The architecture of crisis: problematising a global ban on the three-cueing system in reading education

Abstract Contemporary literacy policy is increasingly shaped by crisis narratives that position reading achievement as a problem requiring urgent intervention. This paper examines the growing movement to ban or discredit the three-cueing system in reading education through an analysis of contemporary policy discourse in the United States. Drawing on Carol Bacchi’s framework for analysing problem representations in policy, we investigate how legislation and public commentary aligned with the Science of Reading (SoR) construct three-cueing as a harmful instructional practice that should be removed from classrooms. Using an Alabama news report on Alabama Senate Bill 168, we identify the assumptions, silences, and effects embedded within this representation of the problem. The analysis shows that three-cueing is frequently conflated with guessing from pictures or context and positioned as incompatible with scientific evidence, despite ongoing debate about its purpose, interpretation, and role in reading. We argue that this framing relies on selective interpretations of research, simplifies complex questions about reading instruction, and legitimises increased state control over pedagogy. In doing so, it narrows the range of perspectives considered legitimate in literacy policy debates and constrains alternative approaches to reading instruction. More broadly, the case illustrates how crisis narratives can be mobilised to justify policy interventions while obscuring competing understandings of reading, literacy, and educational improvement.