A teacher reading with a group of students

American Public Media Educate Podcast: At a Loss for Words - What's wrong with how schools teach reading

Donald Bolger

In American Public Media’s Educate podcast, Associate Professor Donald J. Bolger describes how people learn to read words. The podcast features stories about education and how people learn.

American Public Media visited Dr. Bolger’s Laboratory for the Neurodevelopment of Reading and Language. During the visit, Dr. Bolger and students illustrated how phonics and holistic approaches are used to teach people how to read in a demonstration in which students were learning to read a foreign language.

Dr. Bolger is in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, and studies the cognitive and neural bases of reading and language ability, in addition to how people learn to read. He is an affiliate of the Center for Advanced Study of Language and co-founded the Maryland Neuroimaging Center.