Book Review: Understanding Difficulties in Literacy Development: issues and concepts - Edited by Janet Soler, Felicity Fletcher-Campbell and Gavin Reid (original) (raw)
Related papers
Critical issues: literacy and educational policy: Part three
Journal of Literacy Research, 1996
This installment of JLR's Critical Issues section is the final part of a three-part series on literacy and educational policy. We are especially pleased to publish the following responses, by three highly qualified policymakers, to the views expressed in Part 1 of this series (see Volume 28, Number 2). In Part 1, Judith Green with Carol Dixon, David Pearson, and Sharon Quint commented respectively on the ideas they believed to be crucial for policymakers to know about literacy from their perspectives as literacy researchers. At the same time, we published Donna Alvermann's reaction to the views of the three researchers, also from her perspective as a literacy researcher. As substantiated by their brief biographies at the beginning of this issue, Emerson J. Elliott, Gary K. Hart, and Marshall S. Smith are imminently qualified to write a response to the researchers' views from the perspective of those who are intimately involved with educational policy at the highest level...
Improving Literacy at Key Stage 3: Policy, Practice and Evaluation
Literacy (formerly Reading), 1999
This paper reports on and explores some of the assumptions underpinning an invitation issued to local education authorities in England in January 1998 from the Department for Education and Employment to bid for funds to develop literacy in the first years of secondary schooling. It goes on to describe one authority's successful bid, and explores how the project is being implemented in schools within the authority, in terms of action plans, staff development and classroom practice. Finally, these perspectives are compared with research findings on literacy development, particularly in low-achieving schools. The problems of evaluating literacy interventions are discussed.
2007
This paper is driven by concern that the fields of literacy research, policy and practice do not interact with one another in ways that are congruent or productive, as evidenced in recent government literacy reports in Australia and overseas. This concern leads us to interrogate the nature of the relationship between literacy research, policy development and classroom practice. With a view to understanding how this relationship might be enhanced, this paper provides a literature review of the nexus between literacy research, policy and practice, the issues that arise therein, and directions for further investigation, including our ARC Discovery ‘Nexus Project’ (Harris, Derewianka, Chen, Fitzsimmons, Kervin, Turbill, Cruickshank, McKenzie & Konza, 2007).
Addressing Literacy in Secondary Schools: Introduction
Language and Education, 2007
This special issue of Language and Education 1 reports on an independent threeyear research evaluation of a major professional development initiative to promote cross-curricular, whole school literacy policies -also known in the wider literature as 'school language policies' -in secondary schools in New Zealand. The findings from this evaluation, we believe, have significant implications for other national contexts.
Early Years, 2005
In this article we consider the development of key policy issues in England, related to the area of literacy learning and children who are considered to have difficulties in literacy in their early years. We trace the tensions which have arisen since the 1980s between different policies and practices in these areas. These tensions include pressures to raise standards of literacy and to support children with difficulties, and the establishment of a prescribed curriculum for young children. In particular, we focus on the blend and clash of national educational policy ideals in areas related to literacy and children who have been categorised as having 'special educational needs', and how these have influenced the development of the Early Literacy Support Programme (ELS) (DfES, 2001a; 2001b). This is a programme set up by the Department for Education and Science in England for children in Year 1, aged 5 to 6 years old.
Literacy Development and Normative Fantasies: What Can Be Learnt from Watching Students Over Time?
2001
This paper draws on two studies to consider theoretical, analytical, ethical, methodological, and representational questions about longitudinal case study research in literacy acquisition. Both studies drew on observations and interviews, as well as formal assessment data. The two longitudinal studies are: "100 Children Go to School: Longitudinal Study from the Year Prior to School to the First Four Years of School"; and "Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Students and the Development of Literacies in School: Longitudinal Study." The paper presents observational case study data from both studies which were conducted in several Australian states. Working on these longitudinal studies made the researchers aware of the ways in which they are implicated in producing constitutive discourses about literacy, development, literacy development and children in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. These topics are fraught with controversy, stale and yet still very important to teachers and children's school lives. Some observations are: (1) one outcome of this longitudinal work is the way it complicates children as educational subjects and repositions them as both "agentic" and dynamic; (2) the projects indicate overwhelmingly that what constitutes literacy is changing and there are considerable gaps and differences between the literacies and language practices of schools and home; and (3) while it is helpful to consider the dynamism of young people as students who are subject to change, it is a major dilemma that school literacies and educational futures seem increasingly subject to normative models of assessment and credentialing. (Contains 18 references.) (NKA) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
Australian literacies: Informing national policy on literacy education
2001
What a National Policy on literacy should say 17 2.1 The poli cy context 2.2 Purpose and scope 2.3 Definitions 2.4 Defining literacy 2.5 Teaching cy cles 3 Australia's learners 31 3.1 Australian English speakers 31 3.2 Language diversity and English literacy 3.3 Indigenous Australians 39 3.4 Special needs 3.5 Socioeconomic disadvantage iii 4 School literacy education 47 4.1 The early years 4.2 The middle years 4.3. The later years and the post-schooling sector 5 Adult literacy, numeracy and ESL education 71 5.1 Adnlt literacy, numeracy and ESL education 71 5.2 Lifelong learning for all 6 State and Territory programs in literacy 6.1 Literacy teaching and learning in the South Australian Department for Education, Training and Employment (DETE) 6.2 Literacy teaching and learning in Australian Capital Territory Department for Education and Community Services schools 6.3 Literacy teaching and learning in the Victorian Department of Education schools 6.4 Literacy teaching and learning in Education Queensland schools 6.5 Literacy teaching and learning in Western Australian Education Department schools 87 6.6 Literacy programs: Tasmanian Department of Education 6.7 Literacy teaching and learning in New South Wales Department of Education and Training schools 6.8 Literacy teaching and learning in Northern Territory Department of Education schools 6.9 Current practices in literacy education in the Catholic Sector 6.10 Current practices in literacy education in the Independent Schools Sector References Acknowledgements 123 iv Preamble According to the popular media, there is a shared public expectation that school literacy will equip students for varied roles and literate competence in post-school life. The media reports that Australians expect that all adults will be able to comfortably handle the various forms of spoken and written language which intersect with their personal pursuits, their civic-community participation and their economic-vocational future. This book is written with the express purpose of conveying to policy makers ideas and beliefs about literacy education informed by research and teaching experience. The speed and depth of economic, social and technological change on post-school life requires recognition in public policy of the importance of lifelong learning. It ought to be an underlying assumption of any literacy policy that literacy learning in schools should be adaptable and responsive to changing societal demands on, and uses for, literacy. Within this broader lifelong learning framework the central aim of literacy policy should be to focus national attention on Australia's school literacy achievements and in so doing to raise the literacy capabilities of all Australians by directing resources towards redressing areas of persistent underperformance. Only a broad-based response to the problem of literacy, accompanied by a sustained and focussed strategy and guided by an overarching policy, can hope to succeed. From the very outset, however, it is important to state unambiguously that there is no general literacy crisis in Australia. There is, however, systematic underperformance in English literacy among some groups and many individuals. Among these are children and adults who are socioeconomically and educatioually disadvantaged, some children and adults of non-English speaking background, some groups of both urban and rural Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, older Australians with interrupted or disrupted schooling, some Australians who live in remote or isolated areas as well as some groups of sensorily, physically, emotionally or intellectually disabled Australians. That these same groups and individuals are often seriously disadvantaged in their occupational and educational opportunities is sufficient cause to warrant a targeted policy on literacy. However, there is a wider literacy context that sustains a case for a comprehensive literacy policy. Extraordinary changes are impacting on literacy practices, changes which derive from global economic, social, cultural and technological transformation. Just to keep pace v Recently established national literacy goals At meetings in 1996 and early 1997 Commonwealth, State and Territory Education Ministers agreed to a national litera cy and numeracy goal: That every child leaving primary school should be numerate, and able to read, write and spell at an appropriate level. • Teachers and researchers of languages, especially those concerned with non-alphabetic literacy who see 'reading and writing' in different script forms as demanding different pedagogical approaches and tapping different learner systems. • The widespread adoption of the term Literacy as a sort of index of 'competent functioning' in some field (e.g. Asia literacy, Political literacy, Social literacy). • Anthropologically-oriented research work (influenced by such people as Shirley Brice Heath in the US and Brian Street in the UK) which sees literacy as a kind of assemblage of practices that vary according to context and purpose and not therefore well understood as a unitary capability that is transferable_ over time and place, and including a critical literacy dimension in which influence, ideology and positionality in texts is identified and discussed, and in which students are taught powerful registers of writing and reading. viii Broad Context 1 1.1 The powers of literacy ' Australian Literacies 1-Broad Context 9 6-State and Territory programs in literacy 85 6.3 Literacy teaching and learning in the Victorian Department of Education Curriculum and Standards Framework The Curriculum and Standards Framework II (1999), known as CSF II and distributed to schools in CD ROM and hard copy format, provides the framework for Curriculum delivery in Victoria. It describes learning outcomes to be achieved in eight key learning areas (KLAs). 'English' is one of the eight KLAs.
Secondary Literacy Across the Curriculum: Challenges and Possibilities
Language and Education, 2007
This paper discusses the challenges and possibilities attendant upon successfully implementing literacy across the curriculum initiatives-or 'school language policies' as they have come to be known-particularly at the secondary or high school level. It provides a theoretical background to these issues, exploring previous academic discussions of school language policies, and highlights key areas of concern as well as opportunity with respect to school implementation of such policies. As such, it provides a necessary conceptual background to the subsequent papers in this special issue, which focus upon the Secondary Schools' Literacy Initiative (SSLI)-a New Zealand funded programme that aims to establish cross-curricular language and literacy policies in secondary schools.