper engagement with texts. 

When these elements are in place, teachers can maximize instructional time to meet the needs of all of their students, solidifying the value of small-group reading instruction in today’s classroom.

This post was developed in conjunction with members of ILA’s Administrator Collaborative, which includes Heidi Becker, Nabat Erdogan, Brigid Gala, Lisa Hill, Aileen Hower, Kristin Johnson, and Jill Tussey. For more information, register for the webinar on September 30, 2026, at 5:00 p.m. ET, for an opportunity to explore SGRI more deeply and ask questions live.

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