The journalist behind Sold A Story, the international hit podcast about the way children are taught to read, has been awarded La Trobe University’s highest accolade.
Emily Hanford was presented with an Honorary Degree, Doctor of Letters (honoris causa), on 14 May, in recognition of her efforts to raise awareness of the global reading crisis.
Sold A Story, a multi-part podcast from American Public Media, examines why children in the United States are still learning to read in a way proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago.
The series is set in America but has had a global effect. In Victoria, public schools have been given three years to adopt structured phonics and explicit instruction from prep to grade 2 after State Education Minister Ben Carroll announced a system-wide shift last year.
La Trobe University Vice-Chancellor Professor Theo Farrell said Ms Hanford had been nominated for an Honorary Doctor of Education in recognition of her significant contribution to raising the awareness of policy-makers, academics, school leaders, classroom teachers and parents about how a flawed idea took hold in reading instruction and caused countless children worldwide to be weak readers.
“Sold a Story has helped to shape our thinking and has given us an unprecedented platform for accelerating our engagement with policy makers, in order to influence reading instruction at population level," Professor Farrell said.
La Trobe’s Science of Language and Reading (SOLAR) Lab has been a trailblazer in reading reform since its launch in 2020.
Professor Farrell said Ms Hanford’s work was closely aligned with the work of La Trobe’s School of Education, which was also utilising explicit instruction in its Science of Mathematics Education (SOME) Lab and its broader Momentum Schools research project.
La Trobe was the first university in Australia to align reading instruction in initial teacher education with the evolving body of knowledge known as the science of reading.
In March 2025, it become the first university to meet new requirements of the Teacher Education Expert Panel recommendations of core content focusing on evidence-informed approaches to teaching.
Professor Joanna Barbousas, La Trobe’s Dean of Education and Pro-Vice Chancellor of Education, Impact and Innovation, said experts had repeatedly called for a more structured approach to education to halt Australia’s spiralling literacy and numeracy results.
“Emily’s measured and methodological deep-dive into the teaching of reading has untangled a complex web of research mis-steps and conflicts of interest that have had - and in many cases, continue to have - serious implications for teacher pre-service preparation, school sector policy and classroom practice,” Professor Barbousas said.
“Sold A Story brought mainstream attention to an ongoing crisis in Australian education that La Trobe is attempting to solve.
“It is only through broader recognition of the importance of cognitive science in the classroom that we can begin to address them for the sake of future generations of teachers and students.”
Ms Hanford is a senior correspondent and producer for APM Reports, the documentary and investigative reporting team at American Public Media, and journalist-in-residence at Planet Word, the museum of words and language in Washington, DC.
Sold a Story was one of the most-shared shows on Apple Podcasts in 2023 and one of Time Magazine’s top podcasts of the year. It has won numerous honours including a duPont, an Edward R. Murrow and a Peabody nomination.
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