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Abstract

This reflective inquiry examines the first year of a two-year initiative to more explicitly align an established educator preparation program with the Science of Reading (SoR). Situated within a small private university in New York State, the article considers implementation as both curricular revision and institutional change. The process included faculty professional learning, curriculum mapping, alignment of student learning outcomes, revision of common course assessments, development of SoR-aligned models of candidate work, and consideration of clinical experiences. Particular attention is given to tensions that emerged around policy fatigue, academic freedom and responsibility, differing professional cultures, candidates’ prior experiences with literacy instruction, and inconsistencies between university coursework and clinical settings. Rather than presenting a completed model, the inquiry documents lessons from an early stage of implementation and argues that meaningful SoR integration requires more than adding content to existing courses. It requires coherent expectations for candidate proficiency, opportunities to translate research into practice, sustained faculty collaboration, and alignment across coursework, assessment, and clinical experiences. The experience suggests that educator preparation programs can preserve existing strengths while responding deliberately to an evolving literacy research base.

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