The Future of Literacy Instruction in Europe: What the U.S. Might Learn

"There is general agreement across Europe that initial literacy instruction should use a balanced approach: that reading for meaning and understanding should not be taught separately from instruction about grapheme–phoneme relationships, and that learning to read and to write should be parallel and interactive activities (Effective Practices for Literacy Teaching, pg. 28).”

I was lucky enough this morning to find a pdf file uploaded to ResearchGate which took up most of my day. When I read the above opening statement in the report published in April, 2025, commissioned by a policy group in the European Union, I wondered why the situation is so different in the United States. In fact, I was stunned that an entire continent had the foresight to put together a team of bona fide experts to reflect on the future of literacy teaching in this trying period for humanity. The authors of Effective Practices for Literacy Teaching were charged with conducting a review of the most recent European and international research on effective approaches to teaching literacy. Their mandate came in response to the concerning PISA 2022 results, which showed declines in basic reading skills across Europe.

The writing team of Effective Practices for Literacy Teaching brought considerable expertise to the work. Colin Harrison from the University of Nottingham has contributed significantly to literacy studies particularly in reading comprehension and digital literacy. Greg Brooks from the University of Sheffield has been involved in numerous literacy policy initiatives and has contributed to international comparative studies on reading instruction approaches. P. David Pearson from the University of California, Berkeley, is a highly influential figure in reading research. He’s made significant contributions to comprehension instruction theory and has helped shape literacy curricula and assessment practices across the United States and beyond.

Sari Sulkunen from the University of Jyväskylä is a Finnish literacy expert whose research focuses on reading assessment, adolescent literacy, and multiliteracy. Her work incorporates perspectives from the Finnish education system, which has historically performed well on international literacy measures. Renata Valtin from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin specializes in reading development and difficulties and has contributed to understanding literacy acquisition in German-speaking contexts and developing effective interventions for struggling readers. Together, these authors represent expertise across multiple European countries and the United States, bringing diverse perspectives on literacy instruction from different educational systems.

Early in the text, the authors report that COVID-19 caused significant literacy learning loss across Europe with disproportionate effects on disadvantaged students. Even in the Netherlands, with its short eight-week lockdown and excellent internet coverage, students made little progress, losing about one-fifth of a school year. The average student in grades 1-4 lost five weeks of reading progress, while students in poorest areas showed no learning gain at all. In the UK, children from disadvantaged homes fell an additional five months behind peers.

COVID accelerated pre-existing negative trends in reading scores while reducing crucial parent-child interactions and dramatically increasing screen time. The report emphasized that education systems will be dealing with these impacts for the next two decades, as there are children not yet in school whose life chances have been diminished by the pandemic.

Even before the pandemic, literacy development in Europe involved many stakeholders beyond schools and teachers, including parents, social workers, health professionals, and governments. A unifying theme both motivating and recommended in the report is the notion that literacy development begins from birth with children's exposure to songs, rhymes, interactive play, and stories. The home learning environment is crucial. Evidence from Europe indicates that family literacy programs are valuable, especially for disadvantaged communities. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) is vital for enhancing equal opportunities.

When school begins in Europe, teachers balance decoding with print-related play, storybook reading, and book discussions. The report boils down key insights from reading research indicating five important aspects of early instruction accommodated by such early teaching: phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Most European educators advocate for a balanced approach where reading for meaning is taught alongside phonics, and reading and writing are taught together. As children develop, free reading helps develop fluency and comprehension.

When discussing digital literacy development, the authors call for a balanced approach that recognizes both benefits and limitations of technology, including AI applications. It struck me how heavy a load this word “balance” has carried in the U.S. in contrast to its common sense meaning in the report. In the 1990s, "balance" was a compromise term during the reading wars. By the early 2000s, balanced literacy narrowed to a technical debate, i.e., how to teach phonics. The mid-2000s saw balance increasingly invoked in policy documents as research confirmed that struggling readers needed both code-focused instruction and rich literacy experiences, though ideological disagreements about the proper "balance" persisted.

Since 2010, digital literacy has further complicated balance to include questions about balancing print and digital reading, teacher-directed and self-directed learning, and academic and recreational literacy practices. Most recently, especially following COVID-19's disruptions, balance has been repurposed to address equity concerns—balancing the needs of struggling readers with advancing all students, and balancing traditional literacy skills with the critical digital literacy necessary in an information-saturated environment.

Clearly, the report points out that AI is poised to do some unbalancing. There's a notable section acknowledging that "the time is rapidly approaching when most teachers will not be spending hours devising lessons and marking exercise books. Instead, they will become managers of learning rather than fountainheads of knowledge." AI will transform teacher roles, but teachers "will certainly not be redundant.” The report recommends preparing educational systems to be "more prepared for change and shock" in "a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous digital world," which should be interpreted, I believe, as getting about the building of the human and technological infrastructure to use AI. Seeing this sentiment expressed in such a calming and reasonable manner was refreshing in light of the harsh, often emotional debates surrounding AI in this country.

Two pages (96-67) are devoted exclusively to AI. The authors highlight Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, who enumerate three trends that threaten both the web and humanity: the ubiquity of "fake news," increased personal surveillance over the internet, and cyber-warfare. A figure from Julie Coiro (2023) shows how the internet has transformed from being a source of "truth" to questioning the very nature of "truth." Social media has become a primary news source for many adults, facilitating self-selected alignment with their stovepipe ideologies and broader political views. Of special significance for me is this: The authors argue that “a dialogic rather than a didactic literacy teaching strategy is preferable” in a world on the verge of fragmenting.

A delicious irony it was to read that Reciprocal Teaching from the 1980s was held up as a forward-looking pedagogical approach for all of Europe in 2025. By showcasing this method as a cornerstone of effective literacy instruction, the authors model for Europeans the fact that researchers have long understood the significance of cognitive strategies like predicting and verifying, summarizing and paraphrasing during active reading, routinely raising questions about meaning under construction, and actively seeking to clarify understandings.

This perspective suggests that despite rapid technological change, the fundamental principles of effective literacy education—active engagement, structured dialogue, and gradual transfer of responsibility to learners—remain constant even in the age of AI. Reciprocal Teaching exemplifies how (relatively) ancient wisdom about learning can be integrated with contemporary interest in strengthening critical thinking and collaborative problem-solving in a digital world.

Reciprocal Teaching, as described by the authors, is a collaborative approach where students in small groups take turns adopting the teacher's role in discussions. Students practice four key strategies: predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing. First demonstrated by the teacher, these strategies are gradually adopted by students until they can use them independently. Research shows significant gains in reading comprehension with this method, and the authors emphasize that this approach develops both comprehension skills and student agency. Every student experiences being a leader of learning.

If you have been reading my work, you know that my first impulse was to think about how to integrate a bot with Reciprocal Teaching. To be completely truthful, the thought had never crossed my mind before this report. As an assessment assistant, the AI could record and analyze discourse patterns in real-time, gently prompting quieter students and encouraging deeper exploration of text without dominating the human-centered interaction.

AI-powered digital role cards that adapt to students' developing abilities would be a possibility. Initially, these cards could provide structured prompts for each role (Predictor, Questioner, Clarifier, Summarizer), but gradually fade the scaffolding as the system detects increased student competence, and the scaffold melts into a natural conversational reading strategy. The AI could analyze student contributions over time, suggesting personalized next steps for each student to improve their strategy use while maintaining the student-led nature of reciprocal teaching.

Speaking of reciprocal teaching, this country desperately needs a task force of experts to take a look at the reality of literacy teaching, especially during this AI transition period. In the U.S., school districts vacillate between outright bans and tentative acceptance. Colleges issue contradictory guidance that leaves both faculty and students in uncertainty. This paralysis persists despite widespread adaptation to AI throughout professional communities that today's students will soon enter. The disconnect between innovation in the workplace and institutional inertia is just the most recent example of the gap between schools and the world beyond school which widens as the decades pass.

As we stand at this crossroads of literacy education and technological change, the European Commission's report offers us more than just policy recommendations—it provides a mirror through which we might examine our own fractured discourse in the United States.

What strikes me most is not just what this report contains, but how it was created: through collaborative expertise, evidence-based reasoning, and a commitment to finding common ground. The result is neither a surrender to technological determinism nor a reflexive defense of tradition, but rather a thoughtful integration that recognizes both the enduring principles of effective literacy instruction and the evolving contexts in which students must apply these skills.

I'm curious: What aspects of literacy education in your context would benefit from this kind of balanced, collaborative approach? How might we begin building bridges between the siloed communities that have formed around different approaches to reading instruction and around AI? And what role do you see for AI in supporting—rather than replacing—the human dimensions of literacy development?

Perhaps the most powerful lesson from this report isn't about specific instructional strategies at all, but about how we approach educational change itself: with curiosity rather than certainty, with dialogue rather than decree, and with an eye toward balancing what we know has worked with what we must discover together.

I welcome your thoughts and experiences in the comments.