The Routledge International Handbook of English, Language and Literacy Teaching

The Routledge International Handbook of English, Language and Literacy Teaching

Edited by three authorities in the field, this handbook presents contributions from experts across the world who report the cutting-edge of international research. It is groundbreaking in its holistic, evidence-informed account that aims to synthesize key messages for policy and practice in English, Language and Literacy Teaching. A comprehensive collection, the handbook focuses on the three key areas of reading, writing and language, and the issues that cut across them. The international emphasis of all the chapters is extended by a final section that looks directly at different countries and continents. The authors address many key issues including: • • • • •

why pupil motivation is so important the evidence for what works in teaching and learning the place of Information Technology in the twenty-first century the status of English and other languages globalization and political control of education.

This definitive guide concludes by discussing the need for better policy cycles that genuinely build on research evidence and teachers’ working knowledge in order to engage young people and transform their life chances. A powerful account that will be of interest to students, researchers and academics involved with education. Dominic Wyse is Senior Lecturer in Primary and Early Years Education at the University of Cambridge, UK. Richard Andrews is Professor of English at the Institute of Education, University of London, UK. James Hoffman is Professor of Language and Literacy Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, USA.

The Routledge International Handbook Series

The Routledge International Handbook of English, Language and Literacy Teaching Edited by Dominic Wyse, Richard Andrews and James Hoffman The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education Edited by Michael W. Apple, Stephen J. Ball and Luis Armand Gandin The Routledge International Handbook of Higher Education Edited by Malcolm Tight, Ka Ho Mok, Jeroen Huisman and Christopher C. Morpew The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education Edited by James A. Banks The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education Edited by Michael W. Apple, Wayne Au, and Luis Armando Gandin The Routledge International Handbook of Lifelong Learning Edited by Peter Jarvis The Routledge International Handbook of Early Childhood Education Edited by Tony Bertram, John Bennett, Philip Gammage and Christine Pascal

The Routledge International Handbook of English, Language and Literacy Teaching

Edited by Dominic Wyse, Richard Andrews and James Hoffman

First published 2010 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2010 selection and editorial material, Dominic Wyse, Richard Andrews and James Hoffman; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Routledge international handbook of English language, and literacy teaching / edited by Dominic Wyse, Richard Andrews, and James Hoffman. p. cm. 1. Reading--Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Literacy--Handbooks, manuals, etc. 3. English language--Study and teaching--Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Wyse, Dominic, 1964- II. Andrews, Richard, 1953 Apr. 1- III. Hoffman, James V. LB1050.R635 2010 428.0071--dc22 2009025531 ISBN 0-203-86309-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-46903-1 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-86309-7 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-46903-6 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-86309-1 (ebk)

Contents

List of Illustrations List of Contributors Acknowledgements 1 Introduction Dominic Wyse, Richard Andrews and James Hoffman Part 1: Reading 2 Social and cultural influences on children’s motivation for reading Scott G. Paris and Stuart McNaughton

ix xi xxiv 1

9 11

3 Literature for children Eve Bearne and Morag Styles

22

4 Twenty first century literature: opportunities, changes and challenges Catherine Beavis

33

5 Reading and teaching short stories, based on process studies and experimental research Tanja Janssen, Martine Braaksma and Gert Rijlaarsdam 6 Comprehension instruction: merging two historically antithetical perspectives Gerald G. Duffy, Samuel Miller, Scott Howerton and Joseph Baxter Williams

45

58

7 The genre-specific nature of reading comprehension Nell K. Duke and Kathryn L. Roberts

74

8 Morphological knowledge and learning to read in English Elfrieda H. Hiebert and Marco Bravo

87 v

CONTENTS

9 Phonological development across different languages Usha Goswami

98

10 Interaction and learning to read: towards a dialogic approach Henrietta Dombey

110

Part 2: Writing

123

11 Facilitating writing development Steve Graham

125

12 Writing in the early years Helen Bradford and Dominic Wyse

137

13 The ontogenesis of writing in childhood and adolescence Frances Christie

146

14 Composition: cognitive, textual and social dimensions Sarah W. Beck

159

15 Rhythm and blues: making textual music with grammar and punctuation Debra Myhill

170

16 Linguistic foundations of spelling development Derrick C. Bourassa and Rebecca Treiman

182

17 Handwriting and writing Jane Medwell and David Wray

193

Part 3: Language

203

18 Orality, literacy, and culture: talk, text, and tools in ideological contexts Randy Bomer

205

19 Understanding language development Debra Myhill

216

20 Bilingualism and English language teaching Janina Brutt-Griffler

228

21 Drama in teaching and learning language and literacy Anton Franks

242

22 Classroom discourse: towards a dialogic pedagogy Frank Hardman and Jan Abd-Kadir

254

Part 4: Teaching English, language and literacy

265

23 Critical approaches to teaching languages, reading and writing Hilary Janks

267

vi

CONTENTS

24 Becoming culturally responsive: a review of learning in field experiences for prospective literacy educators Melissa Mosley, Lisa J. Cary and Melody Zoch

282

25 The text environment and learning to read: windows and mirrors shaping literate lives Misty Sailors and James Hoffman

294

26 The relationship between home and school literacy practices Jackie Marsh

305

27 Gender and the teaching of English Gemma Moss 28 An outward, inward, and school-ward overview of interactive communication technologies across the literacy landscape David Reinking 29 Multimodality, literacy and school English Carey Jewitt and Gunther Kress 30 A very long engagement: English and the moving image Andrew Burn

317

328 342

354

31 Reading, writing and speaking poetry Terry Locke

367

32 Overcoming fear and resistance when teaching Shakespeare Joe Salvatore

379

33 Difficulties in learning literacy Elias Avramidis, Hazel Lawson and Brahm Norwich

389

34 Classroom assessment of literacy Peter Afflerbach, Byeong-Young Cho, Jong-Yun Kim and Summer Clark

401

35 Initial teacher preparation for reading instruction Cathy M. Roller

413

Part 5: English, language and literacy teaching: countries as contexts

423

36 Comparative international studies of reading literacy: current approaches and future directions Gerry Shiel and Eemer Eivers

425

37 Globalization and the international context for literacy policy reform in England Dominic Wyse and Darleen Opfer

438

vii

CONTENTS

38 A tale of the two Special Administrative Regions (SARs) of China: an overview of English language teaching developments in Hong Kong and Macao Joanna Lee and Beatrice Lok 39 Bilingual educational programmes in Indian schools: addressing the English language needs of the country Mihika Shah

448

461

40 English in Scandinavia: a success story Aud Marit Simensen

472

41 The teaching of English in Sub-Saharan Africa Alicia Fentiman, Dominic Wyse and Lillian Indira Vikiru

484

42 Recent federal education policy in the United States Richard L. Allington

496

43 English in Australia and New Zealand Wayne Sawyer

508

44 English in England and Wales: knowledge and ownership Sue Brindley

518

Part 6: Conclusion

529

45 Implications for research, policy and practice Richard Andrews, James Hoffman and Dominic Wyse

531

Index

viii

538

Illustrations

Figures 20.1 23.1 23.2 23.3 33.1 34.1

A model of English language spread and change Fairclough’s method of critical discourse analysis Freire’s cycle of naming and renaming The redesign cycle Communication and literacy Influences on classroom literacy and classroom literacy assessment 40.1 The role of English around the world

231 271 273 273 396 404 473

Tables 5.1 Constituting online reading and interpretation activities 9.1 Illustrative data (% correct) from studies comparing phoneme counting, simple word reading and nonword reading in different languages in Kindergarten or early Grade 1 15.1 A summary of professional views on rhetorical grammar 19.1 A summary of different perspectives on language development 19.2 Typical developmental trajectory in language acquisition 22.1 Transcript of English primary school year 6 literacy lesson 22.2 Transcript of Nigerian primary school standard 6 English lesson 23.1 An overview of Halliday’s functional grammar 23.2 An example of how one could describe the redesigned linguistic features selected in Text 3 26.1 Theoretical frameworks in the study of home/school literacy 26.2 Literacy in homes and early years settings/schools 36.1 Comparison between aspects of the PIRLS and PISA Assessments 36.2 Mean scores of participating countries in PIRLS and PISA in 2006

48

105 176 218 220 256 258 270 278 306 311 426 427 ix

ILLUSTRATIONS

36.3 Countries/regions in PIRLS and PISA showing significant differences in performance across assessment cycles 36.4 Percentages of students in high- and low-achieving countries at different benchmarks on the PIRLS 2006 overall reading literacy scale 36.5 Percentages of students in high- and low-achieving countries at different levels on PISA 2006 reading literacy proficiency scale 36.6 Mean scores of students with varying levels of socioeconomic status and engagement in reading in PISA 2000 41.1 Prospects for achieving UPE in Africa

x

429

430

430

433 486

Contributors

Jan Abd-Kadir lectures in Language Education at the University of York, UK. Her research interests focus on the teaching of spoken and written discourse in the L2 classroom. Peter Afflerbach is Professor and Director of The Reading Center, University of Maryland. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in reading assessment, and graduate courses in reading comprehension. He is a former K-6 Chapter One reading teacher, middle school remedial reading teacher and high school English teacher. His most recent book is Understanding and using reading assessment, K-12, published by the International Reading Association in 2007. He is co-editor of the forthcoming Handbook of Reading Research (4e), and co-editor of the research journal Metacognition and Learning. Peter Afflerbach recently served as chair of the Literacy Assessment Committee, International Reading Association, and he was elected to the International Reading Association’s Hall of Fame in 2009. Richard L. Allington is professor of education at the University of Tennessee. He served as president of both the National Reading Conference and the International Reading Association. He has been studying reading disabilities for the past 35 years with a focus on the quality of intervention services provided to struggling readers. He was corecipient, with Anne McGill-Franzen, of the Albert J. Harris Award from the International Reading Association for their contributions to understanding reading/learning disabilities and the William S. Gray Citation of Merit from IRA for his contributions to the profession. He was elected to membership in the Reading Hall of Fame. He is the author of over 100 papers and chapters and several books. He has served, or is serving, on the editorial advisory boards of Reading Research Quarterly, Review of Educational Research, Journal of Educational Psychology, Journal of Disability Policy Studies, Remedial and Special Education, Journal of Literacy Research, Reading Teacher, and Elementary School Journal. Richard Andrews is Professor in English and International Coordinator in the Faculty of Culture and Pedagogy, Institute of Education, University of London. He has held xi

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professorships at Middlesex, Hull and York Universities, and has also taught at New York University. His recent books for Routledge include The Impact of ICT on Literacy Education (2004), Argumentation in Higher Education (2009) and Re- framing Literacy (2010). He runs the MA in English Education at the Institute of Education, and is chair of its working group on China and Taiwan. He directs a number of research projects, including one on theses and dissertations in the digital age. Elias Avramidis is a Senior Lecturer in Special Educational Needs (SEN) in the Graduate School of Education, University of Exeter. His research mainly focuses on examining the theory and practice of inclusive education and the barriers to its implementation. His research (covering primary, secondary and tertiary settings) has sought to identify effective policies and pedagogies to address the needs of children and adults described as experiencing learning difficulties. He has published on topics such as the theory and practice of inclusion; teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education; the identification of and provision for children with difficulties in literacy; and the social impacts on inclusive education. Eve Bearne’s research interests while at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education have been children’s production of multimodal texts and gender, language and literacy. She has also written and edited books about language and literacy and about children’s literature. She is currently responsible for Publications for the United Kingdom Literacy Association. Catherine Beavis is Professor of Education at Griffith University, Australia. She teaches and researches in the areas of English and literacy curriculum, and around digital culture, young people and new media. Her work has a particular focus on the changing nature of text and literacy, and the implications of young people’s experience of the online world for contemporary constructions of English and Literacy curriculum. Her most recent research explores young people’s engagement with computer games, the nature of games as text, and the experience and expectations students bring to English regarding texts, community and communication in contemporary times. Sarah W. Beck is an Associate Professor of English Education at New York University, where she directs the MA programmes in English Education and teaches courses on methods of reading and writing instruction, theories of literacy, and writing research. Her research has investigated subject-specific literacy practices, adolescents’ writing development, literacy instruction in urban high school contexts, and writing assessment. Currently she is studying the nature of the challenges that students experience with argument writing in secondary schools. Randy Bomer is a faculty member in the Language & Literacy Studies program in the department of Curriculum & Instruction at The University of Texas at Austin (USA). He is the author of Time for Meaning and, with Katherine Bomer, of For a Better World, and he was co-editor of The Handbook of Research on Adolescent Literacy. He is also a former president of the National Council of Teachers of English in the USA. Derrick C. Bourassa received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Waterloo in 1996. He has held academic appointments at Acadia University and the University of Winnipeg, where he currently serves as Associate Professor of Psychology. His research focuses on reading and spelling development in typical and atypical (children with xii

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dyslexia and children with Down syndrome) populations. This work has been supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network, the Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation, and the March of Dimes Birth Defects Research Foundation. Martine Braaksma is a postdoctoral fellow at the Graduate School of Teaching and Learning at the University of Amsterdam and member of the Research Group, Language, Literature and Arts Education. She is currently carrying out a research project on ‘Hypertext writing and observational learning’ (funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research) and a review of empirical studies about Dutch as a subject in secondary education. Her teaching includes a Biology and Science Master’s course on communication at the University of Amsterdam. Helen Bradford is an Affiliate Lecturer at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. She has completed research on nursery-aged children’s perceptions of themselves as writers, and the impact of museum programmes as a stimulus for writing with older children. She has expertise in early years and primary education both as a teacher and teacher educator. Marco A. Bravo is Assistant Professor in the Department of Education at Santa Clara University. His research interests include the literacy learning of English language learners. His current research involves probing the potential of science and literacy integration for English language learners. Sue Brindley is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, where she co-ordinates an online Masters in Education, Researching Practice, and a module on Teaching Shakespeare, taught jointly with Shakespeare’s Globe. She taught English at schools in East London and was then appointed to the Open University where she wrote the English PGCE. Sue moved from the Open University to a policy role as English Professional Officer, and from there to the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on constructs of professional knowledge and teacher research. Janina Brutt-Griffler is Professor of English as a Second and Foreign Language and Director of Polish Studies at The State University of New York. She also taught on the graduate faculty at the University of York, England, where she directed the MATESOL programme. She is the author of World English: A Study of Its Development and co-editor of Bilingualism and Language Pedagogy and English and Ethnicity. She is co-Editor of the International Journal of Applied Linguistics (Wiley-Blackwell). She serves on the Executive Committe for General Linguistics of the Modern Language Association. Her work has focused on the history of English, language policy, second language acquisition, and authorship among bilingual writers. Andrew Burn is Professor of Media Education at the London Knowledge Lab, in the Institute of Education, University of London. He has researched and published work on many aspects of the media, including the use of film and digital video in schools, young people’s production of computer games, and media literacy. He has collaborated extensively with the British Film Institute to research and develop approaches to film and screen media in education. His most recent book is Making New Media: Creative Production and Digital Literacies. He spent many years in secondary schools as a teacher of English, Media and Drama. xiii

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Lisa J. Cary is an Associate Professor in Curriculum Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked in Australia, Canada and The United States of America. Her research in Curriculum Studies brings together postmodern curriculum theories and educational research theory. Her work focuses on the nature of exclusionary practices in education through race, gender and colonialism. She has published in The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, The Journal of Curriculum Theorizing and The Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, among other journals. Summer Clark is a doctoral candidate in Minority and Urban Education at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her current research examines literacy education, social justice, and teacher development in urban schools. Other research interests include critical theory, feminist perspectives, participatory action research, new literacy studies, literacy assessment and emancipatory possibilities in education. Byeong-Young Cho was a former high school language teacher in Korea and curriculum developer participating in the Korean National Textbook Development Project. He is researching across content area literacy, adolescents’ Internet reading strategy use, and classroom assessment of literacy at the University of Maryland Reading Center. Frances Christie is Emeritus Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Melbourne, and Honorary Professor of Linguistics and of Education at the University of Sydney. Her major research and teaching interests are in English language and literacy education. Some publications include Pedagogy and the Shaping of Consciousness Linguistic and Social Processes (Cassell Academic, 1999); Classroom Discourse Analysis: A Functional Perspective (Continuum, 2002); Language Education in the Primary Years (University of NSW Press, 2004); (with J.R. Martin, eds.) Language, Knowledge and Pedagogy, Functional Linguistic and Sociological Perspectives. (Continuum, 2007); (with B. Derewianka) School Discourse, Learning to Write across the Years of Schooling (Continuum, 2008); (in press with A. Simpson, eds.) Literacy and Social Responsibility: Multiple Perspectives (Equinox, 2010). Henrietta Dombey is Professor Emeritus of Literacy in Primary Education at the University of Brighton. Since the start of her teaching career, when she was confronted with a class of seven-year-olds with very little purchase on written language, she has been passionately interested in the teaching of reading. A central focus of this interest has been the interactions between teachers, children and texts. A Past Chair of the National Association for the Teaching of English and Past President of the United Kingdom Literacy Association, she has worked extensively with teachers and teacher educators to develop professional thinking and action. Gerald G. Duffy is currently the William Moran Distinguished Professor of Reading and Literacy at the University of North Carolina - Greensboro. Previously, he served for twenty-five years as a professor and Senior Researcher at Michigan State University and, before that, as an elementary and middle school classroom teacher in New York state. He is Past-president of the National Reading Conference, co-editor of the recently published Handbook of Research on Reading Comprehension, and author of over 100 articles and research studies on reading instruction and teacher development. Nell K. Duke is a professor of teacher education and educational psychology and codirector of the Literacy Achievement Research Center (LARC) at Michigan State xiv

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University, East Lansing, Michigan, United States. Duke’s work focuses on early literacy development, particularly among children living in poverty. Her specific areas of expertise include development of informational literacies in young children, comprehension development and instruction in early schooling, and issues of equity in literacy education. She has received awards for her research, including the American Educational Research Association Early Career Award. Her books include Reading and Writing Informational Text in the Primary Grades: Research-Based Practices and Literacy and the Youngest Learner: Best Practices for Educators of Children from Birth to Five. Eemer Eivers is Research Associate at the Educational Research Centre, St Patrick’s College, Dublin, Ireland. She was the Irish national project manager for the 2006 cycle of the OECD’s PISA study and is currently managing Ireland’s national assessments of English reading and mathematics. Research interests include test development, reading achievement, and the links between reading literacy and the home environment. She is currently a member of the Literacy and Numeracy Task Force for Northern Ireland. Alicia Fentiman is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Commonwealth Education, University of Cambridge. She is a social anthropologist by training and has worked in sub-Saharan Africa for over twenty years on a number of educational projects. Her research interests include cultural constraints in basic education, nonformal education in conflict areas (alternative ‘basic’ education), gender, ethnography and language teaching. Anton Franks was a teacher of drama and English in London schools, and now teaches, researches and writes on drama and English in education at the Institute of Education University of London. Publications include English in Urban Classrooms (2004) with Kress et al ‘Learning theory and drama education...’ Cultura y Educación, 2004, 16/1-2 and ‘School drama and representations of war and terror...’ in Research in Drama Education 13/1. Usha Goswami is Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. She is also Director of the Centre for Neuroscience in Education, which carries out research into the brain basis of literacy, numeracy, dyslexia and dyscalculia. Her current research examines relations between phonology and reading, with special reference to the neural underpinnings of rhyme and rhythm in children’s reading. A major focus of the research is on dyslexic and deaf children’s reading. She has received a number of career awards, including the British Psychology Society Spearman Medal, the Norman Geschwind-Rodin Prize for Dyslexia research, and Fellowships from the National Academy of Education (USA), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany) and the Leverhulme Trust. Steve Graham is the Curry Ingram Professor of Literacy at Vanderbilt University. His research focuses on identifying the factors that contribute to writing development and writing difficulties, developing and validating effective instructional procedures for teaching writing, and the use of technology to enhance writing performance. He is the current editor of Exceptional Children, past editor of Contemporary Educational Psychology and Consulting Editor for Focus on Exceptional Children. Frank Hardman holds the Chair in Educational Studies at the University of York, UK. He has published extensively in the area of language and education and his recent xv

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research has focussed on the dialogic nature of classroom talk across a range of international settings. Elfrieda H. Hiebert is currently Adjunct Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. She has published numerous research articles, chapters in edited volumes, and books on how instruction and materials influence reading acquisition, particularly that of low-income students. Her most recent books, both published in 2009, are Reading More, Reading Better and Finding the Right Texts (with M. Sailors). Professor Hiebert’s model of accessible texts for beginning and struggling readers—TExT—has been used to develop widely used reading programs. James Hoffman is a Professor of Language and Literacy Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Hoffman’s research interests have focused on the areas of reading acquisition, reading instruction, reading texts and teacher education. Recent books include: Balancing Principals in Elementary Reading Instruction, The Texts in Elementary Classrooms, and Changing Literacies for Changing Times. Dr. Hoffman has been active in numerous literacy projects in the developing world including those in Belize, Thailand, Tanzania and South Africa. Scott Howerton is an experienced elementary school teacher and is currently a doctoral student majoring in literacy education at the University of North Carolina - Greensboro. Hilary Janks is a professor in the School of Education at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. She is the editor and an author of the Critical Language Awareness Series of workbooks and the author of Literacy and Power. Her teaching and research are in the areas of language education in multilingual classrooms, language policy and critical literacy. Her work is committed to a search for equity and social justice in contexts of poverty. Tanja Janssen is a senior researcher at the Graduate School of Teaching and Learning of the University of Amsterdam and member of the Research Group of Language, Literature and Arts Education. She specializes in literature teaching and learning in the upper grades of secondary education. Other research interests include creative writing and arts education. In addition, she teaches a master’s course for teachers-as-researchers in cooperation with Wilfried Admiraal. Carey Jewitt is Professor of Learning and Technology and Deputy Director at the London Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education, University of London. Carey’s research focuses on visual and multimodal research methods and theory, and the relationships between representation, technologies and pedagogy. She is founding editor of the journal Visual Communication and her most recent books are The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis (2009) and Technology, Literacy, Learning: A Multimodality Approach (2008, Routledge). Jong-Yun Kim was a high school language teacher in South Korea. He is a doctoral student at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Maryland. His interests are reading comprehension of multiple texts, metacognition and classroom assessment. Gunther Kress is Professor of Semiotics and Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. His interests are in meaning-making and communication in contemporary environments with a continuing interest in developing a social semiotic xvi

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theory of multimodal representation and communication: a focus on the processes and forms of communication in all modes. His books include Learning to write (1982/1994); Linguistic processes in sociocultural practices (1984/1989); Social Semiotics (1988, with R Hodge); Before Writing: rethinking the paths to literacy (1996); Reading Images: the grammar of graphic design (1996/2006, with T van Leeuwen); Multimodal Discourse: the modes and media of contemporary communication (2002, with T van Leeuwen); Literacy in the new media age (2003); and Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication (2010). Hazel Lawson is Senior Lecturer in Special and Inclusive Education at University of Exeter, England. She was a teacher for many years in primary and special schools in England. Her research interests are in the general field of special and inclusive education with specific interest in the education of children and young people with severe and profound learning difficulties (intellectual disabilities), especially in the areas of curriculum, literacy and citizenship education; conceptualisations of diversity and pedagogical implications; pupil participation and voice. Joanna Lee has been engaged in language research and teaching upon the completion of her PhD in Educational Studies at the University of York (UK). She is currently teaching at the Centre for Applied English Studies of the University of Hong Kong, offering English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses for undergraduates and co-ordinating a linguistics course for postgraduate students. Her research interests include motivation in language learning, academic writing of ESL/EFL students, gender and language, and language policy in post-colonial context. Terry Locke is Professor and Chair of the Arts and Language Education Department of the School of Education at the University of Waikato. His research interests include the teaching of literature in (multicultural) classrooms, constructions of English and the English teaching professional, the place of metalanguage in English/literacy classrooms and the relationship between literacy/literature teaching and ICTs. Recent books are Critical Discourse Analysis (Continuum, 2004) and Resisting Qualifications Reforms in New Zealand: The English Study Design as Constructive Dissent (Sense Publishers, 2007). He is editor of a forthcoming book from Routledge (2010), Beyond the grammar wars: A resource for teachers and students on developing language knowledge in the English/literacy classroom. He is founding and coordinating editor of the online, peerreviewed journal English Teaching: Practice and Critique. Beatrice Lok is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Centre for Learning Enhancement And Research (CLEAR) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She obtained her doctoral degree in Jan, 2009, from the Faculty of Education of the University of Cambridge. She is interested in the areas of second language learning motivation and the second language development of non-native English speaking students. She has also been involved in English language education research for more than six years. Jackie Marsh is based at the University of Sheffield, UK, where she conducts research focused on the role and nature of popular culture, media and new technologies in young children´s early literacy development, both in and outside of school. She has published widely in this area and her books include Play, Creativity and Digital Cultures (2009, Routledge, co-edited with Willett and Robinson) and Desirable Literacies: Approaches xvii

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to Language and Literacy in the Early Years (2nd edition 2008, Sage, co-edited with Hallet). Jackie is a past president of the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) and a co-editor of the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy(Sage). Stuart McNaughton is Professor of Education at the University of Auckland and Director of the Woolf Fisher Research Centre. His research has focused on literacy and language development including processes of education, socialisation and culture, and on the design of effective instruction and educational programmes for culturally and linguistically diverse populations. He has been a member of the New Zealand government appointed Literacy Task Force and chair of the New Zealand Literacy Experts Group. He has consulted with policy agencies in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Singapore, on instructional change, curriculum design and research and development collaborations with schools. Jane Medwell is Associate Professor at the University of Warwick and currently Director of Teacher Education. She has researched and published widely on topics as diverse as the teaching of writing, the uses of ICT in teaching reading and the characteristics of effective teachers of literacy. Her recent work has focused on writing development, especially the links between handwriting and composition, and on the teaching of modern foreign languages to young children and teacher preparation in this area. She is a fluent French and Russian speaker, and is currently learning Mandarin Chinese. Samuel Miller is Professor of Education at the University of North Carolina - Greensboro and Chair of the Department of Teacher Education and Higher Education. A former classroom teacher in Rhode Island, he has been a professor and researcher for over twenty years, during which time he has published numerous articles in the literacy field, with particular emphasis on the role of motivation in students’ learning to read and write. Melissa Mosley is an Assistant Professor of Language and Literacy at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research explores how teachers develop understandings of critical literacy, anti-racist teaching, and new literacies pedagogy as well as how teachers and students together use literacy practices toward social action in and out of classrooms. She has published in the international journals Linguistics and Education, Race, Ethnicity and Education and Reading Research Quarterly. Gemma Moss is Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. She specialises in the study of literacy policy; gender and literacy; and children’s informal literacy practices and their relationship to the school curriculum. She has held a succession of research grants from the ESRC on these topics. She has also recently co-directed an evaluation of the use of IWBs in London secondary schools on behalf of the DfES. Her most recent book, Literacy and Gender: Researching texts, contexts and readers is published by RoutledgeFalmer. Debra Myhill is Professor of Education at the University of Exeter, and is Head of the Graduate School of Education. Her research interests focus principally on aspects of language and literacy teaching, particularly writing and grammar, and talk in the classroom. She has directed several major research projects on talk and writing and is the author of Better Writers (Courseware Publications), Talking, Listening, Learning: xviii

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Effective Talk in the Primary Classroom (Open University Press), and co-editor of the Sage Handbook of Writing Development. Brahm Norwich is Professor of Educational Psychology and Special Educational Needs at the Graduate School of Education, University of Exeter. He has worked as a teacher, a professional educational psychologist and researched and published widely in these fields. His most recent books are on ‘Moderate learning difficulties and the future of inclusion’ (Routledge 2005) and ‘Special pedagogy for special children: pedagogies for inclusion’ (with Ann Lewis – Open University Press)‘ Dilemmas of difference, disability and inclusion: international perspectives’ (Routledge 2008). Darleen Opfer is a senior lecturer in research methods and school improvement at the University of Cambridge. She has research interests including interest group influence, the political aspects of policymaking, and the impact of national policies on schools, teachers and students. She has completed both large- and small-scale policy evaluations for national and international agencies. Funded research projects have included the impacts of accountability policies and teacher professional development on teacher practice, schools’ efforts to close achievement gaps, and teacher and head teacher mobility and attrition. Scott Paris is Professor and Head of the Centre for Research on Pedagogy and Practice at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. Prior to his appointment in 2009, he was a Professor of Psychology and Education at the University of Michigan where he served as Chair of the Graduate Program in Psychology from 2001 to 2007. Dr. Paris’ research has focused on cognitive development, reading, metacognition, learning in museums and self-regulated learning. His recent projects examine the development of reading skills, interventions to enhance comprehension and technologies for assessing reading. Professor Paris has published 12 books and written more than 130 book chapters and research articles. Professor Paris received awards for Outstanding Undergraduate teaching in 1993, 1995 and 1997. In 2008 he received the Oscar Causey research award from the National Reading Conference, the Albert Harris research award from the International Reading Association (IRA), and in 2009, he was elected to the IRA Reading Hall of Fame. David Reinking is the Eugene T. Moore Professor of Teacher Education at Clemson University. His scholarship focuses on understanding the relation between digital technologies and literacy and how that understanding can inform instruction. From 2001 to 2007, he served as Co-Editor of Reading Research Quarterly, one of the most widely circulated and influential journals in education. From 1994 to 2000 he was Editor of the Journal of Literacy Research, another highly regarded research journal. His research has been supported by substantial federal funding. For example, from 2005 to 2008, he was a co-principal investigator on a three-year project investigating adolescents’ reading comprehension on the Internet, and how that topic could be integrated into language arts instruction. He is currently President of the National Reading Conference, a leading professional organization for literacy researchers. In 2008 he was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame. Gert Rijlaarsdam is full professor of curriculum innovation in language and literature education at the University of Amsterdam and member of the Research Group of Language, Literature and Arts Education. He taught Dutch language and literature for xix

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17 years in secondary education, got an MA in Dutch linguistics and an MA in Educational Sciences, and did his PhD graduation on the effects of peer evaluation on writing. He is editor-in-chief, with Tanja Janssen, of L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, with Luuk van Waes & Dennis Alamargot of the Journal of Writing Research and series editor of Studies in Writing. Kathryn L. Roberts is a doctoral candidate in the Curriculum, Teaching, and Educational Policy program at Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, United States, pursuing a specialization in language and literacy. Teaching kindergarten for four years in Indianapolis spurred her interest in early literacy and language learning and concern for high quality teacher education. Recently, she has been researching visual literacy and comprehension strategy use in parent–child read alouds. Additional research interests include informational text comprehension and the literacy and language learning of English Language Learners. Cathy M. Roller was a professor of reading at the University of Iowa from 1979 to 1998. She was the International Reading Association’s Director of Research and Policy from 1998 to 2009. Under her direction IRA undertook several important research initiatives including a study of eight excellent teacher preparation programmes, a review of the teacher preparation research that was published in Reading Research Quarterly in summer 2008, and a study in progress that will describe reading instruction in grades one and four, based on a nationally representative sample of classrooms. She is currently retired. Misty Sailors is an Associate Professor of Literacy Education in the department of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). She teaches undergraduate and graduate literacy education courses. The primary investigator of a highly competitive Teacher Quality Professional Development Reading grant (US DOE), Sailors’ research interests focuses on comprehension instruction, the professional development of teachers, and the importance of print-rich environments for literacy development. Dr. Sailors has worked in Africa with classroom teachers for six years and is the Program Director of the Textbooks and Learning Materials Program at the UTSA, a multi-million dollar program sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development. She and has conducted internal evaluations of the READ Educational Trust (South Africa) and the Children’s Book Project (Tanzania). She has published in prestigious journals such as Reading Research Quarterly and the Journal of Literacy Research and has more than 35 articles and chapters, two books and one peer-reviewed journal in publication. Additionally, Sailors has received awards from the President of the University for her teaching excellence and from the American Association for University Women and the National Reading Conference for her contributions to research. Joe Salvatore is on the faculty of the Program in Educational Theatre at New York University where he teaches courses in acting, directing, Shakespeare, applied theatre and theatre pedagogy. He also directs the program’s Shakespeare Initiative, which includes the touring Shakespeare-to-Go company, the Shakespeare Youth Ensemble, and the Looking for Shakespeare summer youth program. Joe was awarded the NYU Steinhardt Excellence in Teaching Award in 2006, and he received an NYU Curriculum Development Fund Grant to support his innovative approach to teaching Shakespeare. He has presented his research on arts assessment at conferences around the world including xx

CONTRIBUTORS

UNESCO’s first-ever World Conference on Arts Education convened in Lisbon, Portugal in 2006. Joe’s play III was featured as part of the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival where it received the Fringe’s Overall Excellence Award for Outstanding Play. Joe also serves as the Artistic/Education Director for Learning Stages, an award-winning youth theatre company in southern New Jersey that will celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2010. Joe is a member of the American Educational Research Association, the Educational Theatre Association, the American Alliance for Theatre and Education and the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. Wayne Sawyer is currently Associate Professor and Head of Research in the School of Education, and a Member of the Centre for Educational Research, at the University of Western Sydney. He is a past President of the New South Wales English Teachers’ Association (NSWETA) and past Chair of the NSW Board of Studies English Curriculum Committee. He is an Honorary Life Member of both the NSW ETA and the Australian Association for the Teaching of English. Wayne’s doctoral research was on English curriculum history in Australia and he currently researches in the areas of secondary English curriculum, curriculum history, effective teaching, literacy policy, and pedagogy in low SES schools. Recent publications include Re-Visioning English Education: Imagination, Innovation, Creativity (edited with Paul Brock, Don Carter and Jacqueline Manuel), Charged with Meaning (edited with Susanne Gannon and Mark Howie), both for Phoenix Education, and Only Connect: English Teaching, Schooling and Community (edited with Brenton Doecke and Mark Howie) for AATE/Wakefield Press. Mihika Shah is currently completing her PhD in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge. Her dissertation explores the impact that home reading programmes have had in developed English-speaking countries and their value in an Indian inner-city school where children have oral fluency in their first language but are beginning to become literate in English. She has worked as a Kindergarten teacher and preschool coordinator in private English-medium schools in India before undertaking further studies in the UK. She has also given seminars on children’s development to primary school teachers and teacher trainees from a Piagetian and Vygotskian perspective during the course of her training as a teacher in India. Gerry Shiel is Research Fellow at the Educational Research Centre, St Patrick’s College, Dublin, Ireland. He works on national and international assessments of educational achievement, and on the development of achievement tests. His research interests focus on factors associated with achievement, including gender, cognition and socioeconomic status. He is a former member of the OECD PISA Governing Board, and is current chair of the Federation of European Literacy Associations. Aud Marit Simensen is professor of foreign language education in the Department of Teacher Education and School Development at the University of Oslo, Norway. She has written books and articles about syllabus reforms, shifts of paradigms in foreign language teaching theory, readability, text simplification, and assessment instruments in English as a foreign language. Her latest book is Teaching a foreign language. Principles and procedures, published in 2007 by Fagbokforlaget, Bergen, Norway. Morag Styles is a Reader in Children’s Literature and Education at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Homerton College. She lectures internationally on children’s literature, xxi

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poetry, the history of reading and visual literacy. She is the author of numerous books and articles including, From the Garden to the Street: 300 Years of Poetry for Children (1998); co-author (with Evelyn Arizpe) of Children Reading Pictures: Interpreting Visual Texts (2003) and Reading Lessons from the Eighteenth Century: Mothers, Children & Texts (2006); and co-editor of Acts of Reading: Teachers, Texts and Childhood (2009). She organised a large international conference on Poetry and Childhood (soon to be published) and curated a recent exhibition for the British Library, Twinkle twinkle little bat! 400 years of poetry for children (2009). Rebecca Treiman received a B.A. in linguistics (Yale University, 1976) and a Ph.D. in psychology (University of Pennsylvania, 1980). Her first academic appointment was at Indiana University, and from there she moved to Wayne State University in Detroit. In 2002, she became Burke and Elizabeth High Baker Professor of Child Developmental Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. Professor Treiman’s research deals with phonology, spelling, and reading, and she has been particularly interested in the development of spelling skills in children. Her research has been supported by a number of granting agencies, and she frequently serves as a reviewer for granting agencies and journals. Lilian Indira Vikiru is an Assistant Professor at Aga Khan University – Institute for Educational Development – Eastern Africa. She has taught English and Linguistics at Kenyatta University for over 16 years. She holds a Bed. (Hons) in English and Literature from Kenyatta University, an MA (English and Linguistics) from Kenyatta University and a PhD (English) from the University of Birmingham (UK). Lilian has supervised a number of MA and PhD students in linguistics, language and language learning and teaching. She has authored a course book in poetry and co-authored course books for teaching English for Kenyan and Tanzanian secondary school curricula. She has also co-authored researchbased resource books for teaching English in Kenya. Lilian’s research interests are language learning and teaching, literacy and multi-lingual education. David Wray taught in a variety of schools for 10 years and is currently Professor of Literacy Education at the University of Warwick. He has published over 40 books on aspects of literacy teaching and is best known for his work on developing teaching strategies to help pupils access the curriculum through literacy. This has resulted in such innovations as the Extending Interactions with Texts (EXIT) model to guide the teaching of reading to learn, and writing frames to help with the writing of factual text types. His work was made an integral part of the National Literacy Strategy at both primary and secondary levels and he co-wrote Module 6 (Reading and Writing for Information) of the original primary NLS training materials. Joseph Baxter Williams is a former middle school teacher of language arts and reading, and is currently a doctoral student majoring in literacy education at the University of North Carolina - Greensboro. Dominic Wyse is a Senior Lecturer in Primary and Early Years Education at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Churchill College Cambridge. He is a member of the Centre for Commonwealth Education at the University of Cambridge. Dominic’s research focuses on curriculum policy particularly in relation to the teaching of English, language and literacy. His research has included work on creativity and the curriculum, museum-school partnerships, and primary teaching in Tanzania. He is a Deputy Executive xxii

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Editor of the Cambridge Journal of Education. He is also editor of the Routledge Primary Education series. He is a member of the editorial boards of Teaching and Teacher Education: An International Journal of Research and Studies; Writing and Literacy; and The Editorial Commissioning and Advisory Board of the Teacher Training Resource Bank. Melody Zoch is a doctoral student in the Language and Literacy Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked as a Spanish/English bilingual elementary school teacher and literacy coach. Her research interests include how preservice teachers develop as culturally responsive literacy teachers, how teachers learn through teacher research inquiry groups, and how teachers and students develop as a community of writers across time. She is also a teaching consultant for the National Writing Project.

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Acknowledgements

Dominic, Richard and Jim wish to offer heartfelt thanks to all the authors for their writing, for their ideas, and the wisdom that comes from their vast expertise. They are also grateful to Terry Locke, Jane Medwell, Gordon Pradl, Ilana Snyder, and David Wray for being members of the editorial board. Huge thanks also to Alison Foyle for her leadership on this project, and Emily Laughton for her support. All the Routledge people who helped to bring the book to fruition have been tremendous. Dominic would particularly like to record his appreciation to Richard and Jim for their excellent writing and editing, and for their enthusiasm that was clear at the inception of the project and continued to the final outcome, and beyond!

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1 Introduction Dominic Wyse, Richard Andrews and James Hoffman

The learning and teaching of English, language and literacy are the main priorities for the education systems of many of the world’s nations. The role of language as fundamental to learning in all other areas; the high priority given to literacy teaching; the argument that nations’ economic futures are closely aligned with literacy skills; the emphasis on reading, and the renewed interest in the evidence base for educational policy and practice, are ideas that many nations are addressing. In order to benefit from the wealth of international research of relevance to the teaching of English there is a constant need for expert synthesis and interpretation so that teaching can be informed by these insights. For that reason the aim of this book is to review international research that is particularly relevant to the teaching of English, language and literacy and its enactment as policy. What do we mean by the words ‘English’, ‘language’ and ‘literacy’, and how do we distinguish between them? How do we define learning and teaching and their relationship? ‘English’ is perhaps the easiest to define; it is also the loosest definition. We do not mean the English language (though when authors in the handbook refer to it, they make the reference clear) but it is inevitable that in a handbook published in the English language and referring to its use worldwide, this aspect of English is central to the handbook’s conception. Rather, our principal focus is on English as taught as a curriculum subject in schools, largely where English is a first or first-choice language. ‘Language’ is used to mean the way that learners are taught, and the way they learn, about spoken and textual language. One important part of this is grammar and syntax but our emphasis is also on whole ‘texts’, or language events, including images, sounds, gestures and other semiotics that are part of the landscape of communication in the twenty-first century. Our definition of language, therefore, has a bearing on how we see ‘literacy’. A narrow definition of that term would see a focus merely on the technical capacity to read and write words, which we see as important; but we also emphasise that literacy (or literacies) is a socially embedded semantic system, in a co-evolutionary relationship with new technologies, and as part of a multimodal framework that considers writing, reading, talk and listening alongside other modes of communication. Our central concern in relation to teaching is pedagogy, and we have wanted in this handbook to address 1

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pedagogical matters in every chapter, so that the collection is useful to teachers as well as to researchers, policy-makers and theorists. There seems to be an increasing number of handbooks relevant to the teaching of English, language and literacy (in fact, a number of the contributors to this book are themselves editors of fine handbooks). To take but one example, information technology has attracted a wealth of handbook publications (Reinking – this volume). To some there is a danger that this represents a saturation of the publishing market. However, an alternative understanding of this phenomenon is that it is another indication that education as a discipline is maturing, because there is now such an impressive array of scholarship that needs disseminating in the particular way that an international handbook is able to do. Our claim to the uniqueness of this handbook is: (a) that it attempts to address the teaching of English, language and literacy holistically in recognition that teachers, at any phase of education, have to combine understanding of talk, reading, writing, language, and pedagogy in order to be effective; and (b) that its goal to distil messages from research is specifically focused to provide recommendations for policy and practice. The chapters of the book locate recent cutting-edge research within an appropriate theoretical context, drawing as necessary on historical perspectives. A range of theoretical orientations informs the chapters; but of particular interest to the editors is the growth of interdisciplinary analyses. This interdisciplinarity is evident not only at a substantive level but also methodologically. Many of the authors recognise the contribution that both positivist and naturalistic modes of enquiry can contribute to the important questions that relate to policy and practice. In order to address satisfactorily the many research areas that are of relevance to the teaching of English, language and literacy, this volume focuses in the first three sections on the key areas of reading, writing and language. In recognition that there are also important areas that are not easily categorised within these modes of English, the fourth section of the book addresses issues that cut across reading, writing and language. In addition to the examples of policy and practice from nation states, and the explicit international focus that is a feature of the chapters, the fifth section of the book provides a context for teaching and learning from the perspectives of different countries and continents. This is inevitably partial, but we hope it is another way to reveal issues that may be of global relevance.

Reading, writing and language A chapter on pupils’ motivation is first in this book for good reason. There is growing evidence to support many people’s belief that motivated learners are more likely to learn effectively. However, while pupil motivation has remained something widely acknowledged as important it is not routinely and systematically addressed as part of national policy. The evidence suggests that the teaching of reading can foster different kinds of motivation leading to superficial engagement and/or deep engagement (Paris and McNaughton). Superficial engagement can come for some pupils as a result of a focus on formal school outcomes, but there is a more desirable form of motivation which results in engaged readers who choose to read for personal satisfaction. Any overall aim – teaching for motivation is arguably a very good one – for English teaching has to be considered pedagogically. Within a sociocultural understanding of 2

INTRODUCTION

pedagogy (Dombey) we would highlight contextualised learning and teaching as an important consideration. For example the centrality of meaning and communicative intent to the teaching and learning of English requires the teaching of appropriate comprehension skills within the goal of pupils taking part in tasks which require the production of a satisfying longitudinal outcome (Duffy, Miller, Howerton, and Williams). As part of this reconceptualisation of reading comprehension, and reading teaching in general, attention also needs to be given to the fact that text genres affect the processes of comprehension (Duke and Roberts), not just written composition. The claim has frequently been made that the reading wars that feature extreme arguments about top-down versus bottom-up approaches to the teaching of reading were resolved as research evidence in relation to phonology accumulated. There is now an impressive and growing body of research showing the importance of phonological representation in relation to the learning and teaching of reading (Goswami). However, some have been too quick to translate this crudely to particular approaches to the teaching of reading; approaches which fail to reflect the evidence about context. If we consider contextualised learning and teaching at the level of words, we see that an excessive focus on phonology (this in itself is perhaps not building on the evidence that the syllable is the primary perceptive unit) can lead to neglect of morphology, an aspect of language that has a strong semantic component and one which requires consideration of the word and sentence context (Hiebert and Bravo). We began by highlighting contextualisation in relation to learning and teaching, of which comprehension and phonological representations are two important parts. They are parts which, we would argue, have to be more coherently connected in the minds of researchers, teachers and policy-makers in order for further progress to be made in the teaching of English. The alternative is a continuation of the decontextualised teaching of reading that has historically characterised so many nations’ approaches. In many countries of the world this is evident in the use of textbooks, and in particular the pedagogical assumptions that underpin such textbooks. But even when the most imaginative texts for pupils are routinely used the pressures from policy-makers are such that some genres are privileged above others (Bearne and Styles; Beavis), and student initiated questions and hypotheses may not be encouraged to the extent that they might be ( Janssen, Braaksma, and Rijlaarsdam). As with reading, interest, enjoyment and motivation are also central to the teaching of writing. An enduring debate for writing has concerned how the basic skills can be taught in a way that appropriately balances the emphases on composition and transcription while maintaining pupils’ motivation. The evidence suggests that one potentially powerful way to balance pupil motivation for writing with teaching of the necessary skills is through the use of the process approach to the teaching of writing, augmented by explicit teaching of skills and strategies (Graham). Contextualised teaching of writing requires understanding about the way in which not only are words and sentences the nuts and bolts of a meaning-making system, but also that grammatical choices represent relations between writing and the world that writers inhabit (Myhill a). The importance of contextualisation can be seen not only through the adoption of a process approach, and through grammatical choices, but also at the level of some aspects of writing that have received rather less attention from researchers. Medwell and Wray make clear the links between handwriting and composition, and Bourassa and Treiman show that children’s understanding of spelling features concurrent development of morphology, orthography and phonology. 3

DOMINIC WYSE, RICHARD ANDREWS AND JAMES HOFFMAN

One of the many factors that it is necessary to consider in relation to effective pedagogy is how children’s writing develops. Programmes of study that are built on linear stages of writing development are common at national and regional levels across the world. The link between these programmes and the research evidence is however less clear. In part, this is because we still have some way to go in our understanding of writing development. Christie proposes four developmental phases that account for pupils from age 6 to age 18, with the move to greater abstraction in writing a vital one. Developmental progression is also a focus for Beck, particularly the period from the latter years of secondary education into college/university education. However, whereas for Christie linguistic measurement is the theoretical heart for her view of development, Beck’s analysis is built on an interdisciplinary focus that combines cognitive and sociocultural accounts. Bradford and Wyse also adopt an interdisciplinary focus as a means to highlight the combination of cognition, genre, and children’s writing experiences at home as important areas in relation to young children’s writing, and caution about the need to recognise individual differences in children’s writing behaviour in the context of stage theories. The idea of an evidence-informed teaching approach which motivates pupils and which locates carefully balanced explicit teaching within a holistic framework is a very attractive one. The evidence reviewed in this book suggests not only the potential of this idea in relation to writing and reading as separate modes but also, with the inclusion of language, its potential contribution to a theory of effective English teaching. A direction for further research might be to investigate whether a motivational approach, such as an emphasis on whole texts which engage pupils, that productively combines the systematic teaching of the alphabetic code and other word-level understanding (provided the necessary pedagogic flexibility for teachers and pupils was enabled), when synthesised with our understanding about writing, results in better outcomes for pupils. Anger – sing, goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that accursed anger, which brought the Greeks endless sufferings and sent the mighty souls of many warriors to Hades, leaving their bodies as carrion for the dogs and a feast for the birds; and Zeus’ purpose was fulfilled. It all began when Agamemnon lord of men and godlike Achilles quarrelled and parted. The opening words to one of the first and foremost works of western literature, Homer’s Iliad. The supreme artistic achievement of Homer, someone we know very little about, has attracted a series of significant controversies that revolve around language and literacy; for example the arguments about the extent to which the Iliad was oral or written, at a time when the first examples of Greek alphabetic writing were emerging; or the suggestion that Homer himself was illiterate. Bomer shows the modern theoretical relevance of orality, beginning with its roots in the study of texts such as Homer’s, and concluding with its current importance in showing the way in which written text can contribute to linguistic awareness and conceptual thought. Bomer also provides an important link between the book’s sections on literacy and language in his exploration of the similarities and differences between (and status of) oral and written language. The word ‘language’ in the title of this handbook is perhaps the most important word of all. It is of course through language that pupils learn about language, which in its broadest sense includes reading and writing. The plural of the word language is also 4

INTRODUCTION

significant because at the central core of English teaching is, and should be, understanding that multilingualism is the norm, not an addition (Brutt-Griffler). This has profound implications for the role of the teacher, which so far governments have, particularly in the West, been slow to fully recognise and embed in policy. This understanding affects not only the teaching of English, but all subjects of the curriculum, as language is the vehicle for all teaching. While cognitive psychological perspectives of language continue to be influential, scholarship on the social context for language (Myhill [b]) provides an increasingly powerful case for the understanding of teaching of English, language and literacy. One part of this is the necessary attention to equity and social justice that critical literacy provides (Janks). Another part of the sociocultural context is classroom discourse, through which learning is mediated. As Hardman shows, the recitation script is an ubiquitous feature of classrooms across the world. His call is for the replacement of this with more dialogic forms of discourse that would enable pupils to be empowered and to more frequently be part of initiating ideas. Although the universality of classroom discourse is recognised, the reasons for this are perhaps worthy of further exploration. There is potential in comparing with other universal forms of discourse, such as childdirected speech by parents and carers, to understand the reasons for such ubiquity, but also to fully evaluate potential weaknesses and benefits of common forms of classroom discourse. Understanding of the links between language and literacy, and the place of language in the English curriculum, has grown over the last 30 years or so. One promising element of this has been the growing use of drama as a means to enhance English teaching, which Franks shows is supported by research adopting a range of methodologies including quantitative work. However, there is still much work to be done in order to better understand these links and their implications for pedagogy (see Salvatore’s chapter on Shakespeare). It is regrettable that the richness of language as an area for learning and teaching is still too frequently unacceptably narrowed; for example its relegation to simply ‘speaking and listening’. There is also a need to more clearly understand the elements of language that need direct teaching, those that need facilitation and encouragement, and those that can more appropriately be seen as part of pedagogy, and therefore a part of teachers’ professional knowledge base rather than a subject to be taught.

English, language and literacy teaching Many of the contributors to this handbook are concerned to see literacy and the teaching of English and language holistically. For example when defining the difficulties in learning literacy that some children have (Avramidis, Lawson and Norwich), or in conceptualising writing composition as design. Afflerbach, Cho, Kim and Summer remind us of the negative aspects of literacy assessment if the definition of literacy is a limited one. It seems to us that a critical literacy perspective is an essential framework for thinking about literacy education (Janks), not least when considering social equity. Mosely, Cary and Zoch argue that the provision of pre-service teachers with opportunities to experience unfamiliar contexts is necessary in order to enhance their understanding of culturally responsive pedagogy. However, the question of whether pre-service teachers’ beliefs can be changed in order to positively impact on the outcomes for pupils remains 5

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one that is under-researched (Roller; see also Mosely for evidence on teacher preparation). Social equity has been used as a means to justify political control of education, but as Moss points out in the context of her exploration of gender, this is not the same as the drive for achievement of uniform outcomes in national performance measures. Many countries of the world have centrally controlled educational policies that have a direct impact on pupils and teachers. These are often defended on the basis that they give an entitlement to all pupils; however, true entitlement can also come from greater flexibility and choice over curricula and pedagogy as teachers and pupils construct education that democratically addresses their interests and needs. There can be little doubt that information technology continues to have a powerful impact on growing numbers of people world wide. The speed of change is such that it is very difficult to accumulate measured judgements about the implications. There are many who argue that developments in the digital world have profoundly changed the way that literacy is enacted – for example the idea that writing has been repositioned in the landscape of English, and consequently we face the need to better understand the means of composition that students bring to bear (Jewitt and Kress). This is reflected in teachers’ knowledge (or lack of it) about the differences between pupils’ multimodal experiences in their homes and in society generally which inform the ways that pupils respond to school curricula and pedagogy (Marsh). The interface between home/community on the one hand, and schools on the other, in terms of how multimodality is employed and understood, is one that is in need of continued research. Reinking’s focus is on new technologies; his challenge is that the implications for education as a result of digital technology developments are over-theorized and underresearched. Burn also reveals a lack of research related to moving image work as part of literacy in his characterisation of this as the Cinderella of the English curriculum. If we accept there is a lack of research aimed at supporting action by policy-makers and schools, does this create a vacuum into which more extreme political advocacy of technology can thrive without a sufficiently well-informed understanding of the consequences? One area for future work is the place of information technology in the curriculum. To what extent is it better conceived as a set of tools which are used throughout the curriculum? Does it merit a separate subject study? Surely we need to see technology more as tools that can enhance or detract from the teaching of English, and teaching and learning more generally, than a brave new world that will irrevocably change education as we know it. The demise of the book has long been predicted but is unlikely to happen! We agree that we need to look to the underlying bedrock of the interactive communication technologies landscape (Reinking), which in our view means considering the underlying principles of English, language and literacy teaching (many of which are addressed in this book), if we are to deal appropriately with the future. For example there are many who would argue that texts are the bedrock of English teaching – in this context Locke warns of the neglect of poetry. For some, these texts are predominantly literary texts but for others texts encompass a wide range of forms including electronic and/or multimodal ones. Texts are also a natural part of pupils’ world outside and inside school, and Sailors and Hoffman provide a timely reminder of the significance of the print-rich environment, and of the importance in education of textbooks, which are the dominant form of delivery in many countries, and a significant feature in almost all. It is rather more difficult to identify themes that unify the chapters in part five of the handbook. This difficulty is perhaps to be expected, as the aim of the section is to reveal 6

INTRODUCTION

some of the ways that issues for English, language and literacy teaching emerge in the contexts of nation states. However, there are two issues that seem to predominate: political control of curricula and pedagogy; and the status of English as a world language in relation to education systems of nation states. One of the most significant changes to the terrain of English, language and literacy has been the global growth of English coupled with more explicit international agendas for teaching. Although scholars have historically compared teaching across the world, the direct influence on teaching due to international sociopolitical features has grown considerably. Wyse and Opfer locate economy-driven international policy in the context of the globalisation debates, but also question the extent to which globalisation is actual or more a feature of political perception. They also urge complex forms of political resistance as one way to challenge what can be seen as a new imperialism. International assessments of literacy which continue to evolve (Shiel and Eivers) are an important part of the internationalisation of education. In the wider sociopolitical debates about globalisation China is increasingly recognised as an important economic force. Some of the changes that have taken place in China include even greater recognition of the importance of the English language in relation to ‘business’ in its widest sense. As Lee and Lok show, of particular significance is the status of English and other languages. The correlations between state mandated policies, which assign status to particular languages in national law, and the actual use of languages at a number of different levels in societies, are complex. Sub-Saharan Africa also reveals the complexities that are rooted in colonial pasts and language (Fentiman, Wyse and Vikiru). The growth and expansion of English is not in doubt and is happening in every country in the world. In Scandinavia the success of English language teaching supported by the use of European language frameworks is tempered by popular concerns that national languages may be endangered (Simensen). Shah reveals that issues of the status of English and other languages in India echo those in other parts of the world. Her recommendation is that support for mother tongues should be combined with wellorganised bilingual education programmes in order to support pupils’ learning most effectively. However, there is much research still needed to understand the opportunities and challenges that the combination of English and other languages present to bilingual children (Goswami). The USA continues to be one of the most significant players in terms of research on the teaching of English, and one that influences wealthy and poor nations alike. For example the report of the National Reading Panel has been influential internationally. However, what is of equal significance is the way that the measured conclusions of the NRP became enacted as policy. Policy on the teaching of reading became strongly influenced by federal government through the legislation of No Child Left Behind. Phonics instruction frequently received more attention than other important aspects of reading pedagogy, sometimes in extremis. Allington argues that federal education policy adopted a narrow, ideologically defined notion of ‘scientifically-based reliable, replicable’ reading research (SBRR). This determined the kind of reading pedagogy that states had to implement in order to receive federal funding but, Allington adds, to date there is no compelling evidence that reading standards have improved as a result of the No Child Left Behind legislation, which includes the requirement for SBRR; in fact there is some evidence of more limited reading curricula and decreased curricular and instructional coherence. 7

DOMINIC WYSE, RICHARD ANDREWS AND JAMES HOFFMAN

The difficulties of maintaining research-informed pedagogy in the context of policy formation and implementation is also revealed in Australia. The Commonwealth government in Australia carried out a review of research on literacy, influenced by the work of the NRP, but effectively restricted its focus to the teaching of reading. The report recommended that ‘teachers [should] provide an integrated approach to reading that supports the development of oral language, vocabulary, grammar, reading fluency, comprehension and the literacies of new technologies’ and that ‘no one approach of itself can address the complex nature of reading difficulties. An integrated approach requires that teachers have a thorough understanding of a range of effective strategies, as well as knowing when and why to apply them’.1 Sawyer argues that the approach to reading known as synthetic phonics was fore-grounded and particularly favoured by the report. Of particular concern to Sawyer was the use of one Scottish study as the basis for the suggestion in the report that the case for synthetic phonics was clearly proven whereas research showing the significance of balanced reading instruction was ‘assertion’. Reading pedagogy in England has also been affected by some of the issues evident in the US and Australia, although in a rather more extreme way. Changes to policy on the teaching of reading in England can be seen as a gradual move from considerable teacher autonomy, with custom and practice resulting in phonics teaching being an important but non-dominant feature pre-1988, to strong state control of reading pedagogy with synthetic phonics a dominant feature post-2006. The most dramatic shift occurred following the publication of the government commissioned report on the teaching of early reading. For the first time, policy-makers influenced not just programmes of study in the curriculum, or particular features of literacy lessons, but also the teaching method to be employed in the teaching of reading. Brindley sees this growing political control as part of an international trend resulting in the deprofessionalisation of teachers. We remain committed to the notion of the well-informed empowered teacher who is able to combine appreciation of the importance of evidence with a deep common-sense rooted in celebration of pupils’ achievements. We hope that scholars whose work requires them to remain informed about research on the teaching of English, language and literacy will find the book valuable. But we also hope that the book will act as a force for good and influence the policy and practice of the teaching of English, language and literacy.

1 Australian Government. Department of Education Science and Training, 2005, p.14.

8

Part 1 Reading

2 Social and cultural influences on children’s motivation for reading Scott G. Paris and Stuart McNaughton

In schools around the world, the most important accomplishment in primary grades is the ability to read one’s native language, because it is the gateway for continued learning. Decoding print or characters into speech, however, is a minimal threshold that must be augmented with desire and interest in reading, thoughtful strategies, scaffolded instruction, and wide opportunities to read diverse materials if children are to become independent and self-regulated learners (Paris et al., 1991; Snow et al., 1998). Thus, students need to acquire and apply motivation to learn to read, to monitor and construct meaning from texts, to use reading instrumentally for various purposes, and to read for pleasure and enjoyment. In this chapter, we provide a summary of theoretical principles underlying motivated reading, consider some factors that enhance or inhibit children’s engaged reading, and use distinctive cultural examples to illustrate the concepts.

Principles of motivation Theoretical approaches to motivation, particularly academic motivation in schools, have changed during the past 50 years from behavioral emphases on rewards and punishments to cognitive emphases on self-determination (Schunk et al., 2008). In a simplified manner, the shift in emphasis from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation has been part of the psychological proliferation of cognitive theories about how students view themselves, learning, and school. Traditional accounts of motivation often describe behavioural consequences that enhance motivation, such as gold stars, special privileges, or public recognition and praise. The success of these consequences depends on how the child perceives the people who provide them, the information value of the consequences about one’s performance, and the type of activity that is reinforced, i.e. we know that children will work hard and value success when they get valued rewards from valued people. Performance and effort can be increased for instrumental reasons or extrinsic motivation, but there is considerable, yet controversial, evidence that tangible rewards undermine intrinsic motivation (Sanson and Harackiewicz, 2000). Some reconcile the discrepant findings by noting that external rewards that signal contingent improvement 11

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in competence or learning may enhance intrinsic motivation, whereas ambiguous or non-informative consequences may be interpreted as demeaning (Schunk et al., 2008). External rewards given for instrumental reasons may not undermine motivation when the rewards are interpreted as independent of self-evaluation. In contrast to past emphases on motivation for extrinsic consequences, cognitive constructivist accounts of motivation describe how personal interpretations of events, self, and others influence the direction and force of students’ efforts. Because the theories emphasize personal will, choice, and control, they can be summarized generally as theories of self-regulation. Various theories emphasize goals (Pintrich, 2000), attributions (Weiner, 2000), self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997), self-worth (Covington, 1992), and self-determination (Deci and Ryan, 1985; Ryan and Deci, 2000). The voluminous literature can be summarized with regard to four general types of personal interpretations. One, students interpret their behaviour in terms of goals, sometimes proactively and sometimes retroactively. In general, goals that are oriented toward performance standards and reward levels set by others do not sustain motivation as well as goals that are oriented toward mastery and personal standards. Two students interpret their behaviour in terms of control, and it is more motivating in academic situations for students to feel a sense of internal control over what they do and when they do it, rather than external control of their behaviour by teachers and others. Three students interpret their own successes and failures by making attributions of causality to internal (e.g. ability and effort) or external (e.g. other people or chance) factors that may be stable or unstable over time and contexts. In general, students who take responsibility for their actions show sustained motivation more than students who attribute success and failure to factors beyond their control (Paris and Carpenter, 2004). Learned helplessness and passivity in classrooms may be a sign that students believe their own efforts cannot help them to achieve success or avoid failure. Four students perceive their general competence and worth according to their levels of performance, the reasons for their performance, and the control they exercise. Obviously, students’ interpretations of goals, control, and causes of success and failure are interactive and jointly influence students’ self-concepts. More nuanced theories also emphasize how one’s interest in the object or activity (Renninger et al., 1992), the degree of personal challenge in a task (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996), and the social nature of the situation (Paris and Turner, 1994) influence motivation for reading. Research has shown generally that students regulate their motivation when the tasks are interesting, challenging, and allow social collaboration, compared to dull, boring, or frustrating tasks that are done in solitude.

Motivation for reading These general principles can be applied to reading at school. Students in school can be motivated to read by clear extrinsic rewards, including grades and public recognition that may lead to pride or embarrassment. Success can also be marked by membership in groups that are streamed by ability and access to special programmes or schools. Parents and teachers often refer to these public markers of success as incentives or threats to motivate students to work harder and read more. In the short run, extrinsic rewards may increase motivation for reading, but research suggests that students who work in an environment in which external rewards are frequent may become increasingly oriented to the rewards and performance goals such as grades, test scores, and task completion 12

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(Guthrie and Wigfield, 2000). They tend to choose easier tasks, get frustrated and give up easily, and use superficial strategies for learning – all reactions that undermine enjoyment and understanding while reading. There are also intrinsic factors that motivate reading. Wigfield and Guthrie (1997) identified curiosity, preference for challenge, and involvement (a construct similar to ‘flow experiences’ [see Csikszentmihalyi, 1990]) as three fundamental aspects of intrinsic motivation for reading. Each of these constructs helps students maintain effort in reading tasks. When coupled with mastery goals and a sense of control, students with intrinsic motivation are also likely to avoid distractions and use effective reading strategies so they can complete the tasks. However, as students move from primary grades to middle school and high school, many researchers have noted paradoxical developmental shifts of decreased intrinsic motivation and increased extrinsic motivation (Guthrie and Wigfield, 2000). One possible reason may be the development of more accurate self-appraisal of abilities whereby some children try less because they believe that success is beyond their reach. A second possible reason for the developmental change in student motivation is the change in pedagogical practices. By grades 6–8, students are more oriented to performance goals and extrinsic motivation because teachers emphasize comparisons among students, group students by ability, and use tests and grades as indicators of ability and motivation (Wigfield et al., 1996). This means that the interplay between external and internal motivation to read can shift over time under the influence of changing conditions at school. As research on achievement motivation in academic settings proliferated, reading researchers extrapolated the studies and theories to situations in which children are learning to read or having difficulties sustaining motivation to read. Motivation to read is more than enjoying reading and more than trying hard. The term ‘engaged reading’ has been used to describe the dynamic interactions among factors during reading including interest, expectations, goals, strategies, and the ‘flow’ experience. Guthrie and Wigfield (2000) said that engaged readers ‘coordinate their strategies and knowledge (cognition) within a community of literacy (social) in order to fulfil their personal goals, desires, and intentions (motivation)’ (404). Children who have difficulty becoming and staying engaged in reading in school often have difficulty focusing their attention, applying learning strategies, avoiding distractions, and monitoring their own behaviour, all symptomatic of poor self-regulation skills (Schunk and Zimmerman, 1997). Engagement is a useful term because it includes behavioural, cognitive, social, and even emotional aspects of reading, and it calls attention to the enactment of motivated reading in specific situations. Engaged reading is directly related to reading achievement in brief situations involving intensive reading, and also longitudinally when engagement reflects sustained opportunities to read in and out of school across years (Campbell et al., 1997). When students are deeply engaged in meaningful tasks, they exhibit a motivational ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) in which they lose track of time because they are so thoroughly immersed in the task. Flow is a satisfied state of consciousness associated with intense concentration, effortless control, and deep enjoyment. Schallert and Reed (1997) describe ‘involvement’ in reading in similar terms. Engaged or involved readers are not distracted easily; they sustain attention through difficulties and focus on making sense of what they read. Engaged readers are on ‘auto pilot’, with little metacognition or cognitive monitoring needed. Involved readers may have heightened emotional arousal and reactions to text that may intensify the experience (Nell, 1988). Not surprisingly, 13

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engaged or involved readers read more often for pleasure and have better comprehension. Thus, it is important to identify and support opportunities and teaching strategies that promote engaged reading. Policymakers and curriculum developers must recognize that engaged reading is a function of specific literacy activities within family, community, and school practices (McNaughton, 1995). From this point of view, the degree of students’ engaged reading is related to particular goals and ways of participating in literacy events, whether it is based on worksheets or projects at school, recreational reading, or internet games at home. Becoming more expert and more motivated is a function of how much the activities are valued, supported, scaffolded, and extended in the learners’ immediate community. Contemporary schooling practices ideally are designed to encourage students to become engaged readers who are self-regulated in their interactions with texts. Students need to acquire and apply motivation to learn to read and monitor and construct meaning from texts and to use reading instrumentally for various purposes. The increasing need for facility with non-routine cognitive and analytic tasks will require students to collaborate and synthesize, to search and access across disciplinary boundaries, and to be versatile, applying depth of skill to a progressively widening scope of situations and experiences, gaining new competencies, building relationships, and assuming new roles. We need to ask, ‘What are the conditions in communities and schools that enable the development of engaged reading in these schooling practices?’ and conversely, ‘What might be the conditions that place this development at risk?’ In the next section, we describe several distinctive cultural phenomena that shape children’s motivation to read. These examples of cultural ideologies and pedagogies illustrate how we need to consider more than the individual’s orientation to the task of reading in order to understand why and when some children read avidly and others do not. The goals for reading, in school and out, are fostered by parents and teachers who scaffold reading to ends they value for academic success and personal growth. These ends are often interwoven in the fabric of education so they may not be apparent to students. In the section that follows, we discuss what it means to be a motivated reader by examining specific instances of engaged and disengaged reading by students. We begin with an example of how the cultural press for early academic success is mediated by families who encourage their children to learn at an early age. Next, we consider how procedural instruction by teachers can lead to students’ compliant cognition. Then we discuss how an emphasis on external, instrumental goals such as test preparation undermines engaged reading. Examples from Singapore and New Zealand illustrate the principles.

Kiasu in Singapore Learning to read has usually been regarded as a task taught by teachers, beginning in the first year of school, but the timing varies around the world because students in some countries begin formal schooling at age 5 years, e.g. New Zealand, whereas students in other countries may begin as late as 7 years, e.g. Scandinavia. With more countries providing preschool education and with the press for early success, reading instruction has become a task for parents and preschool teachers. In Singapore, as in many countries around the world, parents are motivated to prepare their young children for school with early literacy experiences. Mee and Gan (1998) found that 95 per cent of Singaporean 14

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parents believe it is important to learn to read in two languages, namely Chinese, which is spoken by 75 per cent of families in Singapore, and English, which is the language of instruction in Singaporean schools. Thus, parents begin instruction at home for language learning and reading. The term ‘kiasu’ means ‘to fear falling behind’ and refers, in this example, to Singaporean parents who provide extensive (and often expensive) preschool instruction to learn to read beginning at age 3–4 years. Why do Asian parents press their children for early reading success? Mainly, they want children to have a head start on academics because, in most Asian countries, education is streamed according to ability from an early age. Preschools and kindergartens are funded usually by private, not public sources; the best preschools have competitive admission criteria, and children in Singapore are expected to know how to read English and their mother tongue language when they begin Primary 1 at age 6 years. In countries where democratic and universal education are new, meritocratic beliefs mean that Asian children are often streamed into ability tracks in primary grades, and, like many eastern European countries, an examination by grade 4–5 is used to track students into academic or vocational preparation. Because access to educational opportunities is determined by tests and achievement in primary grades, Singaporean families work for an early start in reading achievement. Parental anxiety, kiasu, is thus a proactive source of motivation to help children excel early. Motivation to read for pleasure or as a social activity for preschoolers is less important than acquiring reading skills ahead of their peers. However, the competitive intentions driven by kiasu may not lead to effective pedagogy. Many parents teach memorization of ‘sight words’, a practice consistent with learning to read characters in Chinese, and direct instruction in decoding English. Bedtime reading is uncommon in many Asian countries compared to didactic reading instruction. Mee and Gan (1998) found that only 31 per cent of Singaporean parents read aloud to their children, but 69 per cent of parents try to teach their children how to read at home. Furthermore, 66 per cent of parents bought mock examination materials to use with children who are learning to read. Similar experiences of ‘highly motivated’ parents and children are reported in Asian countries from India to Japan, raising a concern for a pedagogy that may misdirect adult instruction as well as children’s initial learning and motivation for reading. One problem is that children may believe that reading is like memorizing words, so they fail to learn adequate decoding skills. A second problem is that the lack of good models of spoken English, and daily use of oral English, means that many children may learn dialects that include non-standard grammar and articulation. A third problem is that reading is tied to performance goals, workbooks, and test results from an early age so that children exposed to this type of pedagogy may adopt superficial or instrumental goals of task completion and text interpretation rather than deep strategies for constructing meaning (Luke et al., 2005). Although this might be in some senses preparation for later secondary schooling conditions more focused on extrinsic motivation, given our view of engaged reading, the practices may be at odds with contemporary needs in schooling for engaged reading.

Proceduralization of complex pedagogies A different threat to engaged reading is the kind of proceduralization of instruction that is common in a growing number of classrooms. During the past 30 years, teachers have 15

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been asked to apply increasingly cognitive and metacognitive principles in their literacy instruction. Although there are clear benefits for these kinds of instruction in research settings and select classrooms, in the face of the need to extend pedagogies across many classrooms there is also a clear risk of oversimplifying a complex pedagogy into a set of rules, steps, or procedures to be followed. Many teachers and students appear to follow paths of least effort, often with enthusiasm, as they sidestep the hard work of monitoring and repairing comprehension. Likewise, they avoid explicit teaching of reading strategies and skills, modelling how and when to use them, and scaffolding their instruction to individual students in favour of following simple procedures for turn-taking, periodic questions, or mechanical application of skills in worksheets. When teachers turn instruction into a set of procedures to follow, neither teachers nor students are required to think deeply – just follow the steps and complete the task. This approach has negative influences on children’s beliefs about reading and hence their motivation to read. Students focus on procedures, rules, and getting the job done, rather than thinking about the meaning of text or connecting the task to other things they are learning. Early intensive ethnographic studies described how children at the beginning of instruction develop concepts about reading that reflect the practices in the classroom. For example given an instructional regime in which flash cards dominated instruction, some children developed ideas about reading based on identifying words in isolation and having attempts corrected by the teacher, which for some children was associated with a reluctance to try new words (Francis, 1982). Effective oral reading of rich narrative texts in early reading instruction, where the goal is comprehension as well as accuracy, requires children to be able to monitor and resolve unfamiliar words in context. Overt self-corrections indicate that monitoring and revising is taking place. In some instructional programmes, self-corrections have a high probability of occurring, so explicit instruction to develop self-monitoring is not needed; but other forms of instruction can increase dependence on the teacher’s corrections (McNaughton, 1987). For example limited wait time after a reader’s error reduces selfcorrecting and maintenance of accuracy through instructional dependence. Alternatively, there is evidence that over-reliance on prompts to use the semantic and syntactic information in the post-error sentence can produce a style of guessing, which is a problem for developing independence in word solving (Tunmer and Chapman, 1999). The risk of proceduralization may, however, be particularly high in reading comprehension instruction. A great deal of research provides considerable evidence for the significance of developing comprehension strategies through explicit deliberate instruction (Pressley, 2002). However, there could be a problem with instructional packages presented in a formulaic way, because they undermine strategies being deployed selectively to construct appropriate meanings from texts (Paris and Cunningham, 1996; Baker, 2002). Procedures such as questioning and summarizing can become surface rituals, practised out of context, or actual reading of texts, engaged in for their own sake and divorced from the goals of reading (Afflerbach et al., 2007). When this happens, students may believe that reading (at least in schools) is reduced to following a few steps and completing the task at hand, low-level performance goals that may inhibit effort and engagement. Two intervention studies in school reform, one in the United States (Moats, 2004) and one in New Zealand (Lai et al., 2009), have identified this problem through analyses of instructional features in low-performing schools. Moats (2004) described how teachers taught vocabulary without using the words in context and without teaching strategies 16

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to garner meaning from the text. In New Zealand, analyses of instruction for Maori children (from the indigenous community) and Pasifika children (from Pacific Islands families) in low-performing urban schools, revealed that explicit strategy instruction frequently occurred, but often it was given in a formulaic way and without reference to effective use in texts. For example in guided reading lessons, students generated many predictions about narrative or expository content of texts, but rarely checked and were rarely prompted to check the accuracy of these predictions using evidence from the text. Systematic observations revealed that prompting to check predictions occurred only nine times in 16 hours of observations. Many students in upper primary grades exhibit fast and efficient decoding but have low comprehension scores, a pattern identified across studies (Paris et al., 2005). Dewitz and Dewitz (2003) observed fluent readers who displayed ‘excessive elaborations’, i.e. guessing, when they tried to answer questions about text. In the intervention study reported by Lai et al. (2009), students were taught to control these strategic acts. The focus was on use determined by the goals of constructing, checking, and using appropriate meanings from texts (Pressley, 2002). This involved, among other things, teachers modelling and guiding the checking of meanings from the text and other sources. The increased self-regulation of checking was associated with significant gains on tests of paragraph comprehension. Successful intervention studies suggest that the solution to the risk of proceduralized and routinized instruction lies in the increased knowledge teachers need to understand the nature of comprehending, learning, and effective teaching. The features of effective comprehension programmes have also been identified by researchers implementing school reforms in reading (e.g. Taylor et al., 2005), who point out that teachers need to teach and model thoughtful strategies, provide challenging tasks, and ask higher-order questions about texts. More generally, this carries implications for the features of effective teacher education and professional development. The issue here is the balance between teachers’ learning and carrying out predetermined patterns of instruction known to be effective, or developing as ‘adaptive experts’, with a body of knowledge and procedures, who can use and modify known instructional methods to solve issues of effective practice (Bransford et al., 2005; Robinson and Lai, 2006). Finding that the problem exists across countries suggests that there is a generalized risk to motivation through the proceduralization of instruction. From the teacher’s perspective this can be examined in terms of whether the teacher has the pedagogical content knowledge and the role within a professional community to act as an adaptive expert, rather than acting more like a technician. Defaulting to routines and formulaic teaching may therefore be a product of wider contextual influences, such as the manner of teacher preparation and the forms in which instructional packages and professional development are delivered. However, in a country such as New Zealand the cultural practices associated with literacy and the nature of students’ learning may add to the risk. The presence of deeply ingrained patterns of learning through imitation and recitation of texts, and the role of authority in guiding learning may limit sustained motivation and engaged reading in the ideal school reading practices of independent problem solving and negotiating meanings. Jones (1991) described the ways in which Pasifika girls in a New Zealand high school negotiated a change in classroom instruction. Through their questions and patterns of non-compliance in the classroom discourse, they shifted the teaching that was focused on discussion and inquiry towards a pattern of presenting information to 17

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be copied. But rather than this merely being work avoidance and cognitive economy that is misdirecting instruction in the classroom, the students’ lack of engagement reflected beliefs about their motivation to engage in particular practices that were not generative for school learning

The motivational costs of instrumental goals Many students are motivated to read better in order to score well on academic tests, specifically high-stakes tests. Some teachers and parents deplore this kind of instrumental motivation as counterproductive for the development of independent readers, while others applaud test-taking skills as necessary for academic success. Certainly, the increased use of high-stakes tests throughout the world in the past 30 years for educational tracking and access to better opportunities has increased the time spent in school on learning to take tests. Singapore education is driven by high-stakes tests, beginning with the Pupil School Leaving Exam (PSLE) in primary grade 6 and continuing in the O level and A level exams taken in secondary school. The high-stakes test results are used to rank order the schools in Singapore, and the rank is public information, published in performance league tables and signalled by awarding medals of achievement. Likewise, students are tested, streamed, and ranked beginning in primary grades, and both students and parents know the comparative information. Thus, kiasu that drives parents to help their preschoolers get a head start also motivates families to succeed on high-stakes tests. The cultural ethos for education in Singapore is so deeply entrenched in testing that teaching to the test and learning for the test drive the pedagogy of most parents and teachers. Most students go to at least one or two tutors after school and on weekends, and most parents buy commercial materials such as practice tests and test-taking tips every year (Tan, 2007). After-school learning is a primary activity for students in most Asian countries. Students are motivated to succeed on tests so the pedagogy of drilling, memorizing, and taking practice tests takes precedence over reading for pleasure or other purposes. When test-taking skills undermine good reading strategies by teaching short-cuts to identify correct answers, or undermine enjoyment and free reading, then both teachers and students are at risk for being motivated to read for instrumental ends that do not sustain a life-long love of reading. Although the Ministry of Education issued broad initiatives called ‘Thinking Schools, Learning Nation’ and ‘Teach Less, Learn More’ to decrease the emphasis on didactic teaching and exam preparation, the practices in classrooms have been slow to respond (Tan, 2007). Consequently, learning to read is focused on completing specific tasks and meeting specific standards. Reading, like other school subjects, is highly instrumental for Singaporean students. Perhaps it is not surprising that their test-driven pedagogies have produced students who score above most countries in international comparisons (e.g. PISA and TIMSS), but it may be surprising to note that Asian students consistently report lower self-concepts and more anxiety than students in other countries (Wilkins, 2004). The motivational costs of reading for instrumental purposes, such as scoring well on high-stakes tests, is a global issue because testing has become so pervasive as a means of identifying and sorting high achievers. These kinds of threats, such as the pressures from high-stakes testing, to the motivation and academic success of students most at 18

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risk, have been noted by many researchers (e.g. Berliner, 2006). It is clear that assessment practices that emphasize normative, comparative, public use of performance data may undermine children’s motivation to read for pleasure, mastery, and learning. The increasing emphasis on high-stakes testing may motivate children for the test, but the unintended consequences may be overwhelmingly negative for children’s motivation to read, particularly for children already at risk (Paris and McEvoy, 2000). Thus, pedagogies for reading instruction must also promote better assessment techniques so students are motivated to succeed for their own mastery goals.

Conclusion Students in school are motivated to read for many purposes. Some are instrumental, such as pleasing parents or teachers or receiving high marks on examinations. These goals engender superficial engagement with reading that yield modest effort and superficial comprehension. Other goals are personal and may be oriented to mastery and personal satisfaction. Research has shown that sociocultural orientations to reading and schooling may foster either deep or superficial goals. Likewise, teachers’ pedagogies may foster engaged or disengaged readers. Teachers are faced with the task of interpreting cultural, familial, and personal orientations to learning that affect children’s motivation to read in their classrooms. It is a difficult task in a short period of time, but it is essential for teachers to understand students’ motivation for reading so that they can accommodate the differences among students in their choice of materials, methods of instruction, and types of assessments. Insightful teachers who are attuned to their students make these choices every day so that their students are challenged and take control of their own learning.

References Afflerbach, P., Pearson, P.D. and Paris, S. (2007). Skills and Strategies: Their differences, their relationships, and why it matters. In K. Mokhtari and R. Sheorey (Eds) Reading Strategies of First- and Second-language Learners: See how they read. Norwood, MA: ChristopherGordon Publishers, pp. 11–24. Baker, L. (2002). Metacognition in Comprehension Instruction. In C. C. Block and M. Pressley (Eds) Comprehension Instruction: Research-based best practices. New York: The Guilford Press, pp. 7–95. Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman. Berliner, D. (2006). Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform. Teachers College Record 108(6): 949–95. Bransford, J., Derry, S., Berliner, D. and Hammermass, K. (2005). Theories of Learning and their Role in Teaching. In L. Darling-Hammond and J. Bransford (Eds) Preparing Teachers for a Changing World. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley, pp. 40–87. Campbell, J.R., Voelkl, K.E. and Donahue, P.L. (1997). NAEP 1996 Trends in Academic Progress (NCES Publication No. 97–985). Washington, DC: US Department of Education. Covington, M.V. (1992). Making the Grade: A self-worth perspective on motivation and school reform. New York: Cambridge University Press. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: HarperCollins.

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Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: HarperCollins. Deci, E.L. and Ryan, R.M. (1985). Intrinsic Motivation and Self-determination in Human Behavior. New York: Plenum. Dewitz, P. and Dewitz, P.K. (2003). They Can Read the Words but they Can’t Understand: Refining comprehension assessment. The Reading Teacher 5(5): 422–35. Francis, H. (1982). Learning to Read. London: Allen & Unwin. Guthrie, J.T. and Wigfield, A. (2000). Engagement and Motivation in Reading. In M.L. Kamil, P.B. Mosenthal, P.D. Pearson and R. Barr (Eds) Handbook of Reading Research Vol. 3. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 403–422. Jones, A. (1991). ‘At School I’ve Got a Chance.’ Culture/privilege: Pacific Islands and Pakeha girls at school. Palmerston Nth, NZ: Dunmore Press. Kim, J.S. (2006). Effects of a Voluntary Summer Reading Intervention on Reading Achievement: Results from a randomized field trial. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 28(4): 335–55. Lai, M.K., McNaughton, S., Amituanai-Toloa, M., Turner, R. and Hsiao, S. (2009). Sustained Acceleration of Reading Comprehension: The New Zealand experience. Reading Research Quarterly 44(1): 30–56. Luke, A., Freebody, P., Shun, L. and Gopinathan, S. (2005). Towards Research-based Innovation and Reform: Singapore schooling in transition. Asia-Pacific Journal of Education 25(1): 7–29. McNaughton, S. (1987). Being Skilled: The socializations of learning to read. London: Methuen. McNaughton, S. (1995). Patterns of Emergent Literacy: Processes of development and transition. Auckland, NZ: Oxford University Press. Mee, C.Y. and Gan, L. (1998). Reading Practices in Singapore Homes. Early Child Development and Care 144(1): 3–20. Moats, L.C. (2004). Science, Language, and Imagination in the Professional Development of Reading Teachers. In P. McCardle and V. Chabra (Eds) The Voice of Evidence in Reading Research. Baltimore, MD: Brookes, pp. 269–87. Nell, V. (1988). The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure: Needs and gratifications. Reading Research Quarterly 23(1): 6–50. Paris, S.G. and Carpenter, R.D. (2004). Children’s Motivation to Read. In J. Hoffman and D. Schallert (Eds) The Texts in Elementary Classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 61–82. Paris, S.G. and Cunningham, A. (1996). Children Becoming Students. In D. Berliner and R. Calfee (Eds) Handbook of Educational Psychology. New York: Macmillan, pp. 117–47. Paris, S.G. and McEvoy, A.P. (2000). Harmful and Enduring Effects of High-stakes Testing. Issues in Education 6(1–2): 145–59. Paris, S.G. and Turner, J.C. (1994). Situated Motivation. In P. Pintrich, D. Brown and C. Weinstein (Eds) Student Motivation, Cognition, and Learning: Essays in honor of Wilbert J. McKeachie. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 213–37. Paris, S.G., Wasik, B.A. and Turner, J.C. (1991). The Development of Strategic Readers. In R. Barr, M. Kamil, P. Mosenthal and P.D. Pearson (Eds) Handbook of Reading Research (2nd edn). New York: Longman, pp. 609–40. Paris, S.G., Carpenter, R.D., Paris, A.H. and Hamilton, E.E. (2005). Spurious and Genuine Correlates of Children’s Reading Comprehension. In S.G. Paris and S.A. Stahl (Eds) Children’s Reading Comprehension and Assessment. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 131–60. Pintrich, P.R. (2000). Multiple Goals, Multiple Pathways: The role of goal orientation in learning and achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology 92: 544–55.

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Pressley, M. (2002). Comprehension Strategies Instruction: A turn-of-the-century status report. In C.C. Block and M. Pressley (Eds) Comprehension Instruction: Research-based best practices. New York: Guilford Press, pp. 11–27. Renninger, K.A., Hidi, S. and Krapp, A. (1992). The Role of Interest in Learning and Development. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Robinson, V. and Lai, M.K. (2006). Practitioner Research for Educators: A guide to improving classrooms and schools. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Ryan, R.M. and Deci, E.L. (2000). Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology 25: 54–67. Sanson, C. and Harackiewicz, J. (2000). Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation: The search for optima motivation and performance. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Schallert, D.L. and Reed, J.H. (1997). The Pull of the Text and the Process of Involvement in Reading. In J. Guthrie and A. Wigfield (Eds) Reading Engagement: Motivating readers through integrated instruction. Newark, DE: International Reading Association, pp. 68–85. Schunk, D.H. and Zimmerman, B.J. (1997). Developing Self-efficacious Readers and Writers: The role of social and self-regulatory processes. In J.T. Guthrie and A. Wigfield (Eds) Reading Engagement: Motivating readers through integrated instruction. Newark, DE: International Reading Association, pp. 34–50. Schunk, D.H., Pintrich, P.R. and Meece, J.L. (2008). Motivation in Education: Theory, research, and applications. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. Snow, C.E., Burns, S. and Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington DC: National Academy Press. Tan, J. (2007). Schooling in Singapore. In G.A. Postiglione and J. Tan (Eds) Going to School in East Asia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, pp. 301–49. Taylor, B.M., Pearson, P.D., Peterson, D. and Rodriguez, M.C. (2005). The CIERA School Change Framework: An evidence-based approach to professional development and school reading improvement. Reading Research Quarterly 40(1): 40–69. Tunmer, W.E. and Chapman, J.W. (1999). Teaching Strategies for Word Identification. In G.B. Thompson and T. Nicholson (Eds) Learning to Read: Beyond phonics and whole language. New York: Teachers College Press & International Reading Association, pp. 74–102. Weiner, B. (2000). Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Theories of Motivation from an Attributional Perspective. Educational Psychology Review 12: 1–14. Wigfield, A. and Guthrie, J.T. (1997). Relations of Children’s Motivation for Reading to the Amount and Breadth of their Reading. Journal of Educational Psychology 89: 420–32. Wigfield, A., Eccles, J.S. and Pintrich, J.R. (1996). Development between the Ages of 11 and 25. In D.C. Berliner and R.C. Calfee (Eds) Handbook of Educational Psychology. New York: Macmillan, pp. 148–85. Wilkins, J.M. (2004). Mathematics and Science Self-concept: An international investigation. The Journal of Experimental Education 72(4): 331–46.

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3 Literature for children Eve Bearne and Morag Styles

For the purposes of this chapter the authors consider literature for children as texts written to entertain the young. The most rewarding literature does much more, of course – it informs, inspires, nourishes and pleases. We have been asked to concentrate on literature for young children, so we have focused on consideration of international fiction, poetry and picture books in a range of genres and varieties of multimodal texts, including screen-based reading provided by the digital technology revolution, with its attendant ‘democratisation of online spaces’ and new ‘rules of social engagement’ (Lang, 2009), using novel and interactive technologies. For reasons of space, we have excluded such categories as biography and information books for children, and make only passing reference to film and so-called crossover texts. We have been influenced by the views of Barbara Hardy and others that narrative is a primary act of mind (1974) and that good stories offer young readers intellectual and emotional wisdom as well as nourishment for the imagination. Shirley Brice Heath (2004, 2009) also reminds us of the links between the visual, verbal and dramatic, arguing that verbal fluency goes hand-in-hand with attention to visual focus and dramatic role-play which, in turn, enables children to explore being inside someone else’s character in thought, voice and action. Most contemporary young critical readers cope admirably with this array of varied and demanding texts; indeed they relish the challenge. Victor Watson describes the kind of readers most children are today as sophisticated and multilayered (1993), while Hollindale (1997) argues for a ‘childist criticism’ of children’s books that values young readers’ opinions and preferences and also reflects on the context in which the act of reading takes place. Unfortunately, current classroom practice in literature and reading in western countries is not equally stimulating and well-conceived. This is because in the opening decade of the twenty-first century the provision of literature and reading pedagogy, with some notable exceptions, is dominated by conservative and mechanistic policy initiatives by successive governments of both right and left persuasions, focusing on initial reading skills rather than equipping children to be enthusiastic, discriminating readers of literature for life. In simple terms, this utilitarian direction in the teaching of English has meant that money that used to be spent on children’s books is now often earmarked for textbooks and practical aids to phonics, grammar and the like, a fact only 22

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too plain to children’s publishers, who have noticed a marked decline in sales of fiction, poetry and picture books.

Theorising children’s literature Children’s literature is not only very difficult to define but remains a site of argument among scholars in the field. In the 1950s and 1960s in England, the emphasis was on defining literature for children, attempting to move away from the dominance of Blyton and acknowledging such writers as Garner, Mayne, Pearce and later Mark, whose literary qualities could be demonstrated according to the critical literary criteria used to analyse adult fiction. The term ‘children’s literature’ was then applied retrospectively to earlier writers whose merit might equally be shown by literary criticism – Carroll, Nesbit and Hodgson Burnett, for example (Watson, 2000). While this move gave welcome status to children’s writers and contributed to the current rich field of study of what children read, it is incomplete. First, it is clear that many of the texts that children choose and enjoy come from popular fiction. Second, with developments in technology, many of the texts that give children pleasure are not found in books but in visual media, particularly films and DVDs. Similar debates are now held about the quality of screen-based and visual texts as those that argued for ‘quality’ texts for children in the mid-twentieth century (Buckingham, 2003). Equally problematic has been the matter of defining ‘children’. Drawing on Ariès’s (1973) position that childhood is a social construct, Jack Zipes claims that ‘there is no such thing as children’s literature’ (2001: 40). He argues that adults may think that they know what it is, but children often think differently. He focuses particularly on the institutions of authorship, production and marketing dominated by adults and which surround the field of texts for children. Not only is there a need to consider the young reader; children’s literature often assumes that children will be central characters in texts that young readers enjoy. These representations are themselves constructs, ranging from depictions of children as innocent and vulnerable, to those which see children as feral, or in distinct contrast, as a force for good (Mills and Mills, 2000; Thacker and Webb, 2002). One of the most coherent approaches of critical theory about children’s literature was Hollindale’s concept of ‘childness’ (Hollindale, 1997) which proposed a convincing relationship between childhood, adulthood and narrative. Nodelman sees different theoretical approaches to children’s literature as presenting a ‘dynamic and interactive pluralism’ (Nodelman, 2005: 1); nevertheless, the area remains contested, often awash with assumptions about both literature and childhood. The field of critical writing about children’s literature and its theorisation (often linked to cultural studies and reader response theory) has been well served by academia (for example Tucker, 1981; Rose, 1984; Hunt, 1990, 2004; Stephens and Watson, 1994; Rudd, 2000; Zipes, 2001). The same is true for histories of the subject (Townsend, 1987; Hunt, 1994, 1995; 3, 1994; Hilton et al., 1997; Watson, 2001; Grenby, 2008) and studies of particular authors1 (for example Tucker and Reynolds, 1997). Then there are many books that provide research, advice and inspiration for teachers and scholars working on texts for children. These include a series of edited volumes by Styles et al. (1992,

1 See titles in Continuum’s Contemporary Classics of Children’s Literature series.

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1994, 1996), Anderson and Styles (2000); Bearne and Watson (2000); Gamble and Yates (2002); Reynolds (2005). In addition, many important publications based on classroombased research aimed at teachers have come out of the Centre for Language in Primary Education and its journal, Language Matters (Barrs, 2003). There is also a plethora of guides to the primary texts themselves and their authors, sometimes aimed at parents as well as teachers and scholars, ranging from Goodwin (2008) for ‘education professionals’, Judith Graham’s advice on selecting and analysing texts for the classroom (1997, 2004); Nicholas Tucker’s Rough Guides to children’s books (2002); and James Carter’s Talking Books (1999). Aidan Chambers, a gifted writer himself, gives excellent advice to teachers in Booktalk (1985) and The Reading Environment (2001) on using literature with children. Nancy Chambers, through the influential Thimble Press, has consistently provided well-informed books about texts and readers (and produced 100 issues of the highly regarded journal of children’s literature, Signal ). Other international journals which are aimed at academics and, to a lesser extent, teachers, include Children’s Literature in Education (UK and North America); New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship (UK); The Lion and the Unicorn (USA); Children’s Literature (USA); Papers (Australia); Canadian Children’s Literature/Litérature canadienne pour la jeunesse. Literacy (journal of United Kingdom Literacy Association) and English in Education (journal of National Association of Teachers of English) often include articles on children’s books and reading.

Critical writing about some popular genres of children’s literature There is no large body of empirical research on children’s responses to literature, although in recent years scholars have become more interested in how young readers interact with picture books. Margaret Meek’s (1988) seminal study showed how challenging picture books taught children some of the complex rules that govern reading narrative, while in the same year Nodelman produced the first serious study of how picture books achieve their effects. This was followed by a variety of publications offering a critical appreciation of the genre, including Jane Doonan’s aesthetic approach (1993); Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996) semiotic theorisation of multimodality and the grammar of visual design; and Nikolajeva and Scott’s framework for analysing the interrelationship between word and image in picure books (2001). This emphasis on the complexity of texts for children has itself marked a shift in critical approaches to children’s literature. Attention to the texts could only provide a partial picture, however. The responses of individual readers to these more challenging texts became a focus for research. Accounts of individual readers that added important knowledge of how children respond to visual texts include Lewis (1992, 2001) and Watson (1996). Arizpe and Styles’s (2003) reading pictures research project provided more extensive evidence of children aged four to 11 responding to picture books, as did Pantaleo (2004, 2008). (See also Arizpe and Styles in Flood et al. (2008) for a critical review of international research evidence on multimodality and young readers.) Although more concerned with young adult readers, Mackey’s (2003) focus on performative aspects of reading brought new understandings to bear, which was also a theme taken up by Bearne, particularly in respect of new technologies and screen-based visual reading (2003a, 2003b). Visual literacy is an increasingly popular subject for higher degree work (see Arizpe et al., 2008; 24

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Noble and Styles, 2009). Critical approaches to children’s literature have responded to changing times and changing texts. While critical approaches have embraced new kinds of texts, traditional tales, myths, legends and fairy tales continue to be central threads in literature for children, in spite of the fact that they were not originally composed for children. These texts arose as part of the community’s way of entertaining but instructing at the same time, and this is perhaps why they remain popular as stories for the young. Once such stories were available in written form, whether in popular chapbooks or in collected versions by the Grimm brothers, for example, they became associated with narratives for children (Avery, 1975; Lurie, 1980, 1991; Applebee, 1985). Fairy tales, in particular, have been interpreted according to a range of theoretical perspectives: psychoanalytic theory (Bettelheim, 1976); formalist and structural theory (Propp, 1968); literary scholarship (Lüthi, 1970; Bottigheimer, 1986); feminism (Tatar, 1987; Warner, 1995); and cultural studies (Zipes, 1979, 1999). Often, traditional tales are seen as carrying moral messages, but since there are so many cultural variants of traditional tales, the morality is at best ambiguous. The enduring appeal of traditional tales and their undoubted popularity with young readers means that new versions are constantly appearing in different forms (Warner, 1995; Zipes, 2001), notably in film. Transformations from one medium to another are not restricted to traditional tales. Previous resistance to what have been termed ‘adaptations’ (Cartmell and Whelehan, 1999) has largely disappeared as the screen has made a range of texts, including Shakespeare, more available even to very young children; successful picture books such as Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman have become favourite television viewing. The Disney Corporation has, sometimes controversially, created animated versions of fairy tales and other traditional tales (Barrier, 1999; Wells, 2002; Whitley, 2008); many stories have been retold in captivating and complex graphic novels, with Marcia Williams among the foremost in the UK. Transformations can allow young people access to stories which might otherwise be difficult to read, particularly in the original. The gritty Anglo-Saxon heroic story Beowulf has been brought to children through the illustrated version by Charles Keeping (Crossley Holland and Keeping, 1982) as well as the DVD directed by Robert Zemeckis (2008). However, transformations are not always into visual forms; audio CDROMs have opened up possibilities for children to enjoy stories, including Dickens’s, which they may find difficult to read. Transformations from book to film and DVD, television, picture book, graphic novel or CDROM should not be seen as replacing the original, but offering a different kind of text, which can be appreciated in its own medium without detracting from a written version. Recently, we have seen the advent of so-called crossover books, fictional texts whose boundaries between adult and child readers are blurred. The Harry Potter series, Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy and Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time are typical examples. (Indeed, publishers were quick to provide more grown-up covers for adult readers.) Of course, this phenomenon is nothing new – in their day, Carroll’s Alice, Potter’s ‘Peter Rabbit’ books, Stevenson’s Treasure Island and a myriad of other texts have been enjoyed by old and young audiences alike.

Gaps and silences Children’s poetry has received very little scholarly attention in the UK and, as far as we can gather, this neglect is universal. Morag Styles produced From the Garden to 25

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the Street: Three hundred years of poetry for children in 1998, but this is the exception to the rule. However, poetry for children, the oral tradition and the work of particular poets are included in major guides (see, for example, Watson, 2001; Hunt, 2004) and in general books on children’s literature such as Demers and Moyles (1982) and Goldthwaite (1996). Other authors give advice to teachers on ways of using poetry in the classroom (for example Brownjohn, 1994), while poets themselves offer young readers insights into their craft and inspiration in a variety of texts (see Cook and Styles, 1988; Lawson, 2008). There have been two well-informed Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (HMI) reports on poetry teaching in recent years, but the latest suggests that it is less well taught than other aspects of English; indeed, that ‘poetry was underdeveloped in many of the schools surveyed’ (HMI, 2007: 3). However, more positively, ‘pupils enjoyed poetry where teachers used active approaches […] and the best [of pupils’ own poetry] demonstrate[d] a level of sophistication and self expression that is a direct result of effective and engaging teaching’ (ibid.). The relative neglect of children’s poetry is regrettable for many reasons, including the fact that young children are responsive to musical language. There are also very fine poets who write for the young. Unfortunately, anxieties about the technicalities of poetry appear to affect teachers from generation to generation, despite some initiatives by arts organisations to dispel this myth (for further information consult, for example Poetry Society, Poetry Book Society, Book Trust UK). A recent research study carried out with over a thousand British teachers (Cremin et al., 2008b) found that very few could name six children’s poets and that there was a tendency to focus on the more humorous or ‘light hearted’ (for example Rosen or Milligan) or a small number whose poetry might be seen as ‘classic’ (for example Causley, Lear, Stephenson or Milne). Very few women poets or black poets received any mention. OfSTED, the inspection body in the UK, similarly found that poetry teaching is a weaker element of provision in classrooms, even where other aspects of teaching are strong (OfSTED, 2007). Part of the reason may lie in the apparent unwillingness of publishers to promote collections and anthologies in an era of the necessity for best sellers and bottom-line commercial success (Holifield, 2008). Another area of concern for some time has been the so-called underachievement of boys in literacy and in the past twenty years or so boys’ reading has come under scrutiny. Some research has suggested that boys read less than girls, that males read more non-fiction and that girls achieve more highly than boys in national tests of reading (Barrs and Pidgeon, 1993; Hall and Coles, 1999). More recently, however, research into boys’ reading (Moss 2000; Moss and McDonald, 2004; Smith, 2004; Warrington and Younger, 2006) suggests the need to acknowledge that some boys do not present problems in their approaches to literacy and that sometimes boys’ reading preferences and achievements may not be visible to teachers (Moss, 2007). Perhaps a more well-founded concern is the lack of international literature available in English for young readers. An initiative to offset this in the UK has been Reading Differences, a collaboration between the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (http://www.qca.org.) and the Centre for Literacy in Education. The annual Marsh Award for the best translated children’s book in the UK has gained in interest and status in recent years. Visual texts offer access to international literature, and the quality and range of European picture books are being increasingly recognised; Cotton (2000), 26

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for example offers a comprehensive survey of European children’s picture books. Film/DVD is perhaps a more likely means of promoting international narratives and the work of Studio Ghibli, particularly the director Miyazaki, has brought enthralling and enchanting stories, such as ‘Princess Mononoke’ and ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ to cinemas and home screens. Adults in positions of responsibility, of course, have always been exercised about children’s reading; it is the instinct of the old to control and, at worst, censor what the young may read and how they may read it. In the classroom, the range of texts to which children are exposed, let alone given opportunities to engage deeply, tends to be limited. There is also a gap between the range of literature provided at school and the texts children are familiar with and of which they become critical readers outside the classroom. Surveys such as Cremin et al. (2008a, 2008b) reveal tensions between the personal habits and pleasures of the adult teacher readers, and their knowledge and classroom practice with regard to children’s literature. Even when teachers enjoy reading themselves, they do not seem to carry this through to their classroom practice. This may well be constrained by the persistent pressure of accountability, targets and tests in school, which can restrict teachers and pupils’ engagement and response.

Putting literature at the heart of the English curriculum The role of literature is to stimulate the imagination and its affective properties; it is essential for children’s emotional as well as intellectual development (Spufford, 2002; Pennac, 2006). The best literature honours children and believes that they deserve to be challenged as well as amused, as the extensive body of critical work by Meek (1988), Hunt (2001), Tucker et al. (1981) underlines. How literature achieves its effects can never be neatly calculated; it involves teachers in an act of faith – in the literature itself and in the agency of young learners with ‘an instinct to create’ (Woolf, 1984: 1). Victor Watson sums it up neatly when he says that ‘we bring the whole of ourselves to our reading and the way we read reflects everything that is important about our reading culture’ (Watson, 2009). Recent work about identities and reading suggests that adults’ mediation of texts for children has a profound effect on ‘how [children] see themselves and who they want to be’ (McCarthey and Moje, 2002: 237; see also Silin, 2003). This has implications for classroom practice and pedagogy and for the education of teachers, both in-service and preservice. Since many books which adults treasure were introduced to them by their teachers, it will be important to extend the scope and range of teachers’ knowledge of children’s literature (Cremin et al., 2008a). In addition, teachers’ knowledge of children’s poetry, picture books, fiction and global literature needs considerable development if they are to teach for the ‘maximum entitlement’ and develop readers for life (Martin, 2003: 14).

Conclusion Research projects focusing on children’s tastes, preferences, reading habits and attitudes (Sarland, 1991; Buckingham, 1993, 2003; Hall and Coles, 1999; Mackey, 2002; Mullis et al., 27

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2003; Twist et al., 2007; Sainsbury and Schagen, 2004; Clark and Foster, 2005; OfSTED, 2007) provide useful evidence on what the young actually do choose to read, dispelling a few myths in the process. However, little research has been carried out on the importance of families in promoting and supporting reading. Studies of screen-based reading in the home (Marsh et al., 2005; Bearne et al., 2007) indicate that there is a wealth of home-based on- and off-screen reading experience that may lie hidden from the view of teachers. Since so many of the texts which children enjoy are first encountered in the home, this must be seen as a significant area for future investigation.

References Anderson, H. and Styles, M. (Eds) (2000). Teaching Through Texts. London: Routledge. Applebee, A. (1985). The Child’s Concept of Story. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ariès, P. (1973). Centuries of Childhood. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Arizpe, E. and Styles, M. (2003). Children Reading Pictures: Interpreting visual texts. London: Routledge. Arizpe, E. and Styles, M. (2008). A Critical Review of International Research Evidence on Multimodality and Young Readers. In J. Flood, S. Brice Heath and D. Lapp (Eds) Research on Teaching Literacy through the Communicative and Visual Arts Vol. 11. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and International Reading Association. Arizpe, E. and Styles, M. with Cowan, C., Mallouri, L. and Wolpert, M.A. (2008). The Voices behind the Pictures. In L. Sipe and S. Pantaleo (Eds) Postmodern Picturebooks: Play, parody, and self-referentiality. New York: Routledge. Avery, G. (1975). Childhood’s Pattern: A study of the heroes and heroines of children’s fiction. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Barrier, M. (1999). Hollywood Cartoons: American animation in its golden Age. New York: Oxford University Press. Barrs, M. (Ed.) (2003). The Best of Language Matters. London: Centre for Language in Primary Education. Barrs, M. and Pidgeon, S. (1993). Reading the Difference: Gender and reading in the primary school. London: Centre for Language in Primary Education. Bearne, E. (2003a). Ways of Knowing: Ways of Showing: Towards an integrated theory of text. In M. Styles and E. Bearne (Eds) Art, Narrative and Childhood. Stoke on Trent, Trentham. Bearne, E. (2003b). Playing with Possibilities: Children’s multidimensional texts. In E. Bearne, H. Dombey and T. Grainger (Eds) Interactions in Language, Literacy and the Classroom. London: Routledge. Bearne, E. and Watson, V. (Eds) (2000). Where Texts and Children Meet. London: Routledge. Bearne, E., Clark, C., Johnson, A., Manford, P., Mottram, M. and Wolstencroft, H. (2007). Reading on Screen. Leicester: United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA). Bettelheim, B. (1976). The Uses of Enchantment. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Bottigheimer, R. (1986). Grimms’ Bad Girls and Bold Boys: The moral and social vision of the tales. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Brownjohn, S. (1994). What Rhymes with Secret? London: Hodder & Stoughton. Buckingham, D. (1993). Reading Audiences: Young people and the media. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Buckingham, D. (2003). Media Education: Literacy, learning and contemporary culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. Carter, J. (1999). Talking Books. London: Routledge. Cartmell, D. and Whelehan, I. (Eds) (1999). Adaptations from Text to Screen, Screen to Text. London: Routledge.

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Chambers, A. (1985). Booktalk: Occasional writing on literature and children. London: Bodley Head. Chambers, A. (2001). The Reading Environment. Stroud: Thimble Press. Clark, C. and Foster, A. (2005). Children’s and Young People’s Reading Habits and Preferences: The who, what, why, where and when. London: National Literacy Trust. Cook, H. and Styles, M. (1988). There’s a Poet behind You! London: A&C Black. Cotton, P. (2000). Picture Books sans Frontières. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books. Cremin, T., Bearne, E., Mottram, M. and Goodwin, P. (2008a). Primary Teachers as Readers. English in Education 42(1): 9–23. Cremin, T., Mottram, M., Collins, F. and Powell, S. (2008b). Building Communities of Readers. Leicester: United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA). Crossley Holland, K. and Keeping, C. (1982) Beowulf. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Demers, P. and Moyles, G. (1982). From Instruction to Delight: An introduction to children’s literature to 1850. Toronto, ON: Oxford University Press. Doonan, J. (1993). Looking at Pictures in Picture Books. Stroud: Thimble Press. Gamble, N. and Yates, S. (2002). Exploring Children’s Literature: Teaching the language and reading of fiction. London: Paul Chapman Publishing. Goldthwaite, J. (1996). The Natural History of Make-believe: A guide to the principal works of Britain, Europe and America Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goodwin, P. (2008). Understanding Children’s Books: A guide for education professionals. London: Sage. Graham, J. (1997). Cracking Good Books. Sheffield: NATE. Graham, J. (2004). Cracking Good Picture Books. Sheffield: NATE. Grenby, M. (2008). Children’s Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hall, C. and Coles, M. (1999). Children’s Reading Choices. London: Routledge. Hardy, B. (1974). Narrative as a Primary Act of Mind. In M. Meek, A. Warlow and G. Barton (Eds) The Cool Web: The pattern of children’s reading. London: Bodley Head. Heath, S.B. (2009). The Deeper Game: Intuition, imagination and embodiment. In M. Styles and E. Arizpe Acts of Reading: Teachers, texts and childhood. Stoke on Trent: Trentham. Heath, S.B. and Wolf, S. (2004). Visual Learning in the Community School. London: Arts Council/ Creative Partnerships. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (HMI) (2007). Poetry in Schools: A Survey 2006–2007. London: HMSO. Hilton, M., Styles, M. and Watson, V. (Eds) (1997). Opening the Nursery Door: Reading, writing and childhood 1600–1900. London: Routledge. Holifield, C. (2008). Where have all the children’s poetry books gone? English 4-11 autumn 2008: (forthcoming). Hollindale, P. (1997). Signs of Childness in Children’s Books. Stroud: Thimble Press. Hunt, P. (1990). Children’s Literature: The development of criticism. London: Routledge. Hunt, P. (1994). An Introduction to Children’s Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hunt, P. (Ed.) (1995). Children’s Literature: An illustrated history. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hunt, P. (2001). Alternative Worlds in Fantasy Fiction. London: Continuum. Hunt, P. (2004). International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature. London: Routledge. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge. Lang, A. (2009). Reading in a Digital Age: Using new technologies to navigate texts together. In M. Styles and E. Arizpe Acts of Reading: Teachers, texts and childhood. Stoke on Trent: Trentham. Lawson, J. (2008). Inside Out: Children’s poets discuss their work. London: Walker Books. Lewis, D. (1992). Looking for Julius: Two children and a picture book. In K. Kimberley, M. Meek and J. Miller (Eds) New Readings. London: A&C Black.

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Lewis, D. (2001). Reading Contemporary Picturebooks. London: Routledge. Lurie, A. (1980). Clever Gretchen and Other Forgotten Folktales. London: Heinemann. Lurie, A. (1991). Not in Front of the Grown-ups: Subversive children’s literature. London: Cardinal. Lüthi, M. (1970). Once upon a Time: On the nature of fairy tales. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. McCarthey, S.J. and Moje, E.B. (2002). Identity Matters. Reading Research Quarterly 37(2): 228–38. Mackey, M. (2002). Literacies across Media: Playing the text. London: Routledge. Mackey, M. (2003). The Most Thinking Book: Attention, performance and the picturebook. In M. Styles and E. Bearne Art, Narrative and Childhood. Stoke on Trent, Trentham. Marsh, J., Brooks, G., Hughes, J., Richie, L., Roberts, S. and Wright, K. (2005). Digital Beginnings: Young children’s use of popular culture media and new technologies. Sheffield: University of Sheffield Literacy Research Centre. Martin, T. (2003). Minimum and Maximum Entitlements: Literature at key stage 2. Reading Literacy and Language 37(1): 14–17. Meek, M. (1988). How Texts Teach what Readers Learn. Stroud: Thimble Press. Mills, J. and Mills, R. (2000). Childhood Studies: A reader in perspectives of childhood. London: Routledge Falmer. Moss, G. (2000). Raising Attainment: Boys, reading and the national literacy hour. Reading 34(3): 101–6. Moss, G. (2007). Literacy and Gender: Researching texts, contexts and readers. London: Routledge Moss, G. and McDonald, J.W. (2004). The Borrowers: Library records as unobtrusive measures of children’s reading preferences. Journal of Research in Reading 27(4): 401–13. Mullis, I.V.S., Martin, M.O., Gonzalez, E.J. and Kennedy, A.M. (2003). PIRLS 2001 International Report: IEA’s study of reading literacy achievement in primary schools. Chestnut Hill, MA: Boston College. Nikolajeva, M. and Scott, C. (2001). How Picturebooks Work. London: Garland. Noble, K. and Styles, M. (2009). Thinking in Action: Analysing children’s multimodal responses to multimodal picturebooks. In J. Evans Reading Beyond the Page: Reading and responding to picturebooks. London: Routledge. Nodelman, P. (1988). Words about Pictures. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Nodelman, P. (2005). Editorial: What are we after? Children’s literature studies and literary theory now. Canadian Children’s Literature/Litérature canadienne pour la jeunesse 31(3): 1–19. Office for Standards in Education (OfSTED (2007) Poetry in Schools: A survey of practice 2006/7. London: OfSTED. Pantaleo, S. (2004).Young Children and Radical Change Characteristics in Picture Books. The Reading Teacher 58:178–87. Pennac, D. (2006). The Rights of the Reader (trans. S. Adams). London: Walker Books. Propp, V. (1968). The Morphology of the Folktale (2nd edn) (trans. L. Scott). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Reynolds, K. (1993). Victorian Heroines: Representations of femininity in nineteenth-century literature and art. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Reynolds, K. (Ed.) (2005). Modern Children’s Literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Rose, J. (1984). The Case of Peter Pan: The impossibility of children’s fiction. London: Macmillan. Rudd, D. (2000). Enid Blyton and the Mystery of Children’s Literature. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Sainsbury, M. and Schagen, I. (2004). Attitudes to reading at ages nine and eleven. Journal of Research in Reading 27: 373–86.

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Sarland, C. (1991). Young People Reading : Culture and response. Buckingham: Open University Press Silin, J.G. (2003). Reading, Writing and the Wrath of my Father. Reading Research Quarterly 38(2): 260–7. Sipe, L. and Pantaleo, S. (Eds) (2008). Postmodern Picturebooks: Play, parody and self-referentiality. New York: Routledge. Smith, S. (2004). The Non-fiction Reading Habits of Young Successful Boy Readers: Forming connections between masculinity and reading. Literacy 38(1): 10–16. Spufford, F. (2002). The Child that Books Built. London: Faber. Stephens, J. and Watson, K. (Eds) (1994). From Picture Book To Literary Theory. Sydney, NSW: St Clair Press. Styles, M. (1998). From the Garden to the Street: Three hundred years of poetry for children. Cassell: London. Styles, M. and Arizpe, E. (2009). Acts of Reading: Teachers, texts and childhood. Stoke on Trent: Trentham. Styles, M. and Bearne, E. (Eds) (2003). Art, Narrative and Childhood. Stoke on Trent, Trentham. Styles, M., Bearne, E. and Watson, V. (Eds) (1992). After Alice: Exploring children’s literature. London: Cassell. Styles, M., Bearne, E. and Watson, V. (1994). The Prose and the Passion: Children and their reading. London: Cassell. Styles, M., Bearne, E. and Watson, V. (Eds) (1996). Voices off: Texts, contexts and readers. London: Cassell. Tatar, M. (1987). The Hard Facts of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Thacker, D. and Webb, J. (2002). Introducing Children’s Literature: From romanticism to postmodernism. London: Routledge. Townsend, J.R. (1987). Written for Children. London: Penguin. Tucker, N. (1981). The Child and the Book: A psychological and literary exploration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tucker, N. (2002a). The Rough Guide to Children’s Books 0–5 Years. London: Rough Guides. Tucker, N. (2002b). The Rough Guide to Children’s Books 5–11 Years. London: Rough Guides. Twist, L., Schagen, I., and Hodgson, C. ( 2007). Readers and Reading: The national report for England (PIRLS). Slough: NFER. Warner, M. (1995). From the Beast to the Blonde: On fairy tales and their tellers. London: Vintage. Warrington, M. and Younger, M. (2006). Raising Boys’ Achievement in Primary Schools: Towards an holistic approach. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Watson, V. (1993). Multi-layered Texts and Multi-layered Readers. In M. Styles and M.J. Drummond (Eds) The Politics of Reading. Cambridge: Cambridge Institute of Education and Homerton College. Watson, V. (1996). Imaginationing Granpa: Journeying into reading with John Burningham. In V. Watson and M. Styles (Eds) Talking Pictures: Pictorial texts and young readers. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Watson, V. (2000). Children’s Literature is Dead: Long live children’s reading. In E. Bearne, and V. Watson (Eds) Where Texts and Children Meet. London: Routledge. Watson, V. (Ed.) (2001). The Cambridge Guide to Children’s Books in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watson, V. (2009). Illuminating Shadows: Jane Johnson’s commonplace book. In M. Styles and E. Arizpe Acts of Reading: Teachers, texts and childhood. Stoke on Trent: Trentham. Wells, P. (2002). Animation and America. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Whitley, D. (2008). The Idea of Nature in Disney Animation. Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

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Woolf, V. (1984). The Common Reader. London: Hogarth. Zipes, J. (1979). Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical theories of folk and fairy tales. London and New York: Routledge. Zipes, J. (1999). When Dreams Came True. London and New York: Routledge. Zipes, J. (2001). Sticks and Stones: The troublesome success of children’s literature from slovenly Peter to Harry Potter. New York: Routledge.

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4 Twenty first century literature: opportunities, changes and challenges Catherine Beavis

Introduction In a recent article in the Australian Newspaper, The Age, (‘Conservative students suffer from “left bias”’, 15 August 2008), the reader’s attention was drawn to a boxed stand-out section juxtaposing significant political moments in Australia’s history over the last ten years under the conservative Howard government, and the selection of texts set for final year English in the southern state of Victoria.

Texts added after: . . . The Howard government rejected the findings of the Bringing Them Home1 report Stolen, Jane Harrison Jackson’s Track, Daryl Tonkin and Carolyn Landon Inheritance, Hannie Rayson . . . the 1999 referendum2 Freedom of the City, Brian Friel Breaker Morant . . . the Tampa incident3 A View from the Bridge, Arthur Miller The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini . . . . Australia joins the coalition of the willing and sends troops to Iraq The Quiet American, Graham Greene The Baghdad Blog, Salam Pax

1 ‘Bringing Them Home’ was the Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families. See further www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/ rsjlibrary/hreoc/stolen/ Stolen, Jackson’s Track and Inheritance all concern Aboriginal heritage and dispossession.

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Victoria’s curriculum was left-wing, the writer claimed, and he had set up a tutoring business ‘to tackle issues of ideological bias, teacher quality and the “subjective” assessment of students’ work’ (Smith, 2008). In reply, high school teacher Tony Townsend agreed with the claims of political bias – citing other left-leaning writers whose work appears on the list: Arthur Miller, Robert Bolt, J.D. Salinger, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and George Orwell. ‘A quick look at much “good” literature shows the socialist conspiracy,’ he observed; ‘The problem is that so many left-wing books seem to contain pesky left-wing ideas like tolerance and freedom. I’m starting to wonder if literature itself isn’t part of a much wider socialist conspiracy’ (Townsend, 2008). In more measured tones, Paul Martin, President of the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English, in a letter to the editor, commented on the ‘extraordinary’ nature of Lopez’s business and claims, pointing out that ‘Narrow notions of political correctness or simplistic divisions between ideological left and right do not begin to come close to the sort of study expectations’ the curriculum requires. Examiners’ reports, he noted, emphasised that ‘students should be encouraged to have confidence in their own reading and to demonstrate a personal understanding of their text rather than simply writing what they believe the examiner is looking for’ (Martin, 2008). This is such a familiar set of moves, but ones that teachers of English and literature seem condemned to encounter continually. Anxiety about set texts, what is and is not being taught, and to what purpose, are well-worn themes in media coverage in many parts of the world. They encapsulate perennial concerns around the teaching of literature in English: which texts are being taught, how and why, and what is that doing to students? There’s an implicit recognition and set of fears that attach to this version of the texts agenda that concerns the role of texts and teaching in shaping individual and community subjectivities; about relationships between texts and identity – national, cultural, social and individual – values and ethics, pedagogy, assessment and teachers’ purposes. Behind all this, more or less explicitly in evidence, stand historical expectations about what counts as ‘literature’ and the place and purpose of classic and contemporary texts in a twenty first century curriculum. Alongside the set of arguments that teachers are (mis)using literature, however understood, to promote particular outlooks and forms of subjectivity is a second set of questions familiar in the media: what has happened to the classics and why don’t teachers teach them any more? In Australia, at roughly the same time as the newspaper report cited earlier, this was most visible in the calling of an ‘Australasian Literature in Education Round Table’ by the Australia Council, which posited its extensive list of key points and recommendations about the need for Australian literature to be taught in Australian schools on the assumption that this was not happening, regardless of evidence to the contrary, including the substantial representation of Australian literature in text lists for

2 The (lost) referendum of 1999 tested national sentiment about whether Australia should become a republic. It also recommended changes to the preamble of the constitution to include greater recognition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and the contribution of immigrants. See further http://www. civicsandcitizenship.edu.au/cce/default.asp?id=9546 3 The Tampa was a Norwegian cargo ship that rescued 438 asylum seekers heading for Christmas Island, Australia, in September 2001. Rather than admit more asylum seekers to Australia, the Federal Government passed Border Protection laws that overrode previous laws and conventions and gave the government the right to turn such vessels away. See further http://action.amnesty.org.au/refugees/comments/how_tampa_ became_a_turning_point/

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senior English and literature curriculum in every state and territory. In an also familiar move, the round table recommended that ‘Professional scholars of literature and contemporary Australian writers should be involved in the designing and supervision of English curricula in schools’ (teachers alone were clearly not up to the task) and that ‘A group of distinguished writers, teachers and scholars should be convened to establish a list of Australian literary works that form part of the intellectual inheritance of all Australians’ (Australia Council, 2007). A sub-strand relates to how literature is defined, with respect to ‘quality’, genre and ethnic/cultural familiarity – the tenor of the discussion strongly implies that the ‘intellectual inheritance’ of all Australians is likely to be relatively monocultural; and all this without consultation or the involvement of the professional body most likely to know about and support the implementation of any change – the Australian Association for the Teaching of English. A third set of anxieties concerns the relationship between traditional print and oral literature and the texts, forms and culture of the digital world, and the consequences of ‘our society’s massive shift toward electronic media for entertainment and information’ (NEA, 2004: vii). There are fears that changes in reading habits and preferences mean that the practice of reading literature (literature ‘as we know it’) together with the kinds of reading (‘deep reading’) reflection and forms of subjectivity it is seen to foster, is disappearing, in the face of popular culture, electronic media and the short-term attention spans and instant gratification seen as characterising the contemporary world (Bikerts, 1994; NEA, 2004). And this in turn, it is feared, has long-term consequences for individuals and society. From outside the profession, these seem to be the burning issues for literature teaching today – texts are being used for the wrong (political) purposes, the right texts (the classics) are not being taught, or not taught extensively, and multimodal texts and contemporary digital culture are ignored or seen as actively unfitting young people as readers of serious literature, with consequences for specific ‘intellectual capability’ and social and national cultural identity. While the need to take account of such perspectives remains, the view from inside the profession includes these, but highlights other pressing concerns about the teaching of literature. Foremost among these are questions about what it means to teach literature, what ‘literature’ means, and which literature, in an increasingly online and globalised world, where there are multiple ‘cultural heritages’ and students’ textual experience out of school is likely to be visual, electronic and multimodal as much as, if not more than, based around traditional print and oral texts. How can we best work with students whose experience of texts in their out of school worlds is likely very different from that which they encounter in school? It’s not just a matter of the place of literature and ‘literary literacy’ in the curriculum, not even of which texts, and how we teach them; but also of who our students are, their experiences of text in the digitally mediated world, and how we respond to this world ourselves, in a subject centrally concerned with the ways in which texts and stories are made, why and how, and the ways in which they engage us and we them. There are two further, related sets of questions here. The first concerns the ways in which theory has changed and how we might think about the purposes and nature of literary study, given perspectives on text and reading that problematise older notions of single authorised readings and a recognisable and stable canon. What kinds of pedagogies should we adopt and what kinds of understandings might we want to foster in students in curriculum framed by largely post-structuralist views of text and reading? What is the place of literary literacy in a critical literacy curriculum? Is there still a place for 35

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literature in the curriculum today? In the light of arguments put by Kress (2002) and others that the nature and purposes of curriculum in times of uncertainty such as the present need to change, what place if any should literature, however understood, have in a curriculum ‘built for change’? If we turn from a focus on texts to a focus on ‘literary literacy’, does this mean teaching literature becomes more about the kinds of attention we bring to texts than the kinds of texts that we teach? Clustering these questions and issues suggests key questions for literature teachers might be organised under three key headings: 1 2 3

What do large-scale studies suggest about what is currently happening in schools regarding the teaching of literature? What is the nature and place of literature in a twenty-first-century curriculum? What about e-literature – multimodal and digital texts and students’ out-of-school textual experience and literacies?

1. What do large-scale studies suggest about literature teaching in schools? While there are numerous studies of literature teaching in individual classrooms units and initiatives, and case studies of young people’s engagements with texts of different kinds,4 it is difficult to pin down systematic and extensive research studies on how literature is currently taught in schools. With the exception of the UK, wide-scale data on what is actually happening in classrooms is thin on the ground. The closest most largescale surveys come to throwing light on contemporary literature teaching practice comes through two main channels: studies on young people’s reading habits and preferences, where the presence or not of literary texts amongst those they read, and their enjoyment of literary texts, provide some indication of what may be happening in schools; and test results data about the kinds of literate capabilities being developed by students and how we might extrapolate from these. The OfSTED (2007) study, Poetry in Schools, one of the few reports directly addressing the teaching of literature, drawing on 86 subject inspections in 2006–7, found ‘Provision for poetry was at least satisfactory in all the schools visited and good or very good in around two thirds’. Drilling down into what this meant about how poetry was actually taught, however, provides less detail, and relates as much to teachers’ knowledge and assessment demands as to actual approaches to teaching. Comments thus refer to the limited range of teachers’ knowledge of poems, the relative scarcity of ‘classic’ poems and poems from other cultures, and the observation that poetry teaching ‘was often planned around the need to improve skills in writing and this approach limited the variety and quality of poems studied’. Reading for pleasure might be taken as an indication that the teaching of literature is proceeding healthily in schools, but the inference, while encouraging, provides little detail about what teachers actually do. Clarke and Foster’s 2005 UK study for the National 4 See for example regular accounts of similar research in such journals as Changing English, English in Education, Research in the Teaching of English, Reading Research Quarterly, Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literacy, English Quarterly, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, English in Australia, English Teaching Practice and Critique, and others. See also Janssen and Pieper’s annotated literature review (Janssen and Pieper, 2009).

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Literacy Trust, Children’s and Young People’s Reading Habits and Preferences: The who, what, why, where and when surveyed 8,000 primary and secondary pupils and found that ‘reading for pleasure benefits children in numerous ways’. Yet the report continued, ‘research also shows that their reading enjoyment may be declining’ (Clarke and Foster, 2005: 2). In Australia, Manuel’s study of 1,200 teenagers aged 11–18 found that 65 per cent of students had read at least one book in the past month, 31 per cent had read four or more books during that time, and that almost all the girls (90 per cent) and nearly three quarters of the boys (72 per cent) had a favourite book (Edwards, 2006). The Young Australians Reading study, commissioned by the Australian Youth Literature Centre, found that 74 per cent of all 10–18-year-olds claim to like reading to some extent; 76 per cent of primary and 46 per cent of secondary students read ‘every few days’; 64 per cent would like to read more; 56 per cent of primary and 78 per cent of secondary students found required reading at school ‘boring’; girls are more likely to say they enjoy reading than boys (86 per cent vs 70 per cent); and fewer than 20 per cent of the target group consider their school or public libraries inviting or able to meet their recreational reading needs (Woolcott, 2000). Studies that locate the reading of print texts for pleasure in the context of more broadly based studies of leisure pursuits, and a view of reading not limited to print texts and ‘literature’, also find that reading for pleasure and reading novels continue to be significant in young people’s lives. The Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006 study, Children’s Participation in Cultural and Leisure Activities found that 74 per cent of children aged 5–14 had read for pleasure in the two weeks prior to the survey (ABS, 2006), and that reading for pleasure continued to rank highly among this age group’s leisure time pursuits. Rennie and Patterson (in press) found that 40 per cent of the 600 students they surveyed reported that they ‘frequently’ read novels out of school, and 30 per cent reported doing so ‘sometimes’. In Canada, Mackey (2005) cites Statistics Canada research (Canadian Reading Habits) showing that 61.3 per cent of Canadians say they read books. Broken down by age, the figures reveal that the strongest group of book readers is not seniors, as so often assumed, but people between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, of whom 71.4 per cent read books. Of this age group, 40.3 per cent read at least one book a month, again the highest number for that category, and above the national average of 36.2 per cent. The 2004 US Report, Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America (NEA, 2004a) mentioned above offers a widely trumpeted account of the reading of ‘literary’ literature in America. This survey, of 1,700 adults, found levels of literary reading had dropped significantly in comparison with figures from 1982 and 1992, so that ‘fewer than half Americans now read literature’ (NEA, 2004b). The survey categorised literature in a severely limited way, and concerned adult readers rather than those currently in school. However, it did report the steepest rate of decline (28 per cent) as occurring in the youngest age groups. At the same time, interestingly, it also reported a 30 per cent increase in the number of people doing ‘creative writing’. While multiple factors and politics are involved, such findings must reflect in part on school curriculum and testing practices. The National Council for Teaching English observes that while educators must help children become lifelong readers, who read a variety of texts representing diverse experiences and perspectives for different purposes, 37

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including personal fulfilment [r]ecent trends in education . . . have made it ‘nearly impossible’ for teachers to help inspire this appreciation in their students . . . The current era of high-stakes testing has resulted in a narrowed curriculum in many schools, leaving little time or resources for extended interaction with literature. (NCTE, 2006). Similarly, scripted curriculum and the ‘minimal use of authentic books’ of ‘No Child Left Behind’ ‘are crowding out of the curriculum the time needed for reading aloud, independent reading of enjoyable and informational texts, writing, discussion and in-depth exploration of literature’ (ibid). Such observations are borne out by the results of national and international literacy test results (e.g. PISA, 2000; PIRLS, 2006), which suggest a close correspondence between what centralised guidelines emphasise and what teachers and students actually do.

2. Literature in a twenty first century curriculum The nature and place of literature in the twenty first century curriculum has been the subject of considerable debate. Agendas to do with cultural heritage, national identity and tradition powerfully influence the framing of national curriculum, but so too do arguments about the need to prepare students for a dramatically changed, technologically sophisticated twenty-first-century world (e.g. Green, 2004; Beavis, 2008; National Curriculum Board, 2009). Within such debates, significant attention has been paid to the influence of theory on literature teaching, to what counts as literature, how to teach and theorise the aesthetic, to what literature specifically has to offer to curriculum. To start with theory, as Patterson describes it: There seem strong grounds for arguing that secondary English has undergone a significant shift over the past four decades, from a ‘study of Culture’ in the Arnoldian–Leavisite tradition to ‘cultural studies’ in the Williams–Eagleton tradition. Each tradition ‘brings into sharp relief the type of person that English teachers would like their students to become.’ (Patterson, 2008: 311) Yet, for all the heat generated by changes brought by ‘new’ theory, it is argued by many that at its heart, English ‘remains deeply committed to an unchanging pedagogy’ (Patterson, 2008: 321). Debates about what constitutes ‘literature’ and how literature might be defined are a well-worn theme in discussions such as these. As Morgan notes, the term ‘literature’ carries baggage – ‘the promise of an enduring and stable body of works in print of solid and enduring value (and values)’ (Morgan, 2007: 35), with concomitant problems of the exclusion both of texts outside the Anglo–Celtic received tradition and of newer and non-print forms. She and Misson speak rather of ‘the aesthetic’, in their definition of literature, one that encompasses ‘movies, TV shows, comics and all those other kinds of leisure texts’. They argue for the concept of ‘aesthetic texts’ and the value of the aesthetic experience that such texts offer, as core elements in English/literature curriculum, with both the aesthetic and critical literacy re-theorised to provide a productive framework for analytic and creative work within English with texts of these kinds. 38

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From a different position, Kress also speaks of aesthetics, seeing it as foundational, together with ethics, to earlier conceptions of English – ‘the former explicitly through notions of the literary canon, the latter less explicitly through notions of “taste” and of (literary) “sensibility” – the mark of the cultured, refined individual’. But, he adds crucially, ‘clearly neither can remain in this older form’ (Kress, 2002: 21). Questions of aesthetics and ethics, he argues, remain ‘foundational pedagogical issues for English: not as a question of specific – say elite – forms, as before, but as a matter of all meaning-making production whether of the banal or of the culturally and socially most valued’ (Kress, 2002: 22). He argues that ‘an approach that treats taste as socially produced and aesthetics as the effect of the politics of social evaluation over time offers a set of principles that can become an essential social and cultural resource’ (Kress, 2002: 22). As both perspectives suggests, it is useful to think in terms of a shift in focus from seeing the aesthetic as a quality embedded in the text, or solely in the text, to thinking (also) about the aesthetic in terms of experience, of socially produced and culturally situated ‘taste’, and of the kinds of attention literary and aesthetic texts require us to bring to bear. Misson and Morgan locate their focus within critical literacy curriculum and post-structuralist theory, arguing for a version of critical literacy that will have a richer sense of textuality and be able to deal with all kinds of texts . . . acknowledge that our reading of texts is something that involves us deeply in all sorts of ways, and indeed that it is a major factor in how we live our lives. (Misson and Morgan, 2006: 226) Their emphasis is on the experiential nature of textual engagement, situated within a socially critical framework, viewing the aesthetic as a ‘way of knowing [which] acknowledges the breadth, diversity, and even contradictoriness of human experience as well as the drive to make sense of it’ (Misson and Morgan, 2006: 226). They also argue for the satisfaction and importance of teaching out of such a framework: ‘it is one of the greatest pleasures and responsibilities of being an English teacher that we work, critically and creatively, with the aesthetic and its rich sense of possibility’ (Misson and Morgan, 2006: 226). Kress’s position on the aesthetic is significantly different. Emphasising the power and effect of social change, the importance of the market, and intimate links between consumption and identity, he conceptualises ‘style as the politics of choice, aesthetics as the politics of style, and ethics as the politics of value’ (Kress, 2009: 50). The focus is less on the aesthetic as experiential and a ‘way of knowing’, and more on the aesthetic as one aspect of a set of issues around choice, the market, identity and consumption. The aesthetic is one element of the work of English as ‘the subject where meaning as value is the issue . . . where community through communication is the issue . . . where issues of choice, style, aesthetics and ethics are the issue, equally in relation to all individuals and groups in society’ (Kress, 2008). The juxtaposition of these two perspectives foregrounds a central question for teachers of literature – what then is the place of literature in the curriculum today, however we define literacy, or whatever ‘aesthetic’ texts we chose to give our attention to? How do we reconcile attention to the social, the market, identity – issues of considerable concern for literacy and critical literacy curriculum – with the kinds of attention we have previously paid to texts, in particular to matters of representation, ideology and value? Sitting alongside this is an argument about the need for ‘literary literacy’ and the 39

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importance of recognising the role of such a focus, and the need for literary texts ‘literary literacy’ in the curriculum. Thus, Green (2002) makes the case for literary literacy as ‘a literacy project of our own’, alongside the work of subject-specific literacies and literacy and critical literacy curriculum. Locke and Andrews speak of ‘literature-related literacy’ – ‘a range of competencies enabling students to read, interpret and critique literary texts (however defined) and to engage in the production of such texts’ (Locke and Andrews, 2004: 127). Such perspectives enable the sort of attention we might previously have reserved only for self-evidently ‘literary’ texts to be brought to bear on other forms and instances, including multimodal, digital and performance texts of many kinds. It also stakes a claim about the need for this kind of attention, and experience, within school curriculum, with English, literacy or literature subjects the logical, and probably only, place where this might occur. A further set of explorations about the purpose of literature in the curriculum concerns the kinds of insights, thinking and dispositions that engagement with literature seems to make possible, and how literature might shape human learning (Sumara, 2002; Sumara and Davis, 2006; Sumara et al., 2008). What about classic texts? There are a cluster of assumptions and expectations about classic texts and their place in the curriculum, which make them the focus for considerable confusion and dissent. Perhaps the greatest difficulty in exploring the place of classic texts in English/literature curriculum lies in the ways in which they tend to stand in as exclusive synonyms or shorthand for the subject literature, or for literary English and the study of literary texts in school. A second problem is that, at least as classic texts are popularly conceived, they also imply the use of a single, well-established theoretical lens and its related pedagogy, and a view of (literary) curriculum as cultural heritage, whose work it is to strengthen and shore up national and cultural identity. A third, related problem is that of the ways this set of associations works to re-inscribe cultural and social exclusivity, and the marginalisation of texts not deemed to fit ‘the great tradition’. Finally, discussions about the kinds of texts that ought properly be the focus of ‘literary’ attention tend to polarise classic texts on the one hand and popular, contemporary or multimodal texts on the other. What is needed is a spectrum that includes all manner of texts, from the classic through to multimodal, visual, digital; texts representative of the diverse communities that make up contemporary populations, and pedagogies that allow for the consideration of issues of both values and aesthetics, and for creative and productive responses as well as the more narrowly analytical. The view of English as a subject with ‘deep purposes’ as ‘the subject that provides the means for understanding an inner world of imagination and desire with an outer world of culture and social demands’ (Kress, 2002: 17) calls for curriculum that looks both forward and back, and thus includes classic texts both as a way of exploring where we have come from and the ways in which these texts, and engagement with them, have helped shape individual and cultural identity, and at the same time to reflect on and prepare students for the contemporary world. As part of a spectrum of texts, classic texts have an important place both because of their significance in the culture, and because of the kinds of engagement they invite. However, this entails a different, and significantly broader view of literature, text and engagement than unproblematic notions of exposure to canonical texts and the cultivation of the literacy and taste of previous times. In particular, it suggests the strong need to contextualise such texts within a wider range that reflects both the cultural diversity of society and schools, and a mix of genres that allows also for the study of contemporary and digital texts, and forms of pedagogy that embrace an active, critical and productive response and stance. 40

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3. Into the future: digital culture, e-literature and out-of-school texts and literacies Central to attempts to reconceptualise literacy and English education for the twenty-first century are the concepts of production and ‘design’. ‘Design’ (Kress, 2000) refers both to the multiple modalities and affordances of contemporary media and forms of literacy, and to the active use people make of the semiotic resources available to them in new ways, to create new meanings, including textual constructions and representations of self . . . ‘the transformative use of available representational resources in the production of new meaning’ (Lam, 2000: 463). This has implications both for the kinds of texts that might be included in a literary curriculum, and the kinds of responses or productions we might invite students to make in relation to them. In other words, this is an invitation to a pedagogy where students are engaged in making literary/aesthetic/imaginative texts of many kinds in addition to reflection and analysis, social context response to texts made by others. It is also an invitation – or perhaps an imperative – to include not only oral, and print basedliterature – narratives, novels, poems, drama and the rest, not only ‘traditional’ media texts like films, but also a wide range of texts produced by contemporary technologies – computer games, text messages, websites and much more. It emphasises productive, generative dimensions of engagement with texts, whereby students are makers and creators as well as analysts and readers of them. The changing nature of text, the rapid evolution of new forms, and the experiences and expectations generated for students by their participation in out-of-school forms of text and literacy are often presented as problematic, even antithetical to the study of literature. Many have noted the fascination and opportunities for engagement, production and creativity that young people find in digital texts and communication, the richness and complexity of such texts as new cultural forms and the opportunities they offer for extended studies of digital texts and literacy in school (e.g. Alverman, 2002; Corio et al., 2008). The work of Luce-Kapler and others on the potentials and challenges of ‘e-literature’ (e.g. Luce-Kapler 2006, 2008) further extends the sense of possibility, while also identifying the need for a shift of mindset (Lankshear and Knobel, 2007) to one which ‘operates on non-material (e.g. cyberspatial) and post-industrial principles and logic’ (Luce-Kapler, 2008: 86). There are a number of challenges here; yet as the one place in the curriculum where close attention can be paid to the ways in which meaning is made and texts are constructed and shaped, the opportunity presented to incorporate and attend to multimodal forms into English if not as literature then as aesthetic texts is significant. The incorporation of such forms as hypertext, fan fictions, websites and computer games provides a site for exploring questions that run across aesthetic texts of many kinds, from issues of representation, construction and ideology through to the experience of engagement with the text; the ways in which meaning is formed and changed through the affordances of the medium; what response means; the nature of the relationship between text and reader, text and player; the blurring of boundaries between reading and writing, between participation and co-construction; intertextuality and the sense of the possible and imagined generated by engagement with the text. The incorporation of texts from the worlds of digital culture, alongside performance, oral and print-based texts that have had power and purchase historically, provides the opportunity for rich teaching and the close levels of attention that literary literacy entails. 41

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It provides the means to build a connectedness between the diverse and various worlds that are the provenance of contemporary and historic texts of different cultures and kinds, and the chance for students to be involved in charting and testing out some of the challenges, tensions and possibilities generated by new genres of narrative, participation and communication and to track and analyse rapidly changing forms. It provides the opportunity for curriculum to respond to students’ experience of texts in their outof-school worlds – digital culture, multiliteracies and design, to explore convergences across texts and platforms, and for students and teachers together to test out shifts and contradictions, pressures created by the juxtaposition of old and new forms, and by the incorporation of such texts into existing parameters for assessment and curriculum.

Conclusion The teaching of literature centres around particular kinds of attention to texts, and a focus on texts where meaning is richly made, whether through words alone or through multiple other forms. The kinds of attention literary study invites are significantly different from other forms of attention and analysis that are also an important part of English and literacy curriculum. In approaching the teaching of literature in the digital age, we need to hold on to what English has traditionally valued as central to the study of literature, but also to embrace cultural, modal and generic diversity. The notion of literary literacy provides an umbrella under which attention, analysis and close reflection might be brought to bear across texts of multiple kinds, while attending also to issues of the aesthetic, critical perspectives, and the consideration of broad-ranging matters to do with text and identity, text and community, rhetoric, values, ethics, and the savouring of meaning and language that lie at the heart of literature teaching of every kind.

References Alverman, D. (Ed.) (2002). Adolescents and Literacy in a Digital World. New York: Peter Lang. Australia Council (2007). Communiqué – Australian Literature in Education Roundtable. http:// www.australiacouncil.gov.au/news/news_items/communique_-_australian_literature_in_ education_roundtable accessed 26 June 2009. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (2006). Children’s Participation in Cultural and Leisure Activities, Cat. no. 4901.0. Canberra: ABS. Beavis, C. (2008). Paying Attention to Texts: Literacy, culture and curriculum. English in Australia 43(1): 23–32. Bikerts, S. (1994). The Gutenberg Elegies: The fate of reading in an electronic age. Boston, MA and London: Faber and Faber. Clarke, C. and Foster, A. (2005). Children’s and Young People’s Reading Habits and Preferences: The who, what, where and when. London: National Literacy Trust. http://www.literacytrust. org.uk/Research/Reading_Connects_survey.pdf accessed 30 August 2009. Coiro, J., Knobel, M., Lankshear, C. and Leu, D. (Eds) (2008). Handbook of Research on New Literacies. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum. Edwards, H. (2006). ‘Kids: all they do is sit around and read’, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 July. http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/kids-all-they-do-is-sit-around-and-read/2006/ 07/15/1152637917551.html accessed 26 June 2009. Green, B. (2002). A Literacy Project of our Own? English in Australia 134: 25–32.

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Green, B. (2004). Curriculum, ‘English’ and Cultural Studies: Or changing the scene of English teaching? Changing English 11(2): 291–305. Janssen, T. and Pieper, I. (2009). Empirical Studies on Verbal Interaction and Literary Understanding. An annotated list of references. L1 – Educational Studies in Language and Literature 9(1): 117–37. Kress, G. (2000). Design and Transformation: New theories of meaning. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (Eds) Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. London: Routledge, pp. 153–61. Kress, G. (2002). English for an Era of Instability: Aesthetics, ethics, creativity and ‘design’. English in Australia 134: 15–23. Kress, G. (2008). ‘The place of English in an era of instability and provisionality.’ Keynote address, Australian Government Summer School for Teachers of English, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC, January. Kress, G. (2009). ‘Recognizing learning, meaning and representation: When, where and how it happens. Developing theory for an era of multimodal communication.’ Paper presented at Conference on Language, Literacy and Learning, Sprakforskningsinstitutet, Stockholm, May, p. 50. Lam, W.S.E. (2000). L2 Literacy and the Design of the Self: A case study of a teenager writing on the internet. TESOL Quarterly 34(3): 257–482. Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2007). Sampling ‘the New’ in New Literacies. In M. Knobel and C. Lankshear (Eds) A New Literacies Sampler. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 1–24. Locke, T. and Andrews, A. (2004). ICT and Literature: A Faustian compact? In R. Andrews (Ed.) The Impact of ICT on Literacy Education. London: Routledge/Falmer. Luce-Kapler, R. (2006).Creative Fragments: The subjunctive spaces of e-literature. English Teaching: Practice and Critique (5)2: 6–16. http://education.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal/view. php?article=true&id=420&p=1 accessed 27 August 2009. Luce-Kapler, R. (2008).Thinking in Hypertext: Interrupting the mindset of schooling. Curriculum Matters 4: 85–101. Mackey, M. (2005). Canadian Young People and their Reading Worlds: Conditions of literature in contemporary Canada. Canadian Children’s Literature/Literature canadienne pour la jeunnesse 31(1): 78–98. Martin, P. (2008). ‘Left bias? We expect so much more’, The Age, 29 August, p.10. Misson, R. and Morgan, W. (2006). Critical Literacy and the Aesthetic: Transforming the English Classroom. Urbana IL: National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE). Morgan, W. (2007). The Literary Work or the Work We do with Literary Texts? English in Australia 42(2): 34–7. National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) (2006). NCTE Position Statement: Resolution on the essential roles and value of literature in the curriculum. http://www.ncte.org/positions/ statements/valueofliterature accessed 30 August 2009. National Curriculum Board (NCB) (2009). Shape of the Australian Curriculum: English. National Curriculum Board/Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority. http://www. acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/Consultation_report_-_English.pdf accessed 26 June 2009. National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) (2004a). Reading at Risk: A survey of literary reading in America (Research Division Report no.46). Washington, DC: National Endowment for the Arts. National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Newsroom (2004b). ‘Literary reading in dramatic decline’. www.nea.gov/news/news04/readingatrisk.html accessed 26 June 2009. OfSTED (2007). Poetry in Schools: A survey of practice. London, OfSTED. www.ofsted.gov.uk accessed 26 June 2009. Patterson, A. (2008). Teaching Literature in Australia: Examining and reviewing senior English. Changing English 15(3): 311–22.

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Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) (2000). Measuring Student Knowledge and Skills: The PISA 2000 Assessment of Knowledge and Skills: The PISA 2000 Assessment of Reading, Mathematical and Scientific Literacy. Paris: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). http://www.pisa.oecd.org/ accessed 26 June 2009. Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) (2006). An International Perspective on Reading Development. http://timss.bc.edu/pirls2006/index.html accessed 26 June 2009. Rennie, J. and Patterson, A. (in press). Reading Habits in a Multiliteracy World. In D. Cole and D. Pullen (Eds) Multiliteracies and Change in Contemporary Literacies. New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis. Smith, B. (2008). ‘Conservative students suffer from “left bias”’, The Age, 15 August, p. 6. Sumara, D. (2002). Why Reading Literature in School Still Matters: Imagination, interpretation, insight. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Sumara, D. and Davis, B. (2006). Correspondence, Coherence, Complexity: Theories of learning and their influences on processes of literary composition. English Teaching Practice and Critique 5(2): 34–55. http://education.waikato.ac.nz/research/files/etpc/2006v5n2art3.pdf accessed 26 June 2009. Sumara D., Luce-Kapler, R. and Iftoddy, T. (2008). Educating Consciousness through Literary Experiences. Educational Philosophy and Theory 40(1): 228–41. Townsend, T. (2008) ‘It’s not just VCE books the left controls’, The Age, 19 August, p. 11. Woolcott Research/Australian Youth Literature Centre (2000). Young Australians Reading: From keen to reluctant readers. http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/about/information/publications/ policies_reports/reading. html accessed 27 August 2009.

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5 Reading and teaching short stories, based on process studies and experimental research Tanja Janssen, Martine Braaksma and Gert Rijlaarsdam

In the last two decades, beliefs about literature education in secondary schools have changed considerably. ‘Text experiencing’ approaches have been developed and implemented, next to the already existing ‘text studying’ and literary historical methods (for The Netherlands, see Janssen, 1998). This development is certainly not uniquely Dutch, but appears to be an international trend in (the thinking about) literature teaching and learning in secondary schools (e.g. Applebee et al., 2000; Poyas, 2004). The interest in readers’ experiences and responses has been accompanied by a plea for more processoriented approaches to literature. According to this view, literature instruction should focus more on the ‘how’ of reading and interpreting literary texts, on text-reader interaction, by paying attention to the literary reading strategies students may use (e.g. anticipating, questioning, problem detecting, filling in gaps) (Andringa, 1995a). However, such process-oriented approaches are still rather uncommon in the literature classroom. Literature teachers and textbooks tend to focus almost exclusively on the end result of a reading process, not so much on the process itself. Most literature tasks and assignments are post-reading tasks; that is, students read a poem, story or novel, and only afterwards are required to respond to the text as a whole (Janssen, 1998; Witte, 2008). What happens during reading goes unnoticed. In this chapter two questions are addressed: How do student-readers actually process a literary text? And how may literature instruction become more process-oriented, aimed at developing students’ processes of literary understanding? We discuss these questions by reviewing some empirical studies carried out by ourselves and others. In the first part of the chapter we focus on the literary reading process and its constituting activities. To get insight into students’ online reading activities, we conducted a think-aloud study in which tenth grade students verbalized their thoughts while they were reading short literary stories. We compared the activities of students who were known to be high achievers in literature (‘good novices’) to those of peers who were less successful readers (‘weak novices’). In doing so, we hoped to learn more about novice readers’ literary competence, enabling us to design interventions to develop weak novices’ potential and bring them to a higher level of expertise. In the second part of the chapter we review studies aimed at improving students’ reading and interpreting of 45

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literary texts. In these studies process-oriented interventions were developed and tested, focused on one reading activity: self-questioning during the reading of complex short stories. We close the chapter with some implications for practice.

The literary reading process In psychological reading research, attempts have been made to describe the fundamental processes that are involved in the understanding of narrative texts (e.g. Van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983; Britton and Graesser, 1996). One shared assumption is that textual comprehension is a constructive process, in which readers are actively trying to make sense of what they read. Another assumption is that readers are attempting to build a ‘situation model’ of the text; that is, a coherent mental representation of the states, events, actions, and characters that are dealt with in the text (Van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983). Readers continuously match these representations to their previous experiences and to what they already know about the genre, the theme, the author, the period in which is was written, and the like. These representations are not fixed; they may alter during reading. And conversely, new information provided by the text may be integrated into and thus alter the reader’s already existing knowledge base. In order to build a mental representation of a text, readers (consciously or unconsciously) perform various mental activities. Various models of (literary) reading activities have been proposed (e.g. Andringa, 1995a; Britton and Graesser, 1996). Often a distinction is made between local and global activities or strategies. Local strategies are aimed at (re)constructing a meaningful coherence between sentences or parts of a sentence (e.g. relating pronouns to referents). Global strategies are aimed at constructing more general mental representations of the text (e.g. capturing the point or theme of a text). Second, cognitive, metacognitive and affective activities of readers have been distinguished. Cognitive activities are, for instance predicting the story content, paraphrasing, drawing inferences, making connections between text parts. Examples of metacognitive activities are monitoring one’s own comprehension, and reflecting on one’s own reading approach. Affective activities are, for instance identifying with story characters, and experiencing suspense and emotions (e.g. horror, humour, compassion). However, the distinctions between categories are not always clear; categories may overlap. Besides, most activities apply to the reading of all kinds of texts, not just literary texts. The question is which mental activities are typical for the reading of literary narratives, a question that is not easily settled. Andringa (1995a) points out two fundamental principles of literary understanding. First of all, literary texts are characterized by ‘indefiniteness’, openness and ambiguity. Because literary texts often raise questions about meanings (e.g. by open endings, allusions, conflicting perspectives), readers are invited to deal with gaps, search for connections, and to develop their own interpretations. Second, the experience of emotions and aesthetic beauty plays an important role in literature reading. Readers are invited to sympathize (or not) with the characters in a literary narrative, to undergo emotions of suspense, to form aesthetic and moral judgments, and so on. A body of empirical research has provided evidence of differences in literary processing between expert and novice readers of literature (e.g. Andringa, 1990, 1995b; Earthman, 1992; Peskin, 1998). This research shows that beginner readers of literature, 46

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or ‘novices’, tend to display a limited repertoire of activities compared to ‘expert readers’ who produce more extensive and complex responses. Such ‘novice-expert studies’ have rendered important insights into divergent levels of literary competence. It should be noted, however, that the literature curriculum in secondary schools is properly speaking not aimed at students becoming experts of literature. Most students will not attain the expert level; the gap is too large. Therefore, we decided to focus our studies on ‘good novices’, rather than taking adult ‘expert readers’ as our frame of reference. We compared the reading activities of tenth grade students who were known to be high achievers in literature (‘good novices’) to those of peers who were unsuccessful in the literature classroom (‘weak novices’). In this way, we hoped to discover more about ‘the zone of proximal development’ of weak novices.

Constituting activities: The online reading process From our studies of reading and interpreting processes of tenth grade students (good and weak readers, each reading five short stories under think-aloud conditions), we found a set of categories of activities covering almost all students’ online thinking processes (Table 5.1). We distinguished two main categories: Process and Content, and we coded each student statement in the think-aloud protocols on both levels. For each subcategory, examples of student statements are presented. These statements were made in response to ‘The Three Friends’, a story by Jeanette Winterson.

Two students reading and interpreting a short story To illustrate students’ use of reading activities, we will present the responses of two 16-year-old students to one story. Students were asked to read the story, fragment by fragment, from a computer screen while thinking aloud. The story, ‘The Three Friends’, is a post-modern fairy tale written by the British author Jeanette Winterson (1998). The story is about three friends who are searching for ‘that which cannot be found’. On their quest they first find gold, then they find women, and finally they find ‘that which cannot be found’. Or rather, it finds them. Although the story is clear enough on a surface level, it baffled and confused our student readers. Students dealt very differently with this confusion, as appeared from their think-aloud responses. Here we present the responses of Nadia and Tom, both 16 years old. Nadia was a ‘weak novice’ according to her literature teacher. In class she showed little interest in reading literature, and she performed less well than her peers in reading and responding to literary texts. Tom, on the other hand, was a ‘good novice’; an avid reader who cherished some literary aspirations himself, writing short stories in his spare time. Nadia’s think-aloud protocol: Fragment 1 (title) [no response] Fragment 2 Well, there were three friends and they found another one and . . . And then they agreed that they would live together, sail together and fight together. And, well, perhaps they like trios or something. 47

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Table 5.1 Constituting online reading and interpretation activities Reading activity

Description

Examples of student responses to ‘The Three Friends’

Reading aloud, rereading, citing. Anticipating on story events, predicting the course or ending of the story. Paraphrasing story content, almost literally repeating text fragments. Stating information not explicitly given by the text, filling in gaps, drawing conclusions. Detecting a problem to integrate information; point out a knowledge gap. Trying to solve a problem detected earlier; accepting that a problem exists. Forming bridges between different parts of the text. Relating the story to personal experiences; giving associations or personal opinions. Relating the story content to general human experiences or general facts; making intertextual links. Noticing aspects of form, structure, style or genre. Providing positive or negative evaluative comments on (parts of) the story. Verbal and nonverbal emotional responses to (parts of) the story. Monitoring one’s own reading or reflecting on own reading habits.

– ‘They will most likely find a couple of women’.

PROCESS Reading aloud Predicting

Retelling

Drawing inferences Detecting a problem Solving a detected problem Relating of text parts Relating to experiences Relating to knowledge of the world Analysing Responding evaluatively Responding emotionally Responding metacognitively Other process

CONTENT Genre Character

48

Responses that cannot be placed into any of the other process categories. Noticing the type or genre of the story. Noticing story characters, their personality, psychological state, feelings, intentions, or relations to other characters.

‘So, there were three friends and they found another one’. ‘A palace. So they must be rich’. ‘They liked no one better, so I take it they are rather singular or shy’. ‘Fight one fight with equal arms. I don’t understand what this means’. ‘What does this mean? (. . .) Oh, now I see. . ..’ [followed by a hypothesis]. ‘A third. So, these are the three friends in the title of the story’. ‘‘The Three Friends’. I have two friends myself. Together we went on a holiday’. ‘The three friends remind me of the three musketeers’. ‘‘Once upon a time. . .’. It starts just like a fairy tale’. ‘I like how this is written (. . .): There were two friends who found a third’. Laughing, sighing, moaning, ‘How sad!’ ‘Yuk!’ ‘I’ll just have to reread this part’. ‘I am pretty used to reading this kind of stories’. –

‘It starts just like a fairy tale’. ‘The three friends are very greedy’. ‘I think those boys are anti-women’.

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Table 5.1 (Continued ) Reading activity

Description

Examples of student responses to ‘The Three Friends’

Events

Noticing story events, what happens in the story.

Time/setting

Noticing the time in the story, time lapses or the setting. Noticing stylistic and/or structural features of the story. Inferring a message, moral, theme or point of the story, or inferring author’s intention.

‘So, the friends are going on a search’. ‘And they nearly fell into the pit, but that did not happen’. ‘The story takes place in the middle ages’. ‘It is well written, with all those short sentences’. ‘Here the idea of the story as a whole becomes apparent. They cannot find that which cannot be found, but they keep meeting people who have something else in abundance’.

Style/structure Theme

Other content

Responses that cannot be placed into any of the other content categories.

Fragment 3 Well, they wanted to go and look for something and they asked each other ‘what?’ That it was: gold, women and something that cannot be found. And they liked the last thing best. And, well, then they went searching for it. Fragment 4 Well, they came to a house, or something, without any floors, but it had ceilings. And there, everything was hanging on chains or something. And they nearly fell into the pit, but that did not happen. And then they saw tables hanging from the ceiling, of people who went to dine there. Fragment 5 Well, then a trumpet sounded and then many guests entered the room. And then some of them started to walk across ropes, and others started to walk on a trapdoor in the ceiling. I do not know what a ‘trapdoor’ is. [Laughs] (. . .) [Responses to fragments 6 to 10 are left out; Nadia keeps on paraphrasing and retelling story events]. Fragment 10 Well, a ship approached them. So probably they were on a ship. And someone was rowing, ‘with one oar that was not an oar’. And then the man removed his hood, and he looked at them and ‘the world tilted’. 49

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That does not happen to you everyday. [Laughs]. And then they saw mermaids. Because ‘fish and starfish in their hair’ is something of the bottom of the sea. So then they probably had found that which cannot be found. Very funny. [Laughs]. As appears from her protocol, most of Nadia’s statements fall into the category of ‘retelling’. Nadia predominantly engages in retelling story events, fragment by fragment. She reconstructs the story as a chronological sequence of events (‘and then . . . and then . . . ’). In retelling she stays very close to the original text, sometimes resorting to direct quotations. Issues concerning the story as a whole are not addressed. However, from time to time she draws inferences, be it on a local level (‘Perhaps, they like trios or something’). Moreover, she seems to be truly involved in the story and to have an eye for its absurd humour, as appears from some of her remarks and emotional responses (laughing). On the other hand, these emotional responses may also be caused by embarrassment (e.g. about not knowing the meaning of the word ‘trapdoor’ in fragment 5). Tom’s think-aloud protocol: Fragment 1 (title) [Reads aloud] ‘The Three Friends’. Fragment 2 I like how this is written, much more [than the previous story]: ‘Once upon a time there were two friends who found a third’. Yes, I guess, that [ehem] . . . So, they are rich as well. Fragment 3 Finding that which cannot be found, that is smart when you succeed. Fragment 4 ‘A house that denied floors’. The wainscotting, are these beams on the ceiling? [No, wainscotting is something against the wall . . .]. [Interrupts] Oh, I see. Yes, yes, yes. How is it possible that guests are coming and going when there is no ceiling? How is it possible that there are tables and chairs, all these things? Oh, yes. [Laughs]. [What are you laughing about?]. Well, that last part; there are extra knives and forks, that’s a bit decadent. Fragment 5 [Laughs]. A strange story. Like everything is hovering. 50

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Fragment 6 They do find gold, but I guess it is quite ‘that which cannot be found’, a house without any floors. [Laughs]. I would almost define it as ‘that which cannot be found’, but . . . They would throw those plates into the abyss anyway, so you’d better take them. Fragment 7 [Immediately]. And now, they will most likely find a couple of women. [Reads]. Indeed. [Laughs]. I’m becoming jealous. Oh, not too many, just take six, then they may carry the plates . . . [Laughs]. Fragment 8 Yes, that is quite typical. They want to be richer than the richest . . . 18 women. Fragment 9 ‘It has found you’. [Silence]. [What are you thinking of?]. I was thinking about ‘that which cannot be found’ that finds you. It was . . . Oh yes, he rows on . . . he has a boat and a sword. They would fight with equal arms or something. ‘That which cannot be found’, that is the answer. [Laughs]. Fragment 10 What does this story mean? They do find all three things they were looking for. But the last thing still is . . . Yes, if they’ll find ‘that which cannot be found’ then it is all over you might say. I guess that’s it. Because ‘that which cannot be found’ is that what meets you. I guess that, it means as you . . . I guess it was death, in this story. But I am not sure . . . Tom uses a variety of reading activities: reading aloud, drawing inferences, evaluating (‘I like how this is written’), responding emotionally, anticipating (‘And now, they will most likely find a couple of women’), forming bridges between text parts (i.e. between fragments 9 and 2), and detecting problems. Like Nadia, he appears to have a sense for the absurdity of the story. Unlike Nadia, he is grappling with the story’s overall meaning. Tom attempts to reconstruct the story on a higher level, generalizing about the significance of the story as a whole (‘What does this story mean?’). His tentativeness (‘I guess . . .’, ‘But I am not sure . . .’) suggests he perceives meaning as something debatable and liable for change. The two transcripts show that adolescent readers may differ widely from each other in the way they emotionally and cognitively respond to a literary story. Tom, the ‘good novice’, is clearly the most varied and flexible in his reading. He attempts to interpret 51

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the story as a whole, on a global level, while Nadia restricts herself to local inferences. Tom also seems to be more tolerant of the openness and ambiguity (or the ‘literariness’) of the story than his low-achieving peer.

Good and weak novices in reading literary texts From think-aloud studies of students’ literary reading processes some important observations can be drawn; 1

2

3

Good and weak novices do engage in more or less the same activities during reading, but the frequency of these activities varies (Smith, 1991; Janssen et al., 2006). In principle, both good and weak novices have access to the same constituting activities. For example, good and weak student-readers both engage in emotional and personal responding during reading, but good readers do so more often than their less-successful peers. The same goes for evaluating, metacognitive responding, problem detecting and questioning. Conversely, the weak reader, more often than the good one, resorts to retelling the story content and to making inferences. Good and weak novices differ in the way they distribute their activities over the reading process as a whole ( Janssen et al., 2005). For instance good novices tend to vary the amount of retellings and emotional responses over the course of reading a story. They provide such responses predominantly when they are reading the middle part of stories, the part where ‘the true action’ takes place. Weak readers, on the other hand, do not change their pattern of retelling or their emotional response during reading; the particular story fragment does not influence the use of particular reading activities. Thus, although weak and good adolescent readers use the same activities, they may differ in their orchestration of activities over the reading process. Good novices show flexibility across reading tasks; that is, they tend to adapt their reading activities to the particular story they are reading. For example good readers are more likely to engage in retelling story content in response to one story than in response to the next story. In other words, good readers appear to be context-sensitive in their use of the retelling strategy. Weak readers, on the other hand, do not much change their retelling activity in response to different stories. The particular story had no influence on their use of retelling. This goes not only for retelling, but similar results were found for other reading activities as well, such as making inferences, problem detecting and associating (Janssen et al., 2005).

Thus, although poor and good adolescent readers engage in the same activities during reading, they differ in their distribution of activities on two levels; both within and across stories. In their attempt to make sense of a literary text, good adolescent readers of literature show a more flexible approach than poor readers. This might not only hold for the reading of literature but also for the reading of expository texts. It has been shown that especially good readers profit from and adapt to specific textual characteristics (Land, 2009). Our study has yielded new information about differences in students’ literary processing. Two factors came into vision which hitherto have been neglected in think-aloud research: the factor ‘moment’ in the reading process; and the factor ‘text’ or the necessity of using multiple literary texts instead of just one or two, as was done in previous studies. 52

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These findings are in accordance with the cognitive flexibility theory of Schunn and Reder (1998), which assumes that individuals may use the same cognitive processes, but differ in how well they adapt their processes to a given situation. We observed that different groups of adolescent readers used more or less the same processes, but in different configurations. One of the differences between good and weak readers that came to light in our think-aloud studies is that good readers more often engage in problem detecting and questioning during reading complex stories than their weaker peers (Janssen et al., 2006). Since a questioning stance seems particularly appropriate for the reading and interpreting of open, ambiguous literary texts, we decided to focus our intervention studies on the strategy ‘self-questioning’ during literature reading.

Research on the effects of self-questioning in reading: a brief overview There is a vast body of research on questioning as a reading strategy ( Janssen, 2002). Here, we will focus on experimental training studies. Descriptive studies of classroom discourse, analyzing the kinds and patterning of teachers and students’ questioning, will be left out of consideration. The first training studies on student-generated questions date from the 1960s. Since then, much research has been done on the benefits of stimulating students to generate questions during and after reading difficult texts. Over 95 training studies on self-questioning during reading were published between 1965 and 2000 (see reviews of Janssen, 2002; Rosenshine et al., 1996; Wong, 1985). The effects of self-questioning have been most widely studied for the reading of expository texts. In these studies, self-questioning is presented as a study strategy, to be used by students individually when reading texts about specific content matter (e.g. biology or history). Reviewers of this research converge in their conclusion that students’ text comprehension and learning performance are improved by training in selfquestioning skills, and that self-questioning training can be more effective than responding to teacher-made questions (Wong, 1985; Rosenshine et al., 1996). Effects of self-questioning approaches have been studied far less often for literature reading. An influential study is that of Singer and Donlan (1982), who trained students in generating and answering general questions based on story-grammar categories (e.g. setting, main character, character’s goal, theme). Singer and Donlan’s main focus was on teaching story grammar; no attention was paid to more spontaneous, readerbased questions. During the 1990s, reader response approaches entered the literature classroom. In these approaches the importance of developing an open, questioning frame of mind in response to literature was well recognized (e.g. Rosenblatt, 1938 [1995]). However, instead of teaching students to ask particular (meta)cognitive questions (as Singer and Donlan did), the emphasis was on students’ personal responses to literature and on eliciting genuine, reader-based questions; students should be invited to ask questions about anything that captured their interest or puzzled them during their reading of a literary text. Special importance was placed on fostering a sense of ‘personal relevance’ and ‘ownership’ in response to literature. A few case studies were published on reader-based questions in the literature classroom (Kooy, 1992; Commeyras and Sumner, 1998). In these studies, students were stimulated to express their uncertainties, wonderings, and hunches about stories, in the 53

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form of questions. According to the teachers and researchers, students were motivated to ask meaningful questions, and to think more deeply about stories. Both students and teachers responded positively toward the literature approach. Thus, these case studies provide indications for the motivating effect of self-questioning in the literature classroom. However, assumptions about the effects of ‘authentic’, student-generated questions on literary response have not been tested experimentally as yet. It therefore remains uncertain whether a literature approach based on authentic student questions is more effective than a regular approach to literature reading, in which teacher-prepared questions dominate. Also, it is unclear what type of guidance or stimulus students need – in particular the weak readers among them – in order to be able to generate meaningful questions in response to literary texts and to develop a ‘questioning frame of mind’. We decided to carry out experimental research, aimed at these questions. We carried out two intervention studies with tenth grade students from different schools in The Netherlands and Belgium. In both studies we used an experimental pre-test–post-test design. In the first study we compared self-questioning instruction to instructor-made questions about short stories. In the experimental condition students read short stories and were stimulated to generate questions during and after reading a story. In the comparison condition students read and discussed the same stories, but they were not stimulated to generate questions themselves. Instead, questions were provided for them. These questions were derived from student questions in a pilot study. In the second experiment two forms of self-questioning instruction were compared; an unguided and a guided form. In the unguided condition students were stimulated to generate questions, without receiving any hints concerning question types. In the guided condition students were also stimulated to generate and discuss their own questions, but – in addition – received good and weak examples of student questions and responses to stories. The question examples were discussed ( Janssen et al., 2008).

Story appreciation We found that ‘authentic’ student-generated questions in response to complex literary stories have a positive impact on students’ appreciation of such stories (Janssen et al., 2009). Self-generated questions were more beneficial in this respect than instructorprepared questions about stories (a medium sized effect; ES 0.68). In addition, an open, unguided approach to questioning was more successful in increasing students’ story appreciation than an approach in which students received question-examples (a small effect; ES 0.43). These findings suggest that ‘personal ownership’, or generating questions yourself, is an important motivating factor. This finding corresponds with reader response theories, and with case studies of student questioning in the literature classroom (Kooy, 1992; Commeyras and Sumner, 1998).

Quality of interpretation In our second study we also found an effect of self-questioning instruction on the quality of students’ story interpretations. Students who had received self-questioning instruction without any guidance outperformed students who reflected on examples of student 54

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questions and responses, not only in story appreciation but also in ‘depth’ or quality of story interpretations. The effect size was small (ES 0.42).

Reading and interpreting process A crucial question is whether students did indeed learn to use a self-questioning strategy in response to short stories. To answer this question, we collected think-aloud responses to stories at pre- and post-test, in Experiment 1. The responses were analysed for the reading activities the students used during reading (Janssen et al., 2006). Results showed that students more often engaged in questioning during reading at post-test than at pretest. In the condition with self-generated authentic student questions, almost all students (94 per cent) guided their reading with questions more often during the post-test than the pre-test. In the control condition about half of the students (46 per cent) showed an increase. In Experiment 2, students wrote down in the margins their initial responses to stories. From these written responses, it turned out that students asked more questions at post-test than at pre-test. About 58 per cent of the students (in both conditions) increased the number of their questions in their initial response to stories. These findings indicate that most students indeed learned to use the self-questioning strategy in response to short stories. In future studies, not just the frequency but also the content and quality of student questions during reading should be analysed. From an explorative analysis of students’ think-aloud responses at pre-test and post-test, it appeared that some students engaged in search activities and hypothesizing after posing a question about a story, while others did not. They just posed questions without attempting to come to a solution or venturing hypotheses. Possibly, this ‘search behaviour’ during reading may be related to the quality of reading outcomes.

Implications for practice To bring students to a higher level of expertise in literature reading, it is clearly not enough to encourage them to express their personal responses to a literary text. Nor is it advisable to offer a fixed set of reading strategies to be applied to all stories. Above all, students (especially the weaker readers) must learn to differentiate their responses, and to use strategies selectively, depending on the reading phase and the particular literary text at hand. Effective methods for reading strategy development already exist for young children and delayed readers (e.g. Pressley, 2000; Mason, 2004). Few methods have been developed for enhancing the literary reading strategies of students in the final grades of secondary education. Such methods must take the openness and aesthetic qualities of literary texts into account, while stimulating students to reflect on their reading process. One of the major concerns in literature education is students’ lack of motivation for reading and studying literature at school, especially in the higher grades of secondary education. Students – novices in the field of literature – are confronted with complex and ambiguous literary texts, written for adults, explained to them by the teacher. Students are expected to find ‘right’ answers to teacher questions and/or to search for 55

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the deeper layers of meaning that the teacher has in mind. In Dutch literature education, this approach appears to be the default.

Conclusion The results we presented here indicate that a more open approach, that encourages students to think for themselves and that values their own personal questions and hypotheses, may contribute not only to students’ appreciation but also to their understanding of complex literary texts.

References Andringa, E. (1990). Verbal data on literary understanding: A proposal for protocol analysis on two levels. Poetics 19: 231–57. Andringa, E. (1995a). Strategieën bij het lezen van literatuur [Strategies in literature reading]. Spiegel 13(3): 7–33. Andringa, E. (1995b). Ontwikkelingen in het omgaan met literaire complexiteit [Developments in dealing with literary complexity]. Tijdschrift voor Onderwijsresearch 20(3): 271–84. Applebee, A.N., Burroughs, R. and Stevens, A.S. (2000). Creating Continuity and Coherence in High School Literature Curricula. Research in the Teaching of English 34: 396–429. Britton, B.K. and Graesser, A.C. (Eds) (1996). Models of Understanding Text. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Commeyras, M. and Sumner, G. (1998). Literature Questions Children Want to Discuss: What teachers and students learned in a second-grade classroom. Elementary School Journal 99(2): 129–52. Earthman, E.A. (1992). Creating the Virtual Work: Readers’ processes in understanding literary texts. Research in the Teaching of English 26(4): 351–84. Janssen, T. (1998). Literatuuronderwijs bij benadering; een empirisch onderzoek naar de vormgeving en opbrengsten van het literatuuronderwijs Nederlands in de bovenbouw van het havo en vwo [Approaches to literature teaching; a study of the form and results of literary education in Dutch secondary schools]. Amsterdam: Thesis Publishers. Janssen, T. (2002). Instruction in Self-questioning as a Literary Reading Strategy: An exploration of empirical research. L1 Educational Studies in Language and Literature 2(2): 95–120. Janssen, T., Braaksma, M. and Couzijn, M. (2009). Self-questioning in the Literature Classroom: Effects on students’ interpretation and appreciation of short stories. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature 9(1): 91–116. Janssen, T., Braaksma, M. and Rijlaarsdam, G. (2006). Literary Reading Activities of Good and Weak Students; A think aloud study. European Journal of Psychology of Education 21(1): 35–52. Janssen, T., Braaksma, M., Rijlaarsdam, G. and Van den Bergh, H. (2005). ‘Flexibility in reading literary texts; Differences between weak and strong adolescent readers.’ Paper presented at the 11th European Conference for Learning and Instruction, Nicosia, Cyprus, 22–27 August. Kooy, M. (1992). Questioning Classroom Questioning. Journal of Learning about Learning 5(1): 14–26. Land, J.F.H. (2009). Zwakke lezers, sterke teksten? Effecten van tekst- en lezerskenmerken op het tekstbegrip en de tekstwaardering van vmbo-leerlingen [Weak readers, strong texts? Effects of textual and reader characteristics on text comprehension and text appreciation of students in vocational education]. Delft: Uitgeverij Eburon.

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Mason, L.H. (2004). Explicit Self-regulated Strategy Development versus Reciprocal Questioning: Effects on expository reading comprehension among struggling readers. Journal of Educational Psychology 96: 283–96. Peskin, J. (1998). Constructing Meaning when Reading Poetry: An expert–novice study. Cognition and Instruction 16(3): 235–63. Poyas, Y. (2004). Exploring the Horizons of the Literature Classroom; Reader response, reception theories and classroom discourse. L1 – Educational Studies in Language and Literature 4(1): 63–84. Pressley, M. (2000). What Should Comprehension Instruction be the Instruction of? In R. Barr (Ed.) Handbook of Reading Research Vol. III. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 545–61. Rosenblatt, L.M. (1938 [1995]). Literature as Exploration. New York: D. Appleton Century. Rosenshine, B., Meister, C. and Chapman, S. (1996). Teaching Students to Generate Questions: A review of intervention studies. Review of Educational Research 66(2): 181–221. Schunn, C.D. and Reder, L.M. (1998). Strategy Adaptivity and Individual Differences. In D.L. Medlin (Ed.) The Psychology of Learning and Motivation; Advances in research and theory Vol. 38. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, pp. 115–54. Singer, H. and Donlan, D. (1982). Active Comprehension: Problem-solving schema with question generation for comprehension of complex short stories. Reading Research Quarterly 17(2): 166–86. Smith, M.W. (1991). Constructing Meaning from Text: An analysis of ninth-grade reader responses. Journal of Educational Research 84(5): 263–71. Van Dijk, T.A. and Kintsch, W. (1983). Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. New York and London: Academic Press. Winterson, J. (1998). The Three Friends. In The World and Other Places. London: Vintage Books, pp. 47–52. Witte, T. (2008). Het oog van de meester. Een onderzoek naar de literaire ontwikkeling van havo- en vwo-leerlingen in de tweede fase van het voortgezet onderwijs [The eyes of the master. A study of the literary development of students in the highest grades of general higher and pre-university education]. Delft: Eburon. Wong, B.Y.L. (1985). Self-questioning Instructional Research: A review. Review of Educational Research 55: 227–68.

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6 Comprehension instruction: merging two historically antithetical perspectives Gerald G. Duffy, Samuel Miller, Scott Howerton and Joseph Baxter Williams

This chapter reviews past research and scholarly thought on comprehension instruction, and proposes where we must go next. We ground our thinking in Greeno et al.’s (1996) perspective: We believe educational research is undergoing a major advance . . . leading toward a psychology of cognition and learning that includes individual, social and environmental factors . . . [that] . . . will require merging and extending concepts and methods that, until recently, have developed relatively separately. (1996: 15) Similar to Greeno et al. (1996), we believe we must merge and extend relatively separate perspectives. Specifically, we merge the importance of motivating students with explicit teaching.

A review of where we’ve been Past research on reading comprehension can be described as three major movements: (1) pre-1975 understandings; (2) understandings rooted in the cognitive revolution that first became prominent in the post-1975 years; and (3) more recent research rooted in sociocultural and situative views. For a more extensive and detailed review, we recommend Pearson (2009).

Pre-1975 understandings Reference to comprehension was relatively rare in the first half of the twentieth century. It was assumed that if one decoded the words on the page, comprehension would follow. Based on behaviourist theory and known as ‘the simple model of comprehension’ (Hoffman, 2009), it prevailed initially because (1) reading emphasized oral recitation and text memorization and (2) many educators believed comprehension could not be taught. 58

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In the mid-twentieth century, however, it became more common to think of comprehension as teachable. Davis (1944), who established nine categories of comprehension skills, was particularly influential. As a result, comprehension came to be viewed as a set of skills to be taught one after another in a simple to complex sequence. Bloom’s (1956) later development of a taxonomy of thinking levels tempered the skills emphasis and encouraged question-asking as a way to improve comprehension. Guzak (1967), for instance studied the extent to which teachers asked high level questions during reading instruction; Pearson and Johnson (1978) extended Guzak’s ideas to include the intersection between teacher questions, the text and the student; and content area reading specialists such as Herber (1978) began emphasizing techniques called ‘purpose setters’, ‘anticipation guides’, or ‘study guides’ that used questions to focus readers’ attention. In sum, comprehension instruction prior to 1975 emphasized component skills and high level questions. Motivation, to the extent that it was considered at all, was thought to be primarily a matter of incentives or dispositions.

The post-1975 cognitive revolution The cognitive revolution started when psychologists began studying language and thinking in the 1950s and 1960s (Minsky, 1961; Newell and Simon, 1972), a movement supported by studies of transformational grammar (Chomsky, 1957) and of linguistics and psycholinguistics (Goodman, 1967; Smith, 1971). From an instructional standpoint, however, the revolution is usually associated with the founding of the Center for the Study of Reading (CSR) at the University of Illinois in 1975. The Center’s work was rooted in schema theory developed by scholars such as Kintsch and Van Dijk (1978) and Rumelhart (1975), and focused on applying those theories to instruction (Anderson and Pearson, 1984). As a result, instead of viewing the reader as a passive recipient of meaning, the reader was seen to be: an aggressive processor of language and information who filters the raw materials of reading (the clues left by the author on the printed page) through her vast reservoir of knowledge to continuously revise a dynamic, ever-emerging model of text meaning. (Pearson, 2009: 13) Durkin’s (1978/9) observational study of fourth grade classrooms was particularly important from an instructional standpoint. Her results showed teachers asking questions that assessed students’ comprehension without teaching students how to comprehend. As a result, reading scholars such as Hansen and Pearson (1983) and Pearson and Camparell (1981) pursued with new intensity the teacher’s role in teaching comprehension, as did Au (1979) and Raphael (Raphael and Wannacott, 1985). Collectively, they found that students were better able to comprehend when their teachers made a conscious effort to intentionally focus student attention either on the structure of the text to be read or on the knowledge domain of the text. Similarly, Anderson and Freebody (1981) and Nagy et al. (1987) studied how to develop vocabulary, while researchers such as Meyer and Rice (1984), Armbruster and Anderson (1981), Bruce (1984), and Beck et al. (1979) studied texts, giving rise to the notion of ‘considerate’ and ‘inconsiderate’ text. Others at the Center developed the concept of metacognition (Baker and Brown, 1984), which led to emphasizing conscious awareness of one’s thinking and, ultimately, 59

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to an instructional focus on strategies instead of skills (see Duffy and Roehler, 1987 and Afflerbach et al., 2008 for elaboration on this distinction). Articulated with particular clarity by Paris et al. (1983), scholars identified strategies that readers could use to build meaning as they read (see also Dole et al., 1991). Subsequently, Palincsar and Brown’s (1984) work on reciprocal teaching established that comprehension improves when teachers engage students in consciously using strategies to comprehend text; Duffy et al. (1987) found direct explanation to be effective, particularly with low achievers; Pressley et al., (1992) obtained similar results by expanding the direct explanation model to include more student involvement; and Beck et al. (1996) successfully tested a procedure in which teachers taught students to actively question the author while reading. While early strategy work emphasized lists of individual strategies, more recent research suggests that it is more effective to teach combinations or bundles of strategies (Duke and Pearson, 2002; Block and Duffy, 2008). For instance Reutzel et al. (2005) compared teaching a ‘set of strategies’ versus teaching strategies one at a time and found results favouring the teaching of combinations of strategies. In sum, the post-1975 period changed our views of both comprehension and instruction. Comprehension was now viewed as active, and the teacher’s role was captured particularly well by Pearson and Gallagher’s (1983) ‘gradual release of responsibility’ model, in which teachers move from explicit modeling to scaffolding and, ultimately, to independence.

More recent research and thought about comprehension instruction Recently, the cognitive model of comprehension has undergone modification. For instance Spiro et al. (1994) and Cartwright (2009) have focused on readers’ pursuit of deeper understanding of content material, including being able to use and apply meaning in diverse contexts; Hartman (1994) discussed how readers mobilize and assemble meaning in situation-specific environments; Rosenblatt (1978) pointed to the active transactional meaning-making role between reader and text; Kamil and Chou (2009) and Tierney (2009) emphasized the complexities rooted in technological advances such as internet sites, text messaging, YouTube and others; and Fairbanks et al. (2009) examined the contextual complexity of making comprehension instruction culturally responsive. These changes all share a growing recognition that comprehension occurs within a sociocultural context involving a task or activity. As noted by McVee et al. (2007) and by Gavelek and Bresnahan (2009), meaning is constructed in the context of embodied encounters with a social world, involving tasks or activities or action. Depending on the purpose or focus of the social activity or event in which the reading tasks are embedded, the reader generates a new meaning, or remakes the meaning, or makes what Smagorinsky (2001) describes as ‘new transformations’, often associated with conscious, practical action. As Winne and Perry (2000) suggest, comprehension is less an attribute than an event. It has social, political and cultural dimensions as well as cognitive and metacognitive dimensions. The result is a more complex and nuanced view of comprehension involving multiple meanings and interpretations. For instance Au and Kaomea (2009) illustrate the social and political dimension of reading comprehension by citing how prevailing textual messages can potentially disempower certain cultural groups. Consequently, they use Freire’s (1985) idea of ‘reading the world’ to argue that comprehension is a personally relevant matter of evaluating 60

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texts critically and providing counter-narratives. In this view, comprehension is a personally relevant matter of ‘rewriting the world’. Zhao (2008), operating from the perspective of a technology expert concerned about America’s ability to maintain a competitive edge in the world, makes a similar case, arguing for less emphasis on explicit textual meaning and more emphasis on a ‘higher’ form of comprehension. Similarly, Zimmerman (1998) argues for personal and contextual relevance when developing selfregulated learners who articulate and solve problems; Randi et al. (2005) call for comprehension as interpretation of text in different ways and for different purposes, as is done by readers in real-life contexts; and Banks and Banks (2004) recommend translating multicultural content into proactive social action. In sum, sociocultural and situative influences have caused us to think about comprehension not only in terms of text and reader interaction, but also in terms of how the social context influences the meaning to be generated. This influence is reflected in recent emphasis on discussion (Almasi, 2009), reading workshops (Keene and Zimmermann, 1997), book clubs (Raphael and McMahon, 1994), and apprenticeship models of instruction (Collins et al., 1989; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Lave, 1996). In short, context is now central to how one comprehends and to the meaning one takes away.

Where we must go with comprehension instruction: a modest proposal Our proposal is influenced by the above sociocultural movement, but focuses on merging recent scholarly thought about motivation and explicit instruction. Historically, these have been antithetical perspectives. Motivation has been perceived as studentcentered; explicit teaching has been perceived as teacher-centered. You either did one or the other, but you did not do both. We propose, however, that we can do both if we situate comprehension instruction in a longitudinal event or task that gives students compelling reasons to read the required text(s) and then, within that larger context, nest individual mini-lessons in which comprehension concepts and strategies are explicitly taught. To illustrate, consider the following fourth grade example: In preparation for teaching a science unit of food chemistry, the teacher engaged students in a discussion of the menus in the school cafeteria. When the students complained about the food, the teacher suggested that they take action by conducting an investigation about whether the menus met recommended standards and to report the results to the school principal. The students saw the task to be authentic and were motivated as a result. The teacher then introduced the chapter on food chemistry in the science textbook, and suggested that this text (and other supplementary texts on the same topic but written at different levels of difficulty) could be used to gather the information needed to make the report to the principal. Then, inside the community effort to gather the information needed to make the report and to ensure that all students were in a position to be legitimate participants in compiling the report to the principal, the teacher taught comprehension strategies to particular sub-groups of students who, in earlier assessments, had been identified as needing to learn those strategies. In situating text comprehension in a longitudinal event or task, the teacher accomplished 61

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two goals: (1) students were motivated to understand text content at higher levels because the task involved taking action to improve the quality of their lives; and (2) they were all in a position to participate because the teacher provided explicit assistance to those who needed it. Two key ideas from sociocultural thought drive our proposal. First by situating comprehension as a worthwhile action, we put students in a position to ‘transform’ textual meaning and to experience reading as authentic activity where personal agency is of primary importance. Second, because students learn best when they are in a position to ‘participate legitimately’ in an authentic communal task (Lave and Wenger, 1991), we provide explicit assistance inside the communal event. These two ideas seldom appear together in today’s classrooms. For instance we recently observed four teachers teaching comprehension. The first said the goal was ‘generating questions’ and directed students to read the first line in a narrative in a basal text and, with no further introduction, asked, ‘Who’s the main character? When did he wake up? What did he look for?’ and other such questions; the second one focused on text features, directed students to read about polar icebergs, and had them list text features on a worksheet; the third emphasized question generation, told students to read about Pluto’s demotion as a planet, and had them fill in a chart with different kinds of questions; and the fourth emphasized predicting, had students read about African plants, and had them list types of predictions on a worksheet. Not one situated comprehension in an authentic task where students could take any kind of action, and none explained why question generation or text features or predicting was important, or how to do it. In short, from the students’ perspective, it was all a procedural exercise; from the teachers’ perspective, it was a matter of mentioning comprehension strategies and assigning practice. As several American studies indicate, today’s teachers narrow what they teach and narrow how they teach it (Smith, 1991; Miller et al., 1993; Watanabe, 2008; Miller et al., 2009); a phenomenon also observed in Taiwan (Aldridge et al., 1999); Kenya (Commeyrus and Inyega, 2007); and elsewhere around the world (Aarnoutse and Weterings, 1995; Pressley et al., 1998). However, the current prevalence of narrowed curricular tasks generally, and of narrowed comprehension tasks particularly, stands in contrast to evidence supporting more compelling, longitudinal tasks. As long ago as the early twentieth century, Kilpatrick (1919) promoted the project method and authentic tasks. Subsequently, ‘inquiry-based’ instruction or ‘problem-based’ instruction and authentic activities (Duke et al., 2006/7) have been explored. More recently, Guthrie et al. (1999); Pearson et al., 2006; and Bravo et al., 2007) have embedded comprehension strategy instruction in a context of inquiry. Despite this long history, however, and as we note above, rigid and procedural forms of comprehension instruction currently prevail. There is little attempt to motivate, little attempt to adapt explicit instruction to the nuances of comprehension, and little attempt to fully merge these two seemingly antithetical perspectives. What follows, therefore, is a rationale for both motivating comprehension instruction and for explicitly teaching comprehension.

Motivating students for comprehension Even the best teachers working under ideal circumstances face the problem of students who comprehend a topic from literal, interpretative, and critical perspectives; strongly 62

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believe in their abilities to read different texts; feel supported in their efforts to comprehend texts; and yet do not care about what they are learning. Teachers have not been provided with solutions to this problem because research has focused on how teachers can develop positive learning environments while strengthening students’ expectancies for success. As a result, we seldom see teachers situating text so that students view comprehension as enriching, enabling, and empowering (Brophy, 1999, 2008). Consequently, we argue for a concept of motivation based on valuing the content to be read. In this view, motivating children to comprehend means embedding what is to be read in a situation where the reader pursues action worthy of effort, ‘transforms’ text meaning in terms of the particulars of the task, and, as a result, experiences a personal sense of agency. Situating comprehension tasks so they are valued Brophy (1999) has called for scaffolding appreciation similarly to how we scaffold cognitions. Scaffolding for appreciation would provide instructional supports to increase the likelihood of students viewing their comprehension as worthwhile and meaningful. Similar to the gradual release of the responsibility model (Pearson and Gallagher, 1983), students need to gradually assume greater agency for their comprehension if they are to appreciate fully the value of studying a topic or discipline. This changes the focus of motivation from interest in a topic to valuing a discipline as worthwhile and meaningful to study (Hidi and Renninger, 2000). Promoting the valuing of text meaning requires broadening our understanding of what it means for students to care about their studies. Traditionally, researchers have examined this issue by focusing on affective responses without necessarily linking such responses to understanding (Eccles et al., 1983; Brophy, 1999, 2008; Eccles and Wigfield, 2002; Brophy [in press]). The focus was more on the question of, ‘Did students enjoy the activity’, than on, ‘Do students value what they’ve read?’ As a result, we know more about the conditions under which students positively rate their affect for a particular topic without knowing whether such ratings are linked to understanding, to aesthetic appreciation of content, or to an awareness of the content’s potential for improving their lives (Brophy [in press]) Expressing positive affect or intrinsic motivation might be a necessary first step, but it is not sufficient (Alexander, 1997; Brophy, 2008). If a student is to understand why a discipline is intriguing or worthwhile, multiple outcomes are required beyond positive affect. Specifically, what is needed is sophisticated understandings of the particular discipline and a realization of the potential for transforming knowledge into meaningful practical action (Reiss, 2004; Waterman 2004). When teachers support students as they approach challenging learning tasks and promote the valuing of content, students view themselves as learners, they act as agents of their learning in future pursuits, and they develop insights into why the assigned content might be meaningful and worthwhile. Authenticity as a key to valuing Understanding what makes instruction meaningful and worthwhile changes the discussion from what teachers might do to help students comprehend text to what they might do to help them value text content. In an attempt to provide specifics, we examine four dimensions of authenticity – real-world, personal, disciplinary, and assessment 63

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(Shaffer and Resnick, 1999). These conceptualizations are consistent with above-cited views of situated learning (Lave, 1996; Au and Kaomea, 2009; Fairbanks et al., 2009) and are applicable to what happens when students attempt to comprehend text. However, while we examine each perspective separately, these dimensions overlap considerably in practice. Real world authenticity refers to the extent to which instructional activities mirror the complexity of what occurs in the world outside the classroom. Blumenfeld et al. (1991) and Duke et al. (2006/7) show how the ‘richness’ of project-based instruction increases interest and understanding by engaging students collaboratively in authentic communal projects while they solve real problems. Similarly, Guthrie et al. (1999) demonstrate how such engagement in ‘real world’ activities improves students’ understanding of and appreciation for their studies. Real world authenticity affords greater challenges, thereby giving students opportunities to acquire self-regulation abilities and to demonstrate agency (Doyle, 1983; Blumenfeld et al., 1987; Blumenfeld, 1992; Miller and Blumenfeld, 1993; Turner, 1995; Johnston et al., 2001; Miller, 2003; Parsons, 2008). For example Miller and Meece (1999) noted how low, average, and high achieving fourth-graders working collaboratively over extended time on ‘high-challenge’ tasks came to value both the opportunity to think creatively and the aesthetic power of literature. Real world authenticity affirms students’ identities while providing opportunities for self-expression. Authenticity from the personal perspective relates to the extent to which students appreciate the transformative nature of knowledge. Students do not just acquire more knowledge as they comprehend text, but come to see the world in new ways, thereby increasing their agency (Dewey, 1938). Oldfather and Dahl (1994) linked such agency to situations where students develop an honoured voice through shared ownership of knowing. Similarly, Roth and Lee’s (2007) theory of praxis underscores how students’ transformation of knowledge promotes agency within the parameters of certain institutional and historical constraints. Thus, students come to see learning as personally worthwhile and meaningful, and gain agency by participating with others in purposeful activities where they transform knowledge (Lave and Wenger, 1991). Disciplinary authenticity relates to the extent to which students are able to understand the language and tools of particular content areas. Gee (2004) refers to this goal when he states, ‘What’s hard about school is not learning to read, which has received the lion’s share of attention from educators and policy makers, but learning to read and learn in academic content areas like mathematics, social studies and science’ (Gee, 2004: 3). Kamil and Bernhardt (2004) make a similar point, as do others. Content disciplines have distinctive vocabulary, distinctive text structures and distinctive ways of discussing content. Understanding these makes for a more authentic task. Finally, assessment authenticity refers to the idea that comprehension is important because what is read will be on the test. In many schools, this kind of authenticity currently drives instruction, with virtually every instructional activity systematically aligned with what is assessed. Our position here is that assessment authenticity emphasizes narrow reproduction of text content rather than more substantive meaning. To motivate students by getting them to value meaning, teachers need to attend to the real-world, personal, and discipline dimensions of authenticity. 64

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Summary Motivating students requires longitudinal tasks that are meaningful, worthwhile, and action-driven. Such authentic tasks engage students because they are seen to have value, with the result that students ‘own’ their learning. Within the parameters of a valued task, teachers can nest explicit teaching.

Providing explicit instructional assistance Explicit teaching, which we define as teachers directly and forthrightly providing information and explanations regarding both how to comprehend and why it is important to do so, is nested in the motivating activity. We emphasize explicit teaching in recognition of the fact that, under normal circumstances in most classrooms, some students cannot participate legitimately in the activities of the community because they lack a key understanding of the strategy needed to comprehend the texts associated with the task at hand. For those students, explicit teaching has frequently been shown to be effective (Duffy et al., 1987; Pressley et al., 1992; Dole et al., 1996; Van Keer, 2004). Because of both the nature of comprehension and recent understanding about the sociocultural nature of instruction, explicit teaching of comprehension is different from explicit teaching of decoding. One must think differently regarding what to be explicit about, who to be explicit with, and what one does to be explicit. What to be explicit about in explicit comprehension instruction Explicit comprehension instruction focuses on large conceptual ideas, vocabulary, and strategies. Skills are not emphasized because comprehension is a conceptual and strategic reasoning process. No single procedure applies universally. Large conceptual ideas include important connections across processes (Guthrie and Cox, 1998), generalities (Greeno et al., 1996), and unifying principles (Chi et al., 1988; Wittwer and Renkl, 2008) that provide both a foundation for understanding how comprehension works and a conceptual framework within which strategies are applied. A major example is the cohesion and unity that come from nesting explicit instruction in authentic activity. Doing so gives teachers the opportunity to be explicit about concepts such as why we read, and why what we teach about comprehension is important. Other unifying principles include the process of progressing from activating background knowledge, to making strategic decisions during reading, and to reflecting on what was read after reading; understanding why reading and writing are reciprocal processes; knowing why texts are structured in particular ways; and understanding why readers must attack comprehension as what Pearson (2009) calls an ‘aggressive’ activity. Because comprehension depends on prior knowledge, and prior knowledge is communicated in word meanings (Baumann, 2009), explicit vocabulary instruction is also crucial. Students with limited background experience generally, and limited experience with the meanings of English words particularly, need explicit help in broadening experiences and developing word labels for those experiences. While there are not many comprehension strategies (Pressley, 2000), with predicting, monitoring, questioning, inferencing and summarizing being frequently cited, the heart of the comprehension process is the strategic combination of predicting-monitoringquestioning-repredicting that occurs as readers think their way through text. The ultimate 65

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goal of explicit strategy instruction is to be efficient in combining strategies (Duke and Pearson, 2002; Block and Duffy, 2008). Who to be explicit with Explicit teaching is not used with everyone. While a teacher may occasionally be explicit in a whole group setting about large conceptual ideas or in developing vocabulary, explicit strategy instruction is applied when informal assessment reveals that particular students need to learn one or another comprehension strategy (Duffy, 2009). Consequently, differentiated instruction is central to explicit comprehension instruction. It is provided in temporary group settings, and for variable periods of time depending upon need. What one does to be explicit when teaching comprehension Descriptions of explicit teaching are often vague. For instance Cervetti et al. (2006) say explicit teaching ‘supports’ students, and that teachers ‘coach’, ‘provide guided practice’, and ‘pose questions that encourage students to focus’, but the reader is left to imagine the specifics; Guthrie et al. (1996) emphasize such terms as ‘teacher modeling’, ‘scaffolding’, ‘coaching’, and ‘direct explanation’, but do not illustrate exactly what each would look like; and Van Keer (2004), writing for a British journal, uses similar terms but provides no specific examples of what a teacher would actually say or do. However, there are four specific actions that define what one does to be explicit when teaching comprehension. First, being explicit means motivating. As noted above, explicit comprehension instruction is nested within a larger motivating event or activity that the class community is pursuing. Because it occurs inside an authentic task having value, explicit comprehension instruction has a holistic or unified quality. Second, being explicit is defined by emphasizing large conceptual ideas as well as strategies. For instance, during big book reading, shared reading, guided reading, and reading in content areas, and various writing activities, teachers make explicit statements about interconnections among processes and unifying principles. To the casual observer, these explanatory statements may appear to be spontaneous responses to routine classroom activities, but in actuality the teacher is intentional and deliberate in making use of these opportunities. Third, being explicit about strategies means modelling thinking or reasoning. It is not enough for a teacher to define, as in, ‘Predicting is making guesses about what will come next’. Similarly, it is not enough for a teacher to say, ‘I’m going to make a prediction as I read. I see the words “food” and “health” in the title so I’m going to predict that this is about food and health’. Again, the teacher provides some information, but the reasoning used to generate the prediction remains invisible. Struggling readers are still left saying, ‘How did she do that?’ To be explicit about comprehension strategies, the teacher must go beyond simply defining and demonstrating and must model how prior knowledge is used to reason or to think strategically, as illustrated below: ‘I see the words food and health in the title. I know something about those things. So to make a prediction, I think about what I already know about food and health. I remember that I saw a TV show that told about staying healthy requires that we eat the right foods. Because that’s what I remember, I expect that this will also be about eating the right foods to stay healthy’. 66

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Finally, explicit strategy instruction means scaffolding (Maloch, 2002; Many, 2002). The teacher must move quickly from the authoritarian role as an explainer and make students active participants. Scaffolds or crutches, such as questions, hinting, prompting, analogies, and examples are provided and then gradually reduced in subsequent trials as students become more adept. During scaffolding, teachers encourage students to try out variations on the model the teacher presented, to discuss their success and/or difficulty in employing the strategy, and to share with each other insights about how to make the strategy or strategies work effectively. This process may go on over days and weeks, as students encounter different texts demanding that they adapt their strategic thinking and/or combine one strategy with another. Whether they work together in small groups, in pairs, in peer tutoring situations, or other arrangements, scaffolding must put students in positions of being active comprehenders who feel they are taking the initiative away from the teacher. Summary Explicit teaching is often criticized as didactic and procedural. However, in the case of explicit comprehension instruction, it is more holistic than reductionist, more nuanced than rigid, and more flexible than procedural. Teachers must be sensitive to the nature of comprehension and how it works, must be opportunistic in choosing when to be explicit, must be diagnostic in deciding who receives it, and must be adaptive in explaining and scaffolding. In short, explicit comprehension instruction is artful as well as direct.

Conclusion Following the lead of Greeno et al. (1996) and in an effort to span the schism between current research and what we typically see in many classrooms, we have extended and then merged the often antithetical ideas about motivation and explicit teaching. We do so as a means for providing a scholarly foundation for further research and a practical platform from which comprehension instruction can be improved. However, we have no illusions about the difficulties involved. While our proposal may be modest, it nonetheless depends on a corps of thoughtful and adaptive teachers. Developing such a corps of teachers is problematic in the current policy environment. where research findings are presented not as guidelines but as rules to be followed, where school administrators promote ‘a production schedule’ in order to raise test scores (Wien and Dudley-Marling, 1998:. 407), and where quality teacher education is being marginalized (Duffy et al. [in press]). But we are hopeful nonetheless. Comprehension is the essence of learning and growing. By merging and extending the previously antithetic ideas of motivation and explicit teaching, we increase the potential for insightful research findings and improved instructional practices.

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7 The genre-specific nature of reading comprehension Nell K. Duke and Kathryn L. Roberts

Consider two texts. One is a story, a memoir of sorts, of a woman’s first year of motherhood. At once both humorous and poignant, the text chronicles the feelings and events the mother experienced in her child’s infant year. The other text is one of the ubiquitous texts written for parents on infant development and care. The text contains information about infant development in different domains – eating, sleeping, social interaction – along with advice for parents about how to support their child’s development in each domain. How similar, or different, are the reading comprehension processes entailed in the reading of these two texts? If one drew a Venn diagram of the reading processes, would the intersection of the circles be almost complete, partial, or almost null? Scholars have reflected on this question for some time. The 1925 Report of the US National Committee on Reading (Ballou et al., 1925) included the following: The reading done in the so-called ‘reading period’ has been largely narrative. Yet studies have demonstrated that the pupil who reads narrative material quite well may read very poorly when the passages tell the conditions of an arithmetic problem or give directions to be followed in the study of grammar. Such situations indicate that there must be a broader conception of the variety of skills and habits to be developed before pupils can be said to read adequately. (Ballou et al., 1925:. 97) Thus on the one hand, it seems it has long been believed that comprehension differs, at least to some degree, by genre. On the other hand, there is much in research and practice that does not operate on this belief. In the US, for example, norm-referenced assessments widely used in both school testing and in research studies provide an overarching score for ‘reading comprehension’ that is not differentiated by genre, (e.g., MacGinitie et al., 2007; University of Iowa College of Education, 2008). Assessments designed for regular use by teachers to monitor progress or inform instruction also do not differentiate by genre (e.g., Good and Kaminski, 2002). Our observations in US classrooms

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find that comprehension instruction is also often inattentive to genre; for example with reading comprehension strategies presented in a single way apparently meant to apply to all texts. In this chapter, we review research on the question of how similar, or different, reading comprehension processes are for different genres of text, with a focus on studies that have included informational text. This research suggests that the differences between comprehension of text in different genres are substantial. Rather than being a unitary construct, reading comprehension is best seen as a collection of processes that are substantially differentiated by genre.

Conceptual backdrop Both genre and reading comprehension provide important conceptual backdrops for this chapter. We discuss each in turn.

Genre Conceptualizations of genre have varied substantially over time and across scholars. On one end is a view of genre as fundamentally about the form of a text, with genres defined primarily by their formal features; on the other end is a view of genre as fundamentally about social activity, with genres defined by the social and rhetorical purposes they are intended to serve (see Miller, 1984; Freedman and Medway, 1994, for discussion of the range of genre theories). For the purposes of this chapter, genre will be operationalized as somewhere between these views. We use a definition offered by Paré and Smart (1994), who in turn build on the work of Bazerman (1988) and others, of genre as a distinctive profile of regularities across four dimensions: a set of texts [we would say text forms and features], the composing processes involved in creating these texts, the reading practices used to interpret them, and the social roles performed by writers and readers. (Paré and Smart, 1994: 147) Of particular interest in this chapter are differences in the reading practices, specifically the reading comprehension processes, employed with different genres. In this day and age, an especially salient question is whether off- and online texts constitute different genres. For example is informational text online a different genre from informational text offline? By the four regularities Paré and Smart (1994) identify, these would indeed be different genres. Their features differ, for example with hyperlinks, navigation bars, and dynamic images being part of many online informational texts; and indexes, page numbers, and static images a part of many offline informational texts. Their composing practices must differ to some degree as well, for example in the creation of the hyperlinks. Certainly reading practices for online reading comprehension differ from offline in important ways (see e.g. Coiro and Dobler, 2007), although of course there is overlap as well (Duke et al., 2006). The social roles performed by the readers and writers arguably do not differ in the fundamental sense for online versus 75

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offline informational texts – in both cases, informing and being informed are at the core. But the nuances may differ, for example in the reader’s expectation for a greater degree of currency of information from the writer in online informational texts. Of course, as with many categorical distinctions, there are grey areas. An online informational text that was originally offline and placed online with minimal alteration is obviously less different from offline informational text than an online informational text written to make use of a full range of affordances of digital technology. For our purposes in this chapter, we leave it to the authors of research we review to categorize the texts employed in their studies.

Reading comprehension A view of reading comprehension is also a necessary conceptual backdrop for this chapter. Definitions of reading comprehension abound. Probably the most often quoted definition of reading comprehension in the US in recent years is that proffered by the RAND Reading Study Group (2002), who define reading comprehension as the ‘process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language’ (RAND, 2002: 11). Notably, the RAND Group, following many previous scholars, goes on to argue that comprehension ‘entails three elements: the reader who is doing the comprehending; the text that is to be comprehended, and the activity in which comprehension is a part’ (RAND, 2002: 11). Similarly, the framework for the 2009 version of the US national test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), defines reading as ‘an active and complex process that involves understanding written text, developing and interpreting meaning, and using meaning as appropriate to type of text, purpose and situation’ (National Assessment Governing Board, 2008: iv). In both articulations, text is seen as affecting reading comprehension. To what degree text, in particular text genre, affects reading comprehension processes is the focus of the next section.

A review of research Space limitations prohibit an exhaustive review of research on genre and reading comprehension. Thus we have chosen to discuss briefly ten studies that compare, each in a different way, reading comprehension for two or more genres. In all cases informational or expository text (preferred terms vary by study) is one of the genres used, so that we can see, in particular, ways in which informational text comprehension is similar to and different from comprehension of other genres. We have divided these studies into four categories: studies of reading achievement by genre; studies of predictors of reading comprehension achievement; think-aloud studies; and studies using other approaches.

Studies of reading achievement by genre A fundamental question is whether readers perform roughly equally in assessments of comprehension of different types of text. The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (The PIRLS) (Mullis et al., 2003; Mullis et al., 2007) examines this question with a particularly large and diverse sample. PIRLS is conducted every five years in many countries or jurisdictions around the world (35 in 2001 and 45 in 2006). It involves administration 76

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of a reading assessment to students, most of whom are 9 years of age at the time of testing. Specifically, the PIRLS requires students to read for two common reading purposes: (a) for literary experience and (b) to acquire and use information (Campbell et al., 2001). The PIRLS also involves the collection of literacy-related information (e.g. time spent on different instructional practices) from students, parents, teachers, school administrators, and assessment coordinators of each nation. Because PIRLS provides both informational reading score and literary reading score for each student, it provides valuable information about how aligned, or not aligned, students’ reading abilities are across these two genres. The result? Across nations, some individuals show substantially different performances in informational versus literary reading, sometimes favouring literary and sometimes informational (Park, 2008). In the US, to take one case, the mean correlation between performance on literary versus informational reading was 0.81 (Park, pers. comm., 28 September 2008). Despite extensive efforts to make the literary and informational reading portions of the assessment as parallel as possible, and even without the many informational text features that help to distinguish this type of text (Purcell-Gates et al., 2007), including navigational features such as indices and headings, and graphical features such as diagrams and charts, only about 65 per cent of the variance in performance in one genre could be explained by performance in another. Another study examines the question of whether reading comprehension achievement, in this case informational reading comprehension achievement, differs on- and offline (Leu et al., 2005). In this study, 89 seventh-grade (roughly 13-year-old) students took a measure of online reading comprehension developed by the New literacies Research Team (2005) and a widely used measure of offline reading comprehension (the Degrees of Reading Power test) (Touchstone Applied Science Associates, 2004). Mean two-tailed Pearson Product Moment correlations in June of the school year were 0.105 – not even statistically significant. Bearing in mind a small sample size, this suggests that informational reading comprehension on- and offline draws on substantially different skills. A third study examines reading comprehension performance for narrative and expository text with a focus on performance in literal versus inferential comprehension (Saenz and Fuchs, 2002). The results are illuminating. Secondary school students (N = 111) in special and remedial education classes read two narrative and two expository passages (order counterbalanced). After each passage they were asked eight literal (defined as ‘textually explicit’) and two inferential (defined as ‘textually implicit’) questions. The literal questions were based only on details and facts mentioned at least twice in the passage. Inferential questions required the students to take an idea from the passage and combine it with prior knowledge. Results show that performance on literal questions did not differ by genre at a level of statistical significance, but performance on inferential questions did. This suggests that literal comprehension demands posed by different genres, at least these two genres, do not differ, but inferential comprehension demands do.

Studies of predictors of reading comprehension achievement Another approach to the question of how similar or different reading comprehension is across genres is to examine how similar or different predictors of reading comprehension performance are by genre. Wolfe (2005) sought to predict reading comprehension, as measured by a recall task, based on how related individual concepts within a text were to the text as a whole, which the author termed semantic associations and 77

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assessed using latent semantic analysis. College students (N=144) read either three narrative or three expository texts and then were asked to provide a written recall of each. Semantic associations predicted both narrative and expository recall, but they predicted expository recall much more strongly (mean R2 for expository 0.32; for narrative 0.19) (students also recalled more text elements from the narrative texts than from the expository). The author hypothesized that semantic knowledge may be more useful in expository comprehension because the background knowledge on a topic does not change a great deal in terms of relevance or correctness from one text on that topic to another. Narratives, on the other hand, vary and in fact are often explicitly designed to surprise the reader with unexpected twists. While in the Wolfe study the same construct predicted narrative and expository comprehension to different degrees, in a study by Best et al. (2004), entirely different constructs predicted narrative versus expository comprehension. Third graders (N = 61) took assessments of decoding ability and world knowledge (Woodcock–Johnson III Tests of Achievement) (Riverside, 2001) and took a narrative and expository comprehension assessment (each comprised of a passage followed by 12 researcher-designed multiple choice questions). As with studies above, readers demonstrated better comprehension with narrative than expository text and in particular did better on inferential questions with narrative than expository text. Importantly, what predicted narrative versus expository comprehension performance differed: while decoding ability predicted narrative reading comprehension performance, world knowledge predicted expository comprehension performance.

Think-aloud studies Think-aloud or verbal protocol studies have provided a great deal of insight into reading comprehension processes, particularly among expert readers (Pressley and Afflerbach, 1995; Kucan and Beck, 1997). Among the insights that think-aloud provides is that reading comprehension processes differ in important ways depending on text genre. In Olson et al. (1981), college students (N unspecified) engaged in think-alouds while reading narrative text and essay text (the authors’ term, which appears to include both persuasive and informational text). They characterized the general approach readers took to the two genres as follows: Story readers have an essentially prospective orientation, generating predictions and looking ahead to what is coming up. In contrast, readers of essays approach the sentence-by-sentence processing more retrospectively, fitting the current sentence in with earlier information that had been explicitly presented in the text. (Olson et al., 1981: 283) As might be expected, then, a number of differences were observed in the proportion of comprehension processes for narrative versus essay text, including prediction, questioning, commenting on structure, managing reading behaviour, confirming predictions, referring to antecedent information, inferring, and accessing general knowledge and associations. Still-developing readers also evidence differences in comprehension processes by genre in think-aloud studies. Langer (1990) had 67 high achieving students in grades 3, 6, and 9 (roughly ages 8, 11, and 14) engage in think-alouds and produce retellings after 78

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reading a story and a report (the author’s term). In most cases, even third graders’ retellings differed by genre, with increasing differentiation of genre conventions over time (also evidenced in their writing). Think-alouds also showed substantial differences by genre. For example, self-questioning processes were more common when reading reports; hypothesizing was more common when reading stories. Kucan and Beck (1996) conducted an in-depth study of the think-alouds of four fourth graders (roughly ages 9–10) over the course of a year. Students’ reading of narrative text, for which readers recalled and summarized a greater percentage of important ideas, reflected more inferencing, more predicting, and greater synthesis and integration of incoming text information. In contrast, students’ think-alouds with expository text ‘focused more on personal knowledge and experiences, providing commentary about or creating comparisons in response to details and more local text information’ (Kucan and Beck, 1996: 259). In light of their findings, the authors wondered whether teaching students to elaborate may benefit students in narrative comprehension while actually serving to distract them in expository comprehension.

Studies using other approaches Research examining reading comprehension by genre is not limited to think-aloud studies and studies of achievement and predictors. Zabrucky and Moore (1999) took an interesting approach by developing expository and narrative text passages that include deliberately inconsistent information (as well as passages that did not have inconsistent information). They then examined older and younger adults’ (N=40) comprehension monitoring processes and recall of the passages with and without inconsistent information. When reading narrative text, younger and older readers were more likely to detect inconsistencies and recalled more information. They were also marginally significantly (p < .06) more likely to reread inconsistent narrative text; they reread expository text only when it was more consistent. Importantly, the ability to recognize and reread when text is inconsistent was related to expository text recall but not to narrative text recall. The authors hypothesize that, because narrative texts are easier to integrate, selective rereading may be less important to the understanding of narrative than expository text; the ability to monitor and attempt to repair comprehension breakdown may be especially important for expository text. Adding another approach to the mix, Sharer, Lehman, and Peters (2001) examined small group discussions of narrative and expository text in eight fourth- and fifth-grade (roughly ages 9 to 11) classrooms. When discussing expository text, students were less likely to make intertextual comments and more likely to make extratextual comments (comments not directly related to the book). When discussing narrative text, students were nearly three times as likely to discuss prior knowledge, although teachers also asked different kinds of questions in the two kinds of discussion (more literal questions about the expository text, more higher-order questions in discussing the narrative text). This examination of book discussions provides yet another indication of relationships between genre and reading comprehension.

Summary We find that a variety of studies – studies of reading achievement by genre, studies of predictors of reading comprehension achievement, think-aloud studies, and studies 79

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using other approaches (error detection, discussion analysis) – all reveal differences in reading comprehension by genre, most often by narrative versus expository genre. In the studies reviewed in this chapter, areas in which genre was seen to make a difference include performance on formal assessments, the ability to answer inferential comprehension questions, the quality of written recall, the role of semantic associations, the predictive power of decoding and world knowledge, text orientation (prospective versus retrospective), the ability to detect inconsistencies in text, and the degree to which readers employ the following processes: predicting; confirming predictions; accessing general knowledge and associations; focusing on personal knowledge and experiences; discussing prior knowledge; commenting on structure; self-questioning; rereading; inferring; referring to antecedent information; integrating incoming information; synthesizing; making intertextual comments; making extratextual comments; and managing reading behaviour. These are quite a number and array of differences in reading comprehension performance and processes by genre.

Implications for educational practice and policy That reading comprehension performance and processes are significantly differentiated by genre has far-reaching implications. In this final section we discuss these implications in three areas: assessment, instruction, and policy.

Assessment As is clear from the research reviewed earlier, we cannot assume that one’s skill in comprehending one genre will be matched in another. Rather, it appears possible to have a highly uneven profile of reading comprehension skill depending upon the genre read. Thus, assessment must be largely genre-specific. Of course, one reason we have this insight is because some assessments, such as the one used in PIRLS, already differentiate by genre at least on a broad level. But, as discussed at the outset of this paper, many assessments do not. This obscures differences that may exist in any individual or group of students’ reading comprehension for different genres, and does nothing to make salient for teachers the genre-specific nature of reading comprehension. The same can be said for researchers, who regularly use such assessments in studies of reading development, instruction, and achievement. All this said, the expense of resources necessary to create a new generation of more genre-sensitive assessments is considerable. Having recently developed informational reading comprehension assessments designed for use by classroom teachers to inform instruction of first, second, and third graders (roughly ages 6–9) (Billman et al., 2008; Hilden et al., 2008), we can attest that the challenge of developing genre-sensitive assessments for young children is particularly great. An important issue for the field to consider is at which grain size to divide genre for the purposes of assessment. For example a popular distinction in assessment is between literary and informational text (e.g. PIRLS; NAEP), but there are in fact many different kinds of literary and informational text and it is possible that there is as much variance in comprehension processes and achievement among different kinds of literary text or different kinds of informational text as there is between literary and informational text types. This points to a need for further research, as the vast majority of studies in this 80

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area contrast narrative with informational text rather than contrasting, for example, comprehension of procedural versus expository text or comprehension of memoir versus realistic fictional narrative text. But there are also practical and logistical questions to address. In order to assess a construct, we need a significant number of items to do so. Is an assessment with a significant number of items for each of, say, seven different academic genres realistic? If it is not realistic, but if research does reveal substantial differences among reading comprehension processes among each of these seven different academic genres, which is the lesser of two evils: shall we aim for pure representation of select genres or shall we sample broadly across genre lines within overarching categories (e.g. literary, informational), recognizing that we are obscuring variance in achievement within these categories? To complicate matters further, there is a strong argument that genres vary by disciplinary context. There are important discursive conventions in science, for example, that render expository text in science (and perhaps even in different disciplines within science) different in important ways from, for example, expository text in history (e.g. Moje et al., 2004) (in which case perhaps we should then be calling them different genres). We have failed to address this issue in the chapter for reasons of space and focus, but it must be invoked here, as it raises many of the same questions as discussed in the previous paragraphs. Should assessments measure reading comprehension of each genre in each of several disciplines? Even if we decide on only three disciplines and only three genres, we already have an assessment with nine subtests, each of which, again, needs a substantial number of items for validity and reliability . . . The challenges are indeed formidable. That said, the progress that has already been made in genre-specific reading comprehension assessment, as evidenced by the methodological tools used in the studies reviewed in this chapter, is encouraging. Although there are many questions that remain unanswered and obstacles to overcome, there is evidence that this important work is possible.

Instruction The degree to which the genre-specific nature of reading comprehension has implications for instruction depends on the degree to which exposure to and instruction in reading comprehension can transfer from one genre to another. This is a question not yet extensively addressed in research; given the research available to date, we can be fairly confident that exposure and instruction will not transfer fully, if even moderately. Of course, some approaches to instruction are quite sensitive to this point. Most famously, the genre-based approach to literacy instruction popularized in Australia is highly genrespecific (see Cope and Kalantzis, 1993). In this approach, genre is the organizing force of literacy education, with explicit instruction focused on the social context and features of specific academic genres and with instructional activities designed to scaffold children toward ever greater independence in reading and writing each specific genre. In practice, some have accused genre-based pedagogy in Australia as being overly focused on text forms (Reid, 1987). Similarly, we have observed that genre-based pedagogy in the US often focuses more on instruction of lists of text features than it does on either the social context of the genre or the strategies one can employ to read or write that genre. Potential pitfalls of this approach were highlighted for us in a recent study on the development of informational and procedural reading and writing in science (Purcell-Gates et al, 2007). In this study, we randomly assigned teachers of second 81

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grade (roughly ages 7–8) classes to one of two conditions. In one condition, teachers were taught to engage their students in what we called authentic literacy events – activities in which students read and wrote for the same reasons people read and write outside of a learning-to-read-and-write context and in which students read and write text the same as, or very much like, texts that exist outside of a learning-to-read-and-write context (see Duke et al., 2006/7 for a detailed description and examples). In the other condition, teachers were also taught to engage their students in authentic literacy events but, in addition, were taught to explicitly teach the function and features of informational and procedural texts in science (which were identified through a discourse analysis we conducted in preparation for the study). Students were followed from the beginning of second to the end of third grade, having teachers in the same condition for both years. Results, to our surprise, showed that explicit teaching of genre function and feature was not associated with stronger growth in informational or procedural reading comprehension or writing, save for procedural writing, and then only in combination with a high degree of authentic literacy events (an interaction effect). In contrast, across conditions, the degree to which the teacher involved students in authentic literacy events was related to growth in four of seven outcome measures in addition to the interaction effect noted for procedural writing. Certainly no single study is definitive, and there are many possible explanations for the lack of impact of explicit teaching of genre function and features found in this study. Still, the study is enough to suggest that simply teaching students the differing features of different genres may not be effective. More promising appear to be approaches in which strategies for reading (or writing; see e.g. Graham and Perin, 2007) particular genres are offered. For example an approach called ‘Collaborative Strategic Reading’, designed to improve comprehension of informational text by teaching a repertoire of strategies appropriate for reading such text, has been shown to be effective (Klingner et al., 1998; Klingner et al., 2004). An approach called ‘Theme Scheme’, developed specifically to improve comprehension of narrative text by teaching readers to identify key story elements, particularly the story theme, has also been shown to be effective (Williams et al., 1994). But, as noted at the outset of this chapter, in practice we have observed that comprehension strategy instruction is often generic, rather than tailored to particular text types, and in any case comprehension strategy instruction alone has not been proven to consistently bring students to target levels of comprehension. Multifaceted approaches, which simultaneously provide authentic contexts as well as feature and strategy instruction, seem likely to pay greater dividends, but there is much research, development, and dissemination work to be done regarding such approaches.

Policy The most fundamental policy implication of the genre-specific nature of reading comprehension is the need to identify those genres that we most want students to learn to comprehend. If we cannot assume that skill in comprehending fictional narrative will transfer to skill in comprehending informational text, we must decide – fictional narrative? informational text? both? neither? Often, standards documents provide only very broad genre categories (e.g. fiction, non-fiction), or specify long lists of genres, from haiku to how to, with little guidance about how to prioritize. Once we have identified the genres we most want students to comprehend, the task is to align materials, instruction, and assessment to these genres. In the US, informational 82

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text presents an interesting case in this regard. There is little doubt that, in later schooling and beyond, informational comprehension ability is highly valued in the US, although US achievement in informational reading, even relative to literary reading ability, leaves much to be desired (e.g. Mullis et al., 2003; Mullis et al., 2007). However, for some time, in the primary grades of schooling (roughly ages 5 to 9), informational text has been scarce in materials (Moss and Newton, 2002) and instruction (Duke, 2000), and almost entirely absent from assessments (though in fairness, comprehension of any sort is relatively neglected in US early literacy assessment). Some scholars have attributed a phenomenon known as the ‘fourth grade slump’, in which students who were previously successful in reading show stagnation or decline in reading ability around fourth grade (Hirsch, 2003), in part to the abrupt increase in informational text reading demands traditionally seen in fourth grade (roughly ages 9 – 10) (Chall et al., 1990). Recognizing now that a great deal of experience of reading stories will not translate to early proficiency with informational comprehension, there is much work to be done to increase the presence of informational text in materials, instruction, and assessment in classrooms at all grade levels. The fact that reading comprehension differs for even closely-related genres online versus offline is of particular note with respect to policy. It means that, if some of the genres that we most want students to learn are online, we have to provide the infrastructure and develop the impetus for students to spend considerable time, in school, engaged in online reading. While there is no doubt that the infrastructure for online reading exists in many schools (e.g. NCES, 2007), there is also little doubt that most students spend very little time in school actually reading online (Mullis et al., 2007), and that instruction in so doing is rarer still. If this continues, the research reviewed in this chapter suggests that we will fail to develop in students the desired skills in reading comprehension of online genres.

Conclusion In sum, the genre-specific nature of reading comprehension has implications for assessment, instruction, and educational policy. Across all of these areas more attention needs to be paid to genre. In recent years in the US there has been an overwhelming focus on acquisition of word-level skills and on comprehension in largely generic ways. It is clear that we need to move from generic to genre-rich reading comprehension research, policy, and practice.

References Ballou, F.W., Hardy, R.L., Horn, E., Jenkins, F., Leonard, S.A., Wilson, E. et al. (1925). In G. M. Whipple (Ed.) The Twenty-fourth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part I: Report of the National Committee on Reading. Bloomington, IL: Public School Publishing Company. Bazerman, C. (1988). Shaping Written Knowledge: The genre and activity of the experimental article in science. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Best, R.M., Floyd, R.G. and McNamara, D.S. (2004). ‘Understanding the fourth-grade slump: Comprehension difficulties as a function of reader aptitudes and text genre.’ Paper presented at the 85th Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA, April.

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Billman, A.K., Duke, N.K., Hilden, K.R., Zhang, S., Roberts, K., Halladay, J.L. et al. (2008). Concepts of Comprehension Assessment (COCA). http://www.msularc.org/html/project_COCA_ main.html accessed 18 June 2008. Campbell, J.R., Kelly, D.L., Mullis, I.V.S., Martin, M.O. and Sainsbury, M. (2001). Framework and Specifications for PIRLS Assessment 2001. Chestnut Hall, MA: International Study Center, Boston College. Chall, J.S., Jacobs, V.A. and Baldwin, L.E. (1990). The Reading Crisis: Why poor children fall behind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Coiro, J. and Dobler, E. (2007). Exploring the Online Reading Comprehension Strategies Used by Sixth-grade Skilled Readers to Search for and Locate Information on the Internet. Reading Research Quarterly 42: 214–57. Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (Eds) (1993). The Powers of Literacy: A genre approach to teaching writing. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Duke, N.K. (2000). 3.6 Minutes per Day: The scarcity of informational texts in first grade. Reading Research Quarterly 35: 202–24. Duke, N.K., Schmar-Dobler, E. and Zhang, S. (2006). Comprehension and Technology. In M.C. McKenna, L.D. Labbo, R.D. Kieffer and D. Reinking (Eds) International Handbook Of Literacy And Technology, Volume II. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 317–26. Duke, N.K., Purcell-Gates, V., Hall, L.A. and Tower, C. (2006/7). Authentic Literacy Activities for Developing Comprehension and Writing. The Reading Teacher 60: 344–55. Freedman, A. and Medway, P. (1994). Locating Genre Studies: Antecedents and prospects. In A. Freedman and P. Medway (Eds) Genre and the New Rhetoric. London: Taylor & Francis. Good, R.H. and Kaminski, R.A. (Eds) (2002). Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (6th edn). Eugene, OR: Institute for the Development of Educational Achievement. http:// dibels.uoregon.edu/ accessed 26 January 2009. Graham, S. and Perin, D. (2007). Writing Next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools – A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education. Hilden, K.R., Duke, N.K., Billman, A.K., Zhang, S., Halladay, J.L., Schaal, A.M. et al. (2008). Informational Strategic Cloze Assessment (ISCA). http://www.msularc.org/html/project_ ISCA_main.html accessed 18 June 2008. Hirsch, E.D. (2003). Reading Comprehension Requires Knowledge of Words and the World: Scientific insights into the fourth-grade slump and stagnant reading comprehension. American Educator 27: 10, 12–13, 16–22, 28–9. Klingner, J.K., Vaughn, S. and Schumm, J.S. (1998). Collaborative Strategic Reading during Social Studies in Heterogenous Fourth-grade Classrooms. Elementary School Journal 99: 3–22. Klingner, J.K., Vaughn, S., Arguelles, M.E., Hughes, M.T. and Leftwich, S.A. (2004). Collaborative Strategic Reading: ‘Real-world’ lessons from classroom teachers. Remedial and Special Education 25: 291–302. Kucan, L. and Beck, I.L. (1996). Four Fourth Graders Thinking Aloud: An investigation of genre effects. Journal of Literacy Research 28: 259–87. Kucan, L. and Beck, I.L. (1997). Thinking Aloud and Reading Comprehension Research: Inquiry, instruction, and social interaction. Review of Educational Research 67: 271–99. Langer, J.A. (1990). The Process of Understanding Reading for Literary and Informative Purposes. Research in the Teaching of English 24: 812–16. Leu, D.J., Castek, J., Hartman, D.K., Coiro, J., Henry, L.A., Kulikowich, J.M. et al. (2005). Evaluating the Development of Scientific Knowledge and New Forms of Reading Comprehension during Online Learning. Final Research Report. Naperville, IL: North Central Regional Educational Laboratory/Learning Point Associates. MacGinitie, W.H., MacGinitie, R.K., Maria, K., Dreyer, L.G. and Hughes, K.E. (2007). Gates–MacGinitie Reading Tests (GMRT) Forms S and T (4th edn). Rolling Meadows, IL: Riverside Publishing.

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Miller, C.R. (1984). Genre as Social Action. Quarterly Journal of Speech 70: 151–67. Moje, E.B., Ciechanowski, K., Kramer, K., Ellis, L., Carrillo, R. and Collazo, T. (2004). Working Toward Third Space in Content Area Literacy: An examination of everyday funds of knowledge and discourse. Reading Research Quarterly 39(1): 38–71. Moss, B. and Newton, E. (2002). An Examination of the Informational Text Genre in Basal Readers. Reading Psychology 23: 1–13. Mullis, I.V.S., Martin, M.O., Gonzalez, E.J. and Kennedy, A.M. (2003). PIRLS 2001 International Report: IEA’s study of reading literacy achievement in primary school in 35 countries. Chestnut Hill, MA: International Study Center, Boston College. Mullis, I.V.S., Martin, M.O., Kennedy, A.M. and Foy, P. (2007). PIRLS 2006 International Report: IEA’s progress in international reading literacy study in primary schools in 40 countries. Chestnut Hill, MA: International Study Center, Boston College. National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) (2008). Reading Framework for the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Washington, DC: Author. National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) (2007). Digest of Education Statistics. Washington, DC: United States Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences. National Committee on Reading (1925). Report of the National Committee on Reading 24(1). New Literacies Research Team (NLRT) at the University of Connecticut. (2005). Online Reading Comprehension Assessment with Blog (ORCA-Blog). Storrs, CT: University of Connecticut. Olson, G.M., Mack, R.L. and Duffy, S.A. (1981). Cognitive Aspects of Genre. Poetics 10: 283–315. Paré, A. and Smart, G. (1994). Observing Genres in Action: Towards a research methodology. In A. Freedman and P. Medway (Eds) Genre and the New Rhetoric. London: Taylor and Francis. Park, Y. (2008). ‘Patterns in and predictors of elementary students’ reading performance: Evidence from the data of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)’, unpublished doctoral thesis, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI. Pressley, M. and Afflerbach, P. (1995). Verbal Protocols of Reading: The nature of constructively responsive reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Purcell-Gates, V., Duke, N.K. and Martineau, J.A. (2007). Learning to Read and Write Genrespecific Text: Roles of authentic experience and explicit teaching. Reading Research Quarterly 42: 8–45. RAND Reading Study Group (2002). Reading for Understanding: Toward an R & D program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND. Reid, I. (Ed.) (1987). The Place of Genre in Learning: Current debates. Geelong, VIC: Deakin University, Centre for Studies in Literary Education. Saenz, L.M. and Fuchs, L.S. (2002). Examining the Reading Difficulty of Secondary Students with Learning Disabilities: Expository versus narrative text. Remedial and Special Education 23: 31–41. Sharer, P.L., Lehman, B.A. and Peters, D. (2001). Pondering the Significance of Big and Little or Saving the Whales: Discussions of narrative and expository texts in fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms. Reading Research and Instruction 40: 297–314. Touchstone Applied Science Associates (TASA) (2004). DRP Readability Scale. Available online at: http://www.tasaliteracy.com/drp/drp-main.html accessed 27 January 2009. University of Iowa College of Education (UoICE) (2008). Iowa Test of Basic Skills Form C. Rolling Meadows, IL: Riverside Publishing Company. Williams, J.P., Brown, L.G., Silverstein, A.K. and deCani, J.S. (1994). An Instructional Program in Comprehension of Narrative Themes for Adolescents with Learning Disabilities. Learning Disability Quarterly 17: 205–21. Wolfe, M.B.W. (2005). Memory for Narrative and Expository Text: Independent influences of semantic associations and text organization. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition 31: 359–64.

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Woodcock, R.W., McGrew, K.S. and Mather, N. (2001). Woodcock–Johnson III Tests of Achievement. Itasca, IL: Riverside. Zabrucky, K. and Moore, D. (1999). Influence of Genre on Adults’ Monitoring of Understanding and Recall. Educational Gerontology 25: 691–710.

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8 Morphological knowledge and learning to read in English Elfrieda H. Hiebert and Marco Bravo

The attention given to phonology has overshadowed that given to morphology. Evidence is substantial, however, that knowledge of morphology is critical for fluid and meaningful reading (Carlisle, 2000; Nagy and Anderson, 1984; Tyler and Nagy, 1990; White et al., 1989). Already in the primary levels of American reading textbooks, compound words and words that contain inflected endings and affixes are prevalent (Hiebert, 2008). The morphological interconnections among words become even more frequent as readers move into the content-area texts of middle grades and beyond (Nagy and Anderson, 1984). For researchers and educators who are aiming to ensure fluent, meaningful reading of English by individuals – whether children who are first-time readers or adolescents and adults who are already reading in another language – the morphological structures that are common to English require attention. Our interest in this context is to underscore what readers of English need to understand about the manner in which morphemes join together to form new words. The historical roots of English mean that there are two common ways in which new words are generated. A prominent system from the Romance layer of English involves the addition of prefixes and suffixes to root words; the prominent way of creating new words within the Germanic layer of English involves combining two or more root words to create a compound word (Barber, 2000). While the two structures are part of the other layer (i.e. compounds consisting of Romance words and derivational morphemes added to German-origin words), these two types of morphological structures are used most prolifically with the words that have origins in the respective languages. While attention to morphology is increasing within the practitioner and research communities, this attention is frequently to the derivational aspects of English. There is much to be learned about how derivational morphology can best be taught and learned. However, the number of compounds entering English has increased substantially (Bauer and Renouf, 2001). Since English compounds are not necessarily marked by joining or hyphenating, many words that native speakers of English may recognize as compounds may challenge readers who are new to English. Our interest in this chapter lies in clarifying what is known about the development and instruction of morphemes as it influences reading development. For both derivations 87

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and compounds, we are going to ask three questions: (a) what is the phenomenon and how extensive is it in English? (b) what do we know about its development in schoolchildren and its relationship to reading development? and (c) what does research have to say about effective instruction and ways of intervening when students’ development is not progressing appropriately?

Derivations Definitions and descriptions Derivational morphology refers to creating words by adding prefixes and suffixes to root words. While it is within the Romance/Latin layer of English that derivational morphology is most productive (e.g. attend, attention, attentive, inattentive), prefixes and suffixes are applied to words of Germanic origin (e.g. friend/friendship, mind/mindful) (Henry, 2003). Further, the major means of word building within the Greek layer of English is the combination of two semantic roots (e.g. eco- and –logy). Since the Greek roots traditionally do not function independently, teachers sometimes refer to these as prefixes and suffixes. The number of words with derivatives gets increasingly larger, as the complexity of content and text increases. Nagy et al. (1989) estimated that, in the middle grades and beyond, ‘more than 60% of the new words that readers encounter have relatively transparent morphological structure – that is, they can be broken down into parts’ (Nagy et al., 1989: 279). The potential connections between words, however, are exacerbated by three potential changes between a derived word and the root word: (a) grammatical class; (b) pronunciation; and (c) meaning. The addition of a suffix typically changes the grammatical class (i.e. noun, verb) of the affixed word. While attend is a verb, the addition of a suffix produces a noun (e.g. attention) or an adjective (e.g. inattentive). There can also be changes in the pronunciation of words affected by the addition of an affix. Among the phonological changes that can occur between a root word and affixes are alternations in the vowel and/or consonant as well as syllable stress (Moats, 2000). The addition of neutral derivational suffixes (e.g. -ment, -able) does not change the pronunciation of the root word (e.g. placement) but the addition of non-neutral suffixes (e.g. -ion, -sion, -tion) typically triggers changes in the consonant or vowel segments of the base and may affect stress placement (e.g. pronounce/pronunciation) (Carstairs-McCarthy, 2005). The effects on meaning of adding prefixes are typically more substantial than with suffixes. Prefixes have specific meaning and consistently make a substantial change to the meaning of a word (e.g. attentive, inattentive). Suffixes tend to provide a grammatical distinction such as signifying a shift from noun to adjective (e.g. zeal/zealous). Particular suffixes are used commonly and have fairly consistent meanings. For example verbs are made by adding –ize and –ify to nouns, adverbs with –ly, and adjectives with –al and -ful.

Developmental progressions While there is still much to learn about the development of morphological knowledge and its application and use in reading, several conclusions can be made from the 88

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existing research. First, most English-speaking children acquire morphological awareness along a fairly consistent developmental progression. Native English-speaking children have generally acquired inflected forms before they start school and also know some derivational suffixes such as -er (e.g. runner, teacher) (Anglin, 1993; Berko, 1958; Tyler and Nagy, 1989). From first through to fifth grades, students learn approximately 4,000 base words and about 14,000 derived words (Anglin, 1993). Explicit knowledge of the morphemic structure of words continues to develop through the high school years (Anglin, 1993; Carlisle, 2000; Tyler and Nagy, 1989) and even through adulthood (Carlisle and Katz, 2006). Second, variation in morphological awareness among students at any level is considerable. Even within a sample of native English speakers in schools with low percentages of low-income students, Nagy et al. (2006) reported substantial variation among students in the speed with which students through tenth grade decoded morphologically related words. Third, morphological knowledge fluctuates as a function of the features of words. Carlisle and Katz (2006) concluded that the ability even of adults to use knowledge of the base word to understand a derived word depends on a number of factors. Measures of familiarity, including derived and base word frequencies, family size, average family frequency, and word length formed two factors, one representing morphemic constitution and the second representing exposure to the word family; both factors accounted for significant variance in reading of derived words. To the extent that a morphologically complex word lacks transparency in sound, spelling, and meaning, its morphological composition can go unnoticed by a large portion of all of the children who encounter it (Templeton and Scarborough-Franks, 1985). Even with orthographic and phonological abilities accounted for, morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge correlate highly. Nagy et al. (2003) reported that this correlation was highest at grades 4 and 5 (r = .83). Beyond this level into high school, the correlation decreased slightly but morphological awareness contributed to reading comprehension, independent of its relation to vocabulary (Nagy et al. (2006).

Instruction and interventions The National Reading Panel (NRP, 2000) summarized the results of approximately 130 studies of phonological instruction. By contrast, Carlisle (2008) located 16 studies on the instruction of morphology. Of these 16 studies, six were conducted in languages other than English (Dutch, Spanish, Chinese). Since the morphological features of these languages are unique, the results of these studies cannot be generalized to morphology instruction in English. Of the ten studies conducted in English, one was conducted with deaf and hard of hearing students (Bow et al., 2004) and another with students with severe learning disabilities (Berninger et al., 2003). Another group of studies emphasized morphology in spelling (Bergisdottir et al., 2006; Nunes et al., 2003) – findings that are difficult to generalize, since facility with morphological knowledge differs in productive and receptive modes (Carlisle and Katz, 2006). In addition to the five studies (Baumann et al., 2002; Baumann et al., 2003; Carlo et al., 2004; Henry, 1989; Parel, 2006) that were conducted in English, our review for this chapter produced a handful of studies (Graves and Hammond, 1980; Nicol, 1980; Wysocki and Jenkins, 1987). An overall conclusion of this research is that instruction regarding the morphological structure of English typically proves to be advantageous 89

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for students. Even so, the diversity of linguistic focus and instructional activities and methods means that few definitive conclusions made can be made about what aspects of morphology most benefit from instruction and how this instruction can best occur. One question, in particular, pertains to whether instruction should focus on the meanings of specific affixes or take a more metalinguistic stance that develops awareness of affixes and of root words. The former perspective has dominated in the existing research. For example, Nicol (1980) taught eight prefixes to fourth through sixth-grade students in three 30-minute sessions. On both immediate and delayed transfer tests, instructed students performed significantly better than an uninstructed control group. Further, students of all achievement levels (high, middle, low) and at all three grade levels benefited from this instruction. Baumann et al. (2002) compared students’ performance in four treatments: prefix content, context clue strategies, a prefix-context clue combination, and typical instruction. Students were more effective on the content that they were taught. That is, students who were taught prefixes used prefixes more effectively, whereas students who were taught context clues performed better on the test of context clues. Those students who received the combined treatment, however, did as well on both tasks as those students whose instruction had focused on one or the other of the content. In a second study, Baumann et al. (2003) taught prefixes and suffixes (a total of 20 affixes) plus the use of a context strategy within social studies classes. The affix/context clue instruction was compared with instruction in the key vocabulary of the social studies units. The affix/context group outperformed the vocabulary only group on tests of taught affixes in novel words, while the vocabulary only group had higher performances on the specific vocabulary of the social studies units. On measures of social studies content and on a comprehension measure, the two groups did not differ. Further, students of high and low proficiency benefited equally from both forms of instruction. A study conducted by White et al. (1989) focused on a set of highly frequent prefixes and a strategy for removing the suffixes of words. Students who received the instruction outperformed uninstructed control students on a test that required them to extract root words by removing a suffix, a test identifying the meaning of the prefixed word when given the base word, and a test on the meanings of the prefixes. The strategy for suffix removal taught in the White et al. (1989) study is moving in the direction of what we might term a metalinguistic approach, where the emphasis is on students’ awareness of affixes and ways to think about those affixes rather than on instruction of the meanings of affixes. Another form of metalinguistic awareness of morphology has been developed by Henry (1989). In this work, students have been taught to distinguish between lettersound correspondences and morpheme patterns on the basis of words’ origins (AngloSaxon, French/Latin, Greek). Those students receiving instruction based on word structure and word origin learned more about the structure of English orthography and also made greater gains in reading and spelling performance than control students. Henry’s (1989) findings suggest an integrative approach to teaching morphology, where the emphasis is not on defining prefixes but on using the prefixes in the context of words, sentences, and texts to understand the meanings of words. Such a strategy places priority on gaining a sense of what morphemes do to the meanings of words rather than ensuring that every prefix has been taught and learned. Graves (2006) suggests that the 20 most frequent prefixes identified by White et al. (1989) can be taught 90

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across several grade levels, beginning with grade four. He hypothesizes that this instruction will likely be sufficient in ensuring that students have sufficient morphological awareness to handle the words in grade-level texts. Even more so than with prefixes, a metalinguistic stance toward suffixes is needed. The meanings of suffixes are sufficiently diverse and, coming at the end of the word, mean that students have already had a clue to word meaning from the root word and any prefixes. With respect to whether the content of suffixes should be taught, Graves (2006) cautions that most derivational suffixes are abstract and difficult to explain, making explanations to elementary students difficult and the result often confusing for students. Graves reminds us of Thorndike’s (1941) advice that systematic instruction in derivational suffixes ought to be reserved for secondary students.

Compound words and phrases Definitions and descriptions While compounding forms the widest-spread morphological technique to create words and is present in all languages (Dressler, 2006), it is more prevalent in some languages than in others. In German – the language most closely associated with English historically – compounding is the primary means of forming new words. While many words in academic text have French and Latin origins, 85 per cent of the 1,000 most common words have German or Danish roots (Williams, 1975). Many of these words are used in compound words (e.g. over, under, to). The Germanic roots of English are the basis for forming a compound word from two or more autonomous words (e.g. cupcake, bean counter). Only a small group of words called the ‘cranberry morphs’ belong to the type of compound words in which all constituent words are not autonomous (e.g. cran-berry, boysen-berry). A set of compounds with bound morphemes is labelled as neoclassical compounds (Dressler, 2006) (e.g. heliography, bibliography). New words continue to be added to English at a rapid pace through compounding. Bauer and Renouf (2001), in examining a database of approximately nine million words from a British newspaper (The Independent) for neologistic compounds, identified approximately 3,000 from 1988 to 1998. In fact, provided there is a conceivable meaning, a limitless number of English compounds could be formed (Carstairs-McCarthy, 2005). Within the compound words that take the Germanic structure, conventions vary: one word (blackboard), hyphenated (stir-fry), or two or more separate words (toy factory). Compounds also represent different grammatical classes: compound verbs ( freeze-dry), compound adjectives (blue-green) and compound nouns (glowworm) (Packard, 2000). Compound nouns are the most common and the noun-noun (text message) is the most common of the compound nouns (Bauer, 1987), although other word classes are also used to form compound nouns, including verb-noun (swearword), adjective-noun ( faint heart), and preposition-noun (underarm). Verb compound verbs can be formed in a number of ways as well: two verbs (stir-fry), a noun/verb (sportswear), adjective/verb (dry-clean), or preposition/verb (undercut). Of these verb compounds, only the preposition/verb is common. Adjective compounds are also formed by joining different grammatical classes: noun/adjective (winter green), 91

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two adjectives (squeaky-clean), and preposition/adjective (overaggressive). As with compound verbs, the preposition/adjective compound is the most common. Another distinction of compound words has to do with their meaning (Miller, 1996). Of the four semantic classes of compound words, endocentric compounds are the most straightforward. Endocentric compounds basically take on the meaning of the final word in the pair with the first word modifying it (e.g. doghouse, rainwater). Exocentric compounds do not have a primary or headword and their meanings are typically not evident from the meanings of the constituents (e.g. white-collar, mushroom). Copulative compounds have two semantic head words that are incorporated into the meaning of the compound word (e.g. sleepwalk, bittersweet), while appositional compounds bring together two attributes or descriptions of the same referent that are, in themselves, not the same (e.g. actor-director, maidservant). There is also a form of compounding common to all languages that becomes increasingly more critical, especially for those learning English as a second or third language – the complex phrases of academic texts. To all intents and purposes, phrases such as climate change or behaviour pattern function as compound words in academic subject areas. Even in the primary grades, these phrases are frequent, as evident in Marzano’s (2004) list of content area vocabulary. In science, 32 per cent of grade K-2 vocabulary consists of two or more distinct words but are presented as a single idea (e.g. seasonal change). In general history terms, many words are recognizable as compound words (e.g. cowboy, newcomer) and an additional 36 per cent consist of two or more words that are not co-joined or hyphenated (e.g. ancient times, human rights). We are going to describe these phrases as compound phrases rather than as phrasal compounds which, in linguistics, have come to have a specific meaning (e.g. winnertake-all struggle). The compound phrase, as we define it, has a looser association than the phrasal compounds that are a focus of linguistics. Writers and specialists, however, use these compound phrases with the expectation that their readers – even young students as well as English language learners (ELLs) – give a unique meaning to their contents.

Developmental progressions Much of the research on the learning and instruction of morphology has been done with inflections and derivations, likely because of the role that these two processes have in western languages (Zhang et al., 2007). In doing the research for this chapter, we found frequent comments that students develop knowledge of compound words with ease. Evidence for this statement, however, was scant. To proficient readers of English, many compound words may appear straightforward in meaning. For novice readers and ELLs, the structure and meanings of these words may not be as evident. In one of the few studies that has been done on the factors that influence compound processing, Juhasz et al. (2003) considered the effects of compound familiarity and sentence type on compound processing. They found that compound words with a high frequency root word were read faster than mono-morphemic words matched for length and frequency. Further, the size of the morphological family and the number of high frequency morphological family members of the root word significantly affected compound word reading time. One of the few studies to consider the nature of compound knowledge to reading comprehension was conducted by Nagy et al. (2003). They administered a measure developed by Berninger and Nagy (1999) in which students were asked to identify 92

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names for novel situations (e.g. Which is a better name for a bee that lives in the grass, a grass bee or bee grass? Expected answer: grass bee). Performances on this task made a unique contribution to reading comprehension above and beyond vocabulary knowledge for students who ranged in age and proficiency (second and fourth graders and at-risk and average readers). Most of the research on compounding has involved cross-language comparisons (see e.g. Libben and Jarema, 2006), due to the differences in compounding across languages. One particular language of interest has been Chinese because of the prominence of compounding in its morphology and the presence of few inflections and derivations (Packard, 2000). To test the hypothesis that fluency in compounding is more important in learning to read in Chinese than in English, Zhang et al. (2007) asked Chinese and American second-, fourth-, sixth-graders, and college undergraduates to complete a compound structure analogy task in their native language. Half of the compounds were familiar and half novel. Chinese participants at every age and on every type of compound performed better than their American counterparts.

Instruction and interventions on compounding Instruction of compound words can be assumed to have been part of at least some of the instructional studies of morphology in languages such as Danish and Chinese that Carlisle (2008) reviewed, since compounding is a primary morphological structure in these languages. In relation to studies of the instruction of compounding in English, however, the studies have been sparse. We found one study where the explicit goal was to teach compound words – and this study was conducted with Chinese speakers: Zhang et al. (in press). The authors claim that theirs is among the first experimental demonstrations of crosslanguage transfer of an aspect of compounding. Our review of the literature suggests this may well be the first instructional study focused specifically on compounds. In the Zhang et al. (in press) study, Chinese fifth graders received instruction in the morphology of compound words in either Chinese or English for 45 minutes. They then completed Chinese and English versions of a compound word structure analogy task. Compared with children who received no instruction, children who received instruction in Chinese were able to transfer knowledge they had acquired of compound types in Chinese to comparable types in English. Reverse transfer from English to Chinese was found among children with high reading proficiency. The research literature is not the only context in which attention to compounding in English has been sparse; that is also the case within the pedagogical literature. Pages devoted to instruction of compound words in volumes on vocabulary instruction (e.g. Henry, 2003; Moats, 2000) are few and, in some cases, lacking altogether (Graves, 2006). One explanation for this lack of attention is suggested by Henry’s comment that the meanings of compound words are fairly straightforward. While this may be true for some compound words, it is not the case with many compound words. For example two compound words that are relatively similar can differ substantially in their meanings (e.g. runway, runaway). Further, the reasons for the choices within compound words are not necessarily obvious (e.g. cowboy but not cattleboy; cattlemen but not cowman). What form does effective instruction take in compound words? We have found no instructional studies that focused specifically on becoming more adept in awareness of 93

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compound words in English. But, while the literature is small, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests directions for instruction that will support morphological awareness of compounds in English. When the focus is on supporting morphological awareness, the intent is not to ensure that every compound word is introduced, but rather that students learn that words can combine in different ways to form new words. Often, when compound words are discussed in pedagogical sources, activities that can best be described as word play are recommended. Activities such as creating or choosing definitions for novel items (as evident in Berninger and Nagy’s (1999) assessment task of bee grass or grass bee) illustrate word play. While a playful perspective is appropriate with compound words, they are simply too important a morphological structure in English to be marginalized to a ‘fun’ activity that is left for rainy Friday afternoons in February. Other than inflected endings, compound words are typically the first multisyllabic words that students experience. When we examined the first-grade texts of a prominent core reading programme (Afflerbach et al., 2007), we found a high percentage of multisyllabic words, many of which were compound words. A first aim of instruction might be to show how highly prolific words – at least in the texts of beginning readers – can be generated. Particular words among the 100 most frequent – where, every, to, day – are particularly prolific within compound words and could be part of a curriculum on compound words. As students move toward the end of the elementary years and into junior and secondary school, lessons could focus on particular classes of compound words. These lessons do not need to be overly didactic but can make explicit fundamental distinctions, such as the underlying structures (e.g. noun + noun, verb + noun). These lessons can also be conceptual by examining the creation of new vocabulary that accompanies a new invention or field (e.g. aircraft, airplane, spacecraft, space shuttle). Ganske (2008) has described the study of compound words as an excellent means of introducing students to words of more than one syllable. We are confident that the single most lacking area at the present time in beginning reading instruction in the US is the failure to guide students in strategies for dealing with the many multisyllabic words in their texts. Attention to compound words in the primary grades represents the first stage in ensuring that students are developing confidence in and strategies for decoding and understanding the meaning of multisyllabic words.

Conclusion There is much to study about the learning of English, particularly about what can and should be taught with regard to morphology. What is beginning to happen – and it can’t happen soon enough or extensively enough – is attention to morphology. To become a proficient reader of English requires that individuals become adept with and learn about its unique morphological systems that include both the derivational morphemes of Romance languages and the compounds of Germanic languages. As morphology is increasingly drawing the attention of researchers and educators, it is the derivations of the Romance contributions to English that are receiving attention. This attention is sorely needed. But, at the same time, the human proclivity to invent and create is evident in the compounds of English. Language evolves daily and the addition of ideas, interpretations of ideas, and inventions are represented in language and also evident in social discourse, as individuals 94

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invent and reinvent language. As the premier language of earth at the current time, English is a primary context for this invention and reinvention. Manipulating existing words into new phrases and orders is one of the ways in which this invention and reinvention occurs. For individuals learning to read in English, we propose that developing an awareness of compounding is essential. We would go so far as to say that, even at the earliest stages of reading, where compound words are among the first multisyllabic words that students encounter, deliberate instruction on compounding is essential.

References Afflerbach, P., Blachowicz, C.L.Z., Boyd, C.D., Cheyney, W., Juel, C., Kame’enui, E. et al. (2007). Reading Street. Glenview, IL: Pearson/Scott Foresman. Anglin, J.M. (1993). Vocabulary Development: A morphological analysis. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 58(10, Serial No. 238). Barber, C. (2000). The English Language: A historical introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bauer, L. (1987). English Word-formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bauer, L. and Renouf, A. (2001). A Corpus-based Study of Compounding in English. Journal of English Linguistics 29: 101–23. Baumann, J.F., Edwards, E.C., Boland, E., Olejnik, S. and Kame’enui, E.J. (2003). Vocabulary Tricks: Effects of instruction in morphology and context on fifth-grade students’ ability to derive and infer word meanings. American Research Educational Journal 40: 447–94. Baumann, J.F., Edwards, E.C., Font, G., Tereshinski, C.A., Kame’enui, E.J. and Olejnik, S. (2002). Teaching Morphemic and Contextual Analysis to Fifth-grade Students. Reading Research Quarterly 37: 150–76. Bergisdottir, F., Nunes, T., Pretzlik, U., Burman, D., Gardner, S. and Bell, D. (2006). An Intervention Program for Teaching Children about Morphemes in the Classroom: Effects on spelling. In T. Nunes and P. Bryant (Eds) Improving Literacy by Teaching Morphemes. London: Routledge, pp. 104–20. Berko, J. (1958). The Child’s Learning of English Morphology. Word 14: 150–77. Berninger, V. and Nagy, W. (1999). ‘University of Washington morphological awareness battery’, unpublished experimental test battery. Seattle, WA. Berninger, V., Nagy, W.E., Carlisle, J.F., Thomson, J., Hoffer, D., Abbott, S. et al. (2003). Effective Treatment for Children with Dyslexia in Grades 4–6: Behavioral and brain evidence. In B. Foorman (Ed.) Preventing and Remediating Reading Difficulties: Bringing science to scale. Baltimore, MD: York Press, pp. 281–347. Bow, C.P., Blamey, P.J., Paatsch, L.E. and Sarant, J.Z. (2004). The Effects of Phonological and Morphological Training on Speech Perception Scores and Grammatical Judgments in Deaf and Hard-of-hearing Children. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 9: 305–15. Carlisle, J.F. (2000). Awareness of the Structure and Meaning of Morphologically Complex Words: Impact on reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12: 169–90. Carlisle, J.F. (2008). ‘What do we know about instruction in morphology? A literature review’. Paper presented in the Vocabulary SIG Symposium on Morphology at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, March. Carlisle, J.F. and Katz, L. (2006). Effects of Word and Morpheme Familiarity on Reading of Derived Words. Reading and Writing 19(7): 669–93. Carlo, M.S., August, D., McLaughlin, B., Snow, C.E., Dressler, C., Lippman, D.N. et al. (2004). Closing the Gap: Addressing the vocabulary needs of English-language learners in bilingual and mainstream classrooms. Reading Research Quarterly 39(2): 188–215.

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Carstairs-McCarthy, A. (2005). The Evolutionary Origin of Morphology. In M. Tallerman (Ed.) Language Origins: Perspectives on evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dressler, W.U. (2006). Compound Types. In G. Libben and G. Jarema (Eds) The Representation and Processing of Compound Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 23–44. Ganske, K. (2008). Mindful of Words: Spelling and vocabulary explorations 4–8. New York: Guilford. Graves, M.F. (2006). The Vocabulary Book. New York: Teachers College Press. Graves, M.F. and Hammond, H.K. (1980). A Validated Procedure for Teaching Prefixes and its Effect on Students’ Ability to Assign Meaning to Novel Words. In M.L. Kamil and A.J. Moe (Eds) Perspectives on Reading Research and Instruction. Washington, DC: National Reading Conference, pp. 184–88. Henry, M.K. (1989). Children’s Word Structure Knowledge: Implications for decoding and spelling instruction. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2: 135–52. Henry, M.K. (2003). Unlocking Literacy: Effective decoding and spelling instruction. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes. Hiebert, E.H. (2008). The (Mis)match between Texts and Students who Depend on Schools to Become Literate. In E.H. Hiebert and M. Sailors (Eds) Finding the Right Texts: What works for beginning and struggling readers: Research-based solutions. New York: Guilford, pp. 1–22. Juhasz, B.J., Starr, M.S., Inhoff, A.W. and Placke, L. (2003). The Effects of Morphology on the Processing of Compound Words: Evidence from naming, lexical decisions and eye fixations. British Journal of Psychology 94: 223–44. Kuo, L., & Anderson, R.C. (2006). Morphological awareness and learning to Read: A cross-language perspective. Educational Psychologist 41(3): 161–80. Libben, G. and Jarema, G. (Eds) (2006) The Representation and Processing of Compound Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marzano, R.J. (2004). Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement: Research on what works in schools. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. Miller, G.A. (1996). The Science of Words. New York: Scientific American Library. Moats, L.C. (2000). Speech to Print: Language essentials for teachers. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes. Nagy, W.E. and Anderson, R.C. (1984). How Many Words are there in Printed School English? Reading Research Quarterly 19(3): 304–30. Nagy, W.E., Berninger, V.W. and Abbott, R.C. (2006). Contributions of Morphology beyond Phonology to Literacy Outcomes of Upper Elementary and Middle-school Students. Journal of Educational Psychology 98: 134–47. Nagy, W., Anderson, R.C., Schommer, M., Scott, J.A. and Stallman, A.C. (1989). Morphological Families in the Internal Lexicon. Reading Research Quarterly 24: 262–82. Nagy, W.E., Berninger, V.W., Abbott, R.C., Vaughan, K. and Vermeulen, K. (2003). Relationship of Morphology and Other Language Skills to Literacy Skills in at-risk Second-grade Readers and at-risk Fourth-grade Writers. Journal of Educational Psychology 95: 730–42. National Reading Panel (NRP) (2000). Teaching Children to Read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Nicol, J.A. (1980). ‘Effects of prefix instruction on students’ vocabulary size’. Unpublished masters thesis, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. Nunes, T., Bryant, P. and Olsson, J. (2003). Learning Morphological and Phonological Spelling Rules: An intervention study. Scientific Studies of Reading 7: 289–307. Packard, J.L. (2000). The Morphology of Chinese: A linguistic and cognitive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Parel, R. (2006). The Impact of Training in Morphological Analysis on Literacy in the Primary Grades. International Journal of Literacy 13: 119–28.

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Templeton, S. and Scarborough-Franks, L. (1985). The Spelling’s the Thing: Older students’ knowledge of derivational morphology in phonology and orthography. Applied Psycholinguistics 6: 371–89. Thorndike, E.L. (1941). The Teaching of English Suffixes. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University. Tyler, A. and Nagy, W. (1989). The Acquisition of English Derivational Morphology. Journal of Memory and Language 28: 649–67. Tyler, A. and Nagy, W.E. (1990). Use of Derivational Morphology during Reading. Cognition 36: 17–34. White, T.G., Power, M.A. and White, S. (1989). Morphological Analysis: Implication for teaching and understanding vocabulary growth. Reading Research Quarterly 24: 283–304. Williams, M.J. (1975). Origins of the English Language: A social and linguistic history. New York: The Free Press. Wysocki, K. and Jenkins, J.R. (1987). Deriving Word Meanings through Morphological Generalization. Reading Research Quarterly 22(1): 66–81. Zhang, J., Anderson, R.C., Packard, J., Wu, X. and Tang, S. (2007). Development of Knowledge about Compound Word Structures in Chinese and English. Champaign, IL: Center for the Study of Reading. Zhang, J., Anderson, R.C., Li, H., Dong, Q., Wu, X. and Zhang, Y. (in press). Cross-language Transfer of Insight into the Structure of Compound Words. Reading and Writing Quarterly.

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9 Phonological development across different languages1 Usha Goswami

Introduction When babies are learning language, where do they begin? Theories of language acquisition used to assume that they began with the ‘phoneme’. ‘Phoneme’ is a term used to refer to the individual sound elements that appear to make up words in languages. As literate adults, we hear these ‘phonemes’ very easily. We hear a spoken word like ‘cat’, and we hear three sound elements, that correspond to the ‘sounds’ made by the letters C, A and T. Classical linguistics assumed that all languages were based on two types of phoneme: consonant (C) phonemes and vowel (V) phonemes. The elements used in a particular language were thought to be selected from a repertoire of around 600 consonants and 200 vowels that were distinctive to the human brain. Very recently, linguists have begun to revise these assumptions. For example Port (2007) commented it seems intuitively obvious that speech presents itself to our consciousness in the form of letter-like symbolic units. When we hear someone say ‘tomato’, we seem to hear it as a sequence of consonant and vowel sound units … [yet] there is virtually no evidence that supports the traditional view of linguistic representation. (Port, 2007: 143–4) Port (2007) then systematically reviewed the linguistic evidence, assessing cherished assumptions, such as the existence of a ‘universal phonetic inventory’, whereby phonetic features from one language will overlap with those from another, since they are drawn from the same universal superset. He showed all these assumptions to be false. Where does such major theoretical revision leave babies who are learning to speak, and where does it leave literacy teachers who are helping children to learn to read?

1 Usha Goswami’s research is funded by the Medical Research Council, Ref. G0400574.

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The short answer is, that it doesn’t matter for babies, but it matters rather a lot for teachers of literacy. This is because once we are literate ourselves, we can no longer perceive speech the way that a pre-literate child perceives speech. This makes it more challenging to teach literacy, as we are teaching children to hear sounds that we ourselves perceive to be fundamental to spoken words, but which are not in fact fundamental to spoken words. As Frith (1998) has pointed out, the acquisition of the alphabetic code is like catching a virus: ‘This virus infects all speech processing, as now whole word sounds are automatically broken up into sound constituents. Language is never the same again’ (p. 1051). There is growing evidence in the cognitive neuroscience literature that learning to read changes the brain, and growing understanding of how this occurs (see Goswami, 2008, for a simple review). In particular, there are experiments with adults showing that learning spelling patterns affects phonological (spoken language) judgements. For example adults are slower to decide that the spoken word ‘sign’ is a real word than they are for ‘wine’, because the spelling pattern ‘-ign’ is less frequent, even though the spoken frequency of the words is similar (Ziegler et al., 2004). Although we as literate adults automatically hear spoken language as sequences of consonant and vowel sound units that are inextricably linked to overlearned letter sequences, children hear acoustically complex patterns that are linked to meanings. In learning letter-sound correspondences, children need to learn to pick out certain aspects of these complex representations, and ignore others. Many children can learn this easily, but others cannot. These individual differences in ease of learning are predicted by children’s ‘phonological awareness’ skills. In this chapter, I will attempt an overview of our current understanding regarding these aspects of phonological development. I will not, however, review the database for the theoretical claims made by Port (2007) and others, as it is quite large and beyond the scope of this chapter. Nevertheless, this database is important, and it is leading to radical revision of theoretical phonology and linguistics. The interested reader is referred to Pierrehumbert (2003); Port (2007) and; Vihman and Croft (2007). Here, I will consider the contributions of developmental phonology and of experimental studies of phonological development to the challenges facing literacy teachers of English.

The core aspects of phonological development Let us return to the question of where babies begin when they are learning spoken language. The new view in developmental phonology is that they learn language-specific ‘phonotactic templates’ (Vihman and Croft, 2007). A phonotactic template is essentially a phonological pattern. As such, it contains variations in sound intensity, pitch, duration and rhythm which together constitute a unit, usually of meaning. A common template for English is a bi-syllabic pattern with stronger first syllable stress (a strong – weak stress template). The ‘strong’ first syllable is typically louder, longer and higher in pitch than the second syllable. Familiar words that follow this pattern are ‘Mummy’, ‘Daddy’, ‘biscuit’ and ‘baby’. This rhythmic pattern is so strong in English that we often change the words we use with babies and young children to conform to this pattern (‘milkie’, ‘doggie’). Developmental phonologists like Vihman and Croft (2007) argue that babies’ own babbling also conforms to these rhythmic patterns. Babies do not babble singlesyllable words. So both perception and production appear to converge onto these rhythmic templates. 99

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The linguist Pierrehumbert (2003) calls these first acquisitions ‘prosodic structures’. Importantly, however, typical prosodic structures or phonotactic templates vary across languages. In French, for example the dominant prosodic pattern is to lengthen the final syllable. Similarly, although all languages are rhythmic, languages conform to different rhythm ‘types’. Whereas English is a stress-timed language, with its rhythm determined by the stressing of syllables that occur at roughly equal intervals in speech, French is a syllable-timed language, with its rhythm determined by stressing the last syllable in a particular word. Clearly, for non-native speakers of English, the phonotactic templates that organize a pre-literate child’s phonological development may be rather different from the templates that govern phonological development in English. This will naturally have implications for learning to be literate in English.

Cross-language similarities Nevertheless, there are a number of important similarities in phonological organization across languages. For example when mothers and fathers talk to their babies, they talk in a particular way (called Motherese, or Infant-directed Speech). This way of talking emphasizes prosodic cues: pitch is typically heightened, duration is increased and rhythm and intonation are exaggerated. These features are found across the world’s languages (Fernald et al., 1989), and the use of infant-directed speech is universal because it appears to have a language-learning function, for example in word boundary segmentation (e.g. Echols, 1996). So the acoustic features that are important for phonology seem to be similar across languages. Another critical universal feature with respect to becoming literate is that the syllable is the primary perceptual unit in all languages. Again, although most of the experimental data for this insight has come from adult work (e.g. Greenberg and Ainsworth, 2006), some of the data comes from experiments with young children. When young children are asked to reflect upon spoken language and perform ‘phonological awareness’ tasks, they do so most easily at the syllable level. This can be illustrated by considering young children’s performance in the different cognitive tasks that have been used across languages as measures of syllable awareness. Children can be asked to tap once with a stick for each syllable in a word (e.g. president = 3 taps), to put out a counter for each syllable in a word (e.g. telephone = 3 counters), or to make ‘same–different’ judgements about words (e.g. whether ‘hammer’ and ‘hammock’ share a syllable). Children across languages generally show high levels of performance in tasks measuring their awareness of syllabic structure, from age 3–4 years (e.g. Liberman et al., 1974; Cossu et al., 1988; Treiman and Zukowski, 1991). For example in Treiman and Zukowski’s same–different judgement task 100 per cent of five-year-olds, 90 per cent of six-year-olds, and 100 per cent of seven-year-olds made accurate same– different judgments about syllables. Similar data have been reported for Turkish kindergartners (Durgunoglu and Oney, 1999), who tapped out 94 per cent of syllable structures correctly; Norwegian kindergartners, who counted out 83 per cent of syllable structures correctly (Hoien et al., 1995); and German kindergarten children, who performed at 81 per cent correct in a syllable counting task (Wimmer, Landerl, Linortner & Hummer, 1991. These data show that when pre-reading children are asked to reflect upon the phonological structure of spoken language at the syllable level, they can perform extremely well, across languages. 100

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Cross-language differences Despite the ubiquity of the syllable as a perceptual linguistic unit across languages, structural elements of the syllable will vary across languages. Examples of factors that vary systematically include the number of sound elements within syllables (syllable complexity – a consonant-vowel (CV) syllable is ‘simple’, a CCVCC syllable is ‘complex’); the types of sound elements within syllables (‘sonority profile’); and phonological ‘neighborhood density’ (the number of similar-sounding syllables to a particular target syllable in a given language). These factors will all affect the development of phonology and phonological awareness in young children. Syllable complexity Taking syllable complexity first, it is striking that most world languages have syllables with a simple structure. To the literate brain, these languages comprise syllables with a consonant unit followed by a vowel unit. We might expect that it is easier to become ‘phonologically aware’ of the individual sound elements in syllables that have this simple CV structure. The English language has primarily complex syllables. The primary structure in English is CVC. For single syllable words (of which English has more than most languages), this structure accounts for 43 per cent of monosyllables (e.g. ‘cat’, ‘dog’, ‘soap’, ‘look’; see De Cara and Goswami, 2002). English also has many CCVC syllables (15 per cent of monosyllables, e.g. ‘trip’, ‘plan’ and ‘spin’); CVCC syllables (21 per cent of monosyllables, e.g. ‘fast’, ‘pant’ and ‘jump’), and some CCVCC syllables (six per cent, e.g. ‘crust’). Only five per cent of monosyllabic words follow the CV pattern (‘sea’, ‘go’, ‘do’). It is perceptually challenging to segment a complex syllable like ‘pant’ into four distinct elements, which is why children often omit sounds like the penultimate consonant phoneme when they learn to spell (e.g. writing PAT for ‘pant’) (Treiman, 1998). Note also that the dominant phonological CVC template in English does not necessarily correspond to a CVC spelling – ‘soap’, ‘look’, and all ‘magic E’ words like ‘cake’ and ‘time’ follow a CVC phonological pattern. However, if a child spells these words using a CVC orthographic pattern (for example SOP, TIM) – this spelling is wrong. Children’s ‘invented spellings’ are actually a rich source for understanding their phonological insights (see Read, 1986; Treiman, 1993; for systematic analyses). Sonority profile The types of sound elements that comprise syllables also vary across languages. This variation is described by the linguistic term ‘sonority profile’. Vowels are the most sonorant sounds that we can make, followed in decreasing order by glides (e.g. /w/), liquids (e.g. /l/), nasals (e.g. /n/), and obstruents or plosive sounds (e.g. /p/, /d/, /t/). Linguists have debated whether there is an optimal sonority profile, namely a profile that is frequently represented across languages because it is easy to produce (e.g. Clements, 1990). For example more sonorant sounds should be nearer to the vowel (we say ‘tra’ but not ‘rta’). The majority of syllables in English end with obstruents (such as ‘dog’ and ‘cat’ – around 40 per cent). In contrast, the majority of syllables in French either end in liquids or have no coda at all (almost 50 per cent). To date, the effects of sonority profile with respect to the development of phonological awareness have not been investigated

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systematically across languages. Nevertheless, a priori it seems likely that sonority profile will have important effects on children’s ability to segment syllables into smaller elements of sound (De Cara et al, 2001). Phonological neighbourhood density Phonological neighbourhood density is an interesting structural factor. It was originally proposed by psycholinguists working within the theoretical perspective of ‘phonemic phonology’ as a metric for describing similarities and differences between words in terms of shared phonemes (e.g. Landauer and Streeter, 1973; Luce and Pisoni, 1998). However, when phonological neighbourhood density was analysed for spoken English, it turned out to highlight the perceptual salience of phonological similarity at the level of rhyme (De Cara and Goswami, 2002). In these analyses, phonological ‘neighbours’ are defined as words that sound similar to each other. The classical linguistic definition of a phonological neighbourhood is the set of words generated by the addition, deletion or substitution of one phoneme to the target (e.g. Landauer and Streeter, 1973; Luce and Pisoni, 1998). For example the neighbours of the target ram would include ramp, am, rap and rim. When many words resemble the target, the neighbourhood is said to be dense. When few words resemble the target, the neighbourhood is said to be sparse. Neighbourhood density is highly correlated with another measure of syllable structure called phonotactic probability (Vitevitch et al., 1999). Phonotactic probability is the frequency with which particular sequences of sound elements occur in words in the English language ( Jusczyk, Luce & Charles-Luce, 1994). Words that have many phonological neighbours tend to be made up of sound elements that are frequent in occurrence. Developmental psycholinguists quickly pointed out that if phonological neighbourhood density was to be used as a developmental metric, it was necessary to redefine the concept of a phonological ‘neighbour’. Dollaghan (1994) reported that the onephoneme-different criterion of a phonological neighbourhood led to many intuitively dissatisfying exclusions when she attempted to calculate children’s phonological neighbourhoods. For example the one-phoneme different criterion excluded many rhyme neighbours, such as clock and sock (you cannot create clock by adding or substituting a single phoneme of sock). De Cara and Goswami (2002) provided empirical data that supported Dollaghan’s view. They calculated phonological similarity neighbourhoods on the basis of the addition, substitution or deletion of a single onset, nucleus or coda. The onset is a linguistic unit corresponding to any consonant phonemes before the vowel in a syllable (such as the ‘cl’ sound in clock and the ‘str’’ sound in string). The nucleus is the linguistic term for the vowel, and the coda is a linguistic unit corresponding to any consonant phonemes after the vowel in a syllable, such as the /k/ sound in clock or the sound made by the letters ‘mp’ in jump. Linguists also use the term rime to refer to the unit comprising the nucleus and coda in any syllable. While rime and rhyme are the same sound unit for monosyllabic words, they differ for bisyllabic words. Although ‘mountain’ rhymes with ‘fountain’, it does not rhyme with ‘captain’. The individual rimes in each syllable in these words are the sound patterns made by the letter strings ‘ount’, ‘ain’ and ‘ap’. The statistical analyses of De Cara and Goswami (2002) were carried out for all monosyllabic English words in the CELEX corpus (4,086 words; Baayen et al., 1993), and for a number of smaller English lexica that were controlled for age of acquisition.

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These statistical analyses showed that most phonological neighbours in English are rime neighbours (e.g. clock/sock). This means that the phonology of English is rhyme-based, at least at the monosyllabic level. An example of a dense phonological neighbourhood in English is words that rhyme with fair. An example of a sparse phonological neighbourhood in English is words that rhyme with moth. In later work (Ziegler and Goswami, 2005), we carried out similar statistical analyses for German, French and Dutch. The German and Dutch analyses were based on the monosyllabic words in the CELEX database (Baayen et al., 1993), and the French analyses were based on the monosyllabic words in BRULEX (Content et al., 1990). The analyses showed that rime neighbours predominate in French, Dutch and German phonology as well. In all of these languages, the percentage of rime neighbours in the monosyllabic lexicon is between 40 per cent and 50 per cent.

Outstanding research questions Therefore, phonological neighbourhood density is a syllable-level factor that may be similar for some languages, and different for others. To date, to my knowledge, the effects of phonological neighbourhood density on the development of phonological awareness have only been examined for English. For English, words from dense phonological neighbourhoods are easier to identify in rhyme judgement tasks (De Cara and Goswami, 2003), and they are also easier to remember in short-term memory tasks (Thomson et al., 2005). Storkel (2001) reported that young children who were taught nonword labels for unfamiliar objects were more likely to acquire labels from dense neighbourhoods, and Metsala (1999) reported that three- and four-year-old children could blend spoken phonemes to yield words from dense neighbourhoods more easily than to yield words from sparse neighbourhoods. Hence this structural factor has an impact on children’s phonological development for English. It seems important to examine the effects of this factor systematically across languages. When languages share phonological structure at this level (e.g. if rime neighbours are dominant in English and French), then theoretically this should facilitate cross-language transfer of phonological awareness. Certainly, cross-language comparisons show that young children are phonologically aware of onsets and rhymes before they become literate in all languages so far studied (see Ziegler and Goswami, 2005, for a comprehensive review). This kind of information about phonological structure seems likely to be important for a systematic analysis of the acquisition of literacy in English by second language learners. Once we have systematic data showing the degree to which a child’s native language is similar to English in terms of syllable complexity, syllable sonority profile and phonological neighbourhood density, we may be able to predict the ease with which that child will become literate in English. For example sonority profile is similar for English and German syllables, but different for English and French. Prosodic templates are similar in English and German, but different in English and French. Theoretically, the number of shared versus dissimilar factors would be expected to affect the crosslanguage transfer of phonological awareness and the acquisition of literacy. However, these are empirical questions, and the data to answer them are not yet available. As well as yielding information important for predicting second language literacy acquisition, these linguistic factors may also affect second language spoken acquisition – at least, when the second language is acquired some time after birth. 103

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Re-representing phonology as letters are learned Information about the phonological structure of a language by itself, however, will only provide a partial answer to whether second language learners might find it easier or more difficult to acquire literacy in English. This is because, as already noted, the way in which the brain represents phonology changes as reading skills are acquired. As Port (2007) commented, once we are literate ‘speech [seems to present] itself to our consciousness in the form of letter-like symbolic units’. Hence the ease or difficulty with which the orthography of a language supports the development of these ‘letter-like symbolic units’ (classically, these units are called phonemes) will also play a role in literacy acquisition in different languages, and in the transfer of literacy skills between languages. This factor is called orthographic consistency or orthographic transparency. Elsewhere, we have provided detailed analyses to demonstrate that the orthographic consistency of different European languages has profound effects on how rapidly children learning those languages develop an awareness of phonemes (Ziegler and Goswami, 2005). Similarly, we have shown how differences in orthographic consistency are systematically related to how rapidly children learning different languages become efficient at single word reading (Ziegler and Goswami, 2005, 2006). Essentially, we demonstrated that children acquiring reading in languages that have high orthographic consistency, or largely one-to-one mappings between letters and sounds, learn about phonemes more rapidly. In these languages, for example Finnish, Greek, German, Spanish and Italian, a letter corresponds consistently to one phoneme. In contrast, languages like English, French, Portuguese and Danish have a one-tomany mapping between letters and phonemes. English has a particularly high level of orthographic inconsistency, as many letters or letter clusters can be pronounced in more than one way. Examples include O in ‘go’ and ‘do’, EA in ‘bead’ and ‘bread’, and G in ‘magic’ and ‘bag’ (see Berndt et al., 1987; Ziegler et al., 1997). Unsurprisingly, it is easier for a child to become aware of phonemes if one letter consistently maps to one and the same phoneme. Children learning to read languages like Finnish, Spanish and Italian acquire phoneme awareness relatively quickly. It is more difficult to learn about phonemes if a letter can be pronounced in multiple ways. Children learning to read languages like French and English acquire phoneme awareness more slowly (see Ziegler and Goswami, 2005, 2006, for more detailed evidence). A table showing cross-language variation in the development of phoneme awareness, based on the phoneme counting task, is provided as Table 9.1. Similar differences between languages are found if grapheme–phoneme recoding to sound is the dependent variable (i.e. if children are asked to read aloud simple words and nonwords). Seymour et al. (2003) reported enormous differences in reading achievement during the first year of literacy instruction using measures of word and nonword reading (the word and nonword items used in their study were matched across languages). For example whereas Finnish children were reading 98 per cent of simple words accurately, English children (in Scotland) were reading only 34 per cent of matched items correctly. Whereas Italian children were reading 95 per cent of items correctly, French children were reading 79 per cent of items correctly. These data are also included in Table 9.1. According to the theoretical analysis provided in this chapter, these cross-language differences in the development of phoneme awareness and simple reading skills are a product of both phonological factors and orthographic factors. Children learning to 104

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Table 9.1 Illustrative data (% correct) from studies comparing phoneme counting, simple word reading and nonword reading in different languages in Kindergarten or early Grade 1 Language

% phonemes counted correctly

% familiar real words read correctly8

% simple nonwords read correctly8

Greek Turkish Italian German Norwegian French English

981 942 973 814 835 736 707

98 – 95 98 92 79 34

97 – 92 98 93 88 41

Notes 1 = Harris and Giannouli, 1999 2 = Durgunoglu and Oney, 1999 3 = Cossu et al., 1988 4 = Hoien et al., 1995 5 = Wimmer et al., 1991 6 = Demont and Gombert, 1996 7 = Liberman et al., 1974 8 = Seymour et al., 2003 (familiar real words = content and function words, nonwords = monosyllabic items only).

read in languages like Finnish, Italian and Spanish are not only learning orthographically consistent languages, but they speak languages with predominantly CV syllables. This means that onset-rime segmentation and phonemic segmentation are equivalent, as well as letters and sounds (phonemes) being (largely) equivalent. In contrast, children who are learning to read in languages like English are not only learning an orthographicallyinconsistent language, they also speak a language with predominantly complex syllables. The cross-language comparisons noted in Table 9.1 are consistent with the proposal that it takes children longer to learn about phonemes and to become efficient in simple reading skills for languages like English and French compared to languages like Finnish, Italian and Spanish. However, another factor that is likely to be important for cross-language differences in phonological development is morphology (Goswami and Ziegler, 2006). Morphological changes are frequently signalled by phonological changes. As an example, in Turkish ‘evim’ means ‘in my house’ and ‘evin’ means ‘in your house’. As this single phoneme change (/m/ to /n/) is critical for language comprehension, it is a priori likely that Turkish morphology affects how rapidly Turkish children become aware of phonemes (Durgunoglu, 2006). However, at the time of writing, the cross-language database on how morphological differences affect phonological development is too small to attempt a systematic analysis.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have discussed a number of the linguistic factors that affect the development of phonological representations of spoken language by children, and I have also 105

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sketched out the transformative effects on phonological development of becoming literate in an alphabetic language. I have suggested that these same factors will affect how easily non-native speakers of English (such as migrant children and other second language learners) can learn to be literate in English, as well as (perhaps) acquire English phonology. Prior to schooling, the research evidence suggests that phonological development is affected by factors like the prosodic templates that characterize the spoken syllables in a language, the phonological complexity of syllable structure in that language, the sonority profile of the syllable and the phonological neighbourhood density characteristics of the spoken phonology. Phonological development is also likely to be affected by the morphology of a language, with agglutinative languages like Finnish and Turkish possibly facilitating the development of phoneme awareness. As schooling begins, orthographic consistency exerts further effects on phonological development. These effects are profound: as noted already, ‘language is never the same again’ (Frith, 1998: 1051). I have tried to show that psycholinguistics has come a long way in terms of recognizing which linguistic factors might be particularly worthy of study if we want a principled and systematic understanding of how to teach English literacy most effectively to second language learners. An overarching theoretical framework underpinning the discussion has been psycholinguistic grain size theory (Ziegler and Goswami, 2005, 2006). This offers a unifying theoretical framework for understanding the kinds of internal phonological representations that the brain will develop in response to learning both spoken and written language. For example the theory predicts that for a child exposed to a consistent orthography, these phonological representations will differ from the kinds of internal representations that the brain will develop if the same child is exposed to an inconsistent orthography. However, the effects of orthographic consistency and of the other factors discussed above can only be explored systematically if it is possible to devise language comparisons where all factors except one can be held constant. As languages vary naturally in many dimensions, this is difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, language pairings can be found that enable particular comparisons. For example English–German comparisons have been very fruitful, as English and German share phonological structure but differ in orthographic consistency. Studies exploring phonological development in these two languages suggest both system-wide effects of spelling consistency on phonological awareness, and item-specific effects (Goswami, Ziegler & Richardson, 2005). Learning to read in all languages depends on phonological awareness, but cross-language variation in prosodic templates, syllable structure and orthographic consistency lead to cross-language divergence in the development of phonemic awareness and the achievement of alphabetic literacy. The implications for teaching are various. For example within a particular language such as English, a better understanding of the importance for phonological development of factors like the complex syllable structure of spoken English, the importance of rhyme (via the neighbourhood density characteristics of English) and the stress-based prosodic system can help teachers to build a strong language foundation prior to literacy teaching that will facilitate the acquisition of alphabetic literacy. When teachers must instead teach children for whom English is a second language, then an appreciation of the nature of the prosodic templates that characterize the spoken syllables in the child’s first language, the phonological complexity of syllable structure in that language, the sonority profile of the syllable, and the phonological 106

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neighbourhood density characteristics of the spoken phonology, should all help to support teaching phonological awareness in English. Finally, if the child for whom English is a second language is already literate or partly literate in their first language, then an appreciation of the nature of the orthography of that first language (e.g. whether it is highly orthographically consistent) will help to identify areas of overlap and divergence with respect to teaching alphabetic literacy.

References Baayen, R.H., Piepenbrock, R. and van Rijn, H. (1993). The CELEX Lexical Database (CD-ROM). Philadelphia, PA: Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania. Berndt, R.S., Reggia, J.A. and Mitchum, C.C. (1987). Empirically Derived Probabilities for Grapheme-to-Phoneme Correspondences in English. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 19: 1–9. Clements, G.N. (1990). The Role of the Sonority Cycle in Core Syllabification. In J. Kingston and M. E. Beckman (Eds) Papers in Laboratory Phonology 1: Between the grammar and physics of speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 283–33. Content, A., Mousty, P. and Radeau, M. (1990). BRULEX: A computerized lexical data base for the French language/BRULEX. Une base de donnees lexicales informatisee pour le francais ecrit et parle. Annee Psychologique 90(4): 551–66. Cossu, G., Shankweiler, D., Liberman, I.Y., Katz, L.E. and Tola, G. (1988). Awareness of Phonological Segments and Reading Ability in Italian Children. Applied Psycholinguistics 9: 1–16. De Cara, B. and Goswami, U. (2002). Statistical Analysis of Similarity Relations among Spoken Words: Evidence for the special status of rimes in English. Behavioural Research Methods and Instrumentation 34(3): 416–23. De Cara, B. and Goswami, U. (2003). Phonological Neighbourhood Density: Effects in a rhyme awareness task in five-year-old children. Journal of Child Language 30: 695–710. De Cara, B., Goswami, U. and Fayol, M. (2001). Phonological Development and Spelling across Orthographies: Role of sonority and spelling-sound consistency. Paper presented at the XIIth conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology, Edinburgh, September. Demont, E. and Gombert, J.E. (1996). Phonological Awareness as a Predictor of Recoding Skills and Syntactic Awareness as a Predictor of Comprehension Skills. British Journal of Educational Psychology 66: 315–32. Dollaghan, C.A. (1994). Children’s Phonological Neighbourhoods: Half empty or half full? Journal of Child Language 257–71. Durgunoglu, A.Y. (2006). Learning to Read in Turkish. Developmental Science 9: 437–8. Durgunoglu, A.Y. and Oney, B. (1999). A Cross-linguistic Comparison of Phonological Awareness and Word Recognition. Reading & Writing 11: 281–99. Echols, C.H. (1996). A Role for Stress in Early Speech Segmentation. In J. L. Morgan and K. Demuth (Eds) Signal to Syntax: Bootstrapping from speech to grammar in early acquisition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 151–70. Fernald, A., Taeschner, T., Dunn, J., Papousek, M., Boysson-Bardies, B. and Fukui, I. (1989). A Cross-language Study of Prosodic Modifications in Mothers’ and Fathers’ Speech to Preverbal Infants. Journal of Child Language 16: 477–501. Frith, U. (1998). Editorial: Literally changing the brain. Brain 121: 1051–2. Goswami, U. (2008). Reading, Dyslexia and the Brain. Educational Research 50(2): 135–48. Goswami, U. and Ziegler, J.C. (2006). Fluency, Phonology and Morphology: A response to the commentaries on becoming literate in different languages. Developmental Science 9: 451–3.

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Goswami, U., Ziegler, J. and Richardson, U. (2005). The Effects of Spelling Consistency on Phonological Awareness: A comparison of English and German. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 92: 345–65. Greenberg, S. and Ainsworth, W. (Eds) (2006). Listening to Speech – An Auditory Perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Harris, M. and Giannouli, V. (1999). Learning to Read and Spell in Greek: The importance of letter knowledge and morphological awareness. In M. Harris and G. Hatano (Eds) Learning to Read and Write: A cross-linguistic perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 51–70. Hoien, T., Lundberg, L., Stanovich, K.E. and Bjaalid, I.K. (1995). Components of Phonological Awareness. Reading & Writing 7: 171–88. Jusczyk, P.W., Luce, P.A. and Charles-Luce, J. (1994). Infants’ Sensitivity to Phontactic Patterns in the Native Language. Journal of Memory and Language 33: 630–45. Landauer, T.K. and Streeter, L.A. (1973). Structural Differences between Common and Rare Words: Failure of equivalence assumptions for theories of word recognition. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour 12: 119–31. Liberman, I.Y., Shankweiler, D., Fischer, F.W. and Carter, B. (1974). Explicit Syllable and Phoneme Segmentation in the Young Child. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 18: 201–12. Luce, P.A. and Pisoni, D.B. (1998). Recognising Spoken Words: The neighbourhood activation model. Ear & Hearing 19: 1–36. Metsala, J.L. (1999). Young Children’s Phonological Awareness and Nonword Repetition as a Function of Vocabulary Development. Journal of Educational Psychology 91: 3–19. Pierrehumbert, J. (2003). Phonetic Diversity, Statistical Learning and Acquisition of Phonology. Language & Speech 46: 115–54. Port, R. (2007). How are Words Stored in Memory? Beyond phones and phonemes. New Ideas in Psychology 25: 143–70. Read, C. (1986). Children’s Creative Spelling. London: Routledge. Seymour, P.H.K., Aro, M. and Erskine, J.M. (2003). Foundation Literacy Acquisition in European Orthographies. British Journal of Psychology 94: 143–74. Storkel, H.L. (2001). Learning New Words: Phonotactic probability in language development. Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research 44: 1321–37. Thomson, J., Richardson, U. and Goswami, U. (2005). Phonological Similarity Neighbourhoods and Children’s Short-term Memory: Typical development and dyslexia. Memory and Cognition 33(7): 1210–19. Treiman, R. (1993). Beginning to Spell: A study of first-grade children. New York: Oxford University Press. Treiman, R. (1998). Beginning to Spell in English. In C. Hulme and R. M. Joshi (Eds) Reading and Spelling: Development and disorders. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 371–93. Treiman, R. and Zukowski, A. (1991). Levels of Phonological Awareness. In S. Brady and D. Shankweiler (Eds) Phonological Processes in Literacy. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Vihman, M. and Croft, W. (2007). Phonological Development: Towards a ‘radical’ templatic phonology. Linguistics 45: 683–725. Vitevitch, M.S., Luce, P.A., Pisoni, D.B. and Auer, E.T. (1999). Phonotactics, Neighbourhood Activation and Lexical Access for Spoken Words. Brain & Language 68: 306–11. Wimmer, H., Landerl, K., Linortner, R. and Hummer, P. (1991). The Relationship of Phonemic Awareness to Reading Acquisition: More consequence than precondition but still important. Cognition, 40: 219–49. Ziegler, J.C. and Goswami, U. (2005). Reading Acquisition, Developmental Dyslexia and Skilled Reading across Languages: A psycholinguistic grain size theory. Psychological Bulletin 131(1): 3–29.

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Ziegler, J.C. and Goswami, U. (2006). Becoming Literate in Different Languages: Similar problems, different solutions. Developmental Science 9: 429–53. Ziegler, J.C., Ferrand, L. and Montant, M. (2004). Visual Phonology: The effects of orthographic consistency on different auditory word recognition tasks. Memory & Cognition 32: 732–41. Ziegler, J.C., Stone, G.O. and Jacobs, A.M. (1997). What’s the Pronunciation for -OUGH and the spelling for /u/? A database for computing feedforward and feedback inconsistency in English. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 29: 600–18.

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10 Interaction and learning to read: towards a dialogic approach Henrietta Dombey

Interaction and learning to read: towards a dialogic approach For most of the last century, reading was seen as a technical matter of extracting information from a text. That view was first called into question by literary theorists such as Iser and Rosenblatt, who, 30 years ago, explored the active role of the reader (Iser, 1978; Rosenblatt, 1978). They argue that reading is an interactive process to which readers bring experiences, ideas and intentions, in the course of which they construct their own meanings, which are answerable to the text, but not determined by it. For Bakhtin too, the process is interactive (Bakhtin, 1981). Seeing all understanding as essentially dialogic, Bakhtin views reading as a dialogic process – between the reader and the writer. For Bakhtin, as for Iser and Rosenblatt, each reader must enter into a rather different dialogue with the author, since each approaches the text within his/her own set of concerns, values, understandings and experiences. Street also takes exception to a view of reading as an essentially technical matter of information processing (Street, 1995). He argues that while much research into literacy and literacy learning is based on an ‘autonomous’ view of literacy, which sees it as a set of skills to be acquired, this is unproductive. Instead, he argues, literacy should be seen as ideological – as social practice, grounded in social, historical and political contexts of use, into which learners are initiated. Meanwhile, Bourdieu’s presentation of cultural transformation, as an alternative educational goal to cultural reproduction, challenges the assumption that literacy education is concerned principally with enabling students to arrive at previously established meanings (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990). Instead, we can see the business of learning to read and write as a process of learning to construct new meanings. I would argue that in a rapidly changing world, it is vital to include the construction of new meanings as a key goal of literacy education. This carries important implications. Accepting these challenges means that the teacher’s role encompasses far more than establishing the conditions for successful communication, transmitting a message and then checking on its reception. If we agree that reading is essentially interactive, grounded in contexts of use, with the goal of cultural transformation, we must see literacy 110

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education as a much broader enterprise. We must see it as an endeavour that involves initiating children into a process of interaction with text, enculturing them into a view of what literacy is and can do, and supporting them as they make unforeseen meanings from what they read, while striving to ensure that these meanings are answerable to the text. Interaction between teacher, student and text is implicit in this more complex conception of literacy education. But these conceptions are not universally accepted. The work of many researchers is based on older, narrower views of reading (e.g. Juel and Minden-Cupp, 2001; Johnston and Watson, 2005). Government commissioned reports that guide educational policy are usually framed in terms of these older, narrower conceptions (National Reading Panel, 2000; Rose, 2006). This means that to gain wide acceptance, it is not enough for approaches to literacy teaching to prove themselves in terms of interactive conceptions of reading as the construction of new meanings; these approaches must also be justified in terms of more conventional, narrower conceptions of reading as the reception of the author’s message.

The theoretical basis of interactive teaching Before we look at empirical studies of children learning to read in school, we should consider the theoretical basis of an interactive pedagogy in general. The notion of interactive teaching has been associated with democracy for some time. Its origins can be traced back to the 1920s in the US (Delamont, 1983), when child development researchers were investigating the limits placed on pupils’ freedom of speech. From the early 1970s, classroom observational tools, such as Flanders’s Interaction Analysis Categories (Flanders, 1970), were constructed to reflect and capture children’s participation in democratic society. These tools were instrumental in shaping early research into teaching. The publication in English of Vygotsky’s Thought and Language (1962) and Mind in Society (1978) added a further challenge to the hegemony of the view of teaching as straightforward one-way transmission. Vygotsky’s influence has been central to the reconceptualisation of learning as an essentially social process. He argues that teaching and learning are not the product of sole endeavour, or the straightforward transmission of knowledge, but result from joint activity in which the learner shares with the teacher a sense of the whole task, while the more experienced partner supports the novice in carrying out parts of it. Having achieved such a task with the teacher’s support, the learner is better able to carry it out independently at a later date. What starts as a jointly achieved activity or understanding, constructed by the learner with outside support, becomes internalised, and thus part of the individual’s mental equipment. The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) identifies the area of learning that the learner can achieve with such support, and is thus, in a healthy situation, continually moving forward. John-Steiner, a noted Vygotskyan scholar, was one of the editors of Mind in Society. Even before its publication, with her colleagues in New Mexico, she set about the practice of interactive teaching, focusing particularly on a literacy course for university freshmen. Drawing contrasts with anthology-based curricula on the one hand and reductionist, behaviourist approaches to literacy learning on the other, Elsasser and John-Steiner (1977) wrote of their pioneering programme for advanced literacy as based on: ‘an intricate interaction among teachers, learners, and social change, which in turn 111

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provides a dynamic of continuity and change that enhances the development of written communication’ (Elsasser and John-Steiner, 1977: 365). From these beginnings, a strongly sociocultural view of learning was developed, in which theoretical advances were underpinned by classroom innovations. Four years after Elsasser and John-Steiner’s publication, Au and Mason (1981) highlighted the dimension of student control over the discourse. They advance the ‘balance of rights’ hypothesis that ‘higher levels of student behavior are probable if there is a balance between the interactional rights of the teacher and children’ (Au and Mason, 1981:. 150). Palincsar and Brown developed the technique of reciprocal teaching for the purpose of remedial reading instruction, in which the central activity is small group collaborative investigation (Palincsar and Brown, 1984). This was followed by Cazden’s (1988) groundbreaking work with young children, showing discourse as having the capacity to act as a catalyst or scaffold for student learning. Tharp and Gallimore (1988) developed an approach they term ‘responsive teaching’ in which ‘digressions, incomplete child utterances and differing viewpoints are the norm’ (Tharp and Gallimore, 1988: 136). Basing much of her work on observation of informal learning out of school, Rogoff advocates an approach she terms ‘guided participation’ (Rogoff, 1990: 138) in which the teacher initially shares responsibility for problem solving, then transfers this to the children. Meanwhile, in the UK Barnes and colleagues were examining the potential of what they termed ‘exploratory talk’, which Barnes, prefiguring some of the observations of Tharp and Gallimore, characterised as ‘often hesitant and incomplete; it enables the speaker to try out new ideas, to hear how they sound, to see what others make of them, to arrange information and ideas into different patterns’ (Barnes, 1976: 126). At much the same time as the psychology of learning in the area of language and literacy was becoming more social, the development of discourse analysis made possible the identification of patterns of verbal interaction. Happily, much of the early work focused on verbal interaction in school classrooms. So we now had a tool to show us what was actually going on in classroom exchanges (Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975).

Classroom interaction studies While quantitative studies, both survey and interventionist, tend to find favour with government (NRP, 2000; Rose, 2006), the following review also includes qualitative studies. These qualitative studies tend to be more fine-grained and include exploration of the meanings those studied attach to their actions. To be clear, the division between quantitative and qualitative studies does not neatly echo contrasting conceptions of reading. Not all researchers working with quantitative approaches appear to endorse a view of literacy as autonomous, or see the goal of education as cultural reproduction. Studies using mainly quantitative approaches have shown that in both the UK and the US, the predominant discourse format in classrooms is one where the teacher is very much in control – setting the topic of exchanges, nominating the speaker and acting as the arbiter of right and wrong (Cazden, 1988; Hardman et al., 2003; Skidmore et al., 2003; Myhill, 2004; Hardman et al., 2005). This indicates that most teachers view literacy teaching as the transmission of an autonomous skill, with the aim of cultural reproduction. In addition to transmitter of information, the teacher’s role in relationship to the students is shown to be quizmaster or interrogator. The student’s role is to respond, 112

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with ‘ready-made’ contributions taken from the text under study or the teacher’s presentation and evaluated in terms of their proximity to the desired response. This instructional format is known in the US as Recitation. However, the researchers cited above are implicitly or explicitly critical of such conceptions of literacy and teaching, and of the aims of education they imply. From a rather different perspective, apparently basing his examination on such a conventional view of literacy teaching as the transmission of an autonomous skill, Reynolds’s survey of research on teacher effectiveness (1998) focuses on the extent of students’ verbal participation, rather than their control over classroom discussion. It concludes that a connection has been demonstrated between high quantities of whole class interactive instruction and academic success. In contrast to Reynolds’ survey, using a mix of approaches, Alexander’s study of classroom interaction in five different national contexts is focused on developing children’s thinking in a way that suggests the possibility of cultural transformation, as well as cultural reproduction (Alexander, 2000). Rather than with the quantity of children’s contributions to classroom discussions, Alexander’s concern is with ‘dialogic enquiry’. This involves teachers acting as discourse guides (echoes of Cazden, 1988) to develop ‘a coherent and expanding chain of enquiry and understanding’ (Alexander, 2000: 26). He demonstrates the intellectual superiority of the extended contributions by one or two children, supported by the teacher, found particularly in Russian classrooms, over the brief exchanges that characterise classroom discussions in the UK and the US. Other studies have produced empirical support for more fully interactive approaches to teaching and learning, in which teacher and students have a more symmetrical relationship. In support of Au and Mason’s hypothesis, studies have shown that increasing students’ control over instruction increases their motivation and engagement (e.g. Deci and Ryan, 1985; Cordova and Lepper, 1996). Vygotsky argued that learners may be supported by groups of peers as well as by their teachers (Vygotsky, 1978). Working mainly with children in the 8–12 years age range, Mercer has shown that not only do the collective scores of groups of children working collaboratively exceed those of children working individually, but that the individual scores of children experienced in such collaborative work do so also (Mercer, 2000; Mercer and Littleton, 2007). In his extensive work with primary aged children, Wells sees active, collaborative enquiry as the paradigm for successful education, with the goal of enabling children to make new meanings together, which we could surely call cultural transformation (Wells, 2001). Much of his work involves children working in small groups, which allow for more tentative exploratory discussion than does the whole class. Working in such groups may have a critical role to play in allowing students more opportunity both to articulate their own views and to explore the views of others. Reporting on a study of nine-year-olds trained to work in threes, Wegerif (2007) sees a key contributor towards more effective problem-solving dialogue as being the children’s ability to listen to others, to change their minds and to argue against their own initial positions. Classroom interaction has clearly been shown to be productive. But it may take many forms, varying in the size of group involved, the length of individual contributions, who chooses the topics, who nominates the next speaker, and the presence or absence of the teacher. And the educational gains can be as varied, ranging from more right answers to higher levels of reasoning. 113

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The structure of interaction Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) identified the Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) exchange pattern, subsequently shown to be the predominant one in most classrooms and the one that characterises the Recitation format. Typically, the teacher’s Initiation move (often a question) is followed by a Response from one or more pupils, which in turn is followed by Feedback from the teacher, which often takes the form of evaluation. Decade after decade, this is the patterning shown to predominate in school classrooms in England in literacy teaching, as well as the teaching of a wide range of other subjects (Galton et al., 1980; Galton et al., 1999, Smith et al., 2004; Hardman et al., 2005). Reynolds reports ‘In general, effective teachers have been found to teach a concept, then ask questions to test children’s understanding and, if the material did not seem well understood, to re-teach the concept, followed by more monitoring’ (Reynolds, 1998: 150). Meanwhile for English et al. ‘ interactivity depends on the ratio of [teacher] questions to [teacher] statements’. But is this teacher-dominated IRF Recitation format the most productive of learning? Does it really fit Elsasser and John-Steiner’s concept of ‘an intricate interaction among teachers, learners, and social change’? And is it really characteristic of the most effective school classrooms? The work of Reynolds (1998) and English et al. (2002) gives us narrow conceptions of interaction. For both, a lesson proceeding through a sequence of questions and answers would be classed as highly interactive, particularly where the children are encouraged to respond at speed. However, an earlier survey of studies of classroom discourse finds that a slow pace of teacher questioning with extended wait times correlates with a greater number of student responses (Carlsen, 1991). Another study finds such characteristics associated with sustained responses of greater complexity (Fagan et al., 1981). Furthermore, in a study comparing whole-class instruction with cooperative learning in small groups, Hertz-Lazarowitz and Shachar (1990) found that teachers used language in ways that were more helpful and encouraging of their students’ efforts during cooperative learning, while in whole-class instruction the same teachers tended to be more authoritarian, rigid and impersonal. Building on this work in a study comparing cooperative learning in small groups and with regular group work, Gillies (2006) found that the teachers who implemented the cooperative group work engaged in more mediated-learning interactions, helping them, for example, to integrate information with prior knowledge. They also made fewer disciplinary comments than those who implemented group work only. The students modelled many of the teachers’ interactions in their groups, making the cooperative learning particularly effective. In a study of 2nd grade children in Hong Kong, Law (2008) found that children who experienced cooperative learning over a year developed a more favourable opinion of the instructional practices they experienced and gained better scores in reading comprehension than their conventionally taught peers. In a complex and penetrating US study, Chinn et al. (2001) contrast two kinds of literature discussion in 4th grade classrooms (nine-year-olds). Drawing on the work of Au and Mason (1981), they compare the two types of discussion principally in terms of the amount of teacher and student talk, the character of teacher and student questions and the cognitive processes involved in the student talk. The two instructional frames involved, Recitation and Collaborative Reasoning, differ in terms of four dimensions – all concerned with the making of key decisions. These are: who decides the stance the discussion takes; who has interpretive authority; who will control turn-taking; and who 114

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chooses the discussion topics. The teachers in the four classrooms involved, all rated as good, were initially videotaped using their habitual Recitation format. They were videotaped again, after a seven-week in-service programme that supported the use of ‘Collaborative Reasoning’. Although there was no marked increase in turn length, the analysis of the transcripts shows the Collaborative Reasoning format to be dramatically more productive of student talk, in terms of the length of each discussion, the rate of words spoken per minute (111 as against 66), and the relative proportion of both words and turns spoken by the students. Meanwhile the teachers’ questions decreased, as did the proportion of assessment questions asked, while there was an increase in the proportion of open-ended questions and questions challenging the students to substantiate observations. In the Collaborative Reasoning classes, students made many more elaborations and predictions, provided evidence at ten times the rate of their Recitation classes and ‘were much more likely to articulate alternate perspectives’ (Chinn et al. 2001: 398). After commenting that the teachers and students’ inexperience in Collaborative Reasoning may have inhibited the students from producing more extended utterances, the authors conclude ‘The results of this study suggest the possibility that giving students greater control over interpretation, turn-taking and topic may generally enhance engagement and elicit a high rate of using beneficial cognitive processes’ (Chinn et al., 2001: 408). In a more modest study, Dombey (2003) found similar patterns as she compared styles of reading ‘big books’ (large format texts) in three Year 1 (5 to 6 years) classrooms in England (Dombey, 2003). Dombey compares the interactive style of a teacher on a demonstration video made for the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) to promote ‘interactive teaching’ with the styles of two teachers of literacy of proven effectiveness, who share the aim of helping their students to engage in making meanings of personal significance to them. In the NLS classroom, attention is focused exclusively on getting the words right, whereas in the other two classes the children engage in some complex cognitive operations as they reason about narrative elements or evaluate the characters’ actions. Like the older children in the Collaborative Reasoning classes of Chinn et al.’s (2001) study, encouraged and supported by their teachers, these children draw on textual evidence to support competing interpretations. They also produce a higher proportion of the words spoken – 26 per cent and 41 per cent, contrasted with the 17 per cent of words spoken by the children in the NLS class – and act as agents of topic change. These young children also listen to one another, contesting, elaborating or building on others’ utterances, with clear reference to what has been said before, producing textured discussion. It is also instructive to approach this subject from the angle of successful literacy teaching. Surveys of studies identifying effective strategies for teaching comprehension have shown that they tend to involve collaborative learning through such approaches as reciprocal teaching and peer-assisted learning techniques (Pressley, 2006; Savage and Pompey, 2008). Certainly it is clear that not all talk in small groups is exploratory. In their study of whole class and group interaction in both Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 classes, Hardman et al. (2005) found that teacher explanation and teacher-directed question and answer made up some 80 per cent of exchanges in both conditions. Conversely, not all exploratory talk takes place in small groups. Nystrand et al. (1997) coined the term ‘dialogical teaching’ to denote a classroom approach in US high school English classes that is concerned with the transformation of understanding and gives students rights in decision 115

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making similar to those in Chinn et al.’s (2001) Collaborative Reasoning classes. This they contrast with ‘monological teaching’, which uses the Recitation format and is concerned with the transmission of knowledge. These terms usefully encapsulate the two contrasting realisations of interaction in the classroom and appear equally applicable to the primary grades. The Russian approach commended by Alexander appears to be midway between the two. However, as suggested above, given training and support, small groups may provide particularly favourable contexts for exploratory discussion. Harste et al. (1989) first coined the term ‘Literature Circle’ to refer to small groups of students meeting together regularly to talk about a text they are all reading, sometimes with the support of their own reading journals and/or a teacher. They recommend that the teacher should prepare the ground by modelling ‘the types of questions and discussion behaviors that are appropriate to establish a supportive context for sharing and constructing interpretations of literature’ (Harste et al., 1988: 297). In the UK, King (2001) has found that the sharing of individual responses in Literature Circles ‘enables the joint construction of meaning and encourages different interpretations’ (King, 2001: 36). The studies surveyed above that indicate the superiority of dialogically organised teaching are principally focused on the construction of complex meaning. Not all literacy learning is of this sort. Children need to learn to lift the words off the page as well as to make significant and personal sense of them. While there are indications that active participation might also improve the quality of the learning of phonics and word recognition (Goswami, 1994; Strauss and Altwerger, 2007), the impact of contrasting types of interaction on these aspects of literacy learning remains to be thoroughly explored.

A brief note on teacher education Teachers appear to value the kind of talk produced in cooperative learning, but few are successful at bringing it about in their classrooms (Hardman et al., 2005). Hardman et al. argue strongly for the need for further research on ways to support teachers ‘to promote more reciprocal forms of teaching’ (Hardman et al., 2005: 314). Mercer and Littleton (2007) are concerned to repair this situation, through helping teachers train children to listen to each other, to show respect for others’ views and opinions, to explain ideas clearly and justify their views, and to use reason to decide an argument. In the Netherlands Krol et al. (2008) found the implementation of such training, through a two-year programme on cooperative learning with elementary school teachers, to be successful and relatively straightforward. Through observation, they found a significant treatment effect for a number of behaviours, including structuring positive interdependence and individual accountability, and activating prior knowledge. It is not clear whether the pupils of the participating teachers learned to explain ideas clearly and justify their views, and to use reason to decide an argument.

The effect of England’s National Literacy Strategy When the National Literacy Strategy (NLS, later subsumed in the Primary National Strategy) was introduced in England, its Framework for Teaching (DfEE, 1998), which 116

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was informed by Reynolds’ (1998) work, specified the most successful literacy teaching as being, inter alia, • • •

discursive – characterised by high quality oral work interactive – pupils’ contributions are encouraged, expected and extended well-paced – there is a sense of urgency, driven by the need to make progress and succeed.

This statement and the accompanying training, involving all of England’s primary schools, might well be expected to have changed the interaction patterns in England’s primary classrooms. Of the various studies of discourse in classrooms since the introduction of the NLS in 1998, the SPRINT study has provided the most comprehensive data (English et al., 2002). In addition to data from the SPRINT study, English et al. (2002) draw on classroom interaction data from the two ORACLE projects, carried out in the mid-seventies and mid-nineties by Galton and colleagues. These three sets of data show marked changes in classroom exchange patterns over the twenty-five years involved. If the data are representative of literacy lessons in England’s primary classrooms, and if the trend has not since been changed, children are now making significantly more contribution to their lessons than their predecessors did some thirty years ago. English et al. (2002) conclude: ‘These data suggest that teachers have been very successful in making their literacy teaching more interactive. Pupil contributions were expected and encouraged twice as often as they were before the NLS’ (English et al., 2002: 23). As this comment indicates, the incidence of student contributions is taken as the measure of interactivity. But English et al. (2002) point out that this increase in the incidence of interactions may be at the expense of their duration. Their own data show a decline between 1996 and 2000 in the percentage of interactions with the same child or small group lasting over 25 seconds, from 27 per cent of the total in 1996, to five per cent at KS2 and two per cent at KS1 in Literacy Hours in 2000. Children seem to be making more frequent contributions to their literacy lessons, but these are briefer and more unconnected than those of earlier classrooms. There is a huge drop in sustained interaction, which, prima facie, appears more likely to promote important learning. A couple of years later, Smith et al. (2004) found, in their study of interactive teaching in the National Literacy Strategy and National Numeracy Strategy, that the average length of a pupil answer was 5 seconds (Smith et al., 2004). The interaction promoted by England’s national strategies appears to be Recitation with decidedly fragmentary contributions from students. This is in marked contrast to Alexander’s (2000) observations of primary classrooms in Russia, France and India, reported above, where a few children are invited to make substantial responses and supported in the process (Alexander, 2000).

Policy implications The teaching of initial literacy attracts considerable governmental attention on both sides of the Atlantic, but the difficulties many ten-year-olds have with making sense of what they read receive less attention. The latest evidence from the PIRLS international 117

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survey tells us that England’s ten-year-olds find reading considerably less interesting than do their counterparts in other countries and are less successful at it than ten-year-olds in England used to be (Mullis et al., 2003). To assess classroom interaction solely in terms of the rate and duration of children’s answers to teachers’ questions is to restrict the notion of interactive teaching to cultural transmission, and to limit the cognitive challenge to students. Teachers need to be encouraged to be both more adventurous and more trusting of their students’ capacity to engage with important issues and challenging ideas. They need to learn to share decision making with them, to make their classrooms more democratic places. Children as young as five and six have been shown to be capable of developing complex understandings through discussions in which competing ideas are explored and evidence from the text adduced (Cazden, 1988; Dombey, 2003). All children should be given such opportunities if we are to develop their capacity to think independently and work collaboratively required by our complex society. While such a style of instruction does not come easily to most teachers, for whom Recitation appears to be the default mode, it is possible for teachers to change. Krol et al. (2008) have shown the positive effects of a two-year in-service programme. Chinn et al. (2001) demonstrate that teachers can make dramatic shifts without extensive training. After a half-day workshop and seven weeks of intermittently supported teaching, teachers had turned their literature classes into sites of active, collaborative enquiry. But for this to happen, in addition to involving teachers in further professional development, other changes are also needed. The heavy emphasis on test results needs to be reduced, so that teachers are encouraged to construe the purpose and process of education as more than the generation of test scores. They also need to be freed from the tyranny of preplanning lessons to the point where there is no room for children to make unscripted contributions.

Conclusion To take these three steps would open up the possibility of moving literacy education away from the stasis of cultural reproduction and towards the more fruitful process of cultural transformation. The irony is that in a number of classrooms, assessed in conventional terms as successful, despite a lack of official support, teachers are engaging in a dialogic approach, emboldened by a strong conception of literacy as an interactive process and children as productive thinkers, capable of supporting each other. We need to help more to join them.

References Alexander, R. (2000). Culture and Pedagogy, International Comparisons in Primary Education. Oxford: Blackwell. Au, K.H. and Mason, J.M. (1981). Social Organizational Factors in Learning to Read: The balance of rights hypothesis. Reading Research Quarterly 17: 115–52. Bakhtin, M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Barnes, D. (1976). From Communication to Curriculum. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J.-C. (1990). Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (rev. edn) (trans. R. Nice). London: Sage.

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Carlsen, W.S. (1991). Questioning in Classrooms: A sociolinguistic perspective. Review of Educational Research 61: 157–78. Cazden, C. (1988). Classroom Discourse: The language of teaching and learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Chinn, C.A., Anderson, R.C. and Waggoner, M.A. (2001). Patterns of Discourse in Two Kinds of Literature Discussion. Reading Research Quarterly 36: 378–411. Cordova, D.I. and Lepper, M.R. (1996). Intrinsic Motivation and the Process of Learning: Beneficial effects of contextualization, personalization and choice. Journal of Educational Psychology 88: 715–30. Deci, E.L. and Ryan, R.M. (1985). Intrinsic Motivation and Self-determination in Human Behavior. New York: Plenum. Delamont, S. (1983). Interaction in the Classroom. London: Routledge. Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (1998). National Literacy Strategy Framework for Teaching. London: DfEE. Dombey, H. (2003). Interactions between Teachers, Children and Texts in Three Primary Classrooms in England. Journal of Early Chiildhood Literacy 3: 37–58. Elsasser, N. and John-Steiner, V. (1977). An Interactionist Approach to Advancing Literacy. Harvard Educational Review 47(3): 355–69. English, E., Hargreaves, L. and Hislam, J. (2002). Pedagogical Dilemmas in the National Literacy Strategy: Primary teachers’ perceptions, reflections and classroom behaviour. Cambridge Journal of Education 32: 9–26. Fagan, E.R., Hassler, D.M. and Szabbl, M. (1981). Evaluation of Questioning Strategies in Language Arts Instruction. Research in the Teaching of English 15: 267–73. Flanders, N. (1970). Analyzing Teacher Behavior. New York: Addison Wesley. Galton, M., Simon, B. and Croll, P. (1980). Inside the Primary Classroom. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Galton, M., Hargreaves, L., Comber, C., Wall, D. and Pell, A. (1999). Inside the Primary Classroom – 20 years on. London: Routledge. Gillies, R.M. (2006). Teachers’ and Students’ Verbal Behaviours during Cooperative and Small Group Learning. British Journal of Educational Psychology 76: 271–87. Goswami, U. (1994). The Role of Analogies in Reading Development. Support for Learning 9: 22–6. Hardman, F., Smith, F. and Wall, K. (2003). Interactive Whole Class Teaching in the National Literacy Strategy. Cambridge Journal of Education 33: 197–215. Hardman, F., Smith, F. and Wall, K. (2005). Teacher–-Pupil Dialogue with Pupils with Special Educational Needs in the National Literacy Strategy. Educational Review (University of Birmingham) 57(3): 299–316. Harste, J., Short, K. and Burke, C. (1988). Creating Classrooms for Authors and Inquirers: The reading-writing connection. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Harste, J., Short, K. and Burke, C. (1989). Creating Classrooms for Authors: The reading–writing connection. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. and Shachar, H. (1990). Teachers’ Verbal Behavior in Cooperative and Whole Class Instruction. In S. Sharan (Ed.) Cooperative Learning: Theory and research. New York: Praeger, pp. 71–101. Iser, W. (1978). The Act of Reading: A theory of aesthetic response. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Johnston, R. and Watson, J. (2005). The Effects of Synthetic Phonics on Reading and Spelling Attainment. A seven year longitudinal study. Edinburgh www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/ education/sptrs-00.asp accessed 30 March 2009. Juel, C. and Minden-Cupp, C. (2001). Learning to Read Words: Linguistic units and instructional strategies. Reading Research Quarterly 35(4): 458–93.

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King, C. (2001). ‘I Like Group Reading because I Can Share Ideas’: The role of talk within the literature circle. Reading 35: 32–6. Krol, K., Sleegers, P., Veenman, S. and Voeten, M. (2008). Creating Co-operative Classrooms: Effects of a two year staff development program. Educational Studies 34(4): 343–60. Law, Y.-K. (2008). Effects of Co-operative Learning on Second Graders’ Learning from Text. Educational Psychology 28(5): 567–82. Mercer, N. (2000). Words and Minds: How we use language to think together. London: Routledge. Mercer, N. and Littleton, K. (2007). Dialogue and the Development of Children’s Thinking: A sociocultural approach. London: Routledge. Mullis, I., Martin, M., Kennedy, A. and Flaherty, C. (Eds) (2003). PIRLS 2001 International Report: IEA’s study of reading literacy achievement in primary school in 35 countries. Boston, MA: Boston College, International Study Center. Myhill, D. (2004). Talk, Talk, Talk: Teaching and learning in whole class discourse. Research Papers in Education 21: 19–41. National Reading Panel (NRP) (2000). Teaching Children to Read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Nystrand, M., with Gamoran, A., Kachur, R. and Prendergast, C. (1997). Opening Dialogue: Understanding the dynamics of language and learning in the English classroom. New York: Teachers’ College Press. Palincsar, A.S. (1984). Reciprocal Teaching of Comprehension-fostering and Comprehensionmonitoring Activities. Cognition and Instruction 1(2): 117–75. Palincsar, A.S. and Brown, A.L. (1984). Reciprocal Teaching of Comprehension-fostering and Comprehension-monitoring activities. Cognition and Instruction 1(2): 117–75. Pompey, Y. and Savage, R. (2008) What Does the Evidence Really Say about Effective Literacy Teaching? Education and Child Psychology 25(3): 17–26. Pressley, M. (2006). Reading Instruction that Works: The case for balanced teaching (3rd edn). New York: The Guilford Press. Reynolds, D. (1998) Schooling for Literacy: A review of research on teacher effectiveness and school effectiveness and its implications for contemporary educational policies. Educational Review 50(2): 147–62. Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in Thinking: Cognitive development in social context. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rose, J. (2006). Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading. Department for Education and Skills. www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/rosereview/ accessed 27 March 2009. Rosenblatt, L. (1978). The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The transactional theory of the literary work. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Savage, R. and Pompey, Y. (2008). What does the Evidence really Say about Effective Literacy Teaching? Education and Child Psychology 25(3): 17–26. Sinclair, J. and Coulthard, M. (1975). Towards an Analysis of Discourse. London: Oxford University Press. Skidmore, D., Perez-Parent, M. and Arnfield, S. (2003). Teacher–Pupil Dialogue in the Guided Reading Session. Literacy 37: 47–53. Smith, F., Hardman, F., Wall, K. and Mroz, M. (2004). Interactive Whole Class Teaching in the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies. British Educational Research Journal 30(3): 395–411. Strauss, S. and Altwerger, B. (2007). The Logographic Nature of English Alphabetics and the Fallacy of Direct Intensive Phonics Instruction. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 7: 299–320. Street, B. (1995). Social Literacies: Critical approaches to literacy in development, ethnography and education. New York: Longman.

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Tharp, R.G. and Gallimore, R. (1988). Rousing Minds to Life: Teaching, learning and schooling in social context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1962). Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society: The development of higher psychological processes. (Eds M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner and E. Souberman.) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wegerif, R. (2007). Dialogic Education: What is it and why do we need it? Education Review 19: 58–66. Wells, G. (2001). Action, Talk and Text: Learning and teaching through inquiry. New York: Teachers College Press.

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Part 2 Writing

11 Facilitating writing development Steve Graham

One of my favourite quotations about writing development comes from Louis L’Amour, who wrote best-selling novels about the American West. He observed that, ‘A writer’s brain is like a magician’s hat. If you’re going to get anything out of it, you have to put something in first’ (L’Amour, 1990: 133). The rub of course is determining what goes in and how to get it there? This chapter addresses this question by identifying what developing writers need to learn as well as the effective methods for acquiring this know-how. My approach to this topic is based on three assumptions. First, writing can be taught. Not everyone agrees with this premise, and reservations about its validity are evident in Somerset Maugham’s famous remark: ‘There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are’ (cited in Winokur, 1999: 146). The belief that writing cannot be taught likely stems from the supposition that writing is a talent – good writers are born writers. While individual differences are evident in all aspects of human behaviour, the development of competence is a complex and uncertain process, involving not only a sustentative environment for growth, but the acquisition of relevant skills, strategies, and knowledge (Alexander, 2004). There is also considerable evidence that teachers and schools can foster or impede such development (see Hillocks, 1986). Simply put, good teaching provides a mechanism for ensuring that a developing writer’s potential is realized. The second assumption is that teaching writing to school-aged youngsters should rest as much as possible on evidence-based practices. There is no shortage of advice on how to teach writing, often provided by professional writers (see King, 2000) or those who teach writing (Atwell, 1987). While both of these sources surely possess useful knowledge, it is difficult to separate the real gold from the fool’s gold, to use a colloquial expression. As Graham (in press) noted, there is typically no direct evidence that a recommended procedure actually produces the claimed results. When evidence is presented, it is generally impossible to determine its value, as it commonly involves testimonials or the presentation of selected pieces of students’ writing. In contrast, writing recommendations based on evidence drawn from scientific studies, which contain controls for ruling out other plausible explanations, provide a more trustworthy 125

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approach for developing a writing programme. Such studies yield evidence on whether the instructional practice produces the desired impact, the observed effects are representative, and how much confidence can be placed in them. The final assumption is that the teaching of writing and the application of evidencedbased practices should be guided by theories of writing and development. I am not suggesting that a single theory should be emphasized to the exclusion of others. Instead, multiple theoretical perspectives should be considered. This decreases the likelihood of ignoring some important aspect of writing development when designing writing instruction for school-aged youngsters. Consequently, my starting point is to examine the two major theoretical perspectives in writing to determine what developing writers need to acquire. This analysis provides a framework for situating the 25 evidenced-based practices identified in the subsequent section. I conclude by considering limitations in the use of evidence-based writing practices and some possible solutions.

Theories of writing and development Cognitive/motivational perspective One major approach to studying writing concentrates mostly on the writer and the role of cognitive and motivational processes in composing. This cognitive/motivational perspective is captured in an influential model of skilled writing developed by Hayes (1996). Although this model takes into account the interaction between the task environment for writing and the internal capabilities of the writer, the context in which writing takes place is relatively circumscribed to include a social component (e.g. the audience, other texts read while writing, and collaborators) as well as a physical component (e.g. text read so far, and the writing medium, such as a word processor). Much more fully developed are the internal resources that writers draw on when composing. These include: •

• •

•

cognitive processes: text interpretation, reflection, and text production – these processes allow the writer to form an internal representation of the writing task that can be acted upon; devise a plan to reach one or more writing goals; draw conclusions about the audience and possible writing content; use cues from the writing plan or text produced so far to retrieve semantic information that is then turned into written sentences; and evaluate plans and text and modify them as needed motivation: the goals, predispositions, beliefs, and attitudes that influence the writing process long-term memory: knowledge of the writing topic and audience as well as linguistic and genre knowledge, including task schemas that specify how to carry out particular writing tasks working memory: serves as an interface between cognitive processes, motivation, and memory, providing a space for holding information and ideas for writing as well as carrying out cognitive activities that require the writer’s conscious attention.

This conceptualization of writing suggests that three important elements in becoming a competent or skilled writer are: (1) developing the cognitive or strategic processes 126

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involved in planning, drafting (including shaping ideas and words into sentences and paragraphs), evaluating, and revising text; (2) attaining a sense of competence and positive disposition towards writing; and (3) acquiring relevant knowledge about different aspects and types of writing, the needs of the reader, and the topics addressed by the writer. Because Hayes’s model involved the actions of skilled writers, it did not take into account another important aspect of writing development: the need to automatize basic text transcription skill such as spelling and handwriting (or typing). Until they are mastered, such basic writing skills require considerable mental energy; energy that is not available for carrying out other essential writing processes like planning, evaluating, and revising (McCutchen, 1988). The contention that strategies, motivation, knowledge, and skills are important ingredients in what needs to go into a developing writer’s brain (to return to our initial touchstone quote by Louis L’Amour) is supported by more general models of domain learning and at a more local level by empirical research involving writing. To illustrate, Alexander (2004) developed a model to explain how learners move from initial acclimation in a domain to competence, and for a select few to expertise. Drawing on a vast body of empirical research from a variety of academic disciplines, she found that movement towards increasing competence was shaped by positive changes in a learner’s strategic behaviour, motivation, and knowledge in that domain. Graham (2006) examined the available evidence to determine if this was the case for writing specifically, while adding a fourth factor – mastery of basic text transcription skills. He reasoned that if each of these were important ingredients in the development of writing competence then (1) skilled writers would possess more of the attribute (e.g. knowledge about writing) than less skilled writers; (2) developing writers would increasingly acquire the attribute with age and schooling; (3) individual differences in the attribute would predict writing performance; and (4) instruction designed to increase the attribute would improve writing performance. Although the amount of evidence was relatively thin for two of the factors (motivation and knowledge), he found that all four tenets were supported in each case (e.g. strategies).

Social/contextual perspective A second major approach to studying writing focuses mostly on the influence of social and contextual factors (these are not fully explored in the cognitive/motivational approach). The basic tenets underlying the social/contextual perspective are captured in an influential model developed by Russell (1997). This model describes how macrolevel social and political factors shape, and are in turn shaped by micro-level writing activities and actions, contending that these interactions influence writing development over time. The two key features of this model are •

•

activity systems, which examine how people (an individual, dyad, or collective – perceived in social terms and taking into account the history of their involvement in the activity system) use concrete tools (e.g. writing) to accomplish some action with some outcome (e.g. students use writing in an ongoing interaction with others to shape a written product in a shared direction); genre, which is a routine way of purposefully interacting within and across activity system(s); genres are stabilized by regularized use of tools (e.g. writing) within and among students, creating a relatively predictable way of interacting with others, 127

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although they are only stabilized-for-now structures, as they are subject to change depending upon the context (e.g. newcomers to an established activity system appropriate some of the ways writing is routinely used by others, but interactions between and among the newcomer and other individuals and activity systems can change typical ways that writing is used). To illustrate how social/contextual factors (macro and micro) influence writing development (within the structure of Russell’s model), consider the following teacher. This teacher taught a unit on story writing because it was emphasized in the district curriculum guide as well as the state’s high stakes testing programme. The teacher and her students were also interested in storytelling. How she taught story writing was influenced by her beliefs about teaching (which were shaped by her teacher preparation programme, her own teachers as a child, the culture of the school, and her past successes/failures teaching current and previous students) as well as the general teaching routines that had evolved as she taught other writing units to her students (e.g. a unit on writing persuasive text). During the story writing unit, her students continued to develop compositions using the same typified approach they had used since the start of the school year: selecting a topic, briefly planning what to say, making a draft, sharing it with a peer, revising and editing it, and sharing part or all of it with the class and at home. Although most students followed this script for composing, others did not. For instance, some students eliminated the planning step altogether, whereas two of the students started sharing their initial plans with each other early in the unit. This had a ripple effect in the classroom, as almost all of the students ended up sharing their plans with a peer by the end of the unit. Throughout the unit, the teacher provided students with concrete examples of stories (traditional stories taken from her own dominant culture). About halfway through the unit, a student brought a book of stories from Africa to class, asking if he could try writing stories like those in his book. This request also had a ripple effect, as the students were encouraged from that point forward to write stories from cultures other than their own, and several of the students’ parents were asked to share their favourite stories from their culture with the class. As this example shows, the what and how of writing instruction are shaped by contextual factors within and outside the classroom.

Evidenced-based writing practices One inference that can be drawn from the cognitive/motivational perspective is that the pathway to competence for developing writers involves becoming increasingly strategic, motivated, and knowledgeable about writing. A second inference is that children need to master basic text transcription skills, such as spelling and handwriting (or typing) so that these become so automatic they require little mental energy. As the social/contextual perspective illustrates, however, what is taught and how it is taught are influenced by a variety of interacting factors within and outside of the immediate teaching situation. Accordingly, I situated the evidence-based practices presented here within the framework of five recommendations. These recommendations take into account the establishment of a context in which writing and writing development can flourish (based on a social/contextual perspective) and the teaching of writing strategies, 128

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skills, motivation, and knowledge (based on the cognitive/motivational perspective). Although I recognize that macro-level factors (e.g. state and district policies, cultural influences, and so forth) shape writing instruction, context is necessarily limited to the classroom level, as this is the place where evidenced-based practices have almost exclusively been tested. Two sources for identifying evidenced-based practices are experimental and single subject design writing intervention studies. Both of these types of studies involve testing a practice to determine if it improves students’ writing under controlled conditions (to rule out counter-explanations for the findings). With experimental studies, one group of students receives the specified treatment and another group (the control) receives a counter-treatment or no treatment at all. This includes true-experimental studies, where individual participants or groups of participants are randomly assigned to treatment or control, and quasi-experimental studies where random assignment does not occur. With experimental treatment studies, the average performance of students in the treatment condition is compared to the average performance of students in the control condition. In contrast, single subject design studies evaluate the effectiveness of a writing practice at the individual level (despite the name, single subject design studies typically involve more than one participant). This involves repeatedly measuring writing performance before as well as during and/or after instruction to establish a stable baseline and treatment effect (assuming that treatment has an impact on performance). The point at which the treatment is presented to a student or across students is controlled to rule out counter explanations to the findings (e.g. writing improves because of something that happened outside of the intervention environment). To illustrate, instruction is provided to a first student and its impact on writing is repeatedly measured. At the same time, the writing performance of other students who have not yet received the treatment is assessed simultaneously. Evidence that the writing practice is effective is obtained if each instructed participant successively demonstrates stable improvement in writing while the remaining uninstructed students demonstrate a stable lack of improvement (Horner et al., 2005). One of the advantages of experimental and quasi-experimental design studies is that the outcome from each study can be cast into a common metric, an effect size, that provides a measure of the direction (positive or negative) and strength of the practice under investigation. The effect sizes for individual studies can then be summed to provide an average effect size across studies for a specific writing practice. My colleagues and I have conducted such analyses of the experimental (Graham, in press; Graham and Perin, 2007a, 2007b) and single subject design (Rogers and Graham, 2008) writing intervention literature with school-aged youngsters. The evidenced-based practices in this chapter are drawn from these reviews. In each of these reviews, we only calculated an average effect size for a writing practice if there were at least four studies that investigated its effectiveness (to ensure that the findings could be reasonably replicated). It is important to note that the writing outcome of interest in the experimental design studies was writing quality. We reasoned that writing practices that improve overall quality of students’ writing should have a more pronounced effect than ones that enhance a more discrete trait, such as sentence structure or diversity of vocabulary in students’ writing. This was not necessarily the case in the single subject design review (Rogers and Graham, 2008); however, as writing assessment in such studies tends to focus more narrowly on the writing trait(s) most 129

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likely to be impacted by treatment (e.g. if spelling is taught, spelling is assessed). Consequently, when an evidence-based practice is presented, I provide the source(s) for the recommendation, the outcome measure, and the overall strength of the effect size (small, moderate, and strong). Unfortunately, the experimental and single subject design writing intervention literature is relatively thin (both in breadth and depth). As a result, I also draw on a third source for identifying evidenced-based practices. This involves identifying recurring patterns in the instructional writing practices of teachers that produce exceptional literacy achievement. Although such an analysis cannot establish that a particular practice is responsible for changes in students’ writing performance, it is reasonable to assume that practices that are idiosyncratic to a specific teacher(s) are potentially less important than those that are employed across all or most of the available studies. Graham and Perin (2007c) identified classroom writing practices that were used in most studies examining exceptional literacy teachers, and I apply these here (again the source is provided when each practice is presented, but no writing outcome measure or strength of effect size is given, as these qualitative studies of exceptional teachers did not directly assess students’ writing progress). These evidenced-based practices must be treated more cautiously, as the evidence supporting them is more tenuous than the evidence from experimental and single subject design studies. Each of our four sources (Graham, in press; Graham and Perrin, 2007a, 2007b; Rogers and Graham, 2008) for evidence-based practices involved a comprehensive search of the writing literature, including journal articles, dissertations, conference reports, and so forth. This represents a relatively up-to-date identification of such practices, as each search was completed in 2006 or later.

Recommendation 1: establish typified, but flexible, classroom routines that support writers and their development The process approach to writing is an evidenced-based practice that provides teachers with a framework to create a supportive classroom writing environment, with flexible classroom routines, where both writing and writing instruction can be anchored (Graham and Perin, 2007a, 2007b: small positive effect on writing quality). Although there is no universally agreed upon definition for process writing it typically involves providing students with extended opportunities for writing: writing for real audiences; engaging in cycles of planning, translating, and reviewing; personal responsibility and ownership of writing projects; high levels of student interactions, creation of a supportive writing environment; self-reflection and evaluation; and personalized individual assistance and instruction as needed. This evidence-based approach is advantageous for at least two reasons. First, the process approach includes instructional elements that support students’ development of writing strategies, skills, motivation, and knowledge. For example teachers facilitate developing writers’ motivational growth by encouraging student responsibility and ownership of their writing, whereas strategic, skill, and knowledge development is promoted by providing personalized instruction when the need arises. Second, the process approach is flexible enough so that its routines can be modified when needed (Atwell, 1987), and other practices and routines can be integrated into its structure. Such integration can have a positive impact on developing writers. For example incorporating 130

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more explicit and systematic instruction on planning and revising into the process approach makes it even more effective (e.g. Curry, 1997). While some academics would argue that more naturalistic learning approaches such as process writing should not be combined with more traditional and explicit instructional procedures, this does not appear to be an issue for most teachers. For example my colleagues and I found that teachers overwhelmingly apply an approach to writing instruction that combines both process writing and explicit instruction (Cutler and Graham, 2008). Several of the routines included in the process approach (as described above) are evidenced based practices in their own right. For example exceptional literacy teachers (Graham and Perin, 2007c): • •

dedicate considerable time to writing, with students writing frequently treat writing as a process, expecting students to plan, draft, revise, edit, and share their work.

Such teachers also apply other classroom routines that are typically included as part of the process writing approach (see Nagin, 2003). These evidenced-based practices (Graham and Perin, 2007c) include: • • • •

students learning to use writing for various purposes (communicating, informing, persuading, and so forth) using various arrangements to teach writing, including whole class, small group, and individual instruction adapting writing assignments and instruction to meet the needs of individual students using writing to facilitate learning in content classes (this practice was also supported in Graham and Perin’s (2007b) analysis of experimental intervention studies: small positive effect on learning content material).

The process approach further encourages high levels of student interaction. An evidenced-based example of this is the development of class routines where students work together to plan, draft, revise, and edit their compositions (Graham and Perin, 2007a: moderate to strong positive effect on writing quality). Collaborative revising, for instance might involve one student (the writer) reading a draft of a paper to another student (the reviewer). The reviewer tells the writer several things they like about the paper and provides specific feedback on selected aspects of it (e.g. noting places that are unclear or where more explanation is needed). The writer then decides which of this feedback will be used in revising the paper. It is important to note that the effectiveness of the process writing approach depends on teacher preparation. Graham and Perin (2007a) found that this approach had a small to moderately positive effect on the quality of students’ writing when delivered by trained teachers, but virtually no impact when delivered by untrained teachers.

Recommendation 2: help students become strategic writers Skilled writing involves high levels of self-regulation and strategic behaviour (Hayes, 1996). This includes mental activities such as planning, monitoring, evaluating, revising, 131

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and summarizing as well as drafting processes such as sentence and paragraph construction. As we already noted, exceptional literacy teachers facilitate the development of some of these mental operations by setting up a predictable writing routine where students are expected to plan, draft, revise, and edit either alone or together (Graham and Perin, 2007c). In essence, they treat writing as a thinking process, and expect students to engage in these mental operations. An especially effective way of helping students become more strategic writers is to explicitly and systematically teach them how to carry out these thinking processes. Such evidenced-based practices include teaching: •

•

•

•

Strategies for planning, revising, and editing compositions (Graham and Perin, 2007a: strong positive impact on writing quality; Rogers and Graham, 2008: strong positive effect on writing quality, output, and schematic structure). This practice is particularly effective with struggling writers. Strategies that are taught range from general heuristics such as brainstorming to strategies designed for specific types of writing, like writing an explanation or writing to persuade. Strategies and procedures for summarizing material read, as this improves their ability to present concisely and accurately such information in writing (Graham and Perin, 2007a: strong positive effect on quality of summaries). This often includes teaching a series of reduction rules (e.g. eliminate redundant material). Strategies for creating different types of paragraphs (Rogers and Graham, 2008: strong positive effect on writing complete paragraphs). For example a paragraph writing strategy may focus on taking a main idea and its supporting details and crafting them into a paragraph. Procedures for writing increasingly complex sentences. For instance, instruction in combining simpler sentences into more sophisticated ones enhances the quality of students’ writing (Graham and Perin, 2007a: moderate positive effect on writing quality; Rogers and Graham, 2008: moderate positive effect on drafting complete sentences).

Instruction in such strategies and procedures consistently involved two basic instructional elements. The teacher modelling how to use the strategy, followed by guided instruction until the strategy could be used by students appropriately and independently. In most instances, teachers further discuss the purpose of the strategy with the student as well as when and where to use it. I include writing via word processing here as an evidence-based practice for facilitating strategic development (Graham and Perin, 2007a: moderate positive effect on writing quality; Rogers and Graham, 2008: moderate positive effect on writing output). With word processing, it is easier to carry out some of the thinking processes involved in writing, specifically revising and editing, making it more likely that these processes will occur. Electronic outlining and semantic mapping software (bundled into the word processing programs) also facilitate the process of planning. It must be noted that I could just as easily have included word processing in the next recommendation involving the teaching of basic text transcription skills. Typing is an easier and faster means of producing text than handwriting, and spelling miscues are reduced through the spell-checking capabilities of most word-processing programs (Gerlach et al., 1991). 132

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Recommendation 3: teach basic text transcription skills to mastery There is a substantial body of literature demonstrating that explicit and systematic teaching of handwriting and spelling improves legibility and correct spelling (see for example Schlagal, 2007). Effect sizes, however, have been calculated for only a small portion of this literature: studies examining the effect of handwriting, spelling, and/or typing instruction for struggling as well as typically developing writers on the overall quality of their text (Graham, in press). In six experimental studies, this evidence-based practice had a moderate to strong positive impact on this variable. Such instruction alone, however, is only part of the picture, as developing writers acquire and reinforce many spelling and handwriting skills as a consequence of reading and writing; but such incidental learning is much less pronounced for students with weaker writing and reading skills (Graham, 2000). The value of directly teaching other text transcriptions skills, such as capitalization and punctuation, are less certain for developing writers in general. In reviewing the experimental writing intervention literature, Graham and Perin (2007a) reported that traditional grammar instruction (which often includes the teaching of capitalization and punctuation) yielded a negative small average effect size for writing quality, whereas Andrews et al. (2006) found in their review that the skills taught did not show appreciable improvement. Nevertheless, directly teaching such skills was an evidence-based practice for struggling writers in the review of single subject design studies conducted by Rogers and Graham (2008: moderate positive effect on correct use of the skill). When teaching such skills to struggling writers, teachers modelled how to use the skill correctly, coupled with student practice in applying it, followed by periodic review of the skill. It is interesting to note that this is also the same basic approach that exceptional literacy teachers applied when teaching skills in their classroom (Graham and Perin, 2007c).

Recommendation 4: Foster students’ interest, enjoyment, and motivation to write Although students typically start school wanting to learn to write, this interest and their motivation quickly diminishes for many of them (Hidi and Boscolo, 2008). How can we turn this situation around? Evidence-based practices drawn from the study of exceptional literacy teachers (Rogers and Graham, 2008) suggest that we need to create an engaging classroom environment by: • •

being enthusiastic about writing keeping students engaged by involving them in thoughtful activities (such as planning their composition) versus activities that require little thoughtfulness (such as completing a workbook page that can be finished quickly, leaving many students unengaged).

Exceptional literacy teachers also seek to promote a ‘can do’ attitude among their students by: •

creating an environment where students are constantly encouraged to try hard, believe that the skills and strategies they are learning will permit them to write well, and attribute success to effort and the tactics they are learning; 133

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• •

setting high expectations for their students, encouraging them to surpass their previous accomplishments; providing just enough support so that developing writers can make progress or carry out writing tasks and processes, but encouraging students to act in a selfregulated fashion, doing as much as they can for themselves.

Another evidence-based practice for increasing motivation is to set clear and specific goals for what students are to accomplish in their writing (Graham and Perin, 2007a: moderate to strong positive impact on writing quality; Rogers and Graham, 2008: moderate positive impact on writing productivity). Goals enhance motivation by directing attention and action to what needs to be done, and provide incentives to mobilize and sustain effort (Locke et al., 1981). Goals can be as simple as ‘Write a paper that is five pages long’ or ‘Make three revisions that add new information to your text’. They can further involve a more complicated means–ends analysis, where the characteristics of the final product are more fully described: ‘Write a letter that leads the audience to agree with your position. The letter should contain a statement that tells what you believe; two or three reasons for this belief; examples or supporting detail for each reason; two or three reasons why others might disagree; and why those reasons are incorrect’. A final evidence-based practice for enhancing motivation is reinforcement. When teachers reinforce positive aspect of students’ writing it has a positive impact on that behaviour ((Rogers and Graham, 2008: strong positive impact on writing productivity).

Recommendation 5: increase students’ knowledge about writing To become a competent writer, students need to acquire discourse knowledge about the different purposes and forms of writing as well as knowledge about the topics of their compositions. An evidence-based practice for acquiring knowledge about specific types of writing is to provide students with good examples or models of specific kinds of writing (Graham and Perin, 2007a: small positive effect on writing quality). These examples are analysed and students are encouraged to emulate the models when writing their own text. Writers typically obtain knowledge about the subject of their composition through prior experiences and by reading or observing. An evidence-based practice that helps students access what they already know as well as obtain new knowledge is to involve them in pre-writing activities, such as reading to obtain ideas for their writing or using a graphic organizer to help them generate and organize what they already know (Graham and Perin, 2007a; Rogers and Graham, 2008: small positive impact on writing quality). Another evidence-based practice for helping developing writers obtain possible information for what they write is inquiry (Graham and Perin, 2007a: small positive impact on writing quality). Inquiry is characterized by clearly specified goals: (for example describe what people do during conflict); analysis of concrete and immediate data (for example observe instances of conflict in the classroom or in the playground); use of specific strategies to conduct the analysis (for example retrospectively ask the person involved in the conflict the reason for their action); and applying what was learned (for example write a story where the insights from the inquiry are incorporated into the paper). 134

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Cautions and solutions This chapter is based on the premise that evidence-based practices should drive instruction for developing writers. It is assumed that this is less risky than basing instruction on untested or poorly tested recommendations, as we know something about the validity, reliability, and generalizability of evidence-based practices. Although there is a positive relationship between teachers’ use of evidence-based writing practices and how well students write (Sadoski et al., 1997), it is important to acknowledge the limitations of this approach. As noted earlier, the evidence-based recommendations presented in this review are based on a relatively small number of studies (sometimes as few as four studies). In addition, the quality of the research supporting each recommendation varies and there is no research on how best to combine these recommendations (although we present a framework for doing so). It must further be emphasized that just because an evidence-based practice had a positive impact in a series of research studies or is commonly used by exceptional teachers does not mean that it will be successful in all other situations. There is rarely, if ever, a perfect match between the conditions under which the practice was tested and the conditions in which it is subsequently applied by other teachers. Even if the match is good, the safest course of action is to monitor the effects of the practice to gauge if it is still effective in the new situation. Although the 25 evidence-based writing practices presented here provide a good beginning foundation on which to build writing programmes for developing writers, they are incomplete. They do not fully cover all of the different aspects of a good instructional programme. For example I did not address parental participation or writing assessment as part of the writing programme, as the promising impact of both of these practices in several initial studies have not been replicated often enough to ensure they are reliable (see Graham and Perin, 2007a: App).

Conclusion Thus, the teaching of writing cannot be based solely on evidence-based practices at the present time, as there are still too many gaps in our knowledge. The obvious solution to this problem is to conduct more writing intervention research. This will require increased funding from both government and private donors, and a concerted effort on the part of the writing community to conduct such research. In the meantime, I would encourage teachers to monitor closely the use of untested practices, just as they would evidencebased ones.

References Alexander, P. (2004). A Model of Domain Learning: Reinterpreting expertise as a multidimensional, multi-stage process. In D. Dai and R. Sternberg (Eds) Motivation, Emotion, and Cognition. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 273–98. Andrews, R., Torgerson, C., Beverton, S., Freeman, A., Locke, T., Low, G. et al. (2006). The Effects of Grammar Teaching on Writing Development. British Educational Research Journal 32: 39–55.

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Atwell, N. (1987). In the Middle: Reading, writing, and learning from adolescents. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Curry, K. (1997). ‘A comparison of the writing products of students with learning disabilities in inclusive classrooms and resource room settings using different writing instruction approaches’. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL. Cutler, L. and Graham, S. (2008). Primary Grade Writing Instruction: A national survey. Journal of Educational Psychology 100: 907–19. Gerlach, G., Johnson, J. and Ouyang, R. (1991). Using an Electronic Speller to Correct Misspelled Words and Verify Correctly Spelled Words. Reading Improvement 28: 188–94. Graham, S. (2000). Should the Natural Learning Approach Replace Traditional Spelling Instruction? Journal of Educational Psychology 92: 235–47. Graham, S. (2006). Writing. In P. Alexander and P. Winne (Eds) Handbook of Educational Psychology. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 457–78. Graham, S. (in press). Teaching Writing, P. Hogan (Ed.) Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Graham, S. and Perin, D. (2007a). A Meta-analysis of Writing Instruction for Adolescent Students. Journal of Educational Psychology 99: 445–76. Graham, S. and Perin, D. (2007b). Writing Next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescent middle and high school. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellence in Education. Graham, S. and Perin, D. (2007c). What We Know, what We still Need to Know: Teaching adolescents to write. Scientific Studies in Reading 11: 313–36. Hayes, J. (1996). A New Framework for Understanding Cognition and Affect in Writing. In M. Levy and S. Ransdell (Eds) The Science of Writing: Theories, methods, individual differences, and applications. Mahwah, NJ: Erbaum, pp. 1–27. Hidi, S. and Boscolo, P. (2008). Motivation in Writing. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer. Hillocks, G. (1986). Research on Written Composition: New directions for teaching. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Horner, R., Carr, E., Halle, J., McGee, G., Odom, S. and Wolery, M. (2005). The Use of Singlesubject Research to Identify Evidence-based Practice in Special Education. Exceptional Children 71: 165–80. King, S. (2000). A Memoir of the Craft: On writing. New York: Pocket. L’Amour, L. (1990). The Education of a Wandering Man. New York: Bantam. Locke, E., Shaw, K., Saari, L. and Latham, G. (1981). Goal Setting and Task Performance. Psychological Bulletin 90: 125–52. McCutchen, D. (1988). ‘Functional Automaticity’ in Children’s Writing: A problem of metacognitive control. Written Communication 5: 306–24. Nagin, C. (2003). Because Writing Matters: Improving student writing in our schools. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Rogers, L. and Graham, S. (2008). A Meta-analysis of Single Subject Design Writing Intervention Research. Journal of Educational Psychology 100: 879–906. Russell, D. (1997). Rethinking Genre in School and Society: An activity theory analysis. Written Communication 14: 504–54. Sadoski, M., Willson, V. and Norton, D. (1997). The Relative Contribution of Research-based Composition Activities to Writing Improvement in Lower and Middle Grades. Research in the Teaching of English 31: 120–50. Schlagal, B. (2007). Best Practices in Spelling and Handwriting. In S. Graham, C. MacArthur and J. Fitzgerald (Eds) Best Practices in Writing Instruction. New York: Guilford. Winokur, J. (1999). Advice to Writers. New York: Pantheon.

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12 Writing in the early years Helen Bradford and Dominic Wyse

For many decades children’s first writing efforts were all but ignored by researchers. Writing was considered a subject of school instruction but of little interest beyond this. Hildreth’s (1936) paper on developmental sequences in name writing, considered to be groundbreaking for the time, cited just ten references spanning the period 1910 to 1934. It is now understood that children who grow up in a literate environment do not wait until school or other formal instruction to explore the features of writing. They are already experimenting from a very early age, before they begin to understand the alphabetic principle and despite the fact that the writing produced might not be conventional from the perspective of an adult. Such early experimentation has generally been termed emergent literacy (Teale and Sulzby, 1986; Hall, 1987). The theory of emergent literacy portrays young children as having had relatively little experience of writing, rather than as being unable to write, and as active enquirers into the nature and purposes of literacy. Over 30 years ago Clay (1975) was warning of the consequences of dismissing a child’s efforts to put marks on paper, arguing that through close scrutiny of what they had done, one would find a ‘rich commentary on their earliest learning about print encapsulated in their accumulated attempts to write’ (Clay, 1975: 15). Clay described the development of writing as a phenomenon that occurs along a continuum, the starting point of which begins with children making ‘gross approximations’ on paper once they have understood the concept that spoken messages can be written down (Clay, 1975: 15). Gross approximations are gradually refined as children’s knowledge about writing develops, with more advanced concepts emerging out of earlier understandings (Clay, 1975, 1993). Other seminal work in support of the idea of a continuum of development includes work by Ferreiro (1986). She argued that children move gradually through successive emergent levels of conceptualization about writing. Harste et al. (1984) found that children as young as three were already making planned organizational decisions about their writing and that they wrote with an expectation that the marks they made would make sense, a characteristic of the writing process they termed ‘intentionality’. Goodman (1986) argued that children from the 137

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even earlier age of two engage in writing tasks for a wide variety of reasons and that most have begun to use symbols to represent real things. In more recent research Lancaster (2003, 2007) found that children under the age of two are able to distinguish between writing, drawing and number. This is based on the child’s experience and perceptions of how each of these three domains represents meaning. Rowe’s (2008) summary of case study evidence suggests that some two-year-olds have begun to display intentionality in their mark making. Evidence of intentionality at such young ages is significant because it necessitates appropriate intervention by educators built on positive understandings of children capabilities. Children interpret things according to the information and resources to which they have access at the time and according to what is currently salient in their thinking. In this respect it is inexperience that distinguishes children’s ability to make meaning from that of adults, rather than lack of ability (Pahl, 1999). The main focus of this chapter is emergent writing and the transition from emergent to conventional writing. We restrict our attention to children from birth to age seven, using the term ‘young children’ to describe this age range. The theoretical framework for the chapter is interdisciplinary, drawing as it does on cognitive and sociocultural theories. An interdisciplinary understanding is, we believe, necessary to advance new knowledge about effective teaching of writing for young children.

Processing decisions during writing Universal patterns of behaviour reflecting a common set of cognitive processing decisions on the part of children have been identified, evident from children making marks which reflect the written language of their culture when asked to write, and composing ‘signs’ when they first start to make associations between the making of marks and the representation of personal meanings (Borzone de Manrique and Signorini, 1998; Levin and Bus, 2003; Scheuer et al., 2006b; Yamagata, 2007; Yang and Noel, 2006). Children’s early writing also displays the features of form common to writing in almost any language such as linearity, directionality and presence of distinguishable units (Gibson and Levin, 1980). Teale et al. (2009) cite invented spelling studies, which show that children construct logical solutions to ‘the language puzzle they face in learning about written words’(2009: 5). Working memory is increasingly seen as an important function of the brain, which has contributed to our understanding of language processing. It has been proposed that working memory consists of three parts: a phonological loop for storing verbal information; a visuospatial sketchpad for visual information and a central executive which regulates the other two parts (Hayes, 2006). There is disagreement as to whether some parts of working memory are not involved in the basic decisions of writing processing such as planning, reading and editing, or whether all three parts of working memory are involved at all times (Hayes, 2006). Our reading of the research leads us to hypothesize that all three elements of working memory are used at all times during the writing process but that different aspects of the writing process will demand different balances of emphasis on use of the phonological loop and the visuospacial sketchpad. An attractive feature of Hayes’ theory is representation of the individual’s cognitive resources as part of ‘the task environment’ (see Flower and Hayes, 1981). This offers a potential link between psychological and sociocultural factors in the writing process, which we 138

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address in this chapter, given that the environment for writing and the tasks that are undertaken are so important. Neuroscience has enabled us to think further about the potential role of working memory. Berninger and Winn’s (2006) model, informed by neuroscientific research, portrays text generation as the two elements of ‘transcription’ and ‘executive functions’ both controlled by a third element, working memory. The split between transcription and executive functions has some similarities with Smith’s (1994) psycholinguistic distinction between transcription and composition, specifically the need to understand the separation of these processes and how this might impact on teaching and learning. Berninger and Winn (2006) portray working memory as activating long-term memory during planning, composing, reviewing and revising, and activating short-term memory during reviewing and revising output. However, they appropriately caution that most neuroscientific research has addressed transcription processes, with a few studies tackling word generation, with and without the constraints of sentence context, but studies have not been undertaken at discourse level. Empirical work has examined the extent to which the effort required by transcription can compromise other aspects of writing (McCutchen, 2006). Evidence suggests that for beginner writers in particular, heavy demands on working memory lead to limitations of writing output. For example when trying to compose sentences, handwriting may not be fluent enough for children to record everything they want to say before they start to forget some of their original thoughts (Graham et al., 2008). Being able to write letters automatically and legibly therefore has implications for children’s writing proficiency (Ritchey, 2008). Only when automaticity with basic writing skills and handwriting is achieved will children be able to fully focus cognitive resources on aspects such as spelling and compositional demands (Kellogg, 1996) (see also Chapter 17, this volume). This does not however imply that the teaching of basic writing skills should necessarily happen before the teaching of other aspects of writing. Borzone de Manrique and Signorini (1998) looked at the effect of task demands on the writing performance of young emergent Spanish writers. They explored the forms of writing produced by kindergarten children who had received no formal instruction in phonological awareness, reading or writing. The children were asked to complete tasks involving writing single words and writing texts. Nine writing forms were defined, ranging from ‘scribble-wavy’ (a continuous line on the paper without the definition of letters, often zig-zag in style) to ‘conventional’ (correct spellings or ‘orthographically acceptable substitutes’ Borzone de Manrique and Signorini, 1998: 515). Results showed that the children used a combination of writing forms for accomplishing each task. Significantly, whereas the predominant form for writing single words was conventional spelling, the predominant forms for text writing were random letter strings (termed ‘letters-random’ by the authors) and repeated letters or patterns (‘letters-patterned’). The emergent writers appeared to use different writing forms depending on the task, rather than as a result of a single level of development. Tolchinsky (2006) similarly argues that children’s writing develops at many levels simultaneously and that rather than following a continuum or linear line of development, ‘what children come to know about texts guides and constrains their knowledge of letters and words, and what they grasp about letter-sound correspondences guides and constrains their way of writing texts’ (Tolchinsky, 2006: 87). These findings provide a challenge to over-prescriptive linear models of development that are commonly adopted in the context of teaching policy documents and school assessment systems. 139

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The writing environment Young children infer the semiotic and functional nature of written language through living, observing and participating in an environment in which others use print for various purposes (Purcell-Gates, 1996; Dyson, 2001). Factors such as a print-rich environment, informal instruction and reading ability have some effect on the emergence of writing (Clay, 1985; Dyson, 2001, 2008; Neuman and Dickinson, 2001; Nunes and Bryant, 2004). Children’s earliest discoveries about written language are therefore learned through active engagement with both their social and cultural worlds (Rowe, 1994; Gee, 2001; Pellegrini, 2001; Barrat-Pugh, 2002; Makin and Jones-Diaz, 2002; Compton-Lilly, 2006). Neuman and Roskos (1997) argued that participation in writing and reading practices represents an important phase of literacy learning, because children come to understand that print is meaningful, and participation enables them to practice what written language is for and how it works. Embedding writing experiences in meaningful activity models several distinctive features about it for young children, such as: written text conveys a message; writing is made up of separate words that correspond to spoken utterances; words are made up of individual letters; and, in English, texts are read from left to right. Several research studies have suggested that as a result of such individual and shared exploration, children are able to test their hypotheses about the forms and functions of written language in situational contexts from a very early age (Ferreiro and Teberosky, 1982; Barrat-Pugh, 2002; Rowe 2003). Young children arrive at school with different understandings of what writing is because of their varying exposure to writing experiences (Barrat-Pugh, 2002). While there is a regularity which characterizes literacy development, children reach developmental milestones through a variety of different routes (Clay, 1991; Pellegrini, 2001); each child’s pathway into literacy is a distinctive journey shaped by personal, social and cultural factors (Martello, 2002; Scheuer et al., 2006a; Rowe, 2008). Aspects of literacy that children see as most relevant will differ according to the circumstances of their upbringing: ‘learning, especially learning an expressive system like written language, is not divorced from one’s identity and history but, of necessity, embedded within it’ (Dyson, 2001: 139). For writing to become part of a child’s communicative repertoire children need to be in an environment that allows them opportunities to write. It is the quality and frequency of the literacy related interactions and activities that children experience at home that make a difference to children’s short- and long-term outcomes (e.g. Wells, 1986; Dunsmuir and Blatchford, 2004). Cognitive theory and sociocultural theory seems to converge on the idea that young children’s writing features variable mental processing during writing, dependent on the form of writing the child is attempting to use and the temporal point during the writing process. This in turn is influenced by the task and the writing experiences that are part of young children’s lives outside formal educational settings.

The transition to conventional writing Drawing is an important precursor to and part of emergent writing (e.g. Levin and Bus, 2003; Yamagata, 2006; Yang and Noel, 2006, Lancaster, 2007). Even if children have not learned how to write conventionally, they are able to distinguish between the two systems of drawing and writing and are therefore able to produce marks based on and 140

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associated with the features of each. Levin and Bus (2003: 891) showed that in the early stages the child writes by drawing the two-dimensional object known as print until they begin to understand that writing represents meaning primarily by phonological units of language. As children explore the features of writing, the discovery that some features are distinctive helps children to organize their written materials, for example moving from a discontinuous linear pattern to a small number of distinguishable elements; it is in this respect that the graphic patterns of writing are being reproduced. Later writing is distinguishable from early drawings in terms of properties such as linearity and segmentation into units. Yamagata (2006) investigated the process by which representational activity and knowledge about drawing and letter and number writing emerge in Japanese children aged between 21 and 46 months. An example of representational activity in relation to writing is the child’s name written in the top left-hand corner of the paper: at this stage the meaning of what is written is perhaps determined by the place where it appears, or by the child’s intention as a writer, rather than by its linguistic features. The main findings of the study were that (1) the recognition of representational systems increases with age; (2) representational activities correspondingly develop with age through several phases; and (3) while children over three years can recognize each system correctly, this is not necessarily related to representational activity. By the age of four years, writing has been internally grasped by the child as a particular activity that produces a specific formal output distinct from drawing, in that it is linear and discrete (Yang and Noel, 2006). A child’s knowledge of their name plays a significant role in their early writing development prior to phonological understanding (Haney, 2002). Names provide a way for children to make sense of the print world as they learn to recognize their own name; names also become a natural focus for them as they begin to explore written language (Clay, 1975; Ferreiro and Teberosky, 1982; Bloodgood, 1999; Haney, 2002; Blair and Savage, 2006; Yang and Noel, 2006). Bloodgood (1999) found that the name has the potential to enable children to connect literacy strands in a meaningful way. When faced with a writing task the child problem solves, typically by applying and using what they know in order to make meaning of the situation. If all or some of the letters in their name are the only letters they know how to reproduce, children will often reorchestrate that same set of letters intentionally to produce an infinite number of words. Significantly, while each message might look similar, children consider them to be different (Ferreiro and Teberosky, 1982). As young children make the important transition from emergent to conventional writing (building on their knowledge of drawing and writing, and the writing of their name), they are usually receiving formal writing instruction at school. We have established that children have considerable understanding about how to communicate meaningfully via intentional marks they make on the page, and that the transcriptional demands of conventional writing are a particular challenge. One of the fundamental aspects that children must understand in order to progress to conventional writing is knowledge of the alphabetic code (Blair and Savage, 2006), which Goswami (2008) suggests develops as a result of direct teaching rather than through experience prior to schooling, a point which could beneficially be further explored through research. Once the rules of the alphabetic code are internalized, children are able to move from a preoccupation with code acquisition according to conventional grapheme–phoneme correspondence rules to a concern with orthography (Scheuer et al., 2006a). As far as 141

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English orthography is concerned this requires children to begin learning about the complexity of English spelling; English is a language that is uniquely difficult in this regard, especially in comparison with other languages such as Spanish (Seymour et al., 2003). One way of understanding the transition into conventional writing is to find out what children themselves think about the process of learning to write. Scheuer et al. (2006b) conducted a study of 60 Argentinean children attending either Kindergarten, first or fourth grade (i.e. aged five or nine years old). Findings revealed that children developed clear ideas about the aims, requirements, content and characteristics of writing (Scheuer et al., 2006b). All the children involved in the study were able to give accounts of learning to write, including for the older children an awareness of the emergent stages that they progressed through en route to conventional writing. Conversely, the younger children were able to demonstrate how they felt their writing would change for the better as they grew older. Significantly, while the Kindergarten children involved in the study were unconcerned about the technicalities of producing conventional writing, those in Grade 1 showed a focus on writing output in line with what they were receiving in terms of formal writing instruction in school. These children were more concerned with the secretarial aspects of writing, i.e. producing conventional writing that was acceptable and spelt correctly, for example. Those in Grade 4 however gave responses which reflected an adjustment to, and an understanding of, conventional writing along with an emphasis on the ability to convey meaning to the reader. Writing for the older children in the study represented a way of expressing and generating meanings because the alphabetical code had been fully mastered.

Conclusion The context for writing at the theoretical levels described in this chapter is a vital consideration for educators. The context of the task environment is one that is central to teachers’ work and is one that requires the embedding of writing tasks/experiences in meaningful activities for young children. Meaningful activities are ones that children will understand in relation to their previous experience of literacy in the home and other settings. Writing continua and linear models of writing development continue to be influential in educational settings. For example they are frequently employed as a way to structure national policies on literacy teaching. Such models may be less useful than was once thought in positively influencing effective teaching of writing. Teaching perhaps should be built on an expectation of some universal patterns of development, but the individual nature of children’s routes into writing also need to be understood and supported. This requires one-to-one educator–pupil interaction at the point of mark-making in addition to other larger group activities that will support writing development. The composition of meaningful marks remains the central focus of writing for children and educators alike. However, the ability to compose will ultimately be compromised if the basic skills of letter formation and alphabetic principle are not mastered. There is a need for educators to constantly balance these two important areas. As children master conventional writing, support for code acquisition should be followed by support for children to understand the wider orthographic aspects of language, something which is particularly important for children learning English. Finally, the 142

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place of drawing, not just as something intrinsically important in its own right but also as an important feature of children’s writing development, needs more attention by educators.

References Barrat-Pugh, C. (2002). Children as Writers. In L. Makin and C. Jones-Diaz (Eds) Literacies in Early Childhood: Challenging views, challenging practice. Sydney, NSW: Maclennan and Petty. Berninger, V.W. and Winn, W.D. (2006). Implications of Advancements in Brain Research and Technology for Writing Development, Writing Instruction, and Educational Evolution. In C.A. MacArthur, S. Graham and J. Fitzgerald (Eds) Handbook of Writing Research. New York: The Guilford Press. Blair, R. and Savage, R. (2006). Name Writing but not Environmental Print Recognition Is Related to Letter-sound Knowledge and Phonological Awareness in Pre-readers. Reading and Writing 19: 991–1016. Bloodgood, J. (1999). What’s in a Name? Children’s name writing and literacy acquisition. Reading Research Quarterly 34(3): 342–67. Borzone de Manrique, A.M. and Signorini, A. (1998). Emergent Writing Forms in Spanish. Reading and Writing 10: 499–517. Clay, M. (1991). Becoming Literate: The construction of inner control. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Clay, M.M. (1975). What did I Write? Beginning writing behaviour. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books. Clay, M.M. (1985). The Early Detection of Reading Difficulties (3rd edn). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Clay, M.M. (1993). An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement. Hong Kong: Heinemann Education. Compton-Lilly, C. (2006). Identity, Childhood Culture, and Literacy Learning: A case study. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 6(1): 57–76. Dunsmuir, S. and Blatchford, P. (2004). Predictors of Writing Competence in 4- to 7-year old Children. British Journal of Educational Psychology 74: 461–83. Dyson, A. (2001). Writing and Children’s Symbolic Repertoires: Development unhinged. In S.B. Neuman and D.K. Dickinson (Eds) Handbook of Early Literacy Research. New York: The Guilford Press. Dyson, A. (2008). Staying in the (Curricular) Lines: Practice constraints and possibilities in childhood writing. Written Communication 25(1): 119–57. Ferreiro, E. (1986). The Interplay between Information and Assimilation in Beginning Literacy. In W. Teale and E. Sulzby (Eds) Emergent Literacy: Writing and reading. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Ferreiro, E. and Teberosky, A. (1982). Literacy before Schooling. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Flower, L.S. and Hayes, J.R. (1981). A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing. College Composition and Communication 32: 365–87. Gee, J.P. (2001). A Sociocultural Perspective in Early Literacy Development. In S.B. Neuman and D.K. Dickinson (Eds) Handbook of Early Literacy Research. New York: The Guildford Press. Goodman, Y.M. (1986). Readers’ and Writers’ Talk about Language. In C. Pontecorvo, B. Burge and L.B. Resnic (Eds) Children’s Early Text Construction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Goswami, U. (2008). Cognitive Development: The learning brain. Hove: Psychology Press.

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Graham, S., Harris, K.R., Mason, L., Fink-Chorzempa, B., Moran, S. and Saddler, B. (2008). How do Primary Grade Teachers Teach Handwriting? Reading and Writing 21: 49–69. Hall, N. (1987). The Emergence of Literacy. Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton. Haney, M.R. (2002). Name Writing: A window into the emergent literacy skills of young children. Early Childhood Education Journal 30(2): 101–5. Harste, J.C., Woodward, V.A. and Burke, C.L. (1984). Language Stories and Literacy Lessons. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books. Hayes, J.R. (2006). New Directions in Writing Theory. In C.A. MacArthur, S. Graham and J. Fitzgerald (Eds) Handbook of Writing Research. New York: The Guilford Press. Hildreth, G. (1936). Developmental Sequences in Name Writing. Child Development 7(4): 291–303. Kellogg, R.T. (1996). A Model of Working Memory in Writing. In C.M. Levy and S. Ransdall (Eds) The Science of Writing: Theories, methods, individual differences and applications. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Lancaster, L. (2003) Moving into Literacy: How it all begins. In N. Hall, J. Larson and J. Marsh (Eds) Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy. London: Sage. Lancaster, L. (2007) Representing the Ways of the World: How children under three start to use syntax in graphic signs. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 7(2): 123–54. Levin, I. and Bus, A.G. (2003). How is Emergent Writing Based on Drawing? Analyses of children’s products and their sorting by children and mothers. Child Psychology 39(5): 891–905. McCutchen, D. (2006). Cognitive Factors in the Development of Children’s Writing. In C.A. MacArthur, S. Graham and J. Fitzgerald (Eds) Handbook of Writing Research. New York: The Guilford Press. Makin, L. and Groom, S. (2002). Literacy Transitions. In L. Makin and C. Jones-Diaz (Eds) Literacies in Early Childhood: Challenging views, challenging practice. Sydney, NSW: Maclennan & Petty. Martello, J. (2002). Many Roads through Many Modes: Becoming literate in early childhood. In L. Makin and C. Jones-Diaz (Eds) Literacies in Early Childhood: Challenging views, challenging practice. Sydney, NSW: Maclennan & Petty. Neuman, S.B. and Dickinson, D.K. (Eds) (2001). Handbook of Early Literacy Research. New York: The Guilford Press. Neuman, S.B. and Roskos, K. (1997). Literacy Knowledge in Practice: Contexts of participation in young writers and readers. Reading Research Quarterly 32(1): 10–32. Nunes, T. and Bryant, P. (2004). Handbook of Children’s Literacy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Pahl, K. (1999). Transformations: Meaning making in a nursery. London: Trentham. Pellegrini, A.D. (2001). Some Theoretical and Methodological Considerations in Studying Literacy in Social Context. In S.B. Neuman and D.K. Dickinson (Eds) Handbook of Early Literacy Research. New York: The Guilford Press. Purcell-Gates, V. (1996). Stories, Coupons, and the TV Guide: Relationships between home literacy experiences and emergent literacy knowledge. Reading Research Quarterly 31(4): 406–28. Ritchey, K.D. (2008). The Building Blocks of Writing: Learning to write letters and spell words. Reading and Writing 21: 27–47. Rowe, D.W. (1994). Preschoolers as Authors: Literacy learning in the social world of the classroom. Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Rowe, D.W. (2003). Preschoolers as Authors: Literacy learning in the social world of the classroom. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Rowe, D.W. (2008). The Social Construction of Intentionality: Two-year-olds’ and adults’ participation at a preschool writing center. Research in Teaching 42(4): 387–434. Scheuer, N., De la Cruz, M., Pozo, J.I. and Neira, S. (2006a). Children’s Autobiographies of Learning to Write. British Journal of Educational Psychology 76: 709–25.

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Scheuer, N., De la Cruz, M., Pozo, J.I., Huarte, M.F. and Sola, G. (2006b). The Mind is not a Black Box: Children’s ideas about the writing process. Learning and Instruction 16: 72–85. Seymour, P.H.K., Aro, M. and Erskine, J. M. (2003). Foundation Literacy Acquisition in European Orthographies. British Journal of Psychology 94: 143–7. Smith, F. (1994). Writing and the Writer (2nd edn). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum. Teale, W. and Sulzby, E. (Eds) (1986). Emergent Literacy: Writing and reading. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Teale, W.H., Hoffman, J., Paciga, K., Garrett, J., Richardson, S. and Berkel, C. (2009). Early Literacy then and now. In J.V. Hoffman and Y. Goodman (Eds) Changing Literacies for Changing Times: A historical perspective on the future of reading research, public policy, and classroom practices. London: Routledge. Tolchinsky, L. (2006). The Emergence of Writing. In C.A. MacArthur, S. Graham and J. Fitzgerald (Eds) Handbook of Writing Research. New York: The Guilford Press. Wells, G. (1986). The Meaning Makers: Children learning language and using language to learn. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Yamagata, K. (2007). Differential Emergence of Representational Systems: Drawings, letters, and numerals. Cognitive Development 22: 244–57. Yang, H.C. and Noel, A.M. (2006). The Developmental Characteristics of Four-and-five-year-old Pre-schoolers’ Drawings: An analysis of scribbles, placement patterns, emergent writing, and name writing in archived spontaneous drawing samples. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 6(2): 145–62.

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13 The ontogenesis of writing in childhood and adolescence Frances Christie

Introduction Research into children’s writing in the English-speaking world has had quite a long history, much of it illuminating, for what has been suggested either of children’s writing capacities in particular phases of life, such as childhood, or of pedagogical strategies to promote growth in writing. In practice, the research – some of it now dated – has had more to say of writing in childhood than in adolescence (see discussions in Wray and Medwell, 2006; Christie and Derewianka, 2008: 1–4; Myhill, 2009). In addition, much of the research has been rather general in character, lacking sufficient linguistic depth with which to trace developmental progress in principled ways. Britton et al. (1975) for example undertook a study of writing from 11–18-year-olds, which sought to establish different types of writing – transactional, expressive and poetic – and which had the merit that it suggested some differentiation of writing functions. However, so general did these prove to be that they lacked the necessary specificity with which to analyze children’s written texts, while they offered little to explain developmental progress over time. Other research of a more linguistic character (e.g. Hunt, 1965; Harpin, 1976; Loban, 1976; Perera, 1984), focusing on different ages, used various linguistic tools; it directly addressed features of children’s written language, including for example sentence and clause lengths, types of subordinate or dependent clauses, the frequency of the passive voice, the use of personal pronouns, the use of finite and non-finite verbs, use of adverbials, various kinds of embeddings and uses and expansion of vocabulary. Myhill’s (2009) recent study also uses linguistic measures to investigate the writing of students in the junior secondary years (ages 12 to 15 years) leading her to propose the presence of three overlapping ‘developmental trajectories’ in growth of control of writing. The first involves a shift from speech to written language patterns, the second involves emergent capacity to express and elaborate on experience in writing, while the third involves being able to ‘transform’ the experience presented, so that writers achieve some rhetorical impact. In the latter sense, young writers become ‘designers’ (Myhill, 2009). 146

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All such studies have had value, though it is notable that with some exceptions (e.g. Loban, 1976 )1 the research has rarely addressed writing ability in terms of the developmental trajectory from early childhood, when children enter school aged six or seven, until they conclude their schooling in late adolescence, aged 17 or 18. The issue is an important one, not least because control of writing is critical to control of school learning generally, while a principled account of the ontogenesis of writing in children and adolescents should inform pedagogy and design of the writing curriculum for all the years of schooling. In this chapter I propose the presence of four developmental phases in learning to write: the first lasts from about six to about eight years of age, covering the first years of schooling; the second, from about age nine to about 13 or 14, involves the move from late childhood to adolescence, covering the latter years of primary schooling, and straddling the entry to secondary schooling; the third, from about age 14 to 15 or 16, covers junior to mid-secondary schooling; and the last, from about 16 to age 17 or 18, covers the remaining years of schooling, thence leading into adulthood. The phases are to be understood flexibly, for the distinctions between them are often blurred, while children differ enormously, such is the nature of human development generally. Furthermore, social class background and life experience also have an impact, so that some children come to school more advantaged than others in terms of learning in all areas, including in their writing. In consequence, some progress faster than others. Nonetheless, I shall suggest that we can identify linguistic measures of the developmental changes that typically occur across these phases, and that an understanding of these can help in planning the writing curriculum. The first phase involves establishing the basic tools for writing and reading, as well as some sense of the grammar of the written text. This first phase is often thought of as the most important step in mastering writing, because it is so obviously concerned with the visible manifestations of literacy – its writing and spelling systems. Indeed, they are important, yet it is the second phase that is developmentally in many ways the most significant. That is because this is the phase when children pass from late childhood to early adolescence, and it is then that the transition to successful control of the grammar of written language is effected, though subsequent experience sees consolidation and expansion of what is gained. Successful control of the grammar of written language accompanies, and indeed facilitates, important changes in cognition, as children move into adolescence and on to adult life: capacities for critical reflection on experience, for generalization and for abstract argument, for example, are among the important capacities that adolescence requires, and control of writing has an important function in expression of all these. It is no accident that it is in the second phase that children move from the primary to the secondary school, with all the attendant adjustments involving a changed curriculum and a changed school day: demands on children’s written language expand quite rapidly with the developmental changes of adolescence. Children must learn to deal with experience, information, ideas and knowledge in new ways, leading to ability to handle abstraction, judgment, generalization and argument – all of them characteristics of mature writing of a kind valued for school learning and in adult life.

1 Loban’s study was longitudinal in that it followed the same population of 211 children from kindergarten to Year 12. The study was primarily devoted to collecting oral language, though after grade three, samples of written texts were collected on an annual basis.

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The transition involved in this second phase is marked by significant expansion of all linguistic resources, while in the third and fourth phases there is further expansion and consolidation, so that the range of meanings children are enabled to construct is much enhanced, while they achieve an associated enhanced capacity to express value judgment and opinion. In this discussion I shall draw on Halliday’s systemic functional linguistic (SFL) grammar (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004) and a recently completed study of children’s writing development (Christie and Derewianka, 2008). I note that the latter study traces developments in English, history and science, recognizing the ‘subject specific literacies’ associated with each (Unsworth, 2001: 10–12), and the need to trace developments in all such areas of learning. However, in the interests of space I shall confine my observations mainly to texts drawn from English. Recent discussions of school genres in the SFL tradition are provided by Rose (2009) and Martin (2009).

Four developmental phases in learning to write The proposed developmental trajectory bears a relationship to that proposed by Myhill (2009) in terms of the shift from speech to writing, though since the phases discussed here cover all the years of schooling from early childhood to late adolescence, there are also differences. The overall developmental direction is away from constructing immediate or ‘commonsense’ experience in childhood, towards constructing experience that is remote from the immediate, becoming increasingly abstract and ‘uncommonsense’ in adolescence. The shift from expression of ‘commonsense’ to ‘uncommonsense’2 experience is facilitated by growing mastery of the grammar of writing; the processes of recognizing, interpreting and internalizing the grammatical patterns of written language take some years in their emergence. Very young children’s writing is a little like speech, though it is in fact simpler than the language they typically speak by age six or seven. The tasks of mastering spelling and writing systems are considerable, and the effort to handle these causes the language to regress for some time (Halliday, 1993: 110), while aspects of the grammar of written language must be learned. Grammar in the early years is ‘congruent’ (Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999, 2004) in that the language items chosen accord with their functions: nouns realize people or phenomena, verbs realize actions, and so on, though various non-congruent realizations will emerge later on. In the first phase, a young child writes (spelling and punctuation corrected here, as elsewhere): Me and my brother went to the beach. We went surfboarding. I rode my surfboard.

2 The terms ‘commonsense’ and ‘uncommonsense’ are taken from Bernstein (1975: 99), used to contrast the language and experience of the familiar and the local with the institutional experience and learning of schooling.

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Here the writer (re)creates a familiar experience from his daily life, using simple nominal groups (or noun phrases) – my brother, my surfboard – to identify the participants in his text, while he relies on personal pronouns (we, I ) to create what he makes ‘Theme’ (in first position)3 (Halliday and Matthiessen (2004: 64–105) in each of his clauses. His Theme choices are successful in that they build internal or endophoric reference in the text, helping to build cohesion. Achieving successful control of reference so that a text ‘hangs together’ well is in fact a significant challenge in the early years, and it can take some children many years to accomplish. With experience and maturity, Theme choices become more varied, and young writers move away from excessive reliance on personal pronouns, using other means to build text unity (though Theme choice varies depending on genre). For example the following was written by a child aged 11 (and in our second phase), where what is introduced as New Information (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 579–80), towards the end of the first sentence, is picked up and made Theme or ‘point of departure for the message’ in a later sentence (double slashes reveal clause boundaries): Last summer holidays my family and I went on our holidays to South West Rocks. I was really excited // because we always have so much fun there. In South West Rocks the surf isn’t too rough // but the beaches have lots of rocky outcrops // so everybody is always very careful to swim away from them. Developing control of thematic progression is an important skill that emerges by late childhood to early adolescence (among successful writers at least), playing an important role in subsequent writing of the longer texts required in a secondary education. An important step towards expanding the available linguistic resources comes when children (at about age seven) learn to expand the nominal group structure, typically with an embedded clause (shown with squared brackets): In the ancient times there was a minotaur [[that was very nice and kind // and lived in a cave.]] Such a facility assists in the building of the lexical density (Perera, 1984; Halliday, 1985) that marks mature written language, and by age eight or nine, children learn other ways to expand the nominal group, for example using pre-modification of the noun that is the head word: One day I went for a walk and I saw a very big foot print. or, a little more ambitiously in a slightly older child: The king sat in a heavily decorated carriage.

3 Theme is not defined as ‘first position’ though that is where it appears in the English clause. It is expressed differently in other languages.

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Verbal group structures expand with ageing, as children extend their uses of lexis, while they also eventually make more varied uses of tense choices: The offering didn’t consist of food for the god This offering had happened every 20 years in the city.

Prepositional phrases in the first phase create circumstantial information, either of place or time: Me and my brother went to the beach In the ancient time there was a minotaur

Such phrases can be used quite imaginatively to build circumstantial information as in this, placed in marked Theme position4 (written by a nine-year-old of a knight with a golden sword): Into his scabbard it went. In the second and third phases of development the range of prepositional phrases expands to create many different kinds of circumstantial meaning, including for example those of concession: Despite her extraordinary resistance to emotion, Lara does not stand up to bullies, of manner: Like a demented chorus everyone was screaming, or of purpose: this movie is suitable for both children and adults. Adverbial expressions are rare in the first phase, those that do appear being typically only of intensity: My ice cream was very cold, though they achieve greater significance by the second phase: I was really excited, sometimes being quite effectively made up: Everyone wondered anticipatingly what he was doing

4 An unmarked Theme choice ‘conflates with’ (or is the same as) the Subject of the verb in a clause, while a ‘marked Theme’ is realized in some other aspect of the clause, quite commonly, as here, in a prepositional phrase creating a Circumstance of Place.

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They are especially important by the third phase, as young writers learn to exploit them for the additional circumstantial information they provide, often adding significant nuance to the meanings, and/or adding attitudinal colour to the text: The shadow (of a man) slowly disappeared and a clear image emerged. Unexpectedly the bomb squad van arrived in a matter of seconds. She slid gracefully off Sparkle’s back. (we) miserably scanned the scene In the first phase attitudinal expression is realized either in simple adjectives: It was fun, or in verbs that realize simple affect: I liked it, while it expands in the second and again in the third, expressed sometimes in adverbial expressions as above, though it is also expressed in increasingly nuanced lexical choices across all areas of the lexicogrammar. Examples include: Tom makes a desperate rush to freedom from the jail he is imprisoned in. ‘Stop!’ cried a commanding voice from the door … A ringing silence followed her. The man in the MCG uniform was a hefty and solid looking man with a stern expression [[moulded onto his face]] Turning to clauses, in early childhood these are often singular, or linked by simple additive conjunctive relations: Possums come out at night // and they go back in the morning. The first dependent clauses are typically those of time, often put first in a marked Theme position in order to foreground the information involved, and helping to build simple unfolding of event as in narratives: When we went to the zoo // we saw monkeys and kangaroos. In the second phase, when children are aged from about nine to 12 or 13, all types of dependent clauses tend to emerge, and they are significant in extending the ways children can mean in writing. They include, for example those of reason: No-one would buy him// because he was shy, those of condition: Even if there was a puzzle or a challenge [[ to compete in]] // they would always solve it 151

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or this, in which the writer, aged 11 to 12, uses the conditional clause to intrude a sense of his own judgment on the book: If I were to recommend this book // I would recommend it to people [[ who like to take their time // and ponder over what the author said ]] Clauses of purpose also appear: All of them brought their best swords // to help them in a battle. The latter is a non-finite clause of purpose, and such clauses seem to be the first nonfinite clauses to appear in writing. Another occurs in the following clause complex, which commences with a clause of concession, where the clause (in marked Theme position) facilitates expression of the writer’s judgment of events: Even though the Magpies led most of the way // the group [[ hanging off the barrier]] only shut their mouths // to get a breath. Non-finite clauses achieve considerable significance by the third phase when children are well into their secondary education for they are frequently used in mature written language (Perera, 1984: 235), quite often in marked Theme position: While parading around his castle // he tripped. As threatened, Cody lost everything, while this appears in the fourth phase, written by a student in the last year of school: No longer guided by my own mind and thoughts alone // I feel // this dark world has plans of its own. With growing facility children learn to play with the positioning of the various dependent clauses, making their information prominent in different ways, as in this instance in a child of 11: It was really hot // so > Nic turned to Mum, while these appear in writing by older students in the third and fourth phases: more and more people entered and > no one could think that anything would happen. After the end of the game > we trudged our way to Richmond station. (> denotes an enclosed dependent clause). 152

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The move to a non-congruent grammar Thus far, we have established that the available linguistic resources children use in their writing expand – at least among successful students – from the initial very minimal expressions found in the first phase, towards enriched resources that ‘flesh out’ the meanings made by extending nominal group structures and verbal group structures; making growing use of prepositional phrases to build circumstantial information; expanding control of thematic progression and of reference; and extending the range of dependent clauses, as well as learning skilled ways to deploy them. These things occur in the second phase and early third phase, when children pass from childhood to adolescence, and from primary to secondary schooling. What we have said primarily covers developments using the ‘congruent’ grammar, to which we referred earlier. This account must be extended now to capture one other important development of the second to third phase: it is the shift towards use of a non-congruent grammar. It is this, in association with other additional capacities in expression of symbolic meanings, that marks the departure into control of the grammar of writing that facilitates the expression of the increasingly ‘uncommonsense’ meanings valued in secondary school and in the world beyond school. With the entry to ability to marshall and express ‘uncommonsense’ knowledge, young people ideally achieve growing maturity in expression of knowledge and ideas and growing sensitivity in expression of attitudinally rich meanings. For the purposes of subject English, ‘uncommonsense’ knowledge is various and it is expressed in a range of ways, so it might be thought difficult to generalize about this. However, we can say that it importantly involves, among other things, knowledge of texts (verbal and visual) and critical discussion of these, offering interpretation of their qualities and of the values they express. Successful interpretation and discussion of valued texts is highly prized, and it calls for considerable skill in writing. The first instances of the shift towards non-congruent realizations occur as children turn actions expressed in verb choices into phenomena or things, a process of nominalization identified by Halliday (Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999: 227–92) as a form of ‘grammatical metaphor’. The term is chosen in contrast with lexical metaphor: a grammatical metaphor occurs when the usual or congruent expression found in the grammar is varied to achieve a particular meaning. One example occurs in a young child writing of erosion, where she has nominalized an action Removing all the trees causes the soil to become loose. More congruently this would be expressed thus: ‘If you remove the trees // the soil becomes loose’ Another instance of a grammatical metaphor by a young child was cited above, where the lexical verb ‘decorate’ has been used to qualify the Head word (i.e. the noun carriage), in the group: The king sat in a heavily decorated carriage.

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More congruently this would be expressed thus: The king sat in a carriage which had been decorated heavily. The capacity to use such metaphorical expressions comes at the earliest among children aged nine (Halliday, 1993; Derewianka, 2003), though our data (Christie and Derewianka, 2008) suggest that it appears quite sparingly in children’s writing until well into adolescence. The emergence of grammatical metaphor is very important for the capacity it confers to construct abstract phenomena, ideas and/or entities as an aspect of ‘uncommonsense’ learning. For example a student in mid-adolescence wrote of the imagined world of fairies in a ‘Fairy Realm’; they had achieved their wish of a long life but regretted its impact, for they had grown in number and there was overcrowding: Our newly extended lives are causing our population to rise like never before // and we cannot possibly accommodate for everyone in our clan. Written more congruently this would read: We now live long lives // and therefore our population has grown. What is of interest in all the above examples is that in each case the non-congruent realization buries the otherwise overt connection between the two clauses, expressed using a conjunctive relationship. This is notable, given the fact already noted above, that in late childhood to early adolescence children learn to extend for different purposes the range of dependent clauses they create. The connection between events captured in the conjunctive relations between clauses is of course retained, but expressed differently, for the meaning is expressed in a grammatically metaphorical way. Thus, in the last example, the writer nominalizes, creating a phenomenon (our newly extended lives), while the causal connection is captured in the verb causes, building what in functional grammar is called a ‘causative process’ (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004). The abstract meanings of adolescence rely heavily on the capacity to recognize and use such grammatically metaphorical expressions. Consider the two nominal groups in the following, from a text discussing The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time: people’s perceptions of the world are often hindered by a lack of understanding and empathy Expressed more congruently the writer might have written: (Some) people often perceive the world badly // because they do not understand or have empathy for others, or perhaps: People [[who do not understand // or have empathy for others]] often perceive the world badly. 154

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Two abstract ideas (‘people’s perception of the world’; ‘a lack of understanding and empathy’) are shown to have an important role in constructing the particular interpretation of the novel that the writer – aged about 17- wants to offer. This kind of abstract formulation about experience or knowledge is not available to children in the first phase of writing development, nor even in the second, though its basis should ideally be laid then; while it is in the third and fourth phases that it must be apparent if students are to handle their ‘uncommonsense’ learning.

The movement into abstraction The movement into the non-congruent expressions in which ‘uncommonsense’ knowledge is constructed commences in late childhood to adolescence (the second phase) when children move from primary to secondary curriculum. They are also the years when children often start to fall behind in their school learning, evident for example in the USA in references to the ‘literacy gap’ (e.g. Strickland and Alvermann, 2004; NCW, 2003), though reading is often referred to more than writing (e.g. Carnegie Corporation’s Program, Advancing Literacy, 2007. Also see discussions in Snow and Biancarosa, 2003 and Biancarosa and Snow, 2004). In the UK the National Secondary Strategy, initiated in the light of a Government Green Paper, is intended to improve the general performance of students in Key Stage 3, when children are aged 11 to 14 years (NAA, 2008). In Australia significant government support has been given over many years to literacy initiatives for the so-called ‘middle years’. I would argue that with a better, more linguistically motivated account of what constitutes mature writing performance, we will be able to develop pedagogies that will address the problems. The movement into ‘uncommonsense’ knowledge construction, so valued in secondary school and in much subsequent life, is facilitated by the ability to create abstract meanings of many kinds that take the writer (and the reader) away from immediate reporting of an event towards more abstract understandings and observations. (See Macken-Horarik, 2006, for a related discussion). In what follows, I shall say a little more to illustrate what is meant here. Thus, the student cited above writing about Mark Haddon’s novel used two quite dense nominal groups to create the phenomena of which she wrote, and she used them in turn to offer a judgment about the novel in her opening sentence: ‘Mark Haddon’s novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time demonstrates that people’s perceptions of the world are often hindered by a lack of understanding and empathy’. In writing thus, the writer moved back from the details of the novel and its characters – the actual details of the plot and so on – to offer a very abstract statement about it. This in turn allowed her to go on to offer subsequent equally abstract observations about, and interpretations of, the principal character, the novel and the relationships it portrayed: Christopher’s individual perception of his ideal world was uniquely displayed in the novel. The novel explored many relationships of deception between characters as well as false illusions. These relationships demonstrated the physical, psychological and emotional aspects of the characters’ worlds, including perceptions and understandings between characters. 155

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The use of the verb ‘demonstrate’ twice in this short extract is of some interest, since this and similar lexical verbs (e.g. ‘show’, ‘reveal’, ‘illustrate’, ‘suggest’) commonly appear in such abstract texts, creating what are termed ‘identifying processes’ (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004), involved in building the abstract meanings of the third and fourth phases. Such identifying processes have a critical role in building the texts that senior students are asked to write in English (discussed in Christie and Cléirigh, 2008), allowing them to construct value judgment and opinion, and offering interpretation of literary pieces, as in this, discussing To Kill a Mockingbird: Many situations throughout the book show the children’s reactions and emotions. The two large abstract phenomena ‘many situations throughout the book’ and ‘the children’s reactions and emotions’ are built using grammatical metaphor. Capacity to create and manipulate these allows the writer to move back from the events of the novel and to offer an interpretation of what they ‘show’ or ‘reveal’. Such a capacity is essential to the expression of judgment and interpretation so prized in subject English. Another student writes of a film discussed in English and writes of the ‘lesson’ that it ‘indicates’: this indicates the idea [[ that sometimes there are no set guidelines on a journey’s route]]. Once again this writer deals in abstract experience, interpreting it in such a way that she allows her own value judgment of the film to be expressed. Such abstract experience and value judgment is expressed in many other ways, for example by making metaphorical use of a range of lexical verbs (realizing material processes, Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004), as in the following instances: Christopher displayed sincere empathy when he held Wellington The novel explored many relationships of deception between characters In Frankenstein strong emotions form a large part of the story Dramatic tension also plays a large part in both compositions This poem encompasses an imaginative journey The text pivots on the conceptual metaphor of life as a journey The text itself throws enormous light on the concept of evil In fact, the resources in which abstractions are offered are various, and their nature differs depending both on whether the student is writing in English, history, science or any other subject, and on the types of genre involved. Nonetheless, the capacity to create abstract meanings, achieved in grammatically and lexically metaphorical ways, is common to all subjects, and as already noted, it is particularly prized in English. Sometimes – and this is often true by mid adolescence – young people strain to produce particular effects, as in the student writing of a character in a novel: Lara is an unbelievably strong person. I would describe her as an army tank in emotional traumas. 156

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This tendency to ‘over write’, is a sign of a student enjoying playing with words, though needing to achieve appropriate control of them. Another, slightly eccentric, use of language occurs in a story set in Paris, where the writer strove to create a sense of the atmosphere and style of the streets of the city: No building within view was as outrageously suited to its surroundings that afternoon than an ancient yet very well-maintained turret of an establishment signed ‘Musée des Oeuvres Mondials’. The use of the word ‘outrageously’ doesn’t really work very well, yet one senses the writer’s need to write with a degree of verve and style. Myhill (2009) similarly notes as a developmental phenomenon the tendency of young writers ‘to use ambitious vocabulary, even though the choice may not succeed’.

Conclusion Successful control of writing depends on capacity to marshal and deploy a range of linguistic resources, for no one is sufficient, and even the capacity for abstraction is often deployed in texts marked for simplicity in other ways, such as deliberate use of short sentences, intermingled with longer ones, remarked by both Perera (1984) and Myhill (2009). Overall, successful students by the end of schooling enjoy a repertoire of linguistic resources, of a kind they can take on into adult life. Schooling programmes need to acknowledge the developmental trajectory involved in the ontogenesis of writing, intervening at critical points, including the second and third phases, to assist all students in learning to write well.

References Bernstein, B. (1975). Class Codes and Control Vol. 3: Towards a Theory of Educational Transmissions. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Biancarosa, G. and Snow, C.E. (2004). Reading Next – A Vision for Action and Research in Middle and High School Literacy: A report from Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education. Britton, J.N., Burgess, T., Martin, N., McLeod, A. and Rosen, H. (1975). The Development of Writing Abilities (11–18). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Carnegie Corporation of New York (2007). Advancing Literacy http://www.carnegie.org/ literacy/index.html accessed 17 August 2008. Christie, F. and Cléirigh, C. (2008). ‘On the importance of “showing.”’ Paper presented at the International Systemic Functional Linguistics Congress on Voices around the World, Macquarie University, July. In C. Wu, C. Matthiessen and M. Herke (Eds) Conference Proceedings. Macquarie University: ISFC Organizing Committee, pp. 13–18. Christie, F. and Derewianka, B. (2008). School Discourse: Learning to write across the years of schooling. London and New York: Continuum. Derewianka, B. (2003). Grammatical Metaphor in the Transition to Adolescence. In A.M. SimonVandenbergen, M. Taverniers and L. Ravelli (Eds) Grammatical Metaphor: Views from systemic functional linguistics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Halliday, M.A.K. (1985). Spoken and Written Language. Geelong, VIC: Deakin University Press.

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Halliday, M.A.K. (1993). Towards a Language-based Theory of Learning. Linguistics and Education 5(2): 93–116. Halliday, M.A.K and Matthiessen, C.M.I.M. (1999). Construing Experience through Language. A language-based approach to cognition. London: Cassell. Halliday, M.A.K. and Matthiessen, C.M.I.M. (2004). An Introduction to Functional Grammar (3rd edn). London and New York: Arnold. Harpin, W. (1976). The Second ‘R’: Writing development in the junior school. London: Allen and Unwin. Hunt, K. (1965). Grammatical Structures Written at Three Grade Levels. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Loban, W. (1976). Language Development: Kindergarten through grade twelve. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Macken-Horarik, M. (2006). Knowledge through ‘Know how’: Systemic functional grammatics and the symbolic reading. English Teaching: Practice and Critique 5(1): 102–21. Martin, J.R. (2009). Genre and Language Learning: A social semiotic perspective. Linguistics and Education 20(1): 10–21. Myhill, D. (2008). Towards a Linguistic Model of Sentence Development in Writing. Language and Education 22(5): 271–88. Myhill, D. (2009). ‘Becoming a Designer: Trajectories of linguistic development. In R. Beard, D. Myhill, J. Riley and D. Nystrand (Eds) Handbook of Writing Development. London: Sage, pp. 402–14. National Assessment Agency (NAA) (2008). Statutory National Curriculum Tasks and Tests. http://www.qca.org.uk/qca_14666.aspx accessed 21 January 2008. National Commission on Writing (NCW) (2003). The Neglected ‘R’: The need for a writing revolution. http://www.writing.org/prod_downloads/writingcom/writing-school-reform-natlcomm-writing.pdf accessed 17 August 2008. Perera, K. (1984). Children’s Writing and Reading: Analysing classroom language. Oxford and New York: Blackwell. Rose, D. (2009). Writing as Linguistic Mastery: The development of genre based literacy pedagogy. In R. Beard, D. Myhill, D. Nystrand and J. Riley (Eds) Handbook of Writing Development. London: Sage, pp. 151–66. Snow, C. and Biancarosa, G. (2003). Adolescent Literacy and the Achievement Gap: What do we know and where do we go from here? New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York. Strickland, D.S. and Alvermann, D.E. (Eds) (2004). Bridging the Literacy Achievement Gap, Grades 4–12. New York and London: Teachers College Press. Unsworth, L. (2001). Teaching Multiliteracies across the Curriculum. Buckingham and Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press. Wray, D. and Medwell, J. (2006). Progression in Writing and the Northern Ireland Levels for Writing. A Research Review undertaken for the CCEA. Warwick: University of Warwick.

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14 Composition: cognitive, textual and social dimensions Sarah W. Beck

The transition from high school to college-level writing has become a topic of special interest among literacy educators in the US, as evidenced by the publication of several recent books designed to help secondary school teachers better prepare their students for post-secondary work (Weinstein, 2001; Dombek and Herndon, 2004; Sullivan and Tinberg, 2006). Much has been made of the difficulties that students experience with this transition, though the jury is still out on whether these difficulties are the fault of secondary-school instructors who are not sufficiently attuned to the demands of collegelevel work to prepare their students for it, or whether they are caused by the idiosyncractic nature of writing practices across the various disciplines that students encounter in college (Thompson, 2002). As a contribution to this ongoing discussion, in this chapter I will discuss research studies, including some of my own, that can help us to understand the challenges that composition poses for students progressing through secondary school grades and on into post-secondary study. Though Russell (2006) defines composition as ‘the conscious and explicit development of students’ writing in formal education, from preschool through higher education’ (Russell, 2006: 243), it is important to acknowledge the role of multimodal forms of expression in the development of students’ ability to construct meaning. As Chapman (2006) has noted, the composing process is often mediated by talking, drawing and the use of other media tools such as computers and the internet. And, in their analysis of trends in written learning resources, Bezemer and Kress (2008) note that images have a much more prominent role in these resources than they did in the early twentieth century. Indeed, a rapidly growing body of research is illustrating the diverse, creative and powerful forms of composition students can produce when provided with sufficiently motivating tasks and contexts for writing (e.g. Guzzetti and Gamboa, 2004; McMillan and Wilhelm, 2007), which often incorporate digital and other modes of communication (Alvermann, 2008). Thus, in considering how to foster students’ writing development across contexts of schooling it is important to give some attention to the affordances of different modes for learning. I will keep this in mind as I discuss key elements of composition, with a focus 159

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on academic contexts for writing, and the significance of these elements for the teaching and learning of this essential literate practice.

Composition viewed in three dimensions I situate my discussion of writing across these contexts for learning within a theoretical framework that comprises cognitive, textual and social dimensions. The cognitive dimension involves the thought processes, including retrieval of knowledge from long-term memory and transformation of that knowledge through the process of reflection, that lead to the production of written text. This dimension has been richly described in empirical research conducted by cognitive psychologists (e.g. Flower and Hayes, 1981; Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1987). The textual dimension of the activity of writing includes the macrostructure of text genres, text-forming linguistic devices such as cohesive ties (Halliday and Hasan, 1976); grammatical structures that contribute to idea development in written discourse (Martin, 1989); and the lexical items associated with particular genres. Finally, the social dimension of the activity of writing involves the relationship between writer and audience, as represented in the social–interactionist view of writing (Nystrand, 1986), which views meaning in written text as the jointly-constructed product of communication between writer and reader as well as the socially-constructed artefacts that the writer makes use of during the activity of writing. As Hayes (1996) points out, ‘the act of writing is not social just because of its communicative purpose [;] it is also social because it is a social artifact and is carried out in a social setting’ (Hayes, 1996: 5). It is important to attempt to understand composition through multiple dimensions, and to understand how these dimensions are integrated, because this will allow us to more comprehensively synthesize what we know about the teaching and learning of academic writing, and to locate instructional interventions and assessments within these dimensions. Without such an organizing framework, educators and policymakers are vulnerable to reductive ways of thinking about instruction and assessment. In the sections below I review characteristics of writing at the secondary level through the three facets of this theoretical lens. Along the way I draw on examples from my own research to descriptively illuminate these three facets.

The cognitive dimension Although the validity of cognitive processing theory has been called into question by the emergence of sociocultural theory as an alternative lens for understanding writing (Smagorinsky, 1998; Prior, 2006), the body of knowledge produced by research conducted within this paradigm remains relevant today, in that it has illustrated qualitative differences in how writers of different levels of experience approach texts, and has shown that instruction focused on teaching new thinking skills can have a positive effect on students’ compositions. The landmark studies of Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987), for example revealed that the ability to analyse and transform knowledge during the writing process is what distinguishes expert writers from novice ones. These researchers observed that, while experienced writers analyse and alter relevant knowledge in the process of composing an essay, inexperienced writers simply present knowledge in the order in which they recall it in response to a prompt. Thus, for more skilled writers the processes of writing about and analysing knowledge appeared to be intertwined. 160

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The same pattern has also been identified in research on adult ESL writers of varying levels of experience (Cumming, 1989). This finding continues to have important implications for composition at the secondary level and upward, where writing assignments become increasingly analytic in nature (Schleppegrell, 2004) and therefore require writers to consider the topics and texts that are the subject of their writing from multiple perspectives. Other cognitively oriented studies of composition have highlighted the importance of planning and metacognitive, strategic thinking in the process of composition. For example Flower and Hayes’s (1981) landmark expert–novice comparisons of writers’ processes revealed that more experienced writers approached writing tasks as problemsolving activities that require strategic thinking, while less experienced writers did not. Cognitively-oriented studies of ESL writers have also identified differences in how moreand less-experienced writers approach writing tasks, revealing that more experienced writers use internalized models for writing to guide both the organization and the content of their compositions (Cumming, 1989). In a similar vein, Sasaki (2000) found that more experienced ESL writers spent more time planning than did less experienced ESL writers. Insights gleaned from cognitively-oriented research on composition have led to studies that related planning and other cognitive operations to the quality of the compositions that writers produced, sometimes by evaluating the effects of planning-focused interventions on students’ compositions. For example it has been shown that the extent to which writers plan their compositions using an outline (Kellog, 1987) or heuristic (Yeh, 1998) can have a marked effect on the quality of students’ writing, and that explicitly teaching this aspect of the writing process can result in positive effects on students’ written compositions. This has been proven across a range of contexts and populations, including students with identified learning disabilities (Chalk et al., 2005); middle-school students (De La Paz and Graham, 2002; De La Paz, 2005) and English EFL learners in Japan (Sasaki, 2000). Knowing when to employ certain strategies can also matter: Breetvelt et al. (1994) showed that for high school students, the types of cognitive activities employed during the composing process had different effects on the quality of students’ writing depending on the stage at which those activities took place during the composing process. Such explorations of the cognitive aspect of writing remind us of the relationship between process and product. When helping students to think through or think about their compositions, teachers need to be aware that thinking skills cannot be taken for granted, but must be made visible and explicit to students. At the same time, the sociocultural perspective on cognition that I alluded to earlier encourages us to call into question the novice–expert characterization of writers that is prevalent in much of the cognitively oriented research on writing processes. A sociocultural perspective necessitates that we examine writing as a highly contextualized activity with origins in both culture and history, implying that it would be inadequate to characterize a writer as ‘expert’ or ‘novice’ without careful account of what constitutes expertise for a particular type of writing, including attention to the social and cultural characteristics of writing tasks in which such expertise is demonstrated. Because a sociocultural perspective assumes that thinking is shaped by meditational means (Cole, 1996) – that is, how we think cannot be analysed apart from consideration of the tools, both mental and physical, that we use to think with – an important consequence of this perspective is that a writer who is novice in one context, with one type of 161

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task, may be expert in another, and vice versa, because this perspective assumes that thinking is shaped by meditational means. In that regard, it seems fruitful to investigate thinking in the context of multimodal composition, for example by exploring how students apply principles of design and representation (Bezemer and Kress, 2008) in composing across multiple modes of representation. I will return to this point in more detail below.

The textual dimension The systemic–functional school of linguistics provides a comprehensive approach to describing the textual dimension of composition. Working within this tradition, Martin (1989) proposed three main categories of written genres on the basis of textual analysis of student writing samples: Personal Genres (recounts, narratives); Factual Genres (procedures, reports); and Analytical Genres (Accounts, Explanations, Exposition). Christie (1998, 2002) in turn proposed a developmental sequence for these genre categories, arguing that acquiring proficiency in the analytical genres is one of the major linguistic challenges of secondary school. Specific textual features associated with analytic genres of writing can be found at both the level of text macrostructure and the level of the sentence. The macrostructure of an expository essay has been described as one of ‘foreshadowing, arguing, and summing up’ (Schleppegrell, 2004: 90). The sentence-level (or register) features that allow writers to realize these larger macrostructures include the use of abstract nouns, modal verbs (would, could, might) to indicate degree of commitment to a proposition, and what is known as ‘grammatical metaphor’ – the transformation of ‘congruent’ expressions of actions, in which objects are represented by nouns and actions are represented by verbs, into ‘incongruent expressions’, in which verbs are represented by nominalized versions of those verbs (e.g. ‘demonstration of anger’ rather than ‘he demonstrated that he was angry’). Typically rare in students’ writing until late childhood or early adolescence (Christie, 1998), such transformations allow writers to load multiple modifiers onto nominalized representations of actions or abstract concepts, and thus to pack more information into their texts. Mastery of such transformations is a hallmark of academic writing development at the secondary level (Schleppegrell, 2004), in that it allows writers to represent and analyse relationships among abstractions. This study of textual features has led to a highly systematized approach to describing school language and in particular how students’ writing evolves in response to increasingly complex communicative and cognitive demands, as students move through their school years. This approach has evolved in concert with increasing calls for explicitness in teaching expectations for the language of schooling as a system that must be mastered (e.g. Cope and Kalantzis, 1993). Yet when teachers focus on textual features without sufficient attention to the thinking that produces these features, it can be hard for students to meet their expectations for analytic writing. The teacher I described in a recent case study believed strongly in the need for explicitness in teaching urban students who lacked adequate backgrounds in academic literacy (Beck, 2006). This teacher enacted that commitment in his teaching of the literary analysis essay when he attempted to assist his students’ composition of literary analysis essays by providing a textual scaffold in the form of a fill-in-the blank type of template: _[‘Title’]___ is a _[text type]__ by__ [author]____ . This _[text type]__ deals with __[theme]____. In __[title]_______, __[author]__ suggests that _____________. 162

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Students’ initial attempts to complete this template reveal that while they are capable of filling in the blanks to create grammatically correct renditions of a thesis statement, providing this type of grammatical structure did not guarantee that students would be able to represent the kinds of abstractions that are characteristic of analytic thought. For example: •

•

‘Sunday in the Park,’ is a story by Bel Kaufman. This story deals with a lady, her husband, and her son who are trying to have a good time at the park on a pleasant beautiful Sunday afternoon. In ‘Sunday in the Park,’ Bel Kaufman suggests that everybody has different points of views. [Jamal Essay 1] ‘Tickits’ is a short story, which was written by Paul Milenski. This short story deals with wrong doings. In ‘Tickits’, Milenski suggests that people do try to correct other people’s wrong doings. [Raquel Essay1]

In these examples the student writers appear to have misunderstood plot summaries (‘a lady, her husband, and son …’) and actions (‘wrong doings’) as themes. This misconception of what a theme is and how to render it linguistically suggests that students may have benefited from more practice in transforming their understanding of literary texts through the writing process. Field notes from my extensive observations of this class confirm that these students had few opportunities to experience the processes of brainstorming, drafting, and substantive revision, and thus to develop their ideas about the literary texts that were the focus of these essays. These observations highlight the interrelatedness of the cognitive and textual dimensions of writing, and remind us of the importance of composition as a site of meaning construction. Recent studies of multimodal composition have documented ways in which nontextual modes of communication (sound, still image, moving image) provide students with resources for developing and representing their ideas in new and powerful ways. Ranker’s (2008) descriptive account of two fifth grade boys’ composing processes while creating a video documented how the media they employed ‘broaden[ed] the repertoire of available semiotic resources and means of combining them’ (Ranker, 2008: 229). In other words, the various media gave these students more options for creating meaning because, as Hull and Nelson (2005) have argued, the co-presence of multiple modes of representation enables greater power of expression for authors. The social dimension The social dimension of written composition accounts for the important influence of the social communicative context on the forms that written discourse takes. All genres of writing are realized through certain textual features, which are influenced by the social communicative context in which the genre is designed to function (Cope and Kalantzis, 1993). Another facet of the social dimension of writing has to do with the decisions that writers make about how to shape their writing to meet the needs of readers; in this respect the cognitive (planning and decision-making) and social dimensions overlap. Indeed, Flower (1994) has since adapted the original cognitive model of writing (Flower and Hayes, 1981) to account for how social context shapes the decisions that writers make in the process of composing. High-school students’ reflections on their academic writing, obtained in one of my recent studies (Beck and Jeffery, 2009), show that they do spontaneously consider 163

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the reader even when not directly prompted to do so. The study in question was designed to investigate what students understood about writing in genres in the school subjects of history and literature. Interviews with student participants revealed students’ awareness of the social nature of written communication. For example, when asked why starting the introduction to an essay with a question was a favourite strategy of his, Ricardo, an eleventh grade student, stated: Because it gives people a better understanding of what’s going to go on. Cause it’s like you’re giving them a question, they think about it, then read the rest … then they’re like, oh, that’s what he was trying to say. [Ricardo, Int. 1] Students also invoked the reader when reflecting on the quality of their own work: For example Yen, another eleventh grader, noted that some of my essays don’t even make any sense sometimes, it’s just like … It makes sense, in a way, if you knew, if it was someone that read the same thing … it would make sense, but if I just let you read it, you wouldn’t get it, what it was saying. [Yen Int. 1] A common theme across all participants was that they were often unclear about the purpose of the genres assigned. As Nessa, one tenth grade participant, put it, ‘I’m not really sure [what the purpose of a Document Based Question1 is]. That’s a question I have for myself, too. I’ve been trying to figure that out’. The students’ lack of clarity about what was expected of them as writers in the context of academic subjects was a recurring theme across these interviews. The import of this theme is all the greater, given that these students were fairly representative of the low-income, language-minority population that has often struggled to master school language. We suggest (Beck and Jeffery, 2009) that this ambiguity may have been a source of confusion and difficulty for them as they attempted to compose responses to the writing tasks that their teachers set for them. This suggestion is grounded in and inspired by the substantial body of research that has investigated the sociocultural aspects of the social dimension of writing, which has explored ways in which the degree of distance between students’ primary discourse and the discourse of academic writing (or speaking) has been shown to vary, depending on such factors as socioeconomic status and home language use (Heath, 1983; Gee, 1996). A sociocultural perspective challenges the strictly cognitive view of writing skills by emphasizing how the social environment of the classroom can affect the cognitive processes involved in students’ writing as well as the textual products resulting from it. Research has shown, for example that adjustments to the social context of the teaching environment which included sustained immersion in discourse that employed the register features of scientific writing, as well as explicit explanation of the purpose of these features, led to marked improvements in the informational writing of ESL students (Huang, 2004).

1 Document-Based Questions (DBQs) are a staple of the history and social studies curricula in US schools. This task entails analysing evidence from several primary source documents in response to a question posed about an historical period or event.

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Composition at the post-secondary level Research and scholarship on post-secondary composition have increasingly highlighted the importance of the social dimension of writing. As Durst (2006) points out, for the past 20 or so years studies of college students’ writing have explored how expectations for writing at the college level vary according to the requirements of particular disciplines, rather than constituting a monolithic and static construct. In contrast to the process studies of the early 1980s, which led to general models of writing that could be applied to all writers regardless of their background and context, more recent naturalistic studies have focused on a small number of writers. These studies have revealed the variation in expectations for writing in different disciplines and the confusion that students experience when instructors neglect to specify the nature of these expectations and how students should go about meeting them (Chiseri-Strater, 1991; Herrington, 1985). To cast these findings in terms of the multifaceted theoretical framework that informs this discussion, the difficulties these students face are as much social as cognitive in origin. As Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995) argue, a socio-cognitive approach to understanding genre is better suited to capturing the writing conventions of academic environments than a purely cognitive or textual approach. Recent recommendations for effective writing across disciplines at the post-secondary level from Gottschalk and Hjortshoj (2004) highlight the social and cognitive underpinnings of textual characteristics. Good writing in any discipline is supposed to ‘make difficult subjects easier for us to understand’ (Gottschalk and Hjortshoj, 2004: 11), suggesting that writers must have a deep understanding of the content about which they are writing, in order to make it clear to readers. A key characteristic of all college writing, regardless of the discipline or genre, is that it should be ‘“voiced”. In other words, as readers we sense the presence of a writer writing, addressing us, taking responsibility for our understanding and, in effect, ushering us through the text.’ (Gottschalk and Hjortshoj, 2004: 11) The mention of ‘voice’ in a textbook on academic writing, with its social connotations of interpersonal conversation, suggests how central the social dimension of writing has become to understanding criteria for effective writing in post-secondary settings. Further underscoring the social – or, more accurately, sociocultural – nature of academic writing, Macbeth (2006) provides a rich analysis of her own teaching of a college composition class for ESL students, in which she discovers through analysis of students’ errors how much tacit knowledge about academic discourse she had taken for granted in her teaching. As she discovers through her inquiry, the apparently straightforward task of composing a summary of a transcribed interview ends up being fraught with complexity for her students, most of whom are recent arrivals to the US and one of its large state universities. From this experience she learns that there are many ways of having conversations with texts, and notwithstanding what may be ‘obvious’ about it for one who converses with texts that way, stating the main idea for the record is itself a cultural, and for some of these students, distant practice. (Macbeth, 2006: 196) Although she provided her students with what she thought were explicit and detailed instructions, both orally and in writing, in the final analysis she concluded that following 165

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these instructions had been an ‘interpretive challenge’ (2006: 189) for these students, because they lacked the situated sociocultural knowledge that experienced practitioners of academic discourse take for granted. The need to provide students in composition classrooms with such sociocultural knowledge thus stands as one of the major implications of this study. Recent research on writing practices in specific academic disciplines has also highlighted the influence that social context of communication has on the shaping of written texts. Studying the composition process of a group of science researchers, Florence and Yore (2004) found that student writers moved through several stages of writing process: although they began by ‘dumping results on paper’ (Florence and Yore, 2004: 661) in the form of numbers and tables in figures, over the course of iterative revisions they gradually ‘transformed their findings to persuade select audiences about knowledge claims’ (2004: 661). In other words, in the process of composing these articles under the guidance of expert supervisors, they learned to use the social context of communication to shape the content of their writing. The social dimension of writing has also been implicated in research designed specifically to transform the cognitive processes that college-level writers employ in composing academic prose. Implementation of a peer-response approach to teaching college-age ESL writers has demonstrated that increasing social interaction among peers in the classroom can foster the use of more advanced cognitive processes (Villamil and DeGuerrero, 1996). Text-focused research on the characteristics of college-students’ writing has also highlighted the social implications of textual choices. For example in her study of indirection (a set of discourse strategies characteristic of African–American language traditions that include circumlocution, metaphors and figurative language) in the writing of African–American college students, Syrquin (2006) notes that, while this textual feature has generally been seen to undermine the effectiveness of compositions, ‘certain types of indirection may serve as markers of a writer’s personal style’ (Syrquin, 2006: 87); she even argues, based on her empirical comparative analysis of the writing of African–American and non-African–American students, that there is a place for such style in academic writing ‘based on the writer’s well-developed sensitivity to register choices’ (Syrquin, 2006: 87). In other words, the effectiveness of textual features of writing needs to be considered in light of the social context for the writing and how it is received by a reader. Allowing for variation in register choices and other textual features in academic discourse is one way to provide access to such discourse for students from non-traditional backgrounds. Another way is to embrace a conception of academic discourse that admits multiple modes for expressing meaning, both in teaching practice and in conceptions of students’ writing development. Archer (2006) explored this very issue in an investigation of how students training to be engineers at a South African university realized scientific discourse and affective orientation to their topic (water supply in a rural village) through both visual and textual modes. Noting that the verbal mode is often privileged over the visual mode in the development of students’ academic literacy, she argued for the more inclusive view of academic discourse afforded by multimodal representation. Her argument assumes a social orientation to composition in that she draws on social semiotic theory (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996) to undertake a ‘social-semiotic multimodal analysis’ (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996: 455) of students’ texts. This holistic approach to composition in academic settings reveals codified ways in which visual elements such as diagrams, labels and hierarchical organization of information contribute 166

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to scientific discourse, while at the same time allowing for a more flexible combination of scientific and everyday discourse. This affordance of the visual mode makes it especially useful for revealing the competencies of students from rural areas who have arrived at the university with a diverse range of cultural capital.

Conclusion The recent social turn in literacy research (Gee, 1999) suggests that the true significance of cognitive and textual aspects of any act of composition cannot be understood apart from the social context of that act. Increasingly, even when researchers do not make the social aspects of writing a direct focus of study, they nonetheless feel compelled to acknowledge the social dimension of writing in discussing findings and their implications. What are the implications of this ‘social turn’ for those of us who research composition? Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995) have put forth the notion of writers in academic disciplines as ‘fully invested disciplinary actors’ who are ‘aware of the textual patterns and epistemological norms of their discourse community, but are also aware of the need to be at the cutting edge, to push for novelty and originality’ (Berkenkotter and Huckin, 1995: 25). This characterization of writers in academic contexts suggests a promising line of inquiry for both researching and teaching composition practices, one that focuses on the extent to which and ways in which writers across the stages of schooling are given opportunities to gain investment in the disciplines of school, and to realize that investment in their literate practices. Multimodal literacies may provide an especially promising site for such inquiry, insofar as experimenting with alternate modes of representing ideas allows for novel instantiations of discipline-specific genres. Close investigation of the strategies that students use while composing with multiple media may shed light on the degree to which these media open up not only new ways of making meaning, but also new ways of reflecting on and learning from the process of meaning creation. Studies of multimodal literacy practices (both reading and composing) have highlighted the nonlinear nature of these practices, meaning that writers or readers frequently move back and forth within and across texts in order to construct or create meaning within a multimodal environment (Ranker, 2008). Compared to composing in an exclusively textual mode, composing in multimodal contexts thus seems to pose new challenges to authors, thus offering a dynamic new context in which to explore the intersection of the cognitive, textual and social dimensions of composition.

References Alvermann, D. (2008). Why Bother Theorizing Adolescents’ Online Literacies for Classroom Practice and Research? Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 52(1): 8–19. Archer, A. (2006). A Multimodal Approach to Academic ‘Literacies’: Problematising the visual/ verbal divide. Language and Education 20(6): 449–62. Beck, S. (2006). Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in the Teaching and Learning of Writing. Research in the Teaching of English 40(4): 413–62. Beck, S. and Jeffery, J. (2009). Genre and Thinking in Academic Writing Tasks. Journal of Literacy Research. 41(2), 228–272. Bereiter, C. and Scardamalia, M. (1987). The Psychology of Written Composition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Berkenkotter, C. and Huckin, T. (1995). Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bezemer, J. and Kress, G. (2008). Writing in Multimodal Texts: A social-semiotic account of designs for learning. Written Communication 25(2): 166–95. Breetvelt, I., van den Bergh, H. and Rijlaarsdam, G. (1994). Relations between Writing Processes and Text Quality: When and how? Cognition and Instruction 12(2): 103–23. Chalk, J., Hagan-Burke, S. and Burke, M. (2005). The Effects of Self-regulated Strategy Development on the Writing Process for High School Students with Learning Disabilities. Learning Disability Quarterly 28(1): 75–87. Chapman, M. (2006). Preschool through Elementary Writing. In P. Smagorinsky (Ed.) Research on Composition: Multiple perspectives on two decades of change. New York: Teachers College Press, pp. 15–47. Chiseri-Strater, E. (1991). Academic Literacies: The public and private discourse of university students. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. Christie, F. (1998). Learning the Literacies of Primary and Secondary Schooling. In F. Christie and R. Misson (Eds) Literacy and Schooling. London: Routledge, pp. 47–73. Christie, F. (2002). The Development of Abstraction in Adolescence in Subject English. In M. Schleppegrell and M.C. Columbi (Eds) Developing Advanced Literacy in First and Second Languages: Meaning with power. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 45–66. Cole, M. (1996). Cultural Psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (1993). The Powers of Literacy: A genre approach to teaching writing. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Cumming, A. (1989). Writing Expertise and Second Language Proficiency. Language Learning 39: 81–141. De La Paz, S. (2005). Teaching Historical Reasoning and Argumentative Writing in Culturally and Academically Diverse Middle School Classrooms. Journal of Educational Psychology 97: 139–58. De La Paz, S. and Graham, S. (2002). Explicitly Teaching Strategies, Skills and Knowledge: Writing instruction in middle school classrooms. Journal of Educational Psychology 94: 291–304. Dombek, K. and Herndon, S. (2004). Critical Passages: Teaching the transition to college composition. New York: Teachers College Press. Durst, R. (2006). Writing at the Postsecondary Level. In P. Smagorinsky (Ed.) Research on Composition: Multiple perspectives on two decades of change. New York: Teachers College Press. Florence, M. and Yore, L. (2004). Learning to Write Like a Scientist. Coauthoring as an enculturation task. Journal of Research on Science Teaching 41(6): 637–68. Flower, L. (1994). The Construction of Negotiated Meaning: A social-cognitive theory of writing. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Flower, L. and Hayes, J. (1981). A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing. College Composition and Communication 32(4): 365–87. Gee, J. (1999). The Future of the Social Turn: Social minds and the new capitalism. Research on Language and Social Interaction 32: 261–8. Gee, J.P. (1996). Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in discourses (2nd ed.). London: Taylor & Francis. Gottschalk, K. and Hjortshoj, K. (2004). The Elements of Teaching Writing: A resource for instructors in all disciplines. New York : Bedford/St. Martin’s. Guzzetti, B. and Gamboa, M. (2004). Zines for Social Justice: Adolescent girls writing on their own. Reading Research Quarterly 39(4): 408–36. Halliday, M.A.K. and Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. New York: Longman.

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Hayes, J. (1996). A New Framework for Understanding Cognition and Affect in Writing. In C.M. Levy and S. Ransdell (Eds) The Science of Writing. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Associates, pp. 1–27. Heath, S.B. (1983). Ways with Words: Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms. New York: Cambridge University Press. Herrington, A. (1985). Writing in Academic Settings: A study of the contexts for writing in two college chemical engineering courses. Research in the Teaching of English 19: 331–59. Huang, J. (2004). Socializing ESL Students into the Discourse of School Science through Academic Writing. Language and Education 18(2): 97–123. Hull, G. and Nelson, M. (2005). Locating the Semiotic Power of Multimodality. Written Communication 22(2): 224–61. Kellogg, R.T. (1987). Writing Performance: Effects of cognitive strategies. Written Communication 4: 269–98. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge. Macbeth, K. (2006). Diverse, Unforeseen, and Quaint Difficulties: The sensible responses of novices to learning to follow directions in academic writing. Research in the Teaching of English 41: 108–207. McMillan, S. and Wilhelm, J. (2007). Students’ Stories: Adolescents constructing multiple literacies through nature journaling. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 50(5): 370–8. Martin, J.R. (1989). Factual Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nystrand, M. (1986). The Structure of Written Communication: Studies in reciprocity between writers and readers. Orlando, FL: Academic. Prior, P. (2006). A Sociocultural Theory of Writing. In C. MacArthur, S. Graham and J. Fitzgerald (Eds) A Handbook of Writing Research. New York: Guilford Press, pp. 54–66. Ranker, J. (2008). Composing across Multiple Media: A case study of digital video production in a fifth grade classroom. Written Communication 25(2): 196–234. Russell, D. (2006). Historical Studies of Composition. In P. Smagorinsky (Ed.) Research on Composition: Multiple perspectives on two decades of change. New York: Teachers College Press Sasaki, M. (2000). Toward an Empirical Model of EFL Writing Processes: An exploratory study. Journal of Second Language Writing 9(3): 259–91. Schleppegrell, M. (2004). The Language of Schooling: A functional linguistics perspective. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Smagorinsky, P. (1998). Thinking and Speech and Protocol Analysis. Mind, Culture and Activity 5(3): 157–77. Sullivan, P. and Tinberg, H. (2006). What Is College-level Writing? Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Syrquin, A. (2006). Registers in the Academic Writing of African-American College Students. Written Communication 23(1): 63–90. Thompson, T. (Ed.) (2002). Teaching Writing in High School and College: Conversations and collaborations. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Villamil, O.S. and De Guerrero, M. (1996). Peer Revision in the L2 Classroom: Social–cognitive activities, mediating strategies, and aspects of social behavior. Journal of Second Language Writing 5(1): 51–75. Weinstein, L. (2001). Writing at the Threshold: Featuring 56 ways to prepare high school and college students to think and write at the college level. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Yeh, S. (1998). Empowering Education: Teaching argumentative writing to cultural minority middle-school students. Research in the Teaching of English 33: 49–83.

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15 Rhythm and blues: making textual music with grammar and punctuation Debra Myhill

Introduction When adults and young writers think about grammar and punctuation, all too often their thoughts turn to notions of accuracy and correctness, to ‘getting it right’. This is reinforced by marking systems for public English examinations in England which give marks for spelling, grammar and punctuation (SPaG) separately, disconnecting the grammar and punctuation from the communicative and creative function of writing. A consequence of this is to regard grammar, and with it, punctuation, as fulfilling the need ‘to attend to the mechanics of writing’ (Hillocks, Jr, 1986: 138) and little more. It is a limiting, technicist conceptualization of grammar. Similarly, public discourses relating to grammar and punctuation are framed by reference to error and blame, and almost always by claims of a national decline in standards. Pinker (1994: 370) wryly observes how subtly the link between social standards and grammar can be made: ‘as educational standards decline and pop culture disseminates the inarticulate ravings and unintelligible patois of surfers, jocks and valley girls, we are turning into a nation of functional illiterates’. The public acclaim of ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’ (Truss, 2003) was in many ways astonishing – a best-selling book on punctuation, triggering radio and television reports about the nation’s use of the apostrophe! A recent lengthy review of research on writing (Myhill et al., 2008), published by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), the ministry responsible for education policy in English schools, was greeted by the media with scare reports about teachers’ understanding of grammar. The Times Educational Supplement (Stewart, 2008) headline ‘Syntax too taxing for teachers’ typifies the tone of reporting. Such things are symptomatic of a national psyche of anxiety about grammar and punctuation.

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Not the grammar wars This public anxiety extends into the classroom. Uncertainty about grammar and the place of grammar in a writing curriculum, particularly the value of explicit teaching of grammar, has a long and turbulent educational history and is characterized by trenchant assertions, such as ‘Research over a period of nearly 90 years has consistently shown that the teaching of school grammar has little or no effect on students’ (Hillocks, Jr and Smith, 1991). This chapter will not address the debate about grammar teaching, as that has been rehearsed comprehensively and competently elsewhere (for example see Kolln and Hancock (2005) for a US perspective; Gordon (1991, 2005) for the New Zealand story; Hudson and Walmsley (2005) for insights from the UK; and Locke (2009) for an overview of the debate). However, the debate in part rests upon very differing views about language development and grammar which carry as a consequence differing pedagogical implications. Advocates of a generative transformational grammar are essentially Chomskyan in outlook, believing that we acquire grammar through innate processes (see also Chapter 20, this volume, for a more detailed explanation), whereas functional systemic grammar approaches see grammar as quintessentially about the interrelationship between form and meaning and something that needs to be learned. Hancock summarizes the classroom implications of these contrasting perspectives thus: If language is a mechanical system, essentially meaningfully neutral, essentially innate, then there may be little value to the writer or writing teacher in exploring its nature, little value in parsing sentences or learning the systems for describing its underlying formality. If, on the other hand, the forms of language are inherently, organically linked to discourse context and to meaning, and if these forms are not at all innate, but acquired over a lifetime of interactive use, then linguistics may have an enormous amount to offer the writing teacher and writing student, insights that go well beyond the minimum needed to write conventionally or correctly. (Hancock, 2009) If grammar is acquired naturally through an innate maturation process, then it does seem logical to assume that there is little point teaching it. But just as social interactionist thinking (see Chapter 20) would argue for the role of peers and adults in supporting and scaffolding oral language development, so it would follow that language development in writing would benefit from similar scaffolding. The critical question concerns the place of grammar in such scaffolding and it is this question which this chapter seeks to address.

Writing as social practice The nature of scaffolds provided to support learning about writing are always predicated upon values and assumptions about writing – for example writing as essentially concerned with functional accuracy; or writing as a set of cognitive processes to be mastered. Underpinning the thinking in this chapter is the view of writing as social practice. Writing is an act of connection and communication with others, and every act of writing is a way of expressing identity and positioning in relation to the world and 171

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the readership. So writing is a personal enterprise located within socially-understood expectations and norms about texts, discourses and writing practices. Accordingly, classrooms are socially-determined communities of practice which shape both written texts and writing processes and which frequently reflect the values of the school and the teacher more strongly than the values of the writer. The dominant forms of writing required by the school curriculum inscribe differing power relationships between participants and can reinforce social asymmetries and ideologies, reducing learning to write to mere mastery of a set of cultural norms. But children are not passive recipients of hegemonic cultural forces inevitably driving them to reproduce schooled versions of writing. They are capable of resistance, creativity and subversion. In our recent study of secondary aged (12–16) students’ writing, we found numerous examples of writers finding their own, alternative, voices. One boy, having written a cursory and rather banal argument text about animal rights, concluded with a salient and resistant postscript: ‘I don’t know anything about animal rights so I can’t show my argument writing skills in this task’. In a narrative piece, a girl demonstrates her explicit understanding of the writing games she is expected to play, and, through direct address to the reader, carefully counterpointed short and long paragraphs and a somewhat tongue-in-cheek tone, subverts normative expectations in an entertaining way: You’re probably wondering what all the fuss was about. Well, our teacher told us to make this dramatic and entertaining. So I did. I took an uninteresting incident, and made it interesting. What was the problem? I had an earwig latched on to my finger. I told you it wasn’t interesting. Okay, here is my ‘interesting’ version of the events leading up to it … I woke up in the morning, got washed, dressed and fed. Then I went into the lounge and picked up the earwig. That was really boring. Don’t you agree? Here is how I should have written it. It was a bright and early morning. The birds were singing and the bees were buzzing. At this point I was starting to wake up. I could hear my Mum downstairs, trying to get my brother, Daniel, to stop crying. He was only three months old, but when he cried you could probably hear him on the moon. All the little green, three-eyed Martians were probably hiding in their craters saying, ‘Beazle boing! Barnagy Daniel Balloony’. In English this means ‘Oh no! Not Daniel again’. Anyway, I got out of bed and proceeded down the stairs. By this time my brother was asleep again, having been up half the night. Developing as a writer, therefore, involves being socialized into practices, values, and ways of making meaning, but crucially, it also involves acquiring sufficient agency to comply with or resist those norms and values. And language, as a context-bound phenomenon, is a key part of this. Linguistic choices made in writing reflect values and positions and, as Hancock (2009) argues, functional linguistics provides ‘a way to explore the effectiveness of a choice. It heals the split between grammar and meaning. It connects form to meaning and form to purpose’. 172

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Writing as design Making choices – about textual content, about imagery, about sentence structures and patterns, about visual layout – is essential to gaining ownership as a writer of the writing process. Elsewhere (Maun and Myhill, 2005), I have argued for a framing of writing as a design activity and for supporting writers to see themselves as designers making design choices. The concept of writing as design is not new. Sharples (1999) described writing as an act of creative design and maintained that ‘a writer is not only a creative thinker, and problem solver, but also a designer’ (1999: 10). Kress (1997: 127) argued that children’s early attempts at writing are about design, and the New London Group (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000) conceptualized design as central to thinking about multiple literacies and intertextuality. Frequently, however, the concept of design focuses more on visual design (as in Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996) or on multimodality as elements of text design than on the verbal possibilities and choices. But grammar and punctuation are fundamental ‘design tools’, part of a writer’s meaning-making resources for text design. A narrow view of grammar and punctuation as merely addressing accuracy obscures its potentiality for creating rhythms and dynamics in text, and for subtly shaping nuances of mood and meaning.

Exploring grammar and writing Syntactical complexity and linguistic development Perhaps the most apparent way in which grammar relates to writing is in the development of increasing control of the sentence as a syntactical unit. The sentence is a defining unit in writing, or as Kress (1994) says ‘the sentence belongs to writing’. Spontaneous speech is not composed of sentences, but utterances, and those utterances are often hesitant, with multiple pauses, repetitions and circularities and they are often heavily chained sequences of clauses and fragments. Grammatically, writing is very different – it is, in general, composed in sentences and it tends to be more lexically dense, more embedded with greater subordination, and more nominalization and ellipsis (Chafe, 1982; Perera, 1984; Czerniewska, 1992). It is important to note, of course, that while informal speech and formal writing are very different, in practice speech and writing are not opposites, but a language continuum, with written forms such as email having many characteristics of speech, and formal speeches having many of the characteristics of writing. For novice writers, however, learning how to write in sentences is a significant challenge of early literacy, as is learning that writing is not speech written down but a different kind of discourse. Perera’s (1986) analysis of children’s oral and written usages demonstrated that from about eight years old, children were ‘differentiating the written from the spoken language’ (1986: 96). For older writers, becoming increasingly able to deploy linguistic constructions or patterns which are atypical in speech is an important element in writing development (Myhill, 2008). A number of studies have analysed writing development in terms of the syntactic complexity evidenced in their writing (Hunt, 1965; Perera, 1984; Harpin, 1986; Verhoeven et al., 2002; Massey et al., 2005; Myhill, 2008), and there are some generalizable findings across these studies. In general, as writers mature there is an increase in 173

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the use of subordination, the passive, and in lexical density, and an increase in length of clauses, noun phrases and sentences. But it is less clear what this means in terms of writing competence or writing effectiveness. The studies of Massey et al. (2005) and Myhill (2008) looked not just at age but at writing attainment and both found that less expert writers presented different profiles from their more able peers. This did not, however, equate simply to measures of syntactical complexity. The high-attaining writers, for example were more likely to use a short sentence or a simple sentence than lowerattaining writers, who were more likely to connect clauses using a coordinating conjunction. One voice arguing clearly that mature writing is characterized by syntactical complexity is Jordan (1993), though he is considering adult writers, often writing for specific purposes. He argues that immature writing is characterized by ‘the simple subjects, the paucity of complex noun phrases and the lack of subordination’ (1993: 44) whereas for mature writers ‘restrictive clauses and complex noun phrases play important cohesive and stylistic roles, and we therefore need to understand what they mean and how they contribute to the style and cohesion of the text’ (1993: 45). However, Crowhurst (1980) looked at both syntactical complexity and writing quality in narrative and in argument and found that in narrative there was no correlation between writing quality and syntactical complexity. Similarly, Faigley (1979) found no correspondence between clause length and judgements of quality. What these somewhat contradictory viewpoints indicate, however, is that syntactical complexity is largely value-neutral. In other words, it may well be that there is a general increase in syntactical complexity as writers mature, but what is significant is less the presence or absence of particular syntactic constructions but the effectiveness with which they are used. What is important is whether syntactical choices made serve ‘specific rhetorical motives’ with ‘syntactic and tonal choices that heighten register, generate rhetorical emphasis, and increase readability’ (Haswell, 2000: 338).

Sentence-combining One aspect of syntactical complexity is the use of longer sentences, often with subordination, and more internal connectivity. Sentence-combining is a technique designed to develop greater syntactical complexity: it will be very familiar to a US audience but is relatively unknown beyond, so it is worth providing a clear explanation. In essence, sentence-combining is designed to enable novice writers to develop the ability to ‘write more complex and sophisticated sentences’ (Graham and Perin, 2007: 18) using exercises which give them practice at ‘combining’ two or more sentences into one. So a child might be given the two sentences: It is true. A rich man wants to get married. And might re-write this as: ‘It is true that a rich man wants to get married’ (or of course, as Austen puts it, ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a good wife’). The emphasis is on grammatical connectivity, rather than using grammar for sentence design. Following O’Hare’s (1973) study showing the beneficial impact of sentence-combining was a flurry of subsequent studies in the late 1970s (for example Daiker et al., 1978; Hake and Williams, 1979) which tended to be confirmatory of its benefits. More recent 174

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studies in the US (Saddler and Graham, 2005) and uniquely, one in England (Keen, 2004) again point to its success. Indeed, Keen maintained that the impact was very quickly transferred and that the children he worked with were able to move from the exercises and ‘apply them more or less immediately to their own writing’ (2004: 96). Two substantial meta-analyses conducted in recent years on opposite sides of the Atlantic (Andrews et al., 2004; Graham and Perin, 2007) have concluded that there is a sound empirical basis for recommending the use of sentence-combining as an instructional strategy to improve writing. However, sentence-combining merits deeper scrutiny. For a start, it is not evident that all the studies examining sentence-combining adopted a common view of sentencecombining. Connors (2000) in his perceptive review of the topic noted that sentencecombining could be enacted in the classroom in three different ways – first, as a generative cumulative exercise of building up sentences; second, as an imitation exercise where sentence patterns are offered for writers to imitate using their own words; and finally, as a combinatory exercise joining sentence kernels. Then there are methodological problems with many of the studies, as pointed out by Witte (1980) who said of the Hake and Williams (1979) study that ‘the design of the experiment they report leaves something to be desired’. One very evident flaw in the research evidence is that the effect of sentence-combining is nearly always measured by an increase in sentence length or complexity, which may tell you that sentence-combining is effective in supporting the writing of longer sentences, but says nothing about whether they are better or more effective sentences. Indeed, the Hake and Williams study reported that the increase in syntactic complexity was sometimes accompanied by an increase in error or expressive confusion. Similarly, the Saddler and Graham (2005) study found that the success of sentence-combining in helping children to write longer sentences was somewhat tempered by the fact that children tended to use simple connectors such as ‘and’ and ‘because’. Crucially, both Kinneavy (1979) and Faigley (1980) argued that the benefit of sentence-combining was not the cognitive exercise but ‘the functional teaching of rhetorical principles’ (Kinneavy, 1979: 76). In other words, the subtext of the technique was the creation of possibilities for active discussion of sentence design and impact. The danger of adopting the sentence-combining strategy without adequate attention to the appropriate pedagogical context in which to use it is that it will lead to formulaic writing where syntax is divorced from communication. As Andrews et al. argued, ‘sentencecombining suggests a pedagogy of applied knowledge – at its best, applied in situations of contextualized learning; at its worst, drilling’ (2006: 52).

Rhetorical grammar The emphasis on rhetorical principles advocated by Kinneavy and Faigley is at the heart of a pedagogy of grammar centred upon rhetorical understanding, such as that proposed by Martha Kolln (2006) in Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices, Rhetorical Effects. Kolln argues that knowledge of grammar is a ‘rhetorical tool that all writers should understand and control’ (2006: xi), a tool which enables the writer to make effective choices. As a theoretical perspective, the rhetorical approach is founded upon the discussion and analysis of how meaning is crafted and created through shaping language to achieve the writer’s intentions. In the classroom, it requires that teachers ‘treat grammar as a meaning-making system and pay careful attention to rhetorical 175

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Table 15.1 A summary of professional views on rhetorical grammar Author

Pedagogic Principle

Ehrenworth (2003)

Linguistic understanding ‘Grammar as a transformative agent’ (2003: 91) through exploring and ‘An apprentice relationship with great analysing written texts, authors, even at the level of sentence structure’ (2003: 93)

Nunan (2005)

No value in teaching roles without contexts

‘Complex sentence structure and complex thought are mutually dependent’ (2005: 72)

Paraskevas (2006)

Writers as apprentices learning how to craft writing with linguistic tools

Teaching should connect ‘grammar to rhetorical and stylistic effects’ (2006: 65) ‘Understanding about sentences, then, gives them the power to choose how they want to convey their meaning, how best to say what they want to say’ (2006: 68).

Jayman et al. (2006) Using sentence patterns to promote recognition of rhetorical sentence effects

In their own words

‘Now, students recognize a writer’s punctuation as style and rhetoric; now, students recognize a writer’s punctuation as deliberate choice. They describe the sentence patterns a writer uses, and they identify cohesion in writing – and what creates it. Students can talk about language.’ (2006: 46)

choices made in the creation of effective text (both in reading and writing)’ (Kolln and Hancock, 2005: 28). Kolln’s approach is echoed in several professional articles, affirming the positive impact upon young writers’ understanding and practice (see examples in Table 15.1). A rhetorical approach emphasizes the interrelationship between form and meaning and how ideas are shaped and shaded by the language in which we choose to express them. Schleppegrell (2007), arguing for the value of systemic functional linguistics in the teaching of writing, echoes Kolln’s thinking, reminding us that ‘writers choose both form and content, and it is through the rhetorical and syntactic forms they choose that the content is constructed and evaluated’ (Schleppegrell, 2007: 122). This unveils the act of writing as social practice and offers opportunities for considering how meanings are forged and created in text – it allows the writer to become a ‘critical user and innovator of language in a rhetorical space’ (Locke, 2005: 88). Micciche (2004) argued for a critical pedagogical stance using grammar to interrogate texts and the values they enshrine. As writers, she claims, the grammatical choices we make represent relations between writers and the world they live in. Word choice and sentence structure are an expression of the way we attend to the words of others, the way we position ourselves in relation to others. In this sense, writing involves cognitive skills at the level of the idea development and at sentence level. (Micciche, 2004: 719) 176

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What’s the point? investigating punctuation Like sentences, punctuation belongs to writing – it is a feature of written text for which oral language provides no models. Like grammar, punctuation suffers from being regarded as an aspect of technical accuracy in writing. So perhaps the most surprising thing about punctuation is that, despite Truss’s (2003) zero tolerance approach to its misuse, it is an aspect of writing and writing development that has been seriously under-researched. Nigel Hall (Hall 1998, 1999, 2009; Hall and Robinson, 1996; Hall et al., 2002) is arguably the only researcher in the world who has taken a sustained interest in children’s development in using punctuation. There is a more robust body of research in linguistics which has analysed historical aspects of punctuation and how punctuation is used in texts (Partridge, 1953; Nunberg, 1990; Parkes, 1992), but this is rarely linked with implications for teaching writing. Bruthiaux (1995), however, does argue that what we teach children should be based on ‘contemporary punctuation practice as observed in naturallyoccurring texts’ (1995: 10) as evidenced by textual analysis, rather than by adherence to spurious rules. Hall, too, has noted that ‘Teachers and textbooks have tended to teach children that punctuation is a set of rules imposed upon writers rather than a set of tools for writers so that they can make their meanings as clear as possible’ (Hall, 2009). But contemporary practice, unfortunately, is not easy to define. As with all language use, punctuation usage changes with time. Bruthiaux’s detailed corpus analysis points to a simplification trend in punctuation with fewer marks being used and some marks, such as the semi-colon, markedly declining. Variation in punctuation use is not exclusively diachronic, however, it is also synchronic, as any writer who works with a range of publishers would testify. Publishing houses have different house-styles, particularly regarding internal sentence punctuation and the marking of speech. Changing communication practices are themselves altering punctuation usage – most teachers will be familiar with the trend in informal writing to use a string of punctuation marks for emphasis. But increasingly a range of other graphic devices is being used to convey information to the reader about how to read the text. WE ALL KNOW HOW TO SHOUT IN AN EMAIL, for example. And is an emoticon a new punctuation mark? For emergent writers, the challenges of learning to punctuate are significant: They have to control the creation of the meaning, the graphic and grammatical representation of this meaning, its conversion into a set of phoneme/grapheme relationships and represent all this neatly on a piece of paper using an awkward writing instrument that needs to be held in a particular way. (Hall, 2009) What is particularly significant about Hall’s work is that he investigates children’s thinking and reasoning about punctuation. He shows, for example, how initially children see punctuation as a graphic device, often putting a full stop at the end of every line of text, and only later do they develop a more linguistic understanding of punctuation. The pattern of development implied by literacy policy documentation in England is a poor match for the actual progression observed, which is neither linear nor systematic because as written language use progresses so the punctuation problems children have to solve increase in difficulty. Older children may make punctuation errors, but this 177

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is often because the problems they are trying to solve by using punctuation have become much more complex. (Hall, 2009) One aspect of reasoning which Hall observes is prosodic reasoning, where children explain and justify their punctuation choices on the basis of pausing or needing to breathe, reflecting a common teaching tendency to explain punctuation as essentially about spoken needs of pausing or breathing. This is likely to be because it is simpler to explain punctuation in this way than to explain its connection with grammatical units in the sentence. But it mirrors a historical distinction between the syntactic and prosodic functions of punctuation summarized by Bruthiaux (1995: 1) who explains the two functions thus: One, a syntactic function, is to clarify relationships between sentences or between independent and dependent clauses. The other, a prosodic function, is to mark some of the intonational contours that appear to many writers to accompany their texts when they read them mentally or that might surface if these texts were to be read aloud. If the prosodic function of punctuation is limited to a simplistic notion of pausing and breathing, then it is unlikely to be of much support to young writers. But Chafe (1987, 1988) argues that ‘the inner voice of written language’ is less limited by the physical constraints of speech, creating more prosodic possibilities for punctuation, and that good writers ‘listen to what they write’ (1987: 5). The covert prosody of written language is reflected in punctuation: ‘paying attention to the sound of written language is absolutely essential to the effective use of punctuation’ (1987: 5) and develops awareness of the prosodic potential of punctuation. This links with a recurring theme in the US literature, the teaching of punctuation as a rhetorical tool, alerting young writers to the range of meaning-making possibilities in punctuation (see Myhill et al., 2008: 35–6).

Rhythm and Blues: taking the teaching of grammar forward Teaching explicit grammar is already a part of national policy for literacy/English in both primary and secondary schools. However, there is little doubt that its role in the curriculum remains uncertain. Teachers themselves are not always convinced of its value and when combined with some subject knowledge insecurity about linguistics, this can lead to rather narrow, instrumental teaching of grammar. Moreover, both grammar and punctuation are bedevilled by public and policy-makers’ views of them as markers of national standards, which reinforces the emphasis on error avoidance and accuracy. The problem is not uniquely English: Micciche maintains that in US composition classrooms ‘teaching grammar and teaching writing are separate enterprises’ and grammar is ‘not empowering but disempowering, not rhetorical but decontextualised, not progressive but remedial’ (2004: 717).

Conclusion I would argue, then, that what is required is a reconceptualization of grammar at both policy and professional level, a reconceptualization which rejects the view that 178

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grammar, and punctuation, are ‘a set of rules about what is correct and incorrect’; but instead recognizes that ‘grammar is a theory about how language makes meaning; how language forms construe meanings of different kinds’ (Schleppegrell, 2007: 122). In this way, both grammar and punctuation are integral to the teaching of writing and to the act of creating meaning, because they are the tools, the very stuff with which meaning is forged and refined. Choosing the syntactical structure for a sentence, altering the punctuation to shift the emphasis, inverting the subject–verb order all enable the writer to create different rhythms and moods in the writing, to make the text dance to the writer’s tune.

References Andrews, R., Torgerson, C., Beverton, S., Freeman, A., Locke, T., Low, G. et al. (2006). The Effect of Grammar Teaching on Writing Development. British Educational Research Journal 32(1): 39–55. Bruthiaux, P. (1995). The Rise and Fall of the Semi-colon: English punctuation theory and English teaching practice. Applied Linguistics 16(1): 1–14. Chafe, W. (1982). Integration and Involvement in Speaking, Writing, and Oral Literature. In D. Tannen (Ed.) Spoken and Written Language: Exploring orality and literacy. Norwood, NJ: Able, pp.35–54. Chafe, W. (1987). What Good is Punctuation? Occasional Paper No. 2. Washington, DC: Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Chafe, W. (1988). Punctuation and the Prosody of Written Language. Written Communication 5(4): 395–426. Connors, R.J. (2000). The Erasure of the Sentence. College Composition and Communication 52(1): 96–128. Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (Eds) (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. New York: Routledge. Crowhurst, M. (1980). Syntactic Complexity and Teachers’ Quality Ratings of Narrations and Arguments. Research in the Teaching of English 14: 223–31. Czerniewska, P. (1992). Learning about Writing. Oxford: Blackwell. Daiker, D.A., Kerek, A. and Morenberg, M. (1978). Sentence-combining and Syntactic Maturity in Freshman English. College Composition and Communication 29(1): 36–41. Ehrenworth, M. (2003). Grammar – Comma – A New Beginning. English Journal 92(3): 90–6. Faigley, L. (1980). Names in Search of a Concept: Maturity, fluency, complexity, and growth in written syntax. College Composition and Communication 31(3): 291–300. Gordon, E. (1991). Grammar Teaching in NZ Schools: Past, present, and future. English in Aotearoa 15: 19–30. Gordon, E. (2005). Grammar in New Zealand Schools: Two case studies. English Teaching: Practice and Critique 4(3): 48–68. Graham, S. and Perin, D. (2007). A Meta-analysis of Writing Instruction for Adolescent Students. Journal of Educational Psychology 99(3): 445–76. Hake, R. and Williams, J.M. (1979). Sentence Expanding: Not can, or how, but when. In D. Daiker, A. Morenberg and M. Kerek (Eds) Sentence-combining and the Teaching of Writing. Conway, AR: L&S Books, pp. 134–46. Hall, N. (1998). Young Children and Resistance to Punctuation. Research in Education 60: 29–40. Hall, N. (1999). Young Children’s Use of Graphic Punctuation. Language and Education 13(3): 178–93.

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Hall, N. (2009). Developing an Understanding of Punctuation. In R. Beard, D. Myhill, J Riley and M. Nystrand (Eds) Sage Handbook of Writing Development. London: Sage pp. 271–83. Hall, N. and Robinson, A. (Eds) (1996). Learning about Punctuation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Hall, N., Sing, S. and Wassouf, C. (2002). The Development of Punctuation Knowledge in Children Aged Seven to Eleven. Working document for ESRC Project R0002383348. Hancock, T. (2009). How Linguistics can Inform the Teaching of Writing. In R. Beard, D. Myhill, J. Riley and M. Nystrand (Eds) Sage Handbook of Writing Development. London: Sage, pp. 194–208. Harpin, W. (1986). Writing Counts. In A. Wilkinson (Ed.) The Writing of Writing. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, pp. 158–76). Haswell, R.H. (2000). Documenting Improvement in College Writing. Written Communication 17(3): 307–52. Hillocks, G., Jr (1986). Research on Written Composition. Urbana, IL: NCTE. Hillocks, G., Jr and Smith, M. (1991). Grammar and Usage. In J. Flood, J. Jensen, D. Lapp and J. Squire (Eds) Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts. New York: Macmillan, pp. 591–603. Hudson, R. and Walmsley, J. (2005). The English Patient: English grammar and teaching in the twentieth century. Journal of Linguistics 41(3): 593–622. Hunt, K.W. (1965). Grammatical Structures Written at Three Grade Levels. Urbana, IL: NCTE. Jayman, J., Doolan, L., Hoover, M., Maas, S., McHugh, T., Mooney, K. et al. (2006). Sentence Patterns: Making meaning with a countrywide grammar initiative. English Journal 95(5): 41–7. Jordan, M. (1993). Towards an Understanding of Mature Writing: Analyzing and paraphrasing complex noun phrases. Technostyle 11(2): 39–72. Keen, J. (2004). Sentence-combining and Redrafting Processes in the Writing of Secondary School Students in the UK. Linguistics and Education an International Research Journal 15(1–2): 17–97. Kinneavy, J.L. (1979). Sentence Combining in a Comprehensive Language Framework. In D. Daiker, A. Morenberg and M. Kerek (Eds) Sentence Combining and the Teaching of Writing. Conway, AR: L&S Books, pp. 60–76. Kolln, M. (2006). Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical choices, rhetorical effects. London: Longman. Kolln, M. and Hancock, C. (2005). The Story of English Grammar in US Schools. English Teaching: Practice and Critique 4(3): 11–31. Kress, G. (1994). Learning to Write. London: Routledge. Kress, G. (1997). Before Writing: Rethinking the paths to literacy. London: Routledge. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge. Locke, T. (2005). Writing Positions and Rhetorical Spaces. In B. Doecke and G. Parr Writing = Learning AATE Interface Series. Kent Town, SA: Wakefield Press, pp. 75–95. Locke, T. (2009). Grammar and Writing –- The international debate. In R. Beard, D. Myhill, J. Riley and M. Nystrand (Eds) Sage Handbook of Writing Development. London: Sage, pp. 182–93. Massey, A.J., Elliott, G.L. and Johnson, N.K. (2005). Variations in Aspects of Writing in 16+ English Examinations between 1980 and 2004: Vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, non-standard English research matters: Special Issue 1. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate. Maun, I. and Myhill, D. (2005). Text as Design, Writers as Designers. English in Education 39(2): 5–21. Micciche, L. (2004). Making a Case for Rhetorical Grammar. College Composition and Communication 55(4): 716–37.

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Myhill, D.A. (2008). Towards a Linguistic Model of Sentence Development in Writing. Language and Education 22(5): 271–88. Myhill, D.A., Fisher, R.J., Jones, S.M. and Lines, H. (2008). A Review of Evidence on Effective Ways of Teaching Complex Expression in Writing to Secondary School Pupils. London: Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). Nunan, S. (2005). Forgiving Ourselves and Forging Ahead: Teaching grammar in a new millennium. English Journal 94(4): 70–5. Nunberg, G. (1990). The Linguistics of Punctuation. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information. O’Hare, F. (1973). Sentence Combining: Improving student-writing without formal grammar instruction, NCTE Research Report No 15. Urbana, IL: NCTE. Paraskevas, C. (2006). Grammar Apprenticeship. English Journal 95(5): 65–9. Parkes, M.B. (1992). Pause and Effect: An introduction to the history of punctuation in the West. Aldershot: Scholar Press. Partridge, A.C. (1953). You Have a Point Here: A guide to punctuation and its allies. London: Hamish Hamilton. Perera, K. (1984). Children’s Writing and Reading: Analysing classroom language. Oxford: Blackwell. Perera, K. (1986). Grammatical Differentiation between Speech and Writing in Children Aged 8–12. In A. Wilkinson (Ed.) The Writing of Writing. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, pp. 90–108. Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct. London: Penguin. Saddler, B. and Graham, S. (2005). The Effects of Peer-assisted Sentence-combining Instruction on the Writing Performance of More and Less Skilled Young Writers. Journal of Educational Psychology 97(1): 43–54. Schleppegrell, M.J. (2007). At Last: The meaning in grammar. Research in the Teaching of English 42(1): 121–8. Sharples, M. (1999). How We Write: Writing as creative design. London: Routledge. Stewart, W. (2008). ‘Syntax is too taxing for many teachers’, Times Educational Supplement, 2 May 2008. Truss, L. (2003). Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The zero tolerance approach to punctuation. London: Profile Books. Verhoeven, L., Aparici, M., Cahana-Amitay, M., van Hell, J.V., Kriz, S. and Viguie-Simon, A. (2002). Clause Packaging in Writing and Speech: A cross-linguistic developmental analysis. Written Language and Literacy 5(2): 135–61. Witte, S.P. (1980). Sentence Combining and the Teaching of Writing. College Composition and Communication 31(4): 433–7.

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16 Linguistic foundations of spelling development1 Derrick C. Bourassa and Rebecca Treiman

Spelling is an important part of writing, even in these days of spellcheckers. Learning to spell can be a challenge, particularly for English speakers. Classic theories of spelling development (e.g. Gentry, 1982; Henderson, 1985), which are still influential in the field, may be described as stage theories. These theories postulate that children progress through a sequence of different stages in learning to spell, using different types of information and different processes at each stage. During early stages, phonological skills are primary. These include phonological awareness (the ability to identify sounds in spoken words) and knowledge of letter–sound correspondences. Only during later stages are higher-level sources of information thought to come into play, including orthographic knowledge (knowledge of legal and illegal letter sequences and of how a sound’s spelling may differ depending on such things as its position in a word) and morphological knowledge (knowledge of relations among word forms and how they influence spelling). Although there is support for the general idea of a developmental shift from reliance on phonological information to reliance on orthographic and morphological information, we will argue in this chapter that stage theories oversimplify the picture. Finegrained analyses of children’s spelling show that phonological, orthographic, and morphological knowledge are not homogeneous. There is considerable complexity within each of these types of knowledge with, for example, some types of morphological knowledge being grasped more easily than others. Thus, it is important to ask which specific types of phonological, orthographic, and morphological knowledge children acquire and when. It is important to examine not only typically developing children but also children who have difficulty in learning to spell. As we will see, studies of these

1 Preparation of this chapter was supported by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (227563) and the United States National Institutes of Health (HD051610).

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issues have implications for the teaching of spelling as well as for theories of spelling development.

Phonology and typical spelling development In an alphabetic writing system, successful spelling involves segmenting a spoken word into individual sounds, or phonemes, and selecting the appropriate letter or letter group to represent each one. These processes are readily applied to words such as bat and dip, and such words present relatively little difficulty for young writers. However, other words are more problematic. Children may fail to capture the entire phonemic make-up of certain words, they may spell certain phonemes in orthographically inaccurate but phonetically plausible ways, and they may have difficulty with certain sound–letter mappings.

Phoneme grouping in early spelling Children’s analyses of spoken words do not always reach the level of single phonemes. As a result, they may spell certain groups of phonemes with single letters. Consider the child who fails to represent the initial consonant of a syllable-final cluster, spelling hand as ‘had’. Overall, nasals such as /n/ and /m/ and liquids such as /r/ and /l/ are omitted more frequently than obstruent consonants such as /s/, /t/, and /f/ (Treiman et al., 1995; see also Read, 1975). For children, the /æ/ and /n/ of hand may form a single vowel unit rather than a sequence of two phonemes. Indeed, six-year-olds who are asked to pronounce the individual sounds of syllables while putting down one token for each sound may use three tokens for a non-word such as zand, stating that its three sounds are /z/, /æn/, and /d/ (Treiman et al., 1995). With initial consonant clusters, too, children sometimes group separate phonemes (Treiman, 1991, 1993; see also Bruck and Treiman, 1990). They may fail to spell the second and third consonants of these clusters, as in ‘pa’ for play and ‘set’ for street. Studying the classroom writings produced by children of around six years of age, Treiman (1993) found that children omitted the second consonants of two-consonant syllable-initial clusters almost 25 per cent of the time. Children may consider the spoken word play to contain the initial consonant unit /pl/ and the vowel /e/, symbolizing the cluster with a single letter rather than analysing it into two phonemes and symbolizing each phoneme with a separate letter. This idea is consistent with research on phonological awareness, which shows that syllable-initial consonant clusters form cohesive units for children (Treiman, 1991). A final example of children’s tendency to use units larger than single phonemes in relating speech and print involves letter-name spellings. North American children typically learn the names of letters starting from an early age, and they may produce spellings such as ‘cr’ for car and ‘bl’ for bell (Gentry, 1982; Treiman, 1993, 1994). The r in the former spelling represents both the vowel and the /r/, which together constitute the name of the letter r. In ‘bl’, l represents both the vowel and the /l/, which together make up l’s name. Among consonants, these errors are most common for r and next most common for l (Treiman, 1993, 1994). These are the two English consonants whose names consist of vowel–liquid sequences, which are difficult for children to segment. 183

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Phonetic influences in early spelling Consider a six-year-old who writes ‘jrie’ for dry, ‘chrap’ for trap, ‘sbot’ for spot, and ‘hr’ for her. Such spellings may seem odd to the casual observer, and a computerized spelling corrector is unlikely to recognize the intended targets. However, the errors have reasonable linguistic explanations. The spelling of dry as ‘jrie’ is explained by the fact that, when /d/ occurs before /r/, the contact between the tongue and the top of the mouth is further back in the mouth than when /d/ occurs before a vowel. Also, this closure is released more slowly than when /d/ precedes a vowel. These changes make dry sound similar at the beginning to jive. The /t/ sound undergoes analogous changes when it occurs before /r/, helping to explain spellings like ‘chrap’ for trap (Treiman, 1993). The case of ‘sbot’ for spot reflects the tendency for stop consonants after /s/ to sound voiced (i.e. the vocal cords vibrate during their production, as in /b/) despite the fact that they are spelled as voiceless (Treiman, 1985; Hannam et al., 2007). Finally, a word like her does not contain a separate vowel as it is pronounced in American English. The /r/ takes the place of the vowel and is said to be syllabic. US children often omit the vowels in these contexts, producing errors such as ‘hr’ for her and ‘brutr’ for brother (Treiman et al., 1993).

Sound–letter mapping in early spelling As we mentioned earlier, many North American children know the names of letters before they begin learning to read and write. This knowledge helps them learn some sound–letter mappings, but hinders their learning of others. Treiman et al. (1994) gave US five-year-olds a simplified spelling task that required them to indicate which letters were used to spell various sounds. Children performed best on phonemes such as /b/ whose spellings are suggested by the initial phoneme of a letter name, b in this example. Performance was intermediate for phonemes such as /n/, whose spellings are suggested by the final phoneme of a letter name. And performance was worst for phonemes such as /g/, which do not occur in a letter name. Similar findings have been reported in other studies of typically developing children and children with speech and language impairments (e.g. Treiman et al., 1998; Treiman et al., 2008). A striking example of children’s reliance on letter names in the learning of sound– letter mappings involves the sound /w/. This phoneme occurs at the beginning of the name of the letter y, but /w/ is never spelled as y in English. Instead, /w/ is typically spelled with w, which has the unusual name ‘doubleyou’. Treiman et al. (1994) found that US five- and six-year-olds sometimes spelled /w/ as ‘y’, as in ‘yet’ for wet. Such errors are less common among children in England, who are less familiar with the names of letters than are US children (Ellefson et al., 2009). Again, seemingly bizarre spellings may have reasonable linguistic explanations.

Orthography and typical spelling development Children in literate societies have a good deal of experience with print even before they have any formal training in reading or writing. They learn about the salient visual characteristics of writing, such as the fact that it consists of strings of units arranged in a linear pattern (Lavine, 1977). With time, children focus more and more on the 184

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letters within printed words and on how they are arranged – their orthographic structure. Stage theories of spelling development claim that young children choose letters purely on phonological grounds, not on the basis of orthographic knowledge. However, Treiman (1993) found that even six-year-olds have some knowledge of legal and illegal spelling patterns. For example, children performed above the level expected by chance when asked when asked to choose which non-word looked more wordlike in pairs such as ckun and nuck. The correct answer is of course nuck; ck may occur in the middles and at the ends of English words, as in packet and pack, but not at the beginnings. Cassar and Treiman (1997) found that young children have some knowledge of the positions in which consonant doublets such as ll may occur. Children also have some knowledge of which consonants may double (including l and n) and which may not (such as h). It takes a number of years, however, for children to learn how double and single consonants are used to indicate vowel pronunciation, as when sallip is used for a word with a ‘short’ first-syllable vowel and salip for a vowel with a ‘long’ first-syllable vowel. Evidence that orthographic knowledge is not a homogeneous construct comes from Hayes et al. (2006), who examined the ability of seven-year-olds, nine-year-olds, tenyear-olds, and adults to use the following vowel in selecting a spelling for initial /k/. In a non-word spelling task, participants were more likely to use k before e or i than before other vowels. This effect was similar in magnitude across age groups. However, using the same type of task, Hayes et al. (2006) found developmental differences in children’s knowledge that the choice between an extended spelling (e.g. peck) and a nonextended spelling (e.g. peek) of a final consonant is often determined by the preceding vowel. Further evidence for a lack of homogeneity comes from Treiman and Kessler (2006; see also Varnhagen et al., 1999), who used the non-word spelling task to examine children’s ability to use consonants in selecting spellings for vowels. These authors found that children spelling at the fourth-grade level were sensitive to preceding-consonant context (e.g. /ɑ/ is typically spelled as a when preceded by /w/, as in wand, and as o when preceded by other consonants, as in pond); in contrast, only spellers at the seventhgrade level and beyond were sensitive to following-consonant context (e.g. /i/ is typically spelled as ee when followed by /p/, as in creep, and as ea when followed by /m/, as in cream).

Morphology and typical spelling development The choice among alternative spellings of a phoneme may be driven by morphological considerations as well as by phonological and orthographic ones. In English, as in some other writing systems, the spelling of a morpheme often remains the same despite pronunciation changes that may occur when the morpheme is combined with others. This idea has been referred to as the principle of morphological constancy (Bourassa and Treiman, 2008). For example, while one would expect health to be spelled as helth based on the sounds that it contains, the conventional spelling indicates the similarity in meaning between health and heal. Similarly, the past tense suffix is spelled as ed whether it is pronounced /t/, as in touched, or /d/, as in rained. Morphological knowledge, like phonological and orthographic knowledge, is a heterogeneous construct. Derivational morphology involves changes in syntactic class and/or meaning between derived word-base word pairings (e.g. cloudy-cloud, 185

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magician-magic). It takes time for children to deal with derivational relations that feature considerable differences in pronunciation and stress within a derived word-base word pair. For example the eight- to 11-year-old children tested by Waters et al. (1988) had difficulty spelling words like sign. The correct spelling of this word can be predicted if one relates it to signal, which has the same root; the word is difficult to spell correctly otherwise. Zutell (1980) found that nine-year-olds had difficulty spelling reduced vowels in morphologically complex words. An example of such a reduced vowel is the second vowel in inflammation, which is derived from inflame. Bourassa and Treiman (2008; see also Carlisle, 1987) found similar results for segments like c in the word musician. Other research has shown that young children can use morphology to aid spelling in more phonologically transparent derivational contexts. One example involves flaps. In American English, words such as fighter and motor contain a medial flap – a brief tap of the tongue against the upper part of the mouth. Flaps, being voiced, are similar to /d/, and young children often spell them as d (Treiman, 1993). If children use the root word fight to aid their spelling of fighter, they should be unlikely to misspell the flap of fighter with a d. Such errors should be more common for motor, which has no root word. Treiman et al. (1994) found this to be the case for children as young as five years of age. Deacon and Bryant (2006) also reported early sensitivity to phonologically transparent derivational contexts in a fill-in-the-blank spelling task. They found that six- to eight-yearold children were more accurate at filling in fair when provided with ____ly (i.e. fairly) than when provided with ____y (fairy). Early morphological knowledge is also evident in children’s spellings of the roots in inflected forms (e.g. past tense verbs and plural nouns), where phonology does not change to the extent that it may with derived forms. Treiman and Cassar (1996) asked whether six-year-old children are able to use morphological knowledge to overcome the segmentation problem that arises for words that end with consonant clusters. They found that the children were more likely to symbolize the first segment of a final consonant cluster with an appropriate letter when a base form existed that could aid their spelling, as with tuned, than when no such base form existed, as with brand. Deacon and Bryant (2006) reported similar sensitivity among their six-year-olds in a fill-in-theblank task; the children more accurately spelled turn in turning than in turnip. Research on children’s spelling of suffixes also points to the importance of linguistic complexity. In general, learners of English take longer to grasp derivational endings than inflectional ones. There are far more derivations than inflections in English, and derivations sometimes denote subtle linguistic distinctions. For instance, the difference between the –ion (abstract noun endings as in frustration) and the –ian (agentive noun endings as in musician) suffixes is beyond the grasp of elementary school children, except through explicit and intensive instruction (Nunes and Bryant, 2006). Even less esoteric derivational suffixes may not be acquired until the middle elementary years. Thus, Deacon and Bryant (2005) found that, while six to eight-year-olds were more likely to fill in the last sections of words correctly in inflected words than in control counterparts (e.g. more accurate spelling of er in smarter than in corner), they did not show such a difference for derived words and their counterparts (e.g. equally accurate spelling of ness in kindness and witness). However, even seemingly simple inflectional suffixes may create difficulties for children. For example Nunes et al. (1997) found that young children sometimes produce errors such as ‘sleped’ for slept, spelling a /t/ that is not an inflectional suffix as if it were. 186

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Spelling in children with dyslexia Children with developmental dyslexia have great difficulty learning to read and write, despite normal intelligence, adequate learning opportunities, and no serious emotional or personality disorders. Most researchers have focused on the reading difficulties of children with dyslexia. However, individuals with dyslexia usually have problems with spelling as well (Critchley, 1975), and some studies have examined the spelling performance of children with dyslexia. This work commonly involves comparing older dyslexics with younger, typically developing individuals, who perform at the same level on standardized spelling tests – a spelling-level match design. Researchers have used this design with the goal of discovering areas in which dyslexics perform especially poorly or especially well. If dyslexics show a pattern of performance that differs from that of younger spelling-level matched children, with notable weaknesses in some areas and relative strengths in others, this would suggest that dyslexics learn to spell in an atypical way, rather than just slowly.

Phonological processing A number of reading researchers have suggested that dyslexia is characterized by a deficit in phonological processing (Goswami and Bryant, 1990). The central idea of the phonological deficit view is that children with dyslexia compensate for their phonological weaknesses by relying heavily on visual memorization of orthographic patterns. This hypothesis predicts that, as compared to younger spelling-matched controls, children with dyslexia should produce a low proportion of spellings that show sensitivity to phonological structure and a relatively large proportion of spellings that show sensitivity to orthographic structure. While research has strongly supported the idea that dyslexics perform either as well as (e.g. Nelson, 1980; Bourassa and Treiman, 2003; Friend and Olson, 2008) or better than (Lennox and Siegel, 1996) typical younger learners on measures of orthographic sensitivity, comparisons of these groups on measures of phonological sensitivity yielded mixed results in initial studies. For instance, Bruck (1988) and Kibel and Miles (1994) reported a phonological deficit in children with dyslexia, while Moats (1983) and Nelson (1980) reported that dyslexics and typical younger learners performed comparably in terms of phonological sensitivity. According to Bourassa and Treiman (2003; see also Treiman, 1997), one reason for the conflicting results may relate to the manner in which phonological sensitivity was measured in these early investigations. Specifically, these studies examined phonological sensitivity in terms of the number of ‘nonphonetic’ spelling errors produced by dyslexics and controls. Examples of such spellings include ‘pad’ for plaid and ‘had’ for hand, in which a phoneme is not represented. The spelling ‘jry’ for dry would also be classified as a nonphonetic error, because the initial phoneme is symbolized with a letter that is never used to represent that phoneme in conventional English. Finally, the very unconventional ‘foz’ for hit would also be a nonphonetic error by this scheme. Bourassa and Treiman (2003) argued that this classification scheme does not capture some important distinctions among errors. Nonphonetic spellings such as ‘foz’ for hit defy phonological explanation. They appear to reflect a lack of knowledge about sound-to-spelling correspondences. However, nonphonetic errors, such as ‘pad’ for plaid, ‘had’ for hand, and ‘jry’ for dry, do have a phonological basis, as outlined earlier 187

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in this chapter. If dyslexics make many such errors, one cannot claim that they fail to appreciate the role of phonology in spelling. Indeed, the results of a number of recent studies suggest that dyslexics are remarkably similar to typical younger learners in their ability to capture phonological information in their spellings. Friend and Olson (2008) found that children with spelling disabilities scored two per cent worse than younger spelling-level matched controls on a measure of phonological accuracy. Although this difference was statistically significant, the authors themselves acknowledge that it is likely to be of little diagnostic value. Bourassa and Treiman (2003) provided an analysis of the performance of dyslexics (mean age = 11 years, 1 month) and spelling-level matched controls (mean age = 7 years, 5 months) on the Treiman-Bourassa Early Spelling Test (T-BEST) (Treiman and Bourassa, 2000). This test includes items that contain a number of the linguistic features outlined above that are problematic for typical beginning spellers, including interior consonants of initial (e.g. the r in trip) and final (e.g. the n in sank) consonant clusters; syllabic /r/ (e.g. the final syllable in supper); phoneme sequences corresponding to letter names (e.g. bar); and /d/ before /r/ (e.g. drip). The spellings of the dyslexics and controls were equivalent on a composite measure of phonological and orthographic sophistication, on a measure of the ability to capture consonant and vowel sequences in the items, and on orthographic legality. Moreover, the dyslexics and control children were equally likely to produce the linguistically-based errors outlined above. Finally, using a larger set of stimuli than Bourassa and Treiman (2003), Cassar et al. (2005: Study 1) found that dyslexic and typical beginning spellers performed comparably on initial (although see Bruck and Treiman, 1990) and final consonant clusters, letter-name sequences, and reduced vowels (i.e. vowels in unstressed syllables, as in the o of carrot). Although the research generally points to similarities between dyslexics and beginning spellers, it is important to ask whether these groups exhibit subtle differences that may be identified by educational practitioners. Cassar et al. (2005: Study 2) asked 44 practitioners (teachers and educators from public schools, private practices, and reading clinics) to classify the spellings of the children from their Study 1. The practitioners were informed that the spellings they would see were produced either by typical sixand seven-year-olds or by older children who had serious difficulties in learning to spell and read. Consistent with the idea that dyslexics are developmentally delayed rather than developmentally deviant, even the most experienced teachers could not reliably distinguish between the spellings of the dyslexic and control groups.

Morphological processing Some researchers (e.g. Carlisle, 1987) have suggested that dyslexics have special difficulty using morphological information to aid their spelling. They may fail to grasp the principle of morphological constancy: the idea that the spelling of a morpheme often remains the same despite pronunciation changes that may occur when the morpheme is combined with others. Carlisle studied 14-year-old poor spellers who performed very similarly to a group of typical nine-year-olds on a standardized spelling test. On a set of experimental items, the 14-year-olds were more likely than the nine-year-olds to spell a base form correctly while spelling its morphologically complex form incorrectly (e.g. ‘equal’ for equal and ‘eqalty’ for equality). They were also more likely to spell the base form incorrectly and the morphologically complex form correctly (e.g. ‘equl’ for equal and ‘equality’ for equality). Carlisle interpreted these results to suggest that the poor 188

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spellers did not use morphological constancy to guide their spellings. Tsesmeli and Seymour (2006; see also Hauerwas and Walker, 2003) found similar results when they compared the spellings of 13–14-year-old dyslexics with those of nine- to ten-year-old typical children. The older children with dyslexia were more likely to produce such inconsistencies as spelling width as ‘widdth’ while spelling wide as ‘wieed’. However, Tsesmeli and Seymour’s (2006; see also Hauerwas and Walker, 2003) dyslexic and control groups were not well matched for spelling ability. Although the older and younger children performed similarly on one standardized spelling test, the older children were substantially worse at spelling the base forms of the morphologically complex words. Their greater inconsistency in spelling complex words and base forms could have reflected their lower overall level of spelling performance, rather than their dyslexic status. Other studies that feature properly matched dyslexic and control groups (i.e. in terms of spelling performance on base forms as well as standardized tests) have found that dyslexic children exhibit morphological knowledge that is comparable to that of typically developing younger children. For example Bourassa et al. (2006) examined the ability of dyslexics (mean age = 11 years, 5 months) and spelling-level matched controls (mean age = 7 years, 8 months) to use morphological constancy to resolve the problems involving flaps and interior consonants of final consonant clusters that were outlined earlier. Bourassa et al. (2006) found that older children with dyslexia, like typically developing younger children, produced significantly more correct spellings of flaps when they occurred in morphologically complex words like dirty than in morphologically simple words like duty. Children with dyslexia were also significantly less likely to omit the first consonant of a final cluster in inflected words like tuned than in morphologically simple words like brand. Moreover, contrary to the results of the studies discussed above, Bourassa et al. (2006) found that dyslexics and controls did not differ in the consistency with which they spelled root morphemes in base word–complex word pairs. For example the groups were equally likely to spell lace as ‘lase’ and laced as ‘lased’, and equally likely to spell wait as ‘wat’ and waiting ‘wating’. Bourassa and Treiman (2008) provided further evidence that dyslexic (mean age = 15 years) and typically developing younger (mean age = 9 years, 9 months) children are equally likely to adhere to morphological constancy in their spellings. These investigators were particularly interested in how these groups dealt with base word–complex word pairs that violate the principle of morphological constancy. Consider the morphologically complex word explanation and its base form explain. Bourassa and Treiman (2008) reasoned that, if children with dyslexia are less likely than typically developing children to use morphological constancy in spelling, they should produce few misspellings such as ‘explainsion’. Also, they should often spell root morphemes differently when on their own and when in a complex word. The data did not support these predictions. Instead, the children with dyslexia and the typically developing children used the principle of morphological constancy to a similar degree.

Conclusion The goal of this chapter has been to outline the phonological, orthographic, and morphological bases of children’s spelling development. Although phonology is important in the spelling of young children, these children can also use rudimentary orthographic 189

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and morphological information. Their spelling is not as one-dimensional as traditional stage theories claim. Nor is it the case that all types of orthographic knowledge or all types of morphological knowledge emerge at the same time. Rather, children’s spelling vocabulary increases as a function of the continual and concurrent accumulation of phonological, orthographic, and morphological knowledge. A linguistically-based approach to spelling development holds considerable potential for educational practice. For instance, this approach helps us understand the particular trouble spots in early spelling. Consider the misspellings ‘cr’ for car, ‘had’ for hand, and ‘pa’ for play, which, as outlined above, reflect specific difficulties with phonemic segmentation. Children are likely to benefit from phonological awareness training on these specific linguistic obstacles (see, for example, Masterson and Apel, 2007). Similarly, spellings such as ‘yet’ for wet suggest that it may not be ideal to spend the same amount of time on each letter when teaching correspondences between sounds and letters. Rather than spending a week on each letter, as they often do, teachers should devote more time to letter–sound relations that are more difficult for learners, e.g. those for w, g, and h (see Treiman et al., 1998). In addition, the fact that children are sensitive to some orthographic patterns (e.g. spelling of consonants as determined by followingvowel context) before others (e.g. spelling of vowels as determined by following-consonant context), and certain morphological patterns (e.g. tuned) before others (e.g. musician) points the way to the continued development of age-appropriate, linguistically-based training methods (e.g. Nunes and Bryant, 2006; Masterson and Apel, 2007). The research we have discussed also has implications for instruction for children with dyslexia. As outlined earlier, much of recent research suggests that what we have learned about spelling development in typical children holds also for children with dyslexia. Dyslexics certainly learn about the writing system more slowly than other children. However, they appear to face the same stumbling blocks and make the same kinds of errors. Instruction needs to be targeted at the same linguistic features for all children, but it needs to be more intensive and more explicit for struggling spellers.

References Bourassa, D.C. and Treiman, R. (2003). Spelling in Dyslexic Children: Analyses from the Treiman–Bourassa Early Spelling Test. Scientific Studies of Reading 7: 303–33. Bourassa, D.C. and Treiman, R. (2008). Morphological Constancy in Spelling: A comparison of children with dyslexia and typically developing children. Dyslexia 14: 155–69. Bourassa, D.C., Treiman, R. and Kessler, B. (2006). Use of Morphology in Spelling by Children with Dyslexia and Typically Developing Children. Memory & Cognition 34: 703–14. Bruck, M. (1988). The Word Recognition and Spelling of Dyslexic Children. Reading Research Quarterly 23: 51–69. Bruck, M. and Treiman, R. (1990). Phonological Awareness and Spelling in Normal Children and Dyslexics: The case of initial consonant clusters. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 50: 156–78. Carlisle, J.F. (1987). The Use of Morphological Knowledge in Spelling Derived Forms by Learningdisabled and Normal Students. Annals of Dyslexia 27: 90–108. Cassar, M.T. and Treiman, R. (1997). The Beginnings of Orthographic Knowledge: Children’s knowledge of double letters in words. Journal of Educational Psychology 89: 631–44.

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Cassar, M., Treiman, R., Moats, L., Pollo, T.C. and Kessler, B. (2005). How do the Spellings of Children with Dyslexia Compare with Those of Nondyslexic Children? Reading and Writing 18: 29–47. Critchley, M. (1975). Specific Developmental Dyslexia. In E.H. Lenneberg and E. Lenneberg (Eds) Foundations of Language Development: A multidisciplinary approach, Vol. 2. New York: Academic Press, pp. 361–6. Deacon, S.H. and Bryant, P.E. (2005). What Young Children do and do not Know about the Spelling of Inflections and Derivations. Developmental Science 8: 583–94. Deacon, S.H. and Bryant, P.E. (2006). Getting to the Root: Young writers’ sensitivity to the role of root morphemes in the spelling of inflected and derived words. Journal of Child Language 33: 401–17. Ellefson, M., Treiman, R. and Kessler, B. (2009). Learning to Label Letters by Sounds or Names: A comparison of England and the United States. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 102: 323–41. Friend, A. and Olson, R.K. (2008). Phonological Spelling and Reading Deficits in Children with Spelling Difficulties. Scientific Studies of Reading 12: 90–105. Gentry, J.R. (1982). An Analysis of Developmental Spelling in GNYS AT WRK. The Reading Teacher 36: 192–200. Goswami, U. and Bryant, P.E. (1990). Phonological Skills and Learning to Read. London: Erlbaum. Hannam, R., Fraser, H. and Byrne, B. (2007). The Sbelling of Sdops: Preliterate children’s spelling of stops after /s/. Reading and Writing 20: 399–412. Hauerwas, L.B. and Walker, J. (2003). Spelling of Inflected Verb Morphology in Children with Spelling Deficits. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice 15: 25–35. Hayes, H., Treiman, R. and Kessler, B. (2006). Children Use Vowels to Help Them Spell Consonants. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 94: 27–42. Henderson, E. (1985). Teaching Spelling. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Kibel, M. and Miles, T.R. (1994). Phonological Errors in the Spelling of Taught Dyslexic Children. In C. Hulme and M. Snowling (Eds) Reading Development and Dyslexia. London: Whurr, pp. 105–127. Lavine, L.O. (1977). Differentiation of Letterlike Forms in Prereading Children. Developmental Psychology 13: 89–94. Lennox, C. and Siegel, L.S. (1996). The Development of Phonological Rules and Visual Strategies in Average and Poor Spellers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 62: 60–83. Masterson, J.J. and Apel, K. (2007). Spelling and Word-level Reading: A multilinguistic approach. In A. G. Kamhi, J. J. Masterson and K. Apel (Eds) Clinical Decision Making in Developmental Language Disorders. Baltimore, MD: Brookes, pp. 249–66. Moats, L.C. (1983). A Comparison of the Spelling Errors of Older Dyslexic and Second-grade Normal Children. Annals of Dyslexia 33: 121–40. Nelson, H.E. (1980). Analysis of Spelling Errors in Normal and Dyslexic Children. In U. Frith (Ed.) Cognitive Processes in Spelling. London: Academic Press, pp. 475–93. Nunes, T. and Bryant, P. (2006). Improving Literacy through Teaching Morphemes. London: Routledge. Nunes, T., Bryant, P. and Bindman, M. (1997). Morphological Spelling Strategies: Developmental stages and processes. Developmental Psychology 33: 637–49. Read, C. (1975). Children’s Categorization of Speech Sounds in English, NCTE Research Report No. 17. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Treiman, R. (1985). Spelling of Stop Consonants after /s/ by Children and Adults. Applied Psycholinguistics 6: 261–82. Treiman, R. (1991). Children’s Spelling Errors on Syllable-initial Consonant Clusters. Journal of Educational Psychology 83: 346–60.

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Treiman, R. (1993). Beginning to Spell: A study of first-grade children. New York: Oxford University Press. Treiman, R. (1994). Use of Consonant Letter Names in Beginning Spelling. Developmental Psychology 30: 567–80. Treiman, R. (1997). Spelling in Normal Children and Dyslexics. In B. A. Blachman (Ed.) Foundations of Reading Acquisition and Dyslexia: Implications for early intervention. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 191–218. Treiman, R. and Bourassa, D.C. (2000). Children’s Written and Oral Spelling. Applied Psycholinguistics 21: 183–204. Treiman, R. and Cassar, M. (1996). Effects of Morphology on Children’s Spelling of Final Consonant Clusters. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 63: 141–70. Treiman, R. and Kessler, B. (2006). Spelling as Statistical Learning: Using consonantal context to spell vowels. Journal of Educational Psychology 98: 642–52. Treiman, R., Cassar, M. and Zukowski, A. (1994). What Types of Linguistic Information do Children Use in Spelling? The case of flaps. Child Development 65: 1310–29. Treiman, R., Weatherston, S. and Berch, D. (1994). The Role of Letter Names in Children’s Learning of Phoneme–Grapheme Relations. Applied Psycholinguistics 15: 97–122. Treiman, R., Zukowski, A. and Richmond-Welty, E.D. (1995). What Happened to the ‘n’ of sink? Children’s spellings of final consonant clusters. Cognition 55: 1–38. Treiman, R., Berch, D., Tincoff, R. and Weatherston, S. (1993). Phonology and Spelling: The case of syllabic consonants. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 56: 267–90. Treiman, R., Pennington, B.F., Shriberg, L.D. and Boada, R. (2008). Which Children Benefit from Letter Names in Learning Letter Sounds? Cognition 106: 1322–38. Treiman, R., Tincoff, R., Rodriguez, K., Mouzaki, A. and Francis, D.J. (1998). The Foundations of Literacy: Learning the sounds of letters. Child Development 69: 1524–40. Tsesmeli, S.N. and Seymour, P.H.K. (2006). Derivational Morphology and Spelling in Dyslexia. Reading and Writing 19: 587–625. Varnhagen, C.K., Boechler, P.M. and Steffler, D.J. (1999). Phonological and Orthographic Influences on Children’s Spelling. Scientific Studies of Reading 3: 363–79. Waters, G.S., Bruck, M. and Malus-Abramowitz, M. (1988). The Role of Linguistic and Visual Information in Spelling: A developmental study. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 45: 400–21. Zutell, J. (1980). Children’s Spelling Strategies and their Cognitive Development. In E. H. Henderson and J. W. Beers (Eds) Developmental and Cognitive Aspects of Learning to Spell. Newark, DE: International Reading Association, pp. 213–30.

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17 Handwriting and writing Jane Medwell and David Wray

Introduction Handwriting is a well researched area of literacy activity but remains an unfashionable topic in mainstream literacy teaching. The chapter explores this paradox and reviews research from the domains of neuroscience, graphonomics and psychology. This research raises important issues for mainstream literacy teachers and suggests that handwriting, which may be neglected for many children, is a crucial part of the writing process. This neglect may in turn adversely affect the composition of these children.

The handwriting paradox The last 30 years have seen some major shifts in definitions of literacy. Early literacy studies across the world (e.g. Ferreiro and Teberosky, 1979; Pontecorvo and Zuccermaglio, 1990) identified the forms of writing of pre-school children and placed them on a developmental continuum. Researchers demonstrated that, with the right support, children could write meaningful texts before they had mastered the writing system (Teale and Sulzby, 1986). They analysed children’s early writing for evidence of understandings about the language system (Clay, 1975), spelling (Gentry, 1981) and audience (Hall, 1987). This produced a pedagogy that came to be known as emergent writing (Hall, 1987; Teale and Sulzby, 1986), which placed the focus of attention in children’s writing firmly on the meanings children were able to create. In such a pedagogy, children were encouraged to write freely and to use their emerging understandings of language and writing skills to express themselves. This inevitably created tension between ensuring that children developed correct letter formation and the desire to allow them to write unimpeded. (This dominance of early composition was not universal. French speaking countries for example continued to emphasize ‘graphisme’ and pursue the teaching of handwriting before beginning composition.) The pedagogy of writing for older children was, likewise, shaped by research that stressed the division between the processes of composing and transcribing text 193

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(Graves, 1983) producing what was known as a ‘process approach’. Graves describes the writing process as a series of stages, with the teacher as facilitator, rather than instructor. Process writing researchers had little to say about handwriting, except to emphasize that it was not a significant success criterion in writing. A composition-led view of writing is very much part of mainstream literacy teaching in many countries. In England, the National Curriculum (DfEE, 2000) requires that children be taught to plan, draft, revise, proofread and present their work, a direct reflection of the process approach. In the US, the achievement standards set in most states follow a similar line. In Pennsylvania, for example, the academic standards expected of all children list five standards for writing which emphasize aspects of composition, one which focuses on spelling, and one which mentions presentation, where children are expected to ‘Present and/or defend written work for publication when appropriate’ (PDE, 2008) This particular standard is the same for children from Grade 1 (6–7 year-olds) to Grade 11 (17–18 year-olds). This recurrent emphasis upon composing may have drawn attention away from handwriting at a time when a good deal of interesting research about the relationship between handwriting and writing was being undertaken.

Handwriting and writing Over the years, a number of models of the writing process have been developed which ascribe different roles to handwriting. Hayes and Flower’s (1980) model placed great emphasis on the recursive nature of the writing process, especially the planning and self-monitoring required by the writer. However, the translation element of this model, the component in which ideas are generated and written on paper, was given little importance in planning and reviewing. Berninger and Swanson (1994) modified the translation component to include two aspects: text generation and transcription. Text generation is how the writer transforms the ideas generated in planning into language representations in working memory. Transcription is how the writer transforms those representations into orthographic symbols through writing (or keyboarding). Berninger and Swanson (1994) theorized that deficits in transcription could interfere with text generation. At the heart of the process is working memory, in particular short-term working memory, the temporary storage of the information necessary for carrying out tasks. This is limited in the amount of material it can hold (a few items) and in the length of time it can hold it (a few seconds). Understanding the ways different writing processes draw upon the same limited working memory resources could explain why some writing processes are more difficult than others and how these processes may interfere with each other. Most models of writing (e.g. Hayes and Flower, 1980; Kellogg, 2001) give a central role to working memory, and the findings of Gathercole et al. (2004) suggest that working memory is particularly associated with the literacy scores of younger children. If young writers have to devote large amounts of working memory to the control of lower-level processes, such as handwriting, they may have little left for higher-level processes. If handwriting consumes a large proportion of working memory capacity, it may limit the child’s ability to generate ideas, select vocabulary, monitor progress and revise text. 194

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This is the key issue for models of writing and handwriting in primary schools today. Christensen (2005) points out that individuals can generally conduct only one cognitive task requiring attention at a time (Sweller, 1988). This means that in addition to the processes of writing such as idea generation, planning and revising, the way in which an individual manages his or her cognitive resources is also critical for successful writing (Saada-Robert, 1999). One way to limit the demands on working memory is to sequence tasks so that only one is undertaken at a time. This has been a popular way to manage writing processes at a pedagogical level, and planning, drafting, revising and proofreading have been sequenced as steps in the writing process in many classrooms, in an attempt to reduce their competing demands on young writers. However, the research discussed above suggests that this is unlikely to be a successful strategy at a cognitive level, as writing processes are recursive and closely linked. It is also hardly possible to isolate or defer the handwriting element of writing, since without it, no writing would actually exist! A better solution is to make some processes, such as handwriting, automatic, in order to free up cognitive resources to deal with higher level processes. Automaticity is achieved when a process can be effected swiftly, accurately, without the need for conscious attention (La Berge and Samuels, 1974). Development of skill in writing may require the automatization of lower-level skills, so that they use less of the available working-memory resources. An impressive programme of structured research undertaken in the last 15 years (Berninger, 1994; Berninger and Graham, 1998; Berninger et al., 2002) has led to the development of a simple model of writing with a developmental element (Wong and Berninger, 2004). This involves the application of ‘transcription skills’ (letter production and spelling) and emerging ‘executive functions’ (control of planning, monitoring and revising), through working, long- and short-term memory, in order to generate text. The research underpinning this model has established that handwriting is far from a purely motor act. Berninger and Graham (1998) stress that it is ‘language by hand’ and their research suggests that orthographic and memory processes (the ability to recall letter shapes) contribute more to handwriting than do motor skills (Berninger and Amtmann, 2004). Orthographic-motor integration of handwriting is the ability to call to mind and write letter shapes, groups of letters and words efficiently without allocation of cognitive attention. This involves mentally coding and rehearsing visual representations of these patterns and integrating them with motor patterns (Berninger, 1994). A number of studies suggest that automatic handwriting is critical to the generation of thoughtful and well-structured written text and has an impact not only on fluency but also on quality in writing (Berninger and Swanson, 1994; Graham et al., 1997). Automatic handwriting requires no cognitive attention, thus leaving more for the composition aspects of writing. Lack of automaticity in orthographic-motor integration can seriously affect young children’s ability to express ideas in text (Graham, 1990). De La Paz and Graham (1995) found, for example that when children were able to dictate their texts to an adult, thus freeing them from physical handwriting, the quality of their composition improved. Other studies have also shown that the elimination of the mechanical demands of writing through dictation results in an increase in the amount of text generated by primary aged children (e.g. Hidi and Hilyard, 1983; McCutchen, 1996). Studies have also suggested that orthographic-motor integration accounts for a surprisingly high proportion of the variance in written language performance in children. 195

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Christensen and Jones (2000) put this as high as 67 per cent for the seven- to eight-yearolds they studied. Berninger and Graham (1998) reported that handwriting automaticity accounted for 25 per cent of the variance in compositional quality in primary grades in the USA. In our own research, with almost 400 seven- and eleven-year-old children, orthographic-motor integration accounted for 34 per cent of the variance in composition in the seven-year-olds (Medwell et al., 2007) and 21.5 per cent in the 11-year-olds (Medwell et al., 2009). Other studies have indicated that the influence of orthographic-motor integration declines with age (Berninger and Swanson, 1994) but continues to exert an influence on writing well into secondary school (Christensen and Jones, 2000). The research described above generally looks at the products of writing. However, graphonomics can look at handwriting not as a product but as a process by studying its spatial and kinetic parameters. Using digitizing tablets, researchers are able to record and examine the position, time, velocity and acceleration of the writing implement of a writer. This approach has a major benefit in that it allows investigation of the processes of handwriting from an objective point of view, avoiding reliance on the subjective evaluation of the handwritten product (Longstaff and Heath, 1997). Graphonomics has given us an impressive body of evidence, adding to our knowledge about automaticity in handwriting (Tucha et al., 2008). Studying the smallest unit of handwriting, the letter stroke, researchers have been able to determine that automated production produces a smooth velocity curve with only one inversion of direction. The velocity profiles of skilled handwriters show that they are producing fully automated movements in their handwriting. By examining the effects of a variety of conditions on the velocity profiles of handwriting, researchers have been able to explore some of the elements which affect automaticity (Tucha et al., 2008). In adults, writing backwards significantly reduces automaticity (Tankle and Heilman, 1983). Writing dictated non-words also produces significantly more inversions in velocity, indicating less automatic handwriting (Tucha et al., 2004). This suggests that the semantic information activated to write words is as important as the phonological and orthographic information (Seidenberg and McClelland, 1989). Other graphonomic experiments have involved writers: writing with their eyes closed; visually tracking the pen tip; mentally tracking the highest points in the letter while their eyes are closed. Results show that that conscious visual and mental control of graphomotor output hampers the production of automated handwriting movements (Tucha and Lange, 2005). Experiments with ordinary children, children with attention deficit disorder and adults have demonstrated that the intention to write neatly interferes with automated handwriting processes (Tucha and Lange, 2004, 2005). Tucha et al. (forthcoming) also examined the effect of offering a reward for neatness and found that this increased the number of inversions in velocity in children’s handwriting. In other words, concentrating on neatness, and especially concentrating on neatness for a reward, reduces automaticity in handwriting (Tucha et al., 2008). This is a very important finding for handwriting policy and pedagogy.

Handwriting problems Research has investigated the proportion of children with automaticity problems in handwriting. Graham and Weintraub (1996) estimated that between 12 per cent and 196

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20 per cent of school-aged children experienced handwriting difficulties, and other estimates have ranged from ten per cent to 34 per cent (Barnett et al., 2006; Rosenblum, 2005). In a longitudinal study of 407 children, 27 per cent were classified as dysfunctional handwriters at age seven, but by age 11 only 13 per cent were so classified (Karlsdottir and Stefansson, 2002). Jones and Christensen (1999) used children’s ability to generate fewer than 13 letters per minute on an alphabet task (Berninger et al., 1991) to select children for an intervention programme. In their sample of 114 pupils aged six to seven years this identified 21 (18 per cent of the sample). In our own study of 189 children of the same age, this cut-off point would identify 69 (37 per cent of the sample) (Medwell et al., 2007). These findings suggest that lack of automaticity is a problem for a significant number of children and may be interfering with their composing processes. Certain groups of children are more likely to have handwriting difficulties. These include pre-term children (Feder et al., 2005); children with learning difficulties (Waber and Bernstein, 1994); and boys. Boys are more likely to be identified with a handwriting problem than girls (Vlachos and Bonoti, 2004), and research has confirmed that girls are generally better handwriters than boys (Graham and Miller, 1980) both on measures of overall quality and of letter formation (Hamstra-Bletz and Blote, 1990; Ziviani and Elkins, 1984). Girls also tend to write faster than boys (Berninger and Fuller, 1992) and to have better levels of neatness and automaticity (Medwell et al., 2007). If handwriting does have an impact on children’s ability to compose, it may be that the lesser likelihood of boys achieving automaticity is significantly implicated in their underachievement as writers. However, pedagogy has not developed to address this and handwriting has not generally been a focus of writing programmes aimed at boys, at least in the UK (e.g. UKLA/PNS, 2004). Difficulties in handwriting may affect children’s written performance in a number of ways. The motivational difficulties experienced by children suffering prolonged failure may cause some to give up on writing. Poor writing can affect emotional wellbeing through anxiety, and children’s academic progress is often judged through their handwriting. For children whose handwriting is slower and less automatic, there is a danger that this can create what Stanovich (1986) has called, in reading, the ‘Matthew effect’, whereby those who are more able (usually girls) achieve more successful practice and, because of orthographic-motor integration, have more attention available for composing. In turn this leaves the less able with less opportunity to engage with higher-order composing processes. In all these ways, as well as through the more direct mechanism of poor automaticity, handwriting may impact upon children’s written composition.

Pedagogic ways forward In the context of this research the possible effects of teaching on handwriting automaticity are important. Our research (Medwell et al., 2009) showed a strong school effect. In one of the four schools in the study, children had relatively poor composition, speed and orthographic motor-integration but unexpectedly high levels of neatness. Further investigation revealed that the school had introduced regular daily handwriting practice for all children and had succeeded in raising neatness scores on externally marked tests. However, this improvement in neatness had not produced an 197

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improvement in orthographic-motor integration or in composition scores. It would seem that traditional handwriting teaching (copying rows of the same letter) had not developed children’s automaticity. Studies have explored the effects of more focused handwriting instruction on composition. Jones and Christensen (1999) measured the orthographic-motor integration, reading and written expression of 114 seven-year-olds before and after an eight-week handwriting programme. These children showed significant improvement in their handwriting and, crucially, their composing skills. Christensen (2005) also reports a study of 50 thirteen to fifteen-year–olds, who underwent an intensive handwriting programme. A matched control group did journal writing for a similar period. Although both the journal and handwriting groups were equivalent at pre-test, the scores for the hand-writing group after eight weeks of intervention were 70 per cent higher in orthographic-motor integration and 46 per cent higher in quality of written text than the journal group. The handwriting group also wrote approximately twice as much as the journal writers. Christensen’s intervention programme gave participants sequenced practice in writing letters, words, and sentences. Beginning with letters based on a circle (e.g. a, d, c), and continuing with other formations until all letters were covered, the programme progressed from participants practising single letters in isolation to twoand three-letter exercises, and finally words, phrases, and short sentences. These studies offer promising evidence that the right kind of handwriting intervention can make a difference to the handwriting and composition of children in mainstream classes. By improving their ability to produce letters automatically, these young writers freed up their attention for other writing processes. One of the key goals for researchers and teachers is to identify which children would benefit from additional instruction to improve their handwriting automaticity. It is not always clear how children are selected in intervention studies. Jones and Christensen (1999), for example chose their participants on the apparently arbitrary basis that they scored 13 or less on a test which involved writing letters of the alphabet in one minute. In our own studies we have tried to develop this, relating automaticity levels to external criteria such as national norms for composing. In Medwell et al. (2007) we found that seven-year-old children who scored 12 or less on the alphabet task had statistically only a 40 per cent chance of achieving the national expectation for composing and could be considered ‘at risk’. In Medwell et al. (2009) we found that 11-year-olds who scored around 22 or less on the alphabet task had the same 40 per cent statistical chance of achieving the national standard for composing. Our aim is to continue this research to refine further this screening mechanism, possibly including neatness or letter formation.

Conclusion The research discussed above suggests that the role of handwriting in writing has been underestimated in mainstream education. It seems that the necessity for speed and automaticity in handwriting has been neglected in our writing pedagogy, despite good evidence of its importance. Educators have given priority to composing processes in writing, but in so doing we may have neglected a skill which makes a significant contribution to the composing we so value. 198

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Handwriting, particularly the automaticity of letter production, appears to play a role in facilitating higher order composing processes by freeing up working memory to deal with the complex tasks of planning, organizing, revising and regulating text production. In this way, automatic handwriting facilitates composing. Research undertaken into the predictors of writing competence suggests that automatic letter writing is the single best predictor of length and quality of written composition in the primary years (Graham et al., 1997); in secondary school; and even in the post-compulsory education years (Connelly et al., 2006; Jones, 2004; Peverley, 2006); and research to identify appropriate thresholds for screening is underway. The assumption that handwriting will become automatic relatively early in writers’ development, freeing up cognitive resources to facilitate composition, is endemic in policy and practice. It is difficult to find any recognition, in policy statements worldwide, that handwriting might progress, other than becoming neater, as children gain more maturity in writing. Recent research in England (Medwell et al., 2007; Medwell et al., 2009) challenges this assumption. However, neither national statutory testing nor school policies (Barnett et al., 2006) aims to assess handwriting speed or fluency, addressing only writing style and neatness. We appear to be assessing the wrong aspects of handwriting and, given the graphonomic evidence, may be emphasizing a criterion which inhibits automaticity (Tucha et al., 2008). On the basis of the findings of intervention studies, we need to reconsider how to develop children’s handwriting automaticity and to accept that current pedagogy is doing a less than effective job. We know that a significant proportion of children experience handwriting difficulties throughout schooling. More of these children are boys than girls, and their handwriting difficulties are likely to impact upon their ability to compose written language. There is evidence that teaching interventions can improve not only handwriting, but also written composition. None of the authors of the studies discussed above make exaggerated claims regarding handwriting instruction. It will not solve all the difficulties of writing but the evidence suggests that it could be helpful to a significant number of young writers. This does not mean more handwriting teaching for all children but, rather, differentiated attention to address the handwriting needs of children who struggle with letter formation and automaticity.

References Barnett, A., Stainthorp, R., Henderson, S. and Scheib, B. (2006). Handwriting Policy and Practice in English Primary Schools. London: Institute of Education. Berninger, V. (1994). Reading and Writing Acquisition: A developmental neuropsychological perspective. Dubuque, IA: Brown and Benchmark. Berninger, V. and Amtmann, D. (2004). Preventing Written Expression Disabilities through Early and Continuing Assessment and Intervention for Handwriting and/or Spelling Problems: Research into practice. In L. Swanson, K. Harris and S. Graham (Eds) Handbook of Research on Learning Disabilities. New York: Guilford, pp. 345–63. Berninger, V. and Fuller, E. (1992). Gender Differences in Orthographic, Verbal, and Compositional Fluency: Implications for diagnosis of writing disabilities in primary grade children. Journal of School Psychology 30: 363–82. Berninger, V. and Graham, S. (1998). Language by Hand: A synthesis of a decade of research on handwriting. Handwriting Review 12: 11–25.

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Berninger, V. and Swanson, H. (1994). Modifying Hayes and Flower’s Model of Skilled Writing to Explain Beginning and Developing Writing. In E. Butterfield (Ed.) Children’s Writing: Toward a process theory of the development of skilled writing. Hampton Hill, CT: JAI Press, pp. 57–81. Berninger, V., Mizokawa, D. and Bragg, R. (1991). Theory-based Diagnosis and Remediation of Writing Disabilities. Journal of Educational Psychology 29: 57–9. Berninger, V., Abbott, R., Abbott, S., Graham, S. and Richards, T. (2002). Writing and Reading: Connections between language by hand and language by eye. Journal of Learning Disabilities 35: 39–56. Christensen, C. (2005). The Role of Orthographic-motor Integration in the Production of Creative and well Structured Written Text for Students in Secondary School. Educational Psychology 25: 441–53. Christensen. C. and Jones, D. (2000). Handwriting: An underestimated skill in the development of written language. Handwriting Today 2: 56–69. Clay, M. (1975). What did I Write? Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Connelly, V., Campbell, S., MacLean, M. and Barnes, J. (2006). Contribution of Lower Order Skills to the Written Composition of College Students with and without Dyslexia. Developmental Neuropsychology 29: 175–96. De La Paz, S. and Graham, S. (1995). Dictation: Applications to writing for students with learning disabilities. In T. Scruggs and M. Mastropieri (Eds) Advances in Learning and Behavioral Disorders. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, pp. 227–47. Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (2000). National Curriculum Handbook for Primary Teachers in England: Key Stages 1 and 2. London: HMSO. Feder, K., Majnemer, A., Bourbonnais, D., Platt, R., Blayney, M. and Synnes, A. (2005). Handwriting Performance in Preterm Children Compared with Term Peers at Age 6 to 7 Years. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology 47: 163–70. Ferreiro, E. and Teberosky, A. (1979). Literacy before Schooling. Exeter, NH: Heinemann. Gathercole, S., Pickering, S., Knight, C. and Stegmann, Z. (2004). Working Memory Skills and Educational Attainment: Evidence from national curriculum assessments at 7 and 14 years of age. Applied Cognitive Psychology 18: 1–16. Gentry, J. (1981). Learning to Spell Developmentally. The Reading Teacher 34: 378–81. Graham, S. (1990). The Role of Production Factors in Learning Disabled Students’ Compositions. Journal of Educational Psychology 82: 781–91. Graham, S. and Miller, L. (1980). Handwriting Research and Practice: A unified approach. Focus on Exceptional Children 13: 1–16. Graham, S. and Weintraub, N. (1996). A Review of Handwriting Research: Progress and prospects from 1980 to 1994. Educational Psychology Review 8: 7–87. Graham, S., Berninger, V., Abbott, R., Abbott, S. and Whitaker, D. (1997). The Role of Mechanics in Composing of Elementary School Students: A new methodological approach. Journal of Educational Psychology 89: 170–82. Graves, D. (1983). Writing: Teachers and children at work. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Hall, N. (1987). The Emergence of Literacy. Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton. Hamstra-Bletz, L. and Blote, A. (1990). Development of Handwriting in Primary School: A longitudinal study. Perceptual and Motor Skills 70: 759–70. Hayes, J. and Flower, L. (1980). Identifying the Organization of Writing Processes. In L. Gregg and E. Steinberg (Eds) Cognitive Processes in Writing. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 3–30. Hidi, S. and Hilyard, A. (1984). The Comparison of Oral and Written Productions in Two Discourse Modes. Discourse Processes 6: 91–105. Jones, D. (2004). ‘Automaticity of the transcription process in the production of written text’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Queensland, QLD. Jones, D. and Christensen, C. (1999). The Relationship between Automaticity in Handwriting and Students’ Ability to Generate Written Text. Journal of Educational Psychology 91: 44–9.

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Karlsdottir, R. and Stefansson, T. (2002). Problems in Developing Functional Handwriting. Perceptual and Motor Skills 94: 623–62. Kellogg, R. (2001). Competition for Working Memory among Writing Processes. American Journal of Psychology 114: 175–91. La Berge, D. and Samuels, S. (1974). Toward a Theory of Automatic Information Processing. Cognitive Psychology 6: 283–323. Longstaff, M. and Heath, R. (1997). Space-time Invariance in Adult Handwriting. Acta Psychologica 97: 201–14. McCutchen, D. (1996). A Capacity Theory of Writing: Working memory in composition. Educational Psychology Review 8: 299–325. Medwell, J., Strand, S. and Wray, D. (2007). The Role of Handwriting in Composing for Y2 Children. Journal of Reading Writing and Literacy 2: 18–36. Medwell, J., Strand, S. and Wray, D. (2009). The Links between Handwriting and Composing for Y6 Children. Cambridge Journal of Education 39(3): 329–44. Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE). (2008). State Academic Standards. http://www. pde.state.pa.us/ accessed 30 March 2009. Peverley, S. (2006). The Importance of Handwriting Speed in Adult Writing. Developmental Neuropsychology 29: 197–216. Pontecorvo, C. and Zuccermaglio, C. (1990). A Passage to Literacy: Learning in a social context. In Y. Goodman (Ed.) How Children Construct Literacy. Newark, DE: International Reading Association, pp. 59–98. Rosenblum, S. (2005). Using the Alphabet Task to Differentiate between Proficient and Nonproficient Handwriters. Perceptual and Motor Skills 100: 629–39. Saada-Robert, M. (1999). Effective Means for Learning to Manage Cognitive Load in Second Grade School Writing: A case study. Learning and Instruction 9: 189–208. Seidenberg, S. and McClelland, J. (1989). A Distributed Developmental Model of Word Recognition and Naming. Psychological Review 96: 447–52. Stanovich, K. (1986). Matthew Effects in Reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly 21: 360–470. Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive Load During Problem Solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science 12: 247–85. Tankle, R. and Heilman, K. (1983). Mirror Writing in Right-handers and in Left-handers. Brain and Language 19: 115–23. Teale, W. and Sulzby, E. (Eds) (1986). Emergent Literacy: Writing and reading. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Tucha, O. and Lange, K. (2004). Handwriting in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Motor Control 8: 461–71. Tucha, O. and Lange, K. (2005). The Effect of Conscious Control on Handwriting in Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Journal of Attention Disorders 9: 323–32. Tucha, O., Trumpp, C. and Lange, K. (2004). Writing Words and Non-words to Dictation. Brain and Language 91: 267–73. Tucha, O., Tucha, C. and Lange, W. (2008). Graphonomics, Automaticity and Handwriting Assessment. Literacy 42(3): 145–55. Tucha, L., Tucha, O., Walitza, S., Kaunzinger, I. and Lange, K. (forthcoming). Movement Execution during Neat Handwriting. Handwriting Today. United Kingdom Literacy Association/Primary National Strategy (UKLA/PNS) (2004). Raising Boys’ Achievements in Writing. Reading: UKLA. Vlachos, F. and Bonoti, F. (2004). Handedness and Writing Performance. Perceptual and Motor Skills 98(3): 815–24. Waber, D. and Bernstein, J. (1994). Repetitive Graphomotor Output in LD and Non-learning Disabled Children. The repeated patterns test. Developmental neuropsychology 10: 51–65.

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Wong, B. and Berninger, V. (2004). Instructional Principles for Composition in Elementary, Middle and High School. In B. Shulman, K. Apel, B. Ehren, E. Silliman and A. Stone (Eds) Handbook of Language and Literacy Development and Disorders. New York: Guildford, pp. 600–24. Ziviani, J. and Elkins, J. (1984). An Evaluation of Handwriting Performance. Educational Review 36: 249–61.

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Part 3 Language

18 Orality, literacy, and culture: talk, text, and tools in ideological contexts Randy Bomer

In this era when communications technologies are changing rapidly and those changes seem to touch every area of life, literacy and technology scholars make frequent reference to past times that saw large-scale technological shifts. The development of the internet is often compared to the invention of the printing press, and the ubiquitous presence of computing in our lives to the spread of literacy earlier in human history. Moreover, many people are noting the changes in text features as composing practices become faster and more immediate, the new genres that are evolving – email, discussions, chat – that seem to be making literate communication more like spoken communication. The rapidly changing communications environment has brought about new interest in the relationship between orality and literacy, as transitions in cultural history, as differences among cultures, as psychological processes, as social practices, and as developmental stages. The reasons for this renewed interest are not solely technological; intensified contact among diverse cultures across the globe has raised the desire for explanations of cultural differences and strategies of interaction across those differences. Orality and literacy have long been used as concepts for exploring and explaining cultural differences, and at times, people have attempted to deploy them in the service of development projects, education policy, and other interethnic purposes. Institutions of the developed world attempting to engineer cultural conditions for economic growth and also advocates for colonized peoples resisting the loss of traditional folkways have employed rhetorically the distinction between oral and literate – and the scholarship that defines such distinctions. The phrase ‘orality and literacy’ names an interdisciplinary domain of study that took shape in the early 1960s, intensified in the 1980s, and continues today to influence theory, research design, practice, and policy across many disciplines. Some readers may wonder about the use of the term ‘orality’ rather than ‘oracy’. While oracy, a term coined in recent decades, has been used almost exclusively in educational settings to describe students’ oral language as something to be developed or improved – like literacy or numeracy – orality, the term in the scholarship I am drawing upon here, is a much older and broader term referring to the overall use of spoken language, 205

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especially in a culture. Oracy is a word used to name a skill; orality is a mode. Drawing from such diverse fields as linguistics, anthropology, cultural history, literary studies, classics, psychology, education, communications, rhetoric, and cultural studies, this line of inquiry has deep implications for a wide range of questions in the humanities and social sciences. It is especially significant for literacy educators, whose work is similarly situated at a nexus of many disciplines. This inquiry tradition may offer help in thinking about the similarities and differences in speech and writing, listening and reading. It might help educators evaluate whether and how people’s thinking changes – and in what ways – as they develop literacy. When young people who clearly have oral communicative competence have difficulties reading or writing, is there something about the characteristics of written language that they need to know? Understanding this scholarly tradition may have much to offer in child development as well as cultural development. This chapter will introduce the reader to some of the traditions, concepts, and conflicts in a line of inquiry that may prove useful in approaching such issues and questions. The scholarship here reviewed is concerned with basic and enduring questions about the character of cultural difference, the meaning of literacy, and the relationship of tools to thinking, all central theoretical questions for the work of literacy educators. Ideas may provide useful heuristics in approaching educational questions, even when hard distinctions between oral and literate language and processes begin to seem less useful. In what follows, I divide my discussion of the scholarship on orality and literacy into several sections: the first describing an earlier but still influential approach that emphasized the differences between orality and literacy; the second tracing a line of psychological inquiry from Vygotsky to the present; and the third section describing an approach that emphasizes the details of situation or practice in which oral and literate events occur and rejects the notion that differences in mode (oral/literate) make a difference in and of themselves. My title refers to ‘tools’, and that notion will become salient in the section on Vygotsky, where we examine his tradition’s emphasis on communicational modes as forming thought. ‘Ideologies’ is also a keyword in the title, and its importance will be clearer when I discuss later in the chapter the work of several scholars who analyse distinctions between orality and literacy – as well as programmes to impose literacy – as being motivated and shaped, ineluctably, by ideologies.

Emphasis on difference between orality and literacy The scholarship I outline in this section is of interest to literacy educators because it attempts to understand the essential aspects of what we teach – the nature of literacy, differences between speech and writing, and the differences those make in society and in individuals. Most of the problem spaces in literacy education are located somewhere on this map; many of the motives, attitudes, and assumptions of the social endeavour and organized activity of making other people literate can be more thoroughly examined with this conversation in mind. Linguists have sometimes been interested in the differences in form and function between oral and literate language (Chafe, 1985, 1994; Chafe and Danielewicz, 1987; Chafe and Tannen, 1987). Chafe (1994) identifies the following distinctions: evanescence in speech as opposed to permanence and transportability in writing; 206

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differences in tempo, with writing being slower than speech, although reading may be faster than listening; spontaneity versus deliberate working over of language; richness of prosody in speech, available in writing only through what he calls ‘auditory imagery’ (Chafe, 1994: 288). Spoken language evolved with parties co-present and often interacting, and Chafe refers to this ‘closeness language has to the immediate physical and social situation in which it is produced and received’ as ‘situatedness’ (1994: 44). Written language, by contrast, is designed so that circumstances and environment of production have a minimum degree of influence on the language, and Chafe designates this characteristic as ‘desituatedness’ (Chafe, 1994: 45). Therefore, in form, function, and phenomenology, distinctions are sometimes drawn across modes of language production and reception. Some scholars have drawn sharp historical lines separating oral from literate cultures, and because of those sharp lines, these writers have sometimes been referred to as Great Divide theorists (Street, 1984), although this has never been an appellation they applied to themselves. Usually working through epochal swaths of history, these writers typically attempt to describe far-reaching cultural and sometimes mass psychological changes that are brought about when literacy takes root in a culture. Because of their diachronic approach, Great Divide theorists emphasize the discreteness and differences between spoken and written languages – and the societies whose relationships are mediated by them. Although at times they seem to be denigrating oral cultures as more primitive or at least as antecedents to more advanced literate cultures, their intent was to correct a deficit view of cultures that did not rely on literacy and to replace the notion of ‘pre-literate’ with a more descriptive adjective: ‘oral’. Twentieth-century inquiries into orality and literacy began with scholars wondering about Homer, knowing that his poetry was oral and curious about how it was composed. Milman Parry reasoned that if Homer was indeed an oral poet, the works ascribed to him could only be understood in the context of a systematic account of the processes of oral poetry. He identified contemporary Serbia, Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Montenegro as places where traditional oral poetry still occurred and, beginning in the 1930s, undertook fieldwork and recording in order to document the people and processes involved. His assistant and former student Albert Lord accompanied him, and Lord’s The Singer of Tales (1965) extended Parry’s analysis, detailing the intricate interplay of formulated, traditional material and in-the-moment responses to the audience and the singer’s instinct in improvisational performances. The assumption in this empirical work was that there was continuity between the practices of Homer somewhere around the eighth century BCE and in those of Southern Slavic singers of tales in the early twentieth century CE. Havelock (1967) argues that the period between Homer and Plato was one of great transformation in Greek culture. Plato was living in a time when literacy’s role in society was expanding (hence the anxiety about its effects), and Homer lived in a completely oral culture. That earlier culture was not just pre-literate: it was oral, and orality as an absolute presence created specific cultural effects. People accomplished many of the functions literacy would later serve, only in different ways. Songs like the Iliad, according to Havelock, held knowledge that would later be stored in libraries – of myths, values, history, even the names of plants and places. These methods of remembering, of holding society together, represented a way of thinking that would differ substantially from that of Plato’s contemporaries. The widespread use of literacy made a philosophy with Plato’s sort of systematicity possible, because, according to Havelock, 207

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writing released the mind’s energy and attention from the demands of memory. It also made it possible for people to look at language itself and to study and think about it as an object. It became possible, moreover, for people to abstract a word from a narrative context, and then discourse upon that word as an idea. Hence, topic-governed discourse was born out of literacy. The changes between oral and written language Havelock viewed as alterations in the structure of thought across Greek society. Goody and Watt (1963 [1972]) called such changes in the structure of the culture and individual cognition ‘the consequences of literacy’; Ong stated the case clearly in the title of one article: ‘Writing is a technology that restructures thought’ (Ong, 2001: 19), and even more decisively in the title of one chapter in Orality and Literacy: ‘writing restructures consciousness’ (Ong, 1982: 78). Among Goody’s consequences, which he later said he wished they had termed ‘implications’ (Goody, 1986), is the ability to form abstracted categories from numerous particulars, as in the development of lists and catalogues in the ancient world (Goody, 1977). He emphasized from the beginning, and increasingly across the decades, that the implications of literacy were not only cognitive but included the uses to which literacy could be put in a society’s overall development, especially in the development of an archive and a written tradition, the accumulation of meanings and knowledge across many years, and the consequent development of systems of education (Goody, 1986, 2000). A melioristic sense of history, of human development progressing and improving in quality on a staircase to paradise right up to the present is foundational to the orality and literacy discussions of great divide theorists. Literacy is viewed as an improvement on the conditions of orality, allowing the development of abstraction and therefore science, literature, ethics, urbanism, trade, and many other things. In later writings, Goody and others did protest that their intent was to valorize oral cultures by pointing out that they were not merely non-literate but rather possessed of a unique way of thinking and interacting. And in fact, several writers, including Innis, Goody, and Ong sometimes display a neo-Romantic longing for the condition of orality. Still, with rationality, science, law, education, the Western tradition, and the ability to think about language listed as consequences of literacy, it is hard not to think that these writers view most of the defining achievements of the present age as the pinnacle of a long climb. The dichotomous position received a significant boost into public awareness with the relative popularity of Ong’s Orality and Literacy: The technologizing of the word (1982), which synthesized much of others’ work and many other historical and literary studies. Written contemporaneously to some of the work that would critically examine the claims of the ‘great divide’ between orality and literacy (see below), this text has been influential, especially among technophiles and scholars of oral literatures, perhaps beyond the degree one might expect on the basis of the originality of its scholarly contribution. Often cited is Ong’s listing of the ‘psychodynamics of orality’, which includes his assertions that orality: is additive rather than subordinative, and aggregative rather than analytic; is copious in redundancy; is conservative or traditionalist; remains close to the human lifeworld; is agonistically toned, full of fighting words and oppositional stances; is not objective and distanced but rather participatory and empathetic; is homeostatic in its present-mindedness; and is situational, rather than abstract (Ong, 1982: 31–50). He also argues that sound is more interior than sight and that it ‘enters deeply into human beings’ feel for existence’ (1982: 73). Ong also asserts a set of 208

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dynamics of literate thinking. Where spoken words are part of a context that transcends words, writing stands on its own, produced in solitude, a ‘solipsistic operation’ (1982: 101). The writer casts the reader in a fictional role (Ong, 1975), acting as if they are in mutuality, even though, at the moment of the reader’s reading of the text, the author could even be dead. Ong also argues that twentieth century technologies of telephone, radio, and television brought about an era of secondary orality, ‘a more deliberate and self-conscious orality, based permanently on the use of writing and print’ (Ong, 1975: 136). This notion of secondary orality has been especially significant in people’s attempt to locate contemporary developed society on the map of orality/ literacy. A student of McLuhan’s and strongly influenced by him, Ong is in some ways the most deterministic of scholars who write about orality and literacy as a divide.

Psychological perspectives The tradition outlined above converges with another one in sociocultural psychology, and to pick up this other tradition, we must return to the 1920s and 1930s and the work of Lev Vygotsky and his colleagues in the Soviet Union. The emphasis Vygotsky placed upon tools was part of all Marxist theory of the time, derived directly from Engels. By using a tool, one employs the history of effort and problem solving contained in that tool, distributing effort across time by marshalling the energy and intelligence of ancestors. One does not think as an individual when employing a tool – but with cultural–historical artefacts, motives, values, and beliefs. The means by which tools form the thinking of individuals was an essential plank in the theory, and language was, for Vygotsky, the tool of tools. For educators interested in the relationship of language, literacy, and thinking, particularly those working from a sociocultural framework, this must be a significant line of inquiry. Vygotsky wrote that ‘written speech differs from oral speech in the same way that abstract thinking differs from graphic thinking’ (Vygotsky, 1987: 202). Vygotsky viewed the acquistion of scientific concepts as being related to the acquisition of literacy in school. Special efforts are required to master written language, and as a result of those efforts, children’s fundamental patterns of thinking are altered – made more abstract, decontextualized, logical, objective, and aware of language itself. Together, Vygotsky and Luria planned research on people in remote villages in Uzbekistan who, under Stalin in the 1930s, were undergoing what became known as rural collectivization. As part of these changes, educational programmes were introduced to the region and schooling began or intensified. Seeing the changes underway as an unique moment in history offering the opportunity for a natural experiment, Luria (1976) presented adults who had never read or written with a sequence of naming, reasoning, and classification tasks. His results indicated that those without literacy thought only in ways that were situated within practical activity, not in theoretical concepts or abstractions, whereas those who had acquired some literacy were beginning to think in more discursive and school-like ways. Introducing Luria’s (1976) book, Michael Cole, who worked with Luria in the Soviet Union, writes: I am skeptical of the usefulness of applying developmental theories crossculturally. Thus, what Luria interprets as the acquisition of new modes of thought, 209

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I am more inclined to interpret as changes in the application of previously available modes to the particular problems and contexts of discourse represented by the experimental setting. (Luria, 1976: xv). With Sylvia Scribner, Cole conducted cross-cultural research on literacy and schooling that bore out that perspective (Scribner and Cole, 1981). They studied the Vai people of Liberia, who had among them people who were not literate, who were literate in Vai but unschooled (as Vai literacy is not learned in school), literate in Arabic from Quranic schools, literate in English from missionary or government schools. They administered psychological tests, conducted experiments and quasi-experiments, and carried out ethnographic fieldwork. Designed to tease out the effects of specific contexts from those of literacy, their results showed that test performance was a product of schooling and the ways literacy was deployed in schooling, not literacy itself. The consequences of literacy in Vai included more complex descriptions of an unfamiliar game in a simulated letter to a friend, as well as more facility with rebuses and with segmenting text by syllables – all abilities engendered by specific features of Vai written script and the contexts in which written Vai was used in everyday life. When the tests, in other words, were made ecologically valid for the setting and the uses of literacy, then literacy seemed to have cognitive consequences. Literacy is, therefore, a practice, situated in forms of life and systems of activity, not a single technology with universal implications. Jerome Bruner and his colleagues (Bruner et al., 1966; Greenfield and Bruner, 1966) followed on Bruner’s introduction to the first translation of Vygotsky’s work into English in 1962 by bringing the notion of literacy and schooling’s cognitive consequences to child development, a line of inquiry and argument that was further developed by Olson (1977, 1994), a student of Bruner’s. To a certain extent, Olson has developed his perspective and shifted emphases across his career, but in the early years, he conducted experiments that showed that, before the age of six or seven (an age of literacy acquisition in Canadian culture), children did not see the difference between a statement and an intention, what was said and what was meant, between the given and the interpreted. This led him to argue that many texts, as compared to spoken utterances, were autonomous, semantically completely self-contained. The historical achievement of this sort of text – modern essays – in the seventeenth century produced a kind of text that represents modern values of rationality, leading to a bias toward autonomous meanings in thinking across modern Western culture. Like Goody, Olson’s thinking across several decades was complex in its dialogue with other scholars, and although he remained committed to certain central ideas, such as the notion that writing leaves out much meaning that is available in oral communication and that therefore interpretation in literacy is essential to the activity, he mitigated his argument on both the autonomous quality of text and on literacy’s consequences to entire societies’ ways of thinking.

Situated perspectives Theorists reviewed in this section have been critical of the notion that literacy or orality can be seen as separate – as independent variables – from the cultures and contexts in which they exist. Many literary educators are familiar with the notion of situated 210

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literacy, the conception of literacy that views reading and writing (and other forms of signification, including orality) as inseparable from the social functions, purposes, ideologies, relationships and systems in which they appear and from which they gain their shapes. Such conceptions of literacy challenge the notion that reading, for example consists mainly of inside-the-head skills that can be measured outside the contexts of reading’s use. Indeed, as Scribner and Cole demonstrated, instances of measurement on testing are contexts, and they shape the practice of literacy. The distinctions between the characteristics of oral and literate language may not be as binary as they appear in the work of some scholars we have reviewed above. Biber (1988) statistically analysing the features of a large corpus of written and spoken texts in UK English, found that there was ‘no single, absolute difference between speech and writing in English’ (Biber, 1988: 199). He found variation both across and within these modes along six dimensions: involved versus informational production; narrative versus non-narrative; explicit versus situation-dependent; overt persuasion; abstract versus non-abstract; and online elaboration. These variations he calls ‘fundamental parameters of linguistic variation among English texts’ (Biber, 1988: 200), whether those texts are oral or written. Chafe (1994), whose distinctions between oral and literate language I described above, acknowledges the contribution of Biber’s study and argues that the form of language in either mode is always adaptive to the purposes and functions for which it is used. In what follows, I will review scholarship that challenges a dichotomous view of literacy, picking up on Scribner and Cole’s (1981) insights from Liberia as well as this notion of Chafe’s that language forms are purposeful and situated within contexts, not strict products of mode. Finnegan’s (1988) ethnographic work with Sierra Leone’s Limba people resulted in insights that contradict those of the dichotomizing theorists above. For example the Limba, not literate at the time of Finnegan’s study, lived in a social environment that put them in nearly constant contact with speakers of different languages and dialects. They talked often about language, comparing their own to others’, comparing dialects, selfconsciously joking and philosophizing about language. These discussions developed across time and carried stable and sustained notions about language. According to Goody, Ong, and the early Olson, these are social accomplishments reserved to literate societies. What may be at work in creating linguistic awareness is linguistic diversity, whether it be in mode or in lexicogrammatical systems. In many writings from her famous and influential Piedmont study, Shirley Brice Heath (1982) framed her findings in response to research on orality and literacy. Focusing on the literacy event as her unit of analysis was a conceptual, methodological decision that was certain to set her findings at odds with universalized and dichotomous understandings of orality and literacy. She defined literacy event as ‘any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of participants’ interactions and their interpretive processes’ (Heath, 1982: 93). Drawing from her data from the African–American community she called Trackton, she could not characterize Trackton through existing terms of orality or literacy. Rather, in the events she describes, degrees of orality are on one continuum and degrees of literacy on another – both are present to varying degrees in any literacy event. These continua were further inflected by the social and material details of community life – the use of space, ways of talking to children, attitudes toward community sharing of knowledge, voting habits, and work environments. In other words, orality and literacy were mixed as processes in people’s real life experiences, and the mix further derived its social and psychological character from the settings in 211

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which the events occurred. More generally, the meanings and consequences of communication technologies or modalities are contingent upon settings and practices. The notion that literacy is not well represented by a model that sees it as autonomous from other aspects of social life, especially power, privilege, and domination, derives from the work of Street (1984, 1995), who delineates a sharp opposition between autonomous and ideological models of literacy (Street, 1986). His background and chief area of concern is international literacy campaigns, especially those which assume literacy itself will bring universal uplift, intellectual advancement, and economic development. Street demonstrates, with evidence from a number of countries, especially Iran under the Shah, that such campaigns are often employed by the powerful to naturalize their domination and by the agencies that carry out the campaign to justify their own existence. In fact, literacy projects, including traditional school, always carry ideological meanings and exercise powerful ideological agendas upon those being served. Understanding the relationships among students or clients, teachers or workers, and these ideological agendas is important for a number of reasons, since they can create effects not consciously intended by the programme planners, can meet resistance from the students or clients, and can interpellate both teacher and student into existing social hierarchies. Street critiques the positions of some of the ‘great divide’ theorists reviewed above, arguing that theirs is an ‘autonomous’ model of literacy that acts as if consequences naturally follow a technology, irrespective of the ideologies for and within which it is used. To this notion, he opposes his ‘ideological model’ of literacy, which attempts to take into account the interests of learners vis-à-vis the interests of the power structure attempting to make them literate. Collins and Blot (2003) also provide evidence of the relationship of power to literacy, examining, among other things, cases of indigenous peoples in the USA. Understandings of literacy, they argue, rely upon being braided in complementarity with illiteracy/ orality to do its conceptual and discriminating work in society (cf. de Certeau, 1984). They trace the role of literacy in the colonization of the Americas from the fifteenth century onward, arguing as they go that the legacies of those literacy practices continue to exert pressure in South American, Central American, Caribbean, and North American societies. The act of reading and the requirement that natives learn to read established and legitimized the authority of the colonizers over the indigenous populations. Literacy thus abetted the creation of boundaries among distinct social groups with whom people today continue to identify. A 2006 issue of Research in the Teaching of English (Olson, 2006a) included a ‘symposium’ on Olson’s work and featured an essay by Olson and responses from several prominent researchers in literacy education. Olson’s (2006a) essay traces his arguments in The World on Paper (Olson, 1994): that writing leaves out many features of speech, which the reader must restore in order to gain access to the text’s meaning; that texts are used within in a sea of talk; and that, because writing requires compensatory explicitness in the absence of speech cues, it contributes to linguistic awareness and conceptual thought. The respondents, for the most part, do not attempt to answer Olson’s points in detail, but rather reframe the discussion. Bloome (2006) argues, among other things, that an emphasis on mode or linguistic features is misplaced and that the focus should instead be on how local participants use language for social purposes. He writes that the debate about the consequences of literacy is really ‘a debate about the degree to which the local and the situated matter and the degree to which use, diversity, 212

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time, and power relations matter in what counts as evidence’ (Bloome, 2006: 146). Dyson (2006) invokes Bakhtinian theory and data from her own studies of young children writing to argue that if a writing event is seen as a turn in a conversation, prior voices, both written and spoken, are taken up in subsequent texts, and the process by which this absorption occurs is more significant than the relationship between orality and literacy. Gee (2006) points out that literacy is a technology, and as such, it has affordances, although it does not have deterministically necessary consequences, and that these affordances play out in context-specific ways. He echoes Biber (1988) in arguing that a specific genre of language, whether written or oral, can be a productive alternative to mode, and that specific social practices that carry some admixture of speech and writing are an appropriate focus of literacy research. Nystrand (2006) emphasizes that within specific communicative contexts, people choose purposefully and strategically between talking and writing because of their different affordances. Answering Olson’s argument that oral language carries special affordances like prosody, gesture, and proxemics, Nystrand points out that conventions of writing also contribute to the shaping of meaning – paragraph breaks, typographic variety, punctuation, subheads, and the like, conventions that ‘would present special problems to any speaker who sought to convey their force’ (Nystrand, 2006: 162). Purcell-Gates (2006) argues that young children arrive at school already understanding varied functions of language, genres serving those functions, and subsystems (lexical, syntactic, semantic) that form genre conventions. The task of school, she argues, ought to be to learn the ways with language and literacy in students’ home communities and to base pedagogy on those practices. Education, then, is not an induction into universal principles of literacy, but rather an expansion of local practices in which students already participate outside school. Wells’s (2006) response follows Bakhtin in describing discourse as serving two purposes, monologic, which seeks to convey meanings in a controlled and predictable (explicit, relatively autonomous) way; and dialogic, which attempts to provoke a reader/ listener to generate new meaning. Texts, in their design, could be seen as existing on a continuum between these poles, and although a text’s maker may intend one or other of these functions, readers/listeners are free to respond in the other way. Wells draws upon another work of Olson’s (2003) to discuss the notion that school is an institution concerned with specifying knowledge and holding students accountable for that knowledge (a monologic function), and that this agenda exists in tension with the pedagogic value of teaching students to engage with the world dialogically in order to make sense of it. Schools, then, have a special, contradictory relationship to whether literacy should be practiced as if texts are ‘autonomous’ in the way Olson (1977) argued them to be in his earlier work. In response to these commentaries, Olson (2006b) characterizes the position of his interlocutors as ‘pragmatics (use) trumps syntax (form)’ (2006b: 176) and argues that: [I]t is misleading to infer that there are only discourses and social practices as if writing was merely a contingent or incidental factor when, in fact, writing is the critical feature of many discourses or the social practices as it is, for example, in such documentary social practices as law, science, or literature. And we will not understand those practices unless we look more closely at just how writing serves those functions. (Olson, 2006b: 176) 213

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Conclusion I began this chapter by pointing to contemporary questions about how new technology, especially the internet and its evolving literacy practices, are affecting our thinking. Enthusiasts often take up Ong as a guru in pointing out the ways our minds may be changing, the ways humans may be becoming new beings. Such cyborg fantasies, however, are too often universalizing and essentializing and fail to attend to the local, contingent, contextual meanings that technologies develop – the situated uses that actually create multiple different uses, varied and manifold literacies. As Olson points out, it would miss the point to ignore the new forms, but it is helpful, too, to view the new forms within their situated use. Technologies do afford possibilities, but contexts also shape and limit affordances.

References Biber, D. (1988). Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bloome, D. (2006). What Counts as Evidence in Researching Spoken and Written Discourses? Research in the Teaching of English 41(2): 143–7. Bruner, J.S., Olver, R. and Greenfield, P.M. (Eds) (1966). Studies in Cognitive Growth. New York: Wiley. Chafe, W.L. (1985). Linguistic Differences Produced by Differences between Speaking and Writing. In D. R. Olson, N. Torrance and A. Hildyard (Eds) Literacy, Language, and Learning: The nature and consequences of reading and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 105–23. Chafe, W.L. (1994). Discourse, Consciousness, and Time: The flow and displacement of conscious experience in speaking and writing. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Chafe, W.L. and Danielewicz, J. (1987). Properties of Spoken and Written Language. In Comprehending Oral and Written Language. New York: Academic Press, pp. 83–113. Chafe, W.L. and Tannen, D. (1987). The Relation between Written and Spoken Language. Annual Review of Anthropology 16: 383–407. Collins, J. and Blot, R.K. (2003). Literacy and Literacies: Texts, power, and identity. New York: Cambridge University Press. de Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life (trans. S. Rendall). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Dyson, A.H. (2006). Literacy in a Child’s World of Voices, or, the Fine Print of Murder and Mayhem. Research in the Teaching of English 41(2): 147–53. Finnegan, R. (1988). Literacy and Orality. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Gee, J.P. (2006). Oral Discourse in a World of Literacy. Research in the Teaching of English 41(2): 153–9. Goody, J. (1977). The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goody, J. (1986). The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goody, J. (2000). The Power of the Written Tradition. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press. Goody, J. and Watt, I. (1963 [1972]). The Consequences of Literacy. In P. P. Giglioli (Ed.) Language and Social Context. London: Penguin, pp. 311–57. Greenfield, P.M. and Bruner, J.S. (1966). Culture and Cognitive Growth. International Journal of Psychology 1: 89–107.

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Havelock, E.A. (1967). Preface to Plato. New York: Grosset & Dunlap. Heath, S.B. (1982). Protean Shapes in Literacy Events: Ever-shifting oral and literate traditions. In D. Tannen (Ed.) Spoken and Written Language: Exploring orality and literacy. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, pp. 91–117. Lord, A.B. (1965). The Singer of Tales. New York: Atheneum. Luria, A.R. (1976). Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations (trans. M. LopezMorillas and L. Solotaroff). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nystrand, M. (2006). Rendering Messages According to the Affordances of Language in Communities of Practice. Research in the Teaching of English 41(2): 160–4. Olson, D.R. (1977). From Utterance to Text: The bias of language in speech and writing. Harvard Educational Review 47: 257–81. Olson, D.R. (1994). The World on Paper: The conceptual and cognitive implications of writing and reading. New York: Cambridge University Press. Olson, D.R. (2003). Psychological Theory and Educational Reform: How school remakes mind and society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Olson, D.R. (2006a). Oral Discourse in a World of Literacy. Research in the Teaching of English 41(2): 136–43. Olson, D.R. (2006b). Response: Continuing the discourse on literacy. Research in the Teaching of English 41(2): 175–9. Ong, W. (1982). Orality and Literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Routledge. Ong, W. (2001). Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought. In E. Cushman, E.R. Kintgen, B.M. Kroll and M. Rose (Eds) Literacy: A critical sourcebook. Boston, MA: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, pp. 19–31. Ong, W.J. (1975). The Writer’s Audience is always a Fiction. PMLA 90(1): 9–21. Purcell-Gates, V. (2006). Written Language and Literacy Development: The proof is in the practice. Research in the Teaching of English 41(2): 164–8. Scribner, S. and Cole, M. (1981). The Psychology of Literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Street, B.V. (1984). Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Street, B.V. (1995). Social Literacies: Critical approaches to literacy in development, ethnography, and education. London and New York: Longman. Vygotsky, L.S. (1987). Thinking and Speech. In R. W. Rieber and A. S. Carton (Eds) The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky, Vol 1: Problems of general psychology. New York: Plenum Press, pp. 39–288. Wells, G. (2006). Monologic and Dialogic Discourses as Mediators of Education. Research in the Teaching of English 41(2): 168–75.

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19 Understanding language development Debra Myhill

Introduction Language is what makes us human. Our ability as a species to talk distinguishes us clearly from other species and allows us to communicate with each other at a level of sophistication beyond that possible by any animal. Although many animals have well-developed communication systems, these all relate to functional, transactional communication in the present: for example a bee’s waggle dance telling other bees the location of a nectar source or a bird’s alarm call warning its chicks of danger. All attempts, and there have been many, to teach animals to use a symbolic language system have been unsuccessful. The grammar of language gives language systems infinite possibilities – we can discuss the past and speculate about the future, we can create records, and we can make jokes. It is through language that we think, reflect, imagine, speculate; through language, we contest, criticize and condemn. So while is axiomatic that language forms the foundation for the development of speaking, listening, reading and writing, language is also the tool with which we engage with our world and through which we construct our relationships. Understanding how language develops is, therefore, central to an understanding not just of language and literacy teaching, but also of the nature of learning and human communication. This chapter, then, will provide an overview of the social and psychological theories that attempt to explain how we learn to be articulate adults and will consider their significance for educational policy and practice.

Hard-wired for language: the influence of Chomsky The last 50 years have witnessed a significant theoretical debate about first language acquisition, triggered largely by Chomsky’s (1959) rejection of Skinner’s behaviourist theories. Skinner (1957) argued that language development is a habit-forming process of input and imitation which occurs through the child’s interaction with the environment and stimulus-response conditioning. So a baby hears and sees his/her mother continually repeating ‘bye-bye’ and waving as people leave, and eventually waves and says ‘bye-bye’ him/herself; this is greeted by praise and positive behaviour so the child 216

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repeats it and it becomes a learned phrase. This view conceptualizes the learner as a blank sheet, a tabula rasa, with no pre-existing knowledge. Chomsky’s critical review of Skinner’s work in 1959 initiated a significant new direction in thinking about language acquisition and mirrored a parallel shift in the US from behaviourist to cognitive psychology. Chomsky, and a long line of cognitive pyschologists after him, maintained that humans have an innate capacity for learning language, what Pinker (1994) has famously called ‘a language instinct’. The process of becoming articulate is a natural developmental process, ‘less something that a child does than something that happens to the child, like growing arms instead of wings, or undergoing puberty at a certain stage of maturation’ (Chomsky, 1996: 563). At the heart of nativist thinking on language acquisition is a belief that innate or hard-wired mental capacity means that children are born fully linguistically competent. Gopnik (2003) maintained that ‘infants are born with initial innate theories, and that they begin revising these theories even in infancy itself’ (2003: 241). Children do not learn language; rather it is a complex, specialised skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently. (Pinker, 1994: 18). Chomsky (1959, 1968) proposed that verbal input activates a language acquisition device (LAD) which is innate and facilitates the comprehension and production of language. Chomsky argued that because children can produce sentences they have never heard, ‘all children of the world are born with the same innate universal grammar and so even their earliest language is best described with an adult-like formal grammar’ (Tomasello and Bates, 2001: 8). In effect, a universal grammar is ‘a form of mental software’ (Pinker, 1994: 124) that allows individuals to process language within general parameters. It was known as a generative grammar because of its capacity to generate new sentences; with a limited set of grammar rules and a finite set of terms, there are an infinite set of possibilities for sentence creation. The role of input, or environmental language, is not to provide models for imitation but ‘to trigger innate syntactic structures or to set parameters’ (Tomasello, 2001b: 176).

Developing language through interaction The apparent irreconcilability of these nature/nurture positions is reconciled in interactionist and social interactionist theories of language development. Interactionists argue that language development is both biological and social. As Shaffer (1996: 388) points out, imitation clearly does play a role in language development, as children learn the vocabulary of their own language and the accents of their parents; and reinforcement must in part be the explanation of the correlation between the amount of talk children produce and the number of verbal interactions they have with carers. But to achieve such rapid language acquisition, and with similar developmental patterns exhibited in most children, there must be what Bruner termed ‘a unique and predisposing set of language-learning capacities’ (1983: 19). Shaffer suggests that language acquisition is ‘a complex interaction between the child’s biological predispositions, [her] cognitive 217

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development, and the characteristics of [her] unique linguistic environment’ (1996: 378). Chomsky’s concept of the innate universal grammar is rejected in favour of a belief that ‘children must actually construct the abstract categories and schemas of their language based on the patterns they can discern in the language they hear around them’ (Tomasello and Bates, 2001: 8). Social interactionists, according to Harley (2001: 77), stress the importance of a ‘context of meaningful social interaction’ in developing language and draw upon Vygotskyan principles of peer and adult collaboration and support. It is no accident that the stage at which a child typically produces his/her first words is also the stage where he/she is beginning to engage in pretend play. Both are symbolic activities and both use imitation of peer or adult behaviour as the starting point but transform and reshape the play or the language to meet their own communicative needs. Kuczaj (1983: 199) points to the importance of language play in leading to control, enjoyment and mastery and he suggests that there are three kinds of language play: social play (interactional play); social contact play (not interactional but in the presence of other children); and solitary play, all of which have value in supporting language development. Another distinguishing characteristic of the social interactionist framework for language development is that it adopts a broader view of language and particularly considers the acquisition of language in a social context and how children learn to create meaning through talk. Halliday (1975a) critiqued previous thinking about language development for holding an impoverished view of language as a simple two level system – the sound system (phonological) and structure (lexicogrammatical). This omitted the semantic system and all the rich ways in which language is meaningful. Certainly, it is true that the work of Chomsky and his peers focuses very heavily on the mastery of grammatical structures, with little attention to the more sophisticated communicative potential of those structures. For Halliday, putting grammatical structure at the heart of language learning is limiting, treating language as little more than ‘a commodity of some kind that the child has to gain possession of in the course of maturation’ (Halliday, 1975a: 240). Table 19.1 summarizes some of the key characteristics of and distinctions between, these different theories of language development.

Table 19.1 A summary of different perspectives on language development Empiricism

Nativism

Interactionism

Children learn to talk through imitation, reinforcement and social conditioning

Children are innately equipped to talk and the process is spontaneous and inevitable, governed by maturation.

Children draw on biological dispositions, transformative imitations and social interactions to become competent language users.

Other terms associationism used environmentalism behaviourism

rationalism innateness ‘hard-wired’

constructivism pragmatism

Key proponents

Chomsky Lenneberg Slobin Pinker

Bruner Tomasello Bates Snow

Theory in a nutshell

218

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Becoming verbal: how infants learn to talk There is considerable consensus about the pathway from newborn baby to competently talking toddler, probably because this describes what happens rather than how it happens, and is well documented in research by real examples of children’s early talk. The process begins from the moment of birth – new born babies learn very quickly to recognize their mother’s voice and ‘are skilled at using eye contact, facial expression, and nonverbal gestures to communicate with other people’ (Rescorla and Mirak, 1997: 75). These responses are not passive or receptive, but reflect a baby’s active desire to interact with his/her world and they establish the necessary preconditions for learning to talk. They are paralinguistic language characteristics that allow babies to communicate and to receive feedback to their responses. These initial behaviours develop into a pre-linguistic phase. The first stage between approximately six weeks and four months, is when babies play with sound, typically vowel sounds, and with laughing. Between four and nine months is the babbling phase, where more consonants develop and syllables occur (mamama; dadada). These developments do seem to be biologically predetermined but the responses that babies receive from parents or carers teaches them that these efforts can secure actions – it is the interactions between themselves, their environment and other adults which transforms sound into communication, and eventually communication into words and sentences. Significantly, hearing-impaired babies also babble (Sachs, 2004), another indication that this stage is a biological maturation process, but their development beyond about six months diverges from hearing children, as the influence of the environment is experienced differently. At around ten to twelve months most infants produce their first word, a phase known as the holophrastic phase, because the single word utterance appears to encapsulate a whole communicative message. So an infant who says ‘apple’, while pointing to the fruit bowl is likely to be saying ‘I want an apple’, whereas an infant who says ‘apple’ looking over her high chair at her apple on the floor may be saying ‘My apple has fallen on the floor’. The majority of these first words are concrete nouns, naming objects or people who form part of the infant’s world. At around 18 months, there is a dramatic expansion in the number of words in the child’s productive vocabulary, what Goldfield and Reznick (1990) have termed a ‘vocabulary explosion’ or ‘naming spurt’. Rescorla and Mirak (1997) note that some research has suggested that children who have relatively fewer nouns in their vocabulary are less likely to show a spurt in vocabulary at this stage. It is possible that this reflects less interaction and feedback from carers in naming meaningful objects and people that make up the child’s world. Stevens et al. (1998) found a correspondence in 15 month-old children between a greater number of early words and mothers who actively engaged them in informal instructional activities such as pointing, demonstrating and facilitating. Two word utterances appear (e.g. ‘Daddy gone’; ‘Byebye doggy’) and these develop by about two years into telegraphic speech, where the toddler creates embryonic sentences, which have an underlying syntactic correctness but have omitted many of the grammatical words, such as articles and prepositions (e.g. ‘Mummy eat apple’). Syntactic development progresses steadily from this point and from two years six months, toddlers begin to master more complex grammar and expand their telegraphic speech into more conventional speech patterns. Brown’s (1973) study indicated that children acquire grammatical morphemes in a predictable sequence. The morphemes ‘ing’, ‘s’, and the prepositions ‘in’ and ‘on’ are mastered first, with third 219

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Table 19.2 Typical developmental trajectory in language acquisition Months

Developmental Characteristics

0–2

Eye contact, smiling, cooing

2–6

Vocalization – especially vowel sounds

6–10

Babbling, consonantal sounds and syllables e.g. dadada

10–14

Holophrastic phase: single words – up to 30–40 words

18–24

Vocabulary explosion, beginning two-word combinations

24–30

Telegraphic speech

30–36

More complex grammar: articles, prepositions and verb endings

48

Correct sentences for questions, negations, past and future and complex ideas

person verb forms following later. The typical pattern of development is outlined in Table 19.2.

Finding the right word: vocabulary development One key element at the heart of becoming a talker is developing phonological awareness (see Chapter 9, this volume). Being able to understand (receptive) and use (productive) vocabulary requires infants to master sophisticated phonological discrimination, initially discriminating individual sounds from the stream of speech and later discriminating words. Babies can distinguish between the sounds of their own language and other languages. A study by Werker and Desjardins (2001) showed that very young infants were better at discriminating non-native phonemes than older children or adults. Children lose the ability to ‘hear’ non-native phonemes as they get older and become more immersed in the phonemes of their own language: this signals ‘the infant’s movement from universal to language-specific phoneme perception’ (2001: 32). At 12 months, an infant can distinguish between the noises that objects such as toys make; non-verbal vocalizations and words; in other words they have developed linguistically-specific knowledge (Hollich et al., 2000). Learning to distinguish word boundaries in a flow of speech is a sophisticated skill. Many adults learning a foreign language will know the demand this makes – when listening to a native speaker speaking the foreign language it can often be very difficult to identify the word boundaries to support comprehension because the phonological patterns are unfamiliar. It is all the more amazing, therefore, that babies can do this so quickly and without conscious application. Jusczyk (2001) maintains that babies begin to hear words as separate sounds somewhere between six- and seven-and-a-half months, and that initially babies may recognize words from one speaker, such as the mother, but not recognize those words elsewhere (2001: 24). As babies’ communicative experience of language increases, they are able to segment utterances into words: nouns beginning with a consonant tend to be the first to be discriminated, with verbs and vowel onset words following later. Jusczyk et al. (1999) found that consonant-initial nouns are identified as words at around seven-and-a-half 220

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months, whereas vowel-initial verbs are not segmented until 16 months. Seidl (2008) maintains that segmentation and recognition of word boundaries is a complex process ‘in which a variety of factors, including phonological structure, prosodic structure, word class and sentential position are implicated’ (2008: 17). This discriminatory ability develops from being able to recognize word boundaries to increasingly finely-tuned phonological discrimination within words. Zamuner (2008) has shown that children can distinguish between words which rhyme, such as pin and bin, before they can distinguish between words with similar onsets but different endings, such as pin and pit. Research suggests that the broad pattern of lexical development is common across different languages. Caselli et al. (2001) posit that vocabulary acquisition is along the following lines: • • • •

word play and games – social routines like bye-bye; or peek a boo. (0–10 words) reference – the development of nouns to refer to things and people (50–200 words) predication – the development of verbs and adjectives to express relational meanings (100–200 words) grammar – the development of non-lexical vocabulary; words of grammatical function (300–500 words).

However, the process of learning and using words is an active, constructive process, in which ‘children make active attempts to understand adult referential intentions’ and this learning occurs ‘in the flow of naturally occurring social interaction’ (Tomasello, 2001a: 113). Children do not simply hear words in their environment and then use them; they have to learn about their referential and communicative meaning. Thus vocabulary development is a combination of increasing phonological, lexical and semantic proficiency. A recent study by Storkel (2009) has found that the phonological characteristics of words seem to influence word learning differently from lexical and semantic characteristics and she speculates that ‘phonological characteristics may be critical in initiating the learning process, whereas lexical and semantic characteristics may influence the strength of newly created word representations’ (Storkel, 2009: 319). It is evident that finding the right word is a complex orchestration of phonological discrimination, lexical knowledge and semantic understanding drawing on cognitive, linguistic and social meaning-making resources. Most studies indicate that children’s early vocabulary is heavily composed of nouns and that the non-lexical words (articles, prepositions, etc.) appear later. Masterson et al. (2008) conducted a study which confirmed that nouns are more frequent than verbs in early lexical development, and suggest that this is because nouns are often organized with semantic hierarchies (e.g. forest; tree; oak) which support acquisition, whereas verbs are more networked. Yet, as Goodman et al. (2008) demonstrate, the prevalence of nouns in early talk is in inverse proportion to the frequency of these words in parental interactions with their children: children hear their parents use more nonlexical words and fewer nouns. But it seems likely that the nature of parent interactions and the child’s experiences draw more attention to the nouns for communication purposes. Tomasello and Kruger (1992) have shown how children’s development of verbs is more effective when the parent or giver provides constructive modelling. When mothers used verbs to refer to an action they were going to perform or wished their 221

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children to perform, children were better able to produce that verb than when it was referred to after the event. Tomasello and Kruger attribute this positive effect to the establishment of a joint attentional focus between a proficient language user and the child, a form of linguistic scaffolding.

Do adults support infants language development: an ongoing debate Tomasello and Kruger’s observation that vocabulary development is effectively supported by appropriate parental engagement with the child draws attention to the significance of adults in children’s language development. For teachers and educational researchers, understanding the role that adults play is clearly critical in informing pedagogic decisions, but this is the area where theoretical differences between nativists and social interactionists are most sharply defined. Pinker points out that the common opinion that ‘children learn to talk from role models and caregivers’ is wrong (1994: 18) – in common with others who believe in the innate language instinct, the role of carers is to provide patterns of language use which with maturation the child will adopt. There is general agreement that most parents or carers adapt their talk to infants. Saxton (2008) notes that there are at least 12 terms given to this adaptive talk, often reflecting the theoretical stance taken by the author, including ‘baby talk’, ‘motherese’, ‘primary linguistic data’ and ‘caretaker talk’. Saxton critiques many of these for being loose and imprecise, and not always focusing on the two-way nature of the interaction. He suggests that ‘child-directed speech’ is one of the most useful terms and ‘exposure language’ the most neutral. Because of its clarity about the child-centred focus of the talk, this chapter will use ‘child-directed speech’ to refer to any talk with a child which is adapted to suit their linguistic needs. Slobin suggests that ‘it may well be that children, universally, are exposed to a special, simplified version of the language of their community’ (1975: 295). This ‘simpler’ language is characterized by the use of a higher pitch, a slower pace with end of sentence pauses, restricted and concrete vocabulary, and short utterances with limited syntactical complexity (Moerk, 1977). Snow and Ferguson (1977) demonstrated the extent of the differentiation in child-directed speech: the average utterance to two-year-olds is 6.5 words, compared with 9.5 words to ten-year-olds. However, there is disagreement about its value. Harley (2001) questions whether this kind of talk contributes to language development or whether it is instead about fostering a social bond between the child and the adult. Likewise, Rescorla and Mirak (1997: 70) observe that child-directed speech teaches infants about social rituals, such as ‘turntaking, mutuality and contingent interaction with a partner’; but that although all children nevertheless learn to talk, this kind of language is not common to all language communities and is not ‘essential for language acquisition’. In line with Chomsky’s principle of universal grammar, Goodluck (1991) suggests that child-directed speech ‘has the function of helping the child get to grips with language-particular rules (those aspects of his language that cannot be predicted from principles of universal grammar’ (Goodluck, 1991: 168). These views, however, are anathema to social interactionists and to most educators who would argue strongly for the critical significance of carers and other adults’ contributions to language development. Both Halliday (1975b) and more recently, Painter (1998) have shown how carers model language in use, and extend and elaborate upon children’s contributions. Bruner lays emphasis on support from a more 222

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experienced other and ‘a shared and familiar context to aid the partners in making their communicative intentions clear to each other’ (1983: 128). Wells’s (1986) detailed analysis of transcripts of child–parent conversations in the home illustrated how parents extend children’s language by making deliberate attempts to understand, through paraphrasing, introducing new words, and responding spontaneously to opportunities as they arise. He underlines that learning to talk is also about learning to think and to understand the world – ‘children are active constructors of their own knowledge. What they need is evidence, guidance and support’ (1986: 65). Language is more than words and syntactically correct structures; it is a way of being and a way of knowing, and learning a language is about learning the social and cultural values that are embedded within that language community. Bruner argues that culture ‘is constituted for the child in the very act of mastering language. Language, in consequence, cannot be understood save in its cultural setting’ (Bruner, 1983: 134).

Developing children’s language beyond infancy The role of parents and carers in scaffolding early learning points to the significance of parenting in providing a sure foundation for later development, and in fostering new parents’ awareness of how best to nurture talk. The significance of social contexts in regulating communicative interactions has been highlighted by a recent study (Zeedyk, 2008), which investigated the frequency of mother–baby interactions in baby buggies which faced away from the mother and those which faced toward the mother. They found that away-facing buggies substantially reduced the amount of spoken interaction: the mothers’ spoken interactions were reduced by a half and the infants’ by a third. This limiting of talk is important, because evidence suggests that reduced verbal interaction in infancy is linked with poor vocabulary and a greater risk of language difficulties later in primary school (Snow et al., 1998). Verbal interaction includes the rich language development that can derive from play and from sharing books together. The opportunities provided by play for parents to introduce new words and extend children’s language has been shown by Crain-Thoreson et al. (2001) to have a beneficial impact on their children’s vocabulary. Ratner and Bruner (1978) noted the beneficial impact of mother–child play on vocabulary acquisition and repeated studies (Ninio and Bruner, 1978; Scarborough and Dobrich, 1994; Bus et al., 1995) have shown how shared reading supports language development. Annings and Edwards (2000) note that where previous research has looked extensively at the role of mothers in early language development, increasingly now research is focusing more broadly on the ways in which adult/child interactions serve to stimulate and extend children’s language learning. These studies, therefore, also underline the importance of early years education, giving a high priority to adult–child interactions in the context of a play-based curriculum and to creating opportunities for rich talk-based sharing of books. Knowing the significance of parental or adult interaction with children on their language development, popular belief has held that the increasing dominance of television viewing is detrimental to that development. This is, of course, as Marsh (2004) points out, dependent on paradigmatic stances which construct children as ‘active meaning-makers of a range of media or as passive victims who need to be protected 223

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from the negative influences of media’ (Marsh, 2004: 53). Given that independent reading has an effect on older children’s language development, it is reasonable to question whether the linguistic input from television might be a source of development. In fact, the research literature paints a somewhat ambivalent picture of the influence of television. There is convincing evidence of a negative effect of television viewing on language development. Zimmerman et al. (2007) found that in infants under 16 months, television viewing was associated with a lower score on a language development test (MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory [MCDI]). For every hour spent watching television or DVDs, there was a lowering in their score. However, for children aged 17–24 months, there were no correlations found between viewing and language development scores. The negative effect for very young children is also evident in Chonchaiya and Pruksananonda’s (2008) study, which looked at the relationship between language delay and watching television. They found that children with language delay tended to start watching television earlier and spent more time watching than those without language delay. Children who started watching television at less than 12 months of age and watched television for more than two hours a day were approximately six times more likely to have language delays. Similarly, Duffy et al. (2004) found negative effects in slightly older infants, aged 18–36 months. Those children who watched television the most scored lower on the MCDI test, while those who watched least scored highest. Patterson’s (2002) study, comparing the impact of watching television on vocabulary development with being read to, found no effect for television but a positive effect for reading. There are studies, however, which show positive results for older toddlers, especially on vocabulary development. Krcmar and Grela (2004) explored whether Teletubbies taught children new words and found that infants under 22 months were less likely to learn a new word than those over 22 months. Both Naigles and Mayeux (2001) and Rice et al. (1990) found positive impacts on receptive vocabulary in three- to five-year-olds who watched educational television. Rice et al. (1990) looked specifically at children’s learning from Sesame Street and argued that the lexical development is due to the programme’s format which mirrors some of the patterns of parent–child talk. They suggest that the programme ‘closely resembles that of a mother talking to her child, with simple sentences, much talk about the here and now, repeated emphasis on key terms, and an avoidance of abstract terminology’ (Rice et al., 1990: 422). Similarly, Bickham et al. (2001) found that watching educational television such as Sesame Street between ages two and three predicted higher scores on measures of language, maths and school readiness at age five. The age of the infant does seem to be significant in terms of the impact of television. Studies with the most negative results all involve very young children. Fisch (2004) suggested that children younger than two- or three-years old learn better from live interactions than from television and that ‘toddlers’ ability to acquire and use information from television may differ significantly from that of 3 to 5 year olds’ (Fisch, 2004: 50). While it does seem evident that the kind of linguistic input that educational television provides may have very real benefits for pre-school children, it is not an adequate substitute for live communication with a face-to-face respondent. As Naigles and Mayeux so aptly summarized, ‘if the environmental influences on child language development were thought of as a four course dinner, then the place of television input is as one of the options on the dessert plate’ (2001: 150). 224

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Conclusion This chapter focuses on language development in the early years but, of course, language naturally continues to develop throughout compulsory education and beyond. Landauer and Dumais (1997), for example claim that teenagers learn ten new words a day. Older children have to broaden their linguistic repertoire to accommodate the language demands of an increasingly diverse range of communicative situations – writing literary critical essays, giving formal presentations, engaging in dialogic discussion, promoting oneself in letters of application . . . And young people develop discourses and group idiolects which signal their own identity and difference from the dominant discourses which surround them. Language is powerful. Exploiting the powerful, agentive interrelationships between language, thinking and talk offers a very real challenge to conventional monologic discourses of the classroom.

References Anning, A. and Edwards, A. (2000). Promoting Children’s Learning from Birth to Five: Developing the new early years professional. Buckingham: Open University Press. Bickham, D.S., Wright, J.C. and Huston, A.C. (2001). Attention, Comprehension, and the Educational Influences of Television. In D. Singer and J. Singer (Eds) Handbook of Children and the Media. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, pp. 101–20. Brown, R. (1973). A First Language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. (1983).Child’s Talk: Learning to use language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bus, A., van Ijzendoorn, M. and Pellegrini, A. (1995). Joint Book Reading Makes for Success in Learning to Read: A meta-analysis on intergenerational transmission of literacy. Review of Educational Research 65: 1–21. Caselli, M.C., Casadio, P. and Bates, E. (2001). Lexical Development in English and Italian. In M. Tomasello and E. Bates Language Development. The essential readings. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 76–108. Chomsky, N. (1959). A Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. Language 35(1): 26–58. Chomsky, N. (1968). Language and Mind. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Janovich. Chomsky, N. (1996). Language and Problems of Knowledge. In A.P. Martinich (ed.) The Philosophy of Language (3rd edn). New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 558–77. Chonchaiya, W. and Pruksananonda, C. (2008). Television Viewing Associated with Delayed Language Development. Acta Pædiatrica 97(7): 977–82. Crain-Thoreson, C., Dahlin, M.P. and Powell, T.A. (2001). Parent-child Interaction in Three Conversational Contexts: Variations in style and strategy. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 92: 23–37. Duffy, L., Fox, F., Horwood, J., Northstone, K. and the ALSPAC Study Team (2004). Viewing Habits and Language Development. Literacy Today 39(June): 18. Fisch, S. (2004). Children’s Learning from Educational Television. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Goldfield, B.A. and Reznick, J.S. (1990). Early Lexical Acquisition: Rate, content and the vocabulary spurt. Journal of Child Language 17: 171–83. Goodluck, H. (1991). Language Acquisition: A linguistic introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Goodman, J., Dale, P. and Ping, L. (2008). Does Frequency Count? Parental input and the acquisition of vocabulary. Journal of Child Language 35: 515–31. Gopnik, A. (2003). The Theory as an Alternative to the Innateness Hypothesis. In L.M. Anthony and N. Hornstein (Eds) Chomsky and his Critics. New York: Blackwell, pp. 238–54.

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Halliday, M.A.K. (1975a). Learning how to Mean. In E.H. Lenneberg and E. Lenneberg (Eds) Foundations of Language Development: A Multidisciplinary approach, Vol. 1. New York: Academic Press, pp. 239–65. Halliday, M.A.K. (1975b). Learning How to Mean: Explorations in the development of language. London: Edward Arnold. Harley, T. (2001). The Psychology of Language. New York: Psychology Press. Hollich, G., Hirsh-Pasek, K. and Golinkoff, R. (2000). Breaking the Language Barrier: An emergentist coalition model for the origins of word learning. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, vol. 65(3), serial number 262. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Jusczyk, P. (2001). Finding and Remembering Words: Some beginnings by English-learning infants. In M. Tomasello and E. Bates Language Development. The essential readings. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 19–25. Jusczyk, P.W., Houston, D.M. and Newsome, M. (1999). The Beginnings of Word Segmentation in English Learning Infants. Cognitive Psychology 39: 159–207. Krcmar, M. and Grela, B.G. (2004). Teletubbies Teaches First Words? Literacy Today 39(June): 19. Kuczaj, S.A. (1983). Crib Speech and Language Play. New York: Springer-Verlag. Landauer, T.K. and Dumais, S.T. (1997). A Solution to Plato’s Problem: The latent semantic analysis theory of acquisition, induction and representation of knowledge. Psychological Review 104(2): 211–40. Marsh, J. (2004). The Techno-literacy Practices of Young Children. Journal of Early Childhood Research 2(1): 51–66. Masterson, J., Druks, J. and Gallienne, D. (2008). Object and Action Picture Naming in Three- and Five-year-old Children. Journal of Child Language 35: 373–402. Moerk, E.L. (1977). Pragmatic and Semantic Aspects of Early Language Development. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press. Naigles, L.R. and Mayeux, L. (2001). Television as Incidental Language Teacher. In D.G. Singer and J.L. Singer (Eds) Handbook of Children and the Media. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 135–52. Ninio, A. and Bruner, J. (1978). The Achievement and Antecedents of Labelling. Journal of Child Language 5: 1–15. Painter, C. (1998). Learning through Language in Early Childhood. London: Cassell. Patterson, J. (2002). Relationships of Expressive Vocabulary to Frequency of Reading and Television Experience among Bilingual Toddlers. Applied Psycholinguistics 23(4): 493–508. Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct. London: Penguin. Ratner, N. and Bruner, J. (1978). Games, Social Exchange, and the Acquisition of Language. Journal of Child Language 5: 391–401. Rescorla, L. and Mirak, J. (1997). Normal Language Acquisition. Seminars in Pediatric Neurology 4(2): 70–6. Rice, M.L., Huston, A.C., Truglio, R.T. and Wright, J.C. (1990). Words from Sesame Street: Learning vocabulary while viewing. Developmental Psychology 26(3): 421–8. Sachs, J. (2004). Prelinguistic Development. In J. Berko Gleason (Ed.) The Development of Language. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, pp. 40–69. Saxton, M. (2008). What’s in a Name? Coming to terms with the child’s linguistic environment. Journal of Child Language 35: 677–86. Scarborough, H. and Dobrich, W. (1994). On the Efficacy of Reading to Preschoolers. Developmental Review 14: 245–302. Seidl, A. (2008). Boundary Alignment Enables 11-month-olds to Segment Vowel Initial Words from Speech. Journal of Child Language 35: 1–24. Shaffer, D. (1996). Developmental Psychology Childhood and Adolescence. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

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Skinner, B.F. (1957). Verbal Behavior. Acton, MA: Copley Publishing Group. Slobin, D. (1975). On the Nature of Talk to Children. In E.H. Lenneberg and E. Lenneberg (Eds) Foundations of Language Development: A Multi-disciplinary approach, Vol. 1. New York: Academic Press, pp. 283–97. Snow, C., Burns, M.S. and Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Snow, C.E. and Ferguson, C.A. (1977). Talking to Children: Language input and acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stevens, E., Blake, J., Vitale, G. and McDonald, S. (1998). Mother-infant Object Involvement at 9 and 15 Months: Relation to infant cognition and early vocabulary. First Language 18/2(53): 203–22. Storkel, H. (2009). Developmental Differences in the Effects of Phonological, Lexical and Semantic Variables on Word Learning by Infants. Journal of Child Language 36: 291–321. Tomasello, M. (2001a). Perceiving Intentions and Learning Words. In M. Tomasello and E. Bates Language Development. The essential readings. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 111–28. Tomasello, M. (2001b). The Item-based Nature of Children’s Early Syntactic Development. In M. Tomasello and E. Bates Language Development. The essential readings. Oxford: Blackwell, pp.169–86. Tomasello, M. and Bates, E. (2001). Language Development. The essential readings. Oxford: Blackwell. Tomasello, M. and Kruger, A.C. (1992). Joint Attention on Actions: Acquiring verbs in ostensive and non-ostensive contexts. Journal of Child Language 19(2): 311–33. Wells, G. (1986). The Meaning Makers: Children learning language and using language to learn. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Werker, J.F. and Desjardins, R.N. (2001). Listening to Speech in the First Year of Life: Experiential influences on phoneme perception. In M. Tomasello and E. Bates Language Development. The Essential Readings. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 26–33. Zamuner, T. (2008). The Structure and Nature of Phonological Neighbourhoods in Children’s Early Lexicons. Journal of Child Language 36: 3–21. Zeedyk, S. (2008). What’s Life in a Baby Buggy Like? www.suttontrust.com/reports/NLTReport. pdf accessed 1 December 2008. Zimmerman, F., Christakis, D.A. and Meltzoff, A.N. (2007). Associations between Media Viewing and Language Development in Children under Age 2 Years. The Journal of Pediatrics 151(4): 364–8.

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20 Bilingualism and English language teaching Janina Brutt-Griffler

Introduction One of the central goals of linguistic research is to study the unique language ability of human beings, or as Meisel put it ‘an endowment for multilingualism’ (Meisel, 2004: 112). In this line of research, the nature of the genetic endowment for the development of language or multiple languages takes into account neurological and biological variables and how they interact with language input to which children or adults are exposed. At the same time, the emergence of multilingual societies necessitates understanding yet another set of variables with respect to language development and evolution: sociocultural and historical perspectives that draw on insights from interdisciplinary fields such as sociolinguistics, political science, second language acquisition, cultural and literary studies, psychology and cultural anthropology. This line of interdisciplinary research allows us to understand societal processes like transnationalism that bring languages and cultures into contact and create a multilingual environment in which different ‘forms of multilingualism’ in the oral and written/textual domains are developed. This contribution discusses theoretical positions and current empirical research to shed light on two central issues of relevance to researchers in the field of English studies and to English language educators. First, it asks what historical and social forces are serving to promote or hinder the development of bilingualism/ multilingualism in the world today. Second, given the growth of English learning and the concomitant growth of bilingualism, what are the cognitive advantages of being a bilingual?

Bilingualism: the case of English The learning and use of two or more languages has socio-historical causes, political consequences and cognitive implications. We learn languages at all ages to enable us to move across the sorts of ethnolinguistic boundaries we codify as primordial and central to the organization of our world built on nation states. Speaking a second language 228

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opens up opportunities not merely for crossing such societal borders temporarily but perhaps even permanently, permitting the exit from one social identity and entry into another (cf. Mazrui, 2004). No language confers such benefits more than English, called variously a world language (Brutt-Griffler, 2002), an international language, or a lingua franca to call attention to its unique role in a globalizing late modernity (Rampton, 2006). The lure of English is felt across every society, felt by governments eager to advance their economies, parents determined that their children should have access to social mobility, and young people attracted to global popular culture propagated by the communications revolution of the past two decades (Berns et al., 2007). English spreads, too, by migration into the principal English speaking nations, as recent migrants struggle to acquire the national language of their adopted home. Concomitant with the spread of English comes its sometimes hidden other side: the bilingualism of English as a Second/ Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) users, together with the impetus – in an increasingly bilingual world – that spurs mother tongue English speakers to acquire the foreign language competency that success in the world economy increasingly demands. There has been a consequent greater emphasis and support placed on developing advanced foreign language proficiency in English speaking nations (cf. Kramsch, 2005). The global phenomenon of world English brings with it an increase in the scale of bilingualism of epoch proportions. The results of the historical processes of migration of speakers and the languages they use are eroding the imaginary normative notion of use of national and ethnic languages by largely monolingual speech communities, intact communities of practice inhabiting compact geographical spaces. As with any such historical change, this one has sparked political controversy – from the concern that English is pushing out other languages, endangering and perhaps extinguishing thousands in a worldwide linguistic disaster (Bradley and Bradley, 2002; Nettle and Romaine, 2000; Skutnabb-Kangas, 1988, 2000), to the fears that the other languages of bilinguals in the English speaking nations pose a threat to the cohesiveness of those societies. As the former inspires calls, and occasionally measures, to stop English encroachment, the latter provides cover for ‘English only’ anti-bilingualism campaigns that have appeared at regular intervals of nationalistic upsurge. Despite such efforts, the spread of English remains a major impetus for the growth of bilingualism, inextricably linking the topic of English language teaching with that of bilingualism.

Forms of bilingualism: theoretical perspectives Researchers in bilingualism and language related fields often divide bilingualism into two major categories: societal bilingualism and individual bilingualism, regardless of the language they take as their object of inquiry. Language policy and government legislative measures serve as instruments of promoting societal bilingualism (Baker, 2006; Schiffman, 1996). Thus, we often think of Canada as an example of the institutional mandating of bilingualism, though to be sure this French–English societal bilingualism takes root in the development of bilingual proficiencies among its individual citizens. South Africa serves as another example, its constitution mandating eleven languages as official. Still, although such policy and legislative measures validate the status of the language(s), they do not necessarily ensure the development of the second level of bilingualism, the bilingualism of the individual speaker. For example while Switzerland recognizes four official languages: German, French, Italian, and 229

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Romansch, ‘only about six per cent of Swiss citizens can be considered multilingual’ (Romaine, 2004: 398), thus illustrating the existence of ‘territorial unilingualism’ under federal multilingualism (Romaine, 2004: 398). Indeed, as Romaine notes, ‘English is much preferred over the other official languages as a second language’ (2004: 398). The official status of French and English in Canada or the four languages in Switzerland complicates the role of language policy and legislative measures in ensuring the development of societal and individual bilingualism. They suggest a more complex narrative for an official or a national language and its relation to a nation state. The case of English and its relation to a nation state has sparked a lively debate among scholars across disciplinary boundaries and has raised pedagogical concerns in the wake of English emerging as a world language. While a number of nation states, especially those that experienced British colonial rule, have adopted English as one of their official languages, most of the countries where English bilingualism is on the rise have not. A standard estimate has 375 million native English speakers world wide and a similar estimate for ESL. English bilingualism is on the rise in the EFL context, with an estimate approaching 750 million users. Graddol (2000) points out that more people are learning English in China than in any other country – 176.7 million were studying the language formally in 2005. Theoretical explanations of the emergence and rise of English bilingualism must be located in an intricate configuration of both macro-level historical processes and the agency of the individual learners and English language educators. Socio-historical perspectives on English spread and change A decade ago, a hotly contested debate within the field of language policy still raged as to the reason for the rapid spread of English globally, including within the European Union. The standard view, dominant since the late 1980s, argued that the expansion of the numbers of English speakers reflected the linguistic and cultural imperialism of the Anglophone world (Phillipson, 1992, 1999, 2003). An alternative theory, language spread and change, first systematically advanced in Brutt-Griffler (2002), put forward the more nuanced view that the process of English spread was driven, paradoxically, by non-English speakers (see Figure 20.1). Today the signs that the controversy has been settled in favour of the latter standpoint are abundant and well represented in the European mainstream press. The Economist, for instance, notes in a 14 February 2009 lead, that English spread has been spearheaded not from the British Isles but from the continent. Thanks to a network of English language online newspaper editions of nonEnglish language papers, ‘It has never been easier for other Europeans to know what Poles think about the credit crunch, Germans about the Middle East or Danes about nuclear power. English is merely “an instrument”, says [Kees] Versteegh of NRC Handelsblad, “not a surrender to a dominant culture”’. On the contrary, English as a lingua franca has created ‘a genuinely pan-European space for political debate’, something completely opposite of the ‘dominance of Anglo-Saxon thinking’ that ‘European politicians had long feared’ (The Economist, 2009: 64). Such a concern reflects the understanding within the notion of linguistic imperialism, the idea that ‘dominant’ languages such as English spread primarily through the political, economic and cultural hegemony of the major English speaking nations. Closely tied to notions of language endangerment – the threat of language death faced by the majority of the world’s languages, most of which have a small base of native speakers – linguistic imperialism conceptually ties particular languages to 230

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particular nations, whose speakers are assumed to embody ethno-national interests almost exclusively. This understanding of language spread effectively interprets all spread of a hegemonic language such as English as imposition, locates agency in spread squarely in the centre, and does not accord any importance to processes of language change. Macroacquisition in English as a second and foreign language contexts An alternative theory to linguistic imperialism put forward by Brutt-Griffler (2002) emerged out of a detailed empirical study of the history of English and language policy in the former British empire in Asia and Africa. Analysing specific historical events, sociological stratification, language education, and policy initiatives by the colonial authorities, the study complicated the narrative of English linguistic imperialism. Locally, English spread becomes conditioned by social class and often by gender, and for the vast majority of population remains an object of unfulfilled desire. For small subsections of local communities, English establishes itself alongside other local/indigenous languages and it spreads, to a large extent, through the educational system, altogether creating a bilingual local elite. Figure 20.1 presents the outlines of the theory of language spread and change. As shown in Figure 20.1, historically, English has spread to three different contexts and its spread led to differentiated linguistic outcomes. When English spread via migration of native speakers from British Isles to contexts such as North America, for instance, it led to the establishment of English as what we call a ‘mother tongue’ variety; this form

Mother Tongue English

New Varieties of English Migration

Multilingual

Imperial & Econocultural

Spread Linguistic Outcome

English Econocultural Context

National

Language

English as a “Foreign” Language Spread Macroacquisition

Figure 20.1 A model of English language spread and change (Brutt-Griffler, 2002: 120).

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of migration and language spread led to English establishing itself as a dominant language in a speech community. When English spreads to a multilingual context (e.g. India, Singapore, South Africa), speakers of different mother tongues simultaneously take part in the acquisition of a common language. Unlike in the case of English spread via speaker migration, this mode of English spread is facilitated by the local English language educational system. It leads to the development of a new speech community and the outcome of this social second language acquisition or Type A macroacquisition tends to be a new variety of English (see Brutt-Griffler, 2002: 135–47). The third variety of English language spread that leads to the development of bilingualism is the classical mode of transmission as a ‘foreign’ language. Exemplifying the results of such linguistic processes are such paradigms as World Englishes and English as a lingua franca (ELF) (Seidlhofer et al., 2006). The former catalogues the study of ‘New Englishes’, or indigenized varieties of English, in the postcolonial states of, primarily, Asia and Africa. Scholars within this tradition crucially put emphasis on the non-hegemonic identities that such English varieties convey, challenge the ‘ownership’ of the language of its mother tongue speakers from the major English speaking nations, and conceive endonormative processes of language standardization (Kachru, 1985; Widdowson, 1994). This paradigm gave rise to a body of work on the linguistic description of new varieties of English (e.g. Butler, 1981; Kachru, 1985); literary work on postcolonial literatures (e.g. Ashcroft et al., 1989); and socio-historical studies of English in the former British Empire (e.g. Bolton, 2003; Brutt-Griffler, 2002). For many scholars working within this framework, English has often been viewed as an essential linguistic equalizer in a multilingual context where other ethnic languages compete for dominance. A growing acceptance of new varieties of English and the closer integration brought about by the EU helped conceptualize the highly productive paradigm of English as a lingua franca in Europe (Seidlhofer, 2004). Proponents of this paradigm insist on the importance of empirical descriptions of language and language use that go beyond ideological debates (Seidlhofer, 2001). Innovative empirical work has been pursued in such domains as ELF lexicogrammar (Seidlhofer, 2004), phonology and attitudes towards ELF (Jenkins, 2000, 2007), and discourse and discourse processes (House, 2002; Mauranen, 2003). This research paradigm provides English language educators with the much needed empirical data to better understand the controversies surrounding English language use and pedagogy. Pölzl and Seidlhofer (2006) suggest that successful English as lingua franca communication involves a ‘trade-off between achieving a satisfactory degree of mutual intelligibility while retaining a “comfortable” measure of personal identity’ (Pölzl and Seidlhofer, 2006: 152). Overall, the theoretical perspectives on English language spread and English language teaching indicate a movement from an emphasis on macro-level analysis towards taking into account the speaker’s subjectivity. They challenge the traditional notion of social categories that have tended to ascribe a definite relation between language competence and a speaker’s geopolitical space. English is not viewed as a monolithic linguistic system but a highly complex one with a range of variation at all levels of linguistic description (phonology, syntax, pragmatics). Recent perspectives explore the user’s linguistic choices during an interaction for the purpose of self-presentation and negotiation of one’s identity and ethnicity (Brutt-Griffler and Davies, 2006; Rampton, 2006). This turn in conceptualizing language and its users carries important implications for bilingual and multilingual speakers who may choose to draw on language resources 232

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(mother tongues, English and foreign languages) to transcend the ascribed social categorizations of gender, class and ethnicity (cf. Blommaert, 2008). An understanding of bilingual language use and English bilingualism across different educational and cultural contexts, in particular, must be complemented by drawing connections between the social dimensions of bilingualism and those of cognitive dimensions of individual bilingualism. Specifically, given the rapid growth of learning English and the concomitant growth of bilingualism, what are the cognitive advantages of being a bilingual? Second, how can a cognitive perspective inform language change and use among English bilinguals that surface in oral and written texts? This contribution aims to bring the social and cognitive dimension of bilingualism – often studied separately – to develop a socio-cognitive view of bilingualism and to draw implications for English pedagogy.

Bilingualism: a cognitive perspective Research studies that examine the relationship between bilingualism and cognition have suggested that bilinguals possess certain cognitive advantages that monolinguals do not. The exact nature of these advantages and their relationship to language processing continue to be explored through a number of methodologies. Behavioural research, largely experimental in nature and administered within laboratory settings, has explored features of bilingual cognition both related and unrelated to language processing. In addition, studies which utilize functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are offering increasingly detailed views of neurological activity involved in language processing tasks. These two lines of research further our knowledge of bilingualism and cognition in two key ways: behavioural research informs us about what some individuals can do as a result of their bilingualism, while methods utilizing fMRI offer insight into where, how, and why some processing activities occur in bilinguals.

Bilingual processing: bilingualism and cognitive control One of the main foci of research on language and cognition is the relationship between bilingualism and cognitive control. Bilinguals’ ability to suppress one language and perform in another while lexical items in both of their languages are undergoing processing has been demonstrated by Colomé (2001). This ability is largely attributed to inhibitory and other processes involved in executive function, and a major question for researchers has been whether this ability, one that bilinguals presumably develop out of a constant necessity to manage two languages, affects cognitive development in other, perhaps advantageous, ways (see for example Bialystok, 2001). Of particular interest are aspects of executive control which enable individuals to control their attention, ignore irrelevant or misleading information, attend only to relevant information during problem solving, and provide an appropriate response to a task (Martin-Rhee and Bialystok, 2008; Rodriguez-Fornells et al., 2006). In their research comparing bilingual and monolingual performances on the Simon Task and day-night Stroop task, both of which call upon inhibitory functions, Martin-Rhee and Bialystok (2008) showed that bilinguals possess advantages which allow them to control their attention. Bilinguals were better able to selectively pay attention faster and more efficiently to relevant information and inhibit attention to irrelevant information. However, an inhibitory 233

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advantage was not observed in the participants’ responses to stimuli, suggesting that bilingualism does not necessarily benefit all attentional processes. Still, the advantages in executive function and selective attention identified in this study find support in other studies and have been shown to increase with age and perhaps delay age-related cognitive decline (Bialystok et al., 2004; Bialystok et al., 2006; Bialystok et al. 2008). In their study of the effects of bilingualism on attentional networks and conflict resolution, Costa et al. (2008) reported similar results indicative of a bilingual advantage in inhibitory processes involved in executive function that persists with age. In this study, a bilingual advantage was also found in the alerting network, an attentional network which Costa et al. (2008) suggest may be related to the executive network and which enables individuals to become and remain alert in response to an alerting cue. These findings have stimulated further inquiry and attempts to identify, with increased specificity, the nature of inhibitory control as well as the cognitive processes presumably aided by it. Drawing upon research which has argued for a bilingual inhibitory advantage, Colzato et al. (2008) identified bilingual advantages in inhibition with greater specificity by distinguishing between different types of inhibition: active, defined here as ‘processes carried out with the main purpose of excluding particular information from processing’ and reactive, ‘a side effect of faciliatory processes in a capacity limited system’ (Colzato et al., 2008: 310). In contrast to the findings of previous studies, Colzato et al. (2008) found no clear inhibitory advantage in the bilingual participants. Acknowledging that this finding does not rule out the existence of other inhibitory advantages resulting from bilingualism, Colzato et al. (2008) state that the difference between their findings and those of previous research may be attributable to different methodologies and the inhibitory processes they engage. Nevertheless, they conclude that perceived cognitive advantages may not only be attributable to inhibitory processes, but that bilinguals’ necessity to ‘keep two languages separate leads to a general improvement in selecting goal-relevant information from competing, goal-irrelevant information’ (Colzato et al., 2008: 310).

Bilingual processing in tasks related to language processing While the above studies investigate cognitive processes of bilinguals in tasks unrelated to language, investigations of bilingual language processing shed further light on bilinguals’ cognitive processes, contributing to the line of inquiry concerned with bilingual advantages in various aspects of executive function. Costa et al. (2006) sought to distinguish between inhibitory processes and a potential language switching mechanism that enables bilinguals to switch between languages during lexicalization processes, arguing that under some conditions, highly proficient bilinguals utilize a language switching mechanism rather than inhibitory functions, and this mechanism incurs lower cognitive costs than activation of inhibition. Indeed, other studies have noted that cognitive costs occur alongside advantages in executive function; according to Bialystok et al. (2008) the lexical conflict that is produced by the activation of two language systems has the beneficial effect of boosting control processes used to resolve the conflict but the detrimental effect of reducing the efficiency with which words from either one of the languages can be retrieved. (2008: 870) 234

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Bilinguals’ repeated demonstration of more efficient conflict resolution than that of monolinguals is often attributed to advantages in executive function (e.g. Costa et al., 2006; Martin-Rhee and Bialystok, 2008). At the same time, evidence of their relative lexical inefficiency (e.g. Gollan et al., 2005) alongside their ability to perform in one language, even though both language systems are activated, has prompted a great deal of inquiry into language switching and cross-linguistic effects in language processing, both of which have yielded further insight into bilingualism and cognition more broadly. A rather paradoxical assumption underlies such studies; namely, bilinguals’ ability to perform in one language while processing both is a striking ability, yet their relative lexical inefficiency compared to monolinguals can hardly be seen as anything other than detrimental. Still, identifying the processes involved in lexical activation and determining the cognitive costs associated with bilingual lexical retrieval has been central to this line of research. Investigating the impact of sentence context on lexical activation, Schwartz and Kroll (2006) tested bilingual participants’ ability to accurately recognize cognates and homographs in both high constraint sentences which provided substantial semantic information, or cues for word recognition, and low constraint sentences which did not. One major finding of this study was that cognate facilitation among bilinguals was observed in the low constraint sentences containing few semantic cues, indicating dual language activation. This was not the case in the high constraint sentences. This demonstrates that sentences containing substantial semantic information can limit non-selective lexical access for high and low proficiency bilinguals and implies that ‘the top-down processes of sentence comprehension can interact directly with the bottom-up processes of lexical access’ (Schwartz and Kroll, 2006: 208). Schwartz and Kroll’s study has shown that bilinguals in general recognize cognates faster than non-cognates, and this seems to be suggestive of dual language access. Similarly, Duyck et al. (2007) used identical and non-identical cognates in isolated and sentence-context word recognition tasks. While cognate facilitation was observed in all experiments conducted in this study, eye tracking showed no cognate effects on the reading times of non-identical cognates in sentences. This suggests that sentence context can restrict, but not rule out, cross-linguistic activation. Hoshino and Kroll (2008) extend these findings through a picture-naming paradigm, demonstrating that cross-language activation occurs at the phonological level even when languages do not share the same script. Furthermore, Lemhofer et al. (2008) affirm the absence of language specificity in lexical access and find that language pairings have little or no impact on cross-linguistic activation processes. In sum, these studies demonstrate the persistence of cross-linguistic activation across proficiency levels and language processing tasks, impressing upon us the extent of bilinguals’ control over their two languages and the significance of their ability to perform in one language even as another language remains active or ‘in use’. In other words, bilinguals never ‘shut off’ one language just because they are using another. This suggests that cross-linguistic effects seem always to exist, and the type and extent will always depend on certain variables that must be overcome or compensated for by, for example, taking longer to read something or recognize a word. But control in, say, performance, suggests extraordinary ability and attentional capability (cf. Kroll et al., 2008; for an alternative view, cf. Costa et al., 2006). 235

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Coexistence of bilingual language systems and its activation It is precisely such evidence of the coexistence of two language systems that has prompted researchers to investigate how and where these languages are represented and activated neurologically. Studies of lateralization in bilinguals comprise a major strand in this research, one that has yielded some contradictory and controversial findings. A major question inspiring this line of research concerns the extent of right brain hemispheric involvement in language processing in bilinguals. Which variables determine increased right hemispheric involvement? Investigations of the relationship between lateralization and age of acquisition, proficiency, and language exposure, as well as other variables, have produced contradictory findings, and methodologies employed in this line of research have been critiqued (cf. Obler et al., 2000). The inconclusiveness which characterizes lateralization studies even prompted Paradis (2000) to call for an end to such unfruitful inquiries. Indeed, some uncertainties persist. Workman et al. (2000) found greater use of the left hemisphere than the right among bilinguals compared to monolinguals during a word identification task. Their study also found that language-specific factors (e.g. orthography) may impact laterality more than language-acquisitional factors. In a later study, Evans et al. (2002) suggest that right hemispheric involvement may occur when the bilingual is not regularly exposed to the later-learned language. In contrast, Badzakova-Trajkov et al.’s (2008) study determined that increased right hemispheric involvement in language processing could be observed in proficient late bilinguals even when living in their L2 environment. While a host of factors seem to limit consistency in lateralization studies, two recent meta-analyses may offer some generalizations. Through their meta-analysis of 23 lateralization studies, Hull and Vaid (2006) conclude that lateralization patterns in late bilinguals and monolinguals tend to be similar to one another, showing left hemispheric dominance in language processing. In contrast, early bilinguals demonstrate more bilateral involvement in language processing. Likewise, Hull and Vaid’s (2007) meta-analysis of 66 lateralization studies indicated once again that early bilingualism is the major determinant of increased right hemispheric involvement in language processing. They also found more evidence of left hemispheric dominance in late and non-proficient bilinguals. Still other studies utilizing fMRI have revealed a more detailed picture of bilingual language processing, offering neural data for interpreting and theorizing the relationship between bilingualism and cognition. Investigating neural activity during a sentence judgment task of monolinguals and early bilinguals with continued exposure to both of their languages, Kovelman et al. (2008) concluded that processing differences suggest the possibility of two separate but interactional language representation systems in the bilinguals. Drawing an even more detailed picture, Marian et al.’s (2007) study of late bilinguals’ neural activity indicated right hemispheric involvement during L2 phonological and orthographic processing, but the extent of this activation varied among participants. Moreover, variances were greater during L2 processing than during L1 processing, suggesting that ‘first-language acquisition relies on a dedicated left hemispheric cerebral network, while second language acquisition is not necessarily associated with consistent cortical structures’ (Marian et al., 2007: 260). Furthermore, activation of the inferior frontal gyrus was greater for L2 phonological and lexical processing than for L1, implying that L2 acquisition may rely on both previously

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established L1 neural networks as well as on new ones created through L2 acquisition. Alternatively, processing a later-learned L2 may simply require additional neural resources. Finally, varied patterns in cortical activation for phonological and lexical processing offer two tentative conclusions: the two languages may be represented in different cortical areas; or different parts of the cortex are necessarily activated to meet processing demands. In another study of late bilinguals, Golestani et al. (2006) found evidence of potential differences in the efficiency and speed with which certain cortical regions process L1 and L2. Additionally, proficiency was found to possibly play a determining role in neural activation, indicating that more proficient bilinguals ‘engage in more rule-based, nativelike processing during sentence production in a second language’ (Golestani et al., 2006: 1039). Finally, differences in left pre-frontal activation between more and less proficient bilinguals was observed, possibly ‘due to individual differences in the “ability” to engage cortex that is optimized for aspects of syntactical processing during syntax production in the second language’ (Golestani et al., 2006: 1039). Whether age of acquisition or proficiency level alone is responsible for this difference remains a question. While technical innovations have undoubtedly offered new methodologies for linguistic research and, in so doing, facilitated the development and pursuit of new lines of inquiry, the extent to which neuro-imaging data and behavioural data together can create a complete picture of bilingual cognition remains to be seen. What is clear at this point is that fMRI data offer a window into the physiology of language processes unobservable through behavioural research alone, offering new ways of interpreting theories previously derived through behavioural data. At the same time, fMRI data do not indicate what bilinguals can actually do as a result of their bilingualism. Dijkstra and van Heuven (2006) have gone so far as to critique the distinctions and divergences that persist between neuroscientists and psycholinguists, calling for increased cooperation and consistency in the definition and uses of data. Paraphrasing Harley (2004), they state that ‘observing activity in a particular brain area only makes sense given assumptions about the causes of this activity and its relation to cognitive operations’ (Dijkstra and van Heuven, 2006: 192). For now, different methodologies are necessarily employed to offer different views of bilingualism and cognition, but data from both of these lines of research can fundamentally reshape current assumptions and, consequently, the kinds of questions research might answer about linguistic ability and cognitive function. Drawing upon behavioural and neurological research, de Bot (2006) tentatively suggests that monolingualism may be ‘defined as the nonuse of multiple languages for which the brain is equipped’ possibly leading to ‘synaptic pruning’ (de Bot, 2006: 130). Were such a tentative claim substantiated through research, what are conceptualized and presented in the current literature as bilingual cognitive advantages may be perceived more modestly as fuller exploitation of existing cognitive potential.

Implications for English language teaching By bringing the two dimensions of bilingualism together – the social and cognitive – language educators and language policymakers can better understand the tasks at hand with respect to the complex nature of English education today. The epoch-making 237

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spread of English, catapulting bilingualism from the margins to the mainstream of twenty-first-century education, is transforming classrooms and learners in its wake. However much ideology might attempt to banish other languages, educational practice brings them back. When we step outside the charged ideological debates about the spread of English around the world and the threat to English in English-speaking nations, we face the fundamental recognition that for a large and constantly increasing number of students and teachers, what we have traditionally conceived as English education is a multilingual subject taking place in a bi- (or multi-)lingual classroom (Brutt-Griffler and Collins, 2008). Other languages and cultures are embedded in an English classroom and in an English lesson that a teacher constructs on a daily basis. That is the case not only in EFL or ESL contexts, but also to an increasing extent in English as a national language contexts (US, UK, Canada). The learners who increasingly emerge from these classrooms, recent scholarship tells us, do so not only with the social advantages that a knowledge of two or more languages confers, but with cognitive rewards that may, when fully recognized by society at large, ensure that bilingualism becomes as prized in English-speaking nations as English has become around the world.

Conclusion Both the challenges and potential rewards are substantial. Teachers in increasingly multilingual classrooms must begin to understand that English does not represent a monolithic system from the standpoint of either linguistics or the learner. They must grapple with the task of attempting to draw upon the enormous resources present in the language proficiencies that bilingual students bring with them into the classroom (Cummins, 2005). The latter goal is complicated by both the possible incompleteness of students’ first language literacies (Brizic, 2006) and the teacher’s own lack of knowledge of the sheer number of L1s they increasingly confront at all levels of English education. It is rendered, perhaps, more urgent by the importance to their achievement of students’ mastery of academic language proficiency and academic genres in higher education (Andrews, 2009). Educators must strive to develop evidence-based language methodologies that facilitate the promotion of advanced English language proficiency. There is also a continuing need for the professional development of English language teachers that includes both the enhancement of content knowledge and that of social/ cognitive dimensions of second language development.

References Andrews, R. (2009). Argumentation in Higher Education. London: Routledge. Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G. and Tiffin, H. (1989). The Empire Writes back. London: Routledge. Badzakova-Trajkov, G., Kirk, I. and Waldie, K. (2008). Dual-task performance in late proficient bilinguals. Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition, 13: 201–16. Baker, C. (Ed.) (2006). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism (4th edn).Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Berns, M., de Bot, K. and Hasbrink, U. (Eds) (2007). In the presence of English: Media and European youth. New York: Springer. Bialystok, E. (2001). Bilingualism in development: Language, literacy, and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Phillipson, R. (2003). English-only Europe? Challenging language policy. London: Routledge. Pölzl, U. and Seidlhofer, B. (2006). In and on their own terms: The ‘habitat factor’ in English as a lingua franca interactions. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 177(1), 151–176. Rampton, B. (2006). Language in late modernity: Interaction in an urban school. New York: Cambridge University Press. Rodriguez-Fornells, A., De Diego Balaguer, R. and Münte, T. F. (2006). Executive control in bilingual language processing. Language Learning, 56(Suppl. 1), 133–190. Romaine, S. (2004). The bilingual and multilingual community. In T. K. Bhatia & W. C. Ritchie (Eds.), The handbook of bilingualism (pp. 385–406). Oxford: Blackwell. Schiffman, F. H. (1996). Linguistic culture and language policy. New York: Routledge. Schwartz, A. I. and Kroll, J. (2006). Bilingual lexical activation in sentence context. Journal of Memory and Language, 55, 197–212. Seidlhofer, B. (2001). Closing a conceptual gap: The case for a description of English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 11, 133–158. Seidlhofer, B. (2004). Research perspectives on teaching English as a lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, 209–239. Seidlhofer, B., Breiteneder, A. and Pitzl, M. (2006). English as a lingua franca in Europe: Challenges for applied linguistics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 26, 3–34. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1988). Multilingualism and the education of minority children. In T. Skutnabb-Kangas & J. Cummins (Eds), Minority Education (pp. 9–44). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2000). Linguistic genocide in education – or worldwide diversity and human rights? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Widdowson, H. G. (1994). The ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly, 28, 377–381. Workman, L., Brookman, F., Mayer, P., Rees, V. and Bellin, W. (2000). Language laterality in English/Welsh bilinguals: Language-acquisitional and language-specific factors in the development of lateralization. Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition, 5, 289–313.

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21 Drama in teaching and learning language and literacy Anton Franks

The field of drama education The range and scope of what comes under the label of drama in different phases of education is wide. So, the first task in this chapter on the teaching and learning of drama in relation to the teaching of English language, literature and literacy is to give some general definition of drama as a learning activity and then to look at the pedagogic practices of doing drama in school. At its broadest level, drama can be defined as the imagined, embodied and active semiotic representation of social relations located in time and place. Drama requires the involvement of the whole person – the active and integrated engagement of mind and body, involving imagination, intellect, emotion and physical action. Another significant feature of learning in drama is the adoption and playing out of role. English studies, and language arts, particularly at secondary level and beyond, encompass the study of dramatic literature including the study of Shakespeare. Although practical workshop approaches to studying Shakespeare (see Ch. 32, this volume) are more common in contemporary classrooms, the prevailing tendency is towards more ‘academic’ approaches to textual analysis. Nonetheless, notions of physical enactment and active participation are central to an examination of drama and its role in teaching and learning English.

Learning and teaching drama in phases of education Drama in the early years In early phases of education, including reception level primary and pre-schooling (kindergarten and nurseries), children engage in active imaginative play, variously referred to as pretend or make-believe play, role play, social dramatic play (or sociodramatic play), symbolic play, spontaneous imaginative (or dramatic) play or fantasy play (see e.g. Rogers and Evans, 2007: 154). Young children are involved in forms of pretend play in the course of their everyday lives and it occurs in various 242

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locations, most often without intervention or collaboration with adults. In early years classrooms, adults sometimes participate in imaginative play and lead children towards particular objectives (Podlozny, 2000: 244, 265; Rogers and Evans, 2007: 159–61). Alongside spontaneous, child-directed play, more structured, teacher-led drama activities also begin to appear in some classrooms in the early years of schooling, from movement-based, ritualized activity accompanying the telling or reading of stories, through making plays stimulated by stories, poems or pictures, to structured drama approaches for exploring ideas, themes and feelings in a particular topic area. In the North American tradition, rooted in the work of Winifred Ward (1957) and continuing to this day (McCaslin, 2000), play-making based on and around stories is referred to as creative drama or creative dramatics.

Drama from primary to secondary Drama in education (DiE) is a generic title for the use of process drama, through which themes, ideas and characterizations are explored by utilizing a variety of drama techniques including role-play, the making of tableaux or still images, whole group improvizations, the devising of short prepared improvizations (for which children work in small groups and present to others), questioning in role or hot-seating of characters, and so forth (Bolton, 1979, 1984, 1985; Heathcote, 1984b; Heathcote and Bolton, 1995; Heathcote and Herbert, 1985; O’Neill, 1985; O’Neill and Lambert, 1982; Wagner, 1998). In England and Wales, such drama techniques have been referred to in national curriculum requirements for English studies under sections on ‘Speaking and Listening’ for students from 5–16 years old (see e.g. DES, 1989: S. 8.14; DfEE and QCA, 1999: 16, 23, 32). In this context, it is apparent that educational drama in England is supported as part of the curriculum to develop students’ facilities in spoken language and to explore themes and characterizations in literature. At the same time, under sections on ‘Reading’, students aged 11–16 are required to study dramatic texts including Shakespeare both as literary texts and in performance. As part of English studies and as a discrete subject, drama is regarded as an art form and as a method of teaching and learning through which it becomes a means for extending language repertoire and competence, and is a method for exploring ideas, situations, characterizations and so forth. As well as forming part of English studies in secondary schools, drama is often taught in the UK as a separately timetabled subject in schools up to examination level at 16-plus. In other Anglophone countries, it is difficult to ascertain the prevalence of drama in the curriculum. According to Catterall, the use of drama in schools in the US ‘rests on informal traditions and is dictated largely by individual teacher preferences for engaging the medium’ (Catterall, 2002: 58).

Drama in higher education It is worth pausing briefly to reflect on ways in which drama and theatre studies at university level relate more generally to the teaching and learning of drama, both as a discrete subject and as an approach adopted in other disciplines. The study of applied drama and theatre (including theatre for development and theatre for health education) are relatively new developments in higher education (HE) (see Nicholson, 2005; Thompson, 2003). Under the heading of applied drama, students and teachers in HE are also involved in work with prisoners (Thompson, 1998), 243

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those with brain injuries (Franks et al., 2001) and victims of war (Thompson, 2005). Broadly, the growth of socially committed applied drama developed out of Brechtian theatre and the ‘liberationist’ work on literacy developed by Boal (Boal, 1979; Schutzman and Cohen-Cruz, 1994). Currently there appear to be distinct relations and reciprocities between drama in work in schools and its practice and study in universities (Nicholson, 2005).

Drama, language and literacy – some theoretical background In this section, the focus is on some of the theoretical sources that underlie the application of drama in the teaching of English studies, under which the teaching of language, verbal literacy (reading and writing), multimodal literacy, moving image and digital media might be included. Although they are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive in characterizing the role of drama in teaching and learning language and literacy, three broad categories emerge in reviewing a wide range of literature. First, there are developmental theories that trace the relationship between play, drama and learning. In a second, connected category, are semiotic approaches that focus on the production of signs and meanings in and through drama. Finally, there are theories that characterize drama as aesthetic and artistic activity.

Play and drama in learning and development Many approaches to explaining the relationship between drama, language, literacy and conceptual development are founded on the psychological and developmental theories of Vygotsky and Piaget, particularly focused on insights into the role of play in learning. Play and drama are connected, not least because both involve participants in embodied, conceptual and affective action. Participants in play and drama are engaged in representing, encapsulating and expressing the world of social relations through action. The representation of social relations in imagined and enacted situations created through students’ involvement in drama necessarily involves language, gesture and meaningful action. For philosopher of the arts, Susanne Langer, for example drama’s ‘basic abstraction is the act, which springs from the past, but is directed towards the future’ (Langer, 1953: 306). The future orientated and active nature of play connects it both with drama and with development. The most commonly cited works of Vygotsky are the ‘Role of Play in Development’ (Vygotsky, 1978b) and the ‘Prehistory of Written Language’ (1978a). In the ‘Role of Play . . . ’ Vygotsky characterizes pre-school children’s imaginative play as symbolic activity in which the rules and patterns of social relations provide structure for play activity and meaning leads action. The impetus for creating imaginary situations emerges out of children’s desires, which cannot immediately be fulfilled or disregarded, and the imaginary world of play is created to fill the gap. In play, children often take on imaginary roles that are a ‘head taller’ than their actual age, and through role-play they strive to inhabit the patterns of action and language of the adult world. For Vygotsky, play activity, based on the rules and processes of social cultural activity, leads learning and development. Piaget too characterizes play as essentially symbolic activity that is inextricably bound to the emergence and development of language and through it, in the 244

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course of development over the years of childhood, the increasingly conscious realization of social structures and rules (Piaget, 1962). Focusing on the development of the arts in other work, Vygotsky traces the relationship between learning in drama and the development of imagination and creativity in childhood, adolescence and adulthood (Vygotsky, 1967 [2004], 1971, 1994). In a late essay, he examines the ways in which theatre and dramatic techniques function to crystallize and represent social relations and ideologies of particular epochs (1997). A key idea pursued in here is the way in which emotion interacts with intellect through involvement in arts activity – that ‘art is based upon the union of feeling with imagination’ (Vygotsky, 1997: 215). Thus, learning in drama can function in developing both students’ emotional awareness and their understanding of dominant ideologies in particular periods. For both Vygotsky and Piaget, there is complex interrelation between the emergence of play in and through childhood, linguistic and conceptual development. Yet, as Bruner has pointed out, Vygotsky and Piaget view learning and development from fundamentally different perspectives (Bruner, 1986: 134–49). Vygotsky’s account of the emergence of play and language is socially predicated in which learning and development is both led and transformed by the individual’s immersion in the social world. Conversely, Piaget’s account is rooted in an essentially bio-psychological perspective in which maturation through the stages of development are seen as biologically determined, and play activity assists individuals in accommodating and assimilating the social world (Piaget, 1962). Psychologically orientated theories of learning and development, drawing connections between make-believe play, learning drama and the development of spoken language and literacy, have been picked up, elaborated and applied to learning in drama. Early work in this area is Piagetian in character (Slade, 1954; Way, 1967), whereas later work tends to draw from both Piaget and Vygotsky’s work, but sometimes without acknowledging their differences of orientation (Bolton, 1979; Bolton et al., 1986; Courtney, 1974; O’Toole, 1992). In the field of English in education, looking at a range of activity in English that includes role-play and drama, the work of Britton and his associates Rosen and Barnes on the application of Vygotskian theory to the learning of language and literacy in school is prominent in this respect (Barnes et al., 1990; Britton, 1992). With recent attention on creativity and literacy in schooling, there has been a focus on how drama can assist in the development of language and literacy, again drawing on developmental theory (Barrs and Cork, 2001; Heath and Wolf, 2005; NACCCE and Robinson, 1999). Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence has recently had impact on the ways in which learning in drama is seen to relate to literacy and conceptual development (Gardner, 1993). Gardner has now identified nine different types of intelligence, which, from his understanding of the neuropathology, are separate and bounded mental facilities – activity in drama, he maintains, relates mainly to ‘kinesthetic intelligence’ (Gardner, 1999). Gardner’s approach underpins a number of current political, conceptual and analytical approaches to creativity, which is picked up in work on the relationship of drama to the development of literacy (Grainger et al., 2005). Two areas remain open to question, however, when theories of multiple intelligence are applied to learning in drama. First, it is unclear how, when verbal, visual–spatial and interpersonal aspects are related to its actively embodied aspects, as all appear to be integral to the making 245

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of drama. Second, as an essentially socially-formed and socially distributed means of communicating, it is unclear how involvement in the social and cultural world affects learning and development in theories of multiple intelligence (see e.g. Roper and Davis, 2000).

Making signs, texts and meaning in learning drama In the past 30 years, social theories of language and, moving beyond language, social semiotic approaches that take account of gesture, movement, action and dramatic space and time, have informed perspectives on learning in drama. Social theories of language and sign production, drawing from Bakhtin (1986) and Halliday (1978), emphasize that signs are always produced in social settings with a consciousness of audience, response, context and purpose. Semiotic approaches have been developed recently in work on the multimodalities of the learning process (Hodge and Kress, 1993; Jewitt and Kress, 2003; Kress, 2001; see also Ch. 29, this volume). Drawing on Goffman (1986), the ways in which drama ‘frames’ aspects of social life and can provide a context for reading and writing is important in drama education and emerges in Heathcote’s (1984a) influential work on education and drama. Others have written more explicitly about the role that linguistics and semiotics have to play in analysing, understanding and explaining learning in drama (Neelands, 1992, 1993; O’Toole, 1992). Within the field of critical cultural studies, work has been done on developing multimodal approaches to learning in drama through which the full range of embodied communicative resources are engaged in making meaning (Franks, 1995, 2003), and connecting semiotic approaches to meaning making with Vygotskian theories of learning (Franks, 2006). Currently, an emergent field of study examines links between digital media, computer gaming and learning in drama (Carroll et al., 2006). Another approach that sees literacy as emerging from an ability to ‘read the world’ draws ideas from Paulo Freire (1972, 1996; Freire and Macedo, 1987). Boal, who worked with Freire, has used drama and theatre as tools for literacy and social transformation (Boal, 1979, 1995) and is now influential in approaches to drama in schooling and, through ‘applied drama’, projects in informal sites of education (Nicholson, 2000, 2005; Schutzman and Cohen-Cruz, 1994).

Aesthetic and artistic approaches to drama education Learning in drama is also viewed as learning within the arts. Broadly, three interconnected aspects to drama as art bear on theoretical issues of drama and learning. First, drama is seen as aesthetic activity – activity that is embodied, sensory and sensual. Second, drama involves in representation and creates imaginary ‘spaces’ or ‘virtual worlds’ that relate to everyday lived experience, but at the same time are separated and abstracted from the everyday. Last, making drama involves a crafting of particular contents to fit specific forms; i.e. there is a history to particular forms of drama and diverse forms of drama are valued in different ways. Drawing from various sources, including for example the work of Langer (1953) on aesthetics and others who concentrate on the relation between art and learning, such as Dewey (1963), Eisner (2005) and Greene (2001 [1982]), writers on drama, language and learning have elaborated ideas (Bolton, 1979, 1984; O’Neill, 1995). Others have drawn from Kant (Nicholson, 2000, 2005) and Wittgenstein (Fleming, 1994) in critique 246

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of underlying philosophical bases of drama education. Such philosophical approaches on one hand emphasize the personal, individualized and expressive potential of learning in drama to come to understand and represent the world. Drawing on Eisner, for instance, Winston claims that placing drama and English at the heart of the primary curriculum allows learners playfulness and liberation from curricular constraints; that dramatic activity is more expressive than it is instructive (Eisner, 2005: 16–26). On the other hand, more emphasis is placed on the social and cultural nature of drama, from which stems the power of taking a more critical position through drama (Bailin, 1998). Some perspectives on drama in wider culture have not been applied much to learning in drama. Among these are anthropologically based cross- and inter-cultural perspectives based on the work of Turner (1982) and Schechner (1988), which place particular dramatic approaches within wider cultural contexts, and post-structural approaches that see possibilities in drama as a way of subverting current norms of bodily performance and performativity (Butler, 1990a, 1990b).

Researching learning in drama, language and literacy As a relatively new subject on the school curriculum, and as a recently identified means of learning, research in drama remains ripe for development. Nonetheless, the range and scope of research into drama education has been strengthened by the publication of particular books (Ackroyd and IDIERI, 2006; Taylor, 1996, 2000) and journals, such as Research in Drama Education and IDEA/Applied Theatre Researcher.

Qualitative and mixed method research In drama education the strongest tradition, recently strengthened by Ackroyd’s (2006) and Taylor’s (1996) work, is that of practitioner-led action research through which teachers-as-researchers reflect on practice. From such qualitative, interpretative studies, analytical case studies are produced and sometimes published, many looking at the relation between drama and the development of spoken language and literacy. Analytical case study approach to researching the effects of drama and its correlation with language facility is exemplified by work conducted by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE), based in south London. Over years, CLPE has worked on a mixed method approach that combines action research, detailed descriptive narratives, linguistic analysis (particularly of writing) and heuristic application of Vygotskian learning theory. The published work derived from this approach is accessibly written, colourfully presented and rich in content and is aimed as much toward the practising teacher as it is to researchers (Barrs and Cork, 2001; Ellis, 2005; Safford and Barrs, 2005). These case studies demonstrate how reading and writing are embedded within the drama so that drama becomes part of a holistic approach to learning, language and literacy development. Findings of this research support the view that drama is a valuable context for enhancing spoken language and literacy abilities. An observational and interpretative study in Canada conducts research in similar areas and presents findings that align with CLPE’s work (Neelands et al., 1993). The National Theatre (NT) in London commissioned research from the Social Science Research Unit (SSRU) at the Institute of Education, London, between 2002 and 2004, which also utilized mixed methodology (Turner et al., 2004). Although the NT wanted 247

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to examine general effects of their education programmes in primary schools, they also wanted to look specifically for evidence of the effectiveness of their participatory programme in raising achievement in literacy. The research team adopted a matched sample method, and included detailed observation, document and video analysis, and applied interviews and questionnaires with children, teachers and drama practitioners. Gains were found in terms of positive affective and attitudinal engagement with learning and schooling. In its emphasis on the experience of practical work with theatre practitioners, there were discernible gains for participants, particularly in terms of competence and confidence in various kinds of drama and what the researchers call ‘drama literacy’. Interestingly, there appeared to be small gains in numeracy scores with the match sample schools, but no gain in literacy scores; such correlations are not easily susceptible to analysis, however, as the parametric range of the project was so wide and it would be impossible to ascribe any causal relationships.

Participant perceptual surveys With the advent of test scoring of students’ literacy and language competence across the Anglophone world, there has been pressure for implementation of more ‘formal’ research regimes that have inquired into the relation between drama education activities and the development of language and literacy. One such example is the attitudinal survey into the effects and effectiveness of the arts in education conducted by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) for the Arts Council, England, in which a large sample of students and teachers were interviewed (Harland, 2000). The research demonstrates a clear correlation between student competence and the strengthening of students’ sense of self-confidence, although, because of the methods of research utilized, these results show correlative rather than causal relationships between involvement in drama and its effects.

Experimental and quantitative methods Experimental studies in which drama methods are used as an intervention to enhance students’ competence in spoken and written language are rare, but two sources refer to such work. The first is derived from a special issue of the Journal of Aesthetics in Education devoted to an examination of effectiveness of the arts in which Podlozny conducts a meta-analysis of experimental studies into the effectiveness of drama in ‘strengthening verbal skills’ (Podlozny, 2000), notably including work by Pellegrini (1985) and Pellegrini and Galda (1993). From such a meta-analysis, Podlozny deduces that drama is effective in promoting understanding of stories, reading achievement, motivation and readiness to write and to read. Moreover, as activity preliminary to reading, drama helps students to master themes and ideas related to texts they study after involvement in drama. Drama transfers across domains of learning, but this transference needs to be mediated by the teacher. Furthermore, the effectiveness of drama is enhanced when teachers lead from within the drama – even for very short periods of intervention. Such findings are both supported by Wagner (1998) and Catterall (2002). Recent work in the UK, utilizing and promoting matched samples and quantitative methods for researching the effects of drama and learning, has also supported the thesis that involvement in drama supports and extends development of language and literacy (Fleming et al., 2004). 248

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Drama and learning – implications for practice and research In understanding and promoting learning in and through drama, more work remains to be done in developing theory, research and practice, particularly in the light of a growing understanding of the multimodal and multi-mediated nature of drama as a means of learning (Kress, 2001) in the context of an increasingly dramatized society (Williams, 1983). Although there are strong theoretical traditions underpinning understandings of the relation between verbal language and learning, more work needs to be done on ways in which drama as embodied, multimodal activity relates to learning and development. Hitherto, theoretical perspectives on learning in drama have tended to focus on the relation between school drama and the traditions of ‘live’ drama and theatre, as most of the drama seen by audiences today comes via broadcast and digital media; however, more attention needs to be given to the particularities of more popular forms of drama and their effects on drama. Here and in other areas, there would clearly be much to be gained from developing stronger links between the fields of applied drama and theatre in the university sector and work in schools (Baldwin and Fleming, 2003; Goodwin, 2006; Smith and Herring, 2001; Woolland, 2008). From the brief overview of research, it is apparent that research in drama and learning and the application of particular methodologies remain in relatively early stages of development and there remains scope for research and the development of a greater variety of methods. Regarding qualitative and interpretative research, for example the acknowledgement of contemporary cultural conditions, the rise of multimodal communication and the dramatized society requires further development of multimodal and cultural methods of description and analysis. At the same time, as Fleming et al. (2004) point out, those researching the effects of learning in drama have tended to eschew more ‘positivist’, social science based – e.g. quantitative, match sample and experimental – methods. While there are ethical difficulties, for example in giving drama as an intervention for one group of students, while denying it to another for the purposes of match sample analysis, current demands for ‘hard’ evidence bases for practice appear to demand more investment in such approaches. For practice, there fall implications for the development of drama pedagogy. Research has shown that particular teacher techniques and interventions (e.g. teachers taking leading roles within the drama) are effective in leading learning, and more needs to be done to promote, enhance and expand the pedagogy of drama and to embed it more generally as part of the curriculum. The growing body of work examining the effects of arts projects in primary and secondary schools demonstrates that teachers have much to learn from drama practitioners and vice versa.

Conclusion From theory and research, it is evident that drama is significant in learning, particularly in the development of language and literacy. Through its strong connection with play, the application of drama techniques has an important role in the development of language and emergent literacy in early childhood. Later, in primary, secondary and tertiary education, involvement in drama has been shown to be effective in the enhancement of reading and writing abilities. Furthermore, because drama is currently a powerful and prevalent means of conceptualizing, representing and encapsulating the world of social 249

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relations in wider culture, dramatic activity offers opportunities for students not only to penetrate and understand wider aspects of social life but also to make dramas that contribute to the culture in the realm of schooling and beyond.

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Vygotsky, L.S. (1967 [2004]). Imagination and Creativity in Childhood. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology 42(1): 7–97. Vygotsky, L.S. (1971). The Psychology of Art. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978a). The Prehistory of Written Language. In M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner and E. Souberman (Eds) Mind in Society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, pp. 105–19. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978b). The Role of Play in Development. In M. Cole (Ed.) Mind in Society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, pp. 92–104. Vygotsky, L.S. (1994). Imagination and Creativity of the Adolescent. In R. van de Veer and J. Valsiner (Eds) The Vygotsky Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, p. 266. Vygotsky, L.S. (1997). On the Problem of the Psychology of the Actor’s Creative Work (trans. N. Minnick). In R. W. Rieber and J. L. Wollock (Eds) The Collected Works of L.S. Vygotsky. New York and London: Plenum Press, vol. 6, pp. 237–44. Wagner, B.J. (1998). Educational Drama and Language Arts: What research shows. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Ward, W. (1957). Playmaking with Children from Kindergarten through Junior High School (2nd edn). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Way, B. (1967). Development through Drama. London: Longmans, Green & Co. Williams, R. (1983). Drama in a Dramatized Society. In Writing in Society. London: Verso, pp. 11–21. Woolland, B. (2008). Pupils as Playwrights: Drama, literacy and playwriting. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham.

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22 Classroom discourse: towards a dialogic pedagogy Frank Hardman and Jan Abd-Kadir

Introduction This chapter is about work in progress exploring the relevance of a dialogic pedagogy to schools in both the developed and developing world. Within the teacher development literature, there is general agreement that changing pedagogic practices is difficult because of the strong cultural and social influences which shape teacher assumptions about the purpose of schooling and the nature of the teaching and learning process. While recognizing that teaching is a cultural activity and acknowledging the influence of contextual factors on the teaching and learning process, this chapter will argue that the teaching process and the way pupils learn is much more similar than different across countries and cultures. It will be argued that pedagogy is a transnational response to common circumstances and that in order to address a wide range of cultural and socioeconomic groupings an alternative ‘universalistic’ pedagogy emphasizing a joint teacher–pupil activity and higher-order thinking through a dialogic pedagogy that is sensitive to local conditions, needs to be developed (Tharp and Dalton, 2007) The chapter will start with a discussion of the notion of pedagogic universalisms before going on to review research into classroom discourse from the developed and developing world, concluding with a discussion of how a dialogic pedagogy can inform and transform the learning and teaching process in classrooms around the world. It will also address how the professional development needs of teachers can be met so as to enhance the quality of talk in the classroom.

Pedagogic universalisms Until quite recently, most research on classroom discourse has been conducted in the developed world, principally in the United States, Western Europe and Australia. It is therefore questionable as to the extent to which the findings apply to other countries, particularly in the developing world. However, Brophy (1999) believes it is possible to 254

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identify universal principles in teaching and learning so as to improve the quality of education. He points to international research which suggests that schooling is more similar than different across countries and cultures because it is possible to identify generic aspects of formal schooling. For example in schools around the world it is common to find the day divided into periods used for teaching and for a range of subjects covered in the curriculum. It is also common to find teaching made up of whole class lessons in which content is developed through teacher explanation and teacher/ pupil interaction, followed by practice and application activities that pupils work on individually, in pairs or small groups. Brophy concludes, however, that such universal aspects of formal schooling still require adaptation to the local context, including relevant characteristics of the nation’s school system and pupils’ home culture. Similarly, drawing on his international comparison of pedagogy across different cultures, Alexander (2001) argues it is possible to pinpoint universals in teaching and learning, such as the use of whole class teacher–pupil discourse, which must be attended to so as to improve the quality of education. Like Brophy (1999), Alexander (2001) cautions against the assumption that teaching approaches that are effective in one country can be imported into another. Before adopting such practices, he argues, it is important that the cultural assumptions, values and pedagogical principles which shape such approaches are fully understood so as to judge how far the pedagogy can be accommodated in a different cultural context. Out of such an accommodation will come new teaching approaches that have a greater chance of being implemented in the classroom.

Teacher-led recitation: a universalism of classroom pedagogy Advocates of a dialogic pedagogy draw theoretical justification from the work of Vygotsky, who was one of the first psychologists to acknowledge the role of talk in organizing learners’ understanding of the world (Hardman, 2008). Out of his work developed the social constructivist view of learning which suggests that classroom discourse is not effective unless pupils play an active part in their learning (Wells, 1999). This view of learning suggests that learning does not take place through the addition of discrete facts to an existing store of knowledge, but when new information, experiences and ways of understanding are related to an existing understanding of the matter in hand. Talk is seen as being central to the process where pupils are given the opportunity to assume greater control over their own learning by initiating ideas and responses and contributing to the shaping of the verbal agenda. The main pedagogic implication of this theory of learning for school teaching is that it emphasizes the importance of social learning through teacher–pupil and pupil–pupil dialogue. The guided co-construction of knowledge, in which a teacher talks with pupils in whole class, group and individual situations to guide their thinking, is therefore seen as being central to the educational process. In this theory of learning, teachers and learners are regarded as active participants in the construction of knowledge on the basis of ideas and experiences contributed by the pupils as well as the teacher (Mercer and Littleton, 2007). However, international research suggests one kind of talk predominates in the classroom at all phases of education: the so-called ‘recitation script’ made up of 255

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teacher explanation and closed teacher questions, brief pupil answers and minimal feedback which requires pupils to report someone else’s thinking rather than think for themselves, and to be evaluated on their compliance in doing so (Mehan, 1979; Nystrand et al., 1997; Wells, 1999; Alexander, 2001). As first revealed by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), in its prototypical form a teaching exchange consists of three moves: an initiation, usually in the form of a teacher question; a response in which a pupil attempts to answer the question; and a follow-up move, in which the teacher provides some form of feedback (very often in the form of an evaluation) to the pupil’s response. Studies of the national literacy and numeracy strategies in England using macro and micro levels of analysis through computer-based systematic observation and discourse analysis revealed the ubiquity of the Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) structure (Mroz et al., 2000; Hardman et al., 2003; Smith et al., 2004; Hardman et al., 2005; Smith et al., 2006). Overall, it was found that in the whole class section of literacy and numeracy lessons, teachers spent the majority of their time either explaining or using highly structured question and answer sequences. The extract shown in Table 22.1 is typical of the classroom discourse found in the English primary schools that featured in the studies.

Table 22.1 Transcript of English primary school year 6 literacy lesson Exchanges Teaching

T

2 3 4 5 6 7

G T T B T T

5 6 7

G T T

8 9

G T

10

T

11 12

G T

256

Moves

Acts

ok

I

m

now we’ve been doing a lot of work on non-fiction texts and I want to look at another one today non-fiction is made up of what? facts it’s full of facts that’s right and what about fiction it’s made up of stories that’s right it’s about stories can you give me an example of a non-fiction text what was the non-fiction text we looked at last week about? it was about mobile phones yes it was about mobile phones well done and what did the article tell us about mobile phones about bringing them to school right well done whether they should be banned in school can anyone remember an argument for children having mobile phones in school? Sara to talk to their mum that’s right so their parents can contact them and they know where they are so they know they’re safe

ms

R F I I F I el R F I R F I

R F

el Rep e el rep e s rep e el rep e com el n rep e com

TOWARDS A DIALOGIC PEDAGOGY

It is taken from a Year 6 literacy lesson taught by a female teacher exploring a non-fiction text on the banning of mobile phones in schools.1 The extract reveals the rapid pace of teacher’s questioning and the predictable sequence of teacher-led recitation in which the parts are nearly always being played out as teacher–pupil–teacher. Teachers mainly asked closed questions; pupil responses were often evaluated and commented on by the teacher, who maintained the right to determine what was relevant within her pedagogic agenda. Teacher-directed interrogation of pupil knowledge and understanding was therefore the most common form of teacher/pupil interaction, with teacher questioning rarely going beyond the recall and clarification of information. Studies of the national literacy and numeracy strategies in England from the late 1990s onwards revealed that far from encouraging and extending pupil contributions to promote higher levels of interaction and cognitive engagement, most of the questions asked by teachers were of a low cognitive level designed to funnel pupil responses towards a required answer. Overall, it was found that open questions (designed to elicit more than one answer) made up ten per cent of the questioning exchanges and 15 per cent of teachers did not ask any such questions. Probing by the teacher, where the teacher stayed with the same pupil to ask further questions to encourage sustained and extended dialogue, occurred in just over 11 per cent of the questioning exchanges. Uptake question (building a pupil’s answer into a subsequent question) occurred in only four per cent of the teaching exchanges and 43 per cent of the teachers did not use any such moves. Only rarely were teachers’ questions used to assist pupils to more complete or elaborated ideas. Most of the pupils’ exchanges were very short, lasting on average five seconds, and were limited to three words or less for 70 per cent of the time. Compared to earlier studies of English primary classrooms, the findings suggest that traditional patterns of whole class interaction had not been dramatically transformed by the national strategies (Alexander et al., 1996; Galton et al., 1999). The findings are similar to an analysis of more than 200 eighth- and ninth-grade English and social studies classes in a variety of schools in the Midwest of America using computer assisted coding of teacher–pupil discourse moves (Nystrand et al., 2003). Nystrand and his colleagues found that whole-class discussion in which there is an open exchange of ideas averaged less than 50 seconds in the eighth grade and less than 15 seconds in the ninth grade. Using markers of interactive discourse such as open-ended questions, uptake questions, pupil questions, cognitive level and level of evaluation, it was found that shifts from recitational to dialogic discourse patterns were rare: in 1,151 instructional episodes that they observed (i.e. when a teacher moves on to a new topic) only 66 episodes (6.69 per cent) could be described as dialogic in nature. Research in primary classrooms in the developing world also shows the domination of teacher-led recitation. For example evidence from Botswana (Arthur, 1996); Kenya (Bunyi, 1997; Ackers and Hardman, 2001; Pontefract and Hardman, 2005; Abd-Kadir and Hardman, 2007; Hardman et al., 2009); Nigeria (Onocha and Okpala, 1990; Tahir et al., 2005; Hardman et al., 2008); South Africa (Chick, 1996); and Tanzania (O-saki and

1 In the Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) system of discourse analysis moves, Initiation, Response, Feedback, make up the three-part teaching exchange which in turn are made up of acts: com = comment; e = evaluation; el = elicitation; i = inform; n = nominate; rep = reply; s = starter. T = teacher; B = boy; G = girl. Boundaries indicated by a marker (m) and/or metastatement (ms) show a change in lesson topic.

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Table 22.2 Transcript of Nigerian primary school standard 6 English lesson Exchanges Teaching 2 3 4

T T C T

5 6

C T

7 8

C T

9

G

10 11

T T

12 13 14

C T T

15 16 17 18

C T C T

19 20 21 22

B T C T

then today we’re going to look at the special use of the there are certain words that have special^ prepositions then according to according you cannot use according without using the preposition^ to you cannot use according for according in that is according^ to so let somebody make a sentence with according to yes according to the teacher according to the teacher he told us that preposition is the relationship between two things yes according to the teacher she said that a preposition is the relationship between two^ things good then another then another one we have two of them agreed to something agreed with^ somebody again somebody agreed with somebody and agreed to something let somebody make a sentence Yes I agreed to go to school I agreed to go to^ school yes

Moves

Acts

I R/I R I

R

ms ce rep s el rep s ce rep el n rep

F R/I

e ce

R F I

rep e s

R R/I R I

R R/I R I

R R/I R I

el rep ce rep s el n rep ce rep e

Agu, 2002) shows that teacher–pupil interaction often takes the form of lengthy recitations of question (by the teacher) and answer (by individual pupils or the whole class) within an IRF structure. The practice of asking pupils to complete a sentence either through a direct repetition of the teacher’s explanation or pupil’s answer, or through omitting the final word, or words, or a combination of both these strategies, was very common. The extract in Table 22.2, taken from a Nigerian Standard 6 (age 11–12) English lesson taught by a male teacher focusing on prepositions, is typical of the IRF structure found in sub-Saharan African classrooms.2

2 Here re-initiation (R/I) moves are embedded within a teaching exchange and together with the act of cued elicitation (ce) are often designed to elicit a repetition or completion of a phrase or word. ^ indicates rising intonation; C = choral response.

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The widespread use of cued elicitations to elicit a direct repetition of the teacher’s explanation or pupil’s answer through a choral response is common (Turns 2, 6, 11, 14, 16, 20). Overall, the classroom discourse in sub-Saharan African classrooms was found to be highly ritualized, creating a semblance of curriculum coverage, knowledge and understanding. The most prevalent methods of teaching were teacher explanation punctuated by a question and answer approach, choral responses, pupils copying from the chalkboard; written exercises and teachers marking pupil work. Teacher-led recitation, with its constant demand for pupil participation, ensured teachers maintained tight control of the learning environment. Such use of ‘participation’ strategies, through the completion of phrases, the repetition of words and choral affirmation of ‘understanding’, prevented pupils from engaging in more creative and higher levels of thinking. It therefore led to the perpetuation of a restrictive, often monotonous, model of teaching and learning, with little exposure to different functions of language.

Towards a universalistic principle of pedagogy The above review of research into classroom discourse suggests that teacher-led recitation is a universal feature of primary classrooms around the world. It follows that there is a need for an alternative ‘universalistic’ pedagogy based on dialogic principles. Research from the developing world suggests that the IRF structure can take a variety of forms and functions leading to different levels of pupil participation and engagement, particularly through the use that is made of the follow-up move. Studies from north America (Nystrand et al., 1997; Nassaji and Wells, 2000); Europe (Alexander, 2001; Mortimer and Scott, 2003); and South East Asia (Chin, 2006) suggest that teacher follow-up, which goes beyond evaluation of the pupil answers by asking pupils to expand on their thinking, justify or clarify their opinions, or make connections to their own experiences, can extend the answer in order to draw out its significance so as to create a greater equality of participation. Teacher questions and pupil responses can therefore be woven together into an unfolding exchange, thereby encouraging more pupil- initiated ideas and responses and consequently promoting higher-order thinking. In such cases, the IRF pattern can be said to take on a dialogic function (Alexander, 2006). However, do such dialogic forms of teaching have any relevance to classrooms in the developing world where learning resources are limited, classes are large and teachers inadequately trained, particularly as they are proving difficult to implement in conditions much more conducive to such approaches? Added to these problems, research suggests the policy of teaching through the medium of former colonial languages, such as English, is also exerting a powerful influence on the discursive patterns found in many of the classrooms in the developing world (Chick, 1996; Arthur and Martin, 2006). It is argued that such a policy encourages whole-class teaching as a safer option because it is less linguistically demanding and because of the control it affords over the language choices of pupils, particularly in the chorusing of responses. By resorting to such forms of talk it allows for ‘participation’ without loss of face for both teachers and pupils, whether through language errors or lack of understanding. Helping teachers to transform classroom talk from the familiar IRF sequence into purposeful and productive dialogue is fundamental to what Tharp and Dalton (2007) 259

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see as an alternative ‘universalistic’ pedagogy in the developing world. Such an approach to initial and in-service training would emphasize joint teacher–pupil activity and higher-order thinking through a dialogic pedagogy and curriculum which is relevant to the lives and linguistic profile of the communities from which the pupils come. Alongside the appropriate training of teachers in the use of mother tongue and second language teaching, code switching can play an important role in improving the quality of wholeclass and group-based interaction by acknowledging the importance of cultural background and local knowledge in the process of learning and encouraging more active pupil engagement. Such a policy is also central to making the curriculum more relevant by connecting the learning to the pupil’s experience, environment and culture (Dembele, 2003). However, within the teacher development literature, there is general agreement that changing pedagogic practices is difficult because of the conservatism of teachers brought about by the strong cultural and social influences which shape teachers’ assumptions about the purpose of schooling and the nature of the teaching and learning process (Cuban and Tyack, 1995; O-saki and Agu, 2002; Tabulawa, 2003; Sifuna and Kaime, 2007). It has been found that teachers often view knowledge as fixed, objective and detached from the learner so that they see it as their role to transmit this knowledge to pupils through rote-learning techniques. Research also suggests that end-of-primary examinations exert a powerful influence on instruction and the patterning of classroom interaction in sub-Saharan primary classrooms because of their emphasis on the testing of recall, thereby encouraging a one-way transfer of knowledge (Pryor and Lubishi, 2002; Akyeampong et al., 2006, Hardman et al., 2009) As Akyeampong et al. (2006) suggest, it is important that the current assessment practice used in many sub-Saharan countries is supplemented by other forms of evaluation, such as criteria-based, formative, diagnostic and predictive forms of assessment, and that teachers have a thorough understanding of the various types of assessment procedure. Transforming teachers’ beliefs, knowledge, understandings, skills, and commitments, in what they know and are able to do in their classroom practice with regard to teaching and assessment, is therefore viewed as being central to teacher professional development (O’Sullivan, 2006). The school and classroom have therefore been targeted as the best levels of intervention for improving the quality of teaching and learning in the developing world by involving the school head and all the teachers in creating a genuine teaching community through ownership of the process. School-based teacher development programmes building on existing systems and structures and linked to study materials, coaching, observation and feedback by colleagues are therefore being put in place to help teachers explore their own beliefs and classroom practices as a way of bridging the gap between theories and pedagogical practice and to explore alternative approaches (Anderson, 2002; Hardman et al., 2009). It also allows for the cultural assumptions, values and pedagogical principles which shape such approaches to be fully understood so as to judge how far the pedagogy can be accommodated in a different cultural context. Similarly in the developed world it is argued that teachers need extended opportunities to think through new ideas and to try out new practices, ideally in a context where they get feedback from a more expert practitioner and continue to refine their practice in collaboration with colleagues (Costa and Garmston, 1994; Joyce et al., 1997; Hopkins, 2002; O’Sullivan, 2004; Day and Sachs, 2005). Observation, coaching and talk-analysis 260

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feedback can provide useful tools for professional development whereby sympathetic discussion by groups of teachers of observation data derived from their own classrooms acts as an effective starting point for critical reflection (Dillon, 1994). Moyles et al. (2003) also argue that such ‘bottom up’ approaches to teacher development, in which monitoring and self evaluation become a regular part of in-service training, are needed to bring about fundamental changes in the way teachers interact with their pupils. Such an initiative would counter ‘top down’ approaches which research suggests have failed to change underlying pedagogical approaches and give teachers a degree of ownership of the process of school improvement.

Conclusion While recognizing that teaching is a cultural activity and acknowledging the influence of contextual factors on the teaching and learning process, it has been argued that universal principles based on a dialogic pedagogy can inform and transform the learning and teaching process. It therefore raises the possibility of pedagogic change being achieved within the cultural context in which teachers operate through more effective teacher training programmes that are sensitive to the cultural assumptions, values and pedagogical principles which teachers bring to the classroom, so as to judge how far the pedagogy can be accommodated in a different cultural context. By taking the sociocultural context into account, school-based training can address the issue of transfer and move away from the imposition of a ‘top-down’ educational reform model (O’Sullivan, 2001). It can also ensure that the introduction of new pedagogic approaches takes into consideration the realities within which teachers work (O’Sullivan, 2006).

References Abd-Kadir, J. and Hardman, F. (2007). The Discourse of Whole Class Teaching: A comparative study of Kenyan and Nigerian primary English lessons. Language and Education 21(1): 1–15. Ackers, J. and Hardman, F. (2001). Classroom Interaction in Kenyan Primary Schools. Compare 31(2): 245–61. Akyeampong, K., Pryor, J. and Ampiah, J.C. (2006). A Vision of Successful Schooling: Ghanaian teachers’ understanding of learning, teaching and assessment. Comparative Education 42(2): 155–76. Alexander, R. (2001). Culture and Pedagogy: International comparisons in primary education. Oxford: Blackwell. Alexander, R. (2006). Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking classroom talk (3rd edn). Cambridge, MA: Dialogos. Alexander, R., Willcocks, J. and Nelson, N. (1996). Discourse, Pedagogy and the National Curriculum: Change and continuity in primary schools. Research Papers in Education 11(1): 81–120. Anderson, S. (Ed.) (2002). School Improvement through Teacher Development: Case studies of the Aga Khan Foundation projects in East Africa. Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets and Zetlinger. Arthur, J. (1996). Code Switching and Collusion: Classroom interaction in Botswana Primary School. Linguistics and Education 8(1): 17–33.

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Arthur, J. and Martin, P. (2006). Accomplishing Lessons in Postcolonial Classrooms: Comparative perspectives from Botswana and Brunei Darussalam. Comparative Education 42(2): 177–202. Brophy, J. (1999). Teaching, Educational Practices Series 1. Paris: UNESCO, International Academy of Education. Bunyi, G. (1997). Multi-lingualism and Discourse in Primary Mathematics in Kenya. Culture and Curriculum 10(1): 23–30. Chick, J.K. (1996). Safe-talk, Collusion in Apartheid Education. In H. Coleman (Ed.) Society and the Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 21–39. Chin, C. (2006). Classroom Interaction in Science: Teacher questioning and feedback to student responses. International Journal of Science Education 28(11): 1315–46. Costa, A.L. and Garmston, R.J. (1994). Cognitive Coaching: A foundation for Renaissance schools. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon. Cuban, L. and Tyack, D. (1995). Tinkering Towards Utopia: A century of public school reforms. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Day, C. and Sachs, J. (2005). International Handbook on the Continuing Professional Development of Teachers. Buckingham: Open University Press. Dembele, M. (2003). Breaking the Mold: Teacher development for pedagogical renewal. In A.M. Verspoor (Ed.) The Challenge of Learning: Improving the quality of basic education in sub-Saharan Africa. Paris: Association for the Development of Education in Africa, pp. 139–65. Dillon, J. (1994). Using Discussion in Classrooms. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Galton, M., Hargreaves, L., Comber, C., Wall, D. and Pell, T. (1999). Inside the Primary Classroom: 20 years on. London: Routledge. Hardman, F. (2008). The Guided Co-construction of Knowledge. In M. Martin-Jones, A. de Mejia and N. Hornberger (Eds) Encyclopaedia of Language and Education. New York: Springer, pp. 253–64. Hardman, F., Smith, F. and Wall, K. (2003). ‘Interactive’ Whole Class Teaching in the National Literacy Strategy. Cambridge Journal of Education 33(2): 197–215 Hardman, F., Smith, F. and Wall, K. (2005). Teacher–pupil Dialogue with Pupils with Special Needs in the National Literacy Strategy. Educational Review 57(3): 299–316. Hardman, F., Abd-Kadir, J. and Smith, F. (2008). Pedagogical Renewal: Improving the quality of classroom interaction in Nigerian Primary Schools. International Journal of Educational Studies 28(1): 55–69. Hardman, F., Abd-Kadir, J., Agg, C., Migwi, J., Ndambuku, J. and Smith, F. (2009). Changing Pedagogical Practice in Kenyan Primary Schools: The impact of school-based training. Comparative Education 45(1): 65–86. Hopkins, D. (2002). The Aga Khan School Improvement Initiative: An International Change Perspective. In S.E. Anderson (Ed.) School Improvement through Teacher Development: Case studies of the Aga Khan Foundation projects in East Africa. Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets & Zetlinger, pp. 271–96. Joyce, B., Calhoun, E. and Hopkins, D. (1997). Models for Teaching: Tools for learning. Buckingham: Open University Press. Mehan, H. (1979). Learning Lessons. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mercer, N. and Littleton, K. (2007). Dialogue and the Development of Children’s Thinking: A sociocultural approach. London: Routledge. Mortimer, E.F. and Scott, P.H. (2003). Meaning Making in Secondary Science Classrooms. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Moyles, J., Hargreaves, L., Merry, R., Paterson, F. and Esarte-Sarries, V. (2003). Interactive Teaching in the Primary School. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Mroz, M., Smith, F. and Hadman, F. (2000). The Discourse of the Literacy Hour. Cambridge Journal of Education 30(3): 379–90.

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Nassaji, H. and Wells, G. (2000). What’s the Use of ‘Triadic Dialogue’? An investigation of teacher– student interaction. Applied Linguistics 21(3): 376–406. Nystrand, M., Gamoran, A., Kachur, R. and Prendergast, C. (1997). Opening Dialogue: Understanding the dynamics of language and learning in the English classroom. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University. Nystrand, M., Wu, L.L., Gamoran, A., Zeiser, S. and Long, D.A. (2003). Questions in Time: Investigating the structure and dynamics of unfolding classroom discourse. Discourse Processes 35(2): 135–98. Onocha, C. and Okpala, P. (1990). Classroom Interaction Patterns of Practising and Pre-service Teachers of Integrated Science. Research in Education 43: 23–31. O-saki, K.M. and Agu, A.O. (2002). A Study of Classroom Interaction in Primary Schools in the United Republic of Tanzania. Prospects 32(1): 103–16. O’Sullivan, M.C. (2001). The Inset Strategies Model: An effective inset model for unqualified and underqualified teachers in Namibia. International Journal of Educational Development 21(2): 93–117. O’Sullivan, M.C. (2004). The Reconceptualisation of Learner-centred Approaches: A Namibian case study. International Journal of Educational Development 24(6): 585–603. O’Sullivan, M.C. (2006). Lesson Observation and Quality in Primary Education as Contextual Teaching and Learning Processes. International Journal of Educational Development 26(2): 246. Pontefract, C. and Hardman, F. (2005). The Discourse of Classroom Interaction in Kenyan Primary Schools. Comparative Education 42(1): 87–106. Pryor, J. and Lubishi, C. (2002). Reconceptualising Educational Assessment in South Africa: Testing times for teachers. International Journal of Educational Development 22(6): 673–86. Sifuna, D.N. and Kaime, J.G. (2007). The Effect of In-service Education and Training (INSET) Programmes in Mathematics and Science on Classroom Interaction: A case study of primary and secondary schools in Kenya. Africa Education Review 4(1): 104–26. Sinclair, J. and Coulthard, M. (1975). Towards an Analysis of Discourse: The English used by teachers and pupils. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, F., Hardman, F., Wall, K. and Mroz, M. (2004). Interactive Whole Class Teaching in the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies. British Educational Research Journal 30(3): 403–19. Smith, F., Hardman, F. and Higgins, S. (2006). The Impact of Interactive Whiteboards on Teacher– Pupil Interaction in the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies. British Educational Research Journal 32(3): 437–51. Tabulawa, R. (2003). International Aid Agencies, Learner-centred Pedagogy and Political Democratisation: A critique. Comparative Education 39(1): 7–26. Tahir, G., Mohammed, N.D. and Mohammed, A.M. (2005). Improving the Quality of Nomadic Education in Nigeria. Paris: Association for the Development of Education in Africa. Tharp, R.G. and Dalton, S.S. (2007). Orthodoxy, Cultural Compatibility, and Universals in Education. Comparative Education 43(1): 53–70. Wells, G. (1999). Dialogic Inquiry: Towards a sociocultural practice and theory of education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Part 4 Teaching English, language and literacy

23 Critical approaches to teaching language, reading and writing Hilary Janks

Introduction When Foucault (1970) talks about the policing of discourse, it is possible to imagine a teacher armed with a red pen, holding the line in defence of standards and correctness, keeping both change and unruliness at bay. The word the is used for shared knowledge and in the previous sentence suggests both that the line exists and that we know where to draw it. This is not as simple as it sounds. For example should the red pen set to work to eliminate all code-switching in students’ writing, both switching between languages and switching between varieties? Should it banish from the page the use of first person in academic essays? Should it insist on the use of whom as the relative pronoun required for objects even though it sounds pompous as in, ‘To whom am I speaking?’. Should the question mark and the full stop be corrected in the previous sentence? A critical approach to language and literacy education would suggest that these are as much social and political questions as they are linguistic. What lexis, whose variety and which languages are accepted by teachers are not innocent decisions. They are educational rulings that include the linguistic repertoires of some students and exclude those of others. They are part of a system of social stratification that grants cultural capital to those whose language society constructs as distinctive (Bourdieu, 1984, 1991) and denies it to those who speak minority languages or dialects deemed non-standard. More often than not, this is tied to questions of power; it is not an accident that it is the language varieties of social elites that are institutionally sanctioned and naturalized. This chapter focuses on a critical approach to the teaching of language, reading and writing in order to contribute to the three areas that are the focus of this handbook. The next section considers the history of critical literacy and specific orientations in the field that come under this umbrella term. It then goes on to explore critical linguistics, critical reading and critical writing, which are then grounded in a discussion of a widely circulated, multimodal, internet text.

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The history of critical literacy Critical literacy is a sociocultural orientation to English language and literacy teaching that takes the relationship between language, power and identity seriously. It requires an understanding of how texts work and mean in relation to the social contexts in which they are produced and read. It is as much about speaking and listening, reading and writing, as it is about lexis and grammar. It sees the choices we make when using language as actions that have effects that may benefit some at the expense of others. It is an orientation that sees literacy as a set of social practices whose deployment has social effects and it requires teachers to put questions of equity and social justice at the heart of language and literacy education. It is not a topic to be dealt with and ticked off; it is an ongoing lens through which one filters text and talk, image and design, composition and grammar, norms and standards. It requires us to understand textual positioning and to take a position as both an engaged and a critical reader and writer. The term critical literacy is attributed to Paulo Freire, who recognized that If learning to read and write is to constitute an act of knowing, the learners must assume from the beginning the role of creative subjects. It is not a matter of memorizing and repeating given syllables and phrases, but rather of reflecting critically on the process of reading and writing itself, and on the profound significance of language. Insofar as language is impossible without thought, and language and thought are impossible without the world to which they refer, the human word is more than mere vocabulary – it is word-and-action. The cognitive dimensions of the literacy process must include the relationships of men [sic] with their world. (Freire, 1972a: 29) Freire was the first to challenge our assumptions about literacy as simply teaching students the skills necessary for reading and writing and to insist that we ‘reflect critically on the process of reading and writing itself’. He helps us to understand that reading the word cannot be separated from reading the world. Critical literacy can be seen as an umbrella term for other approaches to language and literacy education committed to equity and social justice. Critical Language Awareness (Clark et al., 1987; Fairclough, 1992) brings a linguistic focus to work on language and power and provides tools for critical text analysis. New literacy studies (Heath, 1983; Street, 1984; Gee, 1990; Barton et al., 2000; Pahl and Rowsell, 2005), emphasizes the importance of understanding literacy as a set of social practices that are used and valued differently in different cultures and contexts. Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1990) work on the visual sign leads to the recognition that texts are multimodal, employing multiple forms of semeiosis. Their work provides the foundation for the focus on multiliteracies (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000; NLG, 2000). Finally, new digital technologies have made texts both more complex and more immediate, with the need for students to develop critically conscious digital literacies (Snyder, 2002; Snyder and Beavis, 2004; Lankshear and Knoble, 2006; Lankshear et al., 2006). The social theory that underpins the concerns of critical literacy derives from the counter-hegemonic fields of feminist linguistics (for example Cameron, 1990; Threadgold 1997; Smith, 1999); poststructuralism (Volosinov, 1986; Weedon, 1987, 2004); post-colonial theory (Bhaba 1990; 268

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Pennycook, 1994; hooks, 2006); and critical multiculturalism (May, 1999; Nieto, 2002; Soudien, 2008).

Critical linguistics Halliday sees language as meaning potential, with choice from a range of possible options determining how meaning is realized. Halliday’s language functions – ideational, interpersonal, textual – are mapped onto the categories thath articulate the context of situation – field, tenor and mode. In this way, he manages to link the language system with the social contexts in which it is used. Different aspects of the linguistic system encode different functions (see Table 23.1). His grammar enables critical readers to analyse how representations of events have been constructed by the selection, combination and sequencing of linguistic options. Every clause requires one conscious or unconscious linguistic choice after another. There would be no point to communication if speakers did not hope to be heard and believed. Each choice, whether of a language, or content or norms for interaction, foregrounds what was selected and hides, silences and backgrounds what was not selected. Such choices determine what counts as literature, whose community funds of knowledge (Moll, 1992) are valued, what is said, what is sayable, and who is authorized to speak. All these choices construct subject English and in the process students’ identities. Selection is inevitable. What matters is how we teach students to read critically the texted representations of the world that they encounter. What is damaging and dangerous is docility in the face of constructed representations of the world.

Critical reading The increasing complexity of texts creates an ongoing challenge to teachers who have to teach children to read. Not only do they have to teach them to decode and comprehend texts but also to understand how they are ideologically positioned. According to Freebody and Luke (1990), readers need to be able to • •

•

decode the text. They have to make sense of the written code in order to work out what the text is saying. This necessitates competence in the language. make meaning from the text by engaging with the writer’s meanings. Reading is an active process of bringing one’s own knowledge of culture, content, context, textuse and text-structure into an encounter with those of the writer, in an active process of meaning making. interrogate the text to examine its assumptions, its values and its positions. Readers need to understand what the text is doing to them and whose interests are served by the positions that are on offer. They have to imagine how the text could be otherwise, in order to produce resistant readings that can form the basis for redesign.

Green (2002) refers to these as operational, cultural and critical literacies which are interlocked, bringing the dimensions of language, meaning and power together (2002). Certainly critical literacy is dependent on an ability to decode text and to engage with its meanings. 269

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Table 23.1 An overview of Halliday’s functional grammar Halliday’s metafunctions

Grammatical realization of the metafunctions

Ideational Function: The system of transitivity in the clause consists of participants, processes and circumstances.

Participants are human and/or non-human and nominalizations are processes turned into nouns.

Meaning effects realized by selection from options in the grammar

Choices construct an account of who is doing what to whom under what circumstances. Different participants may be represented Active/passive processes: as acting without thinking or material (doing); mental (feeling thinking but not acting, as trapped thinking, perceiving); behavioural by too much feeling and not (physiological, psychological or enough thought, as talking but part material and part mental: not doing anything. They may be sleep, laugh, watch, listen); represented as a doer or ‘done-to’ verbal (saying verbs that project by the choice of an active or passive speech); relational (verbs of process. In addition, processes being and having); existential may be nominalized and become (exist, happen). participants. Nominalizations remove Circumstances: time, place, participants and tense or modality duration, manner, cause, from the process, thus reifying condition, concession. them, that is, turning a process into a thing. Circumstances provide a particular version of context, cause and effect, etc.

Interpersonal function: Mood: Language is a form of The relationship exchange: Propositions between participants. exchange information – statements and questions; Proposals exchange goods and services – offers and commands.

Mood constructs the reader as someone who knows or who needs to know or as someone who commands or can be told what to do. These differences encode different kinds of power. Modality which expresses degrees of certainty and uncertainty also represents power Modality: maybe, possibly, could, by encoding degrees of authority. should, must, certainly. It also encodes degrees of logical Appraisal: deals with the ways in possibility or probability. Appraisal which linguistic selection is the system that shows attitude and produces different evaluative evaluation more clearly. In particular, emphases. the choice of lexis works to position readers.

Textual function: The organization of and information focus in the clause and the connections across clauses. The linguistic features that enable separate clauses to stick together to form a text.

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Theme and rheme: the first and last parts of the clause. Information focus: emphasis created by size, position, intonation. Cohesion: reference, ellipsis, conjunction, lexical cohesion

The pattern of theme choices shows what is foregrounded in the clause and the theme/rheme distinction shows what is constructed as old versus new information. Information focus directs the reader’s or listener’s attention and cohesion is a powerful way of making connections. These conjunctions can serve particular interests.

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All texts are representations or versions of reality and are constructed by the semiotic choices made by their writers/designers. Kress maintains that signs (verbal, visual, gestural, and so on) are always motivated (Kress, 1993). I would argue that it is the choice of sign that is motivated and that its meaning and its effects are dependent on the contexts in which it is produced and received. Word is a two-sided act. It is determined equally by whose word it is and for whom it is meant. As word, it is precisely the product of the reciprocal relationship between speaker and listener, addresser and addressee. . . . A word is a bridge thrown between myself and another. If one end of the bridge depends on me then the other depends on my addressee. (Volosinov, 1986: 61, emphasis in original) Every text works to position readers who have to be able both to engage and also to distance themselves from it – to read with it and against it. If one is outside the codes of the text, then reading against the text is likely to be easier than reading with the text. Similarly, if one is an insider, an ideal reader of the text, then resistant reading is going to be harder. Fairclough’s three-part model for critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1989) requires a combination of description (semiotic text analysis), interpretation (an analysis of the processes of production and reception) and explanation (social analysis of the conditions of production and reception). In Figure 23.1, I have inserted the kinds of questions needed for each form of analysis into Fairclough’s nested boxes. The answers to such questions enable one to interpret the positions on offer in the text and

Explanation What are the conditions of possibility of this text: what can it say, what can it not say? Why? How is this text shaped by the context of its production? How is it shaped by the context of its reception?

Interpretation of the process of production When was the text written? Where was it published? Who produced it? For what purpose? Who chose the images? Does the text conform to the genre or not? What assumptions does the writer make about the reader? Description This analysis requires that one looks for patterns in the semiotic choices. For examples: What pronouns have been chosen? How certain or tentative is the text? What images are foregrounded? Which verb processes recur? Which participants act and which are acted upon? Who speaks? What is constructed as cause and what as effect by the use of conjunctions? What comes first and what comes last? What is given the most space? What words have a positive value and what words have a negative value? How are they attributed? What is the genre of the text?

Interpretation of the process of reception What is the profile of the target market? Who is the ideal reader? What reading positions are on offer for the reader? What purposes might readers have in reading this text? Are you inclined to read with or against this text? What ways of saying, doing, beliving, being and valuing (Gee, 1990) inform the production of this text? From what positions can this text speak? To what expectations does this text have to conform? Does it conform?

Figure 23.1 Fairclough’s method of critical discourse analysis.

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to make judgements about whose interests they serve. It is important to recognize that text analysis depends on critical linguistics. Critical reading involves understanding how selections from the linguistic system work to position readers. More recently, Kress (2003) has argued that the verbal sign has dominated our understanding of communication despite the fact that texts are increasingly multimodal. New digital technologies enable text producers to include images produced on the other side of the world and downloaded from the world wide web, at the touch of a few buttons. They can now change

font, layout, s p a c ing and

size effortlessly; and include smileys / or clip art at the touch of a key. In addition to lexical, grammatical, content and sequencing choices, writers and publishers also have to decide on the overall design of the page. These design features are an important part of the message. Kress (2003) and Kress and van Leeuwen (2001, 2006) have had a profound effect on our understanding of literacy and how to teach critical multiliteracies. In his approach to critical literacy Freire provides us with a blueprint for the practice of making, unmaking and remaking words and texts and, in the process, the world. For Freire: To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to its namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. Men are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection. . . . It is in speaking their word that men transform the world by naming it. (Freire, 1972b: 61) This process is represented visually in Figure 23.2 and is tied to the processes of textual construction, deconstruction and reconstruction in Figure 23.3. The redesign cycle shows the importance of critical approaches to writing/designing and rewriting/redesigning texts. It is important to recognize that the word writing cannot be extended metaphorically to non-verbal texts in the way that reading can. While we can talk about reading gestures, film, clothing, photographs, bodies, space and so on, we do not talk about writing them. The word ‘design’, unlike the word ‘write’, does work across multiple modalities (NLG, 2000; Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001; Kress, 2003) – multiple forms of meaning making or semeiosis – you can design a dress, a page, a poster, furniture or a classroom. ‘Design’ can therefore be used as a catch-all word for imagining and producing texts. ‘Redesign’ refers to the practice of combining 272

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Name

See name as a problem

New naming

Figure 23.2 Freire’s cycle of naming and renaming.

Make Construct Design

Remake Reconstruct Redesign

Unmake Deconstruct

Figure 23.3 The redesign cycle.

and recombining semiotic resources so as to create possibilities for transformation (NLG, 1996). The redesign cycle is fundamental to a critical approach to literacy.

Critical writing Although most of the early work in critical literacy focused on critical reading, more recently the focus has shifted to include critical writing and design. I often give students a context for which they have to produce a paragraph of biodata, and to limit themselves to five sentences. So for example postgraduate students might be asked to write their biodata for a conference programme; and final year high school students for vacation employment. Limiting the number of sentences forces them to be selective. I then ask them to examine what they have written in response to the following kinds of questions. 1 2

What information did you put first? What did you put last? 273

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3 4 5 6 7

How did you name yourself? What adjectives did you choose? How confident or tentative are you? What information did you choose to include? What information did you omit?

The point of the activity is for students to understand that what they have produced is only one version of who they are and that their own writing can also be deconstructed and reconstructed. For example when I work with postgraduate students constructing their biodata for a conference, I ask whether they named themselves as students or researchers and what the consequences of their choice might be for whom they attract to hear them speak. The idea that they could see themselves as researchers (rather than as becoming-researchers) helps them to understand that writing is identity work. Without a sense of their own authority in relation to research, it is also difficult for these students to find their own positions from which to speak. Practice in redesigning texts that they read also prepares students for redesigning the texts that they write. This gives them greater control over the way they represent themselves and their ideas. Social practice oriented approaches to critical writing recognize that writing is fundamentally bound up with questions of power and identity. The work focused on academic writing in higher education (Ivanic, 1998; Kamler, 2001; Lillis, 2001, Kamler and Thomson, 2006) pays careful attention to the disciplinary norms that writers in the academy have to master. Academic texts are exclusive and excluding for both writers and readers. And writers new to the academy often experience a sense of alienation when they try to penetrate new discourse communities and often struggle to find an authoritative voice. Every semiotic choice, while working to position the reader, also positions the writer. Writing is identity work (Kamler and Thomson, 2006). Halliday’s genre theory provided the theoretical foundation for a genre-based approach to teaching writing in schools (for example Martin, 1985; Martin et al., 1987). In privileging the literacy practices of middle class children, schools did not make the ‘rules’ for producing the genres of school writing explicit enough for children whose home-based practices did not match those of school. The genre theorists therefore embarked on a project to describe the linguistic and structural features of six key genres for school, using Halliday’s Functional Grammar (Halliday, 1985), in order to increase students’ understanding of what was expected of them in producing these ‘powerful’ forms. I see this approach as critical as it sought to achieve greater equity in education; but in their focus on providing students’ access to these dominant forms they also reified them, missing out on possibilities for challenging and redesigning them. Other examples of critical writing practice for primary and secondary schools can be found in critical literacy materials for classrooms. Chalkface Press in Australia produced a series of workbooks that included the examination and rewriting of texts that were racist, sexist or elitist (for example Martino and Mellor, 1995; Mellor and Patterson, 1996). Post-colonial theory was used to examine colonial texts and to explore texts that developed the practice of ‘writing back’ (Kenworthy and Kenworthy, 1997; Martino, 1997). In the Critical Language Awareness Series (Janks, 1993) every workbook includes critical writing activities, as does Christensen’s (2000) Reading, Writing and Rising Up. Using a more Freirean approach, Vasquez’s (2004) work with young children includes many classroom projects in which three- to five-year-olds use writing – petitions, letters, plays, stories – as a form of social action to address problems that they have ‘named’. 274

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As yet, however, the practice of critical writing has not been developed as the main focus of critical literacy work in schools as it was, for example in Kamler’s (2001: 55–78) work with 70- to 85-year-old women on stories of ageing. ‘The purpose of the project was to confront the narrow range of negative images of ageing pervasive in our culture and to produce new stories written from the perspective of the older women’ (Kamler, 2001: 55). In this project, older women were given the opportunity to use writing to frame their subject positions differently. Using the redesign cycle as a basis for literacy teaching in school would not only establish reading, writing and rewriting as an ongoing practice, but it would establish students’ own production as open to repositioning. Learning how to read their own work critically would be integrated with their learning to read with and against texts written by their peers, journalists, advertisers, politicians, scientists and creative artists.

Critical literacy in practice A great deal about representation, critical reading and redesign can be illustrated using an image of Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, in her office, which I downloaded on 31 March (www.flickr.com/photos/smiteme/2896760619/). The photograph remains interesting despite her failed attempt to become the Vice-President of the United States. As we were not able to get permission to reprint this picture, readers need to access the image themselves. There are many versions of Palin sitting on the couch in her office, which can be found if one googles ‘Palin bearskin’. The first version that I encountered was published as a double-page spread in Newsweek, 29 August 2008, as part of the special issue on the Republican convention. Text 1 offers a description of the version of the image available at www.flicker. com.

Text 1

The picture is an image of Palin sitting on a couch in her Anchorage office. She sits on the left-hand side of the picture and appears to be looking at, and talking to, someone out of and to the left of the frame. Her twisted body and the position of her left arm and leg cut her off from the right side of the image. Occupying the right hand side of the image and sharing the couch, is the pelt of a large grisly bear, with its head facing in to opposite direction. The bear pelt and the stuffed Alaskan king crab claim the viewer’s attention because they take up most of the furniture and two-thirds of the image. Turned away from the bear and the crab, with her gaze and body directed to the left of frame, Palin seems at home with, and almost unaware of, the wildlife with whom she shares her office. The camera is positioned slightly above the crab and level with Palin and the bear. This positioning affords equal status to all three in the composition of the shot. Palin’s white jacket is in sharp contrast to the bear’s brown fur and the red tones of the crustacean. 275

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Here, aspects of Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) grammar of visual design have been used to underpin the description. Relative size and position of the participants, their gestures and gaze, the use of colour, camera angle and the overall composition of the shot have been considered. The lack of a clear focal point suggests that this is a snapshot, rather than a professional media shot. In a media shot Governor Palin would be facing the camera and she would be the focus of the composition. Here the shot is dominated by the bear and the crab because of the amount of space given to them. In addition, Palin’s gaze and the way the bear’s head faces pull the reader’s eye in different directions. Interpreting the processes of production and reception is more complex. Although first published in the Anchorage Daily News with a limited readership, the photograph was circulated around the world during the 2008 American presidential campaign and appears on a range of websites and blogs about Sarah Palin. The viewer is therefore anybody and everybody. A version of the picture also appeared on the Alaskan government website, but was subsequently removed. Readers opposed to trophy hunting and in favour of nature conservation are likely to find Palin’s choice of décor distasteful; others more focused on style might simply find it tasteless. The choice and combination of objects will appeal to viewers who favour a tough, no-nonsense woman capable of embracing masculine symbols, that, while suggesting her strength, simultaneously construct her as feminine in contrast to their untamed enormity. The internet image is accompanied by verbal texts that make the position of the text producers clear (see Text 2).

Text 2

Photo via Grizzly Bay by way of Kinship Circle. Copyright info via Grizzly Bay: Use text and photos freely. Help us spread the truth by adding our banner (see bottom). Caption: Photographs of Palin with her bear rug were published in the Anchorage Daily News amidst great controversy over the hunting of habituated bears around Katmai National Park and the McNeil River Sanctuary. Several weeks before the controversial 2007 Katmai Preserve hunt (where bears habituated to bear viewers were shot) Palin posed deliberately next to a dead bear to a make a point that she will do everything in her power to make sure bears and other wildlife are mercilessly shot for pleasure in Alaska. ---------- Forwarded message ---------From: Kinship Circle - kinshipcircle [at] accessus.net Date: Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 3:19 PM Subject: ACT/ Palin¹s Pro-Death Platform KINSHIP CIRCLE PRIMARY - PERMISSION TO CROSS-POST AS WRITTEN 9/27/08: Palin’s Pro-Death Platform On Animals (Continued) 276

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(Box Cont’d) Next Thursday, October 2, Washington University in St. Louis hosts the vice presidential debate featuring Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joe Biden. With the spotlight on vice-prez nominees, you have a great opportunity to send comments to newspapers, blogs and discussions. Let voters know about Governor Sarah Palin’s relentless assault on wildlife and environment. Whatever your political affiliation, Palin is clearly NOT the candidate for animals . . . and animals are the focus of this list.

This image is offered as free text (even though it does not own the copyright) because the organization opposes Palin’s position on the hunting of habituated bears and therefore her candidature. Claiming to know the truth, they offer a highly positioned account, which constructs Palin as merciless and hell-bent on ‘shooting bears and other wildlife for pleasure’, for which there is no evidence in the image. What is left unsaid is whether or not the bears’ habituation to people was causing a problem in the Parks or not. It is clear that the conditions of production underpin the wide circulation of the image. It is possible to redesign the image and the verbal anchoring. Imagine the same photograph shot with the camera facing Palin, with her in the centre of the frame in sharp focus and the background blurred. The caption could construct the wildlife in her office as symbols of Alaska and her commitment to life in its harsh conditions. Such a reconstructed image would be no more or less ‘truthful’, it would just appeal to and offend different people. In teaching critical literacy, what matters is that students learn that texts are positioned, and that different positioning has different effects. They need to manipulate texts to see how they could have been constructed differently. Even in low technology contexts, it is possible to cut texts up and to rearrange their elements. Students need to describe texts as objectively as possible and then compare their descriptions to see that all descriptions are also interpretations, my description included. In Text 1, my choice of the word ‘sharing’, for example anthropomorphizes dead animals and is implicitly proconservation. The choice of the word ‘wildlife’ adds a wry tone that supports the idea of the décor being tasteless. In Text 3, I offer an alternative description to show how it is possible to reposition a text without changing the content of the information provided.

Text 3

Sarah Palin appears to be looking at, and talking to, someone out of and to the left of the frame. Turned away and closed off from the bear pelt and stuffed Alaskan king crab, Palin’s gaze and body suggest that she dislikes having dead animals in her office. Palin’s white jacket is in sharp contrast to the bear’s brown fur and the (Continued) 277

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(Box Cont’d) reddish tones of the crab. The bear together with the stuffed Alaskan king crab claim the viewer’s attention because they take up most of the furniture and twothirds of the image but the positioning of the camera, above the crab and level with Palin and the bear, affords equal status to all three in the composition of the shot.

What we learn from Bourdieu (1984) is that what counts as taste differs in different communities and it is perfectly possible that the objects in Palin’s office are considered to be marks of distinction in Alaska. As a non-Alaskan, my reading is situated outside of these codes. I start from a non-engaged reading position. What this foundation of social theory and social semiotics provides is an antihegemonic vigilance that sees textual practices as forms of social action constituted by selection from a range of semiotic options so as to produce particular social effects. While the signs themselves may be arbitrary (Saussure, 1990) their selection, combination and sequencing is always motivated. What critical linguistics offers specifically is an Table 23.2 An example of how one could describe the redesigned linguistic features selected in Text 3 Text

Linguistic feature

Description

Sarah Palin

Theme position (the first bit of the clause)

Sarah Palin is the jumping off point for the text.

appears to be looking at, and talking to,

modality

No claim to certainty.

someone

participant

An unknown person not thing

out of and to the left of the frame.

prepositions

Spatial organization of image

Turned away and closed off from

prepositions

Show bodily positioning

the bear pelt and stuffed Alaskan king crab,

lexis

Implies that the animals are dead and on display

Palin’s gaze and body

lexis about the body

Shows bodily positioning

suggest that she dislikes having

modality

Tentative

dead animals

lexis

Animals are explicitly named as dead.

in her office.

prepositions

Palin’s white jacket is in sharp lense, cohesion (antonymy). contrast to the bear’s brown fur and . . .

278

Provides the context The use of tense makes the statement categorical.

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understanding of the range of options in the system of linguistic signs, and how they work to position the text, the writer and the reader. Table 23.2 provides an example of how one could describe the redesigned linguistic features selected in Text 3. This kind of detailed description lays the ground for further interpretation and explanation (Fairclough, 1989; see Figure 23.1). Text 3, although a redesign of both Texts 1 and 2, is also not a neutral text. It too is positioned and positioning. Hence the need for a redesign cycle: each naming needs to be interrogated and leads in turn to renaming. This process highlights the interested nature of all texts.

Conclusion Critical literacy pedagogy suggests an orientation to the language and literacy practices that ask students to consider the interests at work in texts and to make judgements about who benefits and who is disadvantaged by textual positionings. This is an orientation that should not be confined to the English curriculum or reduced to a slot on the timetable because it is directed ultimately at all textual practices. In English classes we can provide students with the resources they need for working critically with verbal, visual and multimodal signs. We can give them opportunities for practice in construction, deconstruction and reconstruction, and provide activities to scaffold their learning. However, what really matters is that students develop a critical orientation to events and practices in the world and their representations in texts, so that they recognize the interests that are at play. In a world marked by social injustice, critical literacy continues to help us understand the effects of power and the need for redress. Transformative social action requires ethical redesign that values diversity and ensures that power is used for the benefit of all.

References Barton, D., Hamilton, M. and Ivanic, R. (2000). Situated Literacies. London: Routledge. Bhabha, H. (Ed.) (1990). Nation and Narration. London: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction (trans. R. Nice). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power (trans. J. B. Thompson). Cambridge: Polity Press. Cameron, D. (1990). The Feminist Critique of Language. London: Routledge. Christensen, L. (2000). Reading, Writing and Rising Up. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools. Clark, R. and Ivanic, R. (1997). The Politics of Writing. London: Routledge. Clark, R., Fairclough, N., Ivanic, R. and Martin-Jones, M. (1987). Critical Language Awareness. Unpublished manuscript. Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (Eds) (2000). Multiliteracies. London: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and Power. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (Ed.) (1992). Critical Language Awareness. London: Longman. Foucault, M. (1970). The Order of Discourse. Inaugural lecture at the College de France. In M. Shapiro (Ed.) Language and Politics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Fowler, R., Hodge, B., Kress, G. and Trew, T. (1979). Language and Control. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

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Freebody, P. and Luke, A. (1990). Literacies Programmes: Debates and demands in cultural contexts. Prospect: A Journal of Australian TESOL 11: 7–16. Freire, P. (1972a). Cultural Action for Freedom. Harmondsworth: Peguin. Freire, P. (1972b). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Gee, J. (1990). Social Linguistics and Literacies. London: Falmer Press. Gee, J. (2005). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge. Halliday, M.A.K. (1985). An Introduction to Functional Grammar (1st edn). London: Arnold. Heath, S.B. (1983). Ways with Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hodge, R. and Kress, G. (1979). Language as Ideology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Ivanic, R. (1998). Writing and Identity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Janks, H. (Ed.) (1993a). Critical Language Awareness Series. Johannesburg: Hodder and Stoughton and Wits University Press. Kamler, B. (2001). Relocating the Personal. Albany, NY: State University of New York. Kamler, B. and Thomson, P. (2006). Helping Doctoral Students Write. London: Routledge. Kenworthy, C. and Kenworthy, S. (1997). First Australians, New Australians. Part 2 Changing Places. Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Press. Kress, G. (1993). Against Arbitrariness: The social production of the sign as a foundational issue in critical discourse analysis. Discourse 4(2): 169–92. Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal Discourse. London: Arnold. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images: The grammar of visual design (2nd edn). London: Routledge. Lankshear, C. and Knoble, M. (Eds) (2006). New Literacies: Everyday practices and classroom learning. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Lankshear, C., Snyder, I. and Green, B. (2000). Teachers and Technoliteracy. Crow’s Nest, St Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin. Lillis, T. (2001). Student Writing: Access, regulation, desire. London: Routledge. Martin, J. (1985). Factual Writing: Exploring and challenging social reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Martin, J., Christie, F. and Rothery, J. (1987). Social Processes of Education: A reply to Sawyer and Watson (and others). In I. Reid (Ed.) The Place of Genre in Learning: Current debates. Geelong, VIC: Deakin University. Martino, W. (1997) New Australians, Old Australians. Part 1: From the Margins. Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press. Martino, W. and Mellor, B. (1995) Gendered Fictions. Perth, WA: Chalkface Press. May, S. (Ed.) (1999). Critical Multiculturalism. London: Falmer Press. Mellor, B. and Patterson, A. (1996). Investigating Texts. Perth, WA: Chalkface Press. Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neffe, D. and González, N. (1992). Funds of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into practice 31(2): 132–41. New London Group (NLG) (2000). A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing social futures. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (Eds) Multiliteracies. London: Routledge, Vol. 66, pp. 9–42. Nieto, S. (2002). Language, Culture and Teaching Critical Perspectives for a New Century. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates. Pennycook, A. (1994). The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. Oxford: Longman. Saussure, F. (1990). Course in General Linguistics (trans. R. Harris). London: Duckworth. Snyder, I. (2002). Silicon Literacies: Communication, innovation and education in the electronic age. London: Routledge. Snyder, I. and Beavis, C. (Eds) (2004). Doing Literacy Online: Teaching, learning and playing in an electronic world. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

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Soudien, C. (2008). Schooling, Class and the Making of Youth Identity in South Africa. Cape Town: David Phillip. Street, B. (1984). Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Threadgold, T. (1997). Feminist Poetics: Poesis, performance, histories. London: Routledge. Vasquez. V. (2004). Negotiating Critical Literacies with Young Children. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Volosinov, V.N. (1986). Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (trans. L. Matejka and I.R. Titunik). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weedon, C. (1987). Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Weedon, C. (2004). Identity, Culture and Narratives of Different and Belonging. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

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24 Becoming culturally responsive: a review of learning in field experiences for prospective literacy educators Melissa Mosley, Lisa J. Cary and Melody Zoch

Cultural responsiveness is a construct that emerges from the intersections of three related areas of research in literacy. First, for some time, researchers have been interested in the integration of multicultural texts in the classroom and the ways in which multicultural curriculum supports learners (Bollin, 2007; Boyle-Baise, 2005; Moore-Hart, 2002; Shamai and Paul-Binyamin, 2004). In addition, researchers have more recently taken into consideration the ways education allows space for students to develop the dispositions or knowledge to cross borders in a globalized world and society (Deng, 2004; Luke, 2004). Finally, researchers have considered the ‘responsiveness’ dimension, thinking about diversity and how teachers respond to students in culturally sensitive ways in cross-cultural settings towards greater understanding and increased student achievement (Kambutu and Nganga, 2008; Kidd et al., 2008; Lenski et al., 2005). Being culturally responsive, then, includes developing notions of what culture is, what culture looks like in the curriculum, the dispositions and language practices associated with cultural sensitivity, and how culturally responsive curriculum prepares students for a globalized society. The conceptualization of ‘cultural responsiveness’ raises a few core questions, however. What is culture in a globalized society? How do we ascertain what aspects of culture mediate learning? The complexity of the notion of culture makes it a great individual challenge and a challenge for the field. One way that researchers have addressed this question is to consider the spaces of knowing that the curriculum and interactions around curriculum open for students. Rather than reduce culture to a fixed set of attributes, then, cultural responsiveness includes viewing culture as shifting and socially situated (Cary, 2006). On a day-to-day basis, across classroom contexts, cultural responsiveness varies in how it sounds and looks. Across settings, however, we take the perspective in this chapter that cultural responsiveness in literacy teaching is evident when students use language and texts to construct powerful, multi-voiced, globally situated, and transformative literate practices (Foster et al., 2003).

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In this review of literature, we wondered what teacher preparation looks like in the area of literacy and culture, or cultural responsiveness. Thus, we ask the following question: What have researchers found about how experiences for prospective teachers lead to cultural responsiveness in literacy teaching? The ‘responsiveness’ dimension of culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) in literacy also calls for a discussion of what it looks like and sounds like when culture becomes part of a repertoire of pedagogical literacy practices across geographical and socio-political contexts, or the multidimensionality of how it is conceptualized in the field. Indeed, with regard to Anglo, white, Western-oriented teachers, the ‘responsiveness’ question comes to our attention quite often in the teacher education community. Although all teachers come to teaching with culture, language, geographical location, and situated sense of community, the idea of being culturally responsive is complex. CRP can be an elusive concept and requires a great deal of work – especially reflection on practice and theory building – work that can happen in teacher preparation programmes (Cochran-Smith, 2003; Joshee, 2003; Santoro and Allard, 2005; Shamai and Paul-Binyamin, 2004; Sleeter, 2008).

Theoretical perspectives In order to interpret changes in practices, researchers who study cultural responsiveness and literacy teaching often draw from sociocultural theory that suggests that people ‘become’ particular types of people through their participation in social practices and interactions, using language and other human action (Vygotsky, 1987; Wertsch, 1991, 1998). Sociocultural perspectives focus on the various ‘practices’ in which people participate and the ideologies they bring to those practices (Street, 1984). Teachers learn both by observing practices that are contextual, shared, and part of the fabric of life in institutions and societies, and envisioning the pedagogies that may follow (Gee, 2008; NLG, 1996). A popular place to situate culturally responsive teaching within a teacher preparation programme is in field-based experiences, including literacy teaching practicum and service-learning (Saud and Johnston, 2006). Field experiences appear differently in different international contexts, but commonly include service learning, international exchanges, and practicum – usually one-on-one tutoring. As we review in this chapter, university students in teacher education programmes in the US usually have little to no experience teaching culturally diverse students (Bollin, 2007; Boyle-Baise, 2005; Hale, 2008). Servicelearning is credited with benefits such as enhancing student outcomes (cognitive, affective, and ethical); recognizing structures of power and privilege in the dominant society; changes in the discursive construction of students (Matusov and Smith, 2007; Worthy and Patterson, 2001); taking responsibility for academic outcomes of students (Brock et al., 2007; Cooper, 2007; Nierstheimer et al., 2000); increasing students’ sense of civic responsibility; and reinforcing concepts taught within coursework (Borden, 2007; Butin, 2003; Carrington and Saggers, 2008). Knowledge building is often the primary interest and goal of service-learning without a focus or emphasis on shifting the curriculum and pedagogy of the teacher, such as the post- structuralist definition outlined by Butin (2003). This definition posits service-learning as not only building cross-cultural understanding, dispositions, and beliefs, but as also changing ‘the definitions and boundaries of the teaching process’ (Butin, 2003: 1683–4). 283

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Drawing on sociocultural perspectives, teachers come to know the role of culture in teaching literacy. In our own work and review of other studies, the question looms, what does it mean to gain insight on a students’ culturally situated knowledge? From a sociocultural perspective, practices hold the answers. Through the practices of getting to a know a student’s interests, strategies for reading and writing, his/her beliefs, etc., teachers come to know how to teach that student. Cultural responsiveness includes ‘getting to know the child’, but also the history of his or her interests, how teachers relate to the child’s life outside the classroom, and larger social issues that are present in the geopolitical context. Sociocultural theory also allows us to see the ways in which culture is defined and who has the power to define culture, What Gutiérrez called a sociocritical view of literacy practices (Gutiérrez, 2008; Gutiérrez and Rogoff, 2003). Focusing only on interests, without a deeper understanding of culture as socially, historically, and politically situated, may not be the most appropriate knowledge base for effective practice. A teacher is always working from what he/she knows, from practices that are linked to his or her own beliefs (Freire, 1995). Theories about what constitutes culturally responsive literacy pedagogy and the role of culture in literacy learning are always under construction and can be located on a continuum from ethnocentric literacy teaching to cultural responsiveness (McCarthy, 2003; Rogers and Mosley, 2008; Solomona et al., 2005; Trainor, 2005; Valenzuela, 1999). There is a dialogic relationship between practical knowledge and the contexts in which our literacy practices take shape, contexts that are imbued with relations of power, racism, and social inequities (Janks, 2000). Therefore, when thinking about knowledge construction from a socio-critical perspective, we ask questions, such as, what materials are chosen with the desire to ‘give voice’ to others? How are students framed by these choices, and how do these choices open up new spaces of knowing? (Aveling, 2006). Putting this discussion into the context of schooling in the present day, we acknowledge that teachers are asked to do more than ever in the area of literacy teaching (Barone and Morrell, 2006), and teacher educators are asked to do more than ever to prepare teachers of literacy in teacher education programmes (Anders et al., 2000; Barone and Morrell, 2006; Hoffman and Pearson, 2000). Across contexts and times, there have been examples of literacy education as praxis, or as an exploration and deep understanding of how literacy has been used historically to divide and provide access to an elite group, while limiting opportunities for others to learn literacy. Literacy education, therefore, has denied many individuals full participation in a democratic society (Guinier, 2004; Prendergast, 2003). From a post-structuralist perspective, literacy can be a tool to oppress as well as an expression of freedom, depending on the local and global movements that encompass practices.

Review of literature In our review of the literature, we chose to focus specifically on studies of pre-service teachers who participated in field experiences as part of their programme of study across international contexts. We made this decision based on our belief that having experiences with diverse groups of learners is an integral part of pre-service teacher education towards building culturally responsive practices. Often these experiences consist of pre-service teachers working one-on-one or in small groups with students 284

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over a semester or even a year, either within a structured literacy practicum or in a service-learning setting that relates to literacy instruction. First we began by identifying journals from the last two decades (1990–2009), both international and national, that publish work in the field of teacher preparation and culture. Our search yielded 13 journals and one yearbook. Within these resources, we identified individual articles using the following search terms: literacy, multicultural, culture, culturally relevant/responsive, teacher study groups, action research, teacher learning, language, and critical literacy. In addition, we read the abstracts of articles in these journals to find articles that might have been missed in our initial search. Our next step was to read and arrange the articles into groups and eliminate articles that did not directly relate to literacy and field experience opportunities. One of the most common approaches to studying learning to be culturally responsive is case-study research. Case-study is a method for learning about a complex instance or phenomena in a bounded system. In the search for meaning and understanding, the researcher identifies the system and then constructs the case through systematic data collection and rich, thick description (Stake, 1995). Data in case-study research often include relevant documents and artefacts of pre-service teacher learning, interviews, participant-observation, and lesson plans (Bogdan and Biklen, 1992; Merriam, 1998). Cases provide grounded examples of changes in pedagogical knowledge and beliefs as a result of experiences (Bransford et al., 2005) and are often utilized within pre-service teacher education in order to demonstrate links between theory, learning, and practice (Shulman, 2004). Thus, they have the potential to increase reflection and are an extension of theories, as they are rooted in actual experiences.

Outcomes of field experiences on the process of becoming In our review of the literature as described above, we found the following outcomes of field experiences for prospective teachers: • • • • •

developing teaching skill or pedagogical knowledge; taking responsibility for student outcomes; building an ethic of care: relationship building; raising personal awareness of cultural difference; and awareness of social justice and injustices.

We also heard varying ways of defining cultural responsiveness across the studies. Here, we report on each of these findings and integrate the findings into a discussion of how we might, as a research community, pursue new lines of inquiry around the development of culturally responsive pedagogy in literacy. Developing teaching skill or pedagogical knowledge A common finding among the articles we reviewed was that cross-cultural field experience increased pre-service teachers’ pedagogical knowledge (Brock et al., 2007; Hedrick et al., 2000; Moore-Hart, 2002). For example Moore-Hart (2002) conducted a programme evaluation of a reading practicum for undergraduate pre-service teachers. She compiled a case study of the practicum based on data from 20 pre-service teachers and their tutees, drawing on participant-observation, collection of artefacts, and questionnaires of 285

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participants and their tutees. She found that pre-service teachers became more confident and successful using multicultural literature – one dimension of CRP – with their reading partners over time and were able to increase their students’ reading fluency through shared reading. She also found that pre-service teachers scaffolded students in writing based on their lived experiences and connections with religion and African– American history. Hedrick et al. (2000), through an analysis of email conversations between university course instructors and 21 pre-service teachers, looked at the increasing ability of literacy tutors to adjust to the ‘cognitive cues and needs of their students’ through careful observation (Hedrick et al., 2000: 52). They found that tutors increasingly took on the role of a guide based on how they read their students’ needs, or how they enacted responsive teaching. Brock et al. (2007) watched the literacy tutoring practices of 23 European–American male and females in their 20s, 30s, and 40s – pre-service teachers – with students from diverse backgrounds. The authors found that in peer debriefing sessions, the participants discussed the effectiveness of pedagogical strategies based on how the students received the lessons. One group of tutors fully engaged with the ways in which different pedagogical tools might support diverse learners. In this study the more effective, culturally responsive groups of tutors improved more in their teaching practices than the less effective groups based on their perceptions of pedagogical competencies (Stanovich, 1986). The authors concluded that although field experiences can be beneficial to pre-service teachers’ development, teacher educators also have an obligation to ensure that pre-service teachers are supported in their feelings of efficacy. Responsibility for student outcomes Related to the construction of pedagogical knowledge, cross-cultural experiences in literacy practicum have increased pre-service teachers’ ability to take responsibility for the academic outcomes of students, a dimension of CRP (Brock et al., 2007; Nierstheimer et al., 2000; Worthy and Patterson, 2001). Through examinations of teachers’ reflective writing after literacy tutoring, across studies, researchers found that pre-service teachers’ feelings of success are tightly intermeshed with the success of their students in the tutoring sessions. For example Nierstheimer et al. (2000), in a study of 67 pre-service teachers’ literacy tutoring practices, interviews, written responses, group discussions, and course artefacts, examined tutoring in a reading programme. The authors found that tutoring experiences moved pre-service teachers from assigning a diverse group of students’ literacy problems from someone else – children’s parents and home – toward accepting responsibility for struggling readers’ instruction in terms of offering specific literacy practices that teachers could utilize. In a report of a literacy practicum described above, Brock et al. (2007) described two teams of pre-service teachers working with elementary students and how they constructed their own role as well as their students’ literacy skills. One notable difference between the two teams was the pre-service teachers’ notions of who was responsible for the success of the student. In one group, pre-service teachers blamed the students when lessons did not go well. However, the other team took responsibility for the students’ achievement. The researchers made a link between the two teams’ flexibility of pedagogies used, the personalization of students, and the learning of pre-service teachers. 286

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Building an ethic of care/relationship building In several studies of tutoring programmes, care and relationships have been studied (Lysaker et al., 2005; Worthy and Patterson, 2001). Researchers interested in this literature often cite work on caring to conceptualize the connection between caring for the student and cognitive scaffolding (Goldstein, 2002). Lysaker and colleagues (2005) conducted case studies of tutoring pairs of nine white, European–American teachers tutoring African–American and Latino students in literacy, drawing on reflective logs of tutors and observations of the tutoring sessions. The researchers found that the tutors who were happy in their sessions reported ‘joy and emotional fulfillment about spending time with their buddies, with trying particular instructional approaches, and with being a part of the learning process’ (Lysaker et al., 2005: 29). They were hopeful about the achievement and academic success of their tutees and kept a positive tone throughout their sessions. The tutors made connections between the students’ literate behaviours and how it feels to be a reader in the context of the tutoring session, linking affect with cognitive skill. In Worthy and Patterson’s (2001) study of literacy, tutoring pairs with a design similar to that of Lysaker et al. (2005), the tutors pointed to the complexity and difficulty of building relationships, the emotional investment necessary in literacy teaching, and the link of student motivation to outcomes for students. The tutors also felt ‘a sense of obligation to enter into a caring relationship because they were responsible for teaching their child’ (Worthy and Patterson, 2001: 15). Worthy and Patterson write: In addition to other components of the methods class and tutoring program, the caring relationships that preservice teachers established with their students played a major role in their learning, confidence, and appreciation of the responsive nature of teaching and learning. Tutors also commented on the positive influence of relationships on students’ motivation and learning. (Worthy and Patterson, 2001: 18)

Raising personal awareness of cultural difference Raising awareness within pre-service teachers of their own cultural, racial, and ethnic positioning as well as their preconceived notions of diversity amongst different racial and ethnic groups is another component of teacher preparation programmes (Dantas, 2007; Kambutu and Nganga, 2008; Mahon, 2007; Pence and Macgillivray, 2008; Sahin, 2008). CRP rests upon the willingness of the educator to recognize him/herself as having a cultural and racial history (Bollin, 1996, 2007; Cooper, 2007; Hale, 2008; Johnson, 2002; Malone et al., 2002). Cooper (2007), for example, studied pre-service teachers enrolled in a diversity awareness programme who completed field experiences designed in a connected, sequential manner. Of 42 pre-service teachers, 37 were European– American, four were African–American, and one was Puerto Rican. The awareness programme sought to allow the pre-service teachers to first learn about themselves and then move into cultural immersion through community-based experiences. At the beginning of the semester, most pre-service teachers were resistant and even feared working within other communities. By the end, Cooper concluded that all the activities conjured 287

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up emotions while developing a stronger commitment to understanding and helping students. Bollin (2007) conducted a case study of 110 racially diverse, American pre-service teachers who tutored (across subject areas) minority children in the homes of low-income Hispanic families, in an after-school tutoring programme, or on their own. Bollin analysed the pre-service teachers’ reflections and journal entries required for a course focused on diversity. She found that some pre-service teachers demonstrated a positive racial identity in their writing as they gained an appreciation of Hispanic culture. Others reported only changes in their thinking as previous prejudices and stereotypes were challenged. Bollin concluded that the service-learning component of the teacher education programme strongly influenced the thinking of pre-service teachers in ways that lead to an ethic of care for the students. Other research confirms Bollin’s findings, that raising awareness of cultural difference is often accompanied by changes in how pre-service teachers view themselves as cultural and racial as well as challenging stereotypes. Awareness of social justice/injustices Previously mentioned studies highlight some of the ways in which field experiences raise awareness of social justices and injustices (Boyle-Baise, 2005; Burant and Kirby, 2002; Carrington and Saggers, 2008; Hale, 2008). Boyle-Baise’s (2005) efforts to create community-oriented teachers through service-learning and coursework dealt with culturally responsive teaching, funds of knowledge, and asset-based community development. She examined the learning of 24 pre-service teachers of colour through an analysis of interviews, reflective essays, class discussions, and reflective writing. The pre-service teachers were American and enrolled in an honours seminar on multicultural service learning. The experience resulted in pre-service teachers’ recognition of the wealth of knowledge of older African–Americans about racism in earlier days and helped them gain confidence to face racial tensions in their own lives. Although not literacy focused, participants explored connections with the literate history of the community in which they worked. As an implication of their work with pre-service teachers, Burant and Kirby (2002) suggest that pre-service teachers work in communities in order to engage more with the literature about how schooling structures and perpetuates social inequalities. In Carrington and Saggers’s (2008) study of an inclusive education unit and corresponding field experience in Queensland, the authors found that marginalization, segregation, power dynamics, and injustice came to the surface when pre-service teachers engaged in service-learning. Hale (2008), in a previously described study, found that servicelearning gave pre-service teachers a more critical perspective of educational issues facing English language learners and developed skills to become agents of change while expressing interest in active research. It is clear across studies in international contexts that the course focus must explore theory as well as practice to accomplish the important aspect of CRP. Without a sense of injustice, it seems unlikely that pre-service teachers will engage in these kinds of transformative pedagogy. Most studies in this category were not literacy focused. We saw a sharp contrast in how social inequities or social justice were addressed in literacy practica across the literature review, which leads us to a critical evaluation of the studies we reviewed. 288

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A critical evaluation of the studies reviewed As stated previously, there is no one authentic position for a teacher to take up in order to address issues of equity nor an easy recipe for preparing teachers to teach for social justice. Although there seems to be consensus that asking the pre-service teacher to step into an unfamiliar context helped raise awareness of the need to consider culture in literacy teaching, the experiences also led to the development of teaching skills or pedagogical knowledge; teachers taking responsibility for student outcomes; an ethic of care and relationships with the students; an increased personal awareness of cultural differences; and a clear focus on social justice/injustices. As a result, we can see that the construction of culturally responsive teaching is multifaceted. One vital point to consider, however, is that there should be no assumptions of the pre-service teacher as ‘normal’ and the community and students as ‘other’. Rather, the focus is on how the pre-service teacher draws on cultural knowledge of her/himself in relation to students in order to work on issues of social justice and equity. We noticed through the studies the variation in how pre-service teachers engaged with culturally responsive pedagogy. In some cases, pre-service teachers focused on the academic successes of the students by being there to help with projects and homework (e.g. Bollin, 2007). In other cases, the pre-service teachers thought deeply about the students’ emotional needs and the links between cognitive and emotional development (e.g. Worthy and Patterson, 2001). However, there was very little exploration of the nature of the practices that pre-service teachers used to engage in this work with students; we know little of how pedagogy was enacted in caring and culturally responsive ways. Nor did we understand exactly how theories of diversity or multiculturalism linked to the practices of the pre-service teacher. In other words, we wondered about the link between literature selection, materials, discursive strategies, and other pedagogical considerations and the process of becoming a culturally responsive teacher. We wonder, how do the findings of the studies we reviewed reflect a critical examination of the ways in which practices are developed and interrogated? How are questions of pedagogy interconnected with notions of power and discourse in experiences for prospective teachers? Much of the reviewed work on ‘becoming’ culturally responsive literacy pedagogues includes little discussion of how pre-service teachers talk with students or how the discursive construction of students changes over time in tutoring sessions (for exceptions, see Matusov and Smith, 2007; Worthy and Patterson, 2001). Nor were there direct or specific mentions of race, ethnicity, or language difference in the questions associated with each study. Although some studies did include the area of ‘social justice’, there was little emphasis placed on the links between practicum experiences and economic or political empowerment. One potential direction for moving towards a closer look at this notion of ‘becoming’ is to interrogate which research methodologies might lead us to deeper understanding of cases of pre-service teachers. McVee (2004) in her work with teachers in a literacy masters degree course conducted an analysis of her students’ narratives about a bordercrossing experience. The teachers in her study interrogated racism head-on in their narratives of border crossing, and McVee was able to ascertain the affordances and limitations of their narrative constructions as they were manifest in their stories. Rogers and colleagues (2006) also make a shift toward a more complicated understanding of 289

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equity and diversity through the use of dialogic narratives in their literacy teacher education courses that pushed students to think about tough issues ‘such as cultural essentialism, the relationship of power to language and literacy practices, and the inequities related to social class and education’ (Rogers et al., 2006: 221). Through narrative inquiry and discourse analytic approaches, researchers might better interrogate the discursive shifts – especially the discursive construction of self – associated with becoming a culturally responsive teacher.

Recommendations for educational practice Looking across these two main areas of research in teacher education, we see that crosscultural experiences in practicum and service-learning provide contexts for ‘becoming’ culturally responsive. In order to understand teacher learning, as a research community, we might move beyond our understanding of how prospective teachers learn to understand what it looks like and sounds like when practices are examined through the lenses of cultural and historical discourses about race, ethnicity, culture, diversity, and difference.

Conclusion Becoming a literacy teacher means more than developing pedagogical practices that draw on students’ cultural resources; it requires developing a pedagogical theory to question inequalities, participate politically, resist oppression, and take advantage of educational opportunities (Edelsky, 2006). The review of literature illustrates that more research is needed from a post-structuralist viewpoint, to look at border crossing, changes in literacy practices and teacher learning, and further, the ways in which prospective teachers become cognizant of their participation in regimes of power. Specifically, a poststructuralist perspective suggests that in positioning ourselves as tutors who give back to the community, we are necessarily involved in asymmetrical and static power relations, a dichotomy between teaching and learning and the essentialization of who we and they are. (Butin, 2003: 1684) Teaching is a political act indeed; but often, approaches to teacher education that centre on diversity and social justice are considered separately from discussions of literacy teacher preparation. Both in practice and in research, we call for a closer examination of culturally responsive practice and for becoming a literacy teacher within the frameworks of equity, justice, and political participation.

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25 The text environment and learning to read: windows and mirrors shaping literate lives Misty Sailors and James Hoffman

If we accept John Dewey’s (1956) assertion that the school curriculum should reflect life not just preparation for life, then a proper literacy curriculum should offer learners opportunities to engage in the range of literacy activities they encounter inside and outside of schools – in the present and in the future. Ideally, the environment for literacy learning should reflect this perspective of curriculum and should act as both a window into literacy lives outside of school and a mirror back into the literacy activity within a school. The window perspective on the literacy environment suggests the need for opportunities for learners to look out into the world as well as opportunities for the world to come into the classroom. The mirror perspective is one that emphasizes the power of reflection on learning on the individuals and community within a classroom or school. We will expand this critical stance and theoretical principles to explore the responsibilities for teacher educators, researchers, and staff developers to ‘disclose the undisclosed’ and support teachers in the challenges they face. We will report on the research, theory, and practices related to the literacy environment as it mediates the curriculum to support learning. We limit our attention to the elementary or primary grades where the formal attention to ‘reading’ as a curriculum area is highest. We write this chapter informed by three principles: first, the text environment for learning to read is not just physical, but also psychological, social, and even political; second, the text environment is (co)-constructed, not predetermined, not necessarily purchased, and certainly not prepackaged; and third, the literacy environment is dynamic, never static and, in an ideal world, always changing. We have organized the chapter to reflect the interaction between practice and theory. We adopt this structure to reflect our understanding of and commitment to the development of ‘theories of the middle range’ to guide educational practice (Merton, 1964; Shulman, 2004). Middle range theories focus on critical points of intersection between practice and theory. Middle range theories strive to explain complex processes in highly contextualized and familiar problem spaces. The text environment of the classroom is a problem space in literacy practices that demands constant attention with decisions that 294

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have direct consequences for learning outcomes. Our goal in this chapter is to theorize around these practical choices and the related literacy learning.

The classroom literacy environment in practice Toward a middle range theory of the text environment and literacy learning We believe there is much to learn by assuming a grounded approach to the study of the text environment – one that is rooted in the ‘middle’ at the convergence of theory and practice. Merton (1957: 9, 1968) maintained that theories ‘of the middle range’ are important for practice disciplines. Theories of middle range identify a few key variables: to present clear propositions, have limited scope and be presented in a way that leads to the derivation of testable hypotheses. We are still early in the process of articulating a ‘middle range’ theory of the text environment and literacy learning, but we do believe there is a basis for such a theory set out in the research conducted thus far. All classrooms offer learners a literacy environment. The classroom literacy environment has physical qualities (they ‘look like’), but they have social and psychological dimensions as well. These dimensions emerge as a consequence of and in the context of literacy practices (i.e. work, activity, routines). While the learners may bring literacy practices into the classroom that are unsanctioned (e.g. text messaging), the major focus for a mid-range theory is on the intentional work introduced by the teacher to promote learning. The focus for practices introduced into the classroom (e.g. surface features of language, communication, action, aesthetic response) and the demands placed on the learner (e.g. challenge level, risks, ambiguity) feed a cycle of text production and consumption. The new work produced may become a source of reflection on and a scaffold for new learning. Optimal text environments are those that scaffold the learner individually and the class collectively to succeed in subsequent and more challenging literacy tasks. The level of resourcing of the classroom with imported texts may contribute to the effectiveness of the text environment but the local texts are the most essential and influential. Questions such as: Where did this text (produced in the past) come from? What are you working on now that is new? and, How is this text useful to you in what you are doing now (or next)? can reveal the quality of the text environment in supporting learning – especially when these questions are addressed to both teachers and learners. Literacy growth reflects the focus for, the challenge within, and the support mediated through the literacy environment. We see enormous potential for research that focuses on the development of teacher knowledge around the creation and use of the literacy environment. In discussing the knowledge base for teaching, Lee Shulman (2004) claims that the ‘wisdom of practice’ is the least studied and potentially most important source of teacher knowledge. Practice in teaching, he suggests, is subject to individual and collective amnesia because it occurs at a moment in time with no one else observing and there is no record left behind. He claims that unlike professions such as architecture (which pursues its creations in both plans and edifices) and law (which builds a case literature of opinions), teaching is devoid of history and practice. While we agree with Shulman’s larger point on professional knowledge, we would argue that the text environment does 295

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function as something of a history of practice and offers opportunity for inspection. Further, and perhaps associated with its tangible qualities, the text environment offers a fertile space for the study of ‘situated practices’ as the source of wisdom. We turn now from this theoretical perspective ‘in the middle range’ to examine the research that has been specific to the literacy environment of the classroom. Our goal is to uncover the ways in which research has, can and might in the future inform a mid-range theory of the relationship between the text environment and the teaching of reading.

Research on the role of print-rich classrooms and reading development There appears to be consensus within the field of reading as to the role of classroom literacy environments in literacy development; researchers have agreed that ‘print laboratories (Searfoss and Readence, 1983) and classrooms that are ‘filled’ (Pressley et al., 1996) or ‘flooded’ with print (Cambourne, 2000) are important to the literacy development of children. Over the years, research has looked at what is found inside of and the quality of the texts within print-rich classrooms, as well as who is using those texts and how they are being used. Other studies have directly explored the role of print-rich classrooms and their importance on literacy learning. In this section, we present a chronological examination of the research on the print inside classrooms and the literacy development of children within those classrooms. We have selected to present this research chronologically as it demonstrates the expanding notion of ‘what counts’ and ‘for whom’.

Documenting the importance of print-rich environments Early studies with young children The earliest of the studies that examined the role of print-rich environments in classroom settings were with very young children and were focused on library centres, their environment and books located inside those centres. One of the earliest descriptive studies of print access was reported by Morrow (1982) in the context of early childhood environments. She observed the physical characteristics of library corners in 30 nursery rooms, 37 kindergarten classrooms, 32 first-grade classrooms, and 34 second-grade classrooms in suburban and urban areas throughout New Jersey. She found the classroom library corners to be non-existent or poorly designed and rarely used. Morrow and Weinstein (1992) did find in an intervention study, however, that when library centres in kindergarten classrooms were physically inviting and contained books, children increased their interactions with these books during free play and their teachers used books more in their instruction. Additionally, planned literature activities by the teachers led to an increase in student interest in books. In another study with kindergarteners and their teachers, Taylor et al., Blum and Logsdon (1986) helped 13 kindergarten teachers implement a classroom environment where children could develop initial literacy concepts easily and naturally. The researchers then examined the implementation of training as it manifested itself in the print environment of these classrooms. Texts in the high-implementing classrooms were 296

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clearly student-generated, interactional, reflected ongoing activity, and were displayed more prominently than in non-implementing classrooms. Further observations in the high-implementing classrooms indicated that print represented multiple and varied stimuli for reading and writing, was integrated across classroom activities, was routinized, and allowed for scaffolding throughout the year. In addition, the print was centred on children’s interests, language, and purposes. Children in the high-implementing classrooms outperformed children in the low-implementing classrooms on all measures of reading performance. Reutzel et al., 1989 capitalized on the findings of Taylor’s work (Taylor et al., 1986) and created an intervention study in which they tested the effects of three instructional approaches for developing kindergarteners’ print concepts and awareness. One of the three participating classrooms was assigned to a ‘traditional readiness’ approach to reading instruction; one classroom was assigned to an ‘immersion in print’ approach; and the third classroom was assigned to an ‘immersion in print plus teacher-led instruction’ approach. Results indicated that children in the treatment groups (groups two and three) demonstrated significantly better readiness and word reading abilities at the end of kindergarten than did the traditional group. Furthermore, children in the third group demonstrated significantly greater print concept development. Similarly, Morrow (1991) also collected data on the physical print environment of classrooms, but expanded this notion to include documentation of the ways in which teachers and children used literacy during the observational periods across 35 kindergarten classrooms. Her study looked at the relationships of (a) the frequency of literacy behaviours by children at play; (b) specific materials and physical design elements in kindergarten play areas; and (c) teacher guided experiences related to literacy and play. Morrow collected data using a modified ‘Survey of Displayed Literacy Stimuli’ (Loughlin and Martin, 1987) and a ‘questionnaire’ that documented the number of participants (including children and teachers) engaged in literacy activities and the perceived motivations behind the observed behaviours. Morrow used the observational data in her analysis and reported on the ways participating teachers modelled, discussed, or suggested the use of literacy in the presence of children. Her results were dismal and indicated that classrooms were not designed to facilitate literacy behaviours and there were few materials readily available for use during play. Further, teachers did not especially seek to engage children in voluntary literacy activities during play nor did they model or facilitate literacy activities. Expanding ‘for whom’ print-rich environments are important Two studies began to expand the population for whom print-rich environments were important for. In the first, Fractor and colleagues (Fractor et al., 1993) documented and described the number and types of trade books and examined the design of 183 elementary classroom library centres. The majority of the classrooms studied contained trade books for children and 44 per cent had classroom libraries of some sort. However, of the classroom libraries, 89 per cent were characterized as only ‘basic’ (containing one book per child). Only four per cent of the classroom libraries were characterized as ‘excellent’ (containing at least eight books per child). These excellent libraries contained class published books, videotapes, author information, and writing materials in addition to trade books. Additionally, these classrooms contained high- quality children’s literature, including a variety of genres (stories, informational books, and poetry), books of varying 297

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difficulty levels, and books that represented the cultural and ethnic diversity of their community. Similarly, Ross et al., (1994) examined the way in which classroom conditions, resources, and teaching methods compared across 40 remedial and regular tracked firstgrade classrooms. Although their study was not focused on the print environment, it did include it as one significant consideration. This research team developed and validated the Elementary Classroom Observation measure (ECOM) as part of this study. ECOM considered the classroom ecology and resources (print); makeup and physical environment; interval coding (including grouping configurations and teacher and student behaviours); a rating of teacher behaviours that positively support learning; teaching methods; and open comments. The instrument contained both interval coding (based on a low inference system) and holistic ratings and descriptions that ‘reflected more global, subjective impressions of the events observed’ (Ross et al., 1994: 108). Interestingly, the researchers found no significant differences in the resources offered to children in these two different types of classrooms. This study was evidence that an expanding community of researchers was coming to understand the importance of a print-rich environment for both regular and special education students. Carefully tying print-rich environments to student achievement The next set of studies clearly began to demonstrate the ties between a print-rich classroom environment and student reading achievement. To explore the effects of placing books in print-impoverished classrooms, Neuman (1999) ‘flooded’ more than 300 childcare centres with almost 18,000 books and provided instruction for the teachers on how to use the books. According to Neuman, the book floods set off a ‘chain reaction’ that led to physical changes in the classroom. These changes further enhanced the children’s access to and engagement with print. Read alouds occurred more often, and positive changes in the teacher–child literacy interactions were documented. Qualitative and statistical analyses of early literacy measures showed that students in the intervention groups made gains that were still evident at an eight-month follow-up after the end of the study. In their experimental study, McGill-Franzen et al. (1999) examined the effects of providing books to kindergarteners while enhancing their teachers’ instructional routines involving these books. Three groups of classrooms participated in this study: teachers in Group 1 received books and instruction on how to use the books; teachers in Group 2 received books only (no instruction); and teachers in Group 3 received neither books nor instruction (control group). The authors found that Group 1 teachers read significantly more to their students than teachers in Groups 2 or 3, and displayed the books more attractively than did the Group 2 teachers. In addition, the teachers in the training group provided more extensive and planned displays of a variety of print materials including examples of student written work when compared with teachers in Groups 2 and 3. More importantly, the children in Group 1 achieved significantly higher scores on every measure of literacy development when compared with children in the other groups. The authors concluded that, while it is important to provide classrooms with books, it is critical that teachers know what to do with those books in order for maximal effects. In summary, research during this period focused on documenting the importance of print-rich classroom environments, teaching teachers how to use the resources in those 298

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environments, and understanding that print environments are important for early childhood, elementary, and special education settings.

Expanding the notion of ‘What counts’ and ‘for whom’ While the field was beginning to document the importance of print-rich classroom environments for literacy development, researchers continued to expand the notion of ‘what counts’ inside those environments and ‘for whom’. For example Dowenhower and Beagle (1998) explored the influence of teacher philosophies and beliefs on the implementation of print environments. Documenting the print environment of 18 teachers in the Midwest who described themselves as either conventional or holistic reading teachers, this research team explored whether or not a teacher’s philosophical beliefs impacted his/her print environment. Overall, the classroom print environments across both groups of teachers was ‘less than optimal and in many cases impoverished’ (Dowenhower and Beagle, 1998: 179), regardless of the geographical location of the classroom (urban, suburban, or rural) or the philosophical beliefs of the teacher. The researchers concluded that teachers gave less attention to the physical setting of the classroom than to other curricular concerns. Through her work, Duke (2000) provided the field with an examination of one type of text that had been largely unexplored in earlier studies – that of informational text with young children. In a description of the types of texts offered to children of varying socioeconomic backgrounds, Duke (2000) examined the print environment of 20 first-grade classrooms in the greater Boston area. Duke documented the displayed print, materials in the class libraries, and classroom activities that involved print. She found an overall scarcity of informational texts, particularly in low-income classrooms. She also found that an average of only 3.6 minutes of the students’ day was spent engaged with informational text. Duke described the findings of her study as missed opportunities ‘to prepare students for informational reading and writing they will encounter in later schooling’ and ‘to use informational text to motivate more students’ interest in literacy in their present lives’ (Duke, 2000: 220). Duke described the lack of informational text in low-income schools as a particular concern, as students from these backgrounds are not being given the opportunity to develop this important form of ‘semiotic capital’ or ‘the ability to read and write informational texts’ (Duke, 2000: 220). Duke speculated that the performance on reading assessments by minority and low-income students is tied to the lack of pre-fourth grade informational text experiences they receive. Wolfersberger et al. (2004) continued to expand the notion of ‘what counts’ in printrich classroom environments when they described the development and validation of the classroom literacy environment profile (CLEP), an assessment tool for measuring ‘print richness’ of elementary classrooms. Wolfersberger et al. (2004) recognized the need for the quantification of the effects that varying degrees of implementation of print-rich classroom environments have on literacy development and capitalized on the studies we have described above in devising CLEP. CLEP contained 33 items; each item was rated on a scale from 1 (lowest level of implementation) to 7 (highest level of implementation). In their report, the authors demonstrated the move from the theoretical to the practical as the instrument went through three phases. In phase I, the research team used naturalistic methods to develop the items that would appear in the instrument. In phase II, the team used test theory to refine the content (constructing, reviewing, 299

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and rating the items). In phase III, the team validated the instrument in 21 classrooms (K–6). An analysis of variance was conducted on each item and sub-scale, demonstrating the discrimination reliability of the CLEP. Similarly, Hoffman et al. (2004) reported on the development and validation of an instrument that rested on a strong theoretical framework for thinking about print-rich classrooms and documented the connection between print-rich classrooms and student reading achievement. The research team followed a protocol similar to the Wolfersberger team – first conducting a literature review and developing tentative categories of text types and rubrics for each. Feedback from classroom teachers was solicited on all three components. The team then field-tested the instrument and revisions were made. The instrument contained three components. The first measured the physical print environment of classrooms (grades K–6). The second documented the uses of texts by students and teachers. The third documented the understandings of the texts (forms, functions, and uses) by students and teachers. These three components were rated individually. Each of the components was demonstrated to be highly correlated with student achievement in reading (as measured on the GRADE) in 33 classrooms (grades K–6) across six states. The work of Hoffman et al. provided an additional component to consider in the observational documentation of the print-rich environment – the understanding of the purposes, functions, and uses of print in the environment by students and teachers (drawn from the social practice perspective) and the connection of the print environment to student reading achievement. This instrument was used in another study to compare the effects of preservice teacher programmes on the preparedness of graduates of those programmes (Hoffman et al., 2005). Finally, one last study validated a classroom observation measure to use with English language learners in grade 1, the English Language Learner Classroom Observation Instrument (ELLCO) (Baker et al., 2006). While the formal development of the instrument is discussed in other publications (Dickinson, Smith, Sangeorge, & Anastasopoulos, 2002; ELLCO, 2002) the authors did report on the reliability of the instrument and the correlation between sub-scales. ELLCO contains six sub-scales with individual items in each. Sub-scales include (a) explicit teaching; (b) quality of instruction; (c) sheltered English instruction; (d) interactive teaching; (e) vocabulary development; and (f) phonemic awareness and decoding. Ratings within the sub-scales (except for phonemic awareness and decoding instruction) were found to be correlated to reading achievement (as measured through a composite reading score consisting of post-test performance on oral reading fluency and the reading comprehension measure) in the 14 classrooms in California in which the team worked. The sub-scales were used to measure reliability. Because they considered their work to be exploratory, the team offered suggestions for future work on the instrument in refining the sub-scales. The work of Baker and his colleagues followed the same clear path as the other studies in this analysis while continuing to expand the notion of ‘what counts’ and ‘for whom’ in the literature on print-rich environments. In summary, research has clearly demonstrated the importance of print-rich classroom environments for literacy development with young, elementary aged, special education, and English language learners. Findings from the works of Pressley and his colleagues (Metsala et al., 1997); Morrow et al., 1999; Pressley et al., 1996; Taylor et al., 1999; Wharton-McDonald, Pressley & Hampston, 1998); and from Snow et al., 1991 have provided converging evidence that learning to read occurs best in classrooms 300

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where children are provided multiple opportunities to read, write, and talk about text within literacy-rich environments. The findings related to the text environment confirm the importance of the physical text environment that has been argued for and suggested in the previous research literature. The additional findings related to local text environment were also encouraging. The physical text environment findings might be interpreted simply as a case of wellresourced classrooms (‘just get more and better books in the classroom’), but according to these studies, it is more than just that. The findings from research support the specific importance of certain text categories and the careful and thoughtful use of those texts by teachers. Additionally, the teacher’s and the students’ understanding, valuing, and interpretations of the texts in the classroom environment appear important in relationship to student literacy growth. There are promising findings throughout this research literature documenting the importance and qualities of a rich text environment. Clearly, research findings that document the relationship between the qualities of the text environment and student achievement on standardized measures is of great value. There are a number of additional trends, beyond the focus on achievement, that are evident in this research over the past two decades. First, research investigating the classroom literacy environment has expanded from descriptive studies of the environment itself to studies that explore the mechanisms that link literacy learning and the literacy environment. Second, studies of the literacy environment have progressed from a limited focus on a particular kind of text in a particular context (e.g. tradebooks in the library corner) to include more kinds of texts in more complex uses and settings. Third, studies of the text environment, initially concentrated on early literacy settings, have moved to focus on classrooms across the elementary grades. And fourth, the most recent research into the text environment is considering not just the physical qualities of the texts but the engagement with and understanding of that environment as well. While progress has been made in the study of the text environment, there is great need for more research at all levels. The research is still limited in the examination of the text environment examined within the social practice, critical, and aesthetic perspectives described earlier. We would posit that the optimal environment is one that attends to the psychological, socio-constructivist, social practice, critical, and aesthetic perspectives – valuing all and neglecting none. We would argue that the inventory of texts in a classroom may suggest the foundational quality of the literacy environment but that without observations of interactions and without deep conversations around the texts, there is much to miss out on. The text environment is not an end (to be created) but a means to an end that is always reaching out further and further into the learning horizons. At any moment in time, it can only mirror the past and suggest the future. More research is needed at both the micro and macro levels. More research is needed that examines practice across the kinds of cultural and social contexts illustrated in the three schools on which we have focused in this chapter. Finally, following Shulman (2004), more research is needed that is classroom based, close to the intersection of practice and learning (Brown et al., 1989), and conducted by teachers following a formative or design experiment plan (Brown, 1992; Collins, 1992; Reinking and Bradley, 2007)). We believe there is a great deal of merit, along these same lines, in adopting Brandt and Clintons’ (2002) arguments for a ‘literacy in action’ framework for study. 301

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Conclusion We have adopted the metaphor of mirrors and windows to frame our analysis of theory, research, practice, and reform related to the literacy environment created in the classroom. We have argued that the text environment mediates the literacy lives of learners as they may or may not engage with texts inside and outside of schools. We have also argued that it is helpful to examine the uses of literacy from multiple theoretical frames including the psychological, the socio-psychological, the social practice, the critical, and the aesthetic. The gap is still great in terms of schools realizing the potential for the literacy environment. In closing, we return to John Dewey’s position on the role of curriculum in schools. He writes: From the standpoint of the child, the great waste in the school comes from his inability to utilize the experiences he gets outside of the school in any complete and free way within the school itself; while on the other hand, he is unable to apply in daily life what he is learning in school. That is the isolation of the school – its isolation from life. When the child gets into the schoolroom he has to put out of his mind a large part of the ideas, interests and activities that predominate in his home and neighborhood. So the school being unable to utilize this everyday experience, sets painfully to work on another tack and by a variety of (artificial) means, to arouse in the child an interest in school studies . . . (Thus there remains a) gap . . . between the everyday experiences of the child and the isolated material supplied in such large measure in school. (Dewey, 1956: 75–6) Dewey’s words continue to challenge educators who struggle to find the ‘middle range’ between theory and practice to guide teacher education and curriculum development in literacy. In some sense, the literacy environment of the classroom can be seen as simultaneously the measure of success in meeting Dewey’s challenge and a valuable tool for connecting the world of school with the world of life. It is unlikely that Dewey could have envisioned the transformations that have occurred in the forms and uses of literacy in our society today – making his comments even more salient. Sadly, were he on the scene today, he would not see many of these new literacies widely represented in classrooms, despite their growing use outside of schools. The challenge facing research is to reveal the hidden in the literacy environment and to discover ways to leverage changes in practice that yield improvement in the literacy lives and literacy learning of the students we serve.

References Baker, S.K., Gersten, R., Haager, D. and Dingle, M. (2006). Teaching Practice and the Reading Growth of First-grade English Learners: Validation of an observation instrument. Elementary School Journal 107: 199–221. Bloomfield, L. and Barnhart, C. (1961). Let’s Read: A linguistics approach. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Brandt, D. and Clinton, K. (2002). Limits of the Local: Expanding perspectives on literacy as a social practice. Journal of Literacy Research 34(3): 337–56.

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Brandt, D.B. and Clinton, K. (2003). Limits of the Local: Expanding perspectives on literacy as a social practice. Journal of Literacy Research 34: 337–56. Brown, A.L. (1992). Design Experiments: Theoretical and methodological challenges in creating complex interventions in classroom settings. Journal of the Learning Sciences 2(2): 141–78. Brown, J.S., Collins, A. and Duguid, P. (1989). Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. Educational Researcher 18(1): 32–42. Cambourne, B. (2000). Observing Literacy Learning in Elementary Classrooms: Twenty-nine years of classroom anthropology. The Reading Teacher 53: 512–15. Collins, A. (1992). Toward a Design Science of Education. In E. Scanlon and T. O’Shea (Eds) New Directions in Educational Technology. New York: Springer, pp. 15–22. Dewey, J. (1956). The Child and the Curriculum and the School and Society. Chicago, IL: Phoenix. Dowhower, S.I. and Beagle, K.G. (1998). The Print Environment in Kindergartens: A study of conventional and holistic teachers and their classrooms in three settings. Reading Research and Instruction 37: 163–90. Duke, N.K. (2000). 3.6 Minutes per Day: The scarcity of informational texts in first grade. Reading Research Quarterly 35: 202–24. English Language Learner Classroom Observation Instrument (ELLCO) (2002). Technical Report. http://www.brookespublishing.com/store/books/smith-ellco/index.htm accessed 15 January 2004. Fractor, J.S., Woodruff, M., Martinez, M. and Teale, W.H. (1993). Let’s not Miss Opportunities to Promote Voluntary Reading: Classroom libraries in the elementary school. Reading Teacher 46: 476–84. Hoffman, J.V., Sailors, M., Duffy, G.G. and Beretvas, S.N. (2004). The Effective Elementary Classroom Literacy Environment: Examining the validity of the TEX-IN3 Observation System. Journal of Literacy Research 36: 303–34. Hoffman, J.V., Roller, C.M., Maloch, B., Sailors, M., Duffy, G.G., Beretvas, S.N. and The National Commission on Excellence in Elementary Teacher Preparation for Reading (2005). Teachers’ Preparation to Teach Reading and their Experiences and Practices in the First Three Years of Teaching. Elementary School Journal 105(3): 267–89. Loughlin, C.E. and Martin, M.D. (1987). Supporting Literacy: A developing effective learning environment. New York: Teachers College Press. Leu, D.J. (2006). New Literacies, Reading Research, and the Challenges of Change: A deictic perspective (NRC Presidential address). In J. Hoffman, D. Schallert, C. M. Fairbanks, J. Worthy and B. Maloch (Eds) The 55th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference. Milwaukee, WI: National Reading Conference, pp. 1–20. McGill-Franzen, A., Allington, R.L., Yokoi, L. and Brooks, G. (1999). Putting Books in the Classroom Seems Necessary but not Sufficient. Journal of Educational Research 93: 67–74. Merton, R. (1968). On Sociological Theories of the Middle Range in Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: The Free Press. Metsala, J.L., Wharton-McDonald, R., Pressley, M.J., Rankin, J., Mistretta, J. and Ettenberger, S. (1997). Effective Primary-grades Literacy Instruction=Balanced Literacy Instruction. The Reading Teacher 50: 518–21. Morrow, L.M. (1991). Relationships among Physical Design of Play Centers, Teachers’ Emphasis on Literacy in Play, and Children’s Literacy Behaviors during Play. In J. Zutell and S. McCormick (Eds) Fortieth yearbook of the National Reading Conference: Learner factors/teacher factors: Issues in literacy research and instruction. Chicago, IL: National Reading Conference, pp. 127–40. Morrow, L.M. (1982). Relationships between Literacy Programs, Library Corner Design, and Children’s Use of Literature. Journal of Educational Research 75: 339–44. Morrow, L.M., Tracey, D.H., Woo, D.G. and Pressley, M. (1999). Characteristics of Exemplary First-grade Literacy Instruction. The Reading Teacher 52: 462–76.

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Neuman, S.B. (1999). Books Make a Difference: A study of access to literacy. Reading Research Quarterly 34: 286–311. Pressley, M., Wharton-McDonald, R., Mistretta-Hampston, J. and Echevarria, M. (1998). The Nature of Literacy Instruction in Ten Grade 1/5 Classrooms in Upstate New York. Scientific Studies of Reading 2: 159–94. Pressley, M.J., Rankin, T. and Yokoi, L. (1996). A Survey of Instructional Practices of Primary Teachers Nominated as Effective in Promoting Literacy. The Elementary School Journal 96: 363–84. Reinking, D. and Bradley, B. (2007). On Formative and Design Experiments. New York: Teachers College Press. Reutzel, D.R., Oda, L.K. and Moore, B.H. (1989). Developing Print Awareness: The effect of three instructional approaches on kindergarteners’ print awareness, reading readiness, and word reading. Journal of Reading Behavior 21(3): 197–217. Ross, S.M., Smith, L.J., Lohr, L. and McNelis, M. (1994). Math and Reading Instruction in Tracked First-grade Classes. Elementary School Journal 95: 105–19. Searfoss, L.W. and Readence, J.E. (1983). Guiding Readers to Meaning. Reading Psychology 4: 29–36. Shulman, L.S. (2004). The Wisdom of Practice. Essays on teaching, learning and learning to teach. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Smith, M.W., Dickinson, D.K., Sangeorge, A. and Anastasopoulos, L. (2002). Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation (ELLCO) Toolkit. Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing. Snow, C.E., Barnes, W.S., Chandler, J., Goodman, I.F. and Hemphill, L. (1991). Unfulfilled Expectations: Home and school influences on literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Taylor, B.M., Pearson, P.D., Clark, K. and Walpole, S. (2000). Effective Schools and Accomplished Teachers. Elementary School Journal 101: 121–65. Taylor, N.E., Blum, I.H. and Logsdon, D.M. (1986). The Development of Written Language Awareness: Environmental aspects and program characteristics. Reading Research Quarterly 21: 132–49. Wolfersberger, M.E., Reutzel, D.R., Sudweeks, R. and Fawson, P.C. (2004). Developing and Validating the Classroom Literacy Environmental Profile (CLEP): A tool for examining the ‘print richness’ of early childhood and elementary classrooms. Journal of Literacy Research 36: 211–72.

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26 The relationship between home and school literacy practices Jackie Marsh

Introduction The relationship between home and school literacy practices is fraught with tension, yet offers a range of opportunities for the development of meaningful and creative curricula and pedagogy. There has been a wealth of research conducted over the last four decades that has informed our understanding of the continuities and discontinuities between home and school literacy practices and outlined the consequences for pupils’ motivation, engagement and attainment. The aim of this chapter is to review literature that has explored the relationship between children’s home and school literacy practices. It examines the evidence for the transference of literacy practices from home to school and, conversely, from school to home. The term ‘school’ is used throughout the chapter to denote formal educational institutions, which includes early years’ settings. Home contexts include those in which children and young people reside with parents and/or carers. The conceptualization of literacy is broad and includes multimodal, multimedia communicative practices (Jewitt, 2008; Kress, 2003). While the chapter reviews work that falls within the scope of family literacy research, it does not consider research relating to intervention programmes that aim to enhance and extend family literacy practices (for reviews of this area, see Hannon, 2003; Hannon and Bird, 2004). In the first section of the chapter, I outline the key theoretical frameworks that have been drawn upon in research that has examined the relationship between home and school literacy practices. This is followed by an exploration of the way in which home and school literacy practices interact, if at all. The chapter then moves on to consider recent research that has sought to identify how digital literacy practices are embedded across home and school domains. The chapter concludes with an overview of the avenues of research that are still relatively underexplored in this field of studies. First, however, research exploring home–school congruence or incongruence is discussed in the light of a series of theoretical fields of study; thus what follows is not a chronological account of research in the area, but a conceptual one. For historical overviews of research in the field of home–school literacy, see McCarthey (2000) and Hull and Schultz (2002). 305

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Theoretical frameworks Various theoretical lenses have been used to study the relationship between home and school literacy practices outlined in Table 26.1. This is not intended to offer an exhaustive list, but much of the research in the field over the past 30 years has drawn on these theoretical frameworks. The theoretical concepts are located in three broad areas: sociocultural theory; theory located within cultural studies; and sociological theory. Table 26.1 indicates the key concepts in each of these areas that have been utilized in literacy studies; the theorists most closely associated with those concepts; and, in the final column, a list of indicative studies that draw on that theoretical strand. In the following review of work in these areas, I will discuss in turn studies that fall primarily into one of these categories, although it is acknowledged that many of the studies embody theoretical concepts from across the three areas.

Table 26.1 Theoretical frameworks in the study of home/school literacy Key concepts used in literacy studies

Related theorists

Indicative studies of home–school literacy

Language socialization and socialization of literacy within families

Vygotsky (1962, 1978)

Duranti and Ochs (1997); Heath (1983); Scribner and Cole (1981); Taylor (1983); Taylor and DorseyGaines (1988) Rogers (2003); Rowsell (2006)

Funds of knowledge

Moll et al. (1992)

Feiler et al. (2007); Moll et al. (1992);

Re-contextualization

Bakhtin (1981)

Dyson (1997, 2001, 2003)

Syncretic literacy

Duranti and Ochs (1997)

Gregory and Williams (2000); Gregory et al. (2004); Kenner, (2004)

Cultural theory

New Literacy Studies Gee (2005) (Big D/ little d; Street (1984, autonomous/ ideological 1993) literacy)

Third space

Bhabha (1994)

Gutierrez et al. (1999) Moje et al. (2004)

Sociological theory

Sociocultural theory

Field of study

Cultural capital/ habitus Bourdieu (1990)

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Vertical/ horizontal discourses

Bernstein (2000)

Carrington and Luke (2003); Comber and Barnett (2003); Compton-Lilly (2007); Marsh (2003); Pahl (2007a, 2007b) Marsh (2007); Moss (2000)

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Sociocultural studies of home/school literacy In the first half of the twentieth century, research conducted from within a behaviourist/psychological paradigm focused primarily on the notion of ‘reading readiness’, and the influence of families in the reading process was largely ignored. Sociocultural theories of literacy emerged in the latter decades of the twentieth century and offered a contrast to the earlier view of literacy development as primarily an individualistic, cognitive process. This new approach was exhibited in a series of ethnographic studies that brought together the disciplines of anthropology and sociolinguistics in their close analyses of the literacy lives of a variety of communities. The first significant study of literacy in communities was Scribner and Cole’s (1981) research with the Vai community in Liberia (see Chapter 18, this volume). Through close study of the Vai’s literacy practices, Scribner and Cole argued that the link between cognition and literacy was overstated and that in the Vai community, literacy was a social practice, utilized to meet social and cultural purposes. In contrast, literacy in school was distinct in nature and did not relate to out-of-school literacy practices. This work was followed by a series of studies that illustrated how literacy differed across homes and schools in a variety of communities, including research conducted by Heath (1983), Taylor (1983) and Taylor and Dorsey-Gaines (1988). This research focused on identifying the wide range of language and literacy practices in which families engaged, which contrasted to the previous deficit perceptions many educationalists held of families’ practices outside of schools. In this tradition, numerous studies since the 1980s have sought to identify the nature of literacy in homes and communities in order to document evidence of the richness of literacy in out-of-school contexts (see Cairney, 2003, for a review). This research has highlighted the gulf between home and school literacy environments for some children and McCarthey (2002: 146), in her review of the field, suggested that explanations for these gaps ‘have centred around differences in the (a) nature of literacy practices in home and school, (b) discourse patterns in each setting, (c) perceptions of appropriate parental and teacher roles in education’. Sociocultural theories led to an emphasis on research that outlined how the discourses of home and school differed. Discontinuities in discourse across home and school settings were identified in studies by Au (1981, 1993) and Michaels (1981) and, building on this work and other research in the area of sociolinguistics, the field of New Literacy Studies emerged (Gee, 1996; Street, 1984, 1993). New Literacy Studies focused on the notion of literacy as a social practice that was contextualized within specific domains and Gee (2005) developed the concept of ‘big D/little d discourses’ to explain the way in which dissonance between literacy experiences across domains occurred. ‘Little d’ refers to language in practice, while ‘Big D’ refers to ‘ways of combining and integrating language, actions, interactions, ways of thinking, believing, valuing and using various symbols, tools and objects to enact a particular sort of recognizable identity’ (Gee, 2005: 21). Therefore, even if children were able to gain competence in the use of ‘little d’, their lack of familiarity with the discourses of schooling may lead to a lack of congruity across those spaces (see Chapter 39, this volume, in relation to academic proficiency). In a further attempt to understand the discourses of institutionalized spaces, Street (1993) introduced the notions of ‘autonomous’ and ‘ideological’ constructions of literacy. In autonomous models, literacy is a set of neutral skills to be acquired, irrespective of context. Ideological models, in contrast, emphasize literacy as a practice grounded in social, cultural, historical and political contexts (Street, 1993). 307

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The New Literacy Studies has informed numerous studies that explore issues of identity and power in relation to discursive practices in homes and schools (Rogers, 2003; Rowsell, 2006). In the late 1980s, other studies located within sociocultural models of learning began to explore the way in which schools and educational institutions could recognize and draw upon learners’ experiences in homes and communities. This research utilized the concept of ‘funds of knowledge’ (Moll et al., 1992). ‘Funds of knowledge’ refers to the knowledge individuals and communities build up through their life experiences, which can be drawn upon in educational settings. Research in this area has indicated that this approach can be successful, particularly in relation to community engagement and the impact on teachers’ pedagogy (González et al., 2005). A project that has drawn upon this theoretical framework is the Home School Knowledge Exchange Project in the UK (Feiler et al., 2007). Activities were developed in four primary schools, two in Bristol and two in Cardiff, which aimed to draw on the practices and experiences of home in the classroom. For example children brought to school, in a shoebox, artefacts that were important to them, which were then used to support literacy. Quantitative findings with regard to the impact of the project on reading were inconclusive, but qualitative findings suggest that the project had a positive impact on children’s confidence and self-esteem and teachers’ pedagogical practice. Studies that engage with sociocultural theories emphasize the way in which language and literacy practices from different domains can merge through the process of recontextualization. Dyson’s work (1997, 2001, 2003) draws on Bakhtinian notions of language hybridization to illustrate how the classroom can offer a site in which children’s out-of-school cultural knowledge can be recast, thus creating a bridge between ‘unofficial’ and ‘official’ knowledge. Similar notions of hybridity underpin work focusing on the notion of ‘syncretic literacy’, which explains how ‘ an intermingling or merging of culturally diverse traditions informs and organizes literacy activities’ (Duranti and Ochs, 1997: 172). This concept has been drawn upon in research that has illuminated the rich range of language and literacy practices embedded in multilingual homes and communities, which is often in contrast to the limited opportunities multilingual children have in schools to explore the breadth of their expertise (Gregory and Williams, 2000; Gregory et al., 2004; Kenner, 2004). Sociocultural theories have thus enabled researchers to identify the ways in which discourses differ across various domains and have emphasized the profuse range of literacy practices that exist in families and communities. In the next section, I move on to consider the way in which studies have drawn upon theories embedded within cultural studies to explore the home/school interface.

Cultural studies theory and home/school literacy A number of studies focusing on literacy across domains have drawn upon post-colonial and cultural studies in attempts to explain the process of hybridization. In particular, the concept of ‘third space’ has been used to analyse the way in which literacy can be shaped in classrooms that recognize the home practices of learners. The concept of ‘third space’ was developed in depth by Bhabha (1994) as a metaphor for those borderlands in which cultures meet – spaces of tension rather than smooth coexistence: ‘The non-synchronous temporality of global and national cultures opens up a cultural 308

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space – a third space – where the negotiation of incommensurable differences creates a tension peculiar to borderline existences’ (Bhabha, 1994: 218). In relation to literacy education, Gutiérrez et al. (1999) have used third-space theory to identify ways in which classrooms can incorporate the cultural practices of home and community. The concept was developed further by Moje et al. (2004), who suggest that classrooms as third spaces are not merely places where learners’ cultural knowledge is recognized while the emphasis is on the appropriation by learners of the dominant culture, but instead is a metaphor for a space in which new, hybrid and challenging discourses are created, and knowledge is recontextualized. Appadurai’s (1996) concept of the ‘scapes’ which permeate the globalized world has also informed analyses of home–school literacy transitions. Appadurai has suggested that due to the process of globalization, a number of ‘scapes’, or flows, can be identified, in which people, ideas and resources cross national boundaries. These scapes include ideoscapes – the spread of ideas and concepts; and mediascapes – information and images mediated through technologies. A number of studies in the literacy field have identified how the global flows which permeate home literacy practices do not always transfer to classroom practice (Cruikshank, 2004; Marsh, 2006; Pahl, 2007a). Research that draws on cultural theory therefore examines the border between home and school and seeks to determine the nature of the liminal spaces between these domains in a globalized context. The final category I consider, theories drawn from the field of sociology, also help to explain the nature of the interface between home and school, but focus more squarely on the structural elements that might create continuities and discontinuities in practice.

Sociological theory and home/school literacy The final theoretical thread to be reviewed in Table 26.1 draws from sociological theory in its explorations of the relationship between home and school literacies. In work in this strand, concepts developed by Bourdieu are called upon to understand the way in which some children’s home literacy experiences are more readily compatible with those of school than others. Comber and Barnett (2003), Carrington and Luke (2003) Marsh (2003) and Compton-Lilly (2007) for example illustrate the nature of literacy capital as it is instantiated in homes, and suggest that schools do not recognize or build upon this capital in satisfactory ways. Pahl’s work identifies how children’s ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1990), constructed in family narratives and experience, is sedimented into texts in the home. Her recent research has identified how these texts can be recognized by educators in ways which enable children’s cultural capital to be built upon, for example by creating interactive museum exhibitions that feature family artefacts (Pahl and Pollard, 2006). The work of Bernstein has also informed research in this category. Bernstein (2000) developed the notion of horizontal and vertical discourses to characterize the difference between institutionalized and vernacular knowledge. A horizontal discourse refers to everyday, informal knowledge and is one in which knowledge is not structured in a hierarchical fashion, instead it is, ‘local, segmental, context pendent, tacit, multi-layered, often contradictory across contexts but not within contexts’ (Bernstein, 2000: 170). A vertical discourse, on the other hand, ‘takes the form of a coherent, explicit, systematically principled structure, hierarchically organized, or it takes the form of a series of specialized criteria for the production of texts’ (Bernstein, 2000: 171). Bernstein’s concepts 309

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of horizontal and vertical knowledge posit a clear distinction between schooled and out-of school forms of knowledge. In her work, Moss argues that such a distinction means that informal literacies ‘do not act as a powerful resource within school settings’ (Moss, 2000: 62). However, other studies do suggest that vertical and horizontal knowledge may productively be combined in classrooms that adopt pedagogies in which learners are active agents whose vernacular knowledge is recognized and built upon (Davies and Pahl, 2007; Hagood, 2008; Marsh, 2007; Marsh and Millard, 2005; Morrell and Duncan-Andrade, 2006). The relationship between home and school literacy, therefore, can be conceptualized in different ways, but common to all of the research identified thus far is a desire to identify and understand the differences, and to explore how children’s out-of-school literacy practices can inform curricula and pedagogy. In the next section, I move on to consider the relationship between home and school literacy in order to determine how far they inter-penetrate in both domains.

Movement of literacy practices across domains The relationship between homes and schools can be viewed along a continuum, at one end of which we may experience rich and meaningful relations between the domains; and at the opposite end, little in the way of exchange. Some of the research identified in previous sections has shown how home literacy practices can be successfully incorporated into the school setting (Feiler et al., 2007; Moll et al., 1992). However, a number of studies have outlined how, in contrast, some settings reflect very little of children’s home practices. The metaphor of ‘one-way traffic’ has been used to characterize situations in which the flow of literacy practices is in the direction of school to home (Marsh, 2003). In that study, parents reported how pre-school children embedded schooled practices in their everyday engagement in the home, which has also been identified in other projects (Gregory and Williams, 2000). Obviously, literacy homework means that schooled texts often take a central place in family homes, as Delgado-Gaitan’s (1992) work on Mexican families in the USA outlined. Other studies have suggested that the presentation of a stark dichotomy between home and school literacy practices is misleading, as pupils transfer practices from one domain to another in a fluid manner. For example in her study of the literacy practices of a group of teenage girls in school, Finders (1997) identified the presence of a ‘literacy underlife’, an underlife in which girls wrote notes to each other in class or read teenage magazines away from the gaze of teachers. Similarly, Maybin (2007) studied the oral interactions around texts of ten- and 11-year-old children in one classroom in England. She identified what she characterized as ‘under the desk’ literacies, in which there was interpenetration between the horizontal discourse of children’s vernacular practices and the vertical discourse of official knowledge. Therefore it is clear that literacy travels across domains and, in these travels, is shaped by specific discourses that are imbricated in social, political, historical and cultural contexts. Literacy is both globally determined and locally inflected (Brandt and Clinton, 2002; Pahl and Rowsell, 2006). It would appear that the gulf between home and school literacy practices may not be as wide or as deep as research in previous decades may have suggested. However, there is recent research that indicates that there are areas in which such dissonance does occur, as is the case with digital literacy. 310

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Digital literacy in homes and schools In the last decade, a number of studies have focused on the way in which literacy practices are changing due to developments in technology (Lankshear and Knobel, 2006, 2007). Children and young people are engaged in a variety of multimodal, multimedia practices in homes from a young age (Marsh et al., 2005; Robinson and Mackey, 2003). These practices include the analysis and authoring of a range of digital texts, and research has identified the rich array of skills, knowledge and understanding developed by children and young people and the significance of these practices for identity work (Carrington, 2006; Davies, 2009; Dowdall, 2009; Hagood, 2008; Lankshear and Knobel, 2006; Merchant, 2007; Moje, 2007). As has been found to be the case with more traditional literacy practices, some studies have identified the way in which learners transport their digital literacy texts and practices into the official spaces of school (Bulfin, 2008; Bulfin and North, 2007). Bulfin (2008) presents an account of how teenagers in schools in Victoria, Australia, develop a ‘digital literacy underlife’ (Bulfin, 2008: 1) in which they used digital technologies in ways that subverted or worked around school practices, such as bringing in digital texts from home on USB flash drives and then loading them on to school computers, both within and outside class sessions. However, this activity is largely unofficial and other studies emphasize the lack of transference of multimodal, digital literacy practices across home and school spaces (see Jewitt, 2008, for a review). Marsh (2009), in a review of a number of her studies of young children’s home/school digital literacy practices, identified the ways in which home and school digital literacy practices differ for many children (see Table 26.2). Other studies have begun to consider the relationship between time and space across home and school domains in relation to literacy (Leander and Sheehy, 2004). This work suggests that texts in homes can embed family narratives and practices in processes that occur over long periods of time (Pahl, 2007b), but this is not always the case in classrooms.

Table 26.2 Literacy in homes and early years settings/schools (from Marsh, 2009) Literacy as experienced in many homes

Literacy as experienced in many early years settings and schools

• • • • •

• • • • •

On-screen reading extensive Multimodal Non-linear reading pathways Fluidity/crossing of boundaries Multiple authorship/unknown authorship • Always linked to production • Embedded in communities of practice/affinity groups • Shaped by mediascapes • Child constituted as social reader • Reading integral part of identity construction/performance

On-screen reading minimal Focused on written word and image Linear reading pathways Limited to written page Known, primarily single authorship

• Analysis and production separate • Individualistic • Little reference to mediascapes • Child constituted as individual reader • Reading constructs school reader identities (successful or unsuccessful in relation to school practices)

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In addition, Leander (2007) illustrates how schools bracket space and time in ways that do not happen in pupils’ out-of-school digital practices, which proffer simultaneity rather than linearity. Recent research on the nature of children’s digital literacy practices in homes and out-of-school settings has a number of implications for educational policy and practice. The first of these is that literacy curricula need to move away from the privileging of alphabetic print to include a focus on multimodal, multimedia text analysis and production, thus ensuring that schools pay attention to the range of texts that pupils encounter beyond the school walls. Second, initial teacher education has to ensure that pre-service teachers are fully prepared to teach the skills, knowledge and understanding required in the digital age, just as continuing professional development should address similar issues for in-service teachers. Such professional development opportunities could also be made available to support staff in schools if they are to keep pace with related curriculum developments. Third, resources need to be made available to schools if they are to respond to technological developments in an appropriate manner. As ubiquitous computing and mobile technologies continue to offer more flexible pathways into literacy in the future (Carrington and Marsh, 2009), schools need to rely less on fixed PCs located in classrooms and ICT labs and utilize the kinds of technologies that will enable collaborative learning across diverse contexts. The use of such technologies will inevitably open up opportunities for more meaningful relationships between the literacy practices of homes and schools.

Conclusion This review has indicated something of the complexity of the home–school literacy interface and it is clear that there is a great deal of work that has been carried out in this area in the last four decades. However, there is a range of areas in which very little work has been conducted, which indicates that the practices of specific groups have been excluded from consideration. Apart from the groundbreaking work of Barone (1999), for example with children who live with drug-users, little research has been undertaken in families who suffer extreme social, cultural and economic constraints. For example there is still much to be learned about the relationship between schooled and out-ofschool literacy for looked-after-children, children living in refuges due to domestic violence and children living in temporary residencies, such as refugee camps or homeless hostels. In addition, there needs to be a greater focus on longitudinal studies that examine the transfer of literacy practices across domains. Research has tended to explore literacy in one domain in contrast to another, yet what is required are studies that trace the way in which literacy may seep across the porous boundaries of home and school domains. The importance of this work for literacy education is profound. Educators need to extend their knowledge of the range of literacy practices undertaken by pupils in out-ofschool contexts in order to develop curricula and pedagogy that build on a deep and respectful knowledge of pupils’ experiences. Not to do so is to risk the maintenance of an education system which is predicated upon outmoded forms of literacy knowledge that reflect little of the daily lives or needs of children and young people in the twentyfirst century. 312

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Tools, and Reasoning: Situated Cognition and Technologically Supported Environments, held in Lucca (Il Ciocco), Italy, November 2–7, 1993.] New York: Springer. Dyson, A.H. (1997). Writing Superheroes: Contemporary childhood, popular culture, and classroom literacy. New York: Teachers College Press. Dyson, A.H. (2001). Where are the Childhoods in Childhood Literacy? An exploration in outer (school) space. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 1: 9–39. Dyson, A.H. (2003). Brothers and Sisters Learn to Write: Popular literacies in childhood and school cultures. New York: Teachers College Press. Feiler, A., Andrews, J., Greenhough, P., Hughes, M., Johnson, D., Scanlan, M. et al. (2007). Improving Primary Literacy: Linking home and school. London: Routledge. Finders, M. (1997). Just Girls: Hidden literacies and life in junior high. New York: Teachers College Press. Gee, J.P. (1996). Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in discourses (2nd edn). London: Taylor & Francis. Gee, J.P. (2005). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and method. London: Routledge. González, N., Moll, L.C. and Amanti, C. (Eds) (2005). Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. London and New York: Routledge. Gregory, E. and Williams, A. (2000). City Literacies: Learning to read across generations and cultures. London: Routledge. Gregory, E., Long, S. and Volk, D. (Eds) (2004). Many Pathways to Literacy: Young children learning with siblings: grandparents, peers and communities. London: Routledge. Gutierrez, K.D., Baquedano-Lopez, P., Alvarez, H. and Chiu, M.M. (1999). Building a Culture of Collaboration through Hybrid Language Practices. Theory into Practice 38: 87–93. Hagood, M.C. (2008). Intersections of Popular Culture, Identities, and New Literacies Research. In J. Coiro, M. Knobel, C. Lankshear and D. J. Leu (Eds) Handbook of Research on New Literacies. New York: Erlbaum. Hannon, P. (2003). Family Literacy Programmes. In N. Hall, J. Larson and J. Marsh (Eds) Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Hannon, P. and Bird, V. (2004). Family Literacy in England: Theory, practice, research and policy. In B. H. Wasik (Ed.) Handbook of Family Literacy: Research and practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Heath, S.B. (1983). Ways with Words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hull, G. and Schultz, K. (Eds) (2002). School’s out: Bridging out-of-school literacies with classroom practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Jewitt, C. (2008). Multimodality and Literacy in School Classrooms. Review of Research in Education 32(1): 241–67. Kenner, C. (2004). Becoming Biliterate: Young children learning different writing systems. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books. Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in a New Media Age. London: Routledge. Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2006). New Literacies: Everyday practices and classroom learning (2nd edn). Maidenhead: Open University Press. Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (Eds) (2007). A New Literacies Sampler. New York: Peter Lang. Leander, K. (2007). ‘You Won’t be Needing Your Laptops Today’: Wired bodies in the wireless classroom. In C. Lankshear and M. Knobel (Eds) A New Literacies Sampler. New York: Peter Lang. Leander, K. and Sheehy, M. (Eds) (2004). Spatializing Literacy Research and Practice. New York: Peter Lang. McCarthey, S.J. (2000). Home–School Connections: A review of the literature. Journal of Educational Research 93(3): 145–53.

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Marsh, J. (2003). One-way Traffic? Connections between literacy practices at home and in the nursery. British Educational Research Journal 29(3): 369–82. Marsh, J. (2006). Global, Local/Public, Private: Young children’s engagement in digital literacy practices in the home. In K. Pahl and J. Rowsell (Eds) Travel Notes from the New Literacy Studies: Case studies in practice. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Marsh, J. (2007). New Literacies and Old Pedagogies: Recontextualizing rules and practices. International Journal of Inclusive Education 11(3): 267–81. Marsh, J. (2009). New Literacies, Old Identities: Young girls’ experiences of digital literacy at home and school. In C. Jackson, C. Paechter and E. Renold (Eds) Girls and Education 3–16: Continuing concerns, new agendas. Buckingham: Open University Press. Marsh, J. and Millard, E. (Eds) (2005). Popular Literacies, Childhood and Schooling. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Marsh, J., Brooks, G., Hughes, J., Ritchie, L. and Roberts, S. (2005). Digital Beginnings: Young children’s use of popular culture, media and new technologies. Sheffield: University of Sheffield. http://www.digitalbeginings.shef.ac.uk/ accessed 11 June 2006. Maybin, J. (2007). Literacy Under and Over the Desk: Oppositions and heterogeneity. Language and Education 21(6): 515–30. Merchant, G. (2007). Mind the Gap: Discourses and discontinuity in digital literacies. E-Learning. 4(3): 241–55. Michaels, S. (1981). ‘Sharing Time’: Children’s narrative styles and differential access to literacy. Language in Society 10(3): 423–42. Moje, E.B. (2007). Youth Cultures, Literacies, and Identities in and out of School. In J. Flood, S. B. Heath and D. Lapp (Eds) Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy through the Communicative and Visual Arts. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, vol. 2. Moje, E.B., Ciechanowski, K.M., Kramer, K., Ellis, L., Carrillo, R. and Collazo, T. (2004). Working toward Third Space in Content Area Literacy: An examination of everyday funds of knowledge and discourse. Reading Research Quarterly 39(1): 38–70. Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D. and González, N. (1992). Funds of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice 31: 132–41. Morrell, E., and Duncan-Andrade, J. (2006). Popular Culture and Critical Media Pedagogy in Secondary Literacy Classrooms. International Journal of Learning 12(9): 273–80. Moss, G. (2000). Informal Literacies and Pedagogic Discourse. Linguistics and Education 11(1): 47–64. Pahl, K. (2007a) The Ecology of Literacy and Language: Discourses, identities and practices in homes, schools and communities. Encyclopedia of Language and Education. New York: Springer. Pahl, K. (2007b). Timescales and Ethnography: Understanding a child´s meaning-making across three sites, a home, a classroom and a family literacy class. Ethnography and Education 2(2): 175–90. Pahl, K. and Pollard. A. (2006). ‘Narratives of migration and artefacts of identity: New imaginings and new generations.’ Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Conference, University of Warwick, September. Pahl, K. and Rowsell, J. (Eds) (2006). Travel Notes from the New Literacy Studies: Instances of practice. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Robinson, M. and Mackey, M. (2003). Film and Television. In N. Hall, J. Larson and J. Marsh (Eds) Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy. London, New Dehli and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Rogers, R. (2003). A Critical Discourse Analysis of Family Literacy Practices: Power in and out of print. New York: Routledge. Rowsell, J. (2006). Family Literacy Experiences: Creating reading and writing opportunities that support classroom reading. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

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Scribner, S. and Cole, M. (1981). The Psychology of Literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Street, B. (1984). Literacy in Theory and Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press. Street, B. (Ed.) (1993). Cross-cultural Approaches to Literacy. London: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, D. (1983). Family Literacy: Young children learning to read and write. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Taylor, D. and Dorsey-Gaines, C. (1988). Growing up Literate: Learning from inner-city families. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Vygotsky, L.S. (1962). Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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27 Gender and the teaching of English Gemma Moss

Two themes characterize work on gender and English teaching: how the content of the English curriculum contributes to the formation of gendered identities; and how gender differences in attainment in reading and writing can be explained and addressed. Sometimes these two different discourses intertwine. Look back over the last twenty years and it is also possible to see a swing away from placing girls centre stage in the enquiry to what might almost be described as a preoccupation with boys. In the current managerial and performance-driven climate, boys’ underachievement in reading and writing stands out as a problem to be fixed. The struggle from a feminist perspective has been to know how to respond to this state of affairs without losing ground. In part this has meant grappling with the issue of ‘failing boys’ while trying to protect the interests of girls. This dual aim has not always been easy. This chapter will review how these literatures have developed over time, consider the extent to which policy-driven education reform has reshaped thinking about the relationship between gender and literacy, and suggest where the debate should go next.

Gender and identity: the English classroom as a space for ideological change In many respects, English as a subject area acts as a weather vane for dominant ideas about education and its purposes. In the 1970s and early 1980s English was generally regarded as an expressive art and children’s potential as meaning-makers was a principal theme in a good deal of the research literature. Often influenced by linguistics, much of that literature documented children’s entry into spoken and written language and considered the developmental challenges they faced in both appropriating existing forms of speech and writing and adapting them for new purposes. Mapped onto political arguments about ideology, social structure and agency, the English classroom became a space for exploring social identities and advocating social change. In terms of gender these preoccupations initially led to a focus on the role of texts in reinforcing gender stereotypes (NATE, 1985; Stone, 1983). Quantitative textual analysis was used to demonstrate 317

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the limited roles that girls and women occupied in reading schemes and the children’s literature that was officially endorsed within the school, while at the same time the role of popular culture in inducting girls into an ideology of subservient femininity became a particular target of attack (Leggett and Hemming, 1984). For many English teachers, the language and literature curriculum represented a key forum in which gender stereotypes could be challenged and overturned. It was well-placed to address these issues precisely because of the close association between the reading of literature and the formation of personal sensibilities, and because of the key part the English classroom could play in bridging the cultures of home, peer group and the school through its choice of subject matter. The English teacher’s role in challenging gender stereotypes seemed particularly urgent not least because, despite apparent equal access to the full range of the curriculum, girls’ educational performance continued to lag behind that of boys’. This was particularly true in maths and science subjects and also in terms of entry to higher education. One possible explanation of this state of affairs was girls’ own false consciousness – that they accepted too many limitations placed on their aspirations and future actions by conforming to a narrowly prescribed view of femininity and what constituted gender-appropriate behaviour. An alternative view, of course, was that it was schools themselves which institutionally and structurally limited girls’ horizons by unevenly distributing access to educational goods and in many different ways privileging boys over girls, whether via the official or hidden curriculum. A good deal of the debate within feminism has been precisely over the kinds of possible explanations for girls’ relatively poor educational showing and how these could be most effectively redressed.

Championing girls and challenging boys From these starting points, feminist studies of the English curriculum have explored how girls, and sometimes boys, negotiate a gendered sense of self through their reading and writing. If popular genres that are closely associated with a female readership such as the romance and soaps that once came under sustained attack, then more fine-grained explorations of these genres have followed, unpicking the tensions between what Christian-Smith (1993) calls their ‘ideological closure and utopian possibilities’. In part this kind of rereading has developed alongside a more sophisticated view of gender identities in which femininity is imagined as a less complete and more unstable project, fraught with contradictions and double-edged possibilities (Butler, 1990; Hey, 1997; Walkerdine, 1990). Much of this discussion has been taken forward by examining children’s actual text choices, and considering the significance that particular genres hold for their readers or writers (Camitta, 1993; Cherland, 1994; Moss, 1989). This has been accompanied by a general move from textual analysis to ethnographic studies focused on the uses of literacy in informal contexts. Such studies have explored differences between communities of girl readers as well as similarities in their response, identifying the room for appropriation and transformation alongside social reproduction that reading and writing afford (Frazer, 1987; Hammett and Sanford, 2008; Moss, 1993). The choice of girls rather than boys as the main focus for much of this work is not incidental. Rather, it is a deliberate attempt to explore the possibilities of exercising agency from within communities that occupy socially and ideologically marginalized positions (Hicks, 2001). 318

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This kind of research has fed back into classrooms in different ways. It has sharpened debate over the range of texts that the curriculum should incorporate and what kinds of teaching they should lead to (Marsh and Millard, 2006). If some of this work has argued for a better understanding of the value that popular culture holds for different readers, then feminist studies of classroom interaction have also been very alert to how the resources of the English curriculum and the space it provides can be used by boys to do power over girls (Gilbert, 1993; Williamson, 1981/2). There are good reasons for counselling against an ‘anything goes’ attitude. One way of both admitting a wider range of texts into the classroom but continuing to examine their role in the formation of gendered subjectivities is to adopt a ‘critical literacy’ stance (Gilbert and Taylor, 1991). Authors such as Gilbert and Gilbert (1998) and Rowan et al. (2002) use this perspective to consider how the English curriculum can be used to dissolve the sharp dividing lines between masculinities and femininities, thus opening up more territory to more pupils.

Gender, literacy and performance: the re-gearing of the English curriculum The literature on gender and identity in the English classroom has as its aim greater gender equity. The literature on gender, literacy and attainment has a very different trajectory. In its current form it can be linked to the rise of large-scale education reform programmes, now so prevalent internationally. As large-scale education reform has gathered pace from the early 1990s onwards, it has changed the English classroom. Language and literature have been increasingly subsumed into the literacy curriculum, a redefinition which gives greater emphasis to the transmission of skills, rather than the formation of identity or the expression of individual creativity. The point and purpose of the English curriculum has been transformed even as its constituent parts have been reorganized. This change has been driven externally rather than from within the profession as governments have increasingly wrested control over curricula, not least by introducing quality audit and management regimes that themselves redefine teachers’ professional role (see Chapter 37, this volume), holding them to account for the performance of their pupils. This has involved a major reordering of both teachers’ work and pupils’ learning (Moss, 2004). It has also brought gender differentials in literacy attainment into focus (Mahoney, 1998). In this new climate, the extensive collection and monitoring of performance data guides the decisions policymakers take about where to target teachers’ attention and resources. Performance data collected in OECD countries demonstrates that in countries where access to basic education is not an issue, boys’ achievement in literacy lags behind girls, in contrast to either maths or science, where differences are smaller and run in boys’ favour (OECD, 2004). In some countries, most notably Australia, media reporting of this data has been used as part of an anti-feminist backlash, with calls for schools to redress what is portrayed as an unfair educational advantage for girls (Martino, 2008). But for many governments, gender differences are also only one of a number of salient variables. Other social groups may demonstrate far higher levels of educational disadvantage. In the US, performance discrepancies are voiced more strongly in relation to race and ethnicity. By contrast, attention in the UK has focused first and most strongly on differences in literacy attainment between schools. If these could be largely mapped 319

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onto the social class catchments of the schools concerned, a confluence of managerialism and school effectiveness has recontextualized the problem into an issue of teacher quality. In England in particular this has justified unprecedented and centrally-driven intervention in the organization and delivery of the literacy curriculum (Stannard and Huxford, 2007). This has narrowed the space within the subject English for the kind of political action around gender that Gilbert and Gilbert (1998) and Rowan et al. (2002) advocate. It has also recast the problem of boys’ performance into a technocratic issue which good teaching of the core skills now identified as essential prerequisites of the literacy curriculum should be able to address. The end product sought is uniformity of outcomes from the education system rather than changed gender relations. Performance data have not always been used in this way. Back in the 1950s, boys’ substantially lower achievement in reading and writing was well documented in standardized tests in the UK (Millard, 1997). Indeed, the gap with girls’ performance has remained relatively constant over time. But the differences in achievement between boys and girls were then explained by the concept of differing rates of maturity. Girls’ higher performance was assumed to stem from a greater facility in language skills, with which boys would catch up later. As girls’ apparent head start was not associated with any longer term advantage in terms of performance outcomes from a selective education system which most left relatively early, this discrepancy could be safely overlooked. In the current climate this is no longer a tenable response.

Underachievement in context Recasting any differences in literacy performance as a problem that good teaching could be expected to fix reflects a wider set of social changes, not least in the relation of education to the economy. Since the 1950s there have been a number of fundamental dislocations and re-gearings in the labour market, including the disappearance of a large number of manual jobs in many western countries, and a shrinkage in employment opportunities for the young. As the economy has restructured, so employers have shown themselves less and less willing to invest in training their own workforce when downsizing and outsourcing, and company consolidation may take out the roles they would once have trained for. Against this backdrop, schools are expected to provide larger numbers of willing and flexible entrants to a rapidly changing labour market, where the skills thresholds may be higher and the skills required soft (Arnot et al., 1999). Back in the 1950s, the fact that girls’ performance in English at the age of eleven outstripped boys mattered little in a context where many would be expected to leave the education system early to take up unskilled work. This is no longer the case. Making schools shoulder both the responsibility and also the blame for whether and how young people are equipped to meet the new requirements of the labour market provides governments with a means of managing this transformation in opportunities and dealing with the potential fallout (Mahoney, 1998). Reducing the gender gap in literacy to a technocratic question about the distribution of a finite set of skills achieves precisely this aim. This is not the way the story is mainly told. Indeed, when most strongly picked up by the media, the gender differential in the literacy attainment data is generally treated as proof that schools fail boys and favour girls – in effect turning on its head the case that feminists have argued for years. Not surprisingly, feminists have retorted with anger and suspicion, labelling such coverage part of a backlash against feminism itself (Epstein et al., 1998; Hammett and Sanford, 2008; Martino, 2008). This move has also provided 320

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an incentive for feminists to come up with counter arguments: ones that can explain boys’ underachievement in literacy without losing sight of the broader picture in which girls continue to struggle against sexism and misogyny. In the UK, official advice on boys’ underachievement largely sidesteps these political questions. The gender gap in the literacy curriculum is part of the repertoire of performance discrepancies that schools are expected to both monitor and address. Most of the advice to schools on how they should tackle this issue has concentrated on trying to improve the teaching of a range of skills seen as central to the literacy curriculum, and the lack of which is demonstrated by boys’ low achievement. In line with this view, detailed official advice has advocated more explicit teaching of for instance more complex sentence structures as part of the writing curriculum; or a more precise grasp of the rules that constitute different genres. Perhaps more surprisingly it has also offered support for maintaining a wide definition of what reading and writing are for, rather than only pursuing a narrow and punitive focus on the acquisition of basic skills (OfSTED, 2003). There are some gains. Official advice warns against adopting so-called ‘boyfriendly’ pedagogies on the grounds that there is no evidence that such strategies work (Younger et al., 2005) and states quite clearly that any improvements in boys’ performance must not be bought through adopting approaches that would disadvantage girls (DfES, 2007). As a holding position this seems fair enough. The performance culture may have changed many things, but in the UK at least this does not amount to a fully fledged feminist backlash. But there are also losses. As the policy cycle unfolds, schools are increasingly urged to do better if their results do not show continuous improvement. If the kind of measures outlined above fail to do the job then the pressure is on to try again with something new. In England the changing structures of reform now place more of the responsibility for choosing what to do next on individual schools. In the absence of any clear explanation of the pattern that creates the gender difference in literacy attainment it is not clear which way they will jump. Any discussion of the politics of the choices they make is muted. Outcomes trump all.

Explaining underachievement in the literacy classroom with gender equity in mind Faced with this turn of events, there has been a flurry of activity within the feminist community seeking to understand: the new processes of policy-driven reform which have changed the terms of the discussion of gender equity in education; how to challenge and oppose a public discourse that places boys as the chief losers from the education system and which threatens girls’ undoubted gains; how boys’ relatively poor performance in literacy can be explained and how it can be addressed in ways that are consistent with building greater gender equity for all (Barrs and Pidgeon, 1993, 1998, 2002; Epstein et al., 1998; Gilbert and Gilbert, 1998; Hammett and Sanford, 2008; Millard, 1997; Rowan et al., 2002; Safford et al., 2005). This includes paying attention to how gender is intersected by social class and ethnicity. Perhaps most importantly it also means recognizing that not all boys do badly, just as not all girls do well. One of the most important roles the feminist community has taken on in this debate is challenging explanations for boys’ underachievement which reinforce rather than dissolve gender stereotyping. Often presented as assertions, with little research evidence to support them, 321

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many such explanations can be ruled out precisely because if true they would create conditions in which all boys would fail, when that is not what the data show. There is more than one kind of boy just as there is more than one kind of girl. Return to the performance data and it is the distribution of attainment that varies between boys and girls, with a much larger group of boys clustered at the bottom end of the attainment spectrum in literacy, so creating a longer tail of underachievement. Any satisfactory explanation must account for the variation of failure and success within gender categories, as well as between them. For some this includes taking social class and ethnicity into account: more white working class boys fall into the lowest achieving group. Explanations that pander to simple gender stereotypes – that (all) boys suffer from: a lack of male role models in the home or at school; shorter attention spans or peer pressure to misbehave; a literacy curriculum that pays insufficient attention to their (uniform) interests, as if we all knew exactly what these were – can be dismissed. They are simply not adequate to the case and can lead to positively harmful interventions. The primary school in my local area, which reorganized its teaching into single sex classes so that they could teach boys in short bursts in order to cater for what they regarded as boys’ shorter attention spans, must surely create the object it sets out to address. Feminist explanations for the variation in boys’ response to the literacy curriculum often start from the understanding that masculinities are themselves diverse. They may be intersected by race and class and draw on a range of resources from popular culture whose place in the literacy curriculum is already ambiguous. This takes discussion back to the kinds of issues about gender and identity discussed above. A second strand in feminist thinking links attainment and the formation of gender identities much more closely to the social organization of the curriculum in school and the way this positions learners (Elkjaer, 1992; Moss, 2007; Solsken, 1993). This reflects a different set of interests. One of the first detailed empirical studies in this area, undertaken by Judith Solsken, looked at gender differences in the learning trajectories of boys and girls brought up in the same middle-class community, as they encountered formal schooling and took their first steps towards becoming readers and writers (Solsken, 1993). Solsken’s account focuses on how girls and boys tussled with competing definitions of the English curriculum which positioned them in different ways. She refers to these as ‘play-centred’ or ‘work-centred’ definitions of literacy. The kindergarten classroom that she studied integrated literacy as far as possible into children’s play. The children were encouraged to incorporate emergent writing into playful activities, not drilled in the acquisition of a discrete set of skills, with the meanings and purposes that shaped their use of reading and writing given pride of place. In Bernstein’s terms this is invisible pedagogy of a kind far removed from the visible pedagogy that characterizes most policy-driven classrooms (Bernstein, 1996). Yet Solsken also demonstrates that ‘work-centred’ definitions of literacy were never far away, either within the school, which collected and processed standardized test scores at the end of the year, or at home, where parents and older siblings passed judgement about these children’s proficiency and the progress they made. Solsken’s interest is in understanding how children and families negotiated their way through these tensions, and in particular which kinds of definitions of literacy they appropriated for what ends. She observed that some children who adopted a ‘workcentred’ definition of literacy lacked confidence in their ability to do the work well and seemed to lose sight of the purposes for which they might use their skills. They took few risks. Others who took up a ‘play-centred’ definition of literacy used this position to 322

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resist the kind of close attention that the work of learning literacy seemed to require. More girls than boys fell into the former category; more boys than girls into the latter. Solsken argues that the potential conflict between play and work-centred definitions of literacy can be resolved in many ways, and that the relationship to children’s gendered sense of self is not straightforward. However, gender will always come into the mix at this level, as children negotiate the tensions involved in learning to read and write both at home and in school. Gemma Moss (2007) followed up this work with multi-site ethnographic studies of reading in the seven to nine age group. Moss identifies three different ways of doing reading that permeate the primary classroom: reading for proficiency, where what counts is how well children read; reading for choice, where what counts is their willingness to read; and procedural reading, where reading is used to get some other curriculum task done. She highlights how the judgements that teachers pass on children’s proficiency as readers are made visible in classrooms: through the ways in which children are seated; through the texts they are asked to read; and through the ways in which they then access much of the rest of the curriculum. The hierarchies these produce among learners become part of the social context that children have to navigate in school. Yet at the same time, reading for choice and procedural reading offer children other kinds of ground rules which they can use to reposition themselves and others. As they move up the school, the proficiency judgements that teachers make divide children into two groups: those who can read well enough, and those who can’t yet do so. Children in the first group are given much greater control over their own reading: they have access to the widest range of resources and are freest to determine how they use them. Children in the second group are subject to much closer regulation and their choice of reading material is restricted to what the teacher will allow. Moss argues that these kinds of distinctions between learners are an integral part of the literacy curriculum and yet are not so well-defined in other subject areas. They also become part of all children’s experience of primary schooling. Moss demonstrates that girls and boys designated poor readers react differently to their status in class. Weak girl readers accept that position and are willing to read the books they are allotted. Even if teachers underestimate what they can do, they stick with the tasks and coast along. Boys designated poor readers are less inclined to accept their status, particularly when this sets them apart from their peers. The strategies they employ increasingly take them off task as they struggle to disguise their relatively poor standing. In flight from the judgements made about their reading they seek refuge in visually rich non-fiction whose design characteristics look as though their intended audience comprises adults, not children, and then navigate their way round these texts using the pictures to claim expertise in discussion with their peers (Moss, 2003). Yet by avoiding tasks they cannot do they fall further behind, thus making it more difficult to close the gap. Meanwhile, those children who pass the teacher’s proficiency threshold and are designated independent readers face different dilemmas, as they struggle to take over responsibility for reading for themselves rather than at others’ direction. This produces other gender differences (Moss, 2007). This analysis of the interaction of gender and the designation of ability in the literacy curriculum provides the basis for understanding the variation within the performance data. It also brings under closer scrutiny what needs to change within the literacy curriculum to lead to more equitable outcomes. 323

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Remedying gender differences in literacy attainment without recourse to gender stereotyping Trying to create a socially equitable education system is a different objective from trying to produce uniform outcomes in performance data. When the measure of success rests with the performance data alone the criteria by which to judge the means used to achieve that end weaken. Pressure-driven systems call for quick fixes. In effect they create a market in educational remedies: if one doesn’t work then another must be tried (Ball, 2007). The policy cycle in England has now reached a point where the reliance on a ‘one-size fits all’ approach exemplified by the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy (Coffield et al., 2007) has been diluted by a move towards niche marketing of particular educational products designed to redress the problems associated with particular target groups (NPCDT, 2008). Getting under the general picture presented in the national data to look at the specific data in this school or even in this class is the direction of travel. But this leaves room for stereotyped thinking about who the particular target groups might be and what they might lack. What are the best courses of action open to schools at this point? First they have to get a clear grasp on how performance-driven policy impacts on them. What kinds of behaviours is it pushing them towards? Can these be justified on other grounds? Are educational priorities being distorted or enhanced in the process? Each case will be different. This is a necessary prerequisite before going any further (Myers et al., 2007; OfSTED, 2002). Second, schools need to set aside sufficient time to get behind the data and think about what they mean. Performance data are not transparent, nor are they self-explanatory. On the contrary there may be many ways of interpreting their significance. The history of the possible explanations for boys’ underperformance in literacy demonstrates just that. One corrective to the pressure to decide and then quickly act on explanation x or y is to turn each proffered explanation into questions. The research undertaken by Moss and Attar which led to Literacy and Gender: Researching texts, context and readers began in exactly this way (Moss, 2007). At the time the quantitative data seemed to demonstrate very clearly that (1) boys did less well than girls at reading and writing; (2) boys read less; and (3) boys preferred non-fiction (Barrs, 1993). The research team began by considering what these correlations in the data might suggest and came up with this hypothesis. Boys’ preference for non-fiction would take them to texts which were linguistically more complex and therefore more difficult for beginning readers to read. This would increase the gap between failure and success in learning to read, and so explain the longer tail of underachievement in literacy among boys rather than girls. But the explanation depends upon an assumption that can also be turned into a question: Why do boys prefer non-fiction? This became the basis for the research which set out to discover where and how boys’ preference for non-fiction is formed either inside or outside of school. In fact the research was able to demonstrate that the proposition that ‘boys prefer non-fiction’ is a myth. It derives from a widespread misreading of the quantitative data which actually show that only a very small proportion of children say they prefer to read non-fiction over fiction – roughly ten per cent. The most that can be said is that a majority of that minority are boys. Committed readers, whether boys or girls, read fiction. If supporting boys’ reading is an issue for the English curriculum, then it is important not to stereotype the kinds of reading that boys are willing to undertake (Hammett and Sanford, 2008; Safford et al., 2005). 324

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Conclusion School-based research used to be conducted in such a way that it could challenge existing thinking and open up new possibilities for action (QCA, 1998). Under the current circumstances it is far harder to work in this way. Often what can be done amounts to no more than choosing and then evaluating an initiative which the school has plucked off the shelf, with few questions asked about the premises on which it is grounded. Yet at this point in the education reform cycle we should know that there are seldom simple answers to complex questions. A more complex analysis of the social organization of education suggests that there are two aspects of the literacy curriculum that require particular attention if the gap between girls and boys performance is to be closed (Moss, 2000). One is how teachers deal with the social status of those who fall behind. This is not just a matter of choosing an initial methodology for teaching reading or writing but rather considering how the classroom handles the distinctions between readers that the curriculum creates and the gender politics that flow from this. The second is how teachers manage the transition in classrooms from literacy as teacher-allotted work to literacy as self-directed activity (Moss, 2007). This is seldom a priority in the current round of educational reform with its emphasis on explicit teaching. Yet part of the key to narrowing the gap in performance may well rest with the kind of support offered to pupils as they move into reading and writing for themselves (Barrs and Cork, 2001; Hamston and Love, 2008). Treating this transition as only a problem for boys leads to the hunt for ‘boy-friendly’ solutions, and opportunities to read and write that match ‘masculine’ interests. But the transition creates difficulties for girls too (Moss, 2007). Clarify the difficulties that the social structure to the literacy curriculum poses for all pupils, and schools can find many different ways of addressing them. Resorting to gender stereotypes to explain what those difficulties are or to decide how to remedy them will only do more harm than good.

References Arnot, M., David, M. and Weiner, G. (1999). Closing the Gender Gap. London: Polity Press. Ball, S. (2007). Education plc: Understanding private sector participation in public sector education. London: Routledge. Barrs, M. (1993). Introduction: Reading the difference. In M. Barrs and S. Pidgeon (Eds) Reading the Difference. London: Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE). Barrs, M. and Cork, V. (2001). The Reader in the Writer. London: CLPE. Barrs, M. and Pidgeon, S. (Eds) (1993). Reading the Difference. London: CLPE. Barrs, M. and Pidgeon, S. (Eds) (1998). Boys and Reading. London: CLPE. Barrs, M. and Pidgeon, S. (Eds) (2002). Boys and Writing. London: CLPE. Bernstein, B. (1996). Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity. London: Taylor & Francis. Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. London: Routledge. Camitta, M. (1993). Vernacular Writing: Varieties of literacy among Philadelphia high school students. In B. Street (Ed.) Literacy Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cherland, M. (1994). Private Practices: Girls reading fiction and constructing identity. London: Taylor & Francis. Christian-Smith, L.K. (1993). Texts of Desire: Essays on fiction, femininity and schooling. London: Falmer.

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Coffield, F., Steer, R., Allen, R., Vignoles, A., Moss, G. and Vincent, C. (2007). Public Sector Reform: Principles for improving the education system. London: Institute of Education, Bedford Way Papers. Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2007). Gender and Education: The evidence on pupils in England. Nottingham: DfES. Elkjaer, B. (1992). Girls and Information Technology in Denmark – An account of a socially constructed problem. Gender and Education 4(1/2): 25–40. Epstein, D., Elwood, J., Hey, V. and Maw, J. (Eds) (1998). Failing Boys? Issues in gender and achievement. Buckingham: Open University Press. Frazer, E. (1987). Teenage Girls Reading. Jackie. Media Culture and Society 9(4): 407–25. Gilbert, P. (1993). Gender, Stories and the Language Classroom. Geelong, VIC: Deakin University Press. Gilbert, P. and Taylor, S. (1991). Fashioning the Feminine. Sydney, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Gilbert, R. and Gilbert, P. (1998). Masculinity Goes to School. London: Routledge. Hammett, R. and Sanford, K. (2008). Boys, Girls and the Myths of Literacies and Learning. Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholar’s Press. Hamston, J. and Love, K. (2008). Myths, Boys and Literacy: Adolescent boys and their leisure reading choices. In R. Hammett and K. Sanford (Eds) Boys, Girls and the Myths of Literacies and Learning. Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholar’s Press. Hey, V. (1997). The Company She Keeps: An ethnography of girls’ friendship. Buckingham: Open University Press. Hicks, D. (2001). Reading Lives. New York: Teachers College Press. Leggett, J. and Hemming, J. (1984). Teaching Magazines. The English Magazine 12(Spring): 8–14. Mahony, P. (1998). Girls will be Girls and Boys will be First. In D. Epstein, J. Elwood, V. Hey and J. Maw (Eds) Failing Boys? Issues in gender and achievement. Buckingham: Open University Press. Marsh, J. and Millard, E. (Eds) (2006). Popular Literacies, Childhood and Schooling. London: Routledge. Martino, W. (2008). The Politics and Crisis of Boys’ Literacy: Beyond essentialist mindsets and the boy-friendly curriculum. In R. Hammett and K. Sanford (Eds) Boys, Girls and the Myths of Literacies and Learning. Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholar’s Press. Millard, E. (1997). Differently Literate. London: Falmer Press. Moss, G. (1989). Un/popular Fictions. London: Virago. Moss, G. (1993). Girls Tell the Teen Romance: Four reading histories. In D. Buckingham (Ed.) Reading Audiences: Young people and the media. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Moss, G. (2000). Raising Attainment: Boys, reading and the National Literacy Hour. Reading 34(3): 101–6. Moss, G. (2004). Changing Practice: The National Literacy Strategy and the politics of literacy policy. Literacy 38(3): 126–33. Moss, G. (2007). Literacy and Gender: Researching texts, contexts and readers. London: Routledge. Myers, K., Taylor, H. with Adler, S. and Leonard, D. (2007). Genderwatch … still Watching. Stoke on Trent: Trentham. National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE), Language and Gender Committee (1985). Alice in Genderland: Reflections on language, power and control. Exeter: NATE. National Primary Care Development Team (NPCDT) (2008). National Education Breakthrough Programme: Raising boys’ achievement in secondary schools. http://www.innovation-unit. co.uk/images/stories/breakthrough_handbook_-_july_2004.pdf accessed OfSTED (2003). Yes He Can: Schools where boys write well. London: OfSTED.

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Organisation for Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2004). Learning for Tomorrow’s World: First results from PISA 2003. Paris: OECD. Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) (1998). Can Do Better: Raising boys’ achievement in English. London: HMSO. Rowan, L., Knobel, M., Bigum, C. and Lankshear, C. (2002). Boys, Literacies and Schooling. Buckingham: Open University Press. Safford, K., O’Sullivan, O. and Barrs, M. (2005). Boys on the Margin. London: CLPE. Solsken, J. (1993). Literacy, Gender and Work in Families and in School. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Stannard, J. and Huxford, L. (2007). The Literacy Game: The story of the National Literacy Strategy. London: Routledge. Stone, R. (1983). Pour out the Cocoa, Janet. London: Longmans. Walkerdine, V. (1990). Schoolgirl Fictions. London: Verso. Williamson, J. (1981/2). How does Girl Number Twenty Understand Ideology? Screen Education 40: 80–7. Younger, M., Warrington, M. with Gray, J., Rudduck, J., McLellan, R., Bearne, E., Kershner, R. and Bricheno, P. (2005). Raising Boys’ Achievement. Norwich: DfES.

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28 An outward, inward, and school-ward overview of interactive communication technologies across the literacy landscape David Reinking

I approach my task in this chapter humbly but with some frustration. It is impossible to do justice, in a relatively short chapter, to a topic that encompasses what has been argued to be one of the defining developments in the history of literacy (cf. Leu, 2006; Purves, 1998). Further, the relevant literature is massive. There are no fewer than six major handbooks (Coiro et al., 2008; Flood et al., 1997; Flood et al., 2007; McKenna et al., 2006; Mayer, 2005; Reinking et al., 1998) devoted to examining the intersection of literacy and the digital technologies for reading and writing, multi-media learning, visual media, which are often referred to collectively as interactive communication technologies (ICTs). The most recently published of these handbooks (Coiro et al., 2008) has nearly 1,400 pages and weighs more than a kilo, which is a far stretch for the original meaning of the term handbook, and decidedly ironic given all of these handbooks’ enthusiasm for digitalization. The list of reference citations alone across all of these handbooks would fill a large book. The fact that two of these handbooks have an explicit international focus reflects, too how ICTs and multimedia forms of reading and writing are influencing global changes in literacy. It is clear that countries and regions around the world are contending with the implications of a now well-entrenched, but often ill-understood, post-typographic world that has little in common with the typographic one that dominated through the late twentieth century. Thus, given the diverse sociocultural, economic, and political conditions into which ICTs have emerged and how they are developing around the world, to make any generalizations or recommendations is difficult and risky. Even a superficial perusal of these handbooks would also reveal the remarkable diversity of disciplines and perspectives that have been brought to bear on the topic of literacy and ICTS: literacy studies, library and information sciences, media and communication studies, sociolinguistics, educational psychology and cognitive science, rhetoric, critical literacy and pedagogy, instructional technology, feminism, constructivism and sociocultural theories, are a few; not to mention some more focused and less comprehensive theoretical perspectives such as game theory, activity theory, attention economies, and so forth (see Coiro et al., 2008). Further, as I have argued elsewhere (Reinking, 2005), there is virtually no topic or area of interest in literacy today that is unaffected by digital 328

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technologies in general and ICTs in particular. Thus, the diversity of the literature, too, defies concise summarization. Ironically, this cornucopia of information reveals puzzling scarcity as well. The amount of rigorous, focused research that might guide thinking and action to address the dramatic shifts from a literacy centred in printed materials to one increasingly centred in digital media is not commensurate with either the importance of the topic or the overall volume of the literature devoted to it. Further, that assessment has changed little during the approximately 30 years that researchers have been interested in reading, writing, and digital technologies. For example in major reviews, Reinking and Bridwell-Bowles (1991) found the research until that time to be atheoretical and ad hoc; Kamil and Lane (1998) documented the lack of published studies on digital technologies in mainstream literacy journals; the National Reading Panel (NRP) report in the US (2002) did not conduct a planned meta-analysis of studies in the area of technology because there were too few studies to justify such an analysis; and Moran et al. (2008), in their meta-analysis including international sources, were able to locate only 20 studies between 1988 and 2005 addressing the use of technology aimed at increasing reading achievement among adolescents in schools. Further, in a meta-analysis of 42 studies published between 1990 and 2001 and investigating computer-assisted instruction in beginning reading instruction, Blok et al. (2002) indicated that the relatively low overall effect size (d = 0.2) should be interpreted with caution, in part because many of the studies were of poor quality. Even when considering reviews that include qualitative studies, the proportion of rigorous research published in high quality outlets is often small compared to those citations characterizing the contemporary circumstances or hypothesized effects of ICTs and staking out favoured theoretical positions. That assessment is positive in that the research base, unlike at its early stages, is much more firmly grounded in theory. But it also suggests that there is relatively little research addressing how digital technologies can be integrated practically into curriculum and instruction and that speaks to the issues practitioners and policymakers face. The current literature, it could be argued, is over-theorized and under-researched (i.e. replete with intellectually interesting and potentially promising perspectives without corresponding empirical work), lacking reliable, data-driven guidance for those who need it most, such as educators and policymakers. In that regard, the research base related to ICTs, like education research in general, is an open rural landscape rather than an urban one populated by skyscrapers of knowledge, to use Labaree’s (1998) metaphor. Thus, given the relative paucity of focused research at this juncture, there are few firm conclusions and recommendations that can be confidently drawn from a solid research base. To summarize succinctly, there are more scholars writing about ICTs than those who are gathering data to substantiate their ideas or to address focused questions of consensual importance about how ICTs are or should be viewed and used in schools. So the first message of this chapter, and a caveat for all that follows, is that the scope of the topic is incredibly large, with a literature to match; the perspectives incredibly diverse; and the research base decidedly thin and weak, given the importance of the topic and the volume of publications devoted to it. And, as I hope will become clearer in the remainder of this chapter, the issues are incredibly diverse and complex; the possibilities incredibly open ended and intriguing; and the stakes of not understanding, accepting, or contending with the revolutionary changes ICTs have precipitated, are incredibly high. To accommodate the overwhelming diversity, density, and complexity of the topic, I offer this chapter as a gateway or portal to a much larger landscape, including more 329

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comprehensive sources such as the aforementioned handbooks. At best, it provides snapshots of that landscape. Specifically, I will first contextualize briefly the landscape of literacy today in light of ICTs and then introduce some dominant areas of theory and research, major thoroughfares, if you will, that cut across a diverse landscape. I refer to these thoroughfares as outward, inward, and school-ward emphases and agendas for ICTs theory and research, and I offer some representative examples of theory and research that fall into these categories. Given the breadth of the landscape, it is an inevitably personal and idiosyncratic map of a diverse terrain. Finally, I will offer a few broad generalizations, conclusions, and recommendations.

Snapshots of the current landscape related to ICTs The following snapshots of the contemporary landscape of literacy illustrate the broad, fundamental changes that are characteristic of a post-typographic world when compared to a previously dominant typographic one. They also illustrate how trends involving ICTs are rapidly evolving and shifting, creating ambiguity about the future. 1

2

3 4

5

6

7

In 2007 approximately 60 billion emails were sent every day (http://ask.yahoo. com/20060324.html); 300,000 new blogs appear each day as do approximately 500,000 postings on existing blogs (source: technorati.com); and a new blog is created every 5.8 seconds (The Pew Internet in American Life Project). A survey by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press (2006) revealed that the percentage of US adults who regularly get news online increased between the years 2000 and 2006. A Reuters worldwide survey of 704 newspaper editors revealed that 44 per cent believed that most people would be reading their news online within ten years. Fifty-eight per cent of adult respondents to a Pew survey indicated that they consult the internet when they have a problem; this was the highest category and well above the public library (13 per cent), the lowest category. According to the Internet Systems Consortium (http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/ops/ ds/), in 2008 there were about 600 million internet domain names, and according to Internet World Stats (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm) there were almost 1.5 billion users of the internet worldwide. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA, 2004) in the US (Survey of Literary Reading in America, 2004) reported and lamented a precipitous decline in ‘literary’ reading, while the Book Industry Study Group (http://www.bisg.org/) reported that between 2001 and 2006 the average number of books purchased yearly per American fell from 8.27 to 7.23. Among the top 20 countries in broadband connections, Hong Kong and South Korea are ranked 1 and 2. The UK and the US are eighteenth and nineteenth respectively, just above Slovenia (see: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0601/).

To emphasize an underlying point, all of the information in the previous items was located relatively easily on the internet. Is it accurate? Trustworthy? Those questions too characterize an important dimension of contemporary literacy, and they illustrate the breadth and depth of the issues associated with using digital media for communication and dissemination of information. The issue of accuracy and bias is only one of many 330

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that has or should have meaning for educators and researchers interested in literacy, including law and ethics (e.g. copyright and intellectual property), business and economics (the role of advertising, open or closed access to scholarship), and geopolitics (restrictions on internet access and use in totalitarian countries) to name a few.

International responses to ICT The realization that ICTs have changed everything has been slow to take root in the US, but not necessarily in other countries. Despite, for example that the penetration of internet access in North America is substantially higher than the rest of the world (60 per cent of the population compared to 54 per cent in Oceania/Australia, the second highest (see http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm); the US has no national policy or initiative to systematically integrate ICT knowledge, skills, and dispositions into the curriculum, nor to promote widespread internet access and use in particular. The International Society for Technology in Education has developed national standards for students and for teachers (http://www.iste.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=NETS), but these standards are not officially mandated or monitored. Individual states have technology standards, but these are not typically framed as issues of literacy, nor are they embedded into the language arts curriculum. As recently as 2005, not a single US state allowed students to use word processing when taking standardized, state writing assessments (Leu, 2006). Likewise, the governing board of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has decided not to include assessment of on-line reading skills in the next NAEP assessment, despite that the 2009 Programme for International Assessment (PISA) includes such an assessment. Nonetheless, the International Reading Association released a position statement in 2002 indicating that ICTs were redefining the nature of literacy and calling for the integration of ICT into the literacy curriculum. In 2008, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) followed suit by redefining literacy to include ICTs (http://www.ncte. org/about/gov/129117.htm). In contrast, Mexico’s former President Fox, shortly after his inauguration in 2000, launched a programme to connect every corner in the country to the internet. In Japan, where internet development and access is subsidized by the government, broadband speeds are 8–30 times faster than in the US, with substantially lower cost. In the UK, ICT standards are a separate area of the curriculum in primary and secondary schools (see http://curriculum.qca.org.uk/) and are assessed regularly. In Finland, the National Board of Education as early as 1997 implemented a comprehensive initiative to integrate ICT into schools and to provide extensive in-service opportunities for teachers to acquire needed skills and to develop new curricular materials. In Colombia, a national project entitled Computadores para educar and begun in 2001, recycles computers from businesses and distributes them to schools and provides teacher training support for using them (Alverez, 2006).

Representative overarching perspectives and theories Investigations of ICTs and literacy, and the theoretical or quasi-theoretical perspectives that guide them, can be understood along three often overlapping dimensions: 331

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(a) the larger implications of ICTs for society and literacy writ large; (b) the unique characteristics and affordances of ICTs and how they change or might change the nature of reading, writing, texts, and learning; and (c) the implications of ICTs for literacy development in formal educational settings. As a heuristic for contending with a diverse literature, I refer to these respectively as the ‘outward, inward, and “school-ward”’ dimensions of ICTs. One or more of these dimensions typically figure into the theoretical and empirical rationale for a study and for most of the literature on ICT. However, often the actual theoretical framework applied to interpreting the data originates from other theoretical traditions. For example theoretical perspectives on gender guided Guzzetti and Gamboa’s (2004) investigation of teenage girls creating subversive online ‘zines’, or online magazines, which was focused outward toward societal affects. Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development and metacognitive theories guided Salomon et al.’s (1989) development and research of digital texts that assisted readers as a reading partner in a study that was focused inward on the affordances of ICTs. Semiotic theories guided Labbo’s (1996) study of young children’s symbol making in a computer centre, which clearly has a school-ward focus. However, there are some overarching perspectives and theories that have grown specifically from an interest in ICT. I highlight and critique three here that are representative of outward, inward, and school-ward perspectives.

Outward perspectives One of the first shifts in perspective inspired by ICTs and focused outward was a call to broaden definitions of literacy to include a wider variety of visual elements (Flood and Lapp, 1995). ICTs have also attracted post-modern perspectives on literacy as multimodal (e.g. Kress, 2003), although, as is typical of much post-modern writing, which resists tight definitions, it is difficult to discern coherent new meanings or specific implications and recommendations from such perspectives. Currently, the most prominent and widely used example of an outward focus is the new literacies perspective, or its related term new literacy studies. The roots of that perspective are entwined with the concept of multiliteracies introduced by the New London Group (NLG) (1996) when ICTs were nascent. The NLG saw literacy as a multifaceted, socially situated phenomenon increasingly influenced by globalization and shaped by political power (see Barton and Hamilton, 2000). That view originated largely as a reaction to a dominant, narrower view of literacy as a discrete set of skills that comprise the literacy curriculum in schools. The new literacies perspective implicitly sees ICT as the most visible and important manifestation of those views. Some who adopt this perspective see the internet as the quintessential ICT and thus the rightful focus of new literacies (e.g. Leu et al., 2004). Although often cited as a theoretical perspective, new literacies is usually invoked more for its rhetorical effect to justify and promote more attention to ICTs or for characterizing their effects. Thus, its utility is not as a true theory that explains, summarizes, or predicts. Instead, it serves as a meta-narrative for how ICTs are changing the world and why they deserve attention, or as an umbrella term that embraces diverse scholarly interests. For example Lewis and Fabbos (2005) cite new literacies as the frame for their study of teens’ use of instant messaging, but identity theory does the real work of their analysis and interpretation. The generality of the new literacies can be seen in the four 332

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characteristics that Coiro et al. (2008) identified as encapsulating what they call this emerging construct: ICTs require new social practices, skills, strategies, and dispositions . . . new literacies are central to full civic , economic, and personal participation in a world community . . . new literacies rapidly change as defining technologies change . . . new literacies are multiple, multimodal, and multifaceted. (Coiro et al., 2008: 14) An analysis of the discourse associated with new literacies is instructive. For example Lankshear and Knobel (2003) indicated that the term entails ‘an interesting ambiguity and tension’ (Lankshear and Knobel, 2003: 23) and that examples of it must ‘inevitably be selective, partial, and subject to disagreement’ (2003: 24). Coiro et al. (2008) discussed the ‘many challenges to understanding what it is about literacy that is now “new’’ (Coiro et al., 2008: 6) and stated that ‘The space of new literacies is highly contested’ (2008: 10). Further, they suggested that one purpose of their edited volume was to answer the question, ‘Can we generate principles, concepts, and supporting evidence and arguments for making useful sense of new literacies for research purposes?’ (2008: 7). Given that the concept is broad and amorphous, the answer to that question is likely to be no. Nonetheless, it is a serviceable term that often captures the urgency of pursing research on ICTs, although it has not yet produced an explicit research agenda, which is perhaps unfortunate and which might be a more useful direction than continued efforts aimed at defining new literacies more precisely, or at elevating it to the level of theoretical construct.

Inward perspectives McEneaney (2006) has proposed an explanatory and predictive theory that illustrates an inward focus on how digital texts require a reformulation of theories of reading based on printed texts. He argued that the features of digital texts alter the relationship between reader and text, such that traditional interactive or transactional theories (e.g. Rosenblatt, 2004) positing text as inert and readers as metaphorically interacting with them no longer apply. He proposed instead an agent-based theory where digital texts or readers can be a controlling agent during reading. Further, writers and readers of digital texts must understand that new relationship to pursue their respective goals. He illustrated the theory with several contemporary examples, including internet browsers and online bookselling services, that have enhanced agency through sophisticated technological manipulations of texts and how readers literally interact with them. Another theoretical perspective focusing inward on the unique characteristics of ICTs that can alter the dynamics of reading, writing, texts, and learning is universal design for learning (see Rose and Meyer, 2006). Universal design focuses on how instructional materials can be designed to accommodate the widest possible range of learners. Implicitly, it asks whether there are disabled readers, if digital technologies can help any reader read and comprehend. ICTs have been vital to promoting and implementing that perspective, because digital texts provide a wide range of flexible and dynamic ways to accommodate learners with various handicapping conditions. In my own work (e.g. Reinking, 1997, 2001) I have argued that printed and digital texts should be considered different media because digital texts provide a distinctly broader range of representational 333

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modes for influencing, moulding, and assisting readers during reading, and thus require and exercise different cognitive skills. Further, I argued that digital texts are fundamentally different from printed texts, because they (a) are literally interactive (paralleling McEneaney, 2006); (b) are non-linear (hypertextual); (c) employ multimedia; (d) expand the boundaries of a text to offer freedoms or exercise controls to readers during reading (again, paralleling McEneaney, 2006); (e) change the pragmatics of reading and writing texts; and (f ) are inherently more engaging, because they are more accessible, less serious, and accommodate a wider range of readers’ needs.

School-ward perspectives An example of what I call school-ward perspectives is Labbo and Reinking’s (1999) argument, that considering the relation between research and instructional practice pertaining to ICTs is best seen as negotiating multiple realities. That is, there are multiple ways of viewing the role of ICTs in schools and each defines a reality that shapes what research questions are asked, what theoretical perspectives are invoked, what data are collected and analysed, what research is attended to, and what conclusions are drawn. Several examples from this perspective are evident in the literature, and reflect a progression from realities that are more passive and based in the status quo than are those that see ICTs playing a more active, transformative role. The realities highlighted include (a) simply making ICTs available, presuming that good things will happen; (b) using ICTs to accomplish the goals of conventional literacy instruction grounded in printed materials; (c) employing ICTs as a stimulus to positively transform instruction; (d) preparing students to use ICTs in a post-typographic world where online texts are central to all literate activity; and (e) using ICTs to empower students and resist dominant discourses of power.

Representative research and findings In this section, I provide a sampling of research and findings that fall into the categories of outward, inward, and school-ward research, albeit again with the caveat that the examples represent a personal selection.

Outward research This category includes research tracking current trends in literacy, which is important given the rapidly changing landscape of literacy. Knowing trends in ICT types and uses can inform educators and policymakers in useful ways and spur them to action. Such data are often descriptive and derived from surveys or secondary sources. For example in the US, the Pew Internet and American Life Project (http://www.pewinternet. org/) provides ongoing data on a variety of topics and issues pertaining to use of the internet. A different type of research and data in this category come from ethnographic methods aimed at determining how ICTs are affecting sociocultural dimensions of people’s everyday lives (see Leander, 2008 for a recent summary). For example Selfe and Hawisher (2004) compiled a number of life histories of US citizens, which document and interpret how the information age has effected changes in everyday literacy. Such profiles can be 334

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informative by providing a backdrop for educators and policymakers’ efforts to promote appropriate literacy development in schools. Ethnographic studies have been conducted in a variety of countries and cultures. For example Holloway and Valentine (2001) in the UK studied how social capital derived from competency on the internet varied in different social contexts, which has implications for integrating the internet into schooling. Likewise, Miller and Slater (2000) documented how internet usage was a good fit with the cultural experiences and values found in Trinidad. Such studies provide interesting and informative cross-cultural comparisons. Conclusions from the research in this area are obvious and inescapable: the landscape of literacy over the previous 30 years has changed tremendously and irrevocably. In addition, we know a great deal about the extent and trajectory of those changes, and we have interesting qualitative studies characterizing how digital forms of reading and writing connect with individual readers’ social and cultural lives. What has not been typically addressed is how research in this area might explicitly inform instruction and policy. Among qualitative studies in general and ethnographic studies in particular, there has been perhaps too much attention to theoretical, epistemological, ideological, and methodological understandings, and not enough attention to how this research might define or address practical issues facing educators and policymakers (see Dillon et al., 2000). Nonetheless, there are exceptions. For example Lewis and Fabbos (2005) discussed the implications of their findings about adolescents’ out-of-school uses of instant messaging in schools.

Inward research The largest and arguably the most definitive body of research related to ICTs is found in this category, because (a) it has been of interest from the earliest uses of computers to display texts; (b) it has attracted the interest of diverse scholars; and (c) the questions and issues are more readily addressed with longstanding conventional and experimental methods producing findings that are typically uncluttered by social or cultural factors. For example researchers working in this category are interested in determining how online textual organization (e.g. hypertexts) and displays (e.g. including multimedia elements) might affect or effect learning from texts. The findings are often targeted at and useful to designers of instructional materials, to those interested in how readers contend with the affordances of online reading (e.g. Stahl et al., 1996; Zhang and Duke, 2008), and to those interested in circumventing or accommodating a variety of difficulties readers experience in contending with texts. These issues range from decoding difficulties among beginning or disabled readers (e.g. Segers and Verhoeven, 2004) to comprehension and learning difficulties due to a variety of handicapping conditions (Rose and Meyer, 2006). In the US the National Center for Supported Electronic Text (http://ncset. uoregon.edu/) funds research and serves as a clearing house for projects that fall clearly into a predominant line of research in the inward category. The Cambridge Handbook for Multimedia Learning (Mayer, 2005) is another source that provides numerous examples of the diversity of topics, research questions, studies, and findings in this category. Another line of research in this category is the investigation of how readers behave when using ICTs. For example Lawless and Schrader (2008) reviewed the research, including their own, addressing how readers navigate through online, hypertextual reading environments. Likewise, Zhang and Duke (2008) studied the strategies that 12 good readers used when given different purposes for reading. 335

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An overall conclusion readily supported by research in this category is that the affordances of ICTs can and do affect broadly and deeply the nature of reading and writing. It is clear that digital texts differ substantially from printed forms in the skills, strategies, and dispositions necessary and useful to writing and reading them. In addition, digital texts offer much wider opportunities to shape purposefully the experience of reading and writing or to offer individual assistance to a variety of readers who have specific limitations in reading and acquiring meaning from text. Specific findings in this area are useful primarily to designers of instructional materials. For example in a review of the research involving the use of multimedia components in reading instruction (Reinking, 2005), I concluded the following: (a) using digitized speech to pronounce unfamiliar words can help, under the right conditions, to develop beginning readers’ decoding skills; (b) providing readers with immediate access to the meanings of unfamiliar words, including in some instances video-supported definitions, can increase vocabulary knowledge and comprehension; and (c) the effects of providing multimedia enhancements to children’s stories are complex and dependent on a variety of factors. Nonetheless, this category of research overall also provides little guidance for educators and policymakers. For example it typically does not consider the conditions of use in instructional environments where complex interacting factors may change, off-set, or negate findings in more controlled environments.

School-ward research Research in this category is aimed at studying the use of ICTs in relation to developing literacy in formal education settings. That aim encompasses a wide range of topics, foci, and methodologies. For example historically it includes using ICTs to develop conventional literacy, originally with the goal of creating a complete online curriculum to replace a teacher (Atkinson and Hansen, 1967). Such efforts evolved into what are now called Integrated Learning Systems (ILS) with the more modest goal of supplementing classroom instruction with computer-based individualized activities rooted in a printbased curriculum. Much of the research has been conducted or sponsored by the commercial firms who have developed it, and is therefore suspect. An exception is Paterson et al.’s (2003) investigation of the Waterford Early Reading Program who found that it had no statistically significant effects over classrooms not using this ILS. Their data suggested that the results were explained in part by the ILS’s lack of promoting social constructions and interactions. ILS have been touted as particularly useful for students experiencing difficulties learning to read, but the results have been equivocal (see Lewis’s 2003 review of ILS in the UK). A major conceptual and methodological limitation of the ILS research, and indeed for much of the research comparing computer-based instructional applications to other alternatives, is that the computer-based activities are often carried out in addition to regular instruction. Thus, statistical comparisons are really between more instruction and less instruction. Qualitative researchers’ interested in school-ward uses and effects of ICTs are naturally less interested in comparing classroom interventions using measures of conventional achievement. They are more inclined to describe conditions and processes that relate to ICTs and to their use in classrooms, or how innovative applications can be implemented successfully. For example one line of qualitative research responds to the often-lamented lack of integration of ICTs into the language arts curriculum. It has 336

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revealed an intimidating array of factors that reveal the complexity of issues that must be addressed to successfully integrate ICTs into instruction. A sampling includes: (a) lack of technical knowledge (Bauer and Kenton, 2005; Zhao et al., 2002); (b) lack of hardware and equipment (Bauer and Kenton, 2005; Ertmer et al., 1999; (c) an emphasis on using ICTs toward developing technical skills and products instead of academic work (Honan, 2008; Warschauer et al., 2004); (d) the distance of technology innovations from existing teaching practices and school culture (Zhao et al., 2002); (e) an emphasis on products instead of processes (Honan, 2008); and (f) the lack of human, technical, and social infrastructures (Ertmer et al., 1999; Zhao et al.,2002). Other qualitative or mixed-methods approaches have been used to investigate how ICTs might be integrated into classrooms. For example Labbo (1996) investigated how a teacher integrated a classroom computer centre into a kindergarten classroom and how it enabled children’s literacy development. Myers et al. (1998) described how middle-grade students developed critical literacy as they researched and then created class presentations on the differing views of native Americans in literature, textbooks, and popular culture. Taken as a whole, the school-ward research reflects the intriguing possibilities that ICTs represent for enhancing literacy instruction in schools. Even somewhat mundane applications such as ILS might be seen as an alternative that frees teachers from a narrow focus on developing isolated skills and that enables them to address more intriguing and difficult aspects of literacy. However, the research also reveals the complex factors that must be addressed to integrate ICTs into instruction. ICTs often exist outside of and sometimes at odds with conventional instructional niches and materials, such as textbooks and instruction centred in them. They require more specialized training and technical support, and they raise substantial financial and logistical challenges. Importantly, teacher beliefs are not always conducive to integrating ICTs effectively into instruction, which inhibits integration (e.g. Ertmer, 2005; Windschitl and Sahl, 2002).

Conclusion I conclude this chapter with a brief commentary on the future landscape of literacy and ICT research. ICTs and their underlying technologies have rapidly evolved and are penetrating, or soon will, virtually every region of the world. The immediate future is unlikely to bring much stability as ICTs continue to evolve technologically and conceptually. We are living in a designer age of communication and information, driven by exploration and innovation in which new forms for creating and managing communication and information emerge almost daily. For example there are currently at least seven alternatives to Wikipedia, each with its own attempt to balance the tension between open democratic and closed authoritative vetting of content (http://oedb.org/library/ features/top-7-alternatives-to-wikipedia). Is there one that is the best? Or which do we use under what circumstances? Or could a meta-application be designed to summarize the consistencies and inconsistencies across all of the alternatives? That is, we are in the enviable, unprecedented, but often disorienting, position of being able to decide what we most value, and to create modes, methods, and contents that reflect those values in how we communicate and share information textually. We are no longer subject to the limitations of the relatively narrow constraints and by-products of print, but enjoy the almost limitless possibilities of ICTs. 337

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That condition means that educators are inevitably faced with the challenge of preparing their students for an evolving and uncertain literacy of the future. Likewise, researchers who focus exclusively on the forms of today’s ICTs are likely to find that their findings and conclusions are soon out of date. These challenges are not often acknowledged or discussed explicitly, but need to be. There is a great need for educators and researchers to consider seriously how ICTs can be addressed in their work, not only reactively grounded in the moment, but proactively with an eye to an uncertain future. A starting point in addressing that challenge and in forging a productive path forward is to look for the underlying bedrock of the ICT landscape. It is necessary to examine closely what is most valued in literate environments and how we can preserve and extend those values, regardless of the surface manifestations of the literacy landscape. Adopting that goal will mean identifying a clear research agenda with concrete goals and with an explicit rationale for why they are important and how to achieve them. It means ultimately, I believe, looking for research methods that allow for investigating processes of achieving clear goals in authentic contexts. Research and theory pertaining to ICTs must go beyond questions of the moment, looking narrowly at products or the effects of current ICTs, and looking for examples to confirm favourite theories or perspectives. In short, we need to construct, not just watch the evolvement of, a viable landscape of literacy that can instantiate democratic values and that can be served by outward, inward, and school-ward theory and research.

References Alverez, O.H. (2006). Developing Digital Literacies: Educational initiatives and research in Colombia. In M.C. Mckenna, L.D. Labbo, R.D. Kieffer and D. Reinking (Eds) International Handbook of Literacy and Technology, Vol. II. Mawah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 29–40. Atkinson, R. and Hansen, D. (1966/7). Computer-assisted Instruction in Initial Reading: The Stanford project. Reading Research Quarterly 2: 5–26. Barton, D. and Hamilton, M. (2000). Literacy Practices. In D. Barton, M. Hamilton and R. Ivani (Eds) Situated Literacies: Reading and writing in context. New York: Routledge, pp. 7–15. Bauer, J. and Kenton, J. (2005). Toward Technology Integration in the Schools: Why it isn’t happening. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education 13(4): 519–46. Blok, H., Oostdam, R., Otter, M. and Overmaat, M. (2002). Computer-assisted Instruction in Support of Beginning Reading Instruction: A review. Review of Educational Research 72(1): 101–30. Coiro, J., Knobel, M., Lankshear, C. and Leu, D.J. (2008). Central Issues in New Literacies and New Literacies Research. In J. Coiro, M. Knobel, C. Lankshear and D. J. Leu (Eds) Handbook of Research on New Literacies. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 1–21. Dillon, D.R., O’Brien, D.G. and Heilman, E.E. (2000). Literacy Research in the Next Millennium: From paradigms to pragmatism and practicality. Reading Research Quarterly 35: 10–26. Ertmer, P. (2005). Teacher Pedagogical Beliefs: The final frontier in our quest for technology integration. Educational Technology Research and Development 53(4): 25–39. Ertmer, P., Addison, P., Lane, M., Ross, E. and Woods, D. (1999). Examining Teachers’ Beliefs about the Role of Technology in the Elementary Classroom. Journal of Research on Computing in Education 32(1): 54–72. Flood, J. and Lapp, D. (1995). Broadening the Lens: Toward an expanded conceptualization of literacy. In K.A. Hinchman, D.J. Leu and C.K. Kinzer (Eds) Perspectives on Literacy Research and Practice: The 44th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference. Chicago, IL: National Reading Conference, pp. 1–16.

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Flood, J., Heath, S.B. and Lapp, D. (1997). Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy through the Communicative and Visual Arts. New York: Prentice Hall International. Flood, J., Heath, S.B. and Lapp, D. (Eds) (2007). Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy through the Communicative and Visual Arts, Vol. II. Mawah, NJ: Erlbaum. Guzzetti, B.J. and Gamboa, M. (2004). Zines for Social Justice: Adolescent girls writing on their own. Reading Research Quarterly 39: 408–36. Holloway, S. and Valentine, G. (2001). ‘It’s only as Stupid as You Are’: Children’s and adults’ negotiation of ICT competence at home and at school. Social and Cultural Geography 2(1): 25–42. Honan, E. (2008). Barriers to Teachers Using Digital Texts of Literacy Classrooms. Literacy 42(1): 36–43. International Reading Association (2002). Integrating Literacy and Technology into the Curriculum: A position statement of the International Reading Association. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Kamil, M.L. and Lane, D.M. (1998). Researching the Relation between Technology and Literacy: An agenda for the 21st century. In D. Reinking, M.C. McKenna, L.D. Labbo and R.D. Kieffer (Eds) Handbook of Literacy and Technology: Transformations in a post-typographic world. Mahwah, NJ: Earlbaum, pp. 323–42. Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge. Labaree, D. (1998). Educational Researchers: Living with a lesser form of knowledge. Educational Researcher 27: 4–12. Labbo, L.D. (1996). A Semiotic Analysis of Young Children’s Symbol Making in a Classroom Computer Center. Reading Research Quarterly 31: 356–85. Labbo, L.D. and Reinking, D. (1999). Negotiating the Multiple Realities of Technology in Literacy Research and Instruction. Reading Research Quarterly 34: 478–92. Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2003). New Literacies: Changing knowledge and classroom learning. Bury St. Edmunds: Open University Press. Lawless, K.A. and Schrader, P.G. (2008). Where do We Go now? Understanding research on navigation in complex digital environments. In J. Coiro, M. Knobel, C. Lankshear and D. J. Leu (Eds) Handbook of Research on New Literacies. New York: Taylor and Francis, pp. 267–96. Leander, K.M. (2008). Toward a Connective Ethnography of Online/Offline Literacy Networks. In J. Coiro, M. Knobel, C. Lankshear and D.J. Leu (Eds) Handbook of Research on New Literacies. New York: Taylor and Francis, pp. 33–65. Leu, D. (2006). New Literacies, Reading Research, and the Challenges of Change: A deictic perspective. In J.V. Hoffman, D. Schallert, C.M. Fairbanks, J. Worthy and B. Maloch (Eds) 55th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference. Milwaukee, WI: National Reading Conference. Leu, D.J., Kinzer, C.K., Coiro, J.L. and Commack, D.W. (2004). Toward a Theory of New Literacies Emerging from the Internet and Other Information and Communication Technologies. In R.B. Ruddell and N.J. Unrau (Eds) Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (5th edn). Newark, DE: International Reading Association, pp. 1570–613. Lewis, A. (2003). Integrated Learning Systems and Pupils with Low Attainments in Reading. British Journal of Special Education 26(3): 153–7. Lewis, C. and Fabos, B. (2005). Instant Messaging, Literacies, and Social Identities. Reading Research Quarterly 40: 470–501. McEneaney, J.E. (2006). Agent-based Literacy Theory. Reading Research Quarterly 41: 352–71. McKenna, M.C., Labbo, L.D., Kieffer, R.D. and Reinking, D. (Eds) (2006). International Handbook of Literacy and Technology, Vol. II. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Mayer, R.E. (2005). The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Miller, D. and Slater, D. (2000). The Internet: An ethnographic approach. New York: Berg.

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Moran, J., Ferdig, R.E., Pearson, P.D, Wardrop, J. and Blomeyer, R.L. (2008). Technology and Reading Performance in the Middle-school Grades: A meta-analysis with recommendations for policy and practice. Journal of Literacy Research 40: 6–58. Myers, J., Hamett, R. and McKillop, A.M. (1998). Opportunities for Critical Literacy and Pedagogy in Student-authored Hypermedia. In D. Reinking, M.C. McKenna, L.D. Labbo and R.D. Kieffer (Eds) Handbook of Literacy and Technology: Transformations in a post-typographic world. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 63–78. National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) (2008). Towards a Definition of 21st Century Literacies. Urbana, IL: NCTE. http://www.ncte.org/about/gov/129117.htm accessed 30 June 2008. National Endowment for the Arts (2004). A Survey of Literary Reading in America. Research Division Report #46. National Endowment for the Arts. http://www.nea.gov/news/news04/ ReadingAtRisk.Html accessed 19 August 2008. New London Group (NLG) (1996). A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66: 60–92. Paterson, W.A., Henry, J., O’Quin, K., Ceprano, M.A. and Blue, E.V. (2003). Investigating the Effectiveness of an Integrated Learning System on Early Emergent Readers. Reading Research Quarterly 38(2): 172–207. Purves, A. (1998). Flies in the Web of Hypertext. In D. Reinking, M.C. McKenna, L.D. Labbo and R.D. Kieffer (Eds) Handbook of Literacy and Technology: Transformations in a posttypographic world. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 235–52. Reinking, D. (1997). Me and My Hypertext: A multiple digression analysis of technology and literacy (sic). The Reading Teacher 50(8): 626–43. Reinking, D. (2001). Multimedia and Engaged Reading in a Digital World. In L. Verhoeven and K. Snow (Eds) Literacy and Motivation: Reading engagement in individuals and groups. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 195–221. Reinking, D. (2005). Multimedia Learning of Reading. In R.E. Mayer (Ed.) Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 355–74. Reinking, D. and Bridwell-Bowles, L. (1991). Computers in Reading and Writing Research. In R. Barr, M.L. Kamil, P. Mosenthal and P.D. Pearson (Eds) Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. 2. New York: Longman, pp. 310–40. Reinking, D., McKenna, M.C., Labbo, L.D. and Kieffer, R.D. (Eds) (1998). Handbook of Literacy and Technology: Transformations in a post-typographic world. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Rose, D.H. and Meyer, A. (2006). A Practical Reader in Universal Design for L. Earning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rosenblatt, L.M. (2004). The Transactional Theory of Reading and Writing. In R.B. Ruddell and N.J. Unrau (Eds) Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (5th edn). Newark, DE: IRA, pp.1363–98. Salomon, G., Globerson, T. and Guterman, E. (1989). The Computer as a Zone of Proximal Development: Internalizing reading-related metacognitions from a reading partner. Journal of Educational Psychology 81: 620–27. Segers, E. and Verhoeven, L. (2004). Computer-supported Phonological Awareness Intervention for Kindergarten Children with Specific Language Impairment. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 35: 229–39. Selfe, C.L. and Hawisher, G.E. (2004). Literate Lives in the Information Age: Narratives of literacy from the United States. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Stahl, S.A., Hynd, C.R., Britton, B.K., McNish, M.M. and Bosquet, D. (1996). What Happens when Students Read Multiple Source Documents in History? Reading Research Quarterly 31: 430–6. Warschauer, M., Knobel, M. and Stone, L.A. (2004). Technology and Equity in Schooling: Deconstructing the digital divide. Educational Policy 18(4): 562–88.

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Windschitl, M. and Sahl, K. (2002). Tracing Teachers’ Use of Technology in a Laptop Computer School: The interplay of teacher beliefs, social dynamics, and institutional culture. American Educational Research Journal 39: 165–205. Zhang, S. and Duke, N.K. (2008). Strategies for Internet Reading with Different Purposes: A descriptive study of twelve good readers. Journal of Literacy Research 40: 128–62. Zhao, Y., Pugh, K., Sheldon, S. and Byers, J. (2002). Conditions for Classroom Technology Innovations. Teachers College Record 104: 482–515.

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29 Multimodality, literacy and school English Carey Jewitt and Gunther Kress

A multimodal approach The approach to multimodality taken here derives from the linguistic and semiotic work of Michael Halliday, which sees language as the product of the constant shaping in its use by people realizing their social purposes (Halliday, 1978; Hodge and Kress, 1988). Social semiotics has built on the semiotic aspects of Halliday’s theory and extended them to a range of ‘resources for representation’ and their uses in communication. It views them as socially organized sets of resources that contribute to the construction of meaning. This brings the modes of image, sound, dynamic representation, gesture, gaze, body posture, spatial orientation and movement into the analytical domain for a discussion of English (for a fuller discussion see Kress, 1996, 2009; Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001; Norris, 2004; Jewitt, 2008, 2009). A social semiotic take on multimodality focuses on processes of making meaning through situated practices and interpretation, the design (selection, adaptation, transformation) of multiple modes and the representational features available by social actors in the environments of their daily lives. The emphasis is firmly on sign-making and the agentive work of the sign-maker in a specific place and time. A multimodal approach (from here on in we use the term ‘multimodality’ without mention of the social semiotic frame) investigates how the sociocultural world is realized through material representations in different modes and occasions of communication. This provides an essential link between (changes in) social conditions and the ways in which these are modally instantiated. In other words, how phenomena are represented and communicated in the English classroom speaks to the differential potentials for action by those who are in the classroom.

Key concepts for multimodality Six key concepts inform multimodality and the analysis presented here. 342

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Metafunctions Underpinning the analysis is the notion of meaning as differentiated through three interrelated social functions and realized in three metafunctions. According to Halliday (1978), every element simultaneously realizes meanings about events and states of affairs in the world. He called this ideational meaning. Every element plays a role in positioning us in relation to social others and to meanings. He called this interpersonal meaning. Every element plays a part in producing a coherent text: he called this textual meaning. These metafunctions are analytic means to explore how meanings are articulated through the resources of the grammar of language and, in a multimodal approach, through all other modes used. Mode The concept of mode is at the centre of multimodality. It refers to an organized set of semiotic resources for making meaning (image, gesture, writing, for example). Semiotic resource Semiotic resources provide the means for making meanings, through selection from these modes in a particular moment. For instance the framing of elements as connected or as disconnected in an image or in a page layout is use of a visual semiotic resource. The history of work on language means that much is known about its semiotic potential. Considerably less is understood about the potential of other forms of representation. Detailed studies have begun to describe the resources and organizing principles of image (see Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006); sound (see van Leeuwen, 1999); writing (see Kenner and Kress, 2003; Kenner, 2004); and how these work together in multimodal ensembles (see Kress et al., 2001, 2005; Flewitt, 2006). Choice of mode and of its associated semiotic resources has epistemological effects through the potential of designs of concepts. This in turn influences potential for interaction in the classroom. (Modal) Affordance The concept of (modal) affordance is central to multimodality and to the analysis in this chapter. This concept is based on the material (itself socially shaped) aspects of mode and refers to the potential this material offers for the social and historical shaping of a mode in its social uses. Attention to sign-making and sign in a multimodal perspective foregrounds the agentive work of the sign-maker and the importance of their social, historical and cultural location. Interest The concept of interest is the expression of the historical, social, and cultural biography of the maker of the sign, focused in the moment of the making of the sign by the characteristics and demands of the environment and oriented towards the prospective making of a new sign. Interest underpins and shapes making of meaning as sign.

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Multimodal orchestration The multimodal orchestration of modes refers to the actions of teachers and students – as sign-makers – as much as to the work of designer(s) of a textbook or other teaching and learning materials, engaged in the making of complex semiotic entities, texts. A multimodal analysis uses these key concepts to build a full account of representation(s) in specific contexts with the particular social purposes they realize. This shows how signs are socially made in the actions of social actors and how, at the same time, actors through their signs construe the social world. These concepts offer the potential for well-founded hypotheses about the use of particular features in English. They offer social explanations for a teacher or students’ selecting, adapting and remaking of signs of many kinds, in the process of teaching and learning.

English through a multimodal lens Multimodal approaches focus on signs arising from the agency and interest of people (sign-makers) in the context of production, socially and historically shaped. Building on earlier work on multimodality in school science (see Kress et al., 2001), the Production of School English Project (SEP) (see Kress et al., 2005) developed a multimodal research methodology to examine English. It analysed the (multimodal) forms of English that resulted out of the interaction of the stipulated curriculum with local social conditions – in and around the school – in which English was produced. This analysis highlighted how students and teachers co-produce notions of ability, resistance and identity through all modes used in interaction. The classroom displays, artefacts, the embodied practices of teacher and students were orchestrated to realize versions of English describably specific to a school. It became evident that a full understanding of English demands attention to the use of all modes in use and the relationships between them. The Three Continents Project (see Battacharly et al., 2007) extended this work to explore the postcolonial construction of school English in Delhi, Johannesburg, and London from that same perspective. It showed how subject English articulates national policies on language, identity and power. In addition to focusing on classroom interaction, multimodal research has shown the significance of the role of image, its relation with writing for the construction of knowledge in textbooks (e.g. Moss, 2003; Bezemer and Kress, 2008). It has highlighted the implications of multimodal design for the navigating of digital and print materials through the creation of reading pathways that involve images, colour and layout (e.g. Jewitt, 2008). Recent work by Bezemer and Kress (2008) investigates changes in the design of learning resources over the period 1935–2005 and possible and actual ‘gains and losses’ of multimodal ensembles for potential for learning; it provides an account of epistemological and social–pedagogic significance of these changes. The changing relationship between image, writing, action and layout show that image and layout are increasingly central in the construction of content. Their survey of a sample of textbooks shows that the average number of images per page in English textbooks has increased exponentially from 1930 to 2005 (from an average of about two per 100 pages to about three per ten pages). Now, images no longer function primarily to 344

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illustrate or duplicate what is written on the page or screen, rather image and word attend to discrete aspects of meaning. Increasingly concepts are introduced, established and analysed visually; writing is brought into new relationships with, or substituted by, multimodal forms of representation ( Jewitt, 2002, 2008; Bachmair, 2006). The increasingly complex work of becoming ‘literate’ – of having a full capacity for making and disseminating their meanings – in multimodal environments has become evident in the investigation of students’ production of multimodal texts, models and digital multimedia materials in the English classroom (Bearne, 2003; Kress, 2003; Kenner, 2004). These show the benefits of approaching literacy, writing and reading as multimodal activities (Bearne and Wolstencroft, 2007). Studies of multimodal literacy practices have served to highlight the importance of the spatial organization and framing of writing on the page, the directionality, shape, size, and angle of a script (Kenner, 2004), as well as the embodied dimensions of writing (Lancaster, 2001); the interaction between image, graphical marks and writing (Pahl,1999); the role of voice and the body (Franks, 2003); and the significance of the resources of colour and layout for literacy.

Social conditions shaping literacy and English Four contemporary social trends seem directly relevant to conceptions of literacy and English: first, the reconfiguration of representational and communicational resources and the resultant shapes of knowledge; second, the fluid configuration of boundaries between everyday and specialized knowledge; third, the changing and blurring boundaries between users and the producers of knowledge, typified by terms like ‘creative consumption’ (Sefton-Green, 2006); and fourth, the modularization of knowledge into ‘bite-size’ chunks and its consequent effect on ‘attention’ ( Jewitt et al., 2007). These conditions apply across the social and communicational landscape in which the English classroom is situated; it shares a space with sites such as YouTube, Flickr and other internet resources, all connected through the movement of people across mediascapes. Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) analysis of newspaper front pages showed that even maintaining tradition and stability is itself continuous work. Our perspective acknowledges the effects of technologies as social and cultural tools in remaking, mobilizing and circulating texts and in disseminating practices and shaping how people learn: in short ‘…changing the conditions for learning and for our ideas about what knowledge is’ (Saljo, 2004: 217). Uncoupling multimodality from ‘new’ technologies helps avoid easy dichotomies, such as those between ‘print literacy’ and ‘digital literacy’ or page and screen. It asks how the facilities of a specific technology – ‘old’ or ‘new’ – configure image, word and other modes. From this starting point questions about the consequences of social change can be asked across all sites of literacy and English: ‘How do the representational and communicational facilities made available in the contemporary English classroom affect literacy and the understanding of what English is? What modes are available, how are they used and for what purposes? What sites of display exist or are newly introduced into the classroom and how do these become drawn into practices? Whether the use of walls or of the interactive whiteboard (IWB), all affect the relation of teacher and students in the classroom. The question is: ‘what is the effect?’ 345

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Illustrative case-studies In our exploration of emergent trends we draw on two in-depth case studies of the teaching of English. One comes from the SEP project (see Kress et al., 2005); the other from the project Interactive Whiteboards, Pedagogy and Pupil Performance Evaluation – the IWB project (see Moss et al., 2007). Our focus is on examples that can generate analytical dimensions and questions concerning the changing relationship of image and writing in contemporary English. We use a multimodal and historical perspective to look across the two data sets to describe trends indicative of changes in literacy and English against the backdrop of changes in the technologized pedagogical space of the English classroom. In the two examples – the teaching of a poem – the teacher involved had participated in both projects: in 2000, teaching with the aid of an overhead projector (OHP)1 and in 2005 with an IWB.2

The changing pedagogic space of the contemporary English classroom At the time of the first project, the majority of families in the UK were not connected to broadband, mobile phone usage was limited, and digital cameras and camcorders were too expensive to be available to the majority of the population. Google had been established for just over a year and neither YouTube nor Flickr had yet appeared. Some specialist schools and media/English departments were equipped with digital cameras and editing equipment, but this was not the case for the majority of English teachers. At the time of the SEP project, technology in the English classroom was a television, a video player, sometimes an OHP and occasionally a computer on the teacher’s desk (usually beaming out stars from a black and white screen saver). Occasionally students were taken on whole-class trips to the computer suite to word process completed written work for presentation or to research a topic on the school intranet. Nearly a decade on, the English classroom has become digital, albeit to different degrees. A key factor is the use of IWBs in secondary school English, due to considerable government funding in 2004/5 for IWBs for core subjects, including English; it can be seen as a response that articulates and mediates the changing social conditions outlined earlier. The IWB provides a touch-sensitive multimodal digital hub in the classroom – a portal to the internet. Its use has the potential to expand the kinds of texts that enter the English classroom; to change the practices and experiences of teachers and students and therefore change the possibilities for learning. This move speaks of the need to make curriculum knowledge ‘relevant’ by connecting with students’ out of school experience; the desire to increase student ‘engagement’ through ‘interactivity’; as well as the pressures of examination and the promise of ‘speed’ (Jewitt et al., 2007). Our research on the use of IWBs in English suggests that, increasingly, image now provides the starting point for an English lesson (Moss et al., 2007; Jewitt, 2008). It is common for English teachers (although there may be generational differences in this) to

1 This data is drawn from ‘The Production of School English Project’ undertaken by G. Kress, C. Jewitt, K. Jones, J. Bourne, A. Franks, J. Hardcastle and E. Reid. 2 This data is taken from the IWB project undertaken by G.Moss, C.Jewitt, V.Amstrong, A.Cardini, and F.Castle

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show a clip of digital video (often via YouTube)3 or to display an image – often downloaded from the internet – to offer a route into a concept. Teachers frequently use PowerPoint presentations to present their argument; they annotate texts visually or they connect to a web page. The use of image is also prevalent in students’ work in English, with the use of clipart, or digital photographs – taken by students or downloaded from the internet – designed as PowerPoint presentations and project work both in class and out of school for homework. The relationship between the visual and English is not new, though the specific ways in which writing, image and other modes now feature in the classroom is changing in ways significant for literacy and English. IWBs and access to the internet shape how information and knowledge are created, recreated, mobilized and shared in the classroom.

Sites of display and configurations of space in the English classroom The introduction of IWBs has affected the sites of display in the English classroom and altered how it is configured (see Chapter 25, this volume, for other texts and sites of display). In 2000–3, it was common for English teachers not to have a desk in the classroom; some had a desk at the front or on one side or the other. In the lessons we observed, teachers positioned themselves differently in the classroom, often sitting on the edge of the students’ desks; they moved around the classroom or knelt by a small group or an individual student in interacting with them. The IWB brings a regulation of this diversity. English classrooms now have a desk for a computer connected to the IWB; that desk needs to be at the front, somewhat to the side. If teachers do move around, now they usually need to return to their desks, and from front of class they operate the computer. However, schools that invested in wireless peripherals, such as ‘slates’, enabling interaction with the IWB from any point in the classroom, have newly freed teachers from being at the front of the classroom. This designed freedom offers new possibilities for the shaping and control of pedagogic space. The research seems to indicate, however, that the introduction of IWBs has led to an increase in whole-class teaching (Moss et al., 2007). Several teachers used scanners to enhance the presentational and interactive potential of the IWB, to bring a text or some artefact ‘to life’ in a lesson, making it easier to focus whole class discussion on an item and make it available for manipulation and annotation in ‘real time’ and in new ways. The IWB offers ways of displaying students’ work directly to the whole class, with an immediacy not provided by wall displays. This can enhance whole-class discussion and engagement that is more focused on general, abstract, ‘conceptual’ issues in that work.

Starting points for English The IWB examples show three distinct modal starting points for contemporary school English: a starting point in image, one in writing and one that is multimodal. Each 3 An observation made by John Yandell, Institute of Education, during his observation of beginner teachers’ work in London schools.

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shapes the learning environment through specific semiotic resources with their modal affordances; each involves the ‘interests’ of teachers and students in the multimodal orchestration of English. What counts as knowledge is articulated through ideational and textual meaning. Writing, image and movement featured in significant ways in the classrooms observed in our first project. Writing was the starting point in most cases and dominated the production of English, even though often in fragmented and ‘stunted’ form. From what we saw, use of the IWB seems to be re-mediating English with increasing emphasis on the visual and multimodal; in that process, visual aspects of writing (font, layout, etc.) are coming to the fore. Visual starting point and space Now English lessons may start visually; for example introducing a poem via an image on the IWB or using images to explore a narrative or the notion of symbolism. In a lesson on Macbeth, a teacher used a series of images to initiate a discussion of the development of character and narrative in Macbeth. She displayed images downloaded from the internet on the IWB and asked the class to offer words/concepts that characterized the atmosphere of the play. That in turn led to a discussion of the mood of the play. In another lesson, a teacher displayed a photograph from the Royal Shakespeare Company archive showing Banquo and Lady Macbeth on the IWB to explore the notion of tragedy. He asked the students to suggest who the two characters were, what they might be saying to one another and how they might be feeling. The students wrote their responses on post-it notes, which the teacher collected and read aloud as he stuck them on the IWB. These visual starting points offered relatively open routes into the play and connected more directly with the students’ own experiences – visually – via genres of the ‘soap’ for example. A dynamic starting point As well as the distinct modal starting points, the IWB also offers different medial starting points. In a display of video clips at the start of a lesson, IWB technology reiterates older forms of media and pedagogy. However this can open up new pedagogic repertoires through links and hyperlinks connecting out to television, to advertising, to holiday websites, to YouTube and other video sites. In other words, different domains can be directly connected to the English classroom: the everyday, the commercial, the popular. This diversifies the kinds of texts that come into the classroom and blurs the boundaries between traditional educational spaces and others – making third spaces – pedagogizing the everyday. For English, it undoes (and will, no doubt, eventually remake differently) the formerly strong boundaries between the values of the canonical text and the everyday text. In an English lesson on ‘persuasive speech-writing’, for example the teacher used the students’ recent work about healthy eating in another subject to structure the topic and make it ‘relevant’ to pupils’ experiences. She showed two short clips: one downloaded from Channel 4’s website entitled Jamie’s School Dinners and another clip from an American film, Super Size Me. These generated a lively discussion, which engaged the whole class and provided the basis for the writing task. Re-visualization of the pedagogic space of the classroom These starting points do not imply a rejection of writing; they do reposition writing in the landscape of English. To that extent English is indicative of what is happening in the 348

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contemporary communicational landscape more generally. This shift matters. It affects how knowledge is represented, in which mode and through which media. That in turn is crucial to knowledge construction and to the shapes of knowledge. In other words, forms of representation are integrally linked with meaning, literacy and learning more generally. How phenomena or concepts are represented shapes both what is to be learnt (e.g. the curriculum) as well as how it is to be learnt (the pedagogic practices involved). Image, writing and all modes at use in a school subject take on specific functions in the construction of school knowledge. Image and writing offer different potentials for ‘engagement’ and make different demands on the learner; they offer differential potential for learning, different pathways for learners through texts and, therefore, different potential in the shaping of learner identities. Choice of form shapes knowledge (Kress et al., 2001, 2005; O’Halloran, 2005). Texts previously associated with one medium and one mode (novels, poems) are now available online for study. In that process of re-mediation and re-modalization a formerly printed text is ‘repackaged’ with image, with animation, with speech, with music and other features of sound; it is digitally annotated, differently organized and therefore differently generic, fragmented to a ‘traditional’ view. It is connected via hyperlinks to an author’s biography, to historically and socially relevant knowledge; it becomes part of a web of texts. This potentially remakes the authority of texts, changes its genre, unsettles the boundaries and forms of knowledge and creates connections across previously distinct boundaries. The relationship between ‘consumption’, ‘reading’ and ‘production’, and writing (composing and designing) is increasingly blurred, seen from the traditional perspective – or remade, seen from a contemporary standpoint. The fluid connectivity enhanced by the turn to the multimodal serves to erode the boundaries across domains and disciplines; always, it needs to be stressed, as a ratification or enactment of the already permitted social potential.

Modes, knowledge and practice Common sense assumes that English is about language and texts – written or spoken, literary or everyday. Yet the making of English happens in the orchestration of many modes, shaped by the social, cultural and historical context of classrooms and schools. The Three Continents Project showed that the extent to which students’ body posture, movement, gesture, gaze and talk, as well as spatial arrangements of classrooms and furniture, and the use of walls, are drawn into the production of English, is regulated differently via curricular notions of English and literacy, ‘standing in for’ social categories such as citizenship.

Writing in contemporary classrooms In the SEP project, writing featured in ‘learning materials’, in class work and in course work. There were frequent (attempts at) avoidance of extended writing. Teachers were worried about their students’ competence in writing and a lack of their sense of its importance. This trend appears to have continued. Writing is present but in ‘reduced’ forms: as annotation of texts, as closed procedures, in the collecting up of thoughts written on post-it notes, in recording ‘brain storming’ as mind maps. In its present use, 349

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the IWB is not conducive to extended writing: it encourages a variety of forms accompanied by hyper-textual practices that both fragment and build new connections across written forms. Teachers prepare PowerPoint presentations and annotate them by hand; or they annotate the screen of a website, for instance to highlight examples of persuasive writing. Throughout a lesson on Macbeth’s soliloquy the teacher used PowerPoint slides to display the text to the whole class; these were discussed and annotated by the teacher in real time. The contrast of handwriting with typed writing creates a distinct focus and a distinct sense of agency/authorship: the typed work of the teacher contrasts with her handwritten ‘scribing’ of the collective voice of the class. The typed writing appears as ‘evidence’ – ‘this is Macbeth’s Soliloquy’ – the handwriting appears as the class’s interpretation in response. This associates type with English in canonical form and handwriting with the personal work of interpretation. In this way the teacher’s choice of mode and material is a key element in the production of English and this becomes a resource for the work that is expected of students.

How the visual features in English The ready availability of images from the internet and elsewhere supports a remaking of the formerly classic relationship between image as illustration of writing. As the example below from the IWB project demonstrates, the visual is no longer an adjunct as illustration to writing; image and word are integrated and frequently image is the first step in accessing the effects of language. In an English lesson on the use of image and sounds in poetry, the poem used is ‘The Blessing’ by Imtiaz Dharker; it is studied for examination in the module Poems from Other Cultures. The teacher’s starting point for the analysis of the poem is an illustration that accompanies the poem – a drawing of children dancing and playing around a burst water pipe. The discussion of the image by teacher and students centres on the question ‘what does the poem show and what might it be about?’ The class ‘brainstorms’ the title and the teacher produces a spider-diagram on the IWB to filter and organize the comments. She shows a series of photographs on the IWB related to the poem including a ‘congregation’ and a seedpod. The students are asked to match these images to the words and match them to lines in the poem (moving the images on the board and drawing lines between them). Later in the lesson the teacher displays a poem written by a student, which she had scanned and made digital. This was discussed and annotated. The ‘matching exercise’ treats the ‘reading’ of poetry as a multimodal process. Visual imagery in language is re-presented as a visual image, providing a realist sense of ‘imagery’ and giving students another route to understanding the poem. What English is, what is to be learnt and how it is to be learnt, are reshaped by the now legitimate use of image and other modes. What is involved in English and demanded of the learner has changed. Meaning in English is now differently anchored. With the same teacher teaching a poem in 2000 using an OHP, and in 2005 with an IWB, we note any number of differences: they mark a significant trend for English and literacy as much as for thinking about both. There is the use of image rather than of writing as a starting point for discussion of the poem; the disappearance from the students’ tables of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED); images rather than the OED used to define words considered difficult 350

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for the students. The poem is now displayed in ‘chunks’ spread across the IWB screens – as words, lines, or title. In 2000, the poem was displayed on the OHP as a whole; that was then slowly ‘carved up’ in a process of interrogation. With the IWB, the teacher works with the whole class and students interact with the meaning of the poem right from the start of the lesson – in matching image and word, for example – and in answering questions. In 2000, the teacher drew a strong boundary between reading the poem and analysing it. Boundaries of many kinds have been remade. All this has far-reaching effects for English and literacy: for the texts that come into the classroom, how they are mobilized, how they circulate and are inserted into social interactions. This changes the place, the functions and uses of image, writing and speech. The boundaries between canonical texts and the texts of the everyday, of the aesthetically and historically valued, and of the mundane, are changed. In important ways these changes mark the social and political boundaries of English – determined by teachers, schools, Local Education Authorities (LEA), by policy and by diverse social interests – boundaries hitherto tightly guarded and regulated by a highly prescriptive policy context. Drawing texts from the internet (images, YouTube) connects English with the technologies and students’ experiences out-of-school and remakes the boundaries of canonical knowledge and what counts as socially valued. This changes the semiotic landscape of the English classroom, even though these changes vary across an uneven social terrain.

Conclusion Emergent trends for English multimodality, literacy and education Against the backdrop we have provided, literacy needs to be newly located within multimodal ensembles where the relationships of writing and image, screen and page, are unsettled in new relations (Kress, 2003; Jewitt, 2008). The textual cycle and the forms appearing in contemporary English remake the classic relationship between image and writing. The visual is no longer – if indeed it ever was – an illustrative adjunct to word; images are used fully in representation and are integrated in multimodal ensembles. Increasingly, image provides the first step in accessing topics and issues including the effects and uses of language. The profound effects on English have barely begun to be recognized. In slogan form and as one instance, ontologically, socially and affectively we would say: the world shown is not the same as the world told (Kress, 2003). One immediate question is about implications and applications; a less immediate question is about implications of the future role, the future ‘shape’ of English. The question ‘What is English for?’ demands an answer now; and perhaps a different answer for the medium to long term. We want to suggest that a major issue is that of recognition. Immediately, there is the question of recognition of where and how young people make meaning. How do we begin to understand the different principles and means of composition which students bring to bear on their engagement with their cultural environment, including their lives in school? And more difficult still, what forms of imagination, what kinds of sensibility but also what kinds of practical and essential abilities, tools and practices do students show in their meaning making and in their work of dissemination? Quite specific questions would follow: where does production happen? What kinds of production? In what kinds of modes and what kinds of media? What principles of 351

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composition are at work in that production? In implementing the curriculum which is prescribed, with the assessment criteria which are explicit or implicit, teachers may still be able to find such questions productive for their own practice, as means of connecting with the lifeworlds of their students; enabling them reciprocally to make the fullest possible use of the resources offered in the existing curriculum of English. The medium to longer term result would be an enhanced sense of possible answers to the question ‘What is English for and why does it remain essential for students and their futures?’

References Bachmair, B. (2006). Media Socialisation and the Culturally Dominant Mode of Representation. Medien Padagogik http://www.medienpaed.com/2006/bachmair0606.pdf accessed 18 September 2009. Battacharly, R., Gupta, S., Jewitt, C., Newfield, D., Reed, Y. and Stein, P. (2007). The Policypractice Nexus in English Classrooms in Delhi, Johannesburg and London: Teachers and the textual cycle. TESOL Quarterly Autumn. Bearne, E. (2003). Rethinking Literacy: Communication, representation and text. Literacy 37(3): 98–103. Bearne, E. and Wolstencroft, H. (2007). Visual Approaches to Teaching Writing. London: Paul Chapman Publishing and UKLA. Bezemer, J. and Kress, G. (2008). Writing in Multimodal Texts: A social semiotic account of designs for learning. Written Communication 25(2): 166–95 (Special Issue on Writing and New Media). Flewitt, R. (2006). Using Video to Investigate Preschool Classroom Interaction: Education research assumptions and methodological practices. Visual Communication 5(1): 25–51. Franks, A. (2003). Palmer’s Kiss: Shakespeare, school drama and semiotics. In C. Jewitt and G. Kress (Eds) Multimodal Literacy. New York: Peter Lang, ch. 3, pp. 155–72. Halliday, M. (1978). Language as a Social Semiotic. London: Edward Arnold. Hodge, R. and Kress, G. (1988). Social Semiotics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Jewitt, C. (2002). The Move from Page to Screen: The multimodal reshaping of school English. Journal of Visual Communication 1(2): 171–96. Jewitt, C. (2008). Technology, Literacy and Learning: A multimodal approach. London: Routledge. Jewitt, C. (Ed.) (2009). Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis. London: Routledge. Jewitt, C., Moss, G. and Cardini, A. (2007). Pedagogic Design of IWBS. Learning, Media and Technology 32(3): 302–18. Kenner, C. (2004). Becoming Biliterate: Young children learning different writing systems. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books. Kenner, C. and Kress, G. (2003). The Multisemiotic Resources of Biliterate Children. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 3(2): 179–202. Kress, G. (1996). Before Writing: Rethinking paths to literacy. London: Routledge. Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge. Kress, G. (2009). Multimodality: Exploring contemporary methods of communication. London: Routledge. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal Discourses. London: Macmillan. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images: A grammar of visual design. London: Routledge. Kress, G., Jewitt, C., Ogborn, J. and Tsatsarelis, C. (2001). Multimodal Teaching and Learning. London: Continuum.

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Kress, G., Jewitt, C., Jones, K., Bourne, J., Franks, A. and Hardcastle, J. (2005). English in Urban Classrooms. London: Routledge. Lancaster, L. (2001). Staring at the Page: The functions of gaze in a young child’s interpretation of symbolic forms. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 1(2):131–52. Moss, G. (2003). Putting the Text back into Practice: Junior age fiction as objects of design. In C. Jewitt and G. Kress (Eds) Multimodal Literacy. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 73–87. Moss, G., Jewitt, C., Levacic, R., Armstrong, V., Cardini, A. and Castle, F. (2007). The Interactive Whiteboards, Pedagogy and Pupil Performance Evaluation (Research report 816). London: Department for Education and Science (DfES). Norris, S. (2004). Analyzing Multimodal Interaction: A methodological framework. London: Routledge. O’Halloran, K.L. (2005). Mathematical Discourse: Language, symbolism and visual images. London and New York: Continuum. Pahl, K. (1999). Transformations: Children’s meaning making in nursery education. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books. Saljo, R. (2004). Learning and Technologies, People and Tools in Co-ordinated Activities. International Journal of Educational Research 41: 489–94. Sefton-Green, J. (2006). Youth, Technology and Media Culture. Review of Research in Education 30(1): 279–306. van Leeuwen, T. (1999). Speech, Music, Sound. London: Macmillan.

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30 A very long engagement: English and the moving image Andrew Burn

The place of the moving image in English has a long but vexed history. It appears first as part of what F.R. Leavis and his colleagues saw as the unwelcome intrusion of the mass media into the cultural world of the young, another barbarism threatening the civilization whose guardian, guarantor and representative Leavis took to be the literary culture of the ‘Great Tradition’ (Leavis, 1948). The same deep mistrust of film and cinema, along with visual media in general, was expressed in the early 1960s by David Holbrook: . . . the word is out of date. It is a visual age, so we must have strip cartoons, films, filmstrips, charts, visual aids. Language is superannuated. . . . Some teachers fall for the argument. . . . We must never give way: we are teachers of the responsiveness of the word. . . . The new illiteracy of the cinema, television, comic strip, film-strip and popular picture paper they accept as the dawn of a new era. (Holbrook, 1961 [1967]: 36–7) Though negatively framed, Holbrook’s diatribe accurately anticipates the fields in which this contest would be played out over successive decades. Like Leavis, he recognizes that this is a battle over cultural value, just as media educators would later propose, though from the opposing standpoint. He recognizes, too, that it is a question of literacy, and his characterization of the ‘new illiteracy’ of visual media ironically prefigures today’s rationales for multimodal literacy approaches. Finally, in a more specialized sense, he recognizes that this is about a struggle for primacy between word and image: a struggle as old as the frescoes of sacred narratives painted for the illiterate congregations of mediaeval and Renaissance Europe; and as new as the attempts of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) of the UK government to assert the importance of literature study over the study of texts in other media: Alongside views that media and screen-based texts [can] have their place in English 21 there is the caveat that these should never be at the expense of our rich

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book-based literary heritage – a point more fully elaborated in terms of the purpose and value of engaging with verbal language: the study of literature has one conspicuous advantage over the study of film and television media, in that it develops the skills of analysis, argument and discourse alongside language skills. (QCA, 2005, emphasis added) This riposte to a considerable body of evidence from teachers, researchers and academics arguing for more space for media texts in the English curriculum reveals a profound conservatism directly descended from Leavis and Holbrook’s antipathy to visual texts. While in certain ways the revision of the English curriculum that followed in 2007 makes more space for media texts, this reluctant surrender is limited and incoherent. It only appears in the small print – the ‘headline’ accounts of the curriculum refer solely to language in spoken and written forms, and repeatedly emphasize the ‘literary heritage’. The specific reference to media texts appears under the Reading section of the curriculum, as it has in the past: The range of non-fiction and non-literary texts studied should include: h. forms such as journalism, travel writing, essays, reportage, literary non-fiction and multimodal texts including film. (QCA, 2007) While ‘multimodal texts’ could presumably include television, comics, computer games and other contemporary media forms, the brevity of the reference speaks for itself, especially when compared with the lavish references to heritage literature. Equally disturbing is the fact that media texts are here conceived as ‘non-fiction’ – a palpable absurdity when one considers the predominance of fictional narrative in television drama, film and computer games significant to young people. Finally, to confine media texts to the ‘reading’ section of the curriculum is effectively to make it mandatory to teach children and young people to ‘read’ the media, but not to ‘write’ it. Such a partial provision directly contradicts the government-sponsored definition of media literacy – ‘Access, Understand, Create’ – produced by the UK’s super-regulator, OFCOM. In many ways, however, the relationship between the moving image and the subject English over recent years can be seen in a more positive light. The rise of media education in the 1980s (Buckingham, 2003; Goodwyn, 2004), the long-term advocacy of film education by film institutes such as the British Film Institute (BFI) in the UK, and the development of curricular models of English in the Anglophone countries that increasingly recognize the importance of media texts, all contributed towards a contemporary view of English which, in principle at least, embraces moving image media within a wider notion of media education and an expanded model of literacy. These moves make sense not only in terms of a world where, some argue, the ‘turn to the visual’ is increasingly a feature of the semiotic and cultural landscape (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996). It also makes sense historically, if we consider the shared histories of literature, theatre and cinema: histories of narrative fictions written and performed, visually designed, taking place both in time and space, framed by proscenium arch and silver screen. These are histories of adaptation, of the restless migration of literary characters, from Beowulf to Jane Eyre, from printed page and book illustration to popular theatre and melodrama, film, stage musical, television adaptation, and even, more recently, computer game. 355

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This chapter will focus on what the research can tell us about the moving image and English. Such an exercise comes with the inevitable caveat that this is a much underresearched area. A systematic review four years ago of the research literature on moving image and literacy, for instance, found only 12 relevant studies internationally (Burn and Leach, 2004). While there has been a little more work in the intervening years, this topic remains something of a Cinderella subject in research terms, despite the popularity of film and moving image production work among media teachers (Grahame and Simons, 2004). Nevertheless, the studies available suggest ways in which the moving image relates to specific aspects of English. These form the sections of the chapter, and are framed as: the moving image as an adjunct to the teaching of language and literature; the moving image in its own right; and the moving image as part of a more widely-conceived notion of literacy.

The moving image and the teaching of language and literature Showing the ‘film of the book’ has been a familiar experience in English classrooms the world over for many years, and teachers and students have encountered classic adaptations in this way, from Olivier’s Henry V to Ken Loach’s Kes. However, a critical commentary inspired by the rationales of media education has accompanied the ‘film of the book’ practice, well summarized by Andrew Goodwyn (2004), to whose book the reader is referred for a longer discussion of this question. From this perspective, the ‘film-of-the-book’ approach has been seen as a damaging practice, reducing film to the status of mere appendage to the authentic originating text. This critique derives partly from academic film studies, where perceptions of film adaptations as secondary to the literary original have given way to arguments for the autonomy of the film adaptation as a work of artistic merit, to be judged in its own right. In practical terms, these arguments produce a different kind of classroom practice, in which the book and the film are taught side-by-side. This approach emphasizes the structural features of film narrative and film ‘grammar’, comparing them to those of the literary text in order to find elements in common across both media as well as differences which make each medium distinctive. The comparative teaching of related literary and film texts implies a parity of cultural value, rather than a hierarchy privileging literature. A good example from recent years is an account by two teachers of their use of different film versions of Macbeth, using interactive whiteboards to present and compare short sequences, and drawing attention not only to detailed aspects of the play, but to how it is realized dramatically and filmically (Durran and Morrison, 2004). With the advent over the last ten years of digital authoring tools, recent research literature has focused more on how students make films, as well as view and interpret them. Perhaps the first researched account of this, Julian Sefton-Green’s chapter in Making Media (Buckingham et al., 1995) describes the making of a trailer for S.E. Hinton’s teenage novel The Outsiders with a secondary school class. Sefton-Green’s focus here is on the importance of popular culture, both in literature and film; but his argument is also that digitally manipulating the medium of film produces a shift of power in the relations between producers and audiences – an argument which has become very familiar in relation to digital authoring tools and, more recently, the participatory internet. 356

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Another argument derived from production work with students is that production can also be a kind of analysis. Burn and Durran (2006) describe how Year 9 students, using the editing software Adobe Premiere, make their own sequences of Romeo and Juliet from Baz Luhrman’s film. This study suggests how the students gain a critical understanding, not only of Shakespeare’s text, but of the significance of dramatic action, music, and the editing process in film production. They acquire these new understandings not only from close attention to the Shakespeare text, but by ‘anatomizing’ the filmic text in order to remake it. A related argument is made by Cliff Hodges (2005), who explores how filming sequences that visually re-imagine literary texts can provide insights into detailed aspects of poetic language. However, the argument here is that such exercises also draw attention to specific features of the moving image as a kind of language; and, indeed, to the act of reading, which can supply its own visual array of images in response to a literary text. A similar case is made by Burn (2003) in a study of teenage girls making films of their own bilingual poems, in which the making of the film provides insights into the language of poetry, but at the same time into the language of the moving image. A further argument for the benefit of moving image production in English is that it may help to develop the quality of children’s writing. This hypothesis is tested in a study conducted by the BFI in collaboration with King’s College, London (Parker, 1999, 2002), which worked with primary school children on the Roald Dahl story ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’, helping them to make a digital animation of sections of the story, and assessing their written work afterwards. The published results were tentative, but found some evidence of improvement in the descriptive detail of the children’s writing, and their ability to empathize with characters in the Dahl story. An obvious objection to the rationale proposed by this project is that it threatens to relegate the use of moving image work in the classroom to the instrumental role of a support for print literacy. In this particular case, however, while it was print literacy gains that the report emphasized, it is clear that the specific characteristics of the moving image received a good deal of attention, as might be expected from a project led by film specialists. A different strand of research also makes claims for gains in print literacy, but in relation to computer games. It is the contention of this chapter that 3-D, narrative-based games such as adventure games or role-playing games can and should be considered as moving image texts, for two main reasons. First, they deploy the moving image in the form of animation as the main mode of representation, with many of its familiar qualities: camera angle and movement; framed narrative space; spoken (sometimes written) dialogue; music. Second, in cultural terms games have a close relationship with cinema, and the two forms have influenced each other over recent years, as well as being associated in franchises which adapt from film to game (The Matrix, Star Wars and the Bond movies are the obvious examples); and from game to film (Final Fantasy; Tomb Raider; Resident Evil, Silent Hill ). One study (McClay, 2002) suggests that experience of computer games informs the fantasy writing of a teenage boy, resulting in more fluid, episodic narratives, and new genres of writing of which literacy educators need to become aware. The more specific claim that the boy’s writing deepens the computer narratives by investing the characters with history is debatable; one of the games cited, from the Final Fantasy series, does construct extensive character histories through backstories conveyed via video and text. Arguably, the issue here is more to do with the expectation of psychological depth, prized within the traditions both of Western drama and the novel; but completely 357

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untypical of oral narrative (Ong, 2002) and computer games, which one commentator has compared to Homeric narrative in their use of characters in whom psychological depth is simply not the point (Murray, 1997). Nevertheless, the general argument that games engender new kinds of writing deserves the consideration of English teachers, and clearly resonates with research in the production of fan fiction ( Jenkins, 1992, 2006; Carr et al., 2006: ch. 7). Beavis (2001) also finds certain gains in print literacy related to the experiences of computer games. Part of her analysis looks at the literate practices required of these students to play Heroes of Might and Magic and Beyond Time – reading instructions on- and off-screen, understanding and engaging with narrative structures and fantasy genres, interpreting iconic signification and moving image sequence, such as the cut scenes (pre-rendered animation distinct from the interactive game sequences). She also goes on to analyse how the writing of selected students can demonstrate critical distance in reviews of the games, but can also develop complex approximations to the experience of playing. We have seen, then, examples of research exploring how the study or making of moving image texts can support the study of literature and language in English. Key issues identified are: the cultural argument for parity of esteem between moving image and literary texts; the learning benefits identified by Goodwyn of studying processes of adaptation; the value of making and unmaking moving image texts in considering how meaning is made; and the need, ultimately, to develop extended models of literacy that can travel across semiotic modes and cultural forms, a theme to which the third section of this chapter will return.

The moving image in its own right Over three decades now, the most consistent campaign for the teaching of film in its own right in the UK has been made by the Education Department of the BFI. It has proposed possible film-based curricula (FEWG, 1999), published resources (Bazalgette et al., 2001), and conducted training programmes to promote the teaching of short films in primary schools and the teaching of documentary film. At the same time, the BFI has consistently maintained a strategic link with the literacy curriculum. It has also pursued an advocacy campaign for moving image education within the English curriculum, and can claim substantial credit for the specific inclusion of requirements to study the moving image in recent versions of the National Curriculum for England. The study of film in schools is closely related to the development of media education, and film educators currently make common cause in many ways with media educators, campaigning in Europe at the time of this chapter, for instance, for a charter for media literacy and a commitment by the European Parliament to the development of media literacy. However, the history of film education also differs from that of media education. While the two have a common point of origin, as we have seen, in the cultural protectionism of Leavis, Film Education in Europe also has its roots in the film heritages of different European countries, and the impulse to educate children in this important part of twentieth century culture. As in the UK, national film institutes in countries such as Sweden, France and Italy promote programmes of film education which focus on national and European heritages, archive collections, and contemporary independent 358

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film-making. In this respect, Europe maintains film education in conjunction with media education, unlike the United States, where media education has often been dominated by forms of moral protectionism (Buckingham, 2003), or South-East Asia, where it is more focused on popular mass media and new technologies (Lin, 2008). In many ways, this can be seen as a strength in Europe. It seems odd that media education programmes in the US or South-east Asia should not include film, when the film industry plays such a strong role in the economies and cultures of these regions. Certainly for many English teachers, to now include film now seems natural, given its strong link with literature, and the value of teaching general categories such as text, narrative and genre across different media. At the same time, the broader tradition of media education provides possibilities for teaching different media, as well as a conceptual framework around which there is broad international consensus, and which includes key concepts such as institutions, audiences and representation alongside conceptions of text and signification (Buckingham and Domaille, 2003). From a less positive viewpoint, these three traditions – English, media and film education – can be seen in tension. While English has often tended to favour traditional textual canons and traditional values of literature (whatever the more progressive inclinations of sectors of the profession), media education champions popular culture. While English has traditionally privileged language and print literacy, film and media education have allied themselves with broader conceptions of media literacy (Buckingham, 2003; Burn and Durran, 2007); multiliteracy (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000); multimodal literacy (Jewitt and Kress, 2003). I overstate this opposition to make the contrast – film educators do engage with popular cinema and with television, and have often been leading advocates of media education, as the record of the BFI amply demonstrates. Similarly, media teachers often enthusiastically teach iconic independent films, and incorporate film in their work as an important cultural form. This blurring of boundaries, seen in the world of both literacy education and art education as an indication of new kinds of post-modern pedagogy (Green, 1995; Addison and Burgess, 2003), seems a hopeful move for a new kind of English curriculum, in which old barriers are relaxed, a profusion of cultural influences and texts are embraced, and contradictions of cultural politics are tolerated and explored. While the advocacy for both film and media education has been strong in the UK, however, it has largely been a tradition of exhortation, speculative curriculum design and resource making. Valuable though these processes are, there has been relatively little actual research in for instance the teaching and learning of moving image culture in the classroom. There have been three large studies in recent years: an evaluation of the use of digital cameras and editing softwares in 50 schools in the UK (Reid et al., 2002); a study of children in seven European countries using digital video production to explore their experience of migration (de Block et al., 2005); and a study of moving image production projects in nine UK schools (Lord et al., 2007). While none of these is specifically focused on the moving image and English, four themes can be identified that are relevant to English teachers. The first is a debate about the explicit teaching of film ‘language’, which, although it is an old debate, is revived by these more recent research findings. Reid et al. (2002) found that the student productions which were of the highest quality appeared where moving image literacy had been explicitly addressed by teachers. For example a special school class had learned the conventions of shot construction and continuity editing, 359

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allowing a more effective sci-fi-themed film narrative to be made. This finding can be supported by more recent studies, such as Burn and Durran (2007: ch. 5), where student pastiches of television hospital dramas are shaped by very specific teaching about shot set-up. On the other hand, a recent study of primary school children making films about their memories of childhood suggests that high-quality work can also emerge where children draw on their own experience of media forms and conventions (Potter, 2005). In many ways, this debate parallels the perennial English debate about the teaching of grammar, and whether this enables students to read more analytically or write more effectively, or both. One way to respond to these conflicting research findings about the grammar of the moving image might be to adopt a pragmatic, nuanced approach, in which children’s prior media experience is taken into account, some freedom to experiment and to learn by practice is provided, and more explicit teaching is offered where appropriate. A more specialized aspect of the debate concerns the exact model of ‘moving image grammar’ that might be taught. The most popular choices here seem to be variations on the model of mise-en-scene, filming, editing and sound, of which the most authoritative version remains Bordwell and Thompson’s Film Art (2001). An alternative approach to ‘film language’ will be briefly explored below. The second theme is to do with identity. De Block et al. (2005) explored how moving image production work could allow migrant children to negotiate their identities in relation both to the host culture of their new country and to the culture of their home country. The study found that the children used images, styles and genres from their home country as a touchstone and reminder; but also from global media forms, such as hip-hop, to stake a claim in forms of youth culture recognizable in the host community. While this is a media education intervention research project, not a study of English classrooms, it is the study which most forcibly makes a point echoed in much of the other research: that whenever children and young people make moving image texts, they represent, either directly or obliquely, their own identities and cultural preoccupations. Identity is not a notion common in the discourse of schools: media education research insists that it is indispensable for teachers working on media production projects with young people. In the context of primary school video-making, Potter (2008) describes two ten-year-old girls making a video about their memories of school. His argument is that identity here is constructed from memory fragments which use objects and spaces around the school as touchstones. This analysis, which conceives of identity-building in terms of Bourdieu’s notion of habitus (1984), offers a conception of the film-making process which gets beyond the technologies and grammars of filming and editing, and proposes how embodied performance and physical space contribute to the meanings of the children’s film. The third theme is that of creativity. Reid et al. (2002) found that, while teachers invariably felt that their students’ work was creative, they were uncertain about what this might mean. Many suggested that creativity meant freedom from constraint, which appeared to contradict the finding that the best work emerged from quite formal understandings of the ‘language’ of the moving image. By contrast, Burn and Durran (2007: ch. 2), in a study of seven-year-olds making plasticine animations of fairy tales, proposed a more specific view of creativity, modelled on Vygotsky’s essay on the subject, which proposed that creativity was a combination of the imaginative transformation of cultural resources and the processes of rational thought. Lord et al. (2007) usefully developed a typology of creativity in relation to the moving image, which in itself would be valuable 360

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for practitioners and researchers to use and adapt. They also found, interestingly, that there was rather less evidence of creativity (as assessed by their typology) than project leaders claimed in interviews. The lesson here, perhaps, is that creativity is too important a process to reify or leave to chance. Whatever teachers believe it to be, they may need to be reflective about what it means, how it relates both to notions of originality and apprenticeship, how it may be both new and borrowed from earlier cultural experience, how it may be both free and constrained. The fourth theme is to do with learning progression. Lord et al. found, returning to the schools after a period of time, that all the effects they recorded had weakened over time, since no provision was made to sustain them. The message here is about the need for learning progression, in the sense we have always taken for granted in relation to print literacy. Such progression will probably not be dictated by ‘ages and stages’ models, a point made forcibly by Buckingham (2003); but rather by recursive models, attentive to gradual, uneven and often unpredictable breakthroughs, repetitions, incremental developments, expansions of scope, maturity, complexity, technical skills (Burn and Durran, 2007: ch. 9).

Moving image literacy An early and prominent version of the idea of moving image literacy can be found in the research of David Buckingham, which draws on the traditions of cultural studies and on the new sociology of childhood. His 1993 study Children Talking Television has the subtitle The Making of Television Literacy, and it documents how children are able from a relatively early age to make sense of the representational strategies of this form of moving image culture. His 1996 study Moving Images explores how children and teenagers engage with film and television in an affective sense, negotiating the powerful emotions provoked by moving image texts and using these emotions for their own pleasures, identity formation and journey through adolescence. More recent research has explored how young people’s engagement with fictional worlds crosses different media forms and cultures. Henry Jenkins sees this phenomenon as ‘convergence culture’ (Jenkins, 2006), an example being his Harry Potter fan, Heather, whose online tribute site refers to different media expressions of the Harry Potter mythos. Similarly, my own studies of Harry Potter fans (Burn, 2004, 2006) show 13-yearolds engaging with the figure and narratives of Harry Potter across book, film and computer game. These studies give a strong, empirically-based sense of what kinds of moving image literacy children acquire from their own media cultures, and of the social motivations and uses which generate such informal literacies. The challenge implied for media and film educators, and English teachers too, is how to take proper account of this kind of literacy, and build on it. In the context of formal education, there is a theme which considers moving image literacy as multimodal (cf. Jewitt and Kress, 2003). This research is limited and specific, and a particular feature of my own work. Three studies (Burn and Parker, 2001, 2003; Burn and Durran, 2007: ch. 3) analyse data from a long-running animation project, in which primary school children made short digital animations of texts chosen by the teachers, with the help of teachers, animators and composers-in-residence. The research 361

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underlined the idea of multimodal literacies which were here integrated by the moving image. While the film making involved learning the specific practices of shot construction, editing and animation, it also involved other semiotic modes: visual design (often painted artwork), music composition, performance, recording and editing; and spoken language (the scripting and voicing of character dialogue and voiceover). This model of the ‘language’ of the moving image, termed ‘kineikonic’ in these studies (the Greek for move, ‘kinein’, and image, ‘eikon’) offers an alternative to the conventional model elaborated by Bordwell and Thompson (2001), as discussed above. The problem, however, lies in how a pedagogy might be built around such a model, and how a sufficient consensus might be gained to justify such a pedagogy. A broader conception of media literacy, which would encompass moving image forms such as film, television and games alongside print media and internet-based media, has become prominent in recent years. In many ways, this is policy-driven rather than based on research. A literature review for the UK regulator OFCOM (Buckingham et al., 2006) presents a range of research evidence to demonstrate that, while children gain a considerable degree of media literacy informally from home, peers and the media itself, there is also a case for educational intervention. As the idea of media literacy has gathered pace, a popular one that has gained a wide degree of consensus is the notion of three ‘C’s – cultural, critical and creative. This is endorsed by the UK and European Media Literacy charters; by the UK industry-funded organization Film Education; and, indeed, has become a model for literacy generally in the UK National Curriculum. For the purposes of this chapter, the implications of such a model for the moving image can be teased out. First, the cultural aspect of moving image literacy would, as we have seen, need to take account not only of national film heritage, but also of the importance of popular cinema in the cultural lives of young people. Second, the critical aspect would need to take account of the textual forms of the moving image, as well as the political economy of its production in the film, television and games industries; and, furthermore, how audiences engage with and interpret moving image media. Finally, the creative aspect would need to consider how young people make their own moving image texts both outside and inside school, and how such forms of production use and transform cultural resources, display understandings of design and production, and deploy new forms of exhibition, display and exchange, such as YouTube, file-sharing sites and other kinds of web publishing. However, the exhibition modes of ‘old’ media should not be dismissed: the UK Film Council-funded First Light programme now shows work made by school students in the form of pay-per-view films carried by the UK’s Virgin cable television provider. Such work belongs to a long tradition of the exhibition of children’s films in the context of festivals: the Co-op Young Film Makers festival in the UK, for instance has exhibited hundreds of films by young people in the National Film Theatre in London and the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford.

New moving image forms This chapter has inevitably been concerned mainly with film and to a lesser extent television. The more specialized medium of animation, discussed above, overlaps with newer moving image media, such as 3-D computer games, immersive virtual worlds 362

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and machinima. These forms, closely related to cinema and television, are explored in a small but growing literature in relation to literacy. Pelletier (2005) proposes that game design by 12-year-old students in the UK is closely related to the performance of gendered identity, in respect not only of their own pleasures and interests, but of social expectations of them in schools and in their peer group. Buckingham and Burn (2007), analysing game designs made by Year 8 students, propose a model of ‘game literacy’ based on the notion of media literacy outlined above, arguing that game design is cultural (strongly influenced by students’ gaming experience); critical (involving new understandings of game grammar and design principles); and creative (proceeding from the imaginative transformation of semiotic resources). Implications for English teachers here can be seen partly as cultural – that if their domain includes (in addition to literature) film and television, why would it not include a cultural form such as games, so closely related in form and franchise to these older visual media? However, there is also a linguistic argument – the grammar of games, which at one level can be seen as a narrative constructed in the conditional mood (‘If the player turns left, then the treasure chest opens’), can, if explicitly explored, lead to more complex understandings of how narrative is created at a grammatical level across different media. Finally, a brief word on the relatively new phenomenon of machinima. This is really a form of animation which uses the resources of 3-D games or virtual worlds, staging dramas performed by players as avatars, capturing these, and editing them, adding dialogue, sound and music. The word machinima is a portmanteau of machine and cinema (Kelland et al., 2005). There is very little research about this as yet, and only two studies that can be related to the English and media curricula. The first is an article by Carroll and Cameron (2005), drama educators who relate the performance aspect of machinima to traditions of educational process drama, arguing that the conventions of role-play in each form are closely related. The second is my own study of an animator and educator in the UK who has made machinima films with a group of teenagers in the immersive virtual world Second Life (Burn, 2008: ch. 8). The arguments for this activity as a viable part of the media curriculum are similar to those that would be made for animation projects. Two key differences are: that students act character parts as avatars in the game environment (making the activity more similar to live film in this respect); and the whole enterprise is culturally situated within game culture rather than film culture.

Conclusion The arguments emerging from the research for incorporating the moving image into the English curriculum can be subsumed under the ‘3-Cs’ model of media literacy (and, indeed, literacy more generally). The cultural aspect of literacy is expanded by the cultural contexts of television and film (both popular and arthouse); the critical element is expanded and reinforced by a wider conceptual understanding of textuality, and the regimes of production and reception which frame it; the creative element is expanded by the extension of semiotic repertories available to students into the audiovisual domain of the moving image. I return finally to Henry Jenkins’ notion of convergence culture. Perhaps the most profitable territory for English teachers to exploit is that of cross-media narratives, pursuing the kind of literacy that needs to be envisaged to account for children who ‘read’ Harry Potter across book, film and game. I have described elsewhere how such a literacy 363

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might work in practice (Burn, 2004): how children’s understanding of narrative elements such as character, point-of-view, first and third person, narrative action, are distributed across these three different media versions of the same story. This study derives in part from the work of a teacher in Cambridge – James Durran – who explored such literacies by activities such as close analysis of the language of the boxes of film and game, and by comparing with students the same sequence from the book, film and game. However, the English curriculum can pursue this kind of trans-media phenomenon not only across the cultural and semiotic landscape of the contemporary moment, but also through a historical process of textual transformation. Perhaps a project for the near future for practitioners and researchers to pursue together could be the transformation of the Beowulf narrative from the Old English manuscript, through various film adaptations including the impressive comic-strip animation recently scripted by graphic novelist Neil Gaiman, to the computer game version of this film. Such an enterprise offers to bridge many of the gaps these research studies suggest teachers need to cross: semiotic, cultural, pedagogic. Once these gaps are bridged, perhaps English and the moving image can leave their traditionally strife-ridden engagement, and move into, if not exactly a marriage, then at least a more settled partnership.

References Addison, A. and Burgess, L. (Eds) (2003). Issues in Art and Design Teaching. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Bazalgette et al (eds) (2000). Moving Images in the Classroom. London: British Film Institute (BFI). Beavis, C. (2001). Digital Culture, Digital Literacies: Expanding the notions of text. In C. Beavis and C. Durrant (Eds) P(ICT)ures of English: Teachers, learners and technology. Adelaide, SA: Wakefield Press, pp. 145–61. Bordwell, D. and Thompson, K. (2001). Film Art: An Introduction (6th edn). New York: McGraw-Hill. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Routledge. Buckingham, D. (1993). Children Talking Television: The making of television literacy. London: Falmer. Buckingham, D. (1996). Moving Images: Understanding children’s emotional responses to television. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Buckingham, D. (2003). Media Education: Literacy, learning and contemporary culture. Cambridge: Polity. Buckingham, D. and Burn, A. (2007). Game-literacy in Theory and Practice. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia 16(3, Oct). Buckingham, D. and Domaille, K. (2003). Where have we been and where are we going? Results of the UNESCO Global Survey of Media Education. In C. Von Feilitzen and U. Carlsson (Eds) Promote or Protect UNESCO Children, Youth and Media Yearbook. Goteborg, Sweden: Nordicom, pp. 41–52. Burn, A. (2003). Two Tongues Occupy my Mouth – Poetry, performance and the moving image. English in Education 37(3, Autumn): 41–50. Burn, A. (2004). Potter-Literacy – from Book to Game and Back Again; Literature, film, game and cross-media literacy’. Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature 14(2): 5–17. Burn, A. (2005). Writing Computer Games: Game-literacy and new-old narratives’. L1 – Educational Studies in Language and Literature 6(2).

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Burn, A. (2006). ‘Multi-text Magic: Harry Potter in book, film and videogame’. In F. Collins and J. Ridgman (Eds) Turning the Page: Children’s literature in performance and the media. Bern: Peter Lang. Burn, A. and Durran, J. (2006). Digital Anatomies: Analysis as production in media education. In D. Buckingham and R. Willett (Eds) Digital Generations. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum. Burn, A. and Durran, J. (2007). Media Literacy in Schools: Practice, production, progression. London: Paul Chapman. Burn, A. and Leach, J. (2004). ICT and the Moving Image. In R. Andrews (Ed.) The Impact of ICT on Literacy Education. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Burn, A. and Parker, D. (2001). Making your Mark: Digital inscription, animation, and a new visual semiotic. Education, Communication & Information 1(2): 155–79. Burn, A. and Parker, D. (2003). Tiger’s Big Plan: Multimodality and the moving image. In G. Kress and C. Jewitt (Eds) Multimodal Literacy. New York: Peter Lang. Carr, D., Buckingham, D., Burn, A. and Schott, G. (2006). Computer Games: Text, narrative, play. Cambridge: Polity. Carroll, J. and Cameron, D. (2005). ‘Machinima: Digital performance and emergent authorship’. Proceedings of DiGRA Conference: Changing Views – Worlds in Play, University of Vancouver, June. www.digra.org accessed Cliff Hodges, G. (2005). The Poem, the Reader and the Camera: Using camcorders as notebooks for the study of poetry. English Teaching, Practice & Critique 4(1, May). Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (Eds) (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. Routledge, London. de Block, L., Buckingham, D. and Banaji, S. (2005). Children in Communication about Migration (CHICAM), Final Report of EC-funded project. www.childrenyouthandmediacentre.co.uk accessed; project website: www.chicam.net accessed Durran, J. and Morrison, C. (2004). From Page to Screen and Back Again: Teaching literature through the moving image; teaching the moving image through literature. English, Media, Drama 1(1, Jan). FEWG (1999). Making Movies Matter. London: BFI. Gee, J. (2003). What Video Games have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. London: Palgrave. Grahame, J. and Simons, M. (2004). Media Studies in the UK. London: Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). Green, B. (1995). Post-curriculum Possibilities: English teaching, cultural politics and the postmodern turn. Journal of Curriculum Studies 27(4): 391–409. Holbrook, D. (1961 [1967]). English for Maturity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jenkins, H. (1992). Textual Poachers: Television fans and participatory culture. New York: Routledge. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press. Jewitt, C. and Kress, G. (Eds) (2003). Multimodal Literacy. New York: Peter Lang. Kelland, M., Morris, M. and Lloyd, D. (2005). Machinima. London: Course Technology PTR. Kress, K. and van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge. Leavis, F. and Thompson, D. (1933). Culture and Environment. London: Chatto and Windus. Leavis, F.R. (1948). The Great Tradition. London: Chatto and Windus. Lin, T-Z. (2008). ‘Media education in Taiwan – from policy-making to implementation’, unpublished PhD thesis, Institute of Education, University of London. Lord, P., Jones, M., Harland, J., Bazalgette, C., Potter, J. and Reid, M. (2008). Special Effects: The distinctiveness of learning outcomes in relation to moving image education projects. London: BFI/NfER. McClay, J. (2002). Hidden ‘Treasure’: New genres, new media and the teaching of writing. English in Education 36(1): 46–55.

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Murray, J. (1998). Hamlet on the Holodeck. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ong, W. (2002). Orality and Literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Routledge. Parker, D. (1999). You’ve Read the Book, now Make the Film: Moving image media, print literacy and narrative. English in Education 33: 24–35. Parker, D. (2002). Show us a Story: An overview of recent research and resource development work at the British Film Institute. English in Education 36: 38–45. Pelletier, C. (2005). The Uses of Literacy in Studying Computer Games: Comparing students’ oral and visual representations of games. ETPC 4(1). Potter, J. (2005). ‘This Brings back a Lot of Memories’ – A case study in the analysis of digital video production by young learners. Education, Communication & Information 5(1, Mar). Potter, J. (2008). The Locative Narrative: Katie and Aroti – ‘This is where we always used to sit’. Media Education Journal 44(Dec). Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) (2005). English 21/Playback: A national conversation on the future of English. London: QCA. Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) (2007). The National Curriculum 2007. London: QCA. Reid, M., Burn, A. and Parker, D. (2002). Evaluation Report of the BECTa Digital Video Pilot Project, BECTa. http://www.becta.org.uk/research/reports/digitalvideo/index.html accessed.

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31 Reading, writing and speaking poetry Terry Locke

This chapter concerns itself with poetry in the context of the teaching and learning that occurs in English/literacy classes – primary and secondary – across the Anglophone world. If national curriculum statements are anything to go on, we can take as given the category of ‘poetry’ as a subset of texts worthy of study and emulation (categorized as ‘literary’), and relatable to something we might term ‘literature-related literacies’ (see Locke and Andrews, 2004). Yet all is not well with poetry. For American Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, ‘high schools are places where poetry goes to die’ (Cahnmann, 2003: 29). Fellow American poet, Korina Jocson, talks of young people falling asleep in ‘missionary classroom’ while shining in out-of-school poetry settings (Jocson, 2006: 232). Australians Kroll and Evans state that ‘The tragic truth is that poetry, through neglect by teachers, is terminally ill in the majority of Victorian schools’ (Bantick, 2004: 11, cited in Kroll and Evans, 2008: 36). From the post-colonial setting of Kenya’s education system, Chemwei et al. note that ‘poetry has recently been cited by both secondary and college students as the most unpopular genre of literature’ (Chemwei et al., 2005: 25). According to Canadian researcher, Joan Peskin, ‘poetic texts make up more than an eighth of the materials used in the average secondary school English classroom’ and ‘in the latest 1,110-page Handbook of Research on teaching the English Language Arts (Flood et al., 2003), research on poetry received but one small reference’ (Peskin, 2007: 21). Reasons for such perceived alienation, malaise and marginalization include teachers’ fear of teaching poetry and a lack of expertise in relation to poetry pedagogy, its superficial treatment in crowded curriculums, constructions of poetry itself and subscription to an irrelevant and even offensive canon. In Benton’s 1998 study (Benton, 1999) of English teachers in England, around 70 per cent of teachers saw the reading and discussion of poetry as ‘very important’, while 54 per cent rated the writing of poetry as ‘very important’ (Benton, 1999: 524, 528). However, what concerned these teachers in 1998 were examinations, time pressures and syllabus content (Benton, 1999: 529). In Year 11, 67 per cent of teachers ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ asked pupils to write a poem

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(Benton, 2000: 89). Benton’s study and others (e.g. Locke, 2008) confirm Andrews’ claim that ‘many of the disempowering approaches to the teaching of poetry . . . are the result of having to teach within the requirements of an assessment system’ (Andrews, 1991: 5). However, the relationship between poetry teaching and assessment is a large one and will not be addressed further in this chapter. Following this inauspicious glance at the connection between the study of poetry and curriculum and assessment, this chapter continues by offering a way of conceptualizing the study of poetry. I argue that justifications for teaching poetry in schools and its place in education have a direct relationship with how poetry is viewed and an overall view of what constitutes effective practice around texts. I will discuss reading and writing poetry separately, while recognizing that there is pedagogical justification for not separating the responding to poetry from the writing of poetry. This is particularly important for the teaching of writing, where it is common practice to ‘feed’ the writing process in various ways by the stimulus of studying the work of ‘established’ poets.

Conceptualizing the study of poetry Poetry can be viewed as a formal sub-category of literature, becoming a genre when qualified in some way (for example ‘lyrical poetry’, ‘ballad poetry’) and conceived in terms of the traditional rhetorical triad of text producer, audience and communicable content. Drawing on the work of Wellek and Warren (1962), I define a literary work as characterized by the following qualities: • • •

•

the use of language to please, where the aesthetic function is primary and draws attention to itself a focus on formal organization and coherence the evocation of a fictive or imaginary world which exists in a tangential relationship to the experiential world and about which the work constitutes a kind of moral statement the linguistic mode for a literary text can be oral, verbal, visual or multimodal.

Wellek and Warren make two useful distinctions. The first is between literature and literary study (1962: 15). Literary study concerns itself with the relationship between literature and theories of education. The second distinction is between literature and literary criticism. Literary criticism is concerned with matters of evaluation and taste. If schools are places where students can learn the art of literary connoisseurship (see Eisner, 2002), then literary criticism can be theorized as subsumed under the term ‘literary study’. Near the beginning of How to read a poem, Eagleton (2007) remarks that ‘quite a few teachers of literature nowadays do not practise literary criticism, since they . . . were never taught to do so’ (Eagleton, 2007: 1). A consequence of this neglect is a focus on content at the expense of textual form or literariness. Interestingly, what emerges from the many studies referred to in this chapter is that for different reasons, attention to the formal qualities of poetry is enjoying a resurgence. There are many definitions of poetry and little agreement on the matter. However, people tend to recognize poems when they stumble across them, even if the object in 368

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question offends their taste. Still, engaging students in questions of definition can be a worthwhile activity. An example would be studying Eagleton’s (2007) justification for his own definition of a poem as ‘a fictional, verbally inventive moral statement in which it is the author, rather than the printer or word processor, who decides where the lines should end’ (2007: 23). There are a range of discourses related to both literary study and literary criticism, which potentially affect practices around the teaching and evaluation of poetry. These literature-related discourses tend to shape and be shaped by broader discourses related to constructions of the subject English or ‘literacy’ in general. In this chapter, I will be referring to four paradigms of the subject (see also Locke, 2007): cultural heritage or ‘New Critical’ (for example Brooks and Warren, 1976); personal growth or progressive English (see Dixon, 1975; Iser, 1978; Rosenblatt; 1978); rhetorical or textual competence (see Bakhtin, 1986; Andrews, 1992; Cope and Kalantzis, 1993); and critical practice or critical literacy (see Foucault, 1991; Morgan, 1997). Each of these models offer teachers of English/literacy a particular position or stance in respect of what the study of poetry is all about. In terms of emphasis, cultural heritage and critical literacy models tend to favour close reading, while personal growth and rhetorical competence models tilt the balance back in favour of writing.

Reading poetry in the English classroom Literature concerning the teaching of poetry can be categorized as: 1 2 3

theorized descriptions of a particular approach teacher narratives of a ‘successful practice’ that has been more or less systematically theorized and evaluated research studies.

Professional journals are dominated by the first two, whereas the third group is distinguished for its paucity in scholarly journals. In this section, the literature is grouped according to their theoretical underpinnings, and their claims for effective strategies for teaching the response to poetry discussed and illustrated.

Poetry as self-discovery and personal development Peskin’s (2007) description of poetry as a ‘vehicle for enriching life by engendering wisdom; a vehicle for social and moral development; a body of cultural knowledge to be acquired’ (Peskin, 2007: 34) indicates the degree to which New Critical and Personal Growth models potentially overlap, once the canon becomes something to negotiate and readers are accorded a role in interpretive construction. Similarly, in theorizing how the reading of poetry might be taught, Anderson (2007) justifies it in language that is redolent of the New Critics, claiming that ‘Authentic literature cultivates the moral imagination, because the clearer perception fostered by alive, heightened language gives back to the reader, or audience, increased consciousness of the situations they find themselves in and hence leads them to more aware choices’ (Anderson, 2007: 22). However, one of the reading models he draws upon, Verdonk’s (1993) 369

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‘contextualized stylistics’, clearly draws on reader response criticism. According to Anderson, having related a poem to a broader context, Verdonk proceeds to consider four aspects of its immediate situation context . . . First, the reader as part of the context, next the reader’s search for the poem’s context of time and place, third, the interpersonal context between the persona of the poem and the reader, and finally, the significance of the genre of the discourse. (Anderson, 2007: 24) A connection is thus set up between reader interpretation and how the poem is contextualized. Implicit in Anderson’s work is a view that there is not one way to read a poem, but that different interpretative models can be viewed as heuristics – as useful frameworks to assist students in the work of interpretation. Chemwei et al.’s (2005) Kenyan research also uses a personal growth justification for the teaching of poetry, since it ‘is expected to provide student development and growth in intellectual, emotional, and linguistic aspects. It is also expected to help the individual learner develop an appropriate self-image and concepts of the community to which he or she belongs’ (Chemwei et al., 2005: 25). The study’s experimental group engaged in cooperative learning, a strategy which appeared to lead to significant academic achievement in response to literacy text in comparison with the control sample.

Poetry as a mode of perception A personal growth model has dimensions other than the emotional, moral and spiritual. For Kroll and Evans (2008), poetry involves a ‘particular way of perceiving’, where the imagination gives rise to ‘metaphoric thinking’, something they view as ‘hard-wired’ and displaying us ‘at our most inventive, perverse and surprising’ (Kroll and Evans, 2008: 36). Teaching poetry is justified for its ability to enhance thinking, since ‘it is a site of linguistic complexity that both hones our verbal skills and generates aesthetic pleasure’ (Kroll and Evans, 2008: 37). It is a short step to claim that poetry is ‘at the heart of the educational enterprise’ (Kroll and Evans, 2008: 37). Similar claims that reading poetry enhances higher-level thinking skills are made by Peskin (2007) and Collins (2001). Using such strategies as building up a wide-reading library, workshopping and reading aloud, Kroll and Evans illustrate three core assertions that metaphor is inseparable from poetic seeing, that metaphor is central to human sense-making, and the value of metacognitive reflection on the workings of metaphor and the imagination (Kroll and Evans, 2008: 38). Similarly, but with a great emphasis on the social, Knapp endorses Kozulin’s suggestion that poetry and literature ‘may serve both as prototype of the most advanced forms of human psychological life and as a concrete psychological tool that mediates human experiences’ (Kozulin, 1993: 254, cited in Knapp, 2002: 722). Knapp argues the need for a third option to New Criticism and reader response. Drawing on the work of Stanley Fish (1980), he rejects the notion of an isolated, essential self for a self as ‘a social construct whose operations are delimited by the systems of intelligibility that inform it’ and for a view of interpretation as a meaning-making act derived at least in part by subscription to an ‘interpretive community’ (Fish, 1980: 353 cited in Knapp, 2002: 722). Knapp’s approach uses a series of thematic questioning prompts in the ‘priming’ phase of instruction: ‘poetry as artifice’, ‘scenic development’, ‘rhetorical information’, 370

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‘speaker and listener’, ‘teaching voice and reception’ and ‘image making’ (Knapp, 2002: 722). In groups students are offered a number of interpretive propositions from which they select one, and for which they seek supportive evidence from the text and defend against other group members. The method is not so much evaluated as illustrated from a set of transcribed student group interactions.

Poetry as a mode of signification In this view, the emphasis shifts from perception to language itself as a kind of sign system, and to meaning making as a form of assignation. Eagleton (2007) articulates this view succinctly when he asserts that, ‘Poetry is language in which the signified or meaning is the whole process of signification itself. It is thus always at some level language which is about language’ (Eagleton, 2007: 21). The crucial truth about language that poetry highlights, and which underpins its value in life and education, is that all meaning making is about how words are used. The meanings of words do not exist independently of them. What emerges is a further basis for locating poetry at the heart of learning, and asserting the importance of attending to the formal qualities of language and particularly those of poetry, which Eagleton lists as ‘tone, pitch, rhythm, diction, volume, metre, pace, mood, voice, address, texture, structure, quality, syntax, register, point of view, punctuation and the like’ (Eagleton, 2007: 66). To illustrate his thesis, Eagleton (2007) takes each of these formal aspects, defines it and models its function in the explication of meaning. Though influenced by a personal growth model, Datta’s (2000) ethnographic study with 10 and 11-year-old, (mostly) bilingual students is also focused on poetry as signification: ‘We can say a literary form is a “verbal object” which is to be interpreted as signifying something beyond the literal, something that bilinguals find difficult to access in English’ (Datta, 2000: 144). This dual focus on inner and outer is reflected in Datta’s strategic ‘shift in emphasis from word-centred meaning to image-centred meaning to understand and construct literary text’ (Datta, 2000: 143, emphasis in original). For linguistically anxious, bilingual students, image-forming utilizes a means of enabling them bring to bear ‘their entire repertoire of linguistic and meaning resources’ (143) in interpretive acts. Reading a text aloud is viewed as facilitating the image-forming process and atuning students to the nuances of literary language and the way it represents meaning (p. 146). Because image-forming is not verbal language-bound, it can offer a bridge to new learnings in target and home languages. This imaging strategy is also echoed in Durham’s (1997) personal journey into the satisfactions of teaching poetry, where she talks about encouraging students ‘to make pictures in their minds’ (Durham, 1997: 76) and Obied’s (2007) three-year, longitudinal case-study of two bilingual refugee children. What these writers also share is an approach to learning as mutual and collaborative, and an emphasis on reading poems aloud with attention to the prosodic qualities of language and memorization as a way of enabling children to ‘hear the language and the rhythm in their inner ear and in their voice’ (Datta, 2000: 166).

Poetry as ‘charged’ language The teacher respondents in Benton’s Poetry Research Project valued engagement with poetry since by ‘unravelling the complexities of this “charged” language in terms of its meanings and structures, its feelings and its intentions’ they would become ‘aware of 371

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the conjectures and dilemmas that shaped it’ (Benton, 1999: 525). Interestingly, the research indicated a move away from a personal growth-related rationale for studying poetry to one based on its capacity to enhance students’ appreciation of the formal possibilities of language. This justification is shared by Datta’s desire that her bilingual children ‘understand that poetic language in all cultures uses metaphors, imagery, rhythm and other literary devices to make meaning’ (Datta, 2000: 149), and Eagleton (2007) in his determination to restore form (and its relationship to content) to centre stage in the teaching of poetic response. In two research studies, Peskin (1998, 2007) explored the interpretive operations brought to bear in the reading of poetry by more and less expert or experienced readers in tertiary and secondary contexts. While Peskin is influenced by a cultural heritage model of English, she is motivated largely by concerns about the perceived incomprehensibility of poetry – reflected in its compression, imagery and non-conventional syntax – in comparison with the expansiveness and conformity of prose (Peskin, 1998: 236). Both studies draw on and test Culler’s (1976) theory of poetry as discourse, characterized by three conventions or expectations, namely: 1 2 3

The rule of significance: The poet has something worthwhile to say. Thematic unity: The poet’s message will in some way operate as a unifying force in the poem. Metaphorical significance: Metaphor has a key role in poetic meaning making.

In the earlier study comparing (relative) expert and novice readers, Peskin found by interpreting the readers’ think aloud protocols, that experts brought much greater formal knowledge to the act of reading, mining ‘their knowledge resources to provide a deeper, richer exploration of the poetic significance and of how the poet has effected meaning, where the form echoes the content, and whether the conventions were adhered to or subverted’ (Peskin, 1998: 243). While both groups were guided by Culler’s conventions, engagement with formal qualities led to the experts having a greater appreciation of poetry than the novices. Peskin’s study also aimed at identifying ‘interpretive operations or strategies’ that helped readers produce a coherent reading (1998: 238). Studying expert and novice protocols, she identified strategies utilized predominantly by expert readers: structure as cue; binary oppositions; wordplay and language as cue; rhyme and rhythm as cue; scanning for patterns, and pencil representation (1998: 247) (using a pencil to highlight significant words and highlight identified structural elements). Peskin notes tellingly that: ‘As distinct from the novices, it seems that, when the experts cannot make clear sense of a passage, they move from trying to construct a representation of what the poem is saying to how the poet is saying it’ (1998: 251). Peskin’s 2007 study with secondary-school subjects used think-aloud methodology to investigate differences in expectations when students read poetic and prose text. The research was also premised on the existence of conventional discourses related to the reading of prose and poetry. Departing from Culler (1976) and perhaps influenced by reader-response criticism, Peskin replaced the convention of thematic unity with the convention of ‘multiple meanings’ (Peskin, 2007: 22). However, the focus on form remains strong, since these conventions predispose readers to ‘interpretive operations’ focused on the how of the text’s saying and involve ‘aesthetic appreciation of stylistic devices that contribute to the meaning of the text by integrating the style or form of the poem with its subject matter’ (2007: 22). When older secondary students engaged with 372

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formally poetic text they made ‘significantly more references to literary expectations, conventions and interpretive operations’ (for example binary oppositions and structural and linguistic devices) than they did with prose text. They also engaged with the poems at greater length and with more enjoyment. They also speculated at length on authorial intention, a finding which has led Peskin to question postmodern theories of literature which de-emphasize the author (Peskin, 2007: 31–2).

Poetry as a window to discourse Fairclough (1992) defines discourse as ‘a practice not just of representing the world, but of signifying the world, constituting and constructing the world in meaning’ (Fairclough, 1992: 64). Using a poem by Emily Dickinson as an example (‘I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – ‘), Locke (2003) illustrates the relationship between discourses of reading and pedagogical practices around literary texts, particularly as the latter are enacted in secondary English classrooms. In particular, he argues that different modes of questioning generate different kinds of meaning, and that these modes of questioning, related as they are to differing discourses of literacy, construct differently such concepts as writer, reader, text, meaning-making mind, meaning, language (and other sign systems), technological mediation and social context. In a critical literacy approach, reading prompts are focused on the poem as a kind of interdiscursive space reflecting and refracting the ideological preoccupations implicit in the contexts of both production and reception. Pre-reading prompts •

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What are the cultural backgrounds represented in our classroom? How does each of these cultures represent the moment of death? What happens? What do these cultures say about a ‘soul’ or an ‘afterlife’? Emily Dickinson grew up in a congregational community in the United States and wrote this poem in the early 1860s. How might this community view the moment of death? What was its view on the ‘soul’ and the ‘afterlife’?

Guided reading prompts •

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•

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The speaker in this poem appears to be commenting on her own death. What aspects of the occasion are commented on? What aspects of the occasion are not commented on? The first stanza uses storm imagery to position us to view the moment of death in a particular way. Describe this? In what other ways might a moment of death be described? What qualities does this poem appear to expect you to associate with the word ‘King’? (e.g. sex? status? function?) What are other qualities readers might associate with this word? The first three lines of the third stanza appear to suggest that human beings have two parts: an assignable part and a non-assignable part. How would you describe these parts? Can you think of other ways of describing human beings (as ‘wholes’ or as composed of different sorts of ‘parts’)? The word ‘fly’ has different associations for different groups. Even the same person can talk about flies in different ways. How does the choice of 373

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association for ‘fly’ affect the sort of reading one might construct for this poem? Write a version of the poem commencing with the line: ‘I heard a Choir sing – when I died –’ and substituting the word ‘Queen’ for ‘King’. (Locke, 2003: 58–59)

The hallmarks of such a list include: a focus on the social constructedness of meaning; a sense of texts containing ‘gaps’ in meaning; a sense of authors as cultural channels; the contestation of meaning; the sense of readers being ‘positioned’ to take up certain versions or representations of ‘reality’ over others; the sense of other ‘constructions’ of similar ‘realities’ waiting in the wings. As Goodwyn and Powell (2003) show, however, such an approach poses challenges to teachers to ensure that students have adequate cultural knowledge for the task of deconstruction.

Writing poetry and performance As with reading poetry, differing conceptions of poetic composition offer differing justifications for its inclusion in the English/literacy classroom. In terms of pedagogical sequence, reading or hearing poems is usually viewed as happening prior to writing them. Collom and Noethe (2005), however, argue the reverse, calling for poetic writing as a primary activity from the beginning since they believe ‘that poetry is at the core of language use’ (Collom and Noethe, 2005: xii). Where reading is viewed as somehow preceding composition, the relationship can be viewed in two contrasting ways. The first views writing as completing the act of interpretation and formalizing the construction of meaning, as Datta (2000) does in providing her bilingual students with opening lines from Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’ to establish the mood and rhythm of their own compositions before presenting them orally. It is also reflected in Obied’s (2007) research study, also with bilingual pupils, with its ‘notion of the reader in the writer: of the pupils writing in tune with what they had just read’, in this instance Brecht’s ‘Emigrant’s Lament’ (Obied, 2007: 43). The second views writing as prompted by exposure to the poems of established poets or other students. A regular reference point is Koch’s (1973) Rose, where did you get that red? Teaching great poetry to children. Yates (2007) for example adopts the practice of ‘jumpstarting’, offering students a first-line starter of the kind of formula suggested by Koch (Koch, 1973: 14). O’Connor (2004) and Linaberger (2004–5) also acknowledge a debt to Koch, with the former asserting that having good models is as important for writing poems as for any other kind of writing (O’Connor, 2004: 3). A common metaphor for the relationship is mentorship. Heartwell (2002) refers to ‘masters as mentor’ (Heartwell, 2002: 32), while Barbieri (2002) describes culturally diverse middle-schoolers in a Manhattan classroom being invited to ‘lean on poems as mentors as they begin to write their own’ (Barbieri, 2002: 35). How teachers interpret mentorship varies. Steinbergh (1991), for example complements the exploration of course material with a focus on poetic techniques such as ‘the use of sense image, simile, metaphor, persona, parallel structure, poems of address, instruction, rhyme, meter, and syllabics’ (Steinbergh, 1991: 52). Working with EAL students, she also encourages mother-tongue composition ‘where we hear the music of the language we are born into’ (1991: 60) and the collaborative translation of poems as 374

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a way of fostering bilingualism. A different approach is found in Kuhlman and Bradley’s (1999) study of the latter’s ethnically diverse sixth-grade class. The writers reject the idea of voice as singular in favour of voice as ‘a composite of others’ voices and one’s own manipulation, interpretation and reuse of those words’ (Kuhlman and Bradley, 1999: 307). They identify two key elements in positive learning: (1) reading aloud and discussing shared texts; (2) approaching poetry as genre. Drawing on Bakhtin’s concepts of genre and ‘appropriation’ (1999: 308), they argue that as young writers negotiate the development of voice, they are in certain ways transforming or resisting the utterances of others. Their workshopping approach begins with an exploration of poetry (with a focus on form) and moves to the development of topics, the exploration of words (as triggering emotion and mental imaging), conferencing and publication.

The poetry composition classroom as workshop A workshop can be thought of as an occasion where expertise is pooled in a cooperative enterprise with the aim of developing a particular product, in this case, poetry. There is a substantial body of literature aimed at providing teachers with poetry writing prompts and activities (for example O’Connor, 2004; Collom and Noethe, 2005). The workshop is also characterized by risk-taking, experimentation, seriousness, sharing, formative testing or trialling, and feedback. While the expertise of various participants varies, it tends to be non-hierarchical and can serve to redefine the roles of teacher and class member. Related to this redefinition is the role of teacher as fellow writer (of poetry). Spiro (2007), taking an insider view of the creative process, uses this knowledge both in the design of writing activities and in facilitating the discussion which follows them. Drawing on a range of data, including lessons plans, informal feedback from colleagues and student work samples, she indicates the usefulness of both strategies; for example the use of patterning in writing tasks, and stance, for example ‘being congruent with our own creative processes and reflecting on these’ (Spiro, 2007: 92). Similarly, O’Connor (2004) notes that by writing poems alongside her students she was better placed to appreciate their difficulties. While much of the literature comes from poets as writers/ teachers (e.g. Steinbergh, 1991), there are also journeys of discovery, recording ways that teachers have overcome their blocks, developed confidence in themselves as writers of poetry, and transformed their practice. Both Linaberger (2004–5) and Kell (2005) overcame their fears of writing poetry by enrolling in Summer Institutes sponsored by the National Writing Project in the United States. Consequently, the latter became empowered to write poems alongside her students and to emphasize the performance of poetry in her Year 9 classroom. In a study based in a poor, predominantly African–American high school, Jocson (2006) explored the role poetry plays in the lives of coloured, urban youth and how it might be utilized to improve teaching and learning (Jocson, 2006: 232). She draws attention to a resurgence in spoken word poetry across American cities and communitybased writing programmes such as June Jordon’s Poetry for the People (P4P), ‘a university program in northern California that promotes artistic and political empowerment through poetry’ (2006: 233). This ethnographic study involved ninth- to twelfthgrade students who participated in a collaborative writing workshop lasting for four weeks and run in conjunction with P4P. As a participant observer affiliated to P4P, Jocson exercised her role as STP (student–teacher–poet). The article’s focus, Antonio, 375

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a 17-year-old, African–American student, discovered himself as a writer through the ‘catalyst of P4P (Jocson, 2006: 234). Jocson writes: To understand the dynamics of group workshop I begin with P4P’s definition

of urgent poetry, a strategic approach to move students’ perspectives and attitudes toward an understanding of how words matter, especially in a time when the nation was in the brink of war. (2006: 243) Form is clearly salient here, with emphasis on the writing tips contained in P4P’s ‘technical list’ (favouring, for example active verbs) and a Vygotskian emphasis on moving these writing apprentices into higher levels of competence through group-based discussion and greater independence (2006: 247). There are a number of aspects worthy of note here: the design and appropriateness of the task; an unashamed emphasis on form; the scaffolding and use of feedback; and the utilization of expertise.

Conclusion Implications for policy and practice A number of implications arise from the preceding discussion. First, English/literacy curriculum developers need to acknowledge the place of poetry, written, oral word and digital in the lives of contemporary communities and to view it as a meaningful part of the heritages of many people. A cultural heritage orientation in an English curriculum does not necessitate worship at the altars of dead, white, male poets. Second, there are numerous justifications (in addition to heritage recognition) for prioritizing the reading, composition and performance of poetry in the curriculum. Poetry, more than any other textual form, draws attention to the role language plays in cognition and the way experience is rendered meaningful both socially and individually. A third implication relates to instructional practice. If a central justification for teaching poetry is the how of meaning making in and through language, then we should heed Eagleton’s (2007) critique of current practice as no longer underpinned by literary criticism and that somehow content has taken precedence over form. This chapter offers a number of warrants for making form centre-stage, with consequent implications for the formation of teachers. Teachers themselves need to be encouraged to be writers (and poets) either in their pre-service and in-service development or through such means as a National Writing Project. In this way, the writing of poetry can be demystified and the enjoyment of language as play be returned to our classrooms. Finally, none of this can happen while the dead hand of examination regimes reduces reading and writing poetry to optional extras, or constructs poetry in ways that render it unrecognizable to those who love it and would love to teach in accordance with their own genius.

References Anderson, N. (2007). Stylistics and the Metaphysics of Poetry. English in Australia 42(1): 21–8.

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Andrews, R. (1991). The Problem with Poetry. Buckingham: Open University Press. Andrews, R. (1992). Rebirth of Rhetoric: Essays in language, culture and education. London: Routledge. Bakhtin, M. (1986). The Problem with Speech Genres. In C. Emerson and M. Holquist (Eds) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays: M. M. Bakhtin (trans. V. McGee). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, pp. 60–102. Bantick, C. (2004). The Muse is Standing outside the Classroom, Weeping Gently. The Age 11(May). Barbieri, M. (2002). A Way to Love This World: Poetry for everyone. English Journal 9(3): 32–7. Benton, P. (1999). Unweaving the Rainbow: Poetry teaching in the secondary school I. Oxford Review of Education 25(4): 521–31. Benton, P. (2000). The Conveyer-belt Curriculum? Poetry teaching in the secondary school II. Oxford Review of Education 26(1): 81–93. Brooks, C. and Warren, R.P. (1976). Understanding Poetry (4th edn). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Cahnmann, M. (2003). The Craft, Practice, and Possibility of Poetry in Educational Research. Educational Researcher 32: 29–36. Chemwei, B., Kiboss, J. and Ilieva, E. (2005). Effects of Cooperative Learning on Teaching Poetry. Thinking Classroom 6(4): 25–33. Collins, B. (2001). The Companionship of a poem. The Chronicle of Higher Education 48(13): para. 3. http://chronicle.com/article/The-Companionship-of-a-Poem/18628 accessed 23 September 2009. Collom, J. and Noethe, S. (2005). Poetry Everywhere: Teaching poetry writing in school and in the community. New York: Teachers and Writers Collaborative. Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (1993). The Powers of Literacy: A genre approach to teaching writing. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Culler, J. (1976). Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, linguistics and the study of literature. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Datta, M. (2000). Bilinguality, Imagination and Literature. In M. Datta (Ed.) Bilinguality and Literacy: Principles and practices. London and New York: Continuum, ch. 6, pp. 136–75. Dixon, J. (1975). Growth through English: Set in the perspective of the seventies. Oxford: Oxford University Press for NATE. Durham, J. (1997). On Time and Poetry. The Reading Teacher 5(1): 76–9. Eagleton, T. (2007). How to Read a Poem. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Eisner, E. (2002). The Educational Imagination: On the design and evaluation of school programs (3rd edn). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fish, S. (1980). Is there a Text in this Class? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Flood, J., Lapp, D., Squire, J.R. and Jensen, J.M. (2003). (Eds) Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Foucault, M. (1991). Politics and the Study of Discourse. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller (Eds) The Foucault Effect: Studies in governmentality. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp. 53–72. Goodwyn, A. and Powell, M. (2003). Canonical Texts, Critical Literacy and the Classroom: The case of The Lady of Shalott. English in Australia 138: 51–5. Heartwell, P. (2002). Masters as Mentors: The role of reading poetry in writing poetry. Voices from the Middle 10(2): 29–32. Iser, W. (1978). The Act of Reading: A theory of aesthetic response. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Jocson, K. (2006). ‘Bob Dylan and Hip Hop’: Intersecting literacy practices in youth poetry committees. Written Communication 23(3): 231–59. Kell, K. (2005). Rediscovering the Joy of Poetry. English Journal 95(1): 97–102.

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Knapp, J. (2002). Teaching Poetry via HEI (hypothesis-experiment-instruction). Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 45(8): 718–29. Koch, K. (1973). Rose, Where did you Get that Red? Teaching great poetry to children. New York: Vintage Books. Kozulin, A. (1993). Literature as a Psychological Tool. Educational Psychologist 28: 253–64. Kroll, J. and Evans, S. (2008). Metaphor Delivers: An integrated approach to teaching and writing poetry. English in Australia 41(2): 35–50. Kuhlman, W. and Bradley, L. (1999). Influences of Shared Poetry Texts: The chorus in voice. Language Arts 76(4): 307–13. Linaberger, M. (2004–5). Poetry Top 10: A foolproof formula for teaching poetry. The Reading Teacher 58(4): 366–72. Locke, T. (2003). Thireteen Ways of Looking at a Poem: How discourses of reading shape pedagogical practice in English. Waikato Journal of Education 9: 51–64. Locke, T. (2007). Resisting Qualifications Reforms in New Zealand: The English study design as constructive dissent. Rotterdam/Taipei: Sense Publishers. Locke, T. (2008). English in a Surveillance Regime: Tightening the noose in New Zealand. Changing English: Studies in Culture & Education 15(3): 293–310. Locke, T. and Andrews, R. (2004). ICT and Literature: A Faustian compact? In R. Andrews (Ed.) The Impact of ICT on Literacy Education. London: RoutledgeFalmer, pp. 124–52. Morgan, W. (1997). Critical Literacy in the Classroom: The art of the possible. London: Routledge. Obied, V. (2007). ‘Why did I do nothing?’ Poetry and the experiences of bilingual pupils in a mainstream inner-city secondary school. English in Education 41(3): 37–52. O’Connor, J. (2004). Wordplaygrounds: Reading, writing, performing poetry in the English classroom. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Peskin, J. (1998). Constructing Meaning when Reading Poetry: An expert–novice study. Cognition and Instruction 16(3): 235–63. Peskin, J. (2007). The Genre of Poetry: Secondary school students’ conventional expectations and interpretive operations. English in Education 41(3): 20–36. Rosenblatt, L. (1978). The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The transactional theory of the literary work. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Spiro, J. (2007). Teaching Poetry: Writing poetry – teaching as a writer. English in Education 41(3): 78–93. Steinbergh, J. (1991). To Arrive in Another World: Poetry, language development, and culture. Harvard Educational Review 61(1): 51–70. Verdonk, P. (1993). Twentieth Century Poetry: From text to context. London: Routledge. Wellek, R. and Warren, A. (1962). Theory of Literature (3rd edn). New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Yates, C. (2007). Writing like Writers in the Classroom: Free writing and formal constraint. English in Education 41(3): 6–19.

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32 Overcoming fear and resistance when teaching Shakespeare1 Joe Salvatore

Our doubts are traitors, And makes us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt. Measure for Measure I, iv 4, 77–9; Lucio to Isabella (Shakespeare, 2002)

Throughout my experience as a director and teacher of Shakespeare, I have repeatedly encountered fear and resistance to the Bard and his plays. Actors and directors complain that their conservatory training did not prepare them for the classics, and they are afraid to tackle Shakespeare’s plays in performance. Middle school and high school students find the material inaccessible and boring, often citing that teachers have them sit silently at their desks and force them to read the play aloud. English and theatre teachers report fearing Shakespeare because they feel unprepared to help others to understand his plays. They say that the language is dense, the themes are complex, and the references are obscure. ‘What will happen if a student asks me a question, and I don’t know the answer?’ It seems that teachers inadvertently transmit fear and resistance towards Shakespeare to their students through instruction. Palmer states that teachers cannot see their students’ fears until they have seen their own (Palmer, 1993: 11), and this certainly applies to the teaching of Shakespeare. Teachers respond to fear and resistance from students in a variety of ways. One teacher spoke of the resistance that she felt from her students the moment she mentioned Shakespeare’s name, and as a result she retreated to giving lectures to her students about all of the information they needed to know for the test on Romeo and Juliet. This ‘banking concept of education’ robs students of the ability to think critically about the play and reinforces the passivity that expressed itself as resistance in the first place

1 The author wishes to thank colleague Cathy Benedict for her suggestions and encouragement on the final draft of this chapter.

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(Freire, 2000: 73). To avoid this banking concept and to embrace Freire’s ideas of a constructivist classroom, teachers must feel comfortable with what they know and do not know about Shakespeare’s work, and they must find ways to transmit that confidence in the known and the unknown to their students through the pedagogical choices that they make in their instruction. Bogart writes that ‘[i]t is not the [theatre] director’s responsibility to produce results but, rather, to create the circumstances in which something might happen’ (Bogart, 2001: 124). A director does not have to tell actors where to stand, when to cross, and how to say their lines. Rather, the director is responsible for creating an environment where actors feel comfortable to take risks, construct the world of the play, and convey meaning to an audience. Given the freedom to explore a play, actors will make choices and provide valuable insights that inform how the director moves forward in rehearsals and production. Even though she is the director, Bogart does not position herself as the only person making choices in the rehearsal room, primarily because she recognizes that the collision of ideas against one another, or resistance, actually moves the creative process forward (Bogart, 2001: 138). She is not afraid of the resistance; she welcomes it. A teacher can subscribe to a similar teaching philosophy by allowing students to explore a Shakespeare play and trusting his/her students and their creativity to create meaning from the material (Freire, 2000: 75). The teacher may fear losing control over how the class might unfold: results may be uncertain and unpredictable. Freire writes that fear stems from a person’s insecurity around overcoming a particular obstacle. He goes on to say that if the fear is warranted, then the person should seek out assistance to overcome the insecurity (Freire, 2005: 50–1). In the context of classroom instruction, Freire’s suggestion to seek assistance could mean consulting other colleagues or other resource materials, but it could also mean using kinesthetic, visual, interactive, or theatrical techniques. These activities encourage teacher and student to create circumstances where a dense text can be penetrated, fear is dispelled, and then knowledge and understanding can be acquired. This chapter will examine three teaching strategies currently used in the English classroom: the use of dramatic activities; the viewing of live productions and films; and the actual performance of the plays. These techniques address fear and resistance head-on by creating a space where students and teachers can construct knowledge and understanding of Shakespeare’s plays through experiential and visual activities. These methods of instruction allow student interest in Shakespeare and his plays to emerge, rather than solely relying on the teacher to be the transmitter of knowledge and understanding.

Using dramatic activities in the classroom In an attempt to create dynamic experiences for their students surrounding Shakespeare’s plays, and responding to the notion that students will learn and retain information if we appeal to more of their kinesthetic sensibilities, many teachers integrate dramatic activities into their teaching of Shakespeare. Activities such as process drama and still image allow students to experience elements of a play’s narrative or thematic characteristics without performing the script. By using these activities, a teacher can activate a play’s narrative, explore a relationship between certain characters, illuminate 380

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the conflicts at work in a play, and introduce students to the heightened theatricality at work in a Shakespearean play. Students are often asked to engage in exercises that move the play into a contemporary space or environment, thus linking the play’s circumstances to the students’ own life experiences so they can embody some of the dilemmas faced by the characters in the play. O’Neill defines the elements of process drama and improvisation, and explains the significance and effectiveness of these kinds of dramatic activities in the exploration of a play text. She writes: Process drama involves making, shaping, and appreciating a dramatic event, an experience that articulates experience. Participants control significant aspects of what is taking place; they simultaneously experience and organize it; they evaluate what is happening and make connections with other experiences. These are all demanding activities, requiring the use of perception, imagination, speculation, and interpretation, as well as exercising dramatic, cognitive, and social capacities. (O’Neill, 1995: 1) Once inside the dramatic event, students begin to locate similarities with the characters in the plays, and Shakespeare’s world becomes less foreign and more accessible. Students remember key plot points, understand the conflicts that drive forward the narrative action, and empathize with certain characters or situations because the relationships between the characters become clear. Instead of hearing about these relationships in a lecture, students actually experience them in a kinesthetic way, and they retain details over the long term. Warner advocates the use of dramatic activities in the teaching of Shakespeare when she theorizes that the use of process drama accesses three different worlds for students as they work to understand a play. The world of the play itself, what Warner calls the Shakespearean world, overlaps with the parallel world created by the process drama that the students embody, and then that experience allows the students to apply these worlds to their own personal worlds. The connections are made across three spectrums, with one world informing another, and the overlap becomes the place of understanding and recognition for the student (Warner, 1997: 148–9). For example a teacher chooses to explore As You Like It (Shakespeare, 2006) using Act I, scene 3, when Duke Frederick banishes Rosalind, as the pretext for a process drama exploring loyalty among family and friends. Students are placed into role as Celia, and then asked to make a decision about whether they will join Rosalind’s scheme and why or why not; or two groups are asked to place the Duke on trial for his actions against his brother and niece. One side argues for the Duke’s choices and the other side argues against the Duke’s choices. The teacher provides different pieces of evidence about the Duke’s actions, and this new information affects the arguments from each side. Through both exercises students gain access into the world of Shakespeare’s play through a set of dramatic circumstances that are related to, yet independent of the play itself. This independent experience serves as the bridge into the personal world, and students begin to feel ownership of the play through their experiences in role. Dramatic activities increase student understanding and comprehension through personal connections to Shakespeare’s work. The activities do not require performance skills, but rather a willingness to explore recognizable circumstances and situations. 381

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Students give voice to their own ideas about the source material, in this case Shakespeare’s plays, and as a result, the play seems less foreign. When the play ceases to be an obstacle, fear and resistance dissipate.

Viewing live performances and film/video Viewing a live performance of a play by Shakespeare can be both exciting and daunting, sometimes even fear-inducing, regardless of past knowledge or experience. If I am unfamiliar with a play I am seeing, it can take my ear up to ten minutes to calibrate to the sound of the language, and this can pose a challenge for processing and making sense of the initial action of the play. Important exposition occurs at the top of the play, and if too much information is missed, an audience member can be lost for the remainder of the play. I think specifically of Act I, scene 2, in The Tempest (Shakespeare, 1999) where Prospero spends 155 lines explaining to Miranda how they arrived on the island in the first place. This long scene, even in the hands of gifted actors, can be deadly for novice audience members. Additionally, audiences often have to navigate their way through high concept approaches to Shakespeare’s plays. Because a director feels compelled to ‘help’ a contemporary audience to understand, we sometimes face Macbeth in a space capsule on the moon, or Henry V with French dauphins wearing mane-like wigs and giant platform shoes. These visually arresting productions may excite the audience’s senses, but they usually do very little to help clarify the action of the play. Combine the difficult sound of the language and these complicated visual interpretations, and students may feel alienated when watching a production, even when they know the basic plot of the play. An alternative to live performance emerged with the development and increased availability of videos and DVDs for classroom instruction. Teachers now have access to many different versions of the most popular plays in production, including contemporary film adaptations like 10 Things I Hate About You, O, and She’s the Man. These film versions bring the plays to life in the very recognizable medium of film, one that is more familiar for many young people. Gibson reports that while teachers use this medium quite often, there also exists some disparity about when to use it. Some teachers opt to use a film version as an introduction, while others use it as a capstone experience to review the unit of study. Still others use video throughout their work with the play, repeatedly viewing specific scenes or moments to drive home meaning and intention (Gibson, 1998: 200). Kissler outlines her approach to teaching Henry V using videotapes, and she warns to ‘NEVER view any film in its entirety, unless [doing] so at the end of a unit as a special event’. She advocates for students to first read the play out loud and then view various scenes from a video to enhance comprehension and understanding (Kissler, 1997: 202). The most recent technological advances have allowed teachers, artists, and students to access unprecedented amounts of information on Shakespeare and the canon from CD-ROMs and the internet. The number of teaching resources available has increased exponentially since the 1990s, connecting scholars and artists from all over the world to databases, production video clips, textual interpretations, and perhaps most importantly, to each other. Sites like shakespeare-online and SHAKSPER are web-based instructional tools that connect students and teachers to each other and allow actual 382

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teaching to occur within these cyber-communities. Mullin highlights the advantages of these expansive resources and others; however, he also mentions that the use of webbased materials raises questions about copyright (Mullin, 2003: 126–32). While they can be powerful tools, the potential limitations of web-based resources must be realized by teachers. Materials should be checked for accuracy and permissions before being accepted as reliable sources. Web-based information has become more trustworthy in the last ten years, but it remains relatively simple to post information about any subject and call oneself an expert. Shakespeare and his plays do not have immunity from this issue. Seeing Shakespeare in performance has a myriad of benefits for students. First and foremost, students see the text of the plays come to life. What may often seem abstract or distant can become very real and intimate in performance, thus increasing the ability of students to connect the play and characters to their own lives. As Shakespeare’s plays are full of imagery, an actual production of the play embodies that imagery, and encourages the audience members to use their imagination to create their own versions of what Shakespeare describes through the script. A production also takes the audience into the actual world of the play. That world exists in multiple dimensions, and its inhabitants become real entities rather than simply names on a page. Finally, watching Shakespeare in production encourages students to think about interpretation. A production provides excellent opportunities for students to question why certain choices have been made by the director, designers, and actors. This analysis process of an event engages students in a way that is linked to their own contemporary ways of experiencing the world, through visual and aural stimulation. When students can access the play in this way, their comfort level with the material increases, resistance and fear decrease, and learning increases.

Performing Shakespeare as a learning tool Participating in dramatic activities inspired by Shakespeare’s work and watching live or recorded productions of the plays are important techniques that provide students with valuable insights into the plays themselves. However, nothing allows a student to experience the world of the play, the craft of the playwright, and the potential of the imagination like performing. Of course the challenge can be helping students to overcome their fear of performing a script composed of language that they find difficult and confusing. My own methodology for teaching Shakespeare relies heavily on helping students of all ages to overcome their fear of understanding and performing a Shakespeare play. My graduate Shakespeare courses require all students to prepare and present monologues, rehearse and perform workshops of scenes from the plays, and coach young people who are also learning to perform Shakespeare. Engaging the body in the learning process is an essential element of any strong teaching practice. This kind of engagement makes a difference for students who struggle with the words on a page, and in particular with a writer like Shakespeare, whose words are arranged on the page in a unique way. By actively bringing students to the play script, we can teach them how to crack open a complex and multilayered play, and the confidence gained from doing that translates to the reading and analysis of other writers and artists of equal or greater complexity. I think of modern and contemporary 383

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playwrights like Bertolt Brecht, Suzan-Lori Parks, Tony Kushner, and Ntozake Shange, just to name a few. Gibson suggests some basic principles for teaching Shakespeare, and he begins with the notion that Shakespeare’s ‘text’ must be treated as a ‘script’. Gibson believes that the word ‘text’ actually implies that there is only one correct way to experience these works, whereas he feels that using the word ‘script’ sends a completely different message to students. He writes: [T]reating a Shakespeare play as a script (and calling it so) suggests a provisionality and incompleteness that anticipates and requires imaginative, dramatic enactment for completion. A script declares that it is to be played with, explored, actively and imaginatively brought to life by acting out. A text makes no such demand. (Gibson, 1998: 8) I take Gibson to mean that students should be on their feet, desks pushed to the sides, and there should be an actual exploration of what’s happening in a given scene or moment in the play. Brine and York suggest that actors/students worry less about the meaning of a speech and concentrate more on discovering what the speech is doing (Brine and York, 2000: 97). When I make this simple distinction for students, we immediately move into a different way of engaging with the script. Our work becomes less about what each word means and more about why the character says those particular words. Meaning comes from placing the words in their proper context and enacting the conversations, whether they are with other characters or with themselves in the form of a soliloquy. Riggio explains that working through a script in performance allows for teachers and students to unearth the fundamental questions that are inherent in the script itself, while also examining the process of interpretation (Riggio, 1999: 2). When students have to answer questions about a character’s actions in a scene or the central conflict in a play, the act of playing the character makes for a clearer comprehension of the ‘why’. Also, the conflict becomes ‘real’ because the actor has to solve it using the script’s parameters. By exploring the choices outlined by the playwright, students gain a meta-understanding of the play. When I speak with actors about their roles in a given production, I always ask them to understand their characters as individuals, but more importantly, I require them to understand how those characters fit into the overall mechanics of the play. We discover these roles through rehearsal, discussion, and interpretation. Supporting the notion that students can begin with the script, Flachmann explains the differences between ‘working inside-out and outside-in’ and articulates a major distinction between how a theatre artist versus an English teacher approaches a script. An English teacher will often begin with all of the historical context and dramaturgical information about Shakespeare and the play being studied. Flachmann calls this ‘outside-in’. However, a theatre artist will work directly with the play, introducing students to the characters and plot immediately, and allowing the students to generate the necessary questions about context that need to be answered in order to move forward. Flachmann calls this approach ‘inside-out’. Flachmann writes: The [outside-in] method, which most of us have followed in the classroom for years, is to structure the introduction of the play around our own questions, which 384

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makes us the sole custodians of knowledge and reduces the students to passive recipients of seemingly useless and arcane information that has little relevance to their own complex twentieth-century lives. (Flachmann, 1997: 58–9) Flachmann’s distinction between these two approaches suggests that teachers need to worry less about covering ‘testable’ material, move away from the banking concept of teaching, and focus more on allowing students to engage with the play in actual performance. One way of allowing students to work through performance is through the preparation and presentation of speeches from a given play. The process of preparing a character’s speech asks a student to do three important things: understand the speech on the page; interpret the speech in presentation; and convey meaning to an audience. How skilled the student ultimately is at acting the character is less important than understanding the mechanics of the script and the relationship of the character to the overall story. Therefore, the assessment of the student’s work can be about the process rather than the product, and that student can have a voice in the assessment process by articulating goals for the performance experience. For a more experienced student, a goal may involve interpretation of the script or depth of feeling in performance, while a novice student may focus on projection and diction. Allowing the student to voice those goals helps to shift the learning to a realm that is student-centred rather than teachercentred. When I work with the members of New York University’s Shakespeare Youth Ensemble, my primary goal is to reduce the fear that students have about performing a Shakespeare play. We begin by working on speeches from the play we will workshop in the coming academic year. The members of the company, middle school and high school students, some new and some returners, receive a speech of between 12 and 16 lines from the Arden Shakespeare edition of the play, and they are asked to prepare the speech for presentation at our following meeting. On the day of the presentations, the company members come into the classroom, we do a brief warm up, and then break into pairs. I ask the pairs to find a comfortable space in the room and share their monologues with their partners. However, I emphasize that this is not an acting exercise. They are simply to share the monologue as if they are having a casual conversation in a coffee shop. Partners listen carefully and then respond back with their own speech. Invariably, puzzled looks abound, but the students take on the task, and soon the room is filled with murmuring and occasional laughs as the students attempt to relax with their speeches. Students often report that they find this exercise difficult because they’ve memorized the speech with a certain heightened sensibility, and taking that away disrupts their ‘performance’, which is part of the point. Others find that taking away the pressure of public presentation actually allows them to hear what they are saying and their comprehension increases. After this initial ‘coffee shop’ sharing, I ask everyone to imagine the place where they are the most comfortable, the most relaxed, and I ask them to deliver the speech to their partners, allowing this comfortable, relaxed location to inform the vocal delivery of the speech. This is not a miming exercise but rather an attempt to convey location and/or tone through the voice. The partner’s job is to listen and then guess the speaker’s imagined location. Then the pairs switch and repeat. After each partner has a chance to share, I poll the participants to see if anyone guessed correctly. This guessing game 385

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takes some of the pressure off the presenter, and also introduces the possibility that interpretation is a two-way street. An actor may be thinking and feeling one thing, while an audience member may be experiencing something else. It helps students to understand that we will not concretize the work with ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers, but rather stay open to all the possibilities inherent in the play. The technique also takes the pressure off of me to have all the answers in the process, as we work together to discern meaning from the script. In the next step of the exercise, we examine the structure of each individual speech. For a group of up to 15 young people, I usually offer them four or five verse speeches to choose from, and they are allowed to work on whatever speech they like, regardless of gender. Using a copy of the speech and something to write with, I ask students to bracket the beginnings and ends of sentences. I review that we have three end marks in English: period, question mark, and exclamation point. Once the students have marked their speeches, we compare notes across the group. I make sure that all of the students working on the same speech have identified the same number of sentences, and that the numbers match my own count. This sentence counting exercise opens up a discussion about how speeches with similar numbers of lines can actually have varying numbers of sentences in the lines. Sixteen lines of verse may contain three sentences or 13 sentences. The number of sentences gives the performer information about the character: mindset, emotional state, way of speaking, etc. Identifying the sentences also allows students to see something recognizable in the verse. The words may be arranged differently on the page, but ultimately it is the English language that they can read and understand, one that uses all of the same grammar and punctuation rules that they have learned before. This sentence exercise leads into a translation exercise. Now that students have identified the number of sentences in the speech, I ask them to rewrite the speech in contemporary language using the same number of sentences. I emphasize that it is not a word for word translation, but rather a thought for thought, sentence for sentence translation into language that they would use today. We talk about how to find meanings for words that are unclear and strategies for defining through context clues. Students go away, complete the translation, and then come back and share their new versions in small groups. I am continually amazed by the interpretations that I hear from these young people, because suddenly they have a clear ownership of the wants and needs of the character and over what the speech is actually doing. It is a powerful moment for them and a powerful reminder for me of the possibilities that unfold simply by looking at a play as a script that is a series of English words and grammar constructions on a page. Slowly, this series of low focus exercises cultivates confidence and reduces fear, and students engage willingly with the material. Our work with the speeches continues into more high focus exercises. In pairs students begin to bring the speeches to life through presentation, image work, and group sharing. These exercises are more oriented towards acting the speech, but still in a safe environment that is grounded in the students’ individual goals for the work. I remind the students to focus on their own goals as they move through the process, and then ultimately the assessment can be individualized and student-centred. I acknowledge that I have the luxury of not having to assign a grade for each student in this company; however, that doesn’t eliminate my need for assessment, as I am committed to the growth of these students as readers, interpreters, and performers of Shakespeare. All three exercises that I outlined above have assessment possibilities in the classroom 386

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environment, and as they move through the performance of these speeches, students can and should be writing about their process and their learning about Shakespeare and the characters they are portraying. Journaling or essay prompts can guide students to reveal assessable data about Shakespeare’s dramaturgy, the action within the play, and the wants and needs of the character being portrayed, all of which a classroom teacher can gather as evidence of learning. The data may not be numerical, and the translation of that data may require a rubric or another set of steps for the teacher, but the assessment is far more authentic than grading students on remembering Shakespeare’s birthday or where quotation A appears in play X. Once students have learned this methodology for cracking open a solo speech, we apply similar techniques to whole scenes. At the end of an academic year, after about six months of work, the Shakespeare Youth Ensemble shares a two-hour workshop presentation of the play with minimal costumes and lights and acting blocks in a simple theatre space. In lieu of a longer performance, teachers could implement the same idea in a much shorter period of time through short scene presentations in the classroom. Now would be an ideal time to teach students about the simplicity of Shakespeare’s theatre, thus illustrating that the playwright wrote for a stage space that was far simpler on many levels than what we see when we go to the theatre today. Encouraging students to brainstorm solutions to present the scenes within the classroom provides yet another opportunity for ownership over these plays that we so often are afraid to own. Only in performance does this kind of ownership truly happen.

Conclusion Surprisingly, when I ask the members of my youth ensemble how they feel about learning Shakespeare in their English classrooms, these students still report that they are bored and unhappy. They sit at their desks and read plays out loud, write essays, and take tests. An occasional production of a Shakespeare play surfaces in a drama club, but it does not counterbalance the traditional pedagogical approach that most students still endure. It would appear that in spite of what the scholars and published practitioners are highlighting as best practice, the majority of teachers still teach Shakespeare as literature rather than as theatre. This means that students stay seated at their desks, read the play aloud, and mine it for all of the literary devices that Shakespeare uses to convey meaning. Students may have to recite a famous speech from memory, but with very little emphasis placed on the theatricality of the experience. The students’ understanding must be grounded in the themes at work in the play rather than the action of the narrative. Of course, the ability to analyse a piece of literature and to write that analysis is important for test-taking purposes, but there are other ways into analysis and understanding beyond this traditional banking method. Progressive pedagogy does not support this approach as a way to achieve an environment where authentic learning can occur, but rather, it is a fall-back approach to maintain order in the classroom and to protect the teacher from feeling silly when s/he cannot answer a question from a student. The idea that students may get up out of their seats, move desks out of the way, and actually act the plays is slowly working its way into classroom teaching, but we still struggle to provide teachers with the appropriate tools to assess learning when we use these techniques. It is far more difficult to assess an artistic process because of the subjectivity involved. This suggests that the real crux of changing the way we teach 387

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Shakespeare lies in more comprehensive training around progressive assessment strategies. The future of teaching in this age of accountability relies heavily on the teacher’s ability to collect assessable data that measures achievement. English and theatre teachers are not immune to this, and as a result, neither is Shakespeare. Not only do we need to focus our energies on more active teaching methods with Shakespeare’s work to reduce student fear and resistance, but we also have to find new and innovative ways to train teachers to collect differentiated assessment data that authentically measures student achievement when these techniques are used in the classroom. If we arm teachers with multiple assessment strategies, we help to alleviate teacher fear and anxiety around their own pedagogical performance. Only when both parties feel comfortable in the exchange will students find the energy and excitement that is fundamentally present in Shakespeare’s plays and in the very act of learning itself.

References Bogart, A. (2001). A Director Prepares: Seven essays on art and theatre. New York: Routledge. Brine, A. and York, M. (2000). A Shakespearean Actor Prepares. Lyme, NH: Smith and Kraus. Flachmann, M. (1997). Professional Theater People and English Teachers: Working together to teach Shakespeare. In R. E. Salomone and J. E. Davis (Eds) Teaching Shakespeare into the Twenty-first Century. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the Oppressed (30th Anniversary Edn) (trans. M. Bregman Ramos). New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (2005). Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to those who dare to teach (trans. D. Macedo, D. Koike and A. Oliveira). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Gibson, R. (1998). Teaching Shakespeare. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kissler, L. (1997). Teaching Shakespeare through Film. In R. E. Salomone and J. E. Davis (Eds) Teaching Shakespeare into the Twenty-first Century. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Mullin, M. (2003). Shakespeare on the Web. In L. Davis (Ed.) Shakespeare Matters: History, teaching, performance. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press. O’Neill, C. (1995). Drama Worlds. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Palmer, P.J. (1993). Good Talk about Good Teaching: Improving teaching through conversation and community. Change 25(6): 8. ProQuest Education Journals database. (Document ID: 1566281), accessed 13 May 2009. Riggio, M.C. (1999). Introduction. In M. C. Riggio (Ed.) Teaching Shakespeare through Performance. New York: The Modern Language Association of America. Shakespeare, W. (2006). As You Like it. Edited by J. Dusinberre. London: Arden Shakespeare. Shakespeare, W. (2002). Measure for Measure. Edited by J. Lever. London: Arden Shakespeare. Shakespeare, W. (1999). The Tempest. Edited by V. M. Vaughan and A. T. Vaughan. London: Arden Shakespeare. Warner, C.D. (1997). Building Shakespearean Worlds in the Everyday Classroom. In R. E. Salomone and J. E. Davis (Eds) Teaching Shakespeare into the Twenty-first Century. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.

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33 Difficulties in learning literacy Elias Avramidis, Hazel Lawson and Brahm Norwich

Introduction In approaching the issue of teaching literacy where there are ‘difficulties in learning literacy’, we pose some basic questions: How are difficulties in literacy defined and perceived? How do they relate to conceptualizations of literacy? How much is literacy a curriculum aim for all children? Are there separate and distinctive literacy curricula and literacy pedagogies for children experiencing difficulties in learning literacy? (Lewis and Norwich, 2005). These questions are addressed through this chapter by adopting a socio-educational approach (as opposed to a biomedical one) where the impact of social and environmental factors on pupil performance is given appropriate significance (Riddick, 2001). In discussing the literacy difficulties experienced by some learners, we use the generally held view of literacy as the acquisition of encoding and decoding skills for accessing the meaning of alphabetic script, that is, as an ‘autonomous set of technical skills’ (Rassool, 2002: 17). In England, the Literacy Strategy, introduced in 1998 (DfEE, 1998) and renewed in 2006 as part of the Primary Strategy (DfES, 2006a), has dominated literacy teaching and learning in both mainstream and special primary school settings. This strategy includes the use of a Literacy Hour (with fairly prescriptive sub-parts – whole class shared text work; whole class focused word or sentence work; group or individual work; whole class plenary) and an increasing emphasis on the systematic teaching of phonics as the prime approach in teaching literacy (DfES, 2006b). It is notable that the interpretation of literacy within the Literacy Strategy relates almost exclusively to reading and writing, to the production and interpretation of conventional print text. As literacy has assumed increasing global significance in terms of ‘individual life chances’ and national ‘socioeconomic wellbeing’ (Wearmouth et al., 2003: vii), the significance of difficulties in literacy has become more evident. In this context, there are

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two main views about how children learn to read – a skills-based approach focusing on component parts of reading (e.g. phonics, see Lewis and Ellis, 2006), which arguably was the dominant influence on the Literacy Strategy; and a holistic approach (such as the whole language approach) which encompasses a more constructivist view of learners (Coles, 2000). It is important to recognize that these approaches are linked with different views about difficulties with literacy, what causes these, and suggested educational interventions. For example the skills-based view of literacy education regards unskilled readers as unable to process efficiently and accurately the phonological building blocks of language and the units of print that represent them. The emphasis, therefore, is placed on mastering these skills sufficiently well to execute them rapidly. This is achieved through step-by-step, tightly controlled, and systematic teaching programmes such as ‘Jolly Phonics’ (see Lloyd, 2000). By contrast, the ‘whole language’ approach, as its name implies, engages readers in the entirety of written language. It foregrounds comprehending the meaning in written language and connecting this meaning to the lives of the readers. As such, the emphasis is placed on creating print-rich environments and supporting children in making meaning in order to participate and communicate in a community of language users. Given that there is a wide range of research literature in this field, including accounts of very specific difficulties (Doponio and Macintyre, 2003), specific interventions and broader conceptualizations (Grainger, 2004), this chapter will focus on two particular areas: dyslexia, usually described as a specific learning difficulty in reading, writing and spelling; and literacy for children and young people described as experiencing severe learning difficulties, who have general or global, rather than specific, learning difficulties. Our intention is to explore the relationship between conceptualizations of literacy and difficulties in learning literacy and to examine notions of commonality and distinctiveness.

Dyslexia The literal meaning of the word ‘dyslexia’ (deriving from Greek: ‘dys’ meaning difficulty and ‘lexis’ meaning word) is ‘difficulty with words’. This has been extrapolated mainly, though not exclusively, to aspects of reading and spelling, rather than oral language (Woods, 2002). However, despite extensive research conducted on dyslexia internationally, firm resolutions across disciplines about its definition and identification have not been reached. When problems in literacy learning are framed as a developmental disorder, this brings teaching problems into a medical framework of diagnosis and treatment. In an early definition by the World Federation of Neurologists (1968, cited in Avramidis and Kalyva, 2004), for example dyslexia was seen as a syndrome of neurological origin. Such a narrow ‘deficit’ definition quickly fell into disrepute since it defined difficulty in learning to read by exclusion (not instruction, not low intelligence, and not lack of opportunity). Not having positive identification criteria, with its origins in clinics and not whole populations, and with the uncertainty about the usefulness of general exclusionary causal factors, this definitional approach was bound to fail. Subsequent attempts to define dyslexia, although more comprehensive, were not themselves entirely devoid of a ‘deficit’ terminology (see for example the definition proposed by the Adult Dyslexia Organisation, in Reid, 2001). More recently, however, Peer (2001) suggested a 390

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broader definition, which clearly displays the range of both difficulties and strengths potentially experienced by dyslexic people: Dyslexia is best described as a combination of abilities and difficulties which affect the learning process in one or more of reading, spelling, writing and sometimes numeracy. Accompanying weaknesses may be identified in areas of speed of processing, short-term memory, sequencing, auditory and/or visual perception, spoken language and motor skills. Some children have outstanding creative skills, others have strong oral skills, yet others have no outstanding talents; they all have strengths. Dyslexia occurs despite normal intellectual ability and conventional teaching; it is independent of socio-economic or language background. (Peer, 2001: 3) What is at first sight positive in Peer’s definition is the explicit recognition that dyslexia is a multifaceted concept, which views the dyslexic learner as a unique individual with his/her own learning difficulties and strengths or talents. Its reference to strengths, however, is a general one and not related to dyslexia. Further, such a conceptualization perpetuates the inherent haziness of the term dyslexia in relation to identifying cut-off points for reading, writing and spelling performances, below which the condition can be assumed. This conception is associated with another perspective, the discrepancy model of identification, which considers dyslexia as a ‘specific learning difficulty’ (SpLD). Dyslexia as an SpLD refers to children who show distinct signs of average or above average functioning in many areas of ability, but who do not appear to have the intuitive grasp of literacy acquisition common in most children of their age and thus significantly underachieve in literacy tasks (Doponio and Macintyre, 2003). Concomitantly, children who are slow to achieve in most areas of learning are not normally seen as falling into the category of SpLD or dyslexia. It is the specific nature of the difficulties which makes the condition stand out, and often leads to generalizations being unfairly made about the child’s overall levels of functioning. However, the discrepancy model tells us nothing about the causes of dyslexia. Indeed, the evidence from research seeking to establish causal explanations for the phenomenon is far from conclusive. Recent examples include efforts to identify a genetic basis for dyslexia with the aim of facilitating early identification, or at least some very early warning signs of a child being ‘at risk’ of being dyslexic (Castles et al., 1999); a focus on possible structural differences between the hemispheres in the brain (Bakker, 1990); visual deficits, such as visual stress (Wilkins, 1995); and abnormalities in the magno-cellular subsystem of the visual cortex leading to convergence difficulties and binocular instability (Stein, 2001); and the phonological processing deficit hypothesis (Snowling, 2000). According to the latter cognitive approach, dyslexic readers have poorly specified phonological representations, resulting in difficulties in the processes that are involved in learning new spoken words and in learning to read. Indeed, the strength of the evidence is such that it led Stanovich (1994) to propose that ‘Lack of phonological awareness inhibits the learning of the alphabetic coding patterns that underlie word recognition’ (Stanovich, 2004: 586) and that dyslexia should be redefined as a core phonological deficit. Others, however, have been very critical of such a view, arguing that simply because there is a link between phonological awareness, phonological coding ability and literacy difficulty, a causal explanation cannot be established (Coles, 391

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2000). Notwithstanding such concerns about ‘causality’, it is currently broadly accepted that dyslexia can be perceived as a phonological impairment and this is reflected in the dominance of interventions which promote phonological awareness (McGuinness, 1997). It is worth noting here that the British Psychological Society’s (BPS) definition of dyslexia does not refer to such underlying cognitive difficulties (BPS, 1999: 18). It does exclude ‘appropriate learning opportunities’ as a causal explanation of the ‘severe and persistent’ difficulties, but, more importantly, its version of dyslexia broadens the meaning of the term well beyond that of its origins as a specific learning difficulty. This is because the BPS definition (just like the one suggested by Peers) does not attempt to justify particular significant or functional cut-off points on the continua of reading and spelling measurements. In this way, dyslexia as a term could apply to any child whose literacy development is incomplete or slow, an interpretation which is significantly different from the term’s historical conceptualization as a specific rather than a general difficulty. If, therefore, clear distinctions between dyslexic/non-dyslexic groups cannot be made and the difficulties experienced by dyslexic children cannot be validly identified (Elliott, 2005), then the continuing use of the term is seriously questioned. Indeed, Elliott has strongly argued for a move away from the direct assessment and identification of dyslexia, and towards the assessment of, and teaching for, individual needs.. The persistence of the highly contested concept of ‘dyslexia’ could be attributed to the positive effect it confers on the identified individual and their families. This is because the term has historically excluded low intellectual abilities as a cause of the literacy difficulties. Having the label, therefore, often contributes to the formation of a positive identity. A further reason for the persistence of dyslexia could be the resource entitlement the label confers. Its use is in terms of additional resource allocation and provision relevant to individual needs without necessarily implying specialized or distinctive teaching approaches. This position is compatible with believing that there is insufficient evidence to justify distinctive special pedagogies for children identified as having SpLD or dyslexia. This is reflected in a recent literature review conducted by Lewis and Norwich (Lewis and Norwich, 2005) and argued by others, including Elliott (2005). Lewis and Norwich (2005) examined whether differences between learners (by particular special educational needs (SEN) groups) can be identified and systematically linked with learners’ needs for differential teaching. In challenging the claim that distinctive teaching strategies are needed for all children with special needs, the authors concluded that for some SENs, e.g. specific learning or literacy difficulties, the notion of ‘continua of teaching approaches’ is useful as it captures the appropriateness of more intensive and explicit teaching for pupils with different degrees of learning difficulties. This notion also makes it possible to distinguish between the ‘normal’ adaptations in class teaching for most pupils and the greater degree of adaptations required for those with more significant difficulties in learning, those designated as having (SEN). These are adaptations to common teaching approaches and have been called specialized adaptations, or ‘high density’ teaching. This assumption of ‘continua of teaching approaches’ is applicable to phonological approaches to teaching literacy, with phonological approaches being relevant to all literacy learning, but more intensive and explicit for those with ‘severe and persistent’difficulties. 392

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However, the assumption that there is a continuum of pedagogic approaches can be seen to contradict the prior position that recognizes that a category of ‘specific literacy difficulties’ is required to allocate additional resources to some children. This tension between a continuum and a category is central to the field of inclusive education, sometimes seen as reflecting a dilemma of difference over identifying some children as having unusual difficulties in learning (Lewis and Norwich, 2005). One way of dealing with and possibly resolving this dilemma is to clarify what is meant by attributing a ‘difficulty’. The term can either be used to refer to some inherent individual characteristic of a pupil that exists independently of social norms and systems, or it can be used to describe some children who have been socially identified as entitled to additional resources to reflect a political commitment to equality of capabilities (Terzi, 2007). In this chapter we opt for the latter view that recognizes ‘difficulties’ in literacy learning in this additional resourcing sense, despite problems in the practical use of the concept ‘difficulties’ and the negativity often associated with reference to ‘deficit models’.

Literacy for children who experience severe learning difficulties ‘Severe learning difficulties’ is a term used in the UK to describe children and young people who have significant intellectual or cognitive impairments and who experience significant difficulties in learning. They may be variously labelled in different parts of the world as ‘mentally retarded’, ‘mentally handicapped’ or as having ‘severe intellectual disabilities’. Children described as having or experiencing severe learning difficulties in the UK until the early 1970s were considered ‘ineducable’, though trainable; the majority are now educated in special schools or units. Most pupils with severe learning difficulties will only learn a few of the basics of reading and writing. For example they may be able to identify pictures or graphic representations such as symbols, some may learn a sight vocabulary of common words and some individual phonic sounds, but most find it hard to generalize these skills beyond simple text. Few students with severe learning difficulties are likely to learn to read and write conventionally (for pleasure, work and study) (Lacey et al., 2007). Historically, for this group of children, there has been an emphasis on a functional approach and the teaching of common social sight words (Fletcher-Campbell, 2000). There have also been apparent assumptions about the need for certain cognitive levels before reading can commence, thus some children with severe learning difficulties were denied access to literacy teaching (Porter, 2005). In the UK, the introduction of an entitlement orientated National Curriculum in 1989 and the Literacy Strategy (DfEE, 1998) have influenced the curriculum and teaching practices, and literacy teaching is now generally practised for these pupils. Conventional models of literacy and conventional ways of teaching literacy have tended to be used, including phonics teaching, despite experience being that the vast majority of children with severe learning difficulties would not progress to conventional reading. One of the authors of this chapter was involved in a study researching concepts of literacy and literacy teaching practices for children with severe learning difficulties in England (Layton et al., 2006), an area which has rarely received research attention. Here, we present and explore findings from this study that relate to understandings of literacy, access to conventional literacy through different multimodal media, and alternative forms of literacy. 393

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Understandings of literacy The teachers in this study all expressed commitment to teaching literacy to pupils experiencing severe learning difficulties. Although these learners might not acquire conventional literacy skills that enable them to engage independently with print, teachers considered that the world of literacy should and could still be available to them. They conceived of literacy in diverse ways as demonstrated by the range of literacy activities observed. This included, for example traditional orthography, social sight recognition, speech and language sessions, puppetry, and sequencing of symbols (see Lacey et al., 2007, for a full list). The teachers’ conceptualizations were generally constructed according to the perceived ability levels and needs of individual pupils, with most teachers regarding teaching communication and teaching literacy as indistinguishable, or at least on the same continuum. However, the demands of the prescribed National Curriculum, or at least, their perception of these demands, appeared to influence their choices regarding the content and direction of teaching, evident in the teachers’ almost universal use of the Literacy Hour and its prescriptive structure. A typical lesson ran for about an hour, began with a big book story and went on to phonics work with the whole class on the carpet or in a circle on chairs. Then the pupils were split into groups for work on reading and writing words and sentences or sensory work related to the story and the lesson finished with a plenary session where pupils reported on what they had been doing. (Lacey, 2006: 3) As this example illustrates, the teaching of phonics frequently formed part of literacy teaching for this group of children. For example Lacey et al. (2007: 154) relate the activities in one classroom linked to the grapheme ‘m’ and its corresponding phoneme: ‘The pupils ran their fingers round a large tactile “m” and followed large pre-placed footprints around the classroom and adjacent areas in search of familiar objects beginning with “m”.’ Most teachers in the study seemed to feel obliged to abide by government guidance which, as we have noted, emphasizes the importance of the teaching of reading through synthetic phonics. However, research with children with Down syndrome (many of whom experience severe learning difficulties) suggests that literacy learning may be best when a whole-word approach is used at first, later supplemented by teaching comprehension of text and the use of phonic clues (Byrne et al., 2002). Similarly, Tutt (2006) advises that teaching through phonics may not be the ‘right method’ for a number of children with SEN and especially those children ‘who do not have the maturity to understand grapheme/phoneme relationships or to apply that knowledge in order to blend sounds into words’ (Tutt, 2006: 211). Thus while the teachers expressed broader understandings of literacy than those expounded through the Literacy Strategy, their teaching tended to conform, albeit with adaptations, to government guidance in terms of structure and content. It was also based on conventional print literacy and situated within a conventional model of literacy. Print literacy, however, was approached through resources using different media. These included Big Books, sensory books, talking books, other ICT resources and symbolic materials. In schools for children with severe learning difficulties, there is widespread use of pictorial symbols (Abbott and Lucey, 2005). The use of such symbols 394

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for communication purposes is common, for example through the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) (Bondy and Frost, 2001) and in displays, communication books and visual timetables. Their use as a ‘bridge’ to conventional literacy has also been proposed (Detheridge and Detheridge, 1997), though still not systematically researched. Indeed, some research suggests that association between the picture symbol and the written word can actually make it harder for someone with learning difficulties (Sheehy and Howe, 2001). Even if conventional literacy is not possible for pupils with severe learning difficulties, Lacey et al. (2007) suggest many alternatives in which these pupils can be involved. From this perspective, ‘teaching literacy’ is not just about providing access to conventional print literacy but about the promotion and acceptance of broader literate activities and practices that are not necessarily tied to progression towards conventional reading and writing. This includes for example visual literacies (in the form of still and moving images), storytelling and drama. Many activities observed in the study entailed spoken or non-verbal communication, using literature as a context and drama or storytelling as a medium. However, no evidence has been found to suggest any systematic approaches to the literacy opportunities and affordances with these genres – teaching pupils how to ‘read’ or create still or moving images (Lacey, 2006). We therefore suggest that there needs to be a broader approach than the focus on access to conventional literacy through multimodal resources or through ‘tracking back’ from literacy targets for typically developing pupils. This refocusing requires a broader conceptualization of literacy which encompasses multiliteracies and so raises the question of what counts as literacy.

Discussion Challenging traditional conceptualizations of literacy The nature of literacy, its ‘forms and functions’ (Leu et al., 2004), is grounded in social, cultural, historical and political practices shaped by continually changing social forces. Literacy, as we have noted, is frequently regarded as the ability to read and write, as ‘a unified set of neutral skills’ (Larson and Marsh, 2005: 20) focusing on phonics, word recognition, spelling and vocabulary (UNESCO, 2005) – on decoding and encoding printed and written media. Such definitions, as we have seen, exclude some children who may not be able to read and write in the conventional sense and, from this standpoint, they would be regarded as semi-literate, non-literate or illiterate. One perspective towards these children’s difficulties in learning literacy is to explain them as individual deficits; where the ‘barriers to literacy’ are regarded as within the individual (Wearmouth et al., 2003: 89). ‘Normal’ or typical development, in this view, leads to the notion of ‘inadequate development’ and this tends to imply a deficit model which may ‘pathologise particular groups of children’ (Larson and Marsh, 2005: 5), including those with dyslexia or severe learning difficulties discussed in the previous two sections. Such ‘deficit’ attributions, however, are regarded as limited, since they are seen to ignore the social norms that give rise to distinctions between typical/atypical and normal/abnormal, and do not examine the social function of conventional literacies. In an alternative perspective, it can be argued that there are several different ‘literacies’, some of which may be accessible without requiring the ability to read 395

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and write (Kellner, 2000). As Grainger (2004: 3) suggests, ‘Despite the lack of recognition of these texts in the curriculum, the audiovisual texts of television, film, video and computer generated images are undoubtedly shaping what it means to be literate in the twenty-first century’. The word ‘literacy’ has also been applied to other ways of ‘reading the world’ (UNESCO, 2005); for example ‘information literacy’, ‘media literacy’ and ‘visual literacy’. Further, if we view literacy as socially situated, embedded in social settings, practised differently according to the social and cultural context (Barton, 1994), then this also affords us wider and alternative responses to what counts as literacy. In this alternative perspective, literacy is seen as constructed, something people do, an essentially social activity involving interaction between people, not just an individual cognitive activity (Larson and Marsh, 2005). Many people who are labelled as illiterate or non-literate make significant use of literacy practices for specific purposes in their everyday lives (Doronilla, 1996). So, if literacy is understood as a social practice and as multiple, it becomes problematic to focus only on the individual aspects of literacy (Green and Kostogriz, 2002). The selection of ‘reading and writing behaviours’ to define literacy, according to views in this perspective, is a matter of cultural bias, and a narrow interpretation. Such a view, therefore, challenges the meaning of literacy when applying it to pupils with diverse learning needs and abilities, especially those who do not learn to read and write in conventional ways. One way of considering a broader interpretation of literacy is to set it within the context of social communication. In Lacey et al.’s (2007) study, most teachers of children with severe learning difficulties regarded teaching communication and teaching literacy as indistinguishable, or at least on the same continuum. A central purpose of literacy is arguably communication, even if to oneself in the form of personal diary writing, while communication can be represented as a much wider and multifaceted kind of literacy, including speaking and listening, sign language, facial expressions, and body language. It can also be argued that the wide variety of literate practices in society also involve a much broader interpretation of literacy than that generally taught in schools (school literacy) with its dominance on print-based literacy (Wyatt-Smith and Gunn, 2007). The relationship between social communication, literate practices in society and school literacy can be represented in terms of their range and inclusiveness, as in Figure 33.1. A broader concept of literacy in school curricula would support a goal of literacy for all. In so doing, this would also affect concepts of literacy proficiency and literacy difficulties.

Social communication Literate practices in society

School literacy

Figure 33.1 Communication and literacy.

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Teaching literacy: Issues and their resolution Most teachers do not have experience of teaching children and young people with severe learning difficulties and therefore do not confront some of the above issues about what counts as literacy and the push for inclusive literacy. However, these issues relate to assumptions about the general school curriculum which are relevant to all educators. It was argued above that if literacy is given its conventional and dominant meaning as being about reading, writing and spelling, that this leads to some people coming to be regarded as semi- or non-literate; this can be seen as socially excluding. This politically unacceptable consequence can be seen as partly underlying the move to broaden concepts of school literacy to various forms of communication and ‘multiliteracies’, some of which are accessible to people with severe intellectual disabilities, So, school curricula adopting multiliteracy goals are seen as more inclusive. However, it can be argued that a broader multiliteracy curriculum approach may have two kinds of problems. First, the term ‘literacy’ is being stretched to mean something that departs from the use of particular sign systems and in so doing acts in a metaphoric way to mean ‘capabilities’. In this sense, it is a semantic move about how those with literacy difficulties are represented, rather than what they can specifically do and learn. Second, multiliteracies may be suitable for some people with severe intellectual disabilities, but may still not be relevant to those people with even more significant disabilities, including those with profound and multiple difficulties who, in addition to very severe intellectual and cognitive impairments, have other significant difficulties, such as physical disabilities, sensory impairment or a severe medical condition. For some people with profound difficulties, and perhaps others with deteriorating intellectual functioning, not even a broader multiliteracy may include them. It becomes clear therefore that the issue is one of how to set learning goals that encompass literally all, while still being relevant to all; another expression of the dilemma of difference discussed above. In addition to reforming school curricula in terms of multiliteracies, we also advocate a perspective to pedagogy that assumes generic strategies that are geared to difference by degrees of deliberateness and intensity of teaching. Put simply, in a ‘continua of teaching approaches’ (Lewis and Norwich, 2005), children with severe and persistent difficulties in literacy would receive more intensive teaching than their typically developing peers. This reflects contemporary assumptions about common curriculum content. However, we also recognize that for some children, some areas of learning and programme objectives might be given a different emphasis – what has been called a ‘continuum of curriculum approaches’ (Lewis and Norwich, 2005). Specifically, children with severe learning difficulties might take part in programmes based on common general curriculum goals, but with a different emphasis and approach to some areas, such as literacy and communication. There might also be additional curriculum goals (such as the fostering of augmentative or facilitated communication).

Conclusion Finally, we recognize that the particular instructional approach that a teacher or school takes has always been based on a number of factors not least on how difficulties in literacy learning are conceptualized. Other considerations, according to Coles (2000), 397

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include ‘published research, educational philosophies, published anecdotes, individual and school experiences, teacher education courses, test outcomes, child development values, political pressures, school budgets, and professional organisation endorsements’ (2000: xii). It is the mixture of these influences that often leads to the adoption of a variety of practices ranging from the systematic teaching of phonemic awareness and related skills to whole language instruction. Far from advocating the supremacy of one approach over another (Meyer, 2002), we contend here that a pluralism of approaches should be utilized to improve teaching and learning outcomes for all children. Such an eclectic form of practice is achieved through the exercise of professional judgement, a process based on both knowledge and experience which can be seen as a form of Aristotelian deliberation. As Bayliss (1998) notes, Aristotle’s concept of ‘deliberation’ refers to the intellectual ability that we draw on when we must make decisions in cases where we cannot achieve certainty, but where we are not totally lacking in relevant information. Professional judgement, in turn, is informed by the development of ‘practical wisdom’ (Aristotle – Nicomachean Ethics) or ‘craft knowledge’, which can result in the synthesis of competing courses of action. It is in this way that principled decisions about teaching literacy ought to be made by practitioners, encompassing many aspects of teaching literacy (for example phonics, access to literature, symbols, social sight recognition, to name but a few). Such practice is significantly different from an uncritical use of ‘custom and practice’ (Layton et al., 2006) or a ‘pick and mix’ eclecticism. However, it is worth stressing here that making principled decisions also requires teachers to possess deep understandings of different theoretical models of literacy and awareness of relevant empirical research. The expert literacy teacher, therefore, designs literacy learning opportunities by using ‘practical wisdom’ based on reflections and analysis of professional experiences but informed by theory derived from empirical research.

References Abbott, C. and Lucey, H. (2005). Symbol Communication in Special Schools in England: The current position and some key issues. British Journal of Special Education 32(4): 196–201. Avramidis, E. and Kalyva, E. (2004). Understanding Dyslexia: Cleaning up a messy construct and developing supportive educational environments. Use of English 56(1): 25–47. Bakker, D.J. (1990). Neuropsychological Treatment of Dyslexia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barton, D. (1994). Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language. Oxford: Blackwell. Bayliss, P. (1998). Models of Complexity. Theory driven intervention practices. In C. Clark, A. Dyson and A. Millward (Eds) Theorising Special Education. London: Routledge, pp. 61–78. Bondy, A. and Frost, L. (2001). The Picture Exchange Communication System. Behavior Modification 25(5): 725–44. British Psychological Society (BPS) (1999). Dyslexia, Literacy and Psychological Assessment. Leicester: BPS. Byrne, A., MacDonald, J. and Buckley, S. (2002). Reading, Language and Memory Skills: A comparative longitudinal study of children with Down syndrome and their peers. British Journal of Educational Psychology 72(4): 513–29.

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Castles, A., Datta, H., Gayan, J. and Olson, R.K. (1999). Varieties of Developmental Reading Disorder: Genetic and environmental influences. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 72(2): 73–94. Coles, G. (2000). Misreading Reading. The bad science that hurts children. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (1998). The National Literacy Strategy Framework for Teaching. London: HMSO. Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2006a). Primary Framework for Literacy and Mathematics. Nottingham: DfES. Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2006b). Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading. Rose Report. London: DfES. Detheridge, T. and Detheridge, M. (1997). Literacy through Symbols. London: Fulton. Doponio, P. and Macintyre, C. (2003). Identifying and Supporting Children with Specific Learning Difficulties. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Doronilla, M.L. (1996). Landscapes of Literacy: An ethnographic study of functional literacy in marginal Philippine communities. Hamburg: UIE. Elliott, J.G. (2005). Dyslexia: Diagnoses, debates and diatribes. Special Children 169(1): 19–23. Fletcher-Campbell, F. (Ed.) (2000). Literacy and Special Educational Needs: A review of the literature. Research Report RR227. London: DfEE. Grainger, T. (2004). Introduction: Travelling across the terrain. In T. Grainger (Ed.) The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Language and Literacy. London: RoutledgeFalmer, pp. 1–16. Green, B. and Kostogriz, A. (2002). Learning Difficulties and the New Literacy Studies: A sociallycritical perspective. In J. Soler, J. Wearmouth and G. Reid (Eds) Contextualising Difficulties in Literacy Development. London: RoutledgeFalmer, pp. 102–14. Kellner, D. (2000). New Technologies/New Literacies: Reconstructing education for the new millennium. Teaching Education 11(3): 245–65. Lacey, P. (2006). What is Inclusive Literacy? SLD Experience 46(1): 3–7. Lacey, P., Layton, L., Miller, C., Goldbart, J. and Lawson, H. (2007). What is Literacy for Students who do not Learn to Read and Write? Exploring conventional and inclusive literacy. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs 7(3): 149–60. Larson, J. and Marsh, J. (2005). Making Literacy Real: Theories and practices for learning and teaching. London: Sage. Layton, L., Lacey, P., Miller, C. with Goldbart, J. and Lawson, H. (2006). Developing an Inclusive Literacy Curriculum (for pupils who do not learn to read and write). London: Esmee Fairbairn Foundation. Leu, D.J., Kinzer, C.K., Coiro, J., and Cammack, D.W. (2004). Toward a Theory of New Literacies Emerging from the Internet and other Information and Communication Technologies. In R. B. Ruddell and N. Unrau (Eds) Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (5th edn). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/ lit_index.asp?HREF=leu/ accessed 10 October 2008. Lewis, A. and Norwich, B. (Eds) (2005). Special Teaching for Special Children? Pedagogies for inclusion. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Lewis, M. and Ellis, S. (2006). Phonics: Practice, research and policy. London: Paul Chapman. Lloyd, S. (2000). The Phonics Handbook with Print Letters (Jolly Phonics). Chigwell: Jolly Learning. McGuinness, D. (1997). Why Children Can’t Read. And what we can do about it. London: Penguin. Meyer, R. (2002). Phonics Exposed: Understanding and resisting systematic direct intense phonics instruction. London: Lawrence Erlbaum. Peer, L. (2001). Dyslexia and its Manifestations in the Secondary School. In L. Peer and G. Reid (Eds) Dyslexia – Successful Inclusion in the Secondary School. London: Fulton.

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Porter, J. (2005). Severe Learning Difficulties. In A. Lewis and B. Norwich (Eds) Special Teaching for Special Children? Pedagogies for inclusion. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Rassool, N. (2002). Literacy: In search of a paradigm. In J. Solar, J. Wearmouth and G. Reid (Eds) Contextualising Difficulties in Literacy Development: Exploring politics, ethnicity and ethics. London: RoutledgeFalmer, pp. 17–46. Reid, G. (2001). Biological, Cognitive and Educational Dimensions of Dyslexia: Current and scientific thinking. In L. Peer and G. Reid (Eds) Dyslexia – Successful inclusion in the secondary school. London: Fulton, pp. 10–18. Riddick, B. (2001). Dyslexia and Inclusion: Time for a social model of disability perspective? International Studies in Sociology of Education 11(3): 223–34. Sheehy, K. and Howe, M. (2001). Teaching Non-readers with Severe Learning Difficulties to Recognise Words: The effective use of symbols in a new technique. Westminster Studies in Education 24(1): 61–71. Snowling, M.J. (2000). Dyslexia. Oxford: Blackwell. Stanovich, K.E. (1994). Does Dyslexia Exist? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 35(4): 579–95. Stein, J. (2001). The Magnocellular Theory of Developmental Dyslexia. Dyslexia 7(1): 12–36. Terzi, L (2007). Beyond the Dilemma of Difference: The capability approach in disability and special educational needs. In L. Florian and M. McClaughlin (Eds) Disability Classification in Education. Issues and perspectives. London: Sage, pp. 244–60. Tutt, R. (2006). Reconciling the Irreconcilable: Coping with contradictory agendas. FORUM 48(2): 209–16. UNESCO (2005). Literacy for Life. Paris: UNESCO. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/ 001416/141639e.pdf accessed 13 November 2008. Wearmouth, J., Soler, J. and Reid, G. (2003). Meeting Difficulties in Literacy Development. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Wilkins, A. (1995). Visual Stress. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Woods, K. (2002). What do We Mean when We Say ‘Dyslexia’ and what Difference does it Make Anyway? In P. Farrell and M. Ainscow (Eds) Making Special Education Inclusive. London: Fulton, pp. 139–50. Wyatt-Smith, C. and Gunn, S. (2007). Evidence-based Research for Expert Literacy Teaching. Melbourne, VIC: Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. http://www. eduweb.vic.gov.au/edulibrary/public/publ/research/publ/literacy-summary-paper.pdf accessed 13 November 2008.

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34 Classroom assessment of literacy Peter Afflerbach, Byeong-Young Cho, Jong-Yun Kim and Summer Clark

Classroom assessment of literacy involves teachers and students in the process of gathering, analysing and using assessment information. From this information, inferences about students’ literacy development, achievement, and related instruction can be generated. Classroom assessment uses both formative and summative information, to assist, gauge, and then to certify learning. Classroom assessment is marked by shared responsibility of teachers and students, and it is demanding of their time, attention and knowledge.

Characteristics of effective assessment Pellegrino et al. (2001) propose that effective assessment has, at its core, three features: a detailed description of the thing to be assessed (in this case literacy, or some aspect of literacy); a set of assessment materials that are developed in relation to the description (to establish construct validity); and the process of generating suitable inferences from the information that the assessment yields. In the case of literacy, things to be assessed may include decoding, spelling, inferential comprehension, persuasive essay writing, and using multimedia to construct a classroom presentation. Assessment materials and procedures are developed in accordance with our understanding of the particular aspects of literacy to be measured and with good classroom assessment practice. Inference represents the reasoning and judgments that are made about students, based on the assessment information. For example a teacher can infer student need from classroom assessment, tailoring instruction to meet the need. Assessment that is sensitive to the developmental nature of literacy knowledge and the sociocultural aspects of classroom literacy learning can contribute to students’ growth toward future achievements (Alexander, 2005; Vygotsky, 1978). In addition, evolving assessment theory explains the importance of consequential validity, or the consequences that assessment has for teachers and students. Questions (e.g., Does the assessment help or hinder student progress? Does the assessment help optimize instruction? Do assessment results contribute to, or work against, positive student self-esteem 401

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emanate from consideration?) of consequences? Further, the reliability of classroom assessment, reflecting consistency and trustworthiness of assessment across students and situations, demands teacher expertise. Advances in our understanding of effective assessment from both psychometric (Messick, 1989) and pedagogic (Black and Wiliam, 1998) traditions can help classroom assessments meet high standards for measurement and high standards for usefulness. Classroom literacy assessment, then, should provide good measure of students’ literacy learning. This learning may be around constrained skills and strategies, including phonics, or it may consist of reading and writing to perform diverse tasks, developing epistemic knowledge, and conducting self-assessment of learning. In each case, the complexity of the phenomena to be assessed must be honoured by the assessments we use. Most educational assessments sample quite narrow bands of growth and performance in this case, literacy development (Davis, 1998). Changing classroom literacy assessment must be accompanied by vision and effort related to changing classroom literacy itself. More is known about literacy and literacy assessment than is reflected in most classroom practice – much more. There are distinct disjunctures between the complexity and richness of literacy that exists outside of classrooms and how literacy is experienced within classrooms. As well, there is often a divide between best practices in assessment, and how literacy assessment is conducted in classrooms.

Evidence for the importance of classroom assessment of literacy Assessment involves the process of obtaining samples of student work from which inferences can be generated about student achievement and need. Classroom literacy assessment has a traditional role of informing instruction and tracking student development and progress. However, classroom assessment also figures in theories related to the reflective practioner (Schon, 1990); zones of proximal development and teachable moments (Vygotsky, 1978); and student participation in the culture of assessment (Black and Wiliam, 1998). First, Schon’s (1990) reflective practitioner includes the teacher who seeks information about the goodness of fit between students and instruction. At the core of reflective practice is information, relevant and reliable, linked to teachers’ decision making. Classroom literacy assessment provides information that features in decisions related to the suitability of the curriculum–student matches, and the need to move ahead with a lesson or refocus on a particular aspect of learning. Second, ‘fresh’ assessment information about the state of student learning and suitability of instruction fits well with Vygotsky’s notion of zones of proximal development (1978). Effective instruction takes place within these zones, which are bounded by understanding of a student’s current level of achievement and capability, and the next expected growth and achievement. The process of effective teaching, then, requires that a teacher can regularly and effectively identify the zones of proximal development with information that is detailed enough to inform instruction. This information must be precise, accurate and current – all goals of classroom assessment. Third, assessment should provide students with knowledge about why assessment is important and how it works. When classroom assessment is explained, and its uses modelled, it encourages students to become active participants who learn, through apprenticeship, the ways and means of assessment (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Engagement with classroom assessment culture provides a means for teachers to introduce students 402

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into the culture, and for students to become familiar with (and then adept at) ‘doing’ assessment on their own. From this view, classroom assessment helps shape a critical stance towards one’s work and provides models of the strategies that students need to learn to do assessment (Black and Wiliam, 1998).

Influences on classroom literacy and literacy assessment Our theoretical understandings of literacy and assessment are detailed and continually evolving. However, examination of classroom literacy and its assessment often reveals diminished notions of both. Given the ‘thinness’ of literacy and assessment in many classrooms, it is important to acknowledge the factors that contribute to this status quo. Schools are influenced by economic, political, and social factors that shape the classroom literacy that students experience. Figure 34.1 illustrates the situated nature of classroom literacy assessment, and the influences on literacy and how it is assessed. For example, politics is centrally involved in the shaping educational standards, which in turn shape curriculum and instruction in the classroom. There is no clearer example of politics influencing literacy than the No Child Left Behind legislation in the United States, which is accompanied by specific instruction and testing mandates that shape literacy in the classroom. Economic factors also influence literacy in classrooms. School funding directly influences teacher–student rations, class size, educational materials and experiences, and teachers’ professional development. As funding is limited, each expenditure reduces funds for other aspects of schooling. Monies spent on test preparation are monies not spent on enhancing the collection and use of classroom literacy assessment. Finally, social factors influence literacy in the classroom. The values and power of particular members of school communities (or outside school communities) can lead to narrow or expanded notion of classroom literacy. Entrenched habits of conceptualizing, teaching and assessing literacy may nurture or stifle innovation. A further set of factors presents in classrooms – factors that we conceptualize as psychological, sociocultural and temporal/physical spaces. Psychological space represents the sum of cognitive and affective factors that present in a particular classroom. It includes the particular literacy learning goals, the expectations placed on students, the emotional climate of the classroom and the skills and strategies that are taught and learned. Sociocultural space includes the nature of the connection between students’ lives and language in and out of the classroom, the roles that students and teachers play in classroom literacy, and the spoken and written discourse patterns that exist in the classroom. Finally, the temporal/physical spaces within classrooms act to constrain or encourage student literacy. Physical space includes the actual classroom set-up: seating configurations, individual student and collaborative work areas, computer terminals, hardware and software, and libraries. Temporal factors include the amount of time planned and realized for literacy activities in the classroom. A curriculum constructed around discrete, 50 minute blocks of time will be different from one that is oriented towards literacy projects conducted across an entire marking period. Thus, a set of factors influences literacy and literacy assessment in the classroom, often restricting school literacy. The factors help explain the disjuncture between current understandings of literacy and assessment, and what students encounter in classrooms. 403

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Political Factors

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Physical/Temporal Space Teacher–student ratio The configuration of desks, workspace and communal or single areas

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Figure 34.1 Influences on classroom literacy and classroom literacy assessment.

Effective classroom assessment The gulf between current and possible classroom literacy assessment practice is surmountable, and this section focuses on the characteristics of effective assessment. We use examples from literacy assessment research when available. Given that the research literature on classroom literacy assessment is not fully developed, we borrow from other areas of educational assessment (e.g. science assessment, history assessment) when necessary. We also cite work from affiliated fields, such as educational psychology and sociology, when we believe that it can inform effective assessment practice. Central to our idea of effective classroom assessment of literacy is the idea of teachers as assessment experts (Johnston, 1987). These teachers are accomplished at classroom 404

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assessment and they understand the factors outside of school and within the classroom that influence literacy instruction, achievement and assessment. Neither the centrality of the teacher, nor the need for supporting teachers’ professional development as assessment experts should be underestimated. To illustrate effective classroom assessment, we situate our discussion in a school district that is undergoing transformation in how literacy and literacy assessment are conceptualized and experienced. Previously, the district addressed high stakes accountability with an exclusive focus on raising students’ scores on standardized tests. Top-down pressure from state and school district levels minimized teacher participation in the selection of curriculum or assessment (e.g., Stephens et al., 1995), and school district administrators expected teachers to follow a literacy curriculum that was purchased with the intent to raise test scores. The curriculum offered limited representations of literacy: literacy strategies and skills were introduced, taught, and learned in service of narrowly conceptualized academic tasks and achievement. The reading and writing curriculum focused on students’ skill and strategy learning, the memorization of factual knowledge, and students giving this information back in test-like situations. One goal for the district is summative testing augmented with ongoing professional development that focuses on formative assessment and its role in teaching and learning (Hoffman et al., 1996; Valencia & Au, 1997). The district is supportive of initiatives that join formative assessment and summative assessments in a constructive manner, and provides school resources to support teachers in this effort. Professional development focuses on classroom assessment routines, including teacher questioning, portfolio assessment and performance assessment. Teachers are expected to collaborate with their colleagues to determine the most prominent assessment challenges and to develop action plans to meet the challenges. The teachers are united in their focus on classroom assessments that inform understanding of individual students and instruction of those students. They believe that while accountability is measured with a single test on a single day, accountability is achieved through careful teaching, informed by daily, formative assessments. In this context, teachers focus on the formative assessment of students’ literacy, which they believe is central both to fostering literacy development and to raising the achievement levels of their students. Based on the research literature related to literacy development and assessment, and effective schools, the teachers in this district identify characteristics of successful classroom literacy assessment that include: (1) formative and summative purposes of assessment; (2) transparency of assessment with student and teacher reflection; (3) the ability to demonstrate and communicate accountability; (4) allowing for situated interpretations of student literacy; (5) integrative and flexible usefulness; and (6) validity and reliability. In the following section, we describe each of these characteristics in relation to specific types of assessment, the focus of the assessment and the manner in which it supports particular literacy learning within the particular spaces of the classroom.

Classroom assessment that serves formative and summative purposes A first characteristic of effective literacy assessment is the systematic approach to using both formative and summative assessments. Teachers and schools feel the pressure to demonstrate accountability, which is accomplished with test scores. However, 405

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teachers understand that summative measures such as test scores are closely linked to formative measures: teaching and learning that are held to an accountability standard are enhanced by regular, formative assessment across the school year (Afflerbach, 2007). Teacher questioning serves well both formative and summative assessment purposes. As students progress through lessons, teachers regularly use questions to check on learning (e.g. Can you find evidence provided by the author to support her claim?); to prompt student thinking (e.g. Do you understand this paragraph?); and to model questions that are valuable for students to ask (e.g. Have I set a reasonable goal for my reading?). Each of these types of question serves the formative purpose: to gather ongoing, instructionally useful information, in this case related to the cognitive skills and strategies students are learning, to help shape the manner in which students ask questions of the things they read, and to model questions that are central to students’ self-assessment routines. Regular attention to formative assessment anticipates students’ performance on summative assessments – students’ test scores are traceable back to the series of classroom assessments that provided feedback and helped shape instruction. Teacher questions help transform the psychological space of the classroom because they promote student thinking related to both course content and assessment process.

Transparency and reflection with assessment Students’ movement towards independence is encouraged as assessment is made transparent and as students are engaged in assessment practice. Students who understand the ways and means (and value) of assessment, as opposed to ‘taking assessment’, or ‘being tested or quizzed’, are informed participants in assessment culture (Afflerbach, 2002). Reading and writing with self-assessment are examples of metacognition and self-regulation (Baker & Brown, 1984; Flavell, 1976). Teachers use assessments that encourage student reflection and that provide opportunities for modelling and discussing reflection with students. High quality teaching guides students from their current levels of learning towards their expected, future achievement (Vygotsky, 1978). In this zone of proximal development, teachers use assessment information reflectively to identify teachable moments and perform instructional decision making. The accurate identification of students’ zones of proximal development is dependent on ongoing and detailed formative assessment. As teachers use formative assessment to inform their daily instruction, the teachers’ spoken feedback fosters students’ self-assessment (Crooks, 1988), and student reflection evolves from the classroom assessment models provided by the teacher (Sadler, 1989). Through continual engagement in this supportive space, teachers and students transform a series of classroom assessment routines into their own self-assessment actions (Afflerbach, 2002). For example teachers model and think aloud as they ask questions in science and social studies classes, explaining to students why they are seeking particular information and how their questions relate to the goals of the lesson (Palincsar & Brown, 1984). The teachers also provide explanation as to how they are evaluating the content of student responses. To support student self-assessment, the sociocultural space in the classroom is marked by frequent teacher–student interaction, contributing to the psychological space in which students are expected to assume responsibilities for conducting their own assessment. 406

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Communicability and accountability of classroom literacy assessment Does an assessment offer interested audiences valuable information that is readily understood? What is the relative descriptive power of a single test score, or a detailed narrative of student development? If a school community places high trust in teachers, the means for demonstrating accountability may vary. For example teachers earn the support of parents because they are able to describe the literate behaviours and accomplishments of their students in a narrative form (Afflerbach and Johnston, 1993). Another community may require that accountability be demonstrated by percentile rankings on standardized tests, or may be required to value test scores because of political pressure. This creates considerable difficulty for advocating and using classroom assessments because there is tension around which assessments are valued and used. Teachers who are assessment experts consider the communicative value of assessments, in addition to more traditional criteria of validity and reliability (Shepard and Bliem, 1995). Teachers in this district are adept at using students’ portfolios to communicate to parents, administrators and students the progress that is made from one marking period to the next (Valencia and Calfee, 1991). Digital portfolios contain drafts that demonstrate student growth in expository and persuasive writing. In addition, the portfolio helps communicate progress to students and parents as students work through long-term learning projects that include personal research, problem-solving, and the development and refinement of written communication (Johnson et al., 1998). As parents, administrators and the students themselves examine portfolios and learn about student accomplishments, in detail, accountability is apparent. The portfolio also accommodates student work from across entire marking periods. The lengthy time frame that surrounds portfolio use in the classroom enables teachers and students to accumulate evidence of growth in literacy, as well as help students develop a sense of agency in assessment.

Situated interpretation and classroom literacy assessment Many literacy assessments are constructed with the goal of the objective measurement of student learning and achievement. ‘Scientific’ assessment in literacy requires the collection of samples of students’ work in intentionally standardized contexts, as when students take reading tests (Joint Committee on Testing Practices, 2004). However, when assessment occurs in highly controlled contexts, the contexts may not reflect the culture of literacy and learning in the classroom. In contrast, features of interpretive inquiry can inform classroom assessments (Moss, 1992), as the situated nature of student literacy use is a lens for observing growth. This process can help teachers look ‘for culturally derived and historically situated interpretations of the social life-world’ (Crotty, 1998: 67). Researchers conducting interpretive inquiry use their knowledge of the research context in interpreting data (Lincoln and Guba, 1985). When teachers gather literacy assessment information in situ, attention to the context of learning provides an appropriate lens for interpreting observed student behaviours. Assessment is situated in consideration of students’ past accomplishments and challenges, future literacy experiences, impending instruction and learning. Assessment results are not necessarily geared to national or state level norms – assessment is conducted and interpreted in relation to the teacher’s detailed knowledge of students and their accomplishments and challenges. Consider teachers’ use of interpretive strategies with students’ literacy portfolios, as portfolio contents are in relation to teachers’ in-depth knowledge of when, where, and 407

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how student work is produced. Students’ specific achievements, performances and outcomes are interpreted with knowledge of context – instructional goals, student needs, curriculum and teaching resulting in a needed personalization of assessment. Moss (1992) notes that these cumulative and contextualized narrative records provide an evidentiary trail with specific examples that illustrate students’ developing literacy. The contents of students’ literacy portfolios are interpreted in the context of classroom settings, and in relation to long-term literacy learning goals. Student writing samples, including initial drafts, revisions, editing and search traces, are situated in relation to the students’ assignments, and their own trajectories of progress. Assessment of student work in the portfolio is situated in relation to what has preceded new work, and this expands the temporal space in which assessment is conducted (LeMahieu et al., 1995). The portfolio also contains records of students’ peer group evaluative conferences, reflecting changes in the psychological and sociocultural spaces within the classroom.

Integration and flexibility of classroom literacy assessments An array of assessments is vital to providing a comprehensive account of students’ classroom literacy development, and teachers and students benefit from literacy assessments that provide coverage of important learning processes and goals (Wilson and Adams, 1996). When assessment includes portfolios, performance assessments, teacher questioning, observation checklists, and tests and quizzes, there is the opportunity to integrate the processes and products of assessment so that information is crossreferenced. For example, student responses to comprehension questions based on textbook content may be related to their ongoing work in a performance assessment. In effect, assessment information that converges helps raise the accuracy and confidence of the many inferences that teachers make about students’ accomplishments and needs from assessment data. The array of literacy assessments reflects teachers’ proactive attention to the physical and temporal spaces in which daily literacy events take place. Consider how integrated and flexible assessment works in a science classroom. Students read about the methods of scientific inquiry and then use this understanding to examine and inventory a forest environment near their school. Around the procedures is a series of teacher questions, teacher observations, entries in learning journals and student checklists for following scientific procedure. Each of these assessments provides unique and complementary information about students’ understandings of assigned readings related to forests and their application of the knowledge gained through reading. A single source of information describes students’ literal comprehension of science text (teacher questions); another provides information about students’ use of learned course content (journal entries) as they conduct inventories of forest flora and fauna. A third source, student checklists, both encourages and supports students as they learn to independently manage the complex task (student checklist). The integrated assessment results from careful, a priori consideration of learning goals and appropriate assessment, and represents the thoughtful development of a comprehensive assessment plan.

Validity and reliability in classroom literacy assessment Attention to the previous characteristics of effective classroom literacy assessment must be accompanied by the demonstration that assessment is valid and reliable. 408

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Construct validity is arguably the most important form of validity (Messick, 1989) – assessment must be clearly tied to a detailed and accurate conception of literacy. In many schools, construct validity is claimed for tests, but it is a constrained validity. A literacy assessment that focuses on the determination that students have mastered sound–symbol correspondences and that they read at a particular fluency rate, or ably write a five-paragraph theme, can qualify as having construct validity. Yet, such validity derives from a ‘thin’ conceptualization of what literacy is (Davis, 1998). More broadly conceptualized, construct validity of classroom literacy assessment might include measures of how well students evaluate authors’ arguments, how they use what they have learned from reading in assessed performances, and how they learn to use selfassessment checklists. The validity is connected to the psychological, sociocultural and physical/temporal spaces of the classroom. The construct of literacy is complex, and the attainment of construct validity is due, in part, to assessment that honours the complexity of the construct. A second form of validity is consequential validity (APA, 1999), which focuses on the use of results of tests – the consequences for schools, teachers and students when test results are used to make decisions. We believe that consequential validity is an appropriate consideration for all types of assessment and that it is too limiting to examine ‘consequence’ only with test scores. In effect, there are many possible consequences, positive and negative, of literacy assessment (Tittle, 2005). These include opportunity costs, where school funds are spent in a way that may prevent the use of alternative assessments that are better suited to the phenomena to be measured, and assessment practices that situate students as ‘outsiders’ to the culture of assessment. In contrast, literacy assessment that leads students to engaged participation evidences positive consequence. Teachers who successfully use classroom assessments focus on different potential consequences of the assessment. When assessment routines provide fine-grained information about students’ levels of literacy attainment, it can be used to shape instruction. Consequences considered in reference to the different spaces of the classroom informs efforts to help students build positive self-concepts as readers, establish effective metacognitive routines when reading, conduct peer evaluations and work in extended time frames to assess their developing projects. How can results of classroom assessment be regarded as reliable and fair, and used in predictable, constructive ways? Classroom assessment must be held to the expectation that it will be reliable in representing samples of students’ literate behaviours (Stiggins, 2001). As teachers conduct formative assessment of students’ literacy development, the goal is to gather information that leads to teachable moments and effective instruction. Here, the reliability standard is met when information is sought, obtained, interpreted, and used in a consistent and fair manner. For example, a teacher well-versed in conducting Running Records develops a routine for listening to students’ oral reading, recording miscues and using this information to regularly plan instruction. Fairness of assessment is established as teachers conduct assessment with the intent to provide the best support for students’ literacy development. Teachers realize that subjectivity in assessment is a given, and that a key to reliability is to acknowledge that bias may be operating in their assessments. Thus, a focus of professional development in classroom assessment is the establishment of routines to continually check on how each teacher is interpreting student work. Teachers are also interested in the manner in which classroom literacy assessments can reliably provide the information needed to 409

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regularly update their mental models of students and their achievements. Thus, reliability of assessment directly impacts teachers’ decision-making processes.

Assessment as a transformative agent Assessment often trails curriculum and instruction: the primary focus of literacy development in school is on what to teach and how to teach it. In these situations, assessment may be the final consideration in curriculum adoption or development, and it lacks the ability to inform work that is, by and large, complete. While curriculum and instruction may be designed around assessment, it may not be to good end, as when what is taught in classrooms mimics high stakes tests in content and form. However, assessment can help transform classroom practice in a positive manner, and the assessment–curriculum relationship can be conceptualized as dynamic and symbiotic. When assessment is designed as an integral part of curriculum, there is the opportunity to tailor the fit between assessment and instruction. Popham (1997) claims that highquality assessment helps teachers and students, because the assessment continually draws attention to important aspects of teaching and learning. For example, science and history assessments that ask students to demonstrate their learning through a performance (as opposed to giving back memorized information in a testing situation) help us conceptualize classroom literacy, and related science and history curriculum, differently. A curriculum designed to engage students in learning will necessarily focus on affective aspects of learning, and attention to assessment that helps us understand students’ affective states will be useful. At best, literacy curriculum and assessment are engaged in dialogue that helps determine how best to teach and assess.

Conclusion Effective literacy assessment is conceptualized in relation to the complexities of classrooms and schools, and conducted with psychometrically sound materials and procedures. The development of effective classroom assessments of literacy is daunting, because we must fully realize the nature of literacy in students’ daily lives, and create appropriate curriculum, instruction, and assessment that honours this literacy. Teachers must occupy centre stage in classroom assessment, and school resources must be available to support the challenging work of helping teachers become classroom assessment experts. The results of efforts to optimize classroom assessment will include innovative assessments used in conjunction with challenging curriculum. This represents a sea change in terms of present-day assessments nominally measuring limited representations of student literacy. Successful teaching and learning require the steady flow of information that a wellfunctioning assessment programme provides. The need for classroom assessment to supply the critical formative feedback for teachers and students is self-evident, as we hope is the idea that summative assessment products (i.e. high stakes test scores) will improve as does formative assessment practice. Students do not come to school well prepared on testing day because of summative assessments, but because their teachers regularly use classroom literacy assessments and their attendant information to develop and deliver appropriate instruction. 410

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In classrooms, myriad factors predetermine curriculum – curriculum that is wedded to restricted representations of literacy, and what students must know and do to be ‘literate’. It is schools’ duty to support students within varied literate environments – environments that reflect the evolving nature of literacy and that encourage students to participate. As this occurs, literacy assessment must undergo a parallel evolution. Thin measures of thin representations of literacy do little good. Classroom assessments must focus on important teaching and learning and they must provide fine-grained information that contributes to the accurate portrayal of student growth and performance. From this, we make appropriate inferences about what students can do, what they may next achieve, and how we can best support their growth. Literacy assessment is effective when it is used with full understanding of the contextual influences on assessment. Time and space constraints on classroom assessments, including student–teacher ratios that discourage individualized work, will impede good intention and innovative assessment. Psychological constraints, such as a hyper-focus on hierarchical skills instruction and acquisition, restrict assessments to report only on students’ performances and growth in relation to the diminished ideas of literacy and learning. Sociocultural constraints in classrooms influence the measurement of individual student growth. Individual seatwork should not be assessed to the exclusion of describing growth and achievement in students’ collaborative problem-solving. The movement towards excellence in classroom assessments of literacy is fuelled by both trust and teaching expertise. It is the exceptional teacher who is capable of using classroom assessment routines that are reliable and valid, that encourage student selfassessment, that are transparent, and that offer multiple perspectives on student performance. It is the exceptional school community that is supportive of teachers’ movement towards expertise in classroom assessment, and that provides ongoing resources for developing this expertise.

References Afflerbach, P. (2007). Understanding and Using Reading Assessment, K-12. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Afflerbach, P. (2002). Teaching Reading Self-assessment Strategies. In C.C. Block and M. Pressley (Eds) Comprehension Instruction: Research-based best practices. New York: Guilford Press, pp. 96–111. Afflerbach, P. and Johnston, P. (1993). Writing Language Arts Report Cards: Eleven teachers’ conflicts of knowing and communicating. Elementary School Journal 94: 73–86. Alexander, P.A. (2005). The Path to Competence: A life span developmental perspective on reading. Retrieved September 30, 2008, from http://www.nrconline.org/ accessed 30 September 2008. American Psychological Association (APA) (1999). The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. Washington, DC: APA. Baker, L. and Brown, A. (1984). Metacognitive Skills and Reading. In P. Pearson, R. Barr, M. Kamil and P. Mosenthal (Eds) Handbook of Reading Research. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 353–94. Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the Black Box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan 80: 139–48. Crooks, T. (1988). The Impact of Classroom Evaluation Practices on Students. Review of Educational Research 58: 438–81.

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Crotty, M. (1998). The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and perspective in the research process. London: Sage Publications. Davis, A. (1998). The Limits of Educational Assessment. Oxford: Blackwell. Flavell, J. (1976). Metacognitive Aspects of Problem Solving. In L.B. Resnick (Ed.) The Nature of Intelligence. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 231–5. Hoffman, J., Worthy, J., Roser, N., McKool, S., Rutherford, W. and Strecker, S. (1996). Performance Assessment in First-grade Classrooms: The PALM model. In D. Leu, C. Kinzer and K. Hinchman (Eds) Literacies for the 21st Century: Research and practice. Chicago, IL: National Reading Conference. Johnson, R., Willeke, M. and Steiner, D. (1998). Stakeholder Collaboration in the Design and Implementation of a Family Literacy Portfolio Assessment. American Journal of Education 19: 339–53. Johnston, P. (1987). Teachers as Evaluation Experts. The Reading Teacher 40: 744–8. Joint Committee on Testing Practices (2004). Code of Fair Testing Practices in Education (rev. edn). Washington DC: APA. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. LeMahieu, P., Gitomer, D. and Eresh, J. (1995). Portfolios in Large-scale Assessment: Difficult but not impossible. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice 14: 11–28. Lincoln, Y. and Guba, E. (1985). Naturalistic Inquiry. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Messick, S. (1989). Validity. In R. L. Linn (Ed.) Educational Measurement (3rd edn). New York: Macmillan, pp. 13–104. Moss, P. (1992). Shifting Conceptions of Validity in Educational Measurement: Implications for performance assessment. Review of Educational Research 62: 229–58. Palincsar, A. and Brown, A. (1984). Reciprocal Teaching of Comprehension-fostering and Monitoring Activities. Cognition and Instruction 1: 117–75. Pellegrino, J., Chudowsky, N. and Glaser, R. (2001). Knowing what Students Know: The science and design of educational assessment. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Popham, W. (1997). What’s Wrong – and What’s Right – with Rubrics. Educational Leadership 55: 72–5. Sadler, D. (1989). Formative Assessment and the Design of Instructional Systems. Instructional Science 13: 191–209. Schon, D. (1990). Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions. San Francisco, CA: JosseyBass. Shepard, L. and Bliem, C. (1995). Parents’ Thinking about Standardized Tests and Performance Assessments. Educational Researcher 24: 25–32. Stephens, D., Pearson, P.D., Gilrane, C., Roe, M., Stallman, A.C., Shelton, J. et al. (1995). Assessment and Decision Making in Schools: A cross-site analysis. Reading Research Quarterly 30: 478–99. Stiggins, R. (2001). The Unfulfilled Promise of Classroom Assessment. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice 20: 5–15. Tittle, C. (2005). Validity: Whose Construction is it in the Teaching and Learning Context? Educational Measurement: Issues and Practices 8: 5–13. Valencia, S. and Au, K. (1997). Portfolios across Educational Contexts: Issues of evaluation, professional development, and system validity. Educational Assessment 4: 1–35. Valencia, S. and Calfee, R. (1991). The Development and Use of Literacy Portfolios for Students, Classes and Teachers. Applied Measurement in Education 4: 333–45. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in Society: The development of higher psychological processes (trans. M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner and E. Souberman). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wilson, M. and Adams, R. (1996). Evaluating Progress with Alternative Assessments: A model for Chapter 1. In M. B. Kane (Ed.) Implementing Performance Assessment: Promise, problems and challenges. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers.

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35 Initial teacher preparation for reading instruction Cathy M. Roller

The focus of this review is the initial teacher preparation for reading instruction. In the period from 1995 to the present there has been a great deal of activity surrounding both this topic and initial teacher preparation in general. It is difficult to pinpoint the causes and reasons prompting this activity, and there appears to be a cycle of criticism followed by innovation and research activity relating to some basic unresolved tensions surrounding teaching (Openshaw and Ball, 2008: 156). These tensions give life to debates addressing unresolved questions such as: • • • • • •

Is teaching a practical task centred on classroom management or is it a learned profession? How should teaching candidates be inducted and where? What precise mix of knowledge, qualities, and skills might be required of future teachers? Should the professional or the academic aspects of teacher education programmes predominate? Who should exercise ultimate control of teacher education curriculum and programmes? How can the teacher supply be maintained both cheaply and efficiently? (Openshaw and Ball, 2008: 156)

Regardless of the causes, the volume and reach of interest in initial teacher preparation is astounding. For example in the United States Risko et al. (2008) reported consulting four relatively recent general teacher preparation research reviews and no fewer than eight research reviews on teacher preparation for reading instruction. A 2004 research review of studies related to New Zealand (Cameron and Baker, 2004, front matter) reported using one of the same general reviews as a model for the organization and key themes identified by their review. In addition to the many reviews there have been numerous commission and government reports.

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Report of the National Reading Panel (NRP, 2000), United States. Prepared to Teach: An Investigation into the Preparation of Teachers to Teach Literacy and Numeracy (Louden et al., 2005), Australia. Teaching Reading (NITL, 2005), Australia. Pre-service Teacher Education in Australia: A Mapping Study of Selection Processes, Course Structure and Content, and Accreditation Processes (Ingvarson et al., 2004), Australia. The Sutherland Report, Teacher Education and Training (NCIHE, 1997), England. The Rose Report, Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading (Rose, 2006), England.

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In New Zealand there were so many inquiries and reports that a principal of a school of education said: The fact that the term ‘inquiry’ has been used places this whole operation in the same category as a train crash even before it begins. So why have another inquiry or review? Reviews are often things we do when we don’t know what do or not prepared to do what needs to be done. (Openshaw and Ball, 2008: 169)

Why so much activity? One factor influencing the volume of activity may be the inclusion of background teaching information in recent administrations of international assessments such as The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s (IEA) Progress in International Reading Study (PIRLS); the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA); and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) (see Chapter 36, this volume). In addition to measuring student achievement, the assessments have included information about how subjects are taught. The OECD produced a specific report on teacher education in mathematics and science. Still another possibility is the building of large data systems that are capable of matching individual students to teachers and teachers to their preparation institution, thus allowing for the first time the ability to track teacher candidates and measure their students’ performances (Noel, 2006). Concerns over school leaver competence and achievement gaps also seem to permeate recent discussions of teacher preparation. Many of the reports reference school leavers’ need for twenty-first-century skills and nearly all mention frustration with educational systems that seem impervious to change. In addition, across the globe there seems to have been a move towards ‘highly prescriptive centralized sets of professional standards for teacher preparation’ (O’Donoghue and Ball, 2008), that in general follow on the heels of standards-based reform and aligned systems of student standards and assessments (see Chapter 44, this volume). Another theme that threads through the activity around teacher preparation is ideology. In England immediately following the the Literacy Task Force’s Report: A Reading Revolution: How We Can Teach All Children to Read Well (LTF, 1997), the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) was enacted. Within that effort the Literacy Hour was established along with a very detailed framework for teaching. The Literacy Hour 414

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specified the kinds of activities and the number of minutes to be allotted to those activities. Although the strategy included both word-level and text-level teaching objectives, there was a perceived bias to phonics as the essential component. The response to NLS was mixed, featuring dissension among teachers, teacher educators and policymakers. Stannard and Huxford, who led the development of NLS, argued that implementation was made more difficult by strident critics of the approach to reading (Wyse et al., 2009). After enacting the NLS, England saw an initial improvement in the performance of their 10/11-year-olds in national statutory tests that government attributed to the NLS, but subsequently the gains levelled off. The initial increases in the tests have been attributed to teachers becoming better at teaching-to-the-test (Wyse and Torrance, 2009). At the same time, however, international assessments showed that England’s ten-year-olds ‘are among the best readers internationally’; they also had ‘poorer attitudes toward reading and read less often for fun than pupils in other countries’ (Foster, 2003: 1, as cited in Valtin et al., 2003: 74). An example of attempts to address this issue, seen in one of the initiatives by the UK National Literacy Trust (which describes itself as ‘an independent charity that changes lives through literacy’ although this initiative was government funded), was the National Reading Campaign (see http://www.literacytrust. org.uk/campaign/index.html). Its goal was ‘to ensure that as many people as possible enjoy the pleasures and benefits reading can bring’. Those committed to a more holistic approach to reading may have found expression of their values in this initiative. These themes characterizing ‘ideological’ commitments to the teaching of early reading are clearly traceable in policy tracks. There are those who focus on the word-level and phonics and those who focus on the larger text-level, interpretation and comprehension. Ideology can also be seen at work in England’s Rose Report (Rose, 2006), which recommended the teaching of synthetic phonics. The opening paragraph of the Summary reads: Over the first nine years of the national Curriculum (1989–98) very little impact was made on raising standards of reading. Despite the content of phonic work being a statutory component of the National Curriculum over that time, reports from Her Majesty’s Inspectors show that it was often a neglected or a weak feature of the teaching. That changes markedly with the advent of the National Literacy Strategy in 1998. The Strategy engaged schools in developing a structured programme of literacy that included not only what phonic content should be taught but also how to teach it, with a subsequent rise in standards. (Rose, 2006: 3) However, in other reports, it was the balance and enactment of several priorities that were cited for improving results: A framework for teaching which schools delivered through the Literacy Hour . . . subject specific training for teachers, intervention in schools that were failing their pupils and the setting of clear targets at the school, local and national levels. The National Year of Reading, and the continuing Reading Campaign which accompanied the national Literacy Strategy, had a significant impact on raising the profile of reading not just with schools but also with families and the community. (DfES Education and Skills Committee, cited in Rose, 2006: 12) 415

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These examples seem to illustrate the influence of ideology and the importance of beliefs in fuelling policy activity. The evidence is contested, sometimes ignored, and was subject to political interpretations. There were echoes of these positions also occurring in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Another factor that has played prominently in recent activity related to initial teacher preparation was the push towards an ‘evidence-based’ practice in education as a whole. In the United States, the funding of the National Reading panel and of Reading First (a federal programme providing funds for ‘evidence-based instruction’), at the level of US$5 billion, was tied to the claim that there was ‘scientifically-based research’ that ‘proved’ that phonics was the best method for initial reading instruction (see Chapter 42, this volume). In one piece of legislation there were over 100 references to scientifically based research or scientifically based reading research. The National Reading Panel Report was presented as a summary of ‘An Evidenced-based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and its Implications for Reading Instruction’. The same focus on evidence-based practice was apparent in the Australian document, Teaching Reading: Report and Recommendations. The Executive Summary began with this statement: Underlying this report by the Committee for the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy is the conviction that effective literacy teaching, and of reading in particular, should be grounded in findings from rigorous, evidence-based research. . . . evidence-based high-quality schooling [is] imperative. (NITL, 2005: 11) In the United States, the National Reading Panel (NRP) included a section on initial teacher preparation and professional development. Using the evidence standards imposed by the panel, the researchers were able to locate only 11 studies of initial preparation, and in those 11 studies none used student achievement as an outcome measure. It was, I believe, the paucity of evidence that spurred reviewers to conduct the numerous reviews referred to in the Risko et. al. (2008) review. Most reviews used broader criteria than the very limited criteria of the NRP, and the researchers were eager to draw conclusions about what aspects of teacher preparation were and were not supported by evidence. Despite these efforts the reviews universally conclude the evidencebase for initial teacher preparation in general and specifically in reading does not yet provide clear guidance for building such programmes.

Findings from research into initial teacher preparation The most striking finding of recent research on initial teacher preparation for reading instruction is the tremendous variability that exists across preparation programmes. The programmes vary in the entry routes to teaching, the proportion of coursework devoted to reading, and the amounts and types of practical experience. For example in Australia, 36 institutions reported over 400 initial teacher preparation programmes. These included three- and four-year baccalaureate programmes, one- and two-year postgraduate programmes, university-based programmes, and school-based programmes. In the 416

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United States, there were even more possible entry routes, including district and regional programmes operating outside a university framework that involved on-the-job training supplemented by some training either in vacation periods or after school and weekend meetings. In the United States it was possible to take five years to obtain a teaching credential or as little as one year. In New Zealand there were so many programmes leading to initial certification that a full description of the many routes does not exist. Hoffman and Roller (2001) reported from their survey of teacher preparation for reading instruction that some beginning teachers had as many as 24 semester hours of work related specifically to reading instruction and including substantial practicum work-related reading while other beginning teachers had only three semester hours of work relating specifically to reading instruction and no practica specifically focused on reading. In Australia the average number of course units to be taken over four years was two literacy units; however, some programmes included as many as five units (Louden et al., 2005). Another measure from an Australian study indicated that programmes required from a low of less than two per cent to a high of over 14 per cent, and all but three institutions devoted less than ten per cent of total credits to the teaching. Half of all institutions devoted five per cent or less of total credit points to this activity (Ingvarson et al., 2004). There is even more variation in the practical experiences provided by teacher candidates. The Australian survey (Ingvarson et al., 2004) that included student teaching found that the number of days of practical experience ranged from a low of 50 days in one institution to a high of 160 in two others, with an average of 101 days overall. Sailors et al. (2004) closely examined the practicum components of eight exemplary US sites and they found that practicum experience (not including student teaching) ranged from 70 to 303 hours and averaged 159.5 hours. Besides time devoted to practica, the forms of practica also varied. The Australian survey indicated that practica included spending blocks of time in a school, doing an internship, and spending one or more days each week in a school during a semester or term, and also spending dispersed single days. Sailors et al. (2004) also reported a variety of practica configurations. Programmes provided candidates with opportunities to work with different grouping configurations, including small group and whole class. Many sites planned early literacy practica to provide candidates’ experience with children of varying ages, grades, and developmental levels. One point of consistency among the eight exemplary programmes was the provision of opportunities to work one-on-one with a struggling reader. The Risko et al. (2008) review indicated that tutoring experiences were instrumental in candidates developing a sense of teaching efficacy. In the one-on-one setting they were able to see that struggling readers responded to their teaching moves and that when given appropriate instruction the struggling readers learned. Programmes also differed in the relationships between university coursework and school-based experiences. Many early practica were free-standing and not connected to particular coursework. Other practica operated in the context of school-based preparation programmes and the distinction between coursework and practica were difficult to discern; still other practica were closely tied to particular courses where course assignments were implemented in classrooms, evaluated by professors and part of the university coursework. 417

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Why the variability? While some variability across programmes is to be expected, the incredible number and types of programmes initially preparing candidates to teach reading; the variability among teacher preparation programmes in terms of the number of semester hours or units related to reading; the percentage of the required hours or units devoted to reading as opposed to other subjects; the variations in the numbers of days and hours devoted to practical experience; the array of relationships among coursework and practica; and the formats for those practica, are overwhelming. Some would infer from the existing variability that we do not have strong evidence guiding our delivery of teacher preparation for reading instruction. The inference is somewhat justified. Despite the numbers of research reviews addressing preparation for teaching, and particularly for teaching reading, the research provides few strongly supported findings. The NRP (2000) Report indicated that while the 11 studies they identified as meeting the highest standard of evidence indicated that teacher preparation programmes were successful in changing candidates beliefs and behaviours, and the studies they identified addressing teacher professional development showed that professional development changed teacher beliefs and behaviours in ways that impacted student learning, the body of work was simply too sparse to draw strong conclusions. In the United States and New Zealand, reviews characterize the research on teacher preparation (both the general literature and the literature specific to preparation for teaching early reading), as consisting of mostly ‘one shot’ studies conducted by teacher educators in single courses whose primary motivation was to improve their own teaching practice (Cameron and Baker, 2004; Risko et al., 2008). There is a surprising lack of funded studies and many countries, including the United States and New Zealand, lack even simple descriptive studies of initial teacher preparation. there is little published research about the programme content and approaches in initial teacher education, so it is not possible to compare the range of approaches in New Zealand. While there have been presentations at conferences about different approaches to programmes and programme development, few authors have prepared papers describing their work, so this information is not available for critique . . . there has been no national research on the composition and course requirements of programmes. As a consequence there is no comparative research linking programme design with outcomes for student teachers. (Cameron and Baker, 2004: 15). In the United States, one study that attempted to broadly describe initial teacher preparation for reading instruction was titled What Education Schools Aren’t Teaching about Reading and What Elementary Teachers Aren’t Learning. As the title suggests, the study was ideologically motivated. The ideological bias, the rather pseudoscientific approach, and design flaws made the study and its conclusions suspect and untrustworthy. Many of the government reports also suffer from ideological biases and almost all are conducted under timelines that preclude serious research designs. Also remarkably sparse are longitudinal studies following teacher candidates from selection through the beginning years of teaching. 418

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There are very, very few studies that can connect initial teacher preparation studies to student achievement. Some exceptions are in states where large data systems have made it possible to connect student achievement to a specific teacher and to connect the teacher with a particular preparation programme. So far, however, these studies examine variables at such a high level that it is not easy to conclude that there is causal relationship between teacher preparation and student achievement. In many cases student achievement may be related to selection biases, with some preparation programmes having clearly better or worse intake classes. However, another explanation for the wide variability among initial teacher preparation programmes is simply that there may be a number of equally effective ways to prepare teachers for teaching early reading. One study supporting this conclusion was supported by the International Reading Association (IRA). Its National Commission on Excellence in Elementary Teacher Preparation for Reading Instruction (2003) described and compared eight excellent initial preparation programmes selected through a competitive process. The study confined itself to study four year undergraduate programmes in the United States. But even among these programmes there was considerable variability. Some programmes were site-based and all coursework and practica took place at a school site; others had multiple practica sites but the experiences were closely tied to coursework, and university faculty made assignments to be conducted at the practice sites. The same faculty evaluated assignments and observed teacher candidates at those sites. The number of hours devoted to reading coursework and practica also varied. While the researchers were able to characterize eight distinctive features across the programmes, there was substantial variability within the programmes.

Steps needed to improve initial teacher preparation The first step in developing a plan for improving initial teacher preparation would be to provide accurate descriptive reports of initial teacher preparation that include a focus on preparation to teach early reading. In this respect Australia provides a positive example. Preservice Teacher Education in Australia: A Mapping Study of Selection Processes, Course Structure and Content, and Accreditation Processes (Ingvarson et al., 2004) provides a good overview of initial teacher preparation in Australia. In many cases some national data are available, since the government requires reporting of specific statistics. (For example see the Institutions of Postsecondary Education System (IPEDS) that summarizes data collected under Title II of the Higher Education Action in the United States). Good descriptions of existing practice are essential. A second step would be to focus research at crucial points in the evidence chain. It is particularly difficult to trace the effects of initial teacher preparation on student achievement if only because such studies require following teacher candidates through their programmes and into their practice. Most researchers would agree that a teachers’ first year of teaching is not an adequate reflection of the teacher preparation programme and would suggest that allowing three years is necessary. For example Grossman et al. (2005) found that initial preparation was overwhelmed in the first year, but that by the second year of teaching the concepts and content of the teacher preparation programme resurfaced (as measured by teacher focus groups). Ultimately, teacher effectiveness is determined by candidate characteristics at intake to a preparation programme, the preparation programme itself, the context of the initial 419

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teaching assignment, learning during an induction period, and the characteristics of the schools and students in which they teach. We do have evidence at each link in the evidence chain. We know that verbal ability and other personal characteristics of teachers correlate with student achievement. We also know that teacher preparation can and does change teacher candidate beliefs and behaviours (NRP, 2000; Risko et al., 2008). We also have many studies demonstrating that changing teachers’ beliefs and behaviours can influence student achievement. In addition, we know that certain teaching practices are associated with higher student reading achievement (NRP, 2000). Given the chain of evidence, we have every reason to expect that initial teacher preparation can have positive impacts on student achievement. A third important step is to mine the existing reviews for the findings that are supported and use those findings in conjunction with learning theories to develop a specific theory of initial teacher preparation. Risko et al.’s (2008) review found convincing evidence that initial preparation can and does change teacher candidate beliefs, and also reported evidence that initial preparation changes teachers’ classroom behaviours. However, the researcher also reported cases where initial preparation failed to change beliefs and behaviours. For example the research studies examining the promotion of reflection among teacher candidates almost unanimously reported failing to teach candidates to reflect on their practice. The work addressing cultural diversity indicated that while an initial preparation course was able to sensitize candidates to cultural differences, the course did not have an impact of the use of multicultural literature in practice teaching. The work addressing struggling readers suggested that carefully structured practicum experiences were successful in changing beliefs and had an impact on a range of outcome measures, including teaching observations, transcripts, lessons plans, and assessment and teaching reports. The review goes on to suggest hypotheses accounting for the differences in impact of initial preparation in the separate areas. Looking across the entire corpus of reviewed studies, they noted that interventions delivered in various studies differed in the level of explicitness used to teach in the various areas. They defined explicitness to include five elements – explicit explanation, use of examples, modelling, practice within the university classroom, and practice with students in field settings. After coding each study for explicitness and effect strength (defined as the percentage of subjects for which a particular finding held) they found a strong correlation between explicitness and effect strength.

Conclusion Looking back over the three topic areas referenced above – reflection, cultural diversity, and struggling readers – there were clear differences in the level of explicitness with which the initial preparation or intervention was delivered. In the area of reflection, there was a specific decision not to be explicit with teacher candidates. Theory suggested that reflection by its very nature was unique and that trying to define and explain reflection would preclude candidate’s development of their own reflective thoughts and instead teach them to think like the models. In the cultural diversity studies, there was considerable attention paid to helping candidates discover their own cultural heritages, and multicultural literature was used in the course. However, there were no extended practical experiences that allowed candidates to actually use and 420

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practise their new awareness with students in classrooms (see Chapter 24, this volume). In the struggling reader studies, the interventions were structured and intense and explicit. The findings in these three content areas are consistent with an explictiness hypothesis and suggest that research looking at the impact of explicitness is called for. Another finding that suggests fertile ground for research is a set of studies reported in Risko et al. (2008) by Fazio (2000, 2003). These studies show the impact of an intervention in metacognitve comprehension strategies with teacher candidates can actually be traced through to students. She reported, ‘Observations and artifacts revealed that Holly’s [the teacher candidate] students used strategies quite often’ (Fazio, 2003: 32). Because the studies had a very specific focus and because use of strategies was observable both in the candidates’ teaching and the students’ activities, the tracing of impact was possible. A final step is to develop large-scale national and international research programmes on initial teacher preparation that are guided by theory (e.g. explicitness or learning by doing), that are focused enough to detect differences, and that are longitudinal. Risko et al. (2008) suggested that their review was able to identify patterns and findings more readily than some previous reviews, in part because it was focused on teacher preparation for reading instruction. They hypothesized that effective teaching looks different in different subject areas, and variation by subject actually blurs the research lens and obfuscates patterns. The very specific case studies by Fazio also support the notion of looking narrowly instead of treating initial teacher preparation as a uniform whole. In addition, we need longitudinal studies because the impact of initial preparation builds over a period of years. If we are to understand and improve initial preparation we must be committed to disciplined inquiry that looks at each of the phases moulding a teachers’ ultimate effectiveness.

References Cameron, M. and Baker, R. (2004). Research on Initial Teacher Education in New Zealand: 1992–2004. Wellington, NZ: New Zealand Council for Educational Research & Ministry of Education. Fazio, M. (2000). Constructive Comprehension and Metacognitive Strategy Instruction in a Fieldbased Teacher Education Program: Yearbook of the College Reading Association 22: 177–99. Fazio, M. (2003). Constructive Comprehension and Metacognitive Strategy Instruction in a Fieldbased Teacher Education Program: Effecting change in preservice and inservice teachers – participant one. Yearbook of the College Reading Association 25: 23–45. Grossman, P.L., Schoenfeld, A., with Lee, C.D. (2005). Teaching Subject Matter: In L. DarlingHammond, J. Bransford, P. LePage, K. Hammerness and H. Duffy (Eds) Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What teachers should learn and be able to do. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass. Ingvarson, L., Beavis, A., Kleinhenz, E. and Elliott, A. (2004) Pre-service Teacher Education in Australia: A mapping study of selection processes, course structure and content, and accreditation processes. Melbourne, VIC: Australian Council for Educational Research. http://www.acer.edu.au/tll/TeacherEducation.html accessed International Reading Association (IRA) (2003). National Commission on Excellence in Elementary Teacher Preparation for Reading Instruction Report. Newark, DE: IRA.

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Literacy Task Force (LTF) (1997). A Reading Revolution: How we can teach every child to read well. The preliminary report of the literacy task force. London: Department for Education and Employment (DfEE). Louden, W., Rohl, M., Gore, J., McIntosh, A., Greaves, D., Wright, R. et al. (2005). Prepared to Teach: An investigation into the preparation of teachers to teach literacy and numeracy. West Perth, WA: Worldwide Print. http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/school_education/publications_resources/profiles/prepared_to_teach.htm accessed National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (NCIHE) (1997). Higher Education in a Learning Society (The Dearing Report) Report 10 (The Sutherland Report). Leeds: NCIHE. https://bei.leeds.ac.uk/Partners/NCIHE// accessed National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy (NITL) (2005). Teaching Reading. Canberra, ACT: Australian Government. http://www.dest.gov.au/nitl/report.htm accessed National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching Children to Read: An evidenced-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction: Reports of the subgroups. Washington, DC: National Institute for Child Health and Human Development. http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org/ accessed Noell, G. (2006). Annual Report: Value added assessment of teacher preparation. Lafayette, LA: Louisiana State University. http://asa.regents.state.la.us/TE/2005-technical-report.pdf accessed Openshaw, R. and Ball, T. (2008). New Zealand. In T. O’Donoghue and C. Whitehead (Eds) Teacher Education in the English Speaking World. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Risko, V., Roller, C., Cummins, C., Bean, R., Block, C.C., Anders, P. et al. (2008). A Critical Analysis of Research on Reading Teacher Education. Reading Research Quarterly 43(3): 252–88. Rose, J. (2006). Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading. London: Department for Education and Skills (DfES). http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/phonics/report.pdf accessed Sailors, M., Keehn, S., Martinez, M., Harmon, J., Hedrick, W., Fine, J. et al. (Eds) (2004). Features of Early Field Experiences at Sights of Excellence in Reading Teacher Education Programs. In Fifty-third Yearbook of the National Reading Conference. Chicago, IL: National Reading Conference, pp. 342–55. Valtin, R., Roller, C. and Else, J. (2007). How International Assessments Contribute to Literacy Policy. In J. Flood, S. Heath, and D. Lapp (Eds) Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy through the Communicative and Visual Arts. Old Tappan, NJ: Simon and Schuster, pp. 73–7. Walsh, K., Glaser, D. and Wilcox, D.D. (2006). What Education Schools Aren’t Teaching about Reading and What Elementary Teachers Aren’t Learning. Washington, DC: National Council on Teaching Quality. Wyse, D. and Torrance, H. (2009). The development and consequences of national curriculum assessment for primary education in England. Educational Research 51(2): 213–228. Wyse, D. McCreery, E. and Torrance, H. (2009). The trajectory and impact of national reform: Curriculum and assessment in English primary schools. In R. Alexander, C. Doddington, J. Gray, L. Hargreaves and R. Kershner (Eds.) The Cambridge Primary Review Research Surveys. London: Routledge.

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Part 5 English, language and literacy teaching: countries as contexts

36 Comparative international studies of reading literacy: current approaches and future directions Gerry Shiel and Eemer Eivers

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), sponsored by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), sponsored by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), are now administered on a regular basis, and provide benchmarks against which to compare countries and regions on a range of text types and reading processes. PIRLS is administered to students in Grade 4 (the fourth year of compulsory schooling) every five years. The most recent PIRLS assessment took place in 2006, with first results published in 2007 (Mullis et al., 2007). The next one is scheduled for 2011. PISA is administered to 15-year-olds every three years. The 2006 administration of PISA is the most recent one for which results are currently available (OECD, 2007a). In 2006, 40 countries participated in PIRLS, while 57 (including all 30 OECD member countries) took part in PISA. Twentyeight countries participated in both assessments, allowing for some comparisons between performance at primary and post-primary levels in those countries. Whereas PIRLS focuses exclusively on reading literacy, PISA also assesses mathematics and science. The emphasis on each domain varies by cycle, with reading designated as a major assessment domain in 2000 and again in 2009. Both PIRLS and PISA define reading as an active process involving understanding and using written texts, while PISA’s definition also refers to reflecting on texts (Table 36.1). Both definitions acknowledge the importance of reading for the individual, and for society more generally. PIRLS also refers to participating in communities of readers in school and in everyday life, reflecting its emphasis on describing interactive school and home supports for developing reading literacy. PIRLS and PISA also share the goal of examining factors associated with literacy development. In the case of PIRLS, these include home background factors and teaching and learning processes at school (curriculum and instruction). PISA, on the other hand, seeks to ‘determine the extent to which young people have acquired the wider knowledge and

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Table 36.1 Comparison between aspects of the PIRLS and PISA assessments PIRLS

PISA

Target Group

Primary-level students, Grade 4

Post-primary students – age 15

Frequency

5-year cycle

3-year cycle (but reading literacy is ‘main’ domain once every nine years)

Definition of Reading Literacy

‘the ability to understand and use those written language forms required by society and/or valued by the individual. Young readers can construct meaning from a variety of texts. They read to learn, to participate in communities of readers in school and everyday life, and for enjoyment’ (Mullis et al., 2006: 3).

‘understanding, using and reflecting on written texts, to achieve one’s goals, to develop one’s knowledge and potential, and to participate in society’ (OECD, 2006: 46).

Item Types

• Multiple-choice • Constructed response (short)

• •

Multiple-choice Constructed response (short and extended)

Text Subscales

• •

Reading for literary purposes Reading for informational purpose

• •

Continuous texts Non-continuous texts

Reading Process Subscales

•

Retrieve and straight forward inference Interpret, integrate and evaluate

• • •

Retrieve Interpret Reflect and evaluate

•

skills in reading . . . literacy that they will need in adult life’ (OECD, 2006: 9), and is more concerned with system-, school- and student-level factors associated with performance, than with classroom-level instructional factors. Indeed, the application of an age-based sample in PISA precludes the establishment of links between curriculum and performance, as sampled students may be drawn from several grade levels and classes in a school. In addition to overall scales, both PIRLS and PISA report on performance with respect to subscales based on text type (texts read for literacy purposes, texts read for informational purposes in PIRLS; continuous and non-continuous texts in PISA), and on process (retrieve and straightforward inference, and interpret, integrate and evaluate in PIRLS; and retrieve, interpret, and reflect and evaluate in PISA). Both assessments include multiple-choice and constructed response item types. While the development of an international assessment of reading such as PIRLS or PISA might seem like a straightforward matter involving the selection of suitable passages and questions based on those passages, in practice this is not the case. First, texts (and associated questions) must have cross-cultural validity (i.e. they must be suitable for and relevant to students in all participating countries). Second, translated forms of texts and questions must be comparable across countries and languages. The results of international assessments are only useful to the extent that these conditions, and others related to the sampling of schools and students within countries, have been met. These questions are considered later in this chapter. 426

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Reporting on achievement outcomes The data presented in Table 36.2 offer a rank ordering of countries in PIRLS 2006 and PISA 2006 in terms of their overall performance on reading literacy. There is a limited relationship between the sets of higher-achieving countries in the two studies. In PIRLS 2006, the highest achieving country was the Russian Federation. Yet its performance in PISA 2006 (440 points) was well below the average of 492 for OECD countries. Hence, it seems that reading performance among students in the Russian Federation declines to

Table 36.2 Mean scores of participating countries in PIRLS and PISA in 2006 PIRLS 2006

PISA 2006

Country

Mean Score

Country

Mean Score

Russian Federation Hong Kong Canada – Alberta Singapore Canada – B.C Luxembourg Canada – Ontario Italy Hungary Sweden Germany Netherlands Belgium (Flemish) Bulgaria Denmark Canada – Nova Scotia Latvia United States of America England Austria Lithuania Chinese Taipei Canada – Quebec New Zealand Slovak Republic Scotland France Slovenia Poland Spain Israel Iceland

565 564 560 558 558 557 555 551 551 549 548 547 547 547 546 542 541 540 539 538 537 535 533 532 531 527 522 522 519 513 512 511

Korea Finland Hong Kong Canada New Zealand Ireland Australia Liechtenstein Poland Sweden Netherlands Belgium (French + Flemish) Estonia Switzerland Japan Chinese Taipei United Kingdom Germany Denmark Slovenia Macao-China OECD Country Average Austria France Iceland Norway Czech Republic Hungary Latvia Luxembourg Croatia Portugal

556 547 536 527 521 517 513 510 508 507 507 501 501 499 498 496 495 495 495 494 492 492 490 488 484 484 483 482 480 479 477 472

(Continued) 427

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Table 36.2 (Contd) PIRLS International Average Moldova Belgium (French) Norway Romania Georgia Macedonia (Rep. of) Trinidad and Tobago Iran, Islamic Rep. of Indonesia Qatar Kuwait Morocco South Africa

500 500 500 498 489 471 442 436 421 405 353 330 323 302

Lithuania Italy Slovak Rep. Spain Greece Turkey Chile Russian Federation Israel Thailand Uruguay Mexico Bulgaria Serbia Jordan Romania Indonesia Brazil Montenegro Colombia Tunisia Argentina Azerbaijan Qatar Kyrgyzstan

470 469 466 461 460 447 442 440 439 417 413 411 402 401 401 396 393 393 392 385 380 374 353 312 285

Source: Mullis et al., 2007: Exhibit 1.1; OECD, 2007a: Table 6.1c. PIRLS international standard deviation = 100; OECD country average standard deviation = 99. PISA 2006 reading literacy scores are anchored to the 2000 reading literacy scale, where the mean was set at 500, and the standard deviation at 100. Reading achievement data for the US are not available for PISA 2006.

a considerable extent between grade 4 and grade 9 (the modal grade for students in PISA). On the other hand, Hong Kong is ranked near the top in both studies. There are also some differences in performance across cycles of PIRLS and PISA, though reasons for such differences are not always apparent. Eight countries, including the Russian Federation and Hong Kong, showed improved performance on PIRLS between 2001 and 2006, while six, including Sweden (the highest-performing country in PIRLS 2001) showed significant declines. In PISA, four countries, including Korea (which overtook Finland for top spot in 2006) and Poland, showed significant improvement between 2000 and 2006, while 13, including Spain and Japan, showed declines in achievement (Table 36.3). Like Russia, Italy showed an improvement at primary level on PIRLS between 2001 and 2006, and a decline at post-primary level on PISA during roughly the same time period. Overall performance on PIRLS and PISA can also be examined with reference to the distribution of performance within countries. Here, differences between high- and lowperforming countries on benchmarks (PIRLS) and proficiency levels (PISA) are considered. Benchmarks and proficiency levels are score intervals on the overall reading 428

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Table 36.3 Countries/regions in PIRLS and PISA showing significant differences in performance across assessment cycles PIRLS 2006 – PIRLS 2001

PISA 2006 – PISA 2000

Countries showing increase

Difference (in score points)

Countries showing increase

Difference (in score points)

Russian Federation Hong Kong Singapore Slovenia Slovak Republic Italy Germany Hungary

+37 +36 +30 +20 +13 +11 +9 +8

Chile Korea Poland Liechtenstein

+33 +31 +29 +28

Countries showing decline Morocco Romania England Sweden Netherlands Lithuania

Countries showing decline −27 −22 −13 −12 −7 −6

Argentina Spain Romania Bulgaria Japan Iceland Russian Federation Norway Italy France Australia Greece Thailand

−45 −32 −32 −28 −24 −22 −22 −21 −19 −17 −15 −14 −14

Sources: Mullis et al., 2007: Exhibit 1.3; OECD, 2007b: Table 6.3a.

achievement scales. Descriptions of the reading skills that students in each score interval are expected to be able to demonstrate are also available. In PIRLS 2006, high-scoring countries had relatively large percentages of students scoring at ‘advanced’ level, ranging from 19 per cent (Russian Federation) to eight per cent (Slovak Republic) (Table 36.4). In contrast, just two per cent of students in South Africa, and zero per cent in Indonesia, Qatar, Kuwait and Morocco achieved at an advanced level. Between 46 per cent and 78 per cent of students in these low-scoring countries achieved scores that were below the lowest benchmark. It is not possible to describe the skills that characterize the performance of students scoring at this level. PISA 2006 proficiency levels range from Level 1 (low) to Level 5 (high). In addition, there is a ‘below Level 1’ for students who do not demonstrate the basic skills required to answer Level 1 items. Again, in high-scoring countries such as Korea and Finland, relatively few students score at Level 1 or below it (Table 36.5). On the other hand, 429

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Table 36.4 Percentages of students in high- and low-achieving countries at different benchmarks on the PIRLS 2006 overall reading literacy scale Below Lowest Benchmark

Lowest Benchmark

High and Intermediate Benchmarks

Advanced Benchmark

Percentages of Students High-scoring

Russian Fed. Hong Kong Singapore Slovenia Slovak Republic

Low-scoring

Indonesia Qatar Kuwait Morocco South Africa

2 1 3 4 6

8 7 11 18 14

71 77 67 72 72

19 15 19 6 8

46 72 72 46 78

35 18 18 35 9

19 10 10 19 11

0 0 0 0 2

Source: Mullis et al. (2007), Exhibit 2.1.

Table 36.5 Percentages of students in high- and low-achieving countries at different levels on PISA 2006 reading literacy proficiency scale Below Level 1

Level 1

Levels 2–4

Level 5

Percentages of Students Highest

Korea Finland Hong Kong Canada New Zealand

Lowest

Tunisia Argentina Azerbaijan Qatar Kyrgyzstan

1 1 1 3 5

4 4 6 8 10

73 78 80 74 69

22 17 13 15 16

49 39 41 72 73

24 25 38 16 16

27 36 21 12 11

0 0 0 0 0

Source: OECD, 2007b: Table 6.1a.

large percentages score at Level 5. In the low-scoring countries such as Qatar and Kyrgyzstan, large percentages of students score below Level 1, and few, if any, score at Level 5. According to the OECD (2001), students who achieve at Level 1 or below can be expected to struggle with literacy tasks in their future lives and in further education. However, it is not clear if this assertion applies to developed countries (mainly OECD member countries) or to all participating countries.

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In PIRLS 2006, 17 countries/regions had significantly higher mean scores on information texts, while 19 had higher mean scores on literary texts. Differences tended to be small in countries with higher overall scores, but large in other countries. For example, in the Russian Federation students achieved a mean score on the informational texts scale that was higher (by just three points) than its mean score on the literary texts scale. In contrast, students in Indonesia had a mean score that was 20 points higher on informational texts than on literary texts. Countries in PIRLS also varied in terms of differences between reading processes. Students in Canada-Ontario had a higher mean score (by 19 points) on the interpret/integrate/evaluate scale than on retrieve/straightforward inference scale, while students in Germany scored 14 points higher on the retrieve/ straightforward inference scale than on the interpret/integrate/evaluate scale. One has to go back to 2000 for information on performance on PISA content and process subscales. In that year, a number of countries that performed well overall also demonstrated an advantage on non-continuous texts over continuous texts. In New Zealand, Australia and Belgium, the difference in favour of non-continuous texts was at least 13 points, while in France it was 17 (OECD, 2001: Fig. 4.9). Countries that did less well overall tended to do better on continuous than on non-continuous texts. The difference in Brazil was 40 points; in Mexico it was 30 points, and in Greece 26. Perhaps reading instruction in such countries focuses more on narrative/literacy texts than on non-continuous texts such as charts/graphs, forms, maps and schematics. In general, the highest-performing countries on the overall reading literacy scale in PISA 2000 also performed well on the reading process subscales. However, a number of countries with low overall scores (e.g., Portugal) did poorly on the retrieve subscale (suggesting difficulties in identifying explicitly stated information in text or making simple text-based inferences), relative to their performance on interpret and evaluate subscales, which seem to call for more higher level reading processes.

Key factors associated with performance in reading literacy In this section we examine three of the many factors that have been shown to be related to performance in PIRLS and PISA: gender, engagement in reading, and socioeconomic status.

Gender In PIRLS and PISA, females outperform males on all aspects of reading literacy (Mullis et al., 2007; OECD, 2007a), with overall international average differences ranging from one-sixth of a standard deviation (PIRLS) to one-third (PISA). Thus, it would appear that gender differences in reading literacy increase between primary and post-primary levels. While average differences between males and females on the PIRLS 2006 purpose (content) and process subscales were about the same (also one-sixth of a standard deviation), differences in PISA 2000 were smaller on the non-continuous texts subscale (about one-fifth of a standard deviation on average in favour of females) than on continuous texts subscale (two-fifths of a standard deviation). Similarly, differences in favour of females were greater on the interpret and reflect/evaluate subscales than on the retrieve subscale. Hence, some of the observed gender differences in PISA may be a function of the particular combination of tasks and texts that students encounter. One of the largest 431

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gender differences was in Finland, where females had a mean score that was over onehalf of a national standard deviation higher than males.

Engagement in reading In PIRLS, a measure of engagement in reading was obtained by asking students to indicate the frequency with which they read for fun outside of school. On average, across participating countries/regions, 40 per cent reported reading ‘everyday or almost everyday’, 28 per cent ‘once or twice a week’, and 14 per cent ‘twice a month or less’. Average achievement on the overall reading scale increased in tandem with more frequent leisure reading, though the relationship was weaker in the Russian Federation (where leisure reading is most widespread) than in most other countries. In 2000, when data on reading habits were last gathered in PISA, a measure of engagement in reading was constructed by combining students’ responses on questions relating to the diversity of texts read (including electronic texts), frequency of leisure reading, and attitude to reading. On an index with an OECD average of 0.0 and a standard deviation of 1, the highest score was obtained by Finland (0.46) and the lowest by Belgium (-0.26) (Kirsch et al., 2002). Across participating countries, females reported greater engagement (mean = 0.19) than males (-0.19), with particularly low levels of levels among males in Germany (-0.53), Belgium (-0.48) and Ireland (-0.43). The OECD average gender difference in engagement was 0.38 in favour of females, and ranged from 0.74 in Finland to just 0.04 in Korea.

Socioeconomic status and reading Both PIRLS and PISA include measures of socioeconomic status, which can be considered at the levels of the individual student and his/her school. In PIRLS 2006, parents of participating students were asked to indicate the type of work in which they were involved, if any. Using the highest occupational category of either parent, six occupational categories were identified, ranging from professional (highest category) to ‘never worked outside the home for pay’ (lowest). Across countries, there was a clear relationship between parents’ socioeconomic status and their children’s reading performance, with an average difference of 124 points between children of parents in the highest and lowest categories. In PISA 2000, students provided information about their parents’ occupations. These were converted to the International Socio-economic Index (ISEI), a continuous SES scale based on highest occupation of either parent. On average across OECD countries, students in the top quarter of the index had a mean of 545, while those in the bottom quarter had a mean of 491 (OECD, 2001). The average change in reading literacy associated with a one standard deviation change on the ISEI scale was 34 points (one-third of a standard deviation). The largest change was in Germany (44 points, indicating a strong relationships between SES and reading) and the smallest in Korea (15, indicating a weak relationship). In Finland it was 20 points, indicating the relatively weak relationship between SES and reading achievement in that country. PIRLS 2006 also showed an association between school-level SES and reading achievement. On average across countries, schools in which zero to ten per cent of students were described by their principals as economically disadvantaged achieved a mean score (521) that was significantly higher than that of students in schools in which more than 50 per cent of students were described as disadvantaged (465). The gap was larger 432

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in some countries (e.g. Germany, 93 points; England, 72; French Belgium, 64) than in others (e.g. Poland, 18; Sweden, 33) (Mullis et al., 2007: 250, Exhibit 7.2). PISA examined links between school-level socioeconomic status and reading, using school averages on the ISEI scale described above. In PISA 2006, school-level SES explained between one per cent (Macao-China) and 18 per cent (Mexico) of the variance in student reading achievement scores, with an OECD average of 11 per cent (OECD, 2007b: Table 6.5b). As one of the goals of PISA is to increase equity in learning outcomes, countries in which the association between SES and achievement is particularly strong can be expected to implement policies intended to reduce it.

Combining variables to explain achievement Several studies have sought to look at the effects of combinations of variables on reading achievement in PIRLS and PISA. One such analysis, by Kirsch et al. (2002), looked at the achievement of students in PISA at differing levels of socioeconomic status and reading engagement. Students with high SES and high engagement achieved a mean score of 583, while students with low SES and low engagement achieved a mean of 423 (Table 36.6). Of particular interest were students with low SES and high engagement (about five per cent of the PISA 2000 cohort). These students achieved a mean score of 540, which was just eight points below the mean score of students with average SES and high engagement. Kirsch et al. (2002) interpreted the relatively strong performance of the low-SES highengagement group to suggest that, at least for some students, the potential negative effects of low SES can be ameliorated by high levels of engagement in reading. However, this hypothesis can only be examined by conducting carefully controlled research studies in which gains in engagement are linked to achievement gains (e.g., Guthrie and Davis, 2003). Another approach to examining links between variables has been to construct multilevel models that seek to examine the effects of combinations of school- and studentlevel variables on reading achievement (e.g., Schagen (2004) using PIRLS data for England, and Cosgrove et al. (2005) using PISA data for Ireland). Cosgrove et al. (2005) illustrated the importance of home education, resources, number of books in the student’s home, and frequency of attendance at school in explaining reading achievement, while holding variables such as school SES and lone-parent status constant.

Table 36.6 Mean scores of students with varying levels of socioeconomic status and engagement in reading in PISA 2000 Engagement

High Medium Low

Socioeconomic Status High

Medium

Low

583 540 491

548 506 463

540 467 423

Source: Kirsch et al., 2002: Fig. 5.9. PISA Reading for Change: Performance and Engagement across Countries: Results from PISA 2000: 220, www.oecd.org/pisa.

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Information on reading instruction in international assessments An important feature of PIRLS is that it collects extensive information on the teaching of reading in schools. This information comes from school principals, class teachers and students themselves. In addition, descriptions of each participating educational system may be found in the PIRLS 2006 Encyclopaedia (Kennedy et al., 2007). At primary level there is considerable variation across countries in the use of reading materials to teach reading, but the main resource is the textbook (Mullis et al., 2007). Canada-Nova Scotia (78% of students), France (66%) and England (64%) are more likely to use a variety of children’s books as a basis for teaching reading, compared with most other countries, though such books are in widespread use in almost all countries as supplementary materials. Kuwait (34%) and the Netherlands (33%) are well ahead of other countries in the use of computers as a basis for teaching reading. Again, however, most countries except the Russian Federation, Georgia and Iran report widespread use of computers as a supplementary source of material. Worksheets are in widespread use, with weekly usage by more than 90% of students in most countries. Decoding instruction takes place less often than once a week for 43% of students in PIRLS 2006. Daily instruction was provide to 47% of students in Georgia, 45% in Italy and 39% in the Russian Federation. These data are surprising to the extent that, in many countries, instruction in decoding is less prevalent at Grade 4 than at earlier grade levels. On average across countries, 69% of students were helped to understand the new vocabulary in their texts on a daily basis, with 97% in the Russian Federation and the Slovak Republic receiving this type of instruction every day. Reading comprehension skills that were taught at least weekly were identifying main ideas (90% of students on average across countries), explaining or supporting one’s understanding (91%), comparing reading with one’s own experiences (72%) and making generalizations and drawing inferences (71%). Just 53% of students were asked to describe the style or structure of a text at least weekly, though 88% of students in Hungary and 82% in the Russian Federation were asked to do so at this level of frequency. There is a difficulty in establishing casual links between frequency of teaching various skills or strategies and student performance. Teachers may emphasize a particular strategy (e.g. daily teaching of decoding, engagement of students in oral reading) because students are weak and need additional support, or because the curriculum requires that it be covered. Hence, many of the associations between frequency of instruction and achievement in PIRLS are weak and not statistically significant. Nevertheless, the information about the teaching of reading in PIRLS may be useful to schools and teachers in reviewing curricula and planning for instruction. The emphasis on curriculum and pedagogy in PIRLS contrasts with the absence of such information in PISA, which focuses more on the system, school and student levels to explain achievement.

Criticisms of international assessments The last decade has seen unprecedented interest in international assessments of educational achievement. That such assessments continue to thrive at a time when testing of students at national level has also increased (for example in the context of initiatives such as No Child Left Behind in the United States and National Curriculum Assessment in England and Wales), may reflect a growing desire to benchmark national standards 434

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against international standards of performance. Yet PISA and PIRLS have their critics. Hilton (2006) has argued that the British government’s use of the PIRLS 2001 results, in which England ranked third, to support a claim of improved standards among children at Key Stage 2 (8–11 years of age) in England was deeply problematic. In her view, the PIRLS tests do not constitute a valid measure of reading achievement for many participating countries, and hence should not have been used to evaluate the international standing of England’s nine-year-olds. Among Hilton’s (2006) concerns are possible influences of linguistic and cultural factors on performance between and within countries. In relation to cultural factors, for example she argues that, in countries such as Iran and Morocco, with large numbers of students living in impoverished rural communities, ‘the act of reading. . . . is by its very nature different and not necessarily inferior or superior in terms of cognitive difficulty’ (Hilton, 2006: 828). While proponents of international assessments argue that the tests used in such assessments represent a consensus among participating countries and are carefully vetted for cultural bias (Whetton et al., 2007), one wonders if a series of linked tests that were more targeted to the interests and abilities of children in clusters of culturally similar countries might better serve countries’ information needs. The development of tests suitable for clusters of countries might reduce the ‘clumping’ of countries evident in Table 36.2, and could lead to greater resolution in terms of describing performance at different proficiency levels. A particular challenge in understanding the outcomes of international assessments of reading literacy concerns the interpretation of improving or declining performance. The improved performance of Korea in PISA 2006 has been attributed to a recent stronger focus on the use of essay-type examinations prior to and at the point of entry to university (OECD, 2007a). However, as females were under-represented in the Korean samples in PISA 2000 (44.1% of participating Korean students were female) and in PISA 2003 (40.5% were female), but not in 2006 (49.3% were female), it may be that improved performance in 2006 simply reflects better sampling of students. This suggests a need to strengthen the interpretation of trend data in international assessments. Another challenge in interpreting outcomes involves explaining which specific factors contribute to high achievement. Finnish educators (Välijärvi et al., 2002) cite a range of reasons why Finland performs so well on reading literacy in PISA. These include: high levels of engagement and interest in reading among students; frequent reading of newspapers, magazines, comics, emails and web pages (but, surprisingly, not fiction or non-fiction); a system of comprehensive schooling, with equal opportunities for all students; teaching students in heterogeneous groups; highly-qualified teachers; strong respect for the teaching profession; curricular flexibility and pedagogical freedom; and cultural homogeneity (Finland has fewer immigrant students than most OECD countries). However, it is unclear what the relative contributions of these variables to achievement are, or which ones can provide policymakers with blueprints for change. Despite these difficulties, both PIRLS and PISA can provide some ‘value added’ compared with national studies that seek to explain variation in performance in reading literacy. National studies can estimate the associations between ‘fixed’ variables (e.g. gender, SES and immigrant status) and achievement. In international studies, on the other hand, one can discover that the relationship between fixed variables and achievement can be influenced by system factors. For example, as noted earlier, the effects of SES on achievement vary across PISA countries, and this challenges policymakers to look at ways in which the relationship can be modified. Similarly, the consistently strong 435

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association between engagement in reading and reading achievement across countries, even after controlling for school and student SES, and the hypothesis that enhanced engagement among low-SES students could raise their reading achievement, suggests that a renewed research focus on engagement could be fruitful.

The future of international assessments of reading literacy International assessments of reading literacy continue to evolve. As noted earlier, PIRLS 2011 is seeking to examine the reading skills of students in some low-performing countries at a higher grade level, to ascertain whether skills that are missing at Grade 4 emerge at a later stage. PISA 2009 included an assessment of students’ comprehension of electronic texts as an optional addition to the traditional paper-and-pen assessment of reading. This may signal a way forward for reading assessment, by acknowledging students’ ever-increasing engagement with digital texts. It may also lead in time to adaptive testing, so that the texts and questions that students are asked to read are better matched to their levels of ability. Users of international assessments will welcome these developments, though issues around the comparability of performance on paper-based and electronic tests will continue to require attention.

Conclusion Finally, it is of interest to note that the OECD will coordinate a new international assessment of the literacy (and mathematics) skills of adults in 2012. This survey, called the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), will again focus on differences in achievement levels between countries and the reasons for those differences. Over time, PIACC may also influence the assessment of reading literacy among school-going populations.

References Cosgrove, J., Shiel, G., Sofroniou, N., Zastrutzki, S. and Shortt, F. (2005). Education for Life: The achievements of 15-year-olds in Ireland in the second cycle of PISA. Dublin: Educational Research Centre. Guthrie, J. and Davis, M.H. (2003). Motivating Struggling Readers in Middle School through an Engagement Model of Classroom Practice. Reading and Writing Quarterly 19: 59–85. Hilton, M. (2006). Measuring Standards in Primary English: Issues of validity and accountability with respect to PIRLS and National Curriculum test scores. British Journal of Educational Research 32(6): 817–37. Kennedy, A.M., Mullis, I.V., Martin, M.O. and Trong, K.L. (2007). PIRLS 2006 Encyclopedia: A guide to reading education in 40 PIRLS 2006 countries. Chestnut Hill, MA: TIMSS and PIRLS International Study Centre, Boston College. Kirsch, I., de Jong, J., Lafontaine, D., McQueen, J., Mendelovits, J. and Monseur, C. (2002). Reading for Change. Performance and engagement across countries. Results from PISA 2000. Paris: OECD. Mullis, I.V.S., Kennedy, A.M., Martin, M.O. and Sainsbury, M. (2006). PIRLS 2006 Assessment Framework and Specifications (2nd edn). Chestnut Hill, MA: TIMSS and PIRLS International Study Centre, Boston College.

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Mullis, I.V.S., Martin, M.O., Kennedy, A.M. and Foy, P. (2007). PIRLS 2006 International Report: IEA’s Progress in International Reading Literacy Study in 40 countries. Boston, MA: TIMSS and PIRLS International Study Centre, Boston College. OECD (2001). Knowledge and Skills for Life. First results of PISA 2000. Paris: OECD. OECD (2006). Assessing Scientific, Reading and Mathematical Literacy. A framework for PISA 2006. Paris: OECD. OECD (2007a). Science Competencies for Tomorrow’s World, Vol. 1: Analysis. Paris: OECD. OECD (2007b). Science Competencies for Tomorrow’s World, Vol. 2: Data. Paris: OECD. Schagen, I. (2004). ‘Multi-level analysis of PIRLS data for England.’ Paper presented at the International Research Conference, University of Cyprus, Lefkosia, May. Välijärvi, J., Linnkylä, P., Kupari, P., Reinikainen, P. and Arffman, I. (2002). The Finnish Success in PISA: Some reasons behind it. Jyväskylä, Finland: Institute of Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä. Whetton, C., Twist, L. and Sainsbury, M. (2007). Measuring Standards in Primary English: The validity of PIRLS – a response to Mary Hilton. British Educational Research Journal 33(6): 977–86.

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37 Globalization and the international context for literacy policy reform in England Dominic Wyse and Darleen Opfer

Globalization is a key idea in relation to policy development; in particular it forms a spatial frame within which policy discourses and policy formulations are set (Ball, 2008). One feature of globalization is the hegemonic role of economics in developing educational policy, with the associated targets and quantifiable indicators. Tikly describes such global economics-driven policy as a new imperialism, which he argues ignores the processes at the heart of education, namely those of the curriculum and pedagogy, but which can be challenged by grass roots social movements linked to specific forms of critical pedagogy representing ‘globalisation from below’ (Tikly, 2004: 193). A global focus by policymakers has often resulted in control of teaching being taken away from teachers and teacher educators. The change in the locus of control is at the expense of teacher-owned deeper levels of knowledge and critical thinking, which may, if allowed to flourish, be more likely to result in increases in learning and teaching quality (Tatto, 2007). The focus of this chapter is on understanding the larger contextual conditions associated with globalization and regulation. In view of the claims made by politicians in England about a world class education system, the actual and potential influence of policy in England on other nations, and the reliance on the theory that education is an economic driver in a global marketplace, there is a need to subject such policy thinking to critical scrutiny as a means of evaluating the rationale for claims about a world-class system. England’s National Literacy Strategy (NLS) is used as a case to be analysed through a theoretical framework derived from policy sociology, political science and critical theory. Scholars such as Deborah Stone (1997), Murray Edelman (2001) and John Kingdon (1997) have all demonstrated the importance of investigating the intersections of policy and politics in providing an understanding of complex, ideological policy problems. The theoretical frame allows us not only to understand how policy ideas emerge, but, as Blyth (1997) shows, we are also able to illustrate ‘how or why certain ideas come to be accepted over others’ (Blyth, 1997: 238). It is a selective review of theory and evidence with a main focus on conceptions of globalization and the potential links with national policy on curriculum and pedagogy.

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Despite the predominance of globalization rhetoric by policymakers (and researchers) Hay (2004) contends that even the crudest of aggregate data reveal there is little evidence of the effects of globalization that are so freely and loosely invoked. Empirical research shows that developed nation states are not more affected today by a ‘global market’ than they were in previous historical periods. If anything, Britain has been shown to be less economically global today than in the past (Hirst and Thompson, 1999; Rugman, 2000). Dreher et al. (2008), using the KOF Index of Globalization, which measures the amount of economic, social and political globalization for each country, have shown that overall, globalization for Britain increased until the 1990s. However, since then, the degree of globalization in the country has stagnated. Further, the degree of globalization is due mainly to political and social globalization, where the country is ranked seventh and fifth respectively, rather than economic globalization where the country is ranked twenty-seventh. This picture is found in many other developed nations including France, Germany and the United States, such that those researchers who measure globalization have concluded that any worldwide increases in economic globalization are due primarily to expansion by developing countries. Developed countries have become less economically open while still maintaining a political and social dominance in world affairs (Chase-Dunn et al., 1999). We are not arguing here that there are no external economic pressures on countries – the globalized ripple effect of sub-prime mortgage lending in the US certainly illustrates that there are – rather, we contend that the real impact of these pressures on state institutions such as education, is shaped by policymakers’ perceptions of the extent of the country’s exposure to them. To understand the effects of globalization we also need to account for the importance of ‘ideas’ as a context for policy debates and their outcomes (Moore, 1988). A key idea in relation to globalization is the belief that it exists and has a powerful effect on the nation state. Marsh et al. (2006) argue that ‘if policy-makers believe in globalization, that is likely to shape their approach whether or not globalization actually exists’ (Marsh et al., 2006: 177, emphasis in original). Hence, ideas can play an independent causal role in shaping policy outcomes that can result in material effects. ‘By behaving as if it were a reality, policy-makers may actually be making it a reality’ (Marsh et al., 2006: 177, emphasis in original). This certainly seems the case in England where policymakers constructed a discourse about globalization that implied inevitability. In so doing, they created a context where change was required and current practices were shown to be unable to meet the demands of this new competitive context. Thus, as Prime Minister Tony Blair said, The key to new Labour economics is the recognition that Britain [has] to compete in an increasingly international market place . . . . Today’s Labour Party, New Labour, is the political embodiment of the changed world – the new challenges, the new policies and the new politics. (Blair, 1996, cited in Watson and Hay, 2003: 296) Adding to the idea that globalization exists was the perception of globalization as an economic phenomenon requiring a new approach and urgent attention. Policymakers blur the distinction between the inevitable and the desirable so the ‘inevitable’ requires new policies. We therefore need to consider globalization as a political consequence rather than a purely economic one; by doing so we open the possibility for shaping and resisting the 439

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educationally less desirable influences that the globalization rhetoric creates. Hay and Marsh (2000) believe we must ‘rediscover the capacity [that the rhetoric of globalization so frequently denies us] of shaping, steering and ultimately transforming the globalized world that we have made’ (Hay and Marsh, 2000: 14, emphasis added).

Regulating the risk of globalization Watson and Hay (2003) have shown, with regard to other policy sectors in England, that appeals to the notion of globalization and its constraints can institutionalize the consequences of the discourse. One consequence is the need for management of ‘risk’ – for example the risk of losing economic competitiveness; the risk of falling behind other countries. The necessity to manage risk results in incessant demands for ever more elaborate regulation (Moran, 2001). In adopting the inevitability of globalization and its incumbent risks, policymakers narrow their options for action: ‘the limits of a rational administration’s . . . activism are in supplying the market with information about its intentions. This it does by publicizing a series of medium-term . . . targets’ (Watson and Hay, 2003: 297). Power (1997) has labelled this kind of response as ‘the remanagerialization of risk’ (Power, 1997: 138), where risk prompts the creation of new managerial structures in order to develop techniques of control of the perceived risk. The sheer range of regulatory bodies involved in education in England since the late 1990s is one feature of this remanagerialization of risk – the Teacher Training Agency (TTA) then Training and Development Agency for Schools (note the loss of the word ‘Teacher’ in this rebranding); Her Majesty’s Inspectorate then augmented to the Office for Standards in Education; the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority then the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority; the Department for Education and Skills then the Department for Children, Families and Schools; in addition to all-purpose regulatory agencies such as the Audit Commission and the National Audit Office. As Moran (2003) has shown in other policy sectors: the state is forced to concentrate on the regulation of risk, not necessarily because risks are greater than in the past, but because the cultural climate in which risk is experienced and debated has changed radically, simultaneously heightening knowledge of risk, heightening sensitivity to its consequences, and heightening the capacity to mobilize to demand action against those perceived consequences. (Moran, 2003: 27) A consequence of the rise of the regulatory state in response to perceived risks from globalization is that the regulatory state spreads beyond traditional markets to encompass social institutions. Moran (2001) explains the regulatory state in Britain as a product of the rise of market-forces thinking, where the ideologies of private enterprise are applied to the public sector. Hay (2004) summarizes the position as follows: ‘All aspects of state policy are essentially exposed, in an era of heightened capital mobility, to an exacting and exhaustive competitive audit at the hands of globalisation’ (Hay, 2004: 40). A good example of the rise of the regulatory state and the links to political perceptions of globalization can be clearly seen in the context that was set for the flagship programme of the New Labour government in England – the National Literacy (and 440

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Numeracy) Strategy (NLS). In 1996 a Literacy Task Force (LTF) was established by the Secretary of State for Education and Employment. It was charged with developing a strategy for substantially raising standards of literacy in primary schools in England over a five to ten year period. The expectation was that the strategy would be implemented if the New Labour Government was elected in 1997, which they duly were. The literacy task force report, A Reading Revolution: How we can teach every child to read well, compared England’s performance unfavourably with other countries: International comparisons of children’s achievements in reading suggest Britain is not performing well, with a slightly below average position in international literacy ‘league tables’ . . . Most studies show also a long ‘tail’ of underachievement in Britain . . . most [people] are agreed that the educational system bears the main responsibility. (LTF, 1997: 10) The sources for the ‘international comparisons’ (LTF, 1997: 10) were revealed in a retrospective analysis of research and other related evidence, commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills (Beard and DfEE, 1999), as The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (Elley, 1992), and a report by Brooks et al. (1996). Brooks et al. (1996) did indeed identify a ‘long tail’ of underachievement in the reading results for England and Wales (a phrase which was used repeatedly as part of the justification for the government’s intervention), which they described as the performance of lower ability pupils tailing off drastically, which tended to lower the average score in international comparisons. However, a point that was not emphasized as part of the task force report was that the nature of the data that Brooks et al. examined meant that it was ‘impossible to deduce any trend over time’ (Brooks et al., 1996: 18). The Task Force report went on to comment on national assessment data, suggesting that the range of performance among schools with similar intakes was ‘profoundly disturbing’ (LTF, 1997: 11). Although it is always the case that performance among schools with similar intakes differs, no evidence was presented that the NLS was the best way to address the perception of ‘profound disturbance’. In fact the Task Force report admitted that ‘detailed data have not so far been made available nationally on the results in the reading component of English alone’ (LTF, 1997: 11), a further indication of the perceptual nature of the risk. In 1997, the government’s ‘answer’ to the risk posed by international and national comparisons of literacy test results was to implement the NLS as part of its ‘crusade for higher standards’ (LTF, 1997: 15) that was a feature of the government’s approach to education, signalled by Prime Minister Tony Bair’s commitment to ‘education, education, education’ above all other policy areas. At the very heart of the strategy was the teaching of reading: ‘The core of our strategy necessarily relates to improving the teaching of reading in primary schools’ (LTF, 1997: 16). The single most influential feature of the strategy was the setting of a national target: ‘By 2002 80% of 11 year olds should reach the standard expected for their age in English (i.e. Level 4) in the Key Stage 2 National Curriculum tests’ (DfEE, 1997: 5), by which progress could be measured and control could be maintained. The testing and target-setting system has been the most enduring, and powerful, regulatory feature of education in England since 1997. The rise in the regulatory state continued through the years of the NLS (1997–2006) and provided one point of reference for the intensification of regulation in a number of 441

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education areas. For example the requirements for initial teacher training (ITT) contained in a government circular in 1998 (DfEE, 1998) specified a national curriculum for ITT for the first time, with 14 pages of content which had to be covered for the subject of English alone. The structure of this English curriculum for ITT mirrored most of the features of the NLS. Auditing of trainee’s subject knowledge in relation to this content was required (in addition to assessments that would always be undertaken as part of a course of study at a university). By 2002, this text was reduced to the expectation that trainee teachers must demonstrate that they could teach literacy through the NLS in order to gain qualified teacher status (TTA, 2002). Regulation in education thus emerged ‘as a certain style of processing risk . . . Audit is a normalized style of analysis, and a way of categorizing and breaking down objects, tasks, and needs’ (Power, 1997: 138) The emergent literacy policy in England thus represented not only a set of educational decisions but resulted also from the perceived risk of declining global competitiveness and the resulting need to regulate this risk. The chosen policy was structured to allow for external auditing and regulation – instruments for risk reduction. Literacy and mathematics lessons were prescribed as one hour per day; a short-term objectives-based model was used in the Framework for Teaching; appropriate teaching methods were increasingly specified; and all was to be inspected.

Decline in trust In his groundbreaking work on The Audit Society, Michael Power (1997) illustrates that the rise of audit and regulation is accompanied by a widespread decline in trust within a society. Decline in trust results in an increase in the regulation of professionals. The increasing regulation of schools and teachers mirrors a larger trend in decline in professional self-regulation more generally in Britain. Moran (2001) provides examples of how doctors, accountants and the financial markets all saw increases in governmental regulation under New Labour. Evidence of a decline in trust and self-regulation in education can also be seen in the recent history of national curriculum developments in England. The government challenge to self-regulation was memorably exemplified by the metaphor of the primary curriculum as a secret garden, a phrase which has often inaccurately been attributed to Prime Minister James Callaghan. In fact, the origins of the secret garden began considerably earlier. Prior to the modern period of regulatory control of education in England, there began to emerge a dissatisfaction among government ministers and the public that schools were too free to do as they please, with little apparent accountability. Until 1926 the legal powers established in the Elementary Code in England meant that the Board of Education held the right to approve the school curriculum and timetable through the work of inspectors. In 1926 the regulations were revised and any reference to the subjects of the curriculum was removed (Cunningham, 2002), something which effectively gave schools complete control over their curriculum. In the 1960s, after a lengthy period of very little government control of the curriculum, government began to take a strong interest once more. The idea of the primary curriculum as a ‘Secret Garden’ was coined by David Eccles (Minister of Education from 1954–7 and again from 1959–62) in a debate on the Crowther Report in the House of Commons in March 1960. It became a very powerful slogan, especially in the subsequent attempt by the government to set up a Curriculum Study Group in the Ministry of Education in the face of opposition from teacher unions. 442

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The compromise was the Schools Council for Curriculum Reform which had more teacher representation and less dominance by civil servants than the Study Group. Shirley Williams, as Prime Minister James Callaghan’s Secretary of State for Education and Science, initiated the Great Debate. She called Local Education Authorities (LEAs) to account for the curriculum in a way to which her broad powers under the 1944 Education Act entitled her, but that had not conventionally been exerted in respect of curriculum, especially given post-war sensitivities about curriculum control in totalitarian states, and possibly some respect for the professional judgment of teachers (Cunningham, 2009, pers. comm.). James Hamilton, a Permanent Secretary at the Department of Education and Skills signalled that the department would be taking a much closer look at what was taught in schools: exposing the ‘secret garden of the curriculum’ (Chitty, 1989: 138), by which he meant a curriculum that teachers were able to control without influence from government, and one that government felt was not producing the necessary outcomes for the country’s economy. The oil shock of the 1970s and high inflation resulted in governments in western countries looking again at public spending (Chitty, 1989). Comparisons with other countries led to concerns that Britain was not producing high enough numbers of appropriately qualified engineers, mathematicians and scientists. The economic conditions and the dissatisfaction with the lack of accountability culminated in the highly influential ‘Ruskin College Speech’ by James Callaghan, in which schools’ role in preparing the future generation to contribute to the country’s economic success was articulated. Following the Callaghan speech, a period of intense focus on education by government resulted in proposals for a significant change in legislation, one aspect of which was the proposal for a national curriculum. The consultation on the proposal resulted in fierce criticisms: These proposals are wrong in principle and we oppose them utterly . . . None of the documents makes any mention of the effects the proposed changes will have on present pupils of our schools, their teachers or on the role and responsibilities of head teachers. None draws on either experience or research to inform the ideas contained in them. There is a fundamental inconsistency in the proposals which is so blatant that we must look to the political philosophy which has generated them to find an explanation (Campaign for the Advancement of State Education). (Haviland, 1988: 5) The consultation paper offers no philosophical or other justification for the list of foundation subjects proposed (or even for a subject-based approach). Historical divisions of knowledge do not necessarily provide a satisfactory way of describing curriculum needs for the future, given the rapid change in society. There is a danger too that such an approach will accentuate an emphasis upon knowledge itself rather than upon its application (Royal Society of Arts Examination Board) – (Haviland, 1988: 12). Nevertheless, the national curriculum and associated national testing system were enacted. The Education Reform Act 1988 (ERA) gave statutory power over the curriculum to the Secretary of State for Education. It is perhaps unsurprising that the government adopted a proposal that was shown in consultation to have potentially serious weaknesses. Stone (1997) has suggested that policy contexts built on perceived threats and causes for action lead policymakers to adopt a crisis mentality which generates a spirit of closing ranks on the enemy and 443

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‘constrains policymakers from questioning feasibility or seeming to be soft on the problem’ (Stone, 1997: 295). Edelman (2001) takes this argument further to suggest that perceptual politics begins a chain of policy events which ‘build an impression of beneficial social change even while typically erasing the possibility of change’ (Edelman, 2001: 129). Thus not only do perceived threats and risks result in real effects, the regulatory strategy which results from these perceived risks may hamper effective change in the future. In addition to the changes to the curriculum, the national testing system and associated target setting, the role of the inspectorate changed from a more benign regulatory organization to take on a more explicitly campaigning role to raise educational standards (Smith, 2000). Part of this involved new rounds of inspections of ITT, which departed from the previous practice of inspecting the whole curriculum toward an exclusive focus on literacy and numeracy. The expectation from the inspectors was that providers would ensure that trainees understood and were able to teach using the NLS Framework for Teaching. Likewise in schools the inspection process emphasized the importance of the NLS Framework. So although the national curriculum was the statutory framework, and the NLS Framework for Teaching was technically non-statutory guidance, the pressure of a centralized system built on national targets, enforced by the inspectorate, meant that the NLS framework was, de facto, statutory. Although the main feature of the NLS, the literacy hour, introduced a new level of government control through its specification of the timed segments of the hour, the requirement for whole-class teaching, and the short-term objectives-led planning and lessons, teachers initially had some control over teaching methods that they thought were most appropriate to deliver the teaching objectives. As opposition to the NLS Framework continued to grow the national coordinators of the NLS began to make changes to some aspects of the expectations for teaching, offering teachers a little more freedom (Stannard and Huxford, 2007). But these flexibilities were to be removed in 2008 when the approach to the teaching of reading known as synthetic phonics was made statutory through changes to the national curriculum, in spite of research evidence showing that alternative possibilities were likely to be more beneficial (Wyse and Goswami, 2008). This was further enforced by the introduction, for the first time, of statutory control of education from birth to age five in the Early Years Foundation Stage. This meant that over a period of 20 years government had assumed control of the curriculum and significant aspects of pedagogy from birth to age 18. With the emergence of distrust of educators and the decline of professional autonomy, regulations triumph over other sources of legitimacy, such as community and state (Power, 1997). Regulation produces an ever more auditable structure, regardless of effectiveness. The regulation of the curriculum in general and literacy in particular created the impression that something was being done to lessen the risk of failure. The information produced through assessment and inspection provided a sense of transparency and comfort to policymakers and the public. But the information produced through regulation does not build the capacity in teachers and schools to improve learning. As Power (1997) argues, the audit society is a society that endangers itself because it invests too heavily in shallow rituals of verification at the expense of other forms of organizational intelligence. In providing a lens for regulatory thought and action, audit threatens to become a form of learned ignorance. (Power, 1997: 123) 444

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Thus, teachers became less inclined to engage in reflective and responsive teaching and in the process become deskilled; targets were missed, public distrust of institutions and government increased and the only response available in this scenario is more regulation.

Conclusion A series of interrelated shifts in political discourse and perceived risk occurred which presuppose the necessity and benefits of a curriculum and pedagogy that are amenable to regulation and inspection. Thus ‘the tail has wagged the dog’ and in the process the literacy policy adopted provides delusions of control and transparency which satisfy politicians and some sections of society but which may not be as effective (or as politically neutral) as commonly imagined (e.g. Wyse et al. (2009) cast doubt on the claims made by politicians about the gains made as a result of the NLS). By appealing to the inevitability of globalization as a constraint, policymakers in England established parameters limiting the scope of future political decision making on literacy policy by creating a narrative which entrenched and institutionalized a course of actions and outcomes which appeared predestined but were once merely contingent. In so doing, they also constructed a causal discourse which appeared to depoliticize policy decisions which in other circumstances would be considered politically ideological. The key to resisting the orientation of literacy policy in England, which many educators wish to do, is not only to resist certain curricula and pedagogies but also to resist the political context from which such a regulatory pedagogy has emerged. As Moss (2004) has demonstrated in her examination of the NLS, ‘to be properly understood, NLS needs to be seen as part of a target-setting and performance-monitoring regime that is integral to New Labour’s management of the public sector more generally’ (Moss, 2004: 126). Multiple voices are required to provide a discourse of resistance: arguing for different traditions of evaluation and control; appealing to collegiality and trust; and casting doubt on the efficacy and cost of auditing (Power, 1997). Challenges can also be made by critically interrogating the evidence base for policy decisions about curriculum and pedagogy. Critical pedagogy and curriculum movements can be coupled with a culture of resistance to inappropriate control, something which has been a feature of a minority of teachers and schools’ work, for example by refusing to implement government pedagogical and curriculum requirements. It is a moot point whether critical interrogation of curricula and pedagogy or critical interrogation of the political context which creates a narrative of rationality, or a combination of both, is the most likely way to positively effect change – this is a potentially rich area for future research. Implementing tactics of resistance requires a reorientation, from the comfort gained by the rituals and instruments developed to deal with an unknown and unknowable risk, to an orientation to discomfort.

References Ball, S. (2008). The Education Debate. London: Policy Press. Beard, R. and Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (1999). National Literacy Strategy: Review of research and other related evidence. London: DfEE.

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Blair, T. (1996). Speech to the bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie e. v. annual conference, Bonn, 18 June. Blyth, M. (1997). Any More Bright Ideas? The ideational turn in comparative political economy. Comparative Politics 29(2): 229–50. Brooks, G., Nastat, P. and Schagen, I. (1996). Trends in Reading at Eight. Slough: National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER). Chase-Dunn, C., Kawano, Y. and Brewer, B. (1999). ‘Economic Globalization since 1795: Structures and cycles in the modern world-system.’ Paper presented at the International Studies Association, Washington, DC, February. http://wsarch.ucr.edu/archive/papers/c-d&hall/ isa99b/isa99b.htm accessed 13 September 2008. Chitty, C. (1989). Towards a New Education System: The victory of the new right? London: Falmer Press. Cunningham, P. (2002). Progressivism, Decentralisation and Recentralisation: Local education authorities and the primary curriculum, 1902–2002. Oxford Review of Education 28(2–3): 217–33. Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (1997). The Implementation of the National Literacy Strategy. London: DfEE. Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (1998). Teaching: High status, high standards. Requirements for courses of initial teacher training. London: DfEE. Dreher, A., Gaston, N. and Martens, P. (2008). Measuring Globalization – Gauging its Consequences. New York: Springer. Edelman, M. (2001). The Politics of Misinformation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Elley, W.B. (1992). How in the World do Students Read? Hamburg: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Haviland, J. (1988). Take Care, Mr. Baker! London: Fourth Estate. Hay, C. (2004). Re-stating Politics, Re-politicizing the State: Neoliberalism, economic imperatives and the rise of the competition state. Political Quarterly 75(special issue): 38–50. Hay, C. and Marsh, D. (2000). Demystifying Globalization. London: Macmillan. Hirst, P. and Thompson, G. (1999). Globalisation in Question: The international economy and the possibilities of governance. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kingdon, J. (1997). Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies (2nd edn). New Jersey: Pearson Education. Literacy Task Force (LTF) (1997). A Reading Revolution: How we can teach every child to read well. The preliminary report of the literacy task force. London: Department for Education and Employment (DfEE). Marsh, D., Smith, N.J. and Hothi, N. (2006). Globalization and the State. In C. Hay, M. Lister and D. Marsh (Eds) The State: Theories and issues. London: Palgrave, pp. 172–89. Moore, M.H. (1988). What Sort of Ideas become Public Ideas? In R. Reich (Ed.) The Power of Public Ideas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 55–83. Moran, M. (2001). The Rise of the Regulatory State in Britain. Parliamentary Affairs 54(1): 19–34. Moran, M. (2003). The British Regulatory State: High modernism and hyper-innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moss, G. (2004). Changing Practice: The National Literacy Strategy (NLS) and the politics of literacy policy. Literacy 38(3): 126–33. Power, M. (1997). The Audit Society: Rituals of verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rugman, A. (2000). The End of Globalisation. London: Random House. Smith, G. (2000). The Relevance of Educational Research. Oxford Review of Education 26(3/4): 333–52. Stannard, J. and Huxford, L. (2007). The Literacy Game: The story of the national literacy strategy. London: Routledge.

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Stone, D. (1997). Policy Paradox: The art of political decision making. New York: Norton & Company. Tatto, M.T. (2007). Reforming Teaching Globally. Oxford: Symposium Books. Teacher Training Agency (TTA) (2002). Qualifying to Teach: Professional standards for qualified teacher status and requirements for initial teacher training. London: TTA. Tikly, L. (2004). Education and the New Imperialism. Comparative Education 40(2): 173–98. Watson. M. and Hay, C. (2003). The Discourse of Globalisation and the Logic of no Alternative: Rendering the contingent necessary in the political economy. Policy & Politics 31(3): 289–305. Wyse, D. and Goswami, U. (2008). Synthetic Phonics and the Teaching of Reading. British Educational Research Journal 34(6): 691–710. Wyse, D. McCreery, E. and Torrance, H. (2009). The trajectory and impact of national reform: Curriculum and assessment in English primary schools. In R. Alexander, C. Doddington, J. Gray, L. Hargreaves and R. Kershner (Eds.) The Cambridge Primary Review Research Surveys. London: Routledge.

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38 A tale of the two Special Administrative Regions (SARs) of China: an overview of English language teaching developments in Hong Kong and Macao1 Joanna Lee and Beatrice Lok

The rapid transformation of the economic infrastructure in China since the 1980s, coupled with its more active participation in the international arena, has given rise to a shift in language learning orientation in the country. The trend of English learning out of the pragmatic needs for upward and outward mobility of the Chinese population is accompanied by the rise in importance of English language teaching (ELT). In earlier literature, English language teaching in China was assumed to be dichotomous and grammarfocused (Breen, 2006). However, ELT developments vary according to the specific cultural and historical contexts of different regions within the country. English was officially recognized as the major foreign language in secondary schools in China in 1982 (Lam, 2005), and due to the diversity in historical, economic and cultural developments in different regions of the country, a number of research studies have revealed regional disparities with respect to ELT in China (Hu, 2003; Hu, 2005). As a country with a population of approximately 1.3 billion people and 56 officially recognized indigenous nationalities speaking more than 80 languages (Dai et al., 2000; Zhou, 2001), the diversity and complexity of the linguistic situations, language policies and pedagogical practices of English education in China can easily be oversimplified (Feng, 2007). The end of the twentieth century marked the births of the two SARs (Special Administrative Regions) of China – Hong Kong SAR and Macao SAR. Under the administrative rule of two different colonizers, Hong Kong (under the rule of the British) and Macao (under the colonial administration of Portugal) followed diverging paths in various respects relating to the development of English language education. This chapter aims to offer an overview of how various issues concerning ELT, such as pedagogical approaches/practices and governmental support for ELT, are intertwined with the unique political and sociolinguistic forces of the two places. 1 The authors would like to express their sincere gratitude to Prof. Sylvia Ieong of the University of Macau, who has kindly shared with them valuable information about language education in Macao ever since they expressed interest in this area.

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Macao Macao is a small island situated at the mouth of the Pearl River Delta in the southern part of China. It has a land area of 29.2 km2, and a population of about 543,000, with the majority (96 per cent) being Chinese (DSEC, 2008). The remaining minority comes from various national and ethnic backgrounds including Portuguese, Filipinos and other nationals (Shan and Ieong, 2007). Although the official takeover of Macao by Portugal did not take place until 1887, Macao had been leased to Portugal by China since 1557 to serve as the trading post of the former to expand and safeguard her economic interest in the Far East (Lam, 2008). Following the signing of the Joint Declaration between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Portugal in 1987, Macao became the Special Administrative Region (MSAR) of China in 1999. Under the novel principle of ‘One country, Two systems’ the MSAR is allowed to retain its political and administrative autonomy for 50 years following the handover.

Sociolinguistic and education environments in Macao Although Cantonese, a dialect spoken by people residing within the Guangdong Province in the southern part of China, is the primary language of communication among the overwhelming majority of the Macao population, Portuguese remained the only official language in Macao until 1991, when Chinese joined Portuguese as an official language in Macao. The return of Macao’s sovereignty to China has further reinforced the status of Chinese. Although it was stipulated in the Basic Law of Macao that the official status of Portuguese in the 50 years following the ‘political handover’ in 1999 is to be maintained, its supplementary role is unveiled from the way the Article on language policy is worded: ‘In addition to the Chinese language, Portuguese may also be used as an official language by the executive authorities, legislature and judiciary of the Macao Special Administrative Region’ MFA, 1993, Article 9. The official status granted to the Portuguese language in Article 9 of Basic Law does not necessarily make it superior in status to Chinese and English in MSAR. The results of Young’s (2006) language attitude survey are indicative of the diminishing importance of Portuguese in Macao from the perspective of local students. English has never been the official language of Macao; neither had it ever been made a compulsory subject in school before the handover. The survey reflects the situation that the gradual replacement of Portuguese by English as the most popular foreign language in Macao is no longer a threat, but reality. The unrivalled status of English as the most influential foreign language in Macao is further recognized in a paper by the Macao Development Strategy Research Centre in collaboration with Macao Association of Economic Sciences, published in 2000: During the ruling of Portugal, Macao failed to establish an English environment. However, ignoring the importance of English today means losing tremendous business opportunities. Also, without an English environment, Macau is unlikely to go internationalized. Hence, we should put forward this issue for public discussion and encourage every household to place emphasis on learning English 449

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. . . if we have to choose between English and Portuguese, we should prefer English. (Ieong, 2000: 97–8) The long-term objective for the future development of Macao stated above indicates that the Portuguese language is apparently losing ground to English, a global ‘lingua franca’, which performs a great many more functions in the international, political and economic arenas. Residual influence of the Portuguese language remains mainly in official domains. Portugal’s interest in Macao mainly lied on economic grounds, and the colonial era in Macao was characterized by an imperialistic approach of ruling – only the interests of Portuguese nationals were being looked after (Adamson and Li, 1999). Local Chinese people, according to Shan and Ieong (2007), were politically, economically, socially and educationally marginalized. Little had been done by the Portuguese government to better the livelihood of the local people. Education was an area left almost completely untouched by the colonial government until a couple of decades before the end of the colonial era (Bray and Koo, 2004). According to Yee (1990), about 70 per cent of public funds for education went to Portuguese public schools, which served less than ten per cent of the total population of Macao. As such, Christian missionaries (Roman Catholic Church in particular) have been playing an active and crucial role in shaping education development in Macao (Lam, 2008). The indifferent attitude of the colonial government on education-related matters in Macao has resulted in an education system segregated by the medium of instruction as well as the curriculum. As cited by Berlie (1999) from Inquiry on Education, over 80 per cent of the student population in Macao (inclusive of pre-schools, primary, secondary schools and universities) were taught in Chinese in 1996; about ten per cent were enrolled in English-medium schools, which was double the number that were taught in Portuguese. By 2002/3, fewer than one per cent (953 out of a total of 99,183 students) of the population were educated through the Portuguese medium (Bray and Koo, 2004). The change of national flags in Macao in 1999 was not only marked by the change of political administration, but also the continuing decline of the popularity of the Portuguese language within the territory.

English language education in Macao With over 90 per cent of the population being Cantonese Chinese, Cantonese is the major medium of instruction in more than 90 per cent of schools in Macao, while English medium schools occupy less than ten per cent of the share (Shan and Ieong, 2007). The continuous growth of English-medium schools in Macao in the absence of public funding and support is obviously a result of the demand–supply mechanism (Ieong, 1993; Bray and Koo, 2004). Owing to the extrinsic value of English, middle-class parents in Macao are mostly willing to send their children to private schools for the sake of a better English education (Berlie, 1999). Those who cannot afford to go to elite private schools receive English education in free official schools, where the quality of English teaching is extremely varied. Teaching and learning English in Macao classrooms Official statistics indicate that approximately 40 per cent of Macao’s teachers were born in mainland China (Governo de Macau, 2003) and the majority of expatriate teachers 450

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come from the Philippines (Berlie, 1999). Like many second language classrooms, English classrooms in Macao are characterized by a mix of the students’ first language, Cantonese and English (ibid). The most commonly used language by students for communication in an English classroom is usually Cantonese. The fact that the majority of English teachers are Chinese is a probable reason for students’ over-reliance on Cantonese; however, such a dilemma is not resolved with the presence of a nativespeaking teacher. The following case-study by Ieong (2002) featuring a Form 62 class taught by an expatriate teacher who was assisted by a local teacher further uncovers more thorny issues faced by English teachers in Macao: After giving all the ‘necessary’ help in vocabulary, sentence patterns and even topic sentence for each of the paragraphs, the expatriate teacher told the students to begin their part of the work. Then, he said, he would walk around, answering whatever questions put to him. He further assured them that he enjoyed answering questions and all questions were welcome. At first, he looked obviously pleased to see those black young heads bending over their work with such concentration, believing that he had given them enough guidance . . . He bent over a student’s work and realized what was going on. Except for the few guidelines he had written earlier on the blackboard, the paper was almost entirely covered with Chinese characters that were illegible to him. The students had written many of their ideas in Chinese first and were asking the local teacher to translate their innumerable fancy ideas into English! (Ieong, 2002: 80) This authentic snapshot of an English classroom in Macao has not only pointed to the frustration of and difficulties faced by English teachers in Macao, but also other pedagogical concerns in an English language classroom, such as students’ reluctance to ‘think in English’, and to maximize the benefits of learning from a native-speaking teacher. Most children in Macao learn English as a subject from the age of six, or even earlier; however, their proficiency in the language is far from satisfactory (Ieong, 1993). Berlie (1999) also observed a generally low proficiency of spoken English among Macao students. This also explains why Filipino teachers are not as popular as their local counterparts among students (ibid), as the language barrier has completely ruled out the alternative of retreating to Cantonese in an English classroom. Resources for development for the English teaching force in Macao Owing to the lack of quality control over the teaching of English, neither standards of teachers nor the appropriateness of teaching materials and resources were monitored. The majority of schools in Macao are self-financed and thus not able to offer competitive salaries to attract professional teachers of high calibre. Yee (1990) described the situation regarding teacher qualifications in Macao in 1990 as ‘“whatever the traffic will bear”, i.e. what the schools can get with are the salaries they have to offer’ (p. 5). The lack of authoritative control over educational affairs results in the diversity of the qualifications and standards of in-service teachers in Macao. In 1986, Yee administered

2 Form 6 is the last year of senior secondary education in most of the schools in Macao.

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an assessment survey on the educational needs of Macao, one of them concerning teacher education (Yee, 1990). According to Li and Kwo (2004), in 1983/4 only 24 per cent of teachers at all levels in Macao had teacher qualifications; most teachers teaching at pre-primary and primary levels were junior secondary graduates (Yee, 1990). There are only three institutions offering initial in-service primary teaching education courses: (1) the University of Macau; (2) St. Joseph’s College; and (3) South China Normal University. However, none of these courses are specifically designed for English language teachers teaching in non-native English-speaking classrooms. Even though there is a five-year course in language teaching in South China Normal University, it is focused on Chinese language teaching instead of English. More recent official statistics indicate that over 40 per cent of local serving teachers are below 29 years of age with limited teaching experience (DSEC, 2006). In addition, 44.5 per cent of teachers are serving without pedagogical training (ibid). Although qualifications for English teachers have not been specified, the general picture of teacher qualifications in Macao indicates the problems of an insufficient supply of well qualified education practitioners. As noted by an ELT expert who has had the experience of working in Macao, it is essential that teachers engage themselves in training programmes specially designed for them, to raise their standard in English in order to be able to offer quality English lessons to students (DSEJ, 2003). Proposed innovations in ELT approaches As pointed out by Chan (2002), ‘Macao has never had an officially sanctioned, unitary, universal and compulsory education system’ (p. 555). An inevitable by-product of the diversified nature of the education system in Macao is its non-standardized English curriculum, which results in huge variation among different schools in the quality of English education offered to students. There is no local open examination for English in Macao (Adamson and Li, 1999) and students are not required to sit for any public examination in English language (e.g. TESOL, IELTS) for admission to local universities. Some schools arrange for students to sit for the UK public examination (i.e. General Certificate of Secondary Education), and some students may also apply for approval to travel to Hong Kong to attend the public examinations there (e.g. Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE) and (HKALE)). Yet a pass mark in English language is not always a prerequisite for students to enter a Macao university. Because of the non-interventionist policy of the government on the private school sector, there is neither organization, nor overall planning all the way down to approaches and methodology, syllabus design, material construction, evaluation, etc., in the English language learning and teaching process, it is up to individual schools, teachers and learners to do whatever they can, to make the best of whatever resources they have access to, and to resort to whatever means that help them to improve the teaching and learning of English. (Ieong, 1993: 8) Responding to the social demand for communicative English skills in recent years, ELT approaches in Macao underwent a transformation from the Grammar-Translation Approach to a focus on the communicative front. An ELT innovation involving the 452

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exploitation of language art elements utilizing existing bilingual (Chinese and English) poems, and nurturing a habit for extensive reading, has been put forward by Ieong (2003) to ‘create an environment for learners to practise in all four skills and to communicate’ (p. 5). This proposed communicative approach signifies a momentous change of pedagogical orientation in English language education in Macao. Given the potential obstacle of promoting the communicative approach in a place where the majority of people share a common language, the application and effectiveness of this proposed innovation remains to be seen.

Hong Kong Hong Kong became a British colony in 1842 following the Anglo–Chinese war in 1841. During the colonial period, Hong Kong had prospered and developed into an exclusive gateway to trade with China. It is also one of the greatest trading ports in the world. The signing of the Joint Declaration between the British government and Hong Kong took place in 1984, three years before a similar agreement was signed in Macao between the PRC government and Portugal. This agreement stipulated that the sovereignty of Hong Kong was to be returned to China in 1997, with the proviso that Hong Kong could retain its pre-1997 social, economic and legal systems for at least 50 years after 1997 under the ‘One country, Two systems’ principle. The 154 years of colonial rule by Britain had witnessed the transformation of Hong Kong from a poor and backward fishing village to one of the major hubs of international business and finance. Similar to the case of Macao, Cantonese Chinese constitute the overwhelming majority of the population in Hong Kong, which was estimated at 6.93 million as at mid-2007 (Hong Kong: The facts, 2007). English remained the only official language until 1974, when Chinese was granted the status to serve as an official language in addition to English, according to the Hong Kong Official Languages Ordinance.

Sociolinguistic environment and English language education in Hong Kong The role of Cantonese as the common language of the population in Hong Kong has never been threatened by the English language, of which the use is mainly confined to high-end business and governmental administration. Unlike the case of Macao, where the colonizer’s language is gradually declining in use and importance, the recognition in 1974 of Chinese language as one of the official languages does not undermine the influence of English in any significant ways. Colonial history has laid the foundation for the development of English language education in Hong Kong, but the status of the language is further consolidated by the interplay of political, social, and most important of all, economic forces within and beyond the territory (Evans, 2000). There is no doubt that the colonial past of Hong Kong and its economic ties with other countries affirms the extraordinary status of the English language in Hong Kong (Evans, 1996). The rise of English as an international language has also placed Hong Kong in an advantageous position because of the practical benefits associated with the knowledge of the language of the former colonizer. Like Macao, the practice of Cantonese–English alternation in English lessons (i.e. mixed code teaching) was 453

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common, although it has been strongly discouraged (Curriculum Development Council, 1983, cited in Evans, 2006). Being well aware of the pragmatic value of English as a global language indispensable for individual advancement, the Medium of Instruction (MOI) policy3 implemented in 1998 which reversed the dominating scene of Englishmedium secondary schools in Hong Kong, was faced with severe objections from various stakeholders, despite the pedagogical concerns about the mixed code practice. Under the policy, 114 secondary schools met all three criteria4 stated by the then Education Department and were allowed to continue with the operation of English medium, while the rest of the schools in Hong Kong had to adopt Cantonese as the medium of instruction in all classes except English classes. However, as observed by Evans (2002), the use of mixed code in English classrooms is not uncommon in Hong Kong. Transformation of ELT approaches in Hong Kong Changes regarding teaching of English approaches in Hong Kong have been frequent, if not dramatic. Over the past five decades, the ELT approach has shifted from the traditional grammar-translation approach during the post-war period until the 1970s, to the oral-structural approach in the 1970s. Moving into the 1980s, the orientation of the English syllabus started to gear toward the communicative approach, as did its language assessments. One defining feature of the communicative approach is its equal emphasis on forms and function of language, and that the design of teaching materials takes students’ needs and interests as points of inception (Bickley, 1987); it is also closely associated with the student-centred approach to teaching. The communicative syllabus for English which addresses the importance of both ‘language forms’ and ‘language use’ was officially introduced to primary and to secondary schools progressively from 1984 to 1988 by the Education Department (ibid). Unlike the oral-structural approach, which focused more on ‘forms’ of language, ‘[the communicative syllabus] stresses the significance of meaningful use of the target language in classroom communication’ (Lai, 1991: 100). Since the late 1980s, the communicative approach has become the orientation of ELT development in Hong Kong. The shift of direction from traditional to more contemporary approaches to English teaching in secondary schools in Hong Kong, however, does not necessarily guarantee an outcome that is commensurate to the efforts and resources invested. According to a survey administered by Evans in 1995 to investigate the roles of teachers and students in secondary English classrooms in Hong Kong, the introduction of the communicative approach to English teaching failed to make a difference to the traditional

3 English had been the dominant teaching medium in Hong Kong during British colonial regime. Upon implementation of the new medium of instruction policy in 1998, only 114 out of 421 government-subsidized schools in Hong Kong were allowed to retain the use of English as the teaching medium, while the remaining 307 schools had to use Chinese as the medium of instruction. (Tsui et al. 1999). 4 The criteria to be met by schools if they wish to qualify for English medium teaching are: (1) student ability to be an average percentage of not less than 85 per cent of Medium of Instruction Grouping Assessment Groups (MIGA)I [i.e. students classified as being able to learn effectively in either English or Chinese], and III [students being classified as being able to learn better in Chinese but may also learn effectively in English] students in S1 intake for the past three years; (2) teacher capability to be based on the principal’s assessment and certification; (3) suitable medium of instruction strategies and support programmes (e.g. bridging courses) to be in place to give sound school-based assistance to their S1 students (HKED, 1997).

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teacher–student interaction pattern, where teachers played a dominant role in transmitting knowledge to students, and students remained passive learners (Evans, 1997). Evans’s (1996) examination of the compatibility of the current English language syllabus with the assessment culture of Hong Kong provides a valid account for the failure of the communicative approach in local schools. As stated earlier, English has never been used or promoted to replace Cantonese as the language for everyday communication. As a consequence, the dream scenario of attaining communicative competence within a context where students are sharing the same culture and speaking the same language is in fact an ideal too high to achieve (Evans, 1996). Professional requirements for English language teachers As far as the professional requirements for English language teachers in Hong Kong are concerned, a set of Language Proficiency Requirement (LPR) – which includes a new English test – the Language Proficiency Assessment for English teachers (LPAT) – was introduced to all local English teachers in 2000 to ensure the quality of the English teaching force in Hong Kong. Under the benchmark system, all new and serving English teachers are required to pass the LPAT in order to retain their teaching position in schools. They are required to reach a minimum acceptable level (Level 3) on a criterion-referenced 5-point scale in listening, reading, writing, speaking and classroom language (Glenwright, 2005). To cultivate the growth of professional ELT development in the local society, the government took the initiative to make a considerable investment in increasing the provision of training courses for English teachers in Hong Kong over the past 10 years (Urmston, 2003). The seven local tertiary institutions (including six universities5 and the Hong Kong Institute of Education) provide over 500 subject-trained English teachers every academic year, and several postgraduate programmes in English language teaching are offered in some of these institutions to reinforce the subject knowledge of inservice practitioners in English language education. Professional qualifications of local English teachers have improved tremendously as a result of governmental effort in securing a professional English teaching force in Hong Kong through various means. In 1994, of the population of 9,860 English teachers in Hong Kong, it was found that 4,170 were not subject-trained (Glenwright, 2005); and in the secondary school sector, only 14.2 per cent of the 4,197 English teachers were both academically and professionally qualified (Tsui et al., 1994). In 2006, over 90 per cent of the serving English teachers at schools were qualified with LPAT (Lin, 2007). Resource allocation for developing English language education In order to underpin the learning of English in Hong Kong secondary schools, of which the majority operate with Chinese (Cantonese) as the teaching medium after the implementation of the MOI policy, the Hong Kong SAR government made various attempts to respond to demands for English language education over the last decade (Urmston, 2003). In terms of resources allocation, as early as 1994, the government set up the Language Fund with US$38.5 million, to improve the quality of English language education by providing additional resources and support to teachers (Dickson and Cumming, 1996). It was also proposed by the government that a budget of $800 million

5 Except the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

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Hong Kong dollars be set aside for Chinese-medium schools to help enhance the English language proficiency of their students (Tse et al., 2007). In 1998, the government also introduced the Native Speaking English Teacher (NET) scheme with an aim of creating an authentic English-speaking environment to local students and to stimulate an interactive learning platform for teachers through collaborative teaching of the NET and local English teachers. Currently, there are over 800 NET teachers from all over the world (e.g. Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa) teaching in public primary and secondary schools (ibid). In order to cultivate good English pedagogical practice in the local community and to enhance the development of a school-based English curriculum (Forrester and Lok, 2008), one NET teacher is provided for each comprehensive secondary school with fewer than 40 classes, and two NET teachers are provided for each comprehensive secondary school with 40 or more classes (Education and Manpower Bureau, 2004).

Comparisons Hong Kong and Macao, the only two cities ceded to the European colonizers at a time when China was experiencing a series of chaotic events, share a number of common characteristics in terms of colonial history, demographics, culture and language use. The development of English language education in the two SARs, however, is progressing at different speeds due to their inimitable historical and political backgrounds. For instance the official communication-oriented curriculum design in Hong Kong emphasizes the nurturing of students’ English communicative competence in classrooms. Due to the compulsory curriculum as well as various official public language assessments, the motivation for Hong Kong students to learn English is not only mediated by their choice motivation6 (i.e. personal interest and career-oriented purpose), but also maintained by their executive motivation (the ways learners maintain their motivation to accomplish assigned tasks). Barriers impeding the successful implementation of the communicative syllabus and approach, such as the mutual exclusivity of the English syllabus and English examination syllabus, and incompatibility of the communicative approach in Hong Kong, as pointed out by Evans (1996), reveal the old yet unresolved question of the universal applicability of a western model of ELT in a city which is by and large linguistically and culturally homogenous. The English language curriculum in Hong Kong is mainly driven by the examination syllabus (Dickson and Cumming, 1996), which shapes the ELT approaches and learning styles adopted by local teachers and students. Since the nine-year compulsory education has been introduced in the 1970s to the mass public in Hong Kong, and English has been made a compulsory subject in the core curriculum of primary and secondary education, English has been the most popular second/foreign language in Hong Kong. The colonial background facilitates the development of a more comprehensive and standardized English curriculum in Hong Kong. Being empowered by its status as the world language and Hong Kong’s reliance on international finance, trading and tourism, English language education has not lost ground to

6 The concept of choice and executive motivation is discussed in the Process Model of Second Language motivation developed by Dörnyei and Ottó (Dörnyei and Ottó, 1998). For more details about the model and the concept of second language motivation, please refer to Dörnyei. (2001).

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Chinese language education in any significant respect, and the goal of achieving ‘Biliteracy and Trilingualism’ as stated in the SCOLAR’s action plan for raising language standards in Hong Kong (SCOLAR, 2004) to sharpen its competitive edge implies that the provision of quality English language education in local schools remains one of the most pertinent missions of the Hong Kong education sector. In contrast, English language education in Macao is short of official support, and its survival depends mostly on the demand–supply mechanism governed mainly by economic forces (Harrison, 1984; Ieong, 1993; Bray and Koo, 2004). The rapid development of Macao’s gaming and hospitality industry following the liberalization of the gambling sector has raised strong social expectations that Macau will be transformed into an international tourism and business centre, and that English will presumably become one of the dominant languages of communication between the local people and nonChinese visitors. An increase in the demands for English has certainly raised social awareness of the importance of English in Macao. As stated in the General Regulations governing bachelor’s degree programmes of the University of Macao (2009), in addition to their major programme courses/elective courses, students have to fulfill the English requirement by taking an English course of 6 credit units or more. Young’s (2006) study has also indicated that there is strong motivation to learn English in Macao and such motivation is likely to be influenced primarily by learners’ choice motivation (why and how learners choose certain courses of action) because of the absence of a compulsory curriculum or public examination in English language. Despite rising awareness, the fact that English is not one of the SAR’s official languages has, to a certain extent, restrained the development of English language education in the region. In the early eighteenth century, Macao served as a model in terms of teaching practices for the Hong Kong colonial education system. (Adamson and Li, 2004). Yet, in the past decade, the educational practices and curriculum development of Macao have been strongly influenced by Hong Kong (Mok et al., 2005). Macao, sharing a similar sociolinguistic context and greater flexibility for development, may draw on the experience of English language teaching in Hong Kong to consolidate its foundation in the development of ELT. Although Macao seems to lag behind in its promotion of English language education (Young, 2006), the lack of authoritative control over the English curriculum may create a vacuum which allows more freedom for ELT practitioners there to manoeuvre and to experiment and implement pedagogical innovation.

Conclusion This chapter offers a brief discussion about ELT developments in relation to the historical and sociolinguistic contexts in Hong Kong and Macao, the two SARs of China. The domination of English language in the international scene has not only called for the continuous growth of English language education, but also the need for a strategic plan for its further development in the two regions. This chapter has identified the areas of support required for the future development of English language education in the two former colonies. It is hoped that through discussing the issues of concern relating to ELT practices in the two SARs in China, which are historically, politically and culturally distinct from other regions in China, further research on the design of the syllabus and ELT approaches made to measure for the unique contexts of these two places will be instigated. 457

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References Adamson, B. and Li, S.P.T. (1999). Primary and Secondary Schooling. In M. Bray and R. Koo (Eds) Education and Society in Hong Kong and Macao: Comparative perspectives on continuity and change. Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre. Adamson, B. and Li, S.P.T. (2004). Primary and Secondary Schooling. In M. Bray and R. Koo (Eds) Education and Society in Hong Kong and Macao: Comparative perspectives on continuity and change (2nd edn). Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre. Berlie, J.A. (1999). Macao’s Education: A question of language: Chinese, Portuguese, and English. In J. A. Berlie (Ed.) Macao 2000. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press (China). Bickley, V. (1987). Developments in English Language Teacher Education. In R. Lord and H.N.L. Cheng (Eds) Language Education in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. Bray, M. and Koo, R. (2004). Postcolonial Patterns and Paradoxes: Language and education in Hong Kong and Macao. Comparative Education 40(2): 215–39. Breen, P. (2006). The Education of Language Teachers in East Asia. Asian EFL Journal Professional Teaching 13(1). http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/pta_july_06_pb.php accessed 25 March 2009. Chan, E. (2002). Beyond Pedagogy: Language and identity in post-colonial Hong Kong. British Journal of Sociology of Education 23(2): 271–85. Dai, Q., Cheng, Y., Fu, A. and He, J. (2000). Zhongguo shaoshuminzu yuyan wenzi yingwong yanjiu [Applied Studies of Chinese Minority Nationality Languages and Orthographies] Kunming: Yunnan minzu chubanshe [Yunnan Nationalities Press]. Dickson, P. and Cumming, A. (Eds) (1996). National Profiles of Language Education in 25 Countries. Slough, Berks: National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER). Dörnyei, Z., (2001). New Themes and Approaches in Second Language Motivation Research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 21: 43–59. Dörnyei, Z. and Ottó, I. (1998). Motivation in Action: A process model of L2 motivation. Working Papers in Applied Linguistics 4: 43–69. Education and Manpower Bureau (2004). NET Scheme in Secondary Schools. http://www.emb. gov.hk/index.aspx?langno=1&nodeid=1254 accessed 22 February 2004. Education and Youth Affairs Bureau, Macau (DSEJ) (2003). Educational Digest: English teaching—an interview with Prof. Mark Newell Brock. http://202.175.82.54/edu_ digest/02/04e.pdf accessed 30 August 2003. Evans, S. (1996). The Context of English Language Education: The case of Hong Kong. RELC Journal 27(2): 30–55. Evans, S. (1997). Teacher and Learner Roles in the Hong Kong English Language Classroom. Education Journal 25(2): 43–62. Evans, S. (2000). Hong Kong New English Language Policy in Education. World Englishes 19(2): 185–204. Evans, S. (2002). The Medium of Instruction in Hong Kong: Policy and practice in the new English and Chinese streams. Research Papers in Education 17(1): 97–120. Evans, S. (2006). Language Policy in British Colonial Education: Evidence from nineteenth-century Hong Kong. Journal of Educational Administration and History 38(3): 293–312. Feng, A. (2007). Bilingual Education in China: Practices, policies, and concepts. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Forrester, V. and Lok, B. (2008). Native English Teachers in Hong Kong: Building communities of practice? Asian Social Science 4(5): 3–12. Glenwright, P. (2005). Grammar Error Strike Hard: Language proficiency testing of Hong Kong teachers and the four ‘Noes’. Journal of Language, Identity and Education 4(3): 201–26. Governo de Macau (2003). Inquerito ao ensino 2001/2002 [Education survey 2001/2002]. Macau: Sireccao dos Esatistica e Censos. Harrison, G.J. (1984). The Place of English in Macao and Theoretical Speculation. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 5(6): 475–89.

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Hong Kong Education Department (HKED) (1997). Board of Education Paper. No. 8/97. Hong Kong Government. Hong Kong: The Facts. (2007). http://www.yearbook.gov.hk/2007/en/pdf/Fact_Eng.pdf accessed 22 August 2008. Hu, G. (2003). English Language Teaching in China: Regional differences and contributing factors. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 24(4): 290–318. Hu, Q. (2005). China English, at Home and in the World. English Today 21(3): 27–38. Ieong, S. (1993). Reflections on the Language Issues in Macau: Policies, realities and prospects. Washington, DC: ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics. Ieong, S. (2002). Reports on English in the Asian Classroom: Teaching and learning English in Macao. Asian Englishes 5(1): 76–83. Ieong, S. (2003). English Language Teaching in Macau: Sharing, reflecting and innovating. Journal of Macau Studies 16: 212–28. Ieong, W.C. (2000). Macau 2020: The Long term objectives and development strategies in 20 years. Macao: The Joint Research Group of Macao Development Strategy Research Centre and Macao Association of Economic Sciences. Lai, C.Y.C.C. (1991). Towards More Communication: Hong Kong secondary school English syllabus revisited. Perspectives 3: 98–107. Lam, A.S.L. (2005). Language Education in China: Policy and experience from 1949. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Lam, A.S.L. (2008). Language Education Policy in Greater China. In S. May and N.H. Hornberger (Eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education: Language policy and political issues in education. New York: Springer. Li, S.P.T. and Kwo, W.Y.O. (2004). Teacher Education. In M. Bray and R. Koo (Eds) Education and Society in Hong Kong and Macao: Comparative perspectives on continuity and change (2nd edn). Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre. Lin, A. (2007). English Language Proficiency Assessment for English Language Teachers in Hong Kong: Development and dilemmas. http://www.apecneted.org/resources/downloads/KEYNOTE%20LIN%20paper-%20English%20Teachers%20Benchmarks_HK.doc accessed 30 March 2008. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China (MFA) (1993). Basic Law of the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China, Article 9. Macao: Macao Special Administrative Region Government Printing Bureau. http://www.fmcoprc. gov.mo/eng/sawj/t53584.htm accessed 26 August 2008. Mok, M.M.C., Leung, S.O. and Shan, W.J.P. (2005). A Comparative Study on the Self-directed Learning of Primary Students in Hong Kong and Macau. International Journal of Selfdirected Learning 2(2): 39–54. Shan, W.J. and Ieong, S.L. (2007). ‘An analysis of education in Macao: General situation and unique features.’ Paper presented in the Joint Comparative Education Society of Asia (CESA)/ Comparative Education Society of Hong Kong (CESHK) Conference, Hong Kong, January. Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR) (2004). Action Plan to Raise Language Standards in Hong Kong: Final review report. Hong Kong: SCOLAR. Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) (2006). Statistics of Teachers (School Year 2006–2007). http://app.dsej.gov.mo/prog/edu/stat_d/subpage.jsp?levelindex=2&statfile=te002. jsp?&zerorep=--&sid=&lang=e&year=2006/2007 accessed 30 August 2008. Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) (2008). Latest Statistical Information. http://www.dsec. gov.mo/e_index.html accessed 28 August 2008. Tse, S.K., Shum, M., Ki, W.W. and Chan, Y.M. (2007). The Medium Dilemma for Hong Kong Secondary Schools. Language Policy 6(1): 135–62. Tsui, A.B.M., Coniam, D., Sengupta, S. and Wu, K.Y. (1994). Computer-mediated Communication and Teacher Education: The case of TELENEX. In N. Bird, P. Falvey, A.B.M. Tsui and A. McNeill (Eds) Language and Learning. Hong Kong: Government Printer, pp. 352–69.

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Tsui, A.B.M., Shum, M.S.K., Wong, C.K., Tse, S.K. and Ki, W.W. (1999). Which Agenda? Medium of instruction policy in post-1997 Hong Kong. Language, Culture and Curriculum 12(3): 196–212. University of Macao (2009). General Regulations governing UM programmes. http://www.umac. mo/reg/UMCalendar/(6)GR.pdf Accessed 24 October 2009. Urmston, A. (2003) Learning to Teach English in Hong Kong: The opinions of teachers in training. Language and Education 17(2): 112–37. Yee, A.H. (1990). A Comparative Study of Macau’s Education System: Changing colonial patronage and native self-reliance. Comparative Education 26(1): 61–72. Young, C.M.Y. (2006). Macao Students’ Attitudes toward English: A post-1999 survey. World Englishes 25(3/4): 479–90. Zhou, M.L. (2001). Language Policy and Illiteracy in Ethnic Minority Communities in China. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 21(2): 129–48.

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39 Bilingual educational programmes in Indian schools: addressing the English language needs of the Country Mihika Shah

India is a multilingual country where 1,652 languages belonging to five different language families are used (National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), 2006a). English, however, enjoys the position of power and prestige, and knowledge of English results in a huge socioeconomic divide. One of the major reasons that English is not equally accessible to the country’s majority is the government’s inconsistency in official declaration and behaviour vis-à-vis English. Currently, there is no integrated national policy that governs the teaching of English in schools and colleges across India. The great challenge is providing English language education to a population of over one billion with limited resources. However, this basic need of the people must be satisfied, as economic opportunities available in English are not available in the regional languages. The educational system of the country needs to undergo a radical transformation if the goal of providing equality through education is to be met. Skutnabb-Kangas (1981) defines an ideal bilingual profile as one which allows for a high degree of self-realization and competence as a functioning member of society from both an individual and societal point of view. In principle at least an individual should be able to use both languages in question equally for the purposes of communication and thinking. In India, however, the objective of learning English is upward socioeconomic mobility and not integration. There exists a ‘diglossic’ situation, where English is more frequently used in occupational domains, and one or more regional languages are more frequently used in the social domains. According to Skutnabb-Kangas (1981) this results in the underdevelopment of the ability to use both languages to an equal degree in all domains. Thus, an individual has access to two incomplete language systems instead of access to two complete language systems. In order to avoid this situation, the objective of the educational system should be bilingualism to achieve societal goals. Efficient bilingual educational programmes might help the majority of the population have adequate proficiency in English and their respective regional language.

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This chapter begins with a brief outline of the status of English in India. It goes on to describe the place of English within the educational system of the country. Bilingual educational programmes are then discussed within the theoretical framework of the developmental interdependence hypothesis. It is suggested that bilingual educational programmes might be the most effective means to address both the people’s demand for efficient English language education, and the government’s duty/ responsibility towards preserving and enriching Indian languages. This chapter addresses the English language teaching–learning issues related to the government regionalmedium schools that provide low-cost sustainable education to the majority of the population. Lastly, some of the current issues that hinder English language teaching–learning are discussed and recommendations provided.

India: A linguistic profile Seven union territories1 and 28 states form the Indian sub-continent. Hindi is recognized as the official language of India, and English as the associate official language. According to the Act of Parliament passed in 1963, both Hindi and English have to be compulsorily used for official purposes of the Union. While the entire country is governed by the Union/Central Government, each State Government has its own language and jurisdiction of administration (Rao, 2003). Constitutional recognition is afforded to 22 major Indian languages. Many other minority languages and various dialects are also used across the country (Vaish, 2008). Approximately 87 languages are used in the print media, 71 on the radio, and 13 in government administration (NCERT, 2006a). English is the language associated with power and prestige. The constitution of India was written in the English language and it is not yet known whether a legally authenticated version of the constitution is available in Hindi or any other Indian language (Rao, 2003). English serves as the link-language between central government and the governments of non-Hindi speaking states. The proceedings of the country’s Supreme Court are conducted exclusively in English. The majority of government publications are in English (Khan, 2000). While most Indian states recognize their respective state languages as their official language, three north-east Indian states, Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya, recognize English as their states’ sole official language (Khubchandani, 1994). It is also the language favoured by all-India institutions; all-India competitive exams; all-India conferences and seminars; the mass media; the legal system; the banking system; trade and commerce; and defence. At the individual level, it is viewed as the language of opportunity and socioeconomic advancement (Verma, 1994b). Most careers and high ranking jobs in government, business, commerce, and science and technology require fluency in English (Indianchild, 2000). English dominates the higher education sector. At university level, science and technology courses are mainly taught in English. Instruction through the regional languages is available as an alternative or optional medium for some courses, but most students opt to study these in English (Sridhar, 1989; Khan, 2000).

1 A union territory is an area that is too small to be defined as a full fledged state.

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The three language formula: English in Indian education The Indian education system is comprised of 12 years of primary and secondary schooling. All schools are required to follow the Three Language Formula (TLF), which was first introduced in 1956 and has had several revisions (Vaish, 2008). The TLF specifies the order of introduction and the length of study of different languages and provides different linguistic choices for different regions. According to TLF, children are required to study one language from grades one to four, two languages from grades five to seven and three languages from grades eight to ten. The medium of instruction from grades one to four is the states’ official language, which in the majority of the cases is the children’s mother-tongue. From grades five to seven children begin learning a compulsory second language, which is generally English. In grades eight to ten a third compulsory language is introduced, which can be any modern Indian/foreign language or any classical Indian/foreign language. In the last two years of schooling, any two languages of the three studied so far are compulsory, thereby making the study of English optional (Sridhar, 1989). However, TLF has no support in the constitution or parliament and can be rejected by any state government (Rao, 2003), as is evident from its uneven implementation across the country. At one extreme is the state of Bihar that refuses to teach English even though it is obligatory, whereas at the other extreme is the state of West Bengal that refuses to teach Hindi despite the fact that it is the country’s official language. Three other states, Tamil Nadu, Tripura and the Karaikal region of Pondicherry, have chosen to implement a two-language formula whereby they teach their respective state language and English (Vaish, 2008). There are three types of schools in India: public schools that are funded and managed by the government; private schools that are funded and managed by private entrepreneurs; and government-aided schools that are funded by the government but managed privately (US Library of Congress, 1996). Kurrien (2005, cited in NCERT, 2006b: 2) identifies four different types of schools in terms of teacher proficiency in English, and exposure to English in the environment to define the English language teaching situation in India: (1) the English-medium, private and government-aided, ‘elite’ schools have highly proficient English teachers and children with wide exposure to English within and outside their homes; (2) the new English-medium private schools that serve the lower middle-income population have teachers with limited English proficiency and children with little or no background in English; (3) the governmentaided regional-medium schools have teachers with low/no degree of English proficiency and children with little/no exposure to English outside the classroom; (4) the government regional-medium schools run by district and municipal education authorities have teachers with practically no proficiency in English and children with virtually no exposure to English. The large majority of the students studying in the ‘non-elite’ schools are exposed only to ‘textbook’ or ‘classroom’ English (Verma, 1994b). The intelligence of many students is called into question at higher levels of education when they find themselves in a situation where they are called upon to express themselves in a language that they cannot adequately control (Verma, 1994a). Those attending the new English-medium private schools manage to achieve varied degrees of linguistic competence in order to meet their educational and career demands, but the majority studying in the regional-medium schools struggle with low degrees of linguistic competence and extremely inadequate levels of communicative competence (Nagpal, 1995). 463

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The government of India also subsidizes two types of bilingual schools: Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas. In Kendriya Vidyalayas, bilingualism starts right from pre-school, whereas Navodaya Vidyalayas admit students only in grade six, and up to grade eight the medium of instruction is the regional language. The subjects of science and mathematics are taught in English, and social studies in English/Hindi. But admissions to Kendriya Vidyalayas are restricted to children of central government employees, and admissions to Navodaya Vidyalayas are determined by competitive entrance exams passed by children from rural areas when they are at the end of grade five. There are only approximately 981 Kendriya Vidyalayas and 565 Navodaya Viyalayas across the country (Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, 2007; Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, 2007).

The developmental interdependence hypothesis and its relevance to Indian education The principles and guidelines regarding multilingual education declared by UNESCO in a position paper (2003) lend credence to the developmental interdependence hypothesis. The first principle holds that mother-tongue education is the most effective way to improve educational quality, as it builds on knowledge and experience of both teachers and learners. All formal education should be commenced through the medium of L1. The second principle supports bilingual education, that is, instruction in different subjects through different languages right from primary school to university level in order to promote social and gender equality. Early acquisition of L2 in addition to the mothertongue is recommended. The position paper suggests that instructional time given to L2 should be gradually increased and L2 should be made one of the media of instruction only when students are reasonably familiar with it. The developmental interdependence hypothesis suggests that the level of L2 competence that a bilingual child attains is partially a function of L1 competence that the child possesses at the time that intensive exposure to L2 begins. Additive bilingual education programmes wherein a second language is being added to the repertoire of skills already acquired by a child in L1 are likely to be successful. When children have not been exposed to a literate L1 environment prior to school entry and certain cognitive–linguistic aspects of L1 have not yet been developed, then instruction in L2 is likely to impede the development of L1 and negatively affect the development of L2. Unless children have reached the abstraction level in L1 they are unlikely to be able to master conceptual operations in L2. Children whose conceptual–linguistic knowledge is not conducive to the development of literacy skills should be taught through the medium of L1 (Cummins, 1979). When children are forced to function in cognitively demanding situations, such as those found in classrooms through their L2, and when they have yet to develop an adequate command over L2, they will be unable to comprehend much of the content transmitted in class. They will feel inhibited in expressing their developing intelligence and operating verbally upon their environment (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981). Basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) and cognitive/academic language proficiency (CALP) in both L1 and L2 can be distinguished from each other. BICS represents oral fluency and CALP refers to literacy related aspects of language (Cummins, 1980). The development of CALP is essential for scholastic success. BICS and CALP are manifestations of a common underlying proficiency. It is this common underlying 464

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proficiency that makes the transfer of literacy related CALP skills across languages possible even when the surface aspects of the two languages might be very different. However, the transfer is possible both ways (Cummins, 1998). If an individual can proficiently manipulate, interpret and evaluate his/her L1 in context-reduced situations wherein the negotiation of meanings is largely dependent on linguistic cues, then these skills are more likely to manifest themselves in similar L2 situations (Cummins, 1983). Older learners acquire CALP related aspects of L2 more rapidly than younger learners because of their cognitive maturity (Cummins, 1992). Therefore, it might be more beneficial to promote literacy in children’s stronger language and help them to transfer their linguistic knowledge to the weaker language once they have made the initial breakthrough into literacy (Cummins, 1998). The age at which L2 is introduced, the intensity of teaching, and the duration of L2 learning are interlinked. Bilingual education refers to the language of instruction and requires that at least two languages be used as means of instruction in subjects other than the languages themselves. Bilingual programmes where the age of introduction is low and the intensity of teaching high and duration long have shown the most beneficial results. The next best results are from programmes where the age of introduction is high, intensity of teaching is high but the duration is short. Programmes where one or more subjects have been taught through the foreign language, that is, low starting age, low intensity but long duration, have also shown successful results (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981). The design of any bilingual educational programme must consider that BICS in L2 develops in approximately two years whereas CALP skills in L2 develop over a period of at least five years (Cummins, 1992). Critics of the developmental interdependence hypothesis have argued that it is a deficit-driven theory that attributes language minority children’s school failure to cognitive/academic deficiency (Edelsky et al., 1983). The authors have further contested that BICS and CALP are not distinct from one another but are interlinked. However, they concede that school related literacy tasks requiring abstraction are better acquired through the development of L1. Cummins (2003) had made the distinction between BICS and CALP primarily to define the different time periods required by immigrant children to acquire grade appropriate fluency in L2. In this chapter, however, the developmental interdependence hypothesis has served as a guideline for recommending the design of a bilingual educational programme aimed at the large majority of the Indian population, not a language minority population of immigrants. In the light of the principles declared by UNESCO (2003), the issue regarding interconnectivity between BICS and CALP raised by Edelsky et al. (1983) will be addressed in this chapter, in so far as recommending a long receptive period for the development of L2 BICS. This is with a view to ensuring familiarity with L2 before it can be introduced as a medium of instruction at the same time as strengthening L1 BICS and CALP skills in the elementary school years. In the regional-medium schools in India children are taught literacy skills in their regional language before they are introduced to English. While most of these children will have fully developed BICS in their L1 it is not necessarily true that they will have also developed a level of abstraction in their L1, as not all of them come from literate L1 environments. At present in India, 38.2 per cent of children in grade one cannot read the alphabet; 76.7 per cent in grade two cannot read the prescribed grade one textbooks; and 47 per cent in grade five cannot read the prescribed grade two textbooks in their L1 (Readindia, 2007). Learning a compulsory second language is imposed on these 465

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children without taking into account their L1 CALP development, the age at which English is introduced, the duration for which it will be studied, or the intensity of teaching. In the states of Jammu and Kashmir and Nagaland, English is the medium of instruction from grade one itself. In the remaining states English is introduced at different stages ranging from grades one to five (ASER, 2007). A national integrated English language teaching policy, which is binding on all states, is needed to meet the demands of society. The educational goal should be to help children develop the common underlying proficiency that is beneficial for all language learning. The current TLF does promote additive bilingualism in principle. What is required is a bilingual programme that allows children to use their L1 for cognitively demanding tasks for at least the first two years of schooling. At the same time, the programme should include an early receptive period for English wherein children are not forced to produce anything in English unless and until they are ready for it, thereby helping them acquire surface fluency in English. The developmental interdependence hypothesis suggests that helping children develop CALP skills in their regional languages will facilitate the transfer of these skills to English in the higher grades. This will eventually enable the development of their English language skills. Skutnabb-Kangas (1981) defines a second language as one which an individual would be required to use or at least would hear it being used in the larger community, whereas a foreign language is one which is not required at all in one’s immediate environment for the purpose of communication. Children would have no contact with the foreign language unless it was included as a subject in school. She argues that any language that is not likely to get support from the larger community requires a great deal of institutional and parental support to develop to a high degree of competence. English for urban children in India could be defined as a second language and for rural children as a foreign language. All urban government schools need to implement a programme that comprises regional language instruction for the first two years and simultaneous exposure to English for the development of surface fluency. After the first two years, children need to be gradually moved to learning half of their subjects through the medium of the regional language and the remaining half through English. In rural government schools instruction in the first two years should be provided through regional language and children should be given a longer receptive period for developing surface fluency in English. Thereafter, at least one subject in the early grades and at least two subjects in the higher grades should be taught through instruction in English. One of the advantages of teaching even just one subject through the medium of English earlier rather than later is that the content is more contextual and less linguistically demanding in the early grades. Therefore, children would be spared the burden of having not only to learn a foreign language but also to cope with the content of the subject matter in the foreign language in higher grades. Teaching through the medium of both the regional language and English throughout school is likely to have positive effects on students’ cognitive and academic abilities and result in beneficial forms of additive bilingualism. In India, where the classroom is the main source of English input, it is the responsibility of the educational system not only to provide input but also to facilitate the development of skills for processing and retaining information. Schools need to provide comprehensible input in English; adequate cognitive and linguistic development in L1 to enable transfer to L2; background knowledge through L1 to make sense of L2; a bilingual teacher and the opportunity for students to produce output in L2 (SkutnabbKangas, 1981). Translation into the regional languages is a common feature of English 466

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teaching in India. Based on a study of an Indian bilingual school, Vaish (2008) found that simultaneous translation is important to facilitate students’ access to the content of their lessons. Grounding in basic skills might be accomplished through translation. Vaish suggests that systematic code-switching using the standard forms of both languages might pave the way for content transfer into English. The scaffolding of translation can be removed gradually as students progress higher up the educational ladder. Translation can be an effective tool to provide comprehensible input and question students’ comprehension (Pandey and Amita, 1998). However, translation does limit the ability to use language in meaningful contexts. This can be avoided through providing an early receptive period for the development of surface fluency in English. Teachers need to be made aware that mother tongue can be used as a resource in the English classroom.

The teaching of English language in India The grammar–translation method that finds its roots in the historical Vedic and Koranic traditions of correct pronunciation and chanting of the shlokas (verses) is still widely practised in India (Sheorey, 2006; Vaish, 2008). Kavya (literature)–vyakaran (grammar) were the basis of language study in India. The grammar–translation method requires an individual to learn a second language by interpreting text with the help of a dictionary and studying the rules of inflection and syntax with the help of a grammar book. It ignores the element of communicative use of language. The teaching of vocabulary, grammar and translation are the focal points of English language teaching (Krishnaswamy and Sriraman, 1995). The syllabus focuses on teaching English in a linear, additive fashion. A single structure is introduced and drilled through repetitive exercises, but the application of language is only superficially treated (Pananghat, 1995). Teaching, on the whole, can be thought of as coaching for examinations through repetition and revision. The most common teaching scenario is one where a textbook is prescribed; teachers are supposed to cover ‘the portion’ from the syllabus; students are tested only within the confines of ‘the portion’ taught; and examiners setting the questions papers are only meant to ask questions from ‘the portion’ taught (Krishnaswamy and Sriraman, 1995). Students rely heavily on ‘guide books’ and ‘bazaar notes’ to memorize answers to the ‘set’ questions that are asked repeatedly in examinations (Singh and Satsangi, 2001). Most teachers believe that once they have ‘taught’ the textbook they have fulfilled their responsibility of teaching English. Most English teaching is based on the assumption that once children have learnt the alphabet they have learnt to read all types of texts for all intents and purposes (Gupta, 1994). A typical reading lesson generally comprises the reading of a small part of the text by the teacher, followed by an explanation in simple English or the regional language. One or two grammatical points are discussed and one or two questions are thrown in (Sheorey, 2006). Exercises meant to enhance language learning following the lessons in the textbooks consist of drill practice of a few selected grammatical items that have been taught in isolation and independent of the context (Nagpal, 1995). The typical Indian classroom is dominated by three Ts: textbooks, teachers and tests (Tickoo, 1994). The inflexibility of all three has resulted in less than optimal English language teaching–learning. Textbooks are revised not to increase efficiency but to accommodate lowered goals (Sareen, 1992). The common belief is that subject matter must be appropriately packaged in terms of structure, function and grammar in order to 467

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achieve optimal results (Kumar, 1995). Textbooks are generally written in an ad hoc fashion with minimal understanding of a coherent reading instruction strategy. A single textbook is followed throughout the year and language is believed to have been ‘taught’. Currently, each state produces its own textbooks. A master textbook is produced and then translated into other languages. Textbooks are written and then passed on to illustrators, resulting in mismatched content and illustrations. Furthermore, the lessons are difficult to understand and the language is dense/trivial (NCERT, 2005, 2006a). Improvements have been made in primary school textbooks with larger fonts, less dense text and colourful pictures. Revised science textbooks at the middle-school level have incorporated an element of community knowledge that might encourage critical thinking. However, even the revised high-school English textbooks are full of dense and ponderous language and uninteresting lessons. The communicative element in the revised textbooks is not curricular focus (Vaish, 2008). English textbooks need to be revised to facilitate students’ learning through moving from simple to complex linguistic elements, and from easy/familiar to difficult/unfamiliar content. At the micro level, lexis, syntax, orthography and semantics; and at the macro level students’ aptitude, ability to understand and educational achievement need to be considered. The long-term goal for most Indian students is to be able to use their linguistic knowledge to process progressively varied and complex content in the higher grades (Gupta, 1994). NCERT (2006a) states that authentic texts are the most potent tool for foreign language learning. They recommend that schools should provide a wide range of reading materials to ensure curricular flexibility and exposure; as well as to make sure that children are engaged in reading and writing tasks beyond their everyday coursework. No textbook or syllabus can rise above the quality of its teachers (NCERT, 2005). A study by the National University of Educational Planning and Administration found that nearly 24,00,000 elementary school teachers across India are not educated beyond twelfth grade (Varma, 2007). The outdated one year BEd. programme, pre-service and in-service training of teachers does not prepare them adequately in pedagogic skills (NCERT, 2005). The situation is worsened by the increasing number of ‘shiksha karmis’ (teacher helpers) (NCERT, 2006a). It is interesting to note that teachers have no voice in textbook selection, curriculum design or assessment techniques (Sheorey, 2006). Often, they do not even have the full year’s syllabus that they are meant to teach. The NCERT (2005) suggests that teachers need to be taught pedagogic theory in conjunction with actual practice in classrooms through internships. Issues of teacher selection, training and accountability need to be dealt with firmly. The NCERT (2006b) recommends that teachers need to have basic proficiency in English and also need to acquire the skills required to teach reading through comprehensive study of theories of language learning. Currently, increasing numbers of teachers are being trained for language teaching at the Central Institute of English and Foreign languages (Sheorey, 2006). Major contributions are also being made by non-government organizations such as the Centre for Learning Resources (CLR) to provide in-service training to teacher trainers, and elementary and pre-school teachers in collaboration with several state governments (CLR, 2006–7). English language teaching across the country is examination-oriented. The examination system needs to be radically altered. The current system promotes reduction and reproduction. An assessment system that encourages reasoning, critical thinking and creative writing is needed. Assessment should be ongoing throughout the school year and should not be terminal (NCERT, 2006a). Students’ ability to apply knowledge in 468

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meaningful contexts, not their memory, should be assessed. According to NCERT (2006b) students’ ability to listen, read, write and converse age-appropriately, as well as their control over receptive and expressive vocabulary, should be the objectives of examinations. A national benchmark needs to be set to prepare English language tests that can be comparable across the country.

Conclusion The government of India subsidizes a very limited number of bilingual schools. If bilingual education in India is to reach the masses then the government first and foremost needs to devise and declare a national integrated policy on the teaching of English, which would be binding on all states. People need to be convinced that learning regional language in the early grades is not just part of a political agenda but is necessary and beneficial for children’s English language learning. The predominant belief today is that unless one is educated through the medium of English, one will not acquire proficiency in English. Therefore, bilingual programmes with the dual aims of: (a) developing children’s CALP in their mother tongue in the early grades; and (b) providing vast exposure to English in the early grades to develop children’s BICS need to be implemented. Instruction through regional language and English needs to continue throughout schooling, so that each and every citizen is proficient in both languages, thereby reducing the gap between the elites and the masses. Radical changes need to be made in terms of producing comprehensive and understandable textbooks, training efficient teachers and devising an egalitarian testing system.

References Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) (2007). Annual Status of Education Report (2007) English in ASER 2007: Process document. http://www.pratham.org/aser07/documents/ English_tool.pdf accessed 1 August 2008. Centre for LearningResources (CLR) (2006–7). Annual Report. http://www.clrindia.net/download/annualreport0607.pdf accessed 2 August 2008. Cummins, J. (1979). Linguistic Interdependence and the Educational Development of Bilingual Children. Review of Educational Research 49(2): 222–51. Cummins, J. (1980). The Cross-lingual Dimensions of Language Proficiency: Implications for bilingual education and the optimal age issue. TESOL Quarterly 14(2): 175–87. Cummins, J. (1983). Language Proficiency, Biliteracy and French Immersion. Canadian Journal of Education 8(2): 117–38. Cummins, J. (1992). Bilingual Education and English Immersion: The Ramírez report in theoretical perspective. Bilingual Research Journal 16(1–2): 91–104. Cummins, J. (1998). Immersion Education for the Millennium: What have we learned from 30 years of research on second language immersion? http://carla.acad.umn.edu/cobaltt/ modules/strategies/immersion2000.pdf accessed 26 July 2008. Cummins, J. (2003). Putting Language Proficiency in Its Place: Responding to critiques of the conversational/academic language distinction. http://www.iteachilearn.com/cummins/ converacademlangdisti.html accessed 26 February 2009. Edelsky, C., Hudelson, S., Flores, B., Barkin, F., Altwerger, B. and Jilbert, K. (1983). Semilingualism and Language Deficit. Applied Linguistics 4(1): 1–22.

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Gupta, R.S. (1994). Selecting Reading Materials: Some key considerations. In R.K. Agnihotri and A.L. Khanna (Eds) Second Language Acquisition: Socio-cultural and linguistic aspects of English in India. London: Sage Publications. Indianchild (2000). English in India. http://www.indianchild.com/English_in_india.htm accessed 1 August 2008. Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (2007). Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan. http://kvsangathan.nic. in/ accessed 4 August 2008. Khan, N. (2000). English in India. Journal of Indian Education 25(4): 12–23. Khubchandani, L.M. (1994). English as a Contact Language. In R.K. Agnihotri and A.L. Khanna (Eds) Second Language Acquisition: Socio-cultural and linguistic aspects of English in India. London: Sage Publications. Krishnaswamy, N. and Sriraman, T. (1995). English Teaching in India: Past, present and future. In R.K. Agnihotri and A.L. Khanna (Eds) English Language Teaching in India: Issues and innovations London: Sage Publications. Kumar, K. (1995). Classroom Interaction in Different Subject Classes. In R.K. Agnihotri and A.L. Khanna (Eds) English Language Teaching in India: Issues and innovations. London: Sage Publications. Kurrien, J. (2005). ‘Notes for the meeting of the national focus group on teaching of English and note on introduction of English at the primary stage’, ms., National Focus Group (NFG) – English. Nagpal, U. (1995). Teaching Language through Language. In R.K. Agnihotri and A.L. Khanna (Eds) English Language Teaching in India: Issues and innovations. London: Sage Publications. National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) (2005). National Curriculum Framework. New Delhi: NCERT, Publication Department by the Secretary. http://www. ncert.nic.in/html/pdf/schoolcurriculum/framework05/nf2005.pdf accessed 1 August 2008. National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) (2006a). Position Paper: National focus group on teaching of Indian languages. New Delhi: NCERT, Publication Department by the Secretary. http://www.ncert.nic.in/html/pdf/schoolcurriculum/Position_Papers/ Indian_Languages.pdf accessed 1 August 2008. National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) (2006b). Position Paper: National focus group on teaching of English. New Delhi: NCERT, Publication Department by the Secretary. http://www.ncert.nic.in/html/pdf/schoolcurriculum/position_papers/ English.pdf accessed 1 August 2008. Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti (2007). Objectives and Salient Features of Navodaya Vidyalayas. http://navodaya.nic.in/welcome%20sbs.htm accessed 4 August 2008. Pananghat, S. (1995). A Two-tier Approach to the Teaching of English at the School Level. In R.K. Agnihotri and A.L. Khanna (Eds) English Language Teaching in India: Issues and innovations. London: Sage Publications. Pandey, K.P. and Dr. Amita (1998). Teaching of English in India. Varanasi: Vishwavidyalaya Prakashan. Rao, B.V.R. (2003). The Constitution and Language Politics of India. New Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corporation. Readindia (2007). Read India Overview. http://www.readindia.org/about_read_india/rd_ind_ overview.htm accessed 1 August 2008. Sareen, S.K. (1992). English Reading Texts: A socio-cultural study. New Delhi: Intellectual Publishing House. Sheorey, R. (2006). Learning and Teaching English in India. London: Sage Publications. Singh, M. and Satsangi, N. (2001). English Language Proficiency of Students in Different English Language Teaching Systems. Journal of Indian Education 27(1): 31–40. Skutnabb-Kangas (1981). Bilingualism or Not: The education of minorities, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Sridhar, K.K. (1989). English in Indian Bilingualism. New Delhi: Manohar Publications.

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Tickoo, M.L. (1994). Towards an Alternative Curriculum for Acquisition-poor Environments. In R.K. Agnihotri and A.L. Khanna (Eds) Second Language Acquisition: Socio-cultural and linguistic aspects of English in India. London: Sage Publications. UNESCO (2003). Education Position Paper: Education in a multilingual world. http://unesdoc. unesco.org/images/0012/001297/129728e.pdf accessed 26 February 2009. US Library of Congress (2006). Education. http://countrystudies.us/india/37.htm accessed 1 August 2008. Vaish, V. (2008). Biliteracy and Globalization: English language education in India. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Varma, S. (2007). ‘Gujarat gurus sans college gyan’, The Times of India, 12 December, p.1. Verma, M.K. (1994a). English in Indian Education. In R.K. Agnihotri and A.L. Khanna (Eds) Second Language Acquisition: Socio-cultural and linguistic aspects of English in India. London: Sage Publications. Verma, S.K. (1994b). Teaching English as a Second Language in India: A socio-functional view. In R.K. Agnihotri and A.L. Khanna (Eds) Second Language Acquisition: Socio-cultural and linguistic aspects of English in India. London: Sage Publications.

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40 English in Scandinavia: a success story Aud Marit Simensen

Scandinavia is used in both a wide sense, which includes several countries in the region in northern Europe, and in a narrow sense, which includes the three countries Denmark, Norway and Sweden only. The latter meaning is normally favoured by the larger dictionaries.1 For the purpose of the present chapter, the narrow sense of the term will be used, the most important reason being that the national languages of these countries, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, are closely related, and actually mutually intelligible, so that the linguistic conditions for the learning and use of English in these communities may be comparable.2 These three languages are, in fact, often considered to be dialects of the same language. The languages in Scandinavia are used by approximately 19 million mother tongue speakers. Thus from an international, comparative point of view they are ‘small’ languages. The Scandinavian countries have had and still have close ties with the English speaking world. The Scandinavians have been and still are a seafaring people. For centuries they have sailed all over Europe and across the North Atlantic Ocean. There is for example plenty of evidence for Viking settlements on the British Isles. This applies to a great number of place names that have traces of the Old Norse language in the endings, such as Grimsby and Normanby. In the modern era, great numbers of Scandinavians have immigrated to the USA. Thus new ties to the English speaking world have been set up through family relationships.

1 Cf. for example Encyclopædia Britannica online which also refers to some authorities who argue for the inclusion of Finland as well as Iceland and the Faroe Islands on various grounds. http://britannica.com accessed 13 March 2009. It has, in some cases, been necessary to generalize and exclude minor differences between the Scandinavian countries. 2 This does not, however, apply to minority populations with a Sami language as mother tongue in Norway and Sweden. The Sami language has official status in some parts of Norway and is recognized as a minority language in some municipalities in Sweden. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_languages accessed 13 March 2009.

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The ‘inner circle’ e.g. UK, USA, Australia

The ‘outer circle’ e.g. India, Ghana, Malawi

The ‘expanding circle’ e.g. China, Japan, Denmark, Sweden, Norway

Figure 40.1 The role of English around the world. Source: Simensen, 2007: 74, based on Kachru, 1992.

The Scandinavian languages and English are related, since they all belong to the Germanic language family. This may give learners a feeling of ‘familiarity’ with English, may motivate for learning, and thus be one of several explanations of why the level of competence in English today is considered high. The idea of ‘familiarity’ is, in fact, used for educational purposes in the recent research project, EuroCom.3

English in the world English has at present obtained status as an international language. Among the explanations may be that English is ‘a language which has repeatedly found itself in the right place at the right time’ (Crystal, 1997: 110). One way of describing the ways in which English is currently being learned and used is in terms of three widely recognized concentric circles: an ‘inner circle’, an ‘outer circle’ and an ‘expanding circle’ (see Figure 40.1). The countries where English is spoken as a first language are placed in the ‘inner circle’, with 320–400 million users as a rough estimate. This applies to such countries such as the United Kingdom, USA, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Placed in the ‘outer circle’ are all the countries where English is spoken as a second language, such as India, Pakistan, Malawi, Nigeria and many more, with 150–300 million users as a rough estimate.4 Among these are several former British colonies where English plays a major communicative role both in institutional and personal settings. Finally, the ‘expanding circle’ involves all the countries that acknowledge the importance of English as an international language for cultural, commercial, educational, etc. purposes.

3 The EuroCom project has educational programmes for different language families, for example for the Germanic languages. http://eurocomprehension.eu/germ/indexgerm.htm accessed 13 March 2009. 4 A second language is normally defined as the language learned after the mother tongue.

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This applies to countries such as China, Russia, Japan, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, and a steadily increasing number of other countries, with 1.2–1.5 billion users as a very rough estimate. In these countries English is taught as a foreign language, but the level of competence in the language varies greatly. This applies to countries as well as individuals.5 The claim has been made that for some countries the distinction between the use of English as a second and foreign language has less relevance now than it had previously. This is because there is much more use now than before of English in some countries belonging to the ‘expanding circle’, where it is ‘only’ a foreign language, than in some of the ‘outer circle’ countries, where it has held a well-defined position for a long time. Among the ‘expanding circle’ countries are those of Scandinavia. A popular conception is currently that ‘English is Scandinavia’s second language and is almost spoken fluently throughout’.6 Another widespread perception, as reflected in the following quote, is that English has replaced some smaller European national languages in important functions: ‘Swedish, like many smaller European languages, is now positioned more as a local language of solidarity than one for science, university education, or European communication’ (Graddol, 2004: 1329). One issue during the last couple of decades has been the question of models, norms and standards for English in both the ‘outer circle’ and the ‘expanding circle’ countries, but particularly in the latter. A central educational question has for example been to what extent learners in the ‘expanding circle’ should be dependent on ‘inner-circle’ norms when it comes to speaking. One of the most frequently used arguments against ‘inner-circle’-dependency is that today, non-native speakers of English communicate more often with other non-native speakers than they do with native speakers.7 The choice of norm is undeniably a particularly important question when it comes to choice of criteria for assessment in educational settings. Unlike a few decades ago, most Scandinavian teachers at present seem to agree that the most important criterion is that the pupils’ oral language must be understood by most other speakers of English in the world. When for example a Danish and a Spanish researcher in chemistry meet at a conference in Paris, what is important is that they speak in an accent or a form which guarantees that they are able to understand each other without misconceptions. If we go a few decades back in history, choice of norm, even for exposure only to oral English, was a question of debate in educational circles in Scandinavia. At the time the dispute was mostly concentrated around the choice between ‘inner-circle’ variants. The hegemony of the British–English accent was threatened and gradually other ‘inner-circle’ accents made their way into the teaching of English. Today this is long-gone history. Learners in Scandinavia, as in many other societies all over the world, are from an early age heavily exposed to, and accordingly influenced by, a number of varieties of English in the media. So whatever choice of norm or variety, if any, is taken by school authorities or teachers, it may in practice be overruled by varieties that the pupils are exposed to outside the educational system. This development

5 The categorization into circles may be an oversimplification; grey areas exist between the circles, as Kachru himself noted. Examples are South Africa and Jamaica. 6 http://www.scantours.com/important_information_and_practi.htm accessed 9 March 2009. 7 Jenkins 2003 discusses the question of standard forms in a language and deals with a number of language forms in non-native varieties of English.

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is having a series of important consequences for teaching. Recent studies show for example that Scandinavian pupils rate their learning of English outside school as high (Ibsen, 2004).8 A recent PhD study from Norway expresses it thus: ‘learners today will encounter and familiarize themselves with the world largely through the use of [variants of] English mediated by a diversity of digital technologies’ (Lund, 2004: 11, emphasis added).

English in Scandinavia Learning English has a long tradition in Scandinavian countries. The need for proficiency in a ‘larger’ language than Danish, Norwegian and Swedish has been apparent among many groups in society for a long time. Thus the need for English as a central school subject has been obvious in the educational sector, and the motivation for learning it has in general been strong. Textbooks for the teaching of English to native speakers of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish were published as early as in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Howatt with Widdowson, 2004: 66–7). Naturally, the number of learners at that time was extremely low. The nineteenth century, however, provided opportunities for more learners but mostly for pupils in optional upper secondary education. But it was not until the first half of the twentieth century that compulsory primary schooling gave pupils opportunities to learn English, although with considerable local differences with regard to access to teaching. And it was in the second half of the century only that English was extended on a compulsory basis to all pupils, regardless of where they lived. In addition, the mandatory starting age for learning English was gradually lowered. Normally in the first half of the last century the starting age in Scandinavia was the early teens. This was lowered to ten to eleven years of age in the period up to the 1970s, and further lowered to six to nine years of age in the period up to the present. English is the first foreign language in schools in Scandinavia. All children are taught in a nine-year or ten-year compulsory school system. Teaching English starts in third grade in Denmark, in first grade in Norway, and normally in first grade in Sweden. It is mandatory that all study English from the year they start it to the end of compulsory education.9 Traditionally, the teaching of languages other than the mother tongue has been considered foreign language teaching in Scandinavia. This is still the case, although English is gradually obtaining a new standing in Scandinavian societies.10 English language is permeating the daily lives of the inhabitants to a larger extent than ever

8 The following percentages for Denmark, Norway and Sweden are given in Ibsen’s report: 31%, 31% and 34% for learning through media, 14%, 14% and 13% for learning in other ways and 54%, 55% and 52% for learning through English as a school subject for the three countries respectively. These numbers may be compared to the numbers of another country taking part in this particular European investigation, Spain: 15% for learning through media, 22% for learning in other ways and 63% for learning through English as a school subject (p. 51). The European report, including abstracts of the Scandinavian surveys, is edited by Gérard Bonnet, 2002. 9 See M. Strubell et al., 2007 and Eurydice, 2008. Sweden has certain flexibility in starting age. 10 English is not included among the foreign languages described in the Norwegian school reform of 2006, Kunnskapsløftet. http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/kd/tema/grunnopplaring/kunnskapsloeftet.html? id=1411 accessed 24 March 2009.

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before, and the speed of this development increases from one year to the next. Exposure to English is considerable in all walks of life; original soundtracks to English-speaking movies are for example retained, although generally dubbed elsewhere.11 The massive exposure to English in Scandinavia today and the increased use of it in global interaction are factors that currently contribute to making the learning of it far less typical of the learning of a foreign language. In higher education, English is gradually being used more for publishing research results as well as for teaching non-language subjects. At the University of Oslo for example the number of English medium courses has jumped from about 40 master level programmes in 2003 to more than 800 at all levels today (Hellekjær, in progress). English in Scandinavia is approaching the status of a second language. National syllabi for the teaching of English in Scandinavian countries are updated regularly according to new requirements of society, new research, new theoretical perspectives and the new status of English in the world. English as an international language is for example currently referred to explicitly or implicitly in syllabi in all three countries. Understanding speech, even though regional in nature, is also an objective. The Council of Europe document of 2001, The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching and assessment, is an important foundation in Scandinavia for contemporary objectives in teaching as well as for assessment criteria. Aims for teaching are for example specified for each separate grade or for two to five grades together.12 Among the most central and shared objectives of the contemporary syllabi are to ensure that pupils: • •

develop communicative skills and strategies and an ability to listen, speak, read, and write obtain social and cultural knowledge, knowledge of other cultures, and develop an understanding of people from other cultures, an awareness of communication situations, cultural norms and conventions.

All the syllabi in force in Scandinavia contain elements that belong to a communicative approach to teaching. There is for example a focus on much exposure to English, and as far as possible, to authentic English. A lenient stance to linguistic errors is expressed. One attitude articulated is for example that errors in learning should be considered natural (Denmark). Another is that errors should be considered as signs of progressive acquisition of a new linguistic system (Norway). Finally, as pupils’ own language ability in English is often not sufficient for communication from a linguistic point of view,

11 For a discussion of the proportion of English on the internet see Graddol, 2006: 44–5. In Holland and Scandinavia the percentage is characterized as high. 12 The Swedish syllabus distinguishes between ‘goals to aim for’ in the whole school system and ‘goals that pupils should have obtained’ both by the end of the fifth year in school and by the end of the ninth year. http://www3.skolverket.se/ki03/front.aspx?sprak=EN&ar=0809&infotyp=23&skolform=11&id=3870&e xtraId=2087 accessed 20 March 2009. The Danish and the Norwegian syllabi describe goals in a slightly different manner. More levels for example are specified. In essence, however, they are the same. http:// www.faellesmaal.uvm.dk/fag/Engelsk/beskrivelser_synoptisk.html and http://www.utdanningsdirektoratet. no/upload/larerplaner/Fastsatte_lareplaner_for_Kunnskapsloeftet/english/English_subject_curriculum.rtf both accessed 20 March 2009.

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pupils should learn how to compensate for this by using communicative strategies (Sweden).

Assistance from outside the region A number of European institutions have played an important role in the development of the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language in Scandinavia in modern times, and their importance cannot be overestimated. The British Council, established in 1934, was the first European institution of particular importance for the development and expansion of English as a school subject in Scandinavia.13 Teachers qualified in English were in short supply, and knowledge about planning and implementing English as a school subject was limited. The council thus offered in-service training in the teaching of linguistic aspects of the language as well as of aspects of literature and British life and institutions. Gradually, courses were also given in the methodology of teaching English as a foreign language. However, the need for assistance with English teaching turned out to be so great from the 1950s that British Council education officers became attached to Ministries of Education in Scandinavian countries. Among the most urgent tasks for these office-holders was assistance with the production of syllabi, textbooks and materials on methods of instruction. The council founded the first international professional journal with its first issue in October 1946. Since 1981 the journal’s name has been ELT Journal.14 It has been a journal of great importance for the teaching of English worldwide and still is. The journal has been available for readers in all Scandinavian countries since its inception and still is. Subscriptions for the whole period are documented in the catalogues of the Scandinavian university or national libraries.15 Up to the 1960s, the position of the British Council was to a large extent hegemonic. However, new ideas came from outside the council’s circles and as a consequence the council no longer had supremacy over the teaching of English in Scandinavia. This mostly applied to ideas at vital research centres in USA, ideas which, in fact, before long were replaced by even newer ideas. In essence the most recent ideas caused a shift towards a focus on meaning and on communicative purposes in foreign language teaching. The most central institution in Europe to take the lead in this development was the Council of Europe (CoE). Among the roots of the CoE is the long held idea of European integration through the construction of common institutions. In 1946, Sir Winston Churchill called for the creation of a United States of Europe and a Council of Europe. The CoE was established in 1949.16 CoE is an intergovernmental organization based on membership. Ten pioneer states signed the Statute of the CoE in 1949; among these were Denmark, Norway and Sweden,

13 For the situation in Norway see Gundem, 1989. 14 ELT Journal. http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/ accessed 20 March 2009. 15 This applies to the University of Oslo Library, currently part of the National University Library System, Stockholm University Library, and the Royal Library in Denmark, including Copenhagen University Library, all with subscriptions since 1946. 16 Based on Trim, 2007 and Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org./wiki/Council_of_Europe accessed 20 March 2009.

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and they have all enjoyed close cooperation with the council and with other member states ever since then. The promotion of foreign language learning was one aspect of the council’s mission to improve European understanding and cooperation. Activities in the fields of culture and education started towards the end of the 1950s, with a basis in the European Cultural Convention, signed in 1954. The Council for Cultural Co-operation was established a few years later, in 1962. An essential idea here was closer cooperation between teachers, experts and language planners in member states. Another central idea was to run experiments related to extending foreign language teaching to younger learners and to a broader cross-section of the school population. This had an influence on educational policy in the Scandinavian countries, as noted in the section above, although a Swedish study of English as a foreign language came up with more or less equal proficiency results for two different age groups involved, one starting in grade one, the other in grade three or four (Holmstrand, 1983). During the almost 50 years since the Council for Cultural Co-operation was established, the organization has conducted a series of research projects and developed a whole range of basic and essential tools with regard to teaching. English as a foreign language has been at the forefront of this work all the time. Some of it will be commented on below. To assist in this effort, the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) was created by CoE in 1995. And the idea of teaching foreign languages to younger learners is among other initiatives for example currently regaining attention in Scandinavian countries. This time the coordinating unit is ECML.17 CoE, together with the European Union (EU), are at present the two primary forces at work in European integration.18 A third institution, the European Language Council (ELC), with a focus on language teaching in higher education, although officially launched only in 1997, should also be included here. ELC is an independent association, whose main aim is the improvement of knowledge of languages and cultures, including English, in the EU and beyond. According to the official website of the council, all Scandinavian countries are at present represented by one or more higher educational institutions.19 The EU, with its roots going back to the year 1950, is based on the premise of the free movement of its citizens, capital and services.20 Thus it is important that the citizens in this part of the world, including Scandinavia, have the language skills necessary to understand, communicate and collaborate with other people in Europe. For obvious reasons, English is a central language in the union. A great number of educational programmes, presently under the umbrella of the Lifelong Learning Programme, are established to

17 ECML websites. http://www.ecml.at/mtp2/TEMOLAYOLE/html/Temolayole_E_pdesc.htm and http:// www.ecml.at/documents/earlystart.pdf both accessed 20 March 2009. 18 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/com/2003/com2003_0449en01.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/education/languages/eu-programmes/ and http://europa.eu/abc/history/index_en.htm all accessed 20 March 2009. 19 http://www.celelc.org/ accessed 13 March 2009. 20 Denmark and Sweden are member states of EU. Norway has signed the European Economic Area free-trade deal through the European Free Trade Association and is thus required to adopt European Union legislation in most policy areas, including education.

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promote the learning of languages of the union.21 Keywords in more recent programmes are ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘plurilingualism’, and a current ambition is that every child in the union should be taught at least two foreign languages from an early age, the so-called ‘Mother tongue plus two other languages’ idea. Two widely known educational programmes in the union today are Comenius and Erasmus. The former is relevant for various levels in the educational system. Erasmus focuses on higher education. One example is that future language teachers may apply for a grant to spend three to eight months as a ‘Comenius Language Assistant’ at a host school abroad. A Scandinavian student teacher in education may for example obtain a grant to go to an Italian school to teach English.22 EU programmes are currently supporting countries through their national agencies.23

Recent studies and practical tools The research achieved and the practical tools developed by CoE have been a priceless contribution to the teaching of English in Scandinavia. Six works have been particularly important (van Ek, 1975, 1977, 1986, 1987; van Ek and Trim, 1991, and finally CoE, 2001). All are part of what we may call ‘the threshold level project’. Two important concepts in research in linguistics and related disciplines are central to the project: ‘speech acts’ and ‘communicative competence’ (see detailed description in Simensen, 2007). Roughly speaking, any meaningful utterance counts as a ‘speech act’ with the implication that ‘by saying something, we do something’, such as apologizing (e.g. ‘I’m sorry for being late!’).24 Models for the description of speech acts were developed, and inventories of language exponents or forms used to realize speech acts were produced in CoE documents. Speech act theory had a considerable effect on the theory of teaching English in Scandinavia in the last quarter of the previous century. CoE applied the notion of ‘speech act’ in a model of functional syllabus design and the term ‘language functions’ was used. One of the first questions to be answered in the research project was: What do learners need ‘to do’ with the language? The answer came in terms of a list of language functions and language forms that learners should be able to handle at a specific level. The first list of language functions and inventory of language forms was in English and published in 1975 (van Ek, 1975). Two years later it was followed by a school edition, to be used by writers of syllabi and textbooks in English, inter alia in the Scandinavian countries (van Ek, 1977). The concept of ‘communicative competence’ was the result of an understanding in linguistics and related disciplines that concepts such as ‘linguistic or grammatical competence’ was unsatisfactory both as a term for the native speaker’s competence of language in use and as an objective for foreign language learning. Old concepts of

21 http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/lll/lll_en.html accessed 13 March 2009. 22 http://www.porta-doriente.com/italian-language-school/socrates-comenius-programs.asp accessed 13 March 2009. 23 http://ec.europa.eu/education/programmes/llp/national_en.html accessed 13 March 2009. 24 The idea goes back to the work of language philosophers such as Austin, 1962 and Searle, 1969.

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proficiency left out important aspects of a speaker’s social, situational and cultural competence (van Ek, 1986, 1987; van Ek and Trim, 1991). The originator of the new proficiency concept, the American anthropologist and sociologist Dell Hymes, defined ‘communicative competence’, among other things, as knowledge of ‘when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner’ (Hymes, 1972: 277). Topics related to society and culture in the CoE documents seemed at the time to be of particular interest for people involved in the teaching of English in Scandinavia, and a number of critical research studies were undertaken in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Here, the following studies should be mentioned: images of English culture and society transmitted within Scandinavian foreign language teaching have been studied, and gaps in the representation have been pointed out (see Risager, 1989). In the 1990s and later, studies have focused on the emerging perception of English not merely as a bearer of a particular culture but also as a tool for international communication in widely different environments (see Risager, 1994, 2007). Textbooks have been analysed in relation to the objectives in current syllabi requiring that pupils must develop an ability to use English in different situations and cultural contexts and, in addition, that they must obtain awareness and understanding of their own cultural background as well as that of the ‘others’ (Lund, 2007). The conception of ‘intercultural understanding’ in three types of discourse has been studied: discourse among researchers; discourse in documents from educational authorities; and discourse among teachers of English as a foreign language. Among other things, a discrepancy between the objectives for teaching and the criteria for student assessment in documents from educational authorities has been highlighted in this study (Lundgren, 2002). The point of departure in one related study was the traditional way of teaching culture in English language teaching. Treating culture as pure information about facts, mediated through language, has been questioned. Conceptions about approaches to teaching culture were collected from different groups: upper secondary English teacher students; practising English teachers; and upper secondary school pupils. One conclusion among others in this study was that the way of treating culture in language education should be adjusted to the changed culture, identity and nationality concepts of today, and that English should be learned as the multicultural world language that it unarguably is. Instead of being information purely about facts, culture ought, for example to be problematized; and attitudes, ways of thinking and values should be discussed in teaching (Gagnestam, 2003). Similar to the other works in ‘the threshold level-project’, the most recent document, The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching and assessment, describes its purpose as to provide ‘a common basis for the elaboration of language syllabi, curriculum guidelines, examinations, textbooks, etc., across Europe’ (CoE, 2001: 1). The document includes a detailed description of the traditional four major skills, listening and reading (receptive) and speaking and writing (productive), in addition to ‘new’ interactive skills, such as ‘taking the floor’; mediating skills, such as ‘simultaneous interpretation’; and finally non-verbal skills, such as the use of gestures. Thus the document mirrors a more comprehensive conception of language proficiency. One of the most innovative aspects of this document to date is the scaled descriptions of proficiency levels in terms of ‘can do’ statements, called ‘descriptors’. The document is one of the most powerful influences ever in the field of assessment and 480

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testing in the Scandinavian countries. Six levels of proficiency are defined, two levels in each of three bands (C, B and A). The following excerpt of two out of six levels illustrates the highest level (‘Proficient user’) and the lowest level (‘Basic user’) of the global scale:

Proficient user

C2

Can understand with ease virtually everything heard or read. Can summarize information from different spoken and written sources, reconstructing arguments and accounts in a coherent presentation. Can express him/ herself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in more complex situations.

Basic user

A1

Can understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a concrete type. Can introduce him/herself and others and can ask and answer questions about personal details such as where he/she lives, people he/she knows and things he/she has. Can interact in a simple way provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help. (Council of Europe, 2001: 24. Reprinted with permission.)

A number of scales have already been constructed suitable for the needs in assessment of English in Scandinavia. A study initiated in Scandinavia has also extended the application of the scales in The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching and assessment to young learners (Hasselgreen, 2003, 2005). Two important self-assessment tools have been developed in the wake of the research on ‘descriptors’. In particular, this applies to the European Language Portfolio developed as a tool for the member states of the CoE. The portfolio is an instrument for recording a learner’s language proficiency and intercultural competence and experience, obtained both within and outside formal education. The tool with models, including Danish, Norwegian and Swedish versions, can be downloaded from the websites of the European Commission.25 The other self-assessment tool, DIALANG, is a language assessment programme with a diagnostic purpose. It is electronically based and delivered via the computer. It even gives feedback on test results.26

25 http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/europass/home/vernav/Europasss+Documents/Europass+ Language+Passport/navigate.action and http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/europass/home/hornav/ Downloads/EuropassCV/CVExamples/navigate.action both accessed 13 March 2009. 26 http://www.dialang.org/intro.htm accessed 13 March 2009.

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Conclusion A series of factors have contributed to the fact that the teaching and learning of English in Scandinavia is a success story. In addition to strong motivation due to the obvious needs of the people in this region for proficiency in a language ‘larger’ than their mother tongues, Scandinavia has clearly been in the right corner of the world at the right time. European institutions have provided expertise in the teaching of English and offered research results and new tools of various kinds to the three countries. New challenging theoretical concepts have been introduced, promoting local research. But there are also problems connected to this success story, questions that need to find an answer in the future. The most conspicuous from a cultural point of view is a worry in all three countries for the future of the national languages of the region, given the current development of English towards standing as a second language. The term ‘domain loss’ has for example been taken up in the debate among politicians and in the media vis-à-vis English as the most powerful international language. The most pressing question from an educational point of view is the discrepancy between the language the pupils are exposed to in the media and in society in general, and the language they meet in the educational system, including at the examination table. These problems are the same in all Scandinavian countries, and joint efforts to solve them would make sense.

References Austin, J.L. (1962). How to do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bonnet, G. (Ed.) (2002). ‘The Assessment of Pupils’ Skills in English in Eight European Countries’. A European Project Commissioned by the European Network of Policy Makers for the Evaluation of Educational Systems. http://www.institutodeevaluacion.mec.es/contenidos/ internacional/Assessment_of_English_BED.pdf accessed 20 March 2009. Council of Europe (CoE) (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/ linguistic/Source/Framework_EN.pdf accessed 20 March 2009. Crystal, D. (1997). English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eurydice (2008). Key Data on Teaching Languages at School in Europe (2008 edn). http:// eacea.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/Eurydice/showPresentation?pubid=095EN accessed 20 March 2009. Gagnestam, E. (2003). ‘Kultur i språkundervisning – med fokus på engelska’, PhD thesis, Karlstad: Karlstad University Studies. Graddol, D. (2004). The Future of Language. Science 27(303): 1329–31. http://www.sciencemag. org/cgi/content/full/303/5662/1329 accessed 9 March 2009. Graddol, D. (2006). English Next. Why global English may mean the end of ‘English as a foreign language’. London: British Council. http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-researchenglish-next.pdf accessed 20 March 2009. Gundem, B.B. (1989). Engelskfaget i folkeskolen. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget AS. Hasselgreen, A. (2003). Bergen ‘Can Do’ Project. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. http://www. ecml.at/doccentre/researchdetail.asp?rg=1 accessed 20 March 2009; or http://www.ecml. at/documents/pub221E2003_Hasselgreen.pdf accessed 20 March 2009. Hasselgreen, A. (2005). Assessing the Language of Young Learners. Language Testing 22(3): 337–56. Hellekjær, G.O. (in progress). Assessing Lecture Comprehension in English-medium Higher Education: A Norwegian case study. To be published in AILA Applied Linguistics Series (AALS). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.

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Holmstrand, L. (1983). Engelska på lågstadiet. Utbildningsforskning. FoU-rapport 45. Stockholm: Skolöverstyrelsen and Liber Utbildningsförlaget. Howatt, A.P.R. with Widdowson, H.G. (2004). A History of English Language Teaching (2nd edn). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hymes, D. (1972). On Communicative Competence. In J.B. Pride and J. Holmes (Eds) Sociolinguistics: Selected readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Ibsen, E. (2004). Engelsk i Europa. Acta Didactica, 2. Oslo: Department of Teacher Education and School Development, University of Oslo. http://www.ils.uio.no/forskning/publikasjoner/actadidactica/index.html accessed 20 March 2009. Jenkins, J. (2003). World Englishes: A resource book for students. London: Routledge. Kachru, B.B. (1992). World Englishes: Approaches, issues, and resources. Language Teaching 25(1): 1–14. Lund, A. (2004). ‘The teacher as interface. Teachers of EFL in ICT-rich environments: Beliefs, practices, appropriation’, PhD thesis, Oslo, Faculty of Arts, University of Oslo. http://www.ils. uio.no/forskning/pdh-drgrad/doktoravhandlinger/index.html accessed 20 March 2009. Lund. R. (2007). ‘Questions of culture and context in English language textbooks: A study of textbooks for the teaching of English in Norway’, PhD thesis, Bergen, University of Bergen. https://bora.uib.no/bitstream/1956/2421/1/Dr%20Avh%20%20Ragnhild%20Lund.pdf accessed 20 March 2009. Lundgren, U. (2002). ‘Interkulturell förståelse i engelskundervisning – en möjlighet. Studia Psychologica et Paedagogica series altera CLXIX’, PhD thesis, Malmö, Malmö högskola. Risager, K. (1989). Kulturformidlingen i begynderbøger i fremmedsprog. Nyere tendenser. [Cultural mediation in beginners’ books in foreign languages. Recent tendencies]. ROLIGpapir 45: 19–34. Roskilde: Roskilde Universitetscenter. Risager, K. (1994). Forskning i den kulturelle dimension af fremmedsprogsundervisningen. [Research into the cultural dimension of foreign language teaching]. In: Sprog og Kulturmøde 6: 75–83. Aalborg: Aalborg Universitetscenter. Risager, K. (2007). Language and Culture Pedagogy: From a national to a transnational paradigm. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Searle, J.R. (1969). Speech Acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Simensen, A.M. (2007). Teaching a Foreign Language. Principles and procedures. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget. Strubell, M., Vilaró, S., Williams, G. and Williams, G.O. (2007). The Diversity of Language Teaching in the European Union. A Report to the European Commission Directorate General for Education and Culture. Final Report September 2007. http://ec.europa.eu/ education/policies/lang/doc/divlang_en.pdf accessed 20 March 2009. Trim, J.L.M. (2007). Modern Languages in the Council of Europe 1954–1997. Strasbourg: Language Policy Division, Council of Europe. http://www.coe.int/T/DG4/Linguistic/Source/ TRIM_21janv2007_%20EN.doc accessed 20 March 2009. van Ek, J.A. (1975). The Threshold Level in a European Unit/Credit System for Modern Language Learning by Adults. Systems development in adult language learning. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. van Ek, J.A. (1977). The Threshold Level for Modern Language Learning in Schools. With contributions by L.G. Alexander. London: Longman. van Ek, J.A. (1986). Objectives for Foreign Language Learning. Volume I: Scope. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. van Ek, J.A. (1987). Objectives for Foreign Language Learning. Volume II: Levels. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. van Ek, J.A. and Trim, J.L.M. (1991). Threshold Level 1990. Strasbourg: Council of Europe.

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41 The teaching of English in Sub-Saharan Africa Alicia Fentiman, Dominic Wyse and Lillian Indira Vikiru

In the year 2000, governments around the world pledged to support a global commitment to eight goals which would enable access and equity to improve the lives of all. These are referred to as the Millennium Development Goals or MDGs (United Nations Development Group, 2003: 3–4). One of the goals is linked directly to education, and states as follows.

Goal 2 Achieve Universal Primary Education Target: Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling

This concurs with the main goals of the Education for All (EFA) campaign of providing Universal Primary Education (UPE) worldwide by the year 2015. In order to achieve UPE, all children must complete primary (or elementary) education. The current statistical data are encouraging and show a significant increase in primary enrolment by 29 million or 36 per cent in the period between 1999 and 2005. However, a midway report written in 2008 shows that despite growing numbers in enrolment there are still considerable hurdles to overcome to achieve UPE by 2015. One of the regions that shows some improvement but still lags behind the rest of the world is sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This region consists of 44 countries which are culturally, socially, economically and politically diverse, and enrolment rates and gender disparities vary considerably between countries and within countries. Surveys in SSA countries indicate that children from the poorest households are least likely to attend school, regardless of whether they live in urban or rural areas and that a significant percentage of the population live in extreme poverty (less than US$1 per day) and that poverty contributes to inequity of access to education. Children from poor households are less likely to enrol in school, and there is a direct link between absenteeism, repetition and dropping out (UNESCO, 2008: 1–3). Another factor directly linked to 484

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poverty is the dependency on child labour; in three studies in Ghana it was shown that many children of primary school age are forced to drop out of school in order to assist with the household economy (Fentiman et al., 1999: 344). UNICEF estimates that every year, some 200,000 children are trafficked in West and Central Africa, often to work on cocoa plantations (UNICEF, 2006: 1) The exploitation of children is often unseen and the scale of the problem concealed because children are often working in rural, remote areas or in private households, factories and mines. Research also shows that SSA has the highest HIV-infected population. For example in the year 2007, the Joint United Nations programme on HIV/AIDS and the World Health Organisation (UNAIDS/WHO) reported that of the 33 million people who were living with the virus worldwide, 22 million or 67 per cent of the global total were from SSA. This has a significant impact directly and indirectly on educational goals. In a recent EFA report (EFA, 2008), it was reported that the HIV/AIDS pandemic is a major cause of teacher absenteeism and attrition in sub-Saharan Africa. In the United Republic of Tanzania, 42 per cent of teacher deaths between 2000 and 2002 were reported to be due to AIDS (EFA, 2008: 8). Significantly, 1.9 million children under 15 years of age in SSA live with HIV/AIDS and approximately nine per cent of children of this age in SSA have lost one or both parents to the disease. Other less ‘predictable’ factors include environmental disasters, outbreaks of disease and political instability. Political conflicts in Sudan, Somalia, northern Uganda, Congo, and Cote d’Ivoire have contributed to disrupting, and denying access to, education for thousands of children. Conflict disrupts formal education and it remains a challenge as to how best to rebuild educational systems which have been affected by conflict. In some areas of long-term conflict, there are generations of people who have missed out on formal education. Alternative basic education and non-formal education programmes target these groups and attempt to provide basic literacy, numeracy and life skills education. (This conforms to Goal 4 of the EFA target of achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015.) While access and participation in formal education have increased overall since 1999, progression through school and completion of primary school remain considerable concerns. School retention remains a challenge and the completion rate to the last grade of primary education (63 per cent) is lower in SSA than in the other regions in 2004. Rates were particularly low in Benin, Chad, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda and Uganda, where fewer than half of all pupils reached the last grade. In addition, it is estimated that 33 million children of primary school age are still not enrolled in school, and that the region as a whole accounts for 45 per cent of the world’s out-of-school children, of whom 54 per cent were girls. The scale of the impact is illustrated in countries such as Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, which have more than one million out-of-school children each (EFA, 2008). This is a stark reminder of the scale of global inequalities illustrated in the distribution of opportunities for education. It is, of course, difficult to generalize about the educational situation within SSA because of the diverse cultural, economic and political factors that influence education there. However, quantifiable indicators have provided much needed data for governments, policymakers and donors to assess the factors that contribute to the challenges of education for all. Table 41.1 illustrates the daunting task of achieving UPE in sub-Saharan Africa by 2015 and depicts the projection or prospects of achieving UPE. 485

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Table 41.1 Prospects for achieving UPE in Africa Universal Primary Education Goal Goal already achieved (total NER, 97%) 3 countries: Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, United Republic of Tanzania UPE Prospects (projections made for 30 countries that have not yet achieved the goal) High chance of achieving the goal by 2015 Low chance of achieving the goal by 2015 At risk of not achieving the goal by 2015 Serious risk of not achieving the goal by 2015 Not included in the prospects analysis (insufficient evidence)

5 countries: Benin, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Zambia 13 countries: Burkina Faso, Burundi, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Senegal 8 countries: Botswana, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Mauritius, South Africa, Swaziland, Togo, Zimbabwe 4 countries: Cote d’Ivoire, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda 12 countries: Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Uganda

Source: Adapted from the midway EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2008 (UNESCO, 2008)

As the midway EFA report shows, another key obstacle to achieving EFA in the region is the lack of sustainable financing. Half of the countries in SSA spent more than five per cent of their GNP on education in 2005, although there was considerable variation among countries, with percentages ranging from 1.8 in Cameroon to 11 in Botswana. In 2005, in the 21 countries with data, the median share of education expenditure in total government expenditure was 17.5 per cent and the median growth rate of education expenditure between 1999 and 2005 was five per cent. A significant amount of external aid has been given to SSA, and the G8 made a commitment in 2005 to increase aid to the region by US$25 billion a year; importantly, countries in the region received about one-third of total aid to education in 2005. In addition, aid to basic education amounted to US$1.5 billion a year. Five of the main recipients of aid to basic education were Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Uganda, the United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia (30 per cent of the total for the region) (2008: 8–9).

Literacy One major concern within the education sector is the poor learning outcomes in literacy and numeracy in SSA, especially within formal education. This is attributable to a variety of factors, including the lack of trained teachers; the lack of materials; the quality of teaching; and the language of instruction (LOI). It has been argued that the need to improve reading instruction and learning in SSA should be of paramount concern (Dembele and Ndoye, 2003). It is well documented that learning to read is key to most other areas of learning in early years and primary education, and that low levels of competence in literacy skills in 486

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the first two years of school in SSA have potential repercussions for the rest of the primary cycle. Success in broadening access to education needs to be coupled with improving the quality of education, including the effective teaching of literacy and numeracy skills. Sedel argues: a minimum of five years of primary education of adequate quality is considered necessary to obtain the basic skills that permit individuals to fully participate in the economic and social development of a country and not fall back into illiteracy. (Sedel, 2003: 34) Other studies confirm that African languages should be retained in addition to other languages for at least the first six years in school (e.g. Ndoye, 2003; Brock-Utne, 2007). To put it simply, if teacher and learner are to communicate effectively, they must use a language that they both understand. The argument that local language is important in early years of learning is well supported; and it is also argued more broadly that local language literacy is linked directly to sustainable ‘development’ (Trudell, 2007). Robinson maintains that ‘wherever people are put at the centre of the development process, issues of language will always be close to the surface’. It is further argued by Djite that language is key: No matter how one defines development, it cannot be achieved without reference to language as a crucial factor, and real development is not possible in Africa without the integration of local language and the full potential of all her human capital. (Djite, 2008: 16) The crucial question that remains is: What language is the best language to use? The debate for or against the use of mother tongue in formal education is often polarized as either promoting a case for mother tongue or doing the same for a language of wider communication. This is especially true in African countries which have multiple African languages, and there are those who adhere to a more global language of instruction approach and purport the use of English or French and those who argue that all indigenous languages should be taught. In South Africa, for example the polarization plays itself out as a tension between the promotion of English and the promotion of African languages (Desai and van der Merwe, 1997: 246). One suggestion is to use a twin-pronged approach which would mean promoting both African languages as well as English. A few case-studies show promising data in promoting a bilingual approach to improve the quality of education in SSA. Dembele and Lefoka (2007) illustrated the importance of using languages familiar to both pupils and their teachers in relation to the successful acquisition of early literacy learning in Mali. The advantages of a bilingual approach are further exemplified in several countries’ case-studies (Verspoor, 2003). These include bilingual education in Burkina Faso (Ilboudo, 2004); Pedagogie Convergente in Mali (Fomba et al., 2003) and bilingual education in Mali (Hamidou, 2004). Studies suggest that bilingual education models based on the use of children’s first language as the teaching language, followed by a gradual transition to a second language (e.g. English or French), leads to: (1) enablement of the development of early literacy; (2) better learning outcomes than the dominant models of monolingual education; and (3) in the long-term a more cost-effective approach as a result of a perceptible reduction 487

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in grade repetitions, drop-outs and failure rates (Brock-Utne and Holmarsdottir, 2004; Brock-Utne, 2007; Trudell, 2007). In SSA, the post-colonial legacy is clearly illustrated among Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone countries. The impact of post-colonial legacy is often illustrated in educational policies. The importance of language, and the debate about which language to use, are depicted in the following remark: In the wake of the Jomtien Conference in 1990, African governments have, with the help of the international community, engaged in unprecedented efforts to resolve the educational problems their countries face. The goal of good-quality education for all has taken centre stage in political and educational debates. One issue that has not been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction concerns the medium of instruction, also known as the language of instruction (LOI). What is the best LOI policy in Africa? (1997: xiii) Significantly, this report examined six countries (Botswana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania), and it was suggested that Language of Instruction approaches that are based on the mother tongue in early years of basic education result in faster and improved capacity for the acquisition of knowledge by pupils. Therefore, the appropriate medium of instruction is paramount for the effective delivery of educational programmes; however, there is often a political rationale as to what language to use. This is particularly evident in countries that have engaged in civil war or liberation struggles. For example in Sudan, the issue of language of instruction is seen as crucial in post-conflict reconstruction (Dennis and Fentiman, 2006: 17) In southern Sudan, the issue of English as the medium in schools as opposed to Arabic is not only construed as a political issue but also one of identity (Sommers, 2006). The challenges, however, of changing to a different medium of instruction are complex, as shown in the southern Africa liberation struggles. In Namibia the participatory liberation ideology brought radical education reforms in the 1990s, and the use of English as the medium of instruction was (and still is) a heavily debated issue. English became the official language, and 19 years later, there are still marked inequalities between the urban and rural areas (Howard, 2005). In some countries, there is a deliberate policy to teach all languages, as illustrated in Eritrea: the Ministry of Education issued a mother tongue educational policy and requires that all nine languages should be available in its elementary schools. The complexity of a multilingual society with minority ethnic groups is that there are not enough qualified and experienced educators to prepare the curriculum and there are additional challenges of translating and of turning oral into written language. However, when pupils learn and read through the medium of their first language, it grounds their education in the real world. In this example, it has been argued that the curriculum is an important tool and plays an important role in the development, preservation and promotion of the languages of Eritrea (Alexandria, 2006: 81–95; Bokre and Oden, 2006). Another issue relevant to LoI and choice of language in Africa is the importance of functional literacy, which is key to non-formal literacy programmes. These progammes focus primarily on those who were excluded or denied access to formal education (e.g. adults, over-age youth, disabled, etc.). What is not well researched or documented is how functional literacy non-formal education programmes complement the formal literacy programmes that children are learning in school. 488

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The teaching of English in SSA One of the biggest challenges throughout SSA in teaching any language is the lack of qualified teachers to teach a language effectively. The aim of this chapter is not to debate the dynamics of teaching all languages, but to focus more exclusively on the teaching of English. In a detailed study of teacher–pupil interaction in a Nigerian primary school it was shown that: The policy of teaching through the medium of English in former British colonial countries like Nigeria, with the large number of indigenous languages, is also seen as exerting a major influence on the patterns of classroom interaction and presenting communication difficulties for both teachers and pupils. Despite official policies stipulating the use of English in upper primary classrooms, code switching is reported to be common because of the disparity that frequently occurs between the teacher and pupils in proficiency in English as the language of instruction. (Bunyi, 1987, cited in Hardman et al., 2007; Arthur, 1996) Hardman (see Chapter 22, this volume) argues that rote-learning and teacher-led recitation are common features of classrooms in many countries. Arthur (cited in Hardman et al., 2007) suggests that the policy of teaching through the medium of English, imposed during colonial rule, is exerting a powerful influence in shaping the discursive patterns found in African classrooms, resulting in code switching and an emphasis on whole-class teaching. His research in Botswana and Tanzania showed that code switching to other languages known to the teacher and pupils was also found in Nigeria. To illustrate the complexity of the varying language policies and the different practices for attaining literacy in English, East Africa provides an interesting example. The language policies in Kenya and Uganda have been redefined many times in the last few decades. These redefinitions have been characterized by conflicting theories, divergent attitudes, changing political ideologies and aspirations, and indecisiveness (Muthwii et al., 2002). Partly due to their colonial heritage, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have English as a second language. Kiswahili features prominently in all three countries as the regions’ lingua franca. However, policies and practices in the three countries differ, and the results are equally different. In Kenya, the language policy that is articulated in the constitution and education policy documents endorses a transitional bilingual approach in education. The learners are expected to be taught in their home language (vernacular or Kiswahili) from pre-primary to standard (grade) three in primary school. During this period the learners also learn the vernacular and English as subjects. It is expected that the learner will acquire some level of literacy in both languages. However, the practice is such that, while the learner’s literacy in English is encouraged and developed, their literacy development in the vernacular stalls. It gets worse after the third grade because, according to policy and even practice there is no place for the vernacular, while English is used as the language of instruction as well as taught as a subject. In primary school, instances of code mixing and code switching are common. However, teachers make an effort to use English mainly because the national examination taken at the end of primary school is all in English, except for the Kiswahili paper. In secondary school, the situation remains the same; English is the language of instruction and it is also taught as a subject. The Kenyan system gives prominence to English because as a subject it is also 489

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assigned more time. Kiswahili loses out at this level because it is only offered as a compulsory subject. Thereafter, English is still used as the language of instruction and is also offered as subject in colleges and universities. Kiswahili is offered as a subject in some colleges and universities. In Uganda, the policy also endorses a transitional bilingual programme where vernacular languages are used for instruction in the early years of schooling. This policy has not received much support in the past, with most schools preferring to use English as the language of instruction. Although Kiswahili is regarded in the region as the most significant lingua franca, it is not particularly popular in Uganda. Kiswahili is spoken by a small percentage of the population, but unlike Kenya and Tanzania it is not a vernacular to any specific group in Uganda. The language policy therefore focuses on the use of English and African languages (including Kiswahili). The problem with using the vernaculars in primary schools has mainly stemmed from deciding whether examinations should be in English or vernacular, and the harmonization required if they are to be done in vernacular. Pupil and parent aspirations for a better future (which in their view is signified by proficiency in English) have also contributed to the favourable position English enjoys in the school system and in society at large. In Uganda, English is the official language and the language of instruction in upper primary (from primary 5), secondary and tertiary institutions. It is also the language of instruction throughout the primary cycle in urban areas. The policy also stipulates that the local vernacular (Uganda has 31 African languages) be taught as a subject in primary schools. The policy further recommends that Kiswahili be taught as a subject in all primary schools. Although this policy has not been strictly adhered to in practice, there are renewed efforts to use children’s home language for instruction during the early years in school.

Tanzania There is a burgeoning literature on the language of instruction in the United Republic of Tanzania; the teaching of English as part of basic education is often regarded as a controversial subject. The aim of this section is not to provide a comprehensive analysis of the literature, for this has already been done (Rubagumya, 1991, 1994; Barrett, 1994; BrockUtne et al., 2003), but rather highlight some of the main arguments of the debate of the use of Kiswahili in primary education and the shift to English medium in secondary education. During British colonial rule, English was the medium of instruction in primary and secondary schools. Shortly after independence in 1961, Kiswahili became the national language of Tanzania. It was argued that Kiswahili was a language that could unify people in spite of the diverse ethnic and linguistic context of the country, which resulted in a deliberate political decision to use Kiswahili as the official language of government (Barrett, 1994). Although Kiswahili became the medium of instruction in primary school in 1967 (with the exception of three English medium government schools: Diamond, Olympio and Arusha International School), English remains the language of instruction in secondary schools. Provision of education in Tanzania is guided by the Education and Training Policy (ETP) of 1995. The structure of the formal education and training system constitutes two years of pre-primary education; seven years of primary education; four years of junior secondary school (ordinary level); two years of senior secondary (advanced level); 490

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and up to three more years of higher and tertiary education. The government requires children to enrol in primary school at the age of seven years, and they are supposed to attend and complete seven years of schooling, known as Standards one to seven. The language of instruction in primary schools is Kiswahili, and English is taught only as a subject. In theory, all primary school teachers should be able to teach English, but in practice many qualified teachers do not feel comfortable teaching English (Malekele, 1990). As a result, those students (approximately 25 per cent) who pass their Standard seven exams, and hence are able to gain a place in secondary school, are forced to switch from Kiswahili as the LoI to English. This switch in language has provoked much debate among educationalists. The Ministry of Education recognizes the challenges of the policy and has identified some key factors which affect the teaching of English as a subject. These include the following: 1

2

3 4

Shortage of teaching and learning materials. Primary schools do not have adequate and relevant English teaching and learning materials, such as textbooks, non-textual materials, supplementary and reference materials. Poor mastery of English language. The poor mastery of English for both teachers and students is a prime reason for academic underachievement in primary schools. It is recognized that students are taught by teachers who have a low level of proficiency in English. Inadequate in-service teaching training. Teachers are not provided with in-service teaching training, especially in the much needed area of English as a subject. Shortage of school infrastructure. Most primary schools are overcrowded and there is a critical shortage of infrastructure such as classrooms and desks. This impedes a teacher from adopting a more child friendly and participatory pedagogical approach (MoE, 2009).

The implications of switching to English as the LoI in secondary school have been well documented. Mlama and Matteru (1978) reported that students had difficulty in expressing themselves in English when they were made to switch from English to Kiswahili. This was also cited in the Criper and Dodd report. It was observed that English was no longer a viable educational medium, since very little learning was taking place in secondary schools. The report further pointed out that the level of English language proficiency was then so low that English medium education was not possible (Criper and Dodd, 1984). This was reconfirmed by Roy-Campbell and Qorro (1987), who showed in their research that up to 90% of the secondary school students are unable to read and communicate in English. As a result they perform poorly, particularly in the subjects that are taught through the medium of English and gain very little knowledge in the four years that they spend in secondary schools. (Campbell and Qorro, 1987:) Malekale reported that teachers lack a good foundation in English skills. Scrutiny of written letters by teachers to the Ministry of Education showed that the teachers’ proficiency in English was very poor and further suggested that the inadequate language 491

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proficiency among English teachers is not only at secondary level, but also at the primary level, where it is even worse. (Malekele, 2003: 107). However, Kadeghe (2003) defends the continued use of English as the LoI in secondary and tertiary education. He makes the argument that if Tanzania ignored English it would be left behind in the global context where English is said to dominate. In summary, there are those who support the switch from Kiswhali to English in secondary schools because English is seen as the ‘global’ language, whereas others support the notion that Kiswahili should remain the medium throughout the educational sector. Mutasa (2003) queries the rationale of the policy of using English as the LoI in secondary school thus: Our education language policy should be revisited to determine its consequences for the learner and the nation at large. We should ask ourselves, who gains by using English as the medium of instruction? Who is effectively barred from knowledge? How much English do we need? For what purpose? Many Tanzanians do not need English in their everyday lives. So we recommend to the government to look at the needs of the majority of Tanzanians as far as language is concerned. (Mutasa, 2003: 202) Tanzania has developed further than other African countries through the decision to adopt Kiswahili as the LoI at primary level, but it still maintains English as the LOI at secondary level. In Tanzania, communication in English is a challenge to most people, including the educated. This contrasts with the place of English in Kenya and Uganda. In Uganda, most people who have some level of literacy can communicate in English; in Kenya, some prefer Kiswahili but they can get by in English.

Conclusion The starting point for any attempts at the development of education, and English teaching policy, in SSA is the need to account for the unique linguistic context, which is different in every country of Africa. Of particular importance is the language of instruction, and how it has developed in the country. Although political efforts to improve language teaching have had varying degrees of success it should be remembered that language has its own powerful natural forces for development. In particular, the need to communicate as efficiently as possible will remain the driving force of language change. Teachers will communicate with pupils in the languages that most readily enable them to carry out the day-to-day business of teaching and learning. It appears from the evidence that support for the use of vernacular languages for at least six years of schooling is likely to have benefits for the learning of all languages, including English, and for learning in general.

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42 Recent federal education policy in the United States Richard L. Allington

In the US, responsibility for education has traditionally, and constitutionally, been limited to the states. Thus, federal involvement in education has a total history of about 50 years (1958–2010). However, one of the original pieces of federal education legislation, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act 1965 (ESEA), has been repeatedly reauthorized and is now represented by the federal No Child Left Behind Act 2001. This original legislation (ESEA) provided federal funds to schools enrolling large numbers of students from low-income families. The major funding components have provided federal dollars to support additional education services that were designed to counteract the educational disadvantage brought about by the economic disadvantages of the families of the students (McGill-Franzen, 1987; McGill-Franzen and Goatley, 2001). Much of this funding has historically been allocated for the purposes of providing additional reading support for struggling readers from low-income families. In this chapter I discuss relatively recent US federal education policies (1994–2009). I have elected this time span because federal policy shifted in meaningful ways during this period. Additionally, this review focuses primarily on three federal laws: the Improving America’s School Act 1994 (IASA); the Reading Excellence Act 1998 (REA); and the No Child Left Behind Act 2001 (NCLB). These bills were passed under both a Democratic and Republican president (Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) and with bipartisan support in Congress. I focus on these laws because they reflect a changing federal model for US education policy. The three changes I primarily focus on are: (1) the use of ‘scientifically-based reliable, replicable research’ in making educational decisions; (2) increased educational accountability; and (3) privatization of educational services. But first I provide a brief history of ESEA 1965 because of its centrality to understanding current US federal education policy.

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The elementary and secondary education Act 1965 to the no child left behind Act 2001 As a key part of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, the ESEA targeted federal funds to state and local education agencies based largely on the level of poverty that existed in each state and district. Over the history of this act approximately $450 billion, adjusted for inflation, have been allocated to school districts (McCluskey and Coulson, 2007). The largest proportion of funding was in the Title I programme that was to support supplemental educational services, primarily in reading, for economically disadvantaged students. As the ESEA was initially implemented it became clear that some school districts were using federal funds outside the intended areas and populations (Cross, 2004). This produced both rancour in Congress and new rule-writing in the US Department of Education to restrict school district options. Over time, the rules for ESEA grew into thousands of printed pages of regulations. The net result of this rule-making was the development of a culture of compliance in ESEA offices in states and districts. In the end, states and schools worried more about violating some federal programme rule than they did about producing high-quality educational interventions or improved student outcomes. This was largely because states and school districts could be penalized for rule violation but not for failing to effectively improve student learning (Jennings, 2000). Kantor and Lowe (2006) argue that the traditional Title I programme was ‘embedded in the notion that poverty or race produced cultural deficits that put low-income children at a disadvantage in school’ (2000: 479). The typical school response under ESEA relied on providing pull-out remediation classes to address low educational attainment through additional reading lessons. However, the use of pull-out remediation drew attention to the struggling readers, typically offered slower moving instruction, and often replaced core classroom reading instruction, resulting in very limited improvements, if any, in the reading instruction provided (Allington and McGill-Franzen, 1989). However, this attention to the problems of struggling readers in low-income schools largely removed the school as the source of the problem and targeted instead the struggling readers as primarily responsible for their failure to achieve grade level standards. One unintended effect of ESEA then, was to reduce the accountability of local schools for the failure of these students to read proficiently (McGill-Franzen, 1994). Borman and D’Agostino (1996) conducted a meta-analysis of 17 studies of Title 1 effects from 1966–93 to examine the impact of that programme on reading achievement. Overall effects on reading achievement were modestly positive (d =.11), with the effect size improving as the programme matured. The economic status and racial achievement gaps, while shrinking between 1970 and 1988, still remained large (approximately 25–30 pts on the NAEP fourth grade reading scales). This then led the Clinton administration to focus on evidence-based ‘whole school’ or ‘systemic reform’ models (Smith and O’Day, 1991). The Improving America’s Schools Act 1994 (IASA) was a reauthorization of ESEA under then President Bill Clinton. The changes of importance included, for the first time, shifting accountability from ‘inputs to outcomes’ (DeBray, 2006). The IASA set a time frame for states to develop content and performance standards as well as assessments in both reading and mathematics. In addition, the IASA reduced the federal rules for Title I programmes by two-thirds. This was basically a ‘we’ll give states and school 497

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districts greater autonomy in running the program in exchange for greater accountability for student learning’ model. And the focus on student learning emphasized closing existing achievement gaps between poor and non-poor children and between the majority white student population and students of colour. The IASA changed Title 1 into a programme that required state testing of all students, not separate tests of only Title 1 students, focused on school-wide reform and accelerated achievement growth, not small remedial interventions, emphasized extending time rather than continuing pull-out programmes, and provided funding based on poverty not achievement in order to eliminate reduction of funds for higher-achieving poor schools (LeTendre, 1996). One result of IASA was the shift in schools to the use of school-wide projects. This eliminated the requirement that schools target the federal funds to services for only poor children and, instead, allowed those funds to be spent in ways that were expected to improve the educational environment of all children. Most schools elected to use federal Title I funds to modestly reduce class size or to add after school programmes (Winfield, 2007). Currently, 87 per cent of all students eligible for Title services are enrolled in schools selecting the school-wide projects option (USDE, 2007). Thus, in many respects the original option, to have reading specialists provide supplemental pull-out remediation services, has largely vanished from American schools. IASA introduced the term, adequate yearly progress, in defining how states would meet the new accountability challenge of closing the outcomes achievement gap. The Reading Excellence Act 1998 (REA) was introduced by the Republican majority in Congress and included the first use of the phrase ‘scientifically-based reliable, replicable’ reading research (SBRR) in deciding how to best teach students to read (Edmondson, 2006). This represented the first time that Congress involved itself in arbitrating reading policy. As Boyd and Mitchell (2001) noted, When, for example, the federal government adopts a policy urging reading programmes to be based on ‘reliable, replicable research’ and accompanies that legislation with a declaration that testimony before the adopting committee indicates that there have been ‘scientific breakthroughs’ in our knowledge that support direct phonics instruction, the result is a powerful legitimation of phonics-based instruction, quite independent of the extent to which this body of research is complete, accurate, or unchallenged. (Boyd and Mitchell, 2001: 331–2) The REA then linked SBRR with code-emphasis reading instruction and paved the way for the future adoption of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and its Reading First component (Edmondson, 2006). The No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001. Kantor and Lowe (2006) note that according to the presumptions that underlie NCLB, the law ‘rejects the idea that there is any connection between class and racial inequality and school achievement at all, or, to put it more broadly, the “problem of schooling” is somehow unconnected to the larger issues of inequality in which schools exist’ (Kantor and Lowe, 2006: 485). Rather than race or the environment, it was schools that contributed to the achievement gap. Schools where teachers exhibit ‘the bigotry of low expectations’ and thereby fail to provide high quality reading lessons were derided as the source of the problem of low reading achievement in high poverty schools (Coles, 2009). The NCLB Act dramatically shifted the focus toward adequate yearly progress introduced in the IASA. In addition, 498

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as McColl (2005) argues, ‘There is little dispute over whether NCLB represents an unprecedented level of federal involvement in the affairs of our public schools’ (2005: 605); or as Hoffman (2000) put it, NCLB represented an undoing of 200 years of local control of schools in America. NCLB has undoubtedly changed the nature of the relationship between state education agencies and the federal department of education. ‘Under regulatory federalism, the state role changes from one of collaborative distribution of federal resources to one of regulating the implementation of federal requirements in local school districts’ (Sunderman et al., 2005: 4). Unanswered was whether state agencies had the number of staff and staff with the appropriate expertise to handle the new roles, although it seems that professional opinion was in the negative on this (Tucker and Toch, 2004).

NCLB has neither improved reading achievement nor closed the achievement gaps NCLB was framed such that, ‘The embedded assumption in the bill [NCLB] is that turning up the heat on teachers and administrators in high-poverty schools will close the achievement gap’ (DeBray, 2006: 130). Unfortunately, the recent federal evaluation of the Reading First component of NCLB found no positive effect of the programme on the reading achievement of participating students (Gamse et al., 2008). Similarly, Connor (2009), studying Reading First classrooms in Florida, found no effect on reading achievement, even though the approach to teaching reading had shifted considerably under NCLB. While these studies found that the schools receiving Reading First funding did increase the amount of time spent teaching reading, and similar increases in the amount of time spent teaching some of the SBRR aspects of reading, they found no significant differences in the reading comprehension of third grade students in schools receiving Reading First funding and those in similar schools that did not receive the funding. Reading First had a statistically significant impact on the amount of time teachers reported spending on reading instruction per day. Teachers in Reading First schools reported an average of 105.7 minutes per day, 18.5 minutes more than would be expected without Reading First (87.2 minutes). There was no statistically significant impact of Reading First on the availability of differentiated instructional materials for struggling readers. There was no statistically significant impact of Reading First on the teachers’ reported use of assessments to inform classroom practice for grouping, diagnostic, and progress monitoring purposes. (Gamse et al., 2008: 23) Thus, current evidence suggests that neither increasing the funding, nor increasing accountability, nor using SBRR reading instruction, has impacted the reading achievement of students from low-income families. In a similar vein, Valli et al. (2008) report on a three-year study of schools that cooccurred with NCLB. They also found effects of NCLB on instruction, but noted, ‘In the three schools that we studied, policies associated with NCLB distorted the official curriculum, undermined instruction, and created a test-driven culture that transformed school life in troubling ways’ (Valli et al., 2008: 157) In other words, this federal law did, 499

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in fact, change teaching behaviours in substantive ways but those changes have not resulted in improved reading achievement. The primary changes that Valli and her colleagues (2008) observed were an overall decline in effective teaching and learning, as lessons more often focused on test preparation than on core curriculum content. In none of the schools did NCLB lead to the availability of higher quality classroom reading lessons or increase the likelihood that struggling readers got more help and more expert help in learning to read or to do mathematics. They concluded: Perhaps the most serious problem . . . was finding an effective approach for differentiating instruction so that all children would be ensured access to quality instruction. The programs . . . decreased curricular and instructional coherence, disrupted classroom instruction, and interfered with teachers’ ability to know their students well enough to design effective instruction for them or even to assign grades. Even more troubling, the programs tended to be rigidly structured and unresponsive to the individual needs of particular children. Even with the expenditure of substantial resources and the sincere desire of teachers and specialists [they]. . . failed to meet the needs of students who were failing to flourish, [and] we frequently saw little evidence that the attempts to differentiate were indeed meeting the needs of individual children. (Valli et al., 2008: 156) In other words, while at each school much money and effort were expended in trying to meet the achievement expectations of the NCLB law, none of the schools actually managed to put into place a plan that provided what struggling readers need most – more and better reading lessons (Allington, 2009). Instead, what the schools did was to fragment an existing curriculum along with instructional responsibilities in ways that seem at best antithetical to what was intended by Congress.

Ideology vs. evidence There are several other potential explanations for the disappointing results of Reading First. Stevens (2003) notes that she attended one of the national conferences sponsored by the US Department of Education on the Reading First initiative. She concluded, I felt discouraged and insulted about the limited, prescriptive, and myopic view of literacy referenced by the Academy speakers ... I fear that the federal government’s policy ... has poured fuel on the already blazing pile of quick fixes that have done little to effectively address the gap between privileged and marginalized students. (Stevens, 2003: 667) This federal programme reduced reading instruction to a very basic behaviourist bottom-up model whereby reading pseudo-words quickly became one of the key measures of student growth and progress. This within a model that privileged the faithful implementation of some packaged commercial curriculum materials that had been dubbed ‘proven’ even though no research substantiated such claims (and no research currently supports such a designation either, see www.wwc.ed.gov for example). 500

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Similarly, DeBray (2006) notes that the SBRR provisions created problems because the NCLB did not provide guidance on ‘what level of evidence constituted scientificallybased research. The conference report does reveal that several times conferees chose language specifying that programs should be scientifically based rather than founded on rigorous field experiments at multiple sites’ (2006: 122). DeBray concluded Congress intended that states should ensure that programmes adopted were programmes that worked, but left it to USDE to provide guidance on just what that might mean. However, it is now clear that ideology, or entrepreneurism, drove much of the federal guidance about what was ‘proven’ and what was not (Allington, 2002; Garan, 2005). The Office of the Inspector General (2006, 2007) released several reports on the operation of the Reading First component of NCLB and concluded that federal officials and their contractors had actively promoted certain commercial assessments and curriculum materials in violation of the NCLB ‘prohibitions’ clause. Thus, schools receiving Reading First funds were, literally, required to select assessments and curriculum materials from a limited listing of available products (Brownstein and Hicks, 2005a). As Pearson (2007) surmised: Sometimes ideology does trump science, ever for those who profess to be honoring the science. Many reading professionals, especially those state officials asked to submit and resubmit their Reading First applications until they had ‘gotten the message’ about which programs, assessments, or professional development models to use, suspected for several years that some ‘scientifically based’ tools were being privileged over others, but it was not until the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Education issued two reports documenting conflicts of interest within the Department around the approval of Reading First applications that the allegations became official. (Pearson, 2007: 31) Not surprisingly, federal officials at times found themselves in conflict with state education officials over this aspect of NCLB. Despite assurances from the federal education department that there was no ‘approved list’ of programmes, one state official learned, over submitting a Reading First application and then resubmitting three revisions of the original proposal, that certain programmes had to be in their application in order to get funded, and funding would never occur were not other programmes removed from the application. ‘Even though there was no approved list of assessments or core programs, you don’t get approved unless you have certain assessments or core programs’. she said. ‘There must have been a list somewhere’. (Brownstein and Hicks, 2005b: 2) Perhaps because so much of the education establishment had for so long associated itself with Democratic policies and politicians, when Republicans gained control of the White House and both branches of Congress, conservatives sought other voices on education issues. Thus, ‘expertise itself became contingent on ideology’ (DeBray, 2006: 78). And so ideology rather than SBRR became the driving force behind NCLB. Further, the NCLB top-down mandates for reform necessarily relied on the teachers in the classroom to implement this version of SBRR. But, as McGill-Franzen (2000) has noted, ‘Teaching may be too complicated, too embedded in context, and too tied to individual beliefs and knowledge for policy to have a predictable and consistent effect’ (McGill-Franzen, 2000: 29) She worries that in scaling up research studies to classroom lessons there is a possibility that we will ‘overstate the relationship between developers’ 501

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programs and program materials to children’s learning and undervalue the contribution of teachers’ adaptive implementation’ (McGill-Franzen, 2005: 8). She concludes, noting that ‘the adaptations teachers impose on curriculum materials or pedagogical interventions may be more important to study than the feasibility or success of strict program compliance. I believe that it is the transformation of program into practice that merits observation’ (McGill-Franzen, 2005: 11). Finally, it may be that the standards and tests model is simply not capable of producing improved teaching and learning. Sacks (2000) compares NAEP math and science performance of states with high-stakes testing to that of states with low or moderate stakes. Two-thirds of high-stakes testing states have scores in the bottom half of NAEP while two-thirds of states with fewer consequences of testing outcomes had aboveaverage achievement on NAEP (Sacks, 2000: 89–90) and the four states with no testing programme were all above average! He concludes, ‘The accountability movement’s implicit claim that more testing – and more and greater consequences associated with tests will lead to greater achievement – hardly seems supportable’ (2000: 91). His conclusions were also supported by the analysis reported by Amrein and Berliner (2003) with evidence that implementation of high-stakes accountability schemes had had little to no effect on student reading achievement. This standards-based model was built on a worry that too many teachers had no idea what they were supposed to teach and that too few had the knowledge required to teach those things even when the instructional goals were made clear. But making teaching expectations clearer and student outcomes very visible has had no positive effect on student reading achievement. A further problem with the presumptions of NCLB is that there is evidence that teachers in high-poverty schools produce academic gains equal to teachers in lowpoverty schools (Entwisle et al., 1997). What this study illustrated quite clearly, using twice-yearly achievement testing, is that children in high-poverty schools gained as much reading achievement during the elementary school year as did students in lowpoverty schools. Still the difference in achievement widened every year. However, summer reading loss accounted for virtually all the gap at grade 6, when initial differences upon school entry were controlled. More recently this research team has shown that summer reading loss accounted for approximately 80 per cent of the achievement gap at ninth grade with almost all of the remaining gap explained by differences upon school entrance (Alexander et al., 2007), a finding that largely replicates one reported a quarter of a century ago (Hayes and Grether, 1983). In other words, federal policy may be addressing the wrong presumed cause of the achievement gap – ineffective teaching during the school year. This issue is well discussed by Allington and McGill-Franzen (2003) and Berliner (2006), but seems to be largely ignored at the federal level. One potential solution to the problem of summer reading loss is some sort of summer intervention that makes reading material readily available to poor students. While variations on summer school might provide this option, there are other less expensive options as well. A series of studies (Allington et al., 2007; Kim, 2006; Kim and White, 2008: McGill-Franzen and Allington, 2008; McGill-Franzen and Love-Zeig, 2008) all show positive effects of providing poor students in grades one to five with easy access to summer books through summer book giveaway programmes. McGill-Franzen and Allington (2008) report an effect size for their voluntary summer books programme that equalled the effect size for attending summer school (though the summer books 502

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programme was substantially less expensive). However, currently nothing in federal policy provides specific support for summer interventions.

Privatization and school choice The broad privatization movement was buttressed by the school choice and supplemental services provisions of NCLB. NCLB requires that when schools fail to make adequate yearly progress in closing the reading achievement gap between poor and non-poor, minority and majority, and between students with and without disabilities, then the school must offer all students the option of transferring to another public school that has met the AYP requirements. Choice was only choice from among other higherachieving public schools but even that choice was typically not available prior to NCLB. When a school fails to make adequate yearly progress for three consecutive years, students become eligible for supplementary educational services (SES) that are available outside the school day and can, and are sometimes required to, be provided by private companies. But privatization, even the sort offered under NCLB, has no real research that supports its use of a school reform strategy. For instance comparing the achievement of students enrolled in privatized educational intervention programme services, of the sort NCLB allows, and in some cases requires, with students in a control group, MacIver and Stringfield (2000) noted that ‘Overall, in fact, in both years control students made significantly higher gains than did program students’ (2000: 378) In other words, privatization has no record of research supporting it as a school reform strategy but is central to the prominent market theory of education that argues that privatization creates competition, which always improves products. As Boyd (2007) has noted, ‘The No Child Left Behind Act also strongly supports the goals of choice advocated through the enormous pressure created by adequate yearly progress requirements and the consequences for failure, including school choice and supplemental tutoring options, forced on failing schools’ (Boyd, 2007: 11) Fusarelli (2007) notes that neither the SES nor the public school choice provisions of NCLB has proven popular among parents. Fewer than two per cent of parents have chosen the school choice option and fewer than 20 per cent have chosen the SES tutoring option. Why are these responses so low? Several reasons seem plausible. First, in many of the larger urban schools districts there are few places in achieving schools available to transfer into. Second, many districts have been slow, often very slow, to inform parents of this right. Third, parents may not view their child’s school as a ‘failing’ school as the law does. Finally, parents may simply prefer the neighbourhood school for their children (Boyd, 2007). Evidence from national polling (Bushaw and Gallup, 2008) of public opinion largely supports the third option. Parents rate their child’s public school quite highly compared to their ranking of American schools generally. Thus, most American parents hold their child’s school in higher regard than the federal ratings do. What American parents seem to prefer to the choice option is improvements in the neighbourhood school their child already attends. Beyond that, almost 80 per cent of American parents rated out of school factors as primarily responsible for low student achievement. Finally, we have charter schools as another privatization option, although charter schools are typically also considered public schools. In most states the numbers of 503

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charter schools allowed is limited, at least at this point in time. Still, roughly one million students currently attend charter schools, with approximately 20 per cent of those schools managed by for-profit companies (Vergari, 2007). As for effectiveness of these charters schools, the record is currently mixed, at best. Studies of some charter schools demonstrate improved reading achievement while other studies find no such improvement and, in some studies, charter school performance fails to match the achievement of similar public schools.

Conclusion Closing the achievement gap became the fully articulated goal and NCLB was focused on just that. The shifts under NCLB resulted in ESEA moving from a programme based on inputs to one based on outcomes as evaluative criteria. In addition, shifting federal educational policy towards increased use of federal funds to support the use of a narrowly and ideologically defined SBRR, along with privatization, was central to NCLB. Studies completed to date do not, however, provide any compelling view of the success of these policy goals in closing the reading achievement gap nor to improving American students’ reading proficiency. However, as Song and Young (2008) note, researchers, and especially G. Reid Lyon, then of the National Institute of Child Health and Development, testified repeatedly before Congress that research demonstrated that virtually all children could be reading on grade level if only schools spent federal funds in ways that aligned with the research. Given that testimony, Congress came to believe that mandating SBRR was a necessary and, perhaps, sufficient condition to closing the achievement gap and improving overall reading achievement. In retrospect it seems that SBRR reading instruction of the sort offered under NCLB was simply insufficient and perhaps even unnecessary. DeBray (2006) suggests one sobering lesson from the NCLB process is ‘that the more heated the parties competition over education becomes, the harder it is for empirical knowledge to enter the policy stream’ (DeBray, 2006: 155). Ideological stances have seemed more important in the design and implementation of NCLB than has empirical evidence. The question that remains is whether the policies pursued under NCLB will shape the future of federal policy making in the US At the point in time that this chapter is being written, NCLB is overdue for reauthorization. Currently though, there is little sense of consensus about the law. I see no good evidence to suggest which way the reauthorization might go. Since so much of the law was ideologically driven, not research driven, and since those ideological forces remain largely in place in Congress (for standards, testing, accountability, school choice, privatization, and such) along with what I believe is true frustration on the part of policymakers that 40 years of federal funding has had little effect on either the reading gaps or on improving reading achievement, it seems to me that NCLB could vanish or become even more strongly committed to federal mandates and oversight. The federal push to incorporate high academic standards and test-based accountability is now two decades old but neither reading proficiencies nor the reading achievement gap have improved. Similarly, SBRR models of curriculum and instruction advocated under both REA and NCLB have also failed to close the achievement gaps. And finally, the attempts to advance privatization of educational services have produced no clear research supporting its continued use. While all of this may be viewed as evidence of 504

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bad policy design or bad policy implementation, or both, the issue is whether the Congress and the US Department of Education will acknowledge the failures of their policy making. Or will ideology continue to trump evidence in government policies and programmes?

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43 English in Australia and New Zealand Wayne Sawyer

Under the Australian Federal system of government, education has been largely the separate concern of the six states and two territories. These eight systems have historically designed and implemented their own curricula and administered their own education bureaucracies. However, at the time of writing, moves away from this history of curriculum design towards national curricula in key disciplines such as English are well under way. In any case, much commonality already exists in English, as discussed below. Broadly, schooling is for 13 years in each state and territory, with the compulsory years of schooling being generally to Year 10. The final years – Years 11 and 12 – include some form of assessment towards university entrance. English is a compulsory subject throughout the compulsory years of schooling in each jurisdiction. In contrast to Australia, New Zealand already has a history of national curricula, with its latest manifestation – The New Zealand Curriculum (MoE, 2007a, 2007b) – due for full implementation at the beginning of 2010 and including English as a ‘Learning Area’. Part of the policy context for both countries is their performance in international literacy testing. Only one country, Finland, gained (statistically) significantly better mean scores than Australia and New Zealand in reading literacy in both of PISA 2000 and 2003.1 In PISA 2006, Australia dropped into the third group among (then) fifty-seven countries, but New Zealand retained its position.

Syllabuses/Curriculum Frameworks in English around Australia As details of the national curriculum in English are not yet finalized in Australia at the time of writing, this section deals with the English curricula that currently exist in the eight states and territories. Uniform across Australia are outcomes-based curricula. These exist in the form of Curriculum Frameworks (the Northern Territory, South Australia, Western Australia), Essential Learning Standards (Victoria, Queensland) or Syllabuses

1 Programme for International Student Assessment.

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(New South Wales, Queensland,2 Tasmania).3 As jurisdictions organize these around outcomes to be achieved at different stages of schooling, there is essentially little difference between Syllabuses, Frameworks or Essential Learnings in terms of detail or approach. All identify the language modes of listening, speaking, reading and writing as central concepts. Most identify viewing separately and New South Wales and Tasmania also use the term representing to refer to the production (as opposed to the reception) of ‘visual language’. There is an equal stress on the production (e.g. writing) and reception (e.g. reading) language modes. There is generally a broad definition of ‘text’ to include most forms of written, spoken and visual communication and to take account of new textual forms (with ‘multimedia’ often specifically identified). While there is obviously an emphasis on functional literacy, there is also an emphasis on the imaginative and creative uses of language, as well as on critical literacy and its concerns with the constructed-ness of texts. The nature of texts dealt with in English is variously defined by both mode (‘spoken’, ‘written’, etc.) and medium (‘print’, ‘multimedia’, etc.), but sometimes by other criteria that can include genre (Tasmania lists ‘everyday’, ‘popular’ and ‘classic’, ‘fiction and non-fiction’, ‘imaginative’ ‘information’ and ‘argument’ among its textual forms for English [DETTAS, 2008]). ‘Audience’, ‘purpose’, ‘context’ and ‘form’ are recurring concerns. Most states do not set specific texts for study in the compulsory years of schooling, though some do stress the need to study texts that deal with Australian identity while reflecting the cultural diversity of Australia’s population, including indigenous people. Education into standard Australian English is a common theme while still recognizing and valuing the existence of a diverse variety of Englishes. There is a stress on textual conventions and the teaching of what is almost uniformly referred to as ‘the linguistic structures and features’ of texts. In fact, this phrase in many syllabuses forms part of a matrix against which are mapped the language modes in order to produce outcomes for each stage of schooling.4 Against the strands of listening and speaking, reading and viewing and writing, for example the Northern Territory maps Texts and contexts, Language structures and features and Strategies in order to describe its outcomes (NT Curriculum Framework, n.d.). Additionally, since 2005 Australia has had a national set of Statements of Learning for English, which reflect what is consistent across states and territories, but it is yet to be seen how these will play out vis-a-vis any final national curriculum (Curriculum Corporation, 2005). Essential Learning frameworks in three jurisdictions – Victoria,

2 Queensland appears twice here because at the time of writing it has an Essential Learnings statement on English with a Syllabus under ‘open trial’ and due to be implemented in 2009. 3 An exception to this curriculum organization for English is the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), which has no specific English curriculum as such. Instead, the ACT has a general curriculum framework for Preschool to Year 10, from which schools derive their own curriculum organization. The Framework comprises ten principles to guide curriculum decision making in schools and 25 Essential Learning Achievements. English specifically maps onto ELAs # 8 (‘The student listens and speaks with purpose and effect’), 9 (‘The student reads effectively’), 10 (‘The student writes effectively’) and 11 (‘The student critically interprets and creates texts’). In the discussion which follows, the ACT must be seen, therefore, as an exception to these general trends. 4 The NSW 7–10 syllabus is the only curriculum in Australia that does not list its outcomes against these individual modes or a similar organizing feature (other than the stage of schooling). Instead it takes an integrated approach to outcomes. Outcome 5 at Stage 4 (Years 7–8), for example states ‘A student makes informed language choices to shape meaning with accuracy, clarity and coherence’.

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South Australia and Queensland (though called in the latter New Basics) – present an interdisciplinary framework for ‘literacy’ beyond the discipline-based English syllabuses. Titles of such frameworks are Communication (South Australia and Victoria) and Multiliteracies and Communications Media (Queensland). In addition, the Northern Territory has a separate framework for English as a Second Language.

The New Zealand Curriculum in English English is contained within the New Zealand Curriculum as a ‘learning area’, but learning areas also sit alongside more generic sets of: • •

•

key competencies (thinking; using language, symbols and texts; managing self; relating to others; participating and contributing). principles (high expectations; the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi;5 cultural diversity; inclusion; learning to learn; community engagement; coherence; future focus). values (excellence; innovation, inquiry and curiosity; diversity; equity; community and participation; ecological sustainability; integrity; respect).

Schools are to treat the curriculum as a general framework on which they individually build their school organization. In the New Zealand Curriculum for English-medium teaching and learning (there is also Te Marautanga o Aotearoa for Maori-medium teaching and learning) English is defined as ‘the study, use, and enjoyment of the English language and its literature, communicated orally, visually, and in writing, for a range of purposes and audiences and in a variety of text forms’. Learning English is defined as encompassing each of ‘learning the language, learning through the language, and learning about the language’. The subject is structured around two interconnected strands, namely, making meaning of information received (listening, reading, viewing modes) and creating meaning for themselves and others (speaking, writing, presenting modes). Thus, each strand encompasses oral, written and visual language (MoE, 2007a: 18). Levels of achievement (eight) are described within each strand. Based on a set of underpinning processes and strategies, these levels of achievement are described against: • • • •

text purposes and audiences. ideas within language contexts. language features that enhance texts. the structure and organization of texts (MoE, 2007b).

Theoretical concerns and research Any attempt to cover a full range of theoretical concerns and research interests emanating out of two countries must inevitably confront the issues of partiality and depth.

5 The Treaty of Waitangi is an agreement of 1840 that forms a compact between the British Crown and the Maori people.

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Which research to review? How much? How far back to reach? To what degree of coverage? I address these issues here by covering the research on English language and literacy teaching presented in the peak peer reviewed journals of Australia and New Zealand between 2005 and 2007. This gives some immediacy to the discussion as well as anchoring it in specifics, rather than attempting too general an overview. The relevant sources are: English in Australia (the journal of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English/AATE), the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy (the peak refereed journal of the Australian Literacy Educators’ Association/ALEA) and English Teaching: Practice and Critique (hosted at the University of Waikato).6 There are, of course, problems with using this approach to reviewing research. These include potential skewing of the focus because of editorial policy or editorial interests, sometimes manifested in themed editions of the journal. Further, research represented in such peak journals does not, of course, necessarily emanate from the home country. Such research, then, to use Australia as the example, is not ‘Australian’. On the other hand, how often is research really circumscribed by national boundaries in any case? Each of the journals with which I deal here is an international journal with an international editorial board. Thus, while the approach adopted here gives a sense of recent research interests emanating out of Australian and New Zealand contexts, that research itself, more often than not, is international in its concerns and scope. English Teaching: Practice and Critique runs only themed editions of the journal. In the period in question, these themes were: • • • • • • • •

English and the visual (4:1, May 2005). English teachers as researchers (4:2, September 2005). knowledge about language in the English/literacy classroom (4:3, December 2005 and 5:1, May 2006). reclaiming the ‘creative’ in the English/literacy classroom (5:2, September 2006). English (literature) and gender (5:3, December 2006). composition in the English/literacy classroom (6:1, May 2007). the construction of academic literacy and difference (6:2, September 2007). what counts as research in English/literacy education (6:3, December 2007).

While the other two journals do not normally run themed editions, over this period the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy did include special editions on: •

•

a national government-commissioned research report into literacy teaching practices in the early years, In Teachers’ Hands (Louden et al., 2005a) (28:3, October 2005) and place and environmental education (30:2, June 2007).

6 The journal of the New Zealand Association for the Teaching of English (NZATE), English in Aotearoa, is not included here as it is largely not a refereed journal. It is a themed journal and its themes during the relevant period were: poetry (#55, April 2005); research (#56, July 2005); English for the bored (#58, April 2006); oral language (#59, July 2006); the twenty-first-century English department (#61, April 2007) and writing (#62, July 2007), as well as three conference editions (#s 57, 60, 63, October 2005, 2006 and 2007).

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Other than the themed editions themselves, the strongest focus of the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy in the period 2005–7 was research into classroom pedagogy. Early literacy development, in particular, received a strong emphasis as part of the journal’s concerns over this period. English in Australia in this period included themed editions on: • •

the core Statements of Belief of the AATE (42:2, 2007) and professional teaching standards and STELLA7 (42:3, 2007).

Though not overtly conceptualized in this way, the period 2005–7 in English in Australia in effect reflected the concerns of four of the five strands of the 2003 IFTE8 conference, which had been held in Melbourne. Discussion and research in the journal from 2005–7 could be said to fall into the themes of: literacy for a democratic society; literacy and textual diversity; twenty-first-century literacies; and professional identity and change. The latter two themes – contemporary literacies and teacher professionalism and identity – appeared most commonly in the journal (the latter in the special edition on STELLA), but textual diversity and notions of democracy and power – the latter expressed mostly through discussions of critical literacy – were also strongly present. The changing nature of literacy was a recurring theme over this period across all the journals. Beavis (2006) for example asked how we might re-imagine English at the beginning of the twenty-first century. What is its place in a globalized, networked world? What sorts of curriculum best prepare young people to live creative, productive and socially just and engaged lives in an increasingly fragmented and problematic society? Discussion and research of twenty-first-century literacies focused on harnessing ICT in the classroom in the context of contemporary discussion of multiliteracies and multimodality. There was discussion of both the reading of, and creation of, digital texts, including the use of a metalanguage with visual texts (on this last point, see Callow, 2005, 2006; Unsworth, 2006; Walsh, 2006; Walsh et al., 2007). Other foci included classroom uses of video games and online fan fiction. The IFTE theme of ‘literacy for a democratic society’ could be seen as continuing in the discussions of critical literacy in this period. Australia has a strong history of critical literacy pedagogy (e.g. Mellor et al., 1990; Martino and Mellor, 1995; Morgan, 1997). In this period, scholarly discussion of critical literacy (e.g. Kerkham and Comber, 2007) included work by Misson and Morgan (2005), which reflected the themes of their then recent book on reconciling critical literacy and the aesthetic (Misson and Morgan, 2006). They argued (2005) that readers need to feel and understand the complex pleasures that aesthetic texts offer as legitimate in themselves, and that readers also need to better understand the work that textual pleasures create when they offer certain kinds of knowing and feeling. Misson also argued elsewhere (2005) for a renewed focus on engaging the emotional, affective capabilities of students.

7 From 1999–2001 a consortium of English and literacy educators’ associations (AATE and ALEA), researchers from three university faculties of education, and education bodies in three states developed a set of professional teaching standards that, as a consequence, had their origin in the profession, rather than being imposed from above by government. These standards are known as STELLA (Standards for Teachers of English Language and Literacy in Australia) (STELLA, n.d.). 8 International Federation for the Teaching of English.

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This discussion cannot be seen as separate from more general discussions of paradigms and paradigm shifts in the subject (e.g. Mills, 2005). By drawing parallels with the visual arts, and drawing also on MacLachlan and Reid’s (1994) work on ‘framing’, Howie (2005) presented a model of programming that drew on each of personal growth, reader response, cultural studies, critical literacy and cultural heritage models of the subject, along with linguistics, in the one unit of work. This model uses a recursive pedagogy that has students returning to their own initial/personal responses to a text to re-examine these in the light of the understanding generated from the frames. Sawyer (2006) also connected English to the visual arts in detecting an ‘aesthetic turn’ through art-as-shaping in recent curriculum discussion. Woods and Homer (2005) – arguing that the subject has essentially remained very traditional in high school in emphasizing reading response and writing mostly generated in response to literature – advocated a ‘creative–critical’ approach to texts. Their approach develops a ‘writer’s headset’ that changes the way texts are read and that puts the focus on creative interventions into texts and on the construction of blurred genres and multimodal texts. The October 2005 edition of the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy was the themed issue on In Teachers’ Hands (Louden et al., 2005a), which focused on the practices of a group of Australian teachers identified as effective in teaching literacy in early years classrooms. Facets of literacy assessed by the team included phonological awareness, phonics, print concepts, reading aloud, making meaning from text, and writing in response to text. This array of tasks was broader than many assessments of early years literacy in schools. The tasks and materials were similar to those used in early years teaching, thus measuring children’s growth over a range of facets of literacy in ways that were similar to their regular classroom activities. The research concluded that effective early literacy teaching requires teachers who can ensure high levels of student participation, are deeply knowledgeable about literacy learning, can simultaneously orchestrate a variety of classroom activities, can support and scaffold learners at word and text levels and can target and differentiate their instruction. Success was due to a ‘balanced approach’ to beginning reading and writing instruction that contained elements of both meaning and word level decoding skills. While all of the teachers paid some explicit attention to phonics, the more effective teachers provided clearer explanations of letter–sound correspondences and more careful scaffolding of learning, particularly in terms of guided practice of skills. These teachers also kept a focus on broader text level features, with particular focus on comprehension of texts. The explicit teaching of phonics and an enormous amount of guided practice of skills in a variety of motivating situations, combined with enjoyable experiences around texts, appeared to the researchers to be optimal contexts for learning literacy effectively. Differences in student learning outcomes were attributed more to the ways in which teachers managed the literacy teaching dimensions identified in the study – participation, knowledge, orchestration, support, differentiation and respect – than to teaching activities such as shared book reading, modelled writing or stand-alone phonics lessons (Louden et al., 2005b). In keeping with its nature as literacy focused, the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy went beyond (but included) concern with subject English, towards other subject-specific literacies across the curriculum. This was usually connected to writing pedagogy, often within a genre-based approach in this journal. However, across the journals, as well as an interest in reading (e.g. see Broadley, 2005; Cambourne, 2005; Mills, 2005), there was also a very strong focus on writing in general. This included 513

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interest in creative writing, writing online and writing as intervention in texts. The editions of English Teaching: Practice and Critique which were concerned with knowledge about language had a strong emphasis on grammar. Andrews (2005) presented the research of Andrews et al. (2006), an important meta-analysis of studies into the relationship between knowledge about grammar and writing, which found no evidence for the assumption that knowledge about sentence-level syntax is a useful tool in helping school pupils to write more fluently and accurately. This research was supported by van Gelderen (2006), including in the second language context. Myhill (2005) countered this with the argument that there had not been enough work investigating how grammar teaching could be linked to teaching writing. A number of articles discussed the conditions under which grammar teaching may be useful with Weaver et al. (2006), for example arguing for a focus on key grammatical options and skills in the context of actual writing.

Implications for educational policy and practice There is little in the previous section which is necessarily peculiar to Australia or New Zealand. Unsurprisingly, classroom pedagogy is a superordinate category of research interest, although this takes its place alongside concerns such as the place of the teacher in research and the issue of professional standards for teachers. The place of early literacy achievement is receiving strong public policy recognition in Australia, as it has always had in curriculum practice in both countries, with New Zealand being, of course, a world leader in intervention programmes such as Reading Recovery. In Australia, a key focus for ongoing research will be on the enactment of public policy on early literacy practices and its translation into appropriate literacy achievement for young students. The work of Andrews (2005), Myhill (2005), Weaver et al. (2006) and Louden et al. (2005a) also highlights the importance of nuanced understanding of issues such as the role of grammar or phonics that teachers need to have for effective work in English and literacy classrooms. The multimodal and multimedia nature of emerging literacy practices will continue to be of importance, with the extent to which the school can, should or will engage the outof-school-wired-lives of its students being perhaps the central issue. Perhaps underresearched and under-theorized so far is the important role of creativity in the world of multiliteracies. Kress argues that in an era of globalized instability, creativity is needed more than critique (because critique remains backward-looking and dependent on the past agendas of others). Kress’s (2002) proposed curriculum model based on ‘design’ (a term which he applies both to the media of production and dissemination and to modes of representation) raises issues about the ways in which curricula are/can be responsive to a need for such creativity and the ways in which they can be researched and theorized. Following a period of being at the forefront of theorizing critical literacy, Australia in particular could welcome an interest in re-theorizing creativity as the centre of curriculum design.

Conclusion Alongside this interest in ‘design’ emanating from the New London Group (NLG) (1996) that includes Kress, curriculum theorists from Australia (e.g. Reid, 2004; Green, 2006) 514

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and New Zealand (Locke, 2005, 2007) have recently been re-presenting the possibilities of a model of the subject based in rhetoric. At the same time, the work of Misson and Morgan mentioned previously is a version of the aesthetic that takes account of critical literacy and seeks to define aesthetic experience partly (though not entirely) through the sense of heightened significance achieved by the shaping of a work (Misson and Morgan, 2006). Interestingly, their discussion of aesthetic experience throws a necessary emphasis on to text creation (as opposed to the critical literacy emphasis on textual readings), which ties it quite closely in parts to Kress’ design and, I believe, quite closely to a rhetorical model – all the more so when one considers Andrews’ definition of rhetoric as ‘the arts of discourse and . . . context’ (Andrews, 1992: 5). The convergence of these three areas – design, rhetoric, aesthetic – is a fruitful area of investigation in curriculum theorizing, perhaps especially in the context of potentially major national curriculum reform in Australia.

References Andrews, A. (2005). Knowledge about the Teaching of [sentence] Grammar: The state of play. English Teaching: Practice and Critique 4(3, Dec): 69–76. http://education.waikato.ac.nz/ research/journal/view.php?article=trueandid=266andp=1 accessed 25 June 2008. Andrews, R. (1992). Introduction. In R. Andrews (Ed.) Rebirth of Rhetoric: Essays in language, culture and education. London and New York: Routledge. Andrews, R., Torgerson, C., Beverton, S., Freeman, A., Locke, T., Low, G. et al. (2006). The Effect of Grammar Teaching on Writing Development. British Educational Research Journal 32(1): 39–55. Beavis, C. (2006). English at a Time of Change: Where do we go with text? English in Australia 41(2): 61–8. Broadley, G. (2005). Seeing Forward Looking Back: The New Zealand literacy picture. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 28(1): 8–18. Callow, J. (2005). Literacy and the Visual: Broadening our vision. English Teaching: Practice and Critique 4(1): 6–19. http://education.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal/view.php?article= trueandid=77andp=1accessed 12 June 2008. Callow, J. (2006). Images, Politics and Multiliteracies: Using a visual metalanguage. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 29(1): 7–23. Cambourne, B. (2005). ‘Once More unto the Breach’: Phonics and reading in Australia. English in Australia Summer: 4–9. Curriculum Corporation (2005). Statements of Learning for English. http://www.curriculum. edu.au/verve/_resources/StmntLearning_English_file.pdf accessed 25 March 2008. Department of Education, Tasmania (DETTAS) (2008). Tasmanian Curriculum: English-literacy (including LOTE). http://www.education.tas.gov.au/curriculum/standards/english accessed 21 March 2008. Green, B. (2006). English, Literacy, Rhetoric: Changing the project? English in Education 40(1): 7–19. Howie, M. (2005). A Transformative Model for Programming 7–10 English. English in Australia Autumn: 57–63. Kerkham, H. and Comber, B. (2007). Literacy, Places and Identity: The complexity of teaching environmental communications. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 30(2): 134–48. Kress, G. (2002). English for an Era of Instability: Aesthetics, ethics, creativity and design. English in Australia 134: 15–23.

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Locke, T. (2005). Writing Positions and Rhetorical Spaces. In B. Doecke and G. Parr (Eds) Writing=Learning. Kent Town, SA: AATE/Wakefield Press. Locke, T. (2007). Elearning and the Reshaping of Rhetorical Space. In R. Andrews and C. Haythornthwaite (Eds) Sage Handbook of Elearning. London and New York: Sage. Louden, W., Rohl, M., Barratt-Pugh, C., Brown, C., Cairney, T., Elderfield, J. et al. (2005a). In Teachers’ Hands: Effective literacy teaching practices in the early years of schooling. Canberra: Department of Science and Training (DEST). Louden, W., Rohl, M., Barratt-Pugh, C., Brown, C., Cairney, T., Elderfield, J. et al. (2005b). 11. Conclusions. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 28(3): 242–4. MacLachlan, G. and Reid, I. (1994). Framing and Interpretation. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Martino, W. and Mellor, B. (1995). Gendered Fictions. Cottesloe: Chalkface Press. Mellor, B., O’Neill, M. and Patterson, A. (1990). Reading Stories. Scarborough: Chalkface Press. Mills, K. (2005). Deconstructing Binary Oppositions in Literacy Discourse and Pedagogy. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 28(1): 67–82. Ministry of Education (MoE) (2007a). The New Zealand Curriculum for English-medium Teaching and Learning in Years 1–13. http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/ accessed 12 April 2008. Ministry of Education (MoE) (2007b). The New Zealand Curriculum: Achievement Objectives by Learning Area. http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/ accessed 12 April 2008. Misson, R. (2005). The Origin of Literacies: How the fittest will survive. English in Australia Autumn: 37–46. Misson, R. and Morgan, W. (2005). Beyond the Pleasure Principle: Confessions of a critical literacy teacher. English in Australia Summer: 17–25. Misson, R. and Morgan, W. (2006). Critical Literacy and the Aesthetic: Transforming the English classroom. Urbana, IL: NCTE. Morgan, W. (1997). Critical Literacy in the Classroom: The art of the possible. New York: Routledge. Myhill, D. (2005). Ways of Knowing: Writing with grammar in mind. English Teaching: Practice and Critique 4(3, Dec): 77–96. http://education.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal/view. php?article=trueandid=267andp=1 accessed 25 June 2008. New London Group (NLG) (1996). A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66(1): 60–92. NT Curriculum Framework (n.d.) English learning area. http://www.deet.nt.gov.au/education/ teaching_and_learning/curriculum/ntcf/docs/learning_areas_english.pdf accessed 18 March 2008. Reid, I. (2004). Wordsworth and the Formation of English Studies. Aldershot: Ashgate. Sawyer, W. (2006). The Condition of Music: The aesthetic turn in English. English in Australia 41(2): 27–34. STELLA (n.d.) Standards for Teachers of English Language and Literacy in Australia. http:// www.stella.org.au/index-2.html# accessed 1 April 2008. Unsworth, L. (2006). Towards a Metalanguage for Multiliteracies Education: Describing the meaning-making resources of language–image interaction. English Teaching: Practice and Critique 5(1, May): 55–76. http://education.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal/view.php? article= trueandid=286andp=1 accessed 25 June 2008. van Gelderen, A. (2006). What We Know without Knowing it: Sense and nonsense in respect of linguistic reflection for students in elementary and secondary education. English Teaching: Practice and Critique 5(1, May): 44–54.http://education.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal/ view.php?article=trueandid=285andp=1 accessed 25 June 2008. Walsh, M. (2006). The ‘Textual Shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 29(1, Feb): 24–37.

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Walsh, M., Asha, J. and Sprainger, N. (2007). Reading Digital Texts. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 30(1, Feb): 40–53. Weaver, C., Bush, J., Anderson, J. and Bills, P. (2006). Grammar Intertwined throughout the Writing Process: An ‘inch wide and a mile deep’. English Teaching: Practice and Critique 5(1, May): 77–101. http://education.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal/view.php? article=trueandid=287andp=1 accessed 25 June 2008. Woods, C. and Homer, D. (2005). Transitions from High School English to Tertiary Study. English in Australia Spring: 36–47.

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44 English in England and Wales: knowledge and ownership Sue Brindley

It is, of course, perfectly possible to track the changes to the English curriculum in England and Wales through a linear account of the various government level policy decisions that produced the English national curriculum, currently, and by law, taught in English schools. But to do so would be only a partial account of events. What would be missing would be an understanding of the ways in which the wider context of changes in education has driven English curriculum changes in quite particular ways. Most notable has been the emergence of the accountability agenda, first evident with the ‘secret garden’ challenge of the government of Callaghan in the 1970s (discussed in detail elsewhere in this book) and based on claims of a crisis in ‘falling standards’. The resulting impact of the accountability movement has been profound, both on the subject English and on the very identity of those who teach it. In this chapter I want to examine the ways in which English has been shaped by and through the accountability agenda; and to do so through investigating its relationship with both curriculum knowledge and teacher knowledge (professionalism), constructs which, I argue, have acted on and indeed continue to act on the shaping of English. Taken together, accountability and centralization, and curriculum knowledge and professionalism constitute strands of a theoretical framework, which in turn I have positioned within a socio-constructivist perspective, since my argument is that the subject knowledge contained within the English curriculum is not fixed, but socially constructed knowledge. As such, I argue, the accountability agenda acts to legitimize just one version of English, and one open to contestation.

Accountability and centralization Accountability is at the heart of changes to English in England and Wales. But if accountability is at the heart of the change agenda, its means of operationalizing change is through centralization. Policy claims on both curricular knowledge and professional knowledge are rooted in the accountability and centralization agenda (see for example Beck 1999), with the justification of centralization being related to the need for 518

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accountability, a self-referential framework predicated upon a declared necessity for control in order to respond to the ‘falling standards crisis’ – control of both content and of those teaching that content (Bottery and Wright, 2000). The centralization agenda is far reaching. Taking as its starting point the need to address falling standards, whether a manufactured claim or not (see for example comments by Cameron [1995] and Street [1998]), the creation of crisis nevertheless had significant impact in that it provided grounds for government intervention, addressing first curriculum and second English teachers’ professional roles. The mechanisms were both blunt and subtle: blunt, through the creation of national curricular and the use of a standards and competences model, as we shall later see; and subtle in apparently placing professional concerns at the heart of English teaching – but using, I shall be arguing, a version of professionalism whose function was to bring about compliance with the accountability and centralization agenda, rather than that relating to teacher autonomy (Giroux, 1988; Beck, 1999; Bernstein, 2000 [1996]). English is not alone in being subject to centralization; it is arguably the major strategy in answering the demands of accountability (see for example Ball, 1994; Apple, 2003). In terms of English, it relates to the construction of a national curriculum (content), a national strategy (pedagogy) and standards and competences (professionalism) and ultimately to claims about the ownership of knowledge.

Curriculum knowledge Centralization (i) the English curriculum If we treat the development of the English national curriculum as a case-study of the ways in which centralized policy has come to define curriculum knowledge, we can see how the national curriculum became central to strategic government moves to define curriculum English. In terms of establishing centralized control, curriculum is a key area to claim, for as Stenhouse (1981) said, if curriculum debates are removed from teacher professional discourse, what is left for teachers to explore? English and the national curriculum: a case study in centralization The full force of the UK government response to the ‘falling standards crisis’ was realized through a legislative act: the Education Reform Act (ERA) 1988. Until this point, the content and boundaries of the subject English in England and Wales had largely been determined by the professional concerns and interests of English teachers, combined with the syllabus demands of the Examination Boards in relation to the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) at 16 and the Advanced Level (‘A’ level, taken at 18) exams. ERA reshaped that construct of English, moving it from the arena of the English teachers’ professional judgments to that of a centrally devised and assessed curriculum. Curriculum changes The changes wrought through the national curriculum (NC) were not brought about by reference to any type of research into English or indeed the teaching of English. Instead, the ‘selection of knowledge’ was brought about by invited contributions to a committee 519

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charged with creating the national curriculum. In some ways, the reshaping of English initially seemed more to do with organization than with content. A new move was to organize English across four ‘key stages’ (ages 5–7; 7–11; 11–14; 14–16) and through four language modes: reading, writing, speaking and listening. Within these language modes, the curriculum, represented as ‘Programmes of Study’, was further subdivided into organizational strands representing the breadth and depth of English within the national curriculum. But inroads were made into the English teachers’ domain. If we look at each of the Programmes of Study, we can see examples of claims to centralization. Reading If for example we consider the reading curriculum, the Reading Programme of Study developed age-related required reading lists, which were highly contentious both in terms of the choices of required texts within the NC (largely the so-called ‘dead white males’ lists) and the notion that any text can be said to be ‘age-related’. In the event, the government agency with responsibility for developing the curriculum agreed that in the secondary English NC at least, teachers should be freed from the age-relatedness of text choice, and that the selection of text should reflect pedagogical approaches rather than any notion of ‘age appropriacy’. The required reading lists remained, however, alongside a list of ‘recommended reading’, which soon became, by default, a second level required reading list. Standard English Other changes in the content of the English curriculum brought about highly controversial moves. In the NC Speaking and Listening section, a new and very high profile was given to standard English (SE), the spoken version of English which might be recognized as that standardized across England and Wales, and which allowed for differing accents but not dialect. Brian Cox, Chair of the committee commissioned by government to produce the report used by government as the basis for the NC (although Cox always vehemently argued that the government agencies’ use of report did not reflect either the spirit or the carefully constructed recommendations which allowed for a great degree of teacher professional judgement) reported that ‘Standard English caused us enormous problems’ (Cox, 1991: 26). The ‘enormous problems’ related to confusion in government and by the general public between accent and dialect, the former being mis-understood as the standard requirement for all children to develop an accent often described as BBC English; whereas in fact, the NC orders referred to distinguishing between use of dialect grammatical and lexical choice and those of Standard English (SE), and around appropriate use of SE – for example the then chair of the National Curriculum Council (NCC) directed teachers to correct children’s spoken language in the playground if they were heard using local dialect – and the complex and related implications of social hierarchies related to language use in England and Wales. Grammar and writing Similarly, the teaching of grammar within the Writing Programmes of Study received new attention within the NC. Ministers made some rather unexpected connections between the notions of correctness in writing and social breakdown. For example at 520

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that time, Norman Tebbitt (later Chairman of the Conservative Party) became briefly infamous in the English teaching community by stating that poor spelling could be linked directly with ‘soaring’ crime rates. Somewhat surprisingly, such claims live on with the National Literacy Trust even now exploring the same area (see Literacy Changes Lives: The Role of Literacy in Offending Behaviour ). The power of ‘correctness’, so evident in these developments, was given weight in law through the NC, where the teaching of grammar was prescribed and precise in its requirements. The notion of grammar as rules, and indeed correctness in language use, is not incidental to the wider claims relating to control. In establishing such a position, debate about English is limited to ‘how to bring about’ rather than ‘why’ (see for example Kincheloe, 2003) and reflects therefore wider strategies relating to teacher professionalism, an area to which I return later in this chapter. The changing curriculum The NC for English has changed over time. Most recently (2008) the curriculum was re-organized into four ‘key concepts’ (competence, creativity, cultural understanding and critical understanding); and three ‘processes’: speaking and listening, reading and writing; and ‘range and content’, which is designed to ‘outline the breadth of the subject on which teachers should draw when teaching the key concepts and key processes. The study of English should enable pupils to apply the knowledge, skills and understanding to relevant real-world situations’, the latter phrase perhaps being particularly telling in its vocational emphasis; and ‘curriculum opportunities’ which outline the contexts for teaching English (http://curriculum.qca.org.uk/key-stages-3-and-4/subjects/ english/keystage3/index.aspx). But the changes we can see since the inception of the NC for English are effectively tweaks in a system, however apparently major the tweak. English was and is still centrally defined and controlled through the NC.

Centralization (ii) assessment and monitoring A national curriculum for English was in itself a central strategy in the accountability agenda which informed government centralization of education generally (Sachs, 1999). It was reinforced through a newly developed assessment system within the NC, known as levels of attainment, arranged hierarchically and therefore with an implied linear progression model, although the learning theory underpinning this construction of English was not made explicit nor explored within any government papers; and end of key stage tests (which came to be known as SATS) in English, Maths and Science, administered at ages 7, 11, and 14, were designed to test areas of the national curriculum. Results of SATS were published in local and national press as league tables, and schools not producing ‘good’ results for whatever reasons (which might include social dimensions) were deemed to be failing, and could be inspected by a government agency, the Office for Standards in Education (OfSTED), with the possibility of the school being closed. The combination of an English national curriculum which was required under law, an assessment system designed to test the English NC and an inspectorate that was concerned with ensuring that schools were teaching the NC for English and preparing students for associated assessment arrangements (SATS) effectively, combined to produce 521

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a formidable change from the previous regime of teacher judgement. Thus restructured, we might say that English reflected a centralized agenda with inbuilt accountability. But a curious paradox arises.

The paradox The call to centralization has been, as we noted earlier, associated with claims relating to falling standards: the implication is that without active government intervention, children will emerge from schools being unable to read or write. However, a paradox emerges. The Education Reform Act was passed in 1988; the national curriculum first emerged in 1992; yet from the mid-1990s reports raising concerns about levels of literacy in England and Wales emerged (Brooks et al. 1997; Street, 1997; Lewis and Wray, 2000). Indeed, in 2003 it was announced that the Government had failed to meet its targets for the 2002 key stage 2 tests (DfES, 0613/2002), a source of great potential embarrassment for a government which had claimed that the NC would bring about wholesale improvement in achievement in English. So it would appear that despite the legislation relating to centralizing the English curriculum, there remained problems of the most basic type in reading and writing English.

Centralization (iii) literacy Handling the reality of the NC’s failure to improve standards of achievement in English was going to be a sensitive issue. The solution was to offer a focused strategy for teaching English, initially in the primary schools but moving swiftly into the secondary schools. The solution was the National Literacy Strategy. Again, the purpose of this section is not to outline the literacy strategy in any detail: that can be found elsewhere in this book. But it is to explore the ways in which the literacy strategy became the means of addressing the paradox outlined above of the implementation of extensive legislation to address, and yet ongoing problems with, accessing English. The Literacy Strategy claimed to be addressing a deep rooted problem: falling standards in literacy. However, it was claimed, the blame was not with any failure within the reforms of the national curriculum, but rather with the entrenched failure of schools to teach literacy successfully (see National Literacy Trust: The National Literacy Strategy: England: Background). The problem of accessing English was so long-standing that it could be traced back to the Second World War. A more radical solution had to be developed to this problem, and that was to be the Literacy Strategy (later renamed the Primary and Secondary National Strategies), launched in 1998, with rollout through until 2005. The relationship of the national strategy for literacy with the NC was an issue for English. Since the NC was enshrined in law through ERA, it could not be dismissed. A further round of legislative activity relating to literacy could prove prohibitive timewise for any government facing a general election, as the UK government was at that time. Instead, the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA), the predecessor to the Qualifications and Curriculum Agency (QCA), was asked to offer advice on how primary schools could make space within the national curriculum to concentrate more on literacy. In January 1998, QCA told primary schools that teachers should ‘have regard to’ the national curriculum demands in order to meet and maintain a broad and balanced curriculum, but that they no longer had to meet all the demands of the Programmes 522

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of Study. This extraordinary turn around in the positioning of the NC is telling: the Literacy Strategy was effectively the new curriculum for English in primary schools, and planned to be so in secondary schools. Debates relating to the relationship of English to literacy are not new (see for example Davies, 1996); but the difference in this case was the nature of the Literacy Strategy itself. The subject English was now facing its own major crisis. Whose agenda would now define the content and organization of English? Most significantly, and unlike the NC, the literacy strategy prescribed not only content and organization but pedagogy. It thus also became the mechanism by which pedagogy, and indeed, teacher professionalism, became defined. The redefinition of English teacher identity through the claims on both subject knowledge and pedagogy made by the literacy strategy moved the centralization agenda to a new level. By redefining English teacher knowledge as that contained within government policy, teachers were no longer in a position to exercise curriculum autonomy.

Professionalism If curriculum autonomy – both English subject knowledge and pedagogical knowledge – had been removed from the control of English teachers, the inevitable question to ask is: who now then defines English? Such a question reflects directly on constructions of professionalism. Literatures relating to professionalism are substantial and reflect a variety of positioning. Some have been engaged with definitions (Hoyle and John, 1995); with structures (Barber, 2001; Hargreaves, 2003); and others, it may be argued, with bringing about strategic intent in supporting government policy (Hargreaves, 1998); or opposing such policy (Sachs, 1999; Bottery and Wright, 2000). Furlong (2005) claims that the government redefinition of professionalism has brought about a teaching profession: ‘which accepts that decisions about what to teach, how to teach and how to assess children are made at . . . national level rather than by individual teachers themselves’ (cited in Whitty, 2006: 9). Certainly the ‘new professionalism’ outlined in the Five Year Strategy (2005), where: ‘Career progression and financial rewards will go to those who are making the biggest contributions to improving pupil attainment’ (2005: 66) and where pupil attainment is defined by government policy, suggests another self-referential construct is in place. In order to succeed, teachers had to adopt the professional identity prescribed by government policy directives. The detail of this identity was to be described through an extensive set of directives, known in England and Wales as ‘Professional Standards’.

Teacher knowledge (i) standards and competences In the same way that the Literacy Strategy represented that version of English through a series of disaggregated standards, teachers were now equally subject to centralized control through the development of the Standards model, claimed to bring ‘coherence to the professional and occupational standards for the whole school workforce’ (2007: 1). The standards model represents what is deemed to be effective teaching through a series of statements known as competences, organized into key areas which accord to the strategy construction of English teaching, and which teachers are expected to use for both classroom planning and professional development. Meeting the standards are also the mechanism for teacher promotion, including a gate-keeping system where teachers are awarded graded promotion supposedly based on expertise in 523

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teaching, but which actually accord to expertise measured through Standards compliance. Initial teacher education is no exception: trainee teachers have their own extensive series of ‘Standards’ which they have to demonstrate they have met in order to gain their teaching qualification, the Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE); and as newlyqualified teachers, they have a further set of standards which again they have to meet in order to pass their first year of teaching and become fully qualified (see http://www.tda.gov.uk/teachers/continuingprofessionaldevelopment.aspx). It might be argued that such standards are necessary to regulate the teaching of English in the light of the falling standards crisis. But the question must be, what evidence do we have that the ‘crisis’ exists or indeed that centralization is the answer? For example why is it that even after the introduction of the English NC, new assessment arrangements, and the Literacy Strategy, where curriculum and teacher knowledge in English are both centrally defined and controlled, claims about falling standards in reading and writing are still evident? If the Standards are not answering the falling standards crisis, what is their purpose? In Bottery and Wright’s terms, standards and competences are the control mechanisms which are the central means of teacher de-professionalization: And the professionals? The key words for them . . . will be . . . outcomes, standards, and benchmarking . . . There can now be little time for smelling flowers along the way; the agenda, set months and years in advance, is cast in tablets of stone, and must be achieved if the schools is not to face a deluge of inspection and further external . . . control. (Bottery and Wright, 2000: 28–9) A judgement therefore has to be made over whether such a crisis exists, or whether this is a manufactured crisis which justifies centralized control, or whether such a crisis does exist but shows no signs of responding to a centralized agenda, a situation which would have grave consequences for the UK government’s education agenda, and indeed, for any government with a centralized agenda.

Teacher knowledge (ii) – a research position The dominance of policy knowledge in English remains evident in English teaching. Do we then simply accept that English curriculum knowledge and English teacher knowledge, which defined English pre-national curriculum and professional standards, have simply been deficit models of knowledge? Bottery and Wright (2000) offer a different structure from which to understand the English/literacy debate. Bottery and Wright contend that instead of giving attention to such parochial debates as the content of English curriculum or that of the Literacy Strategy, such government policy documents need to be understood in the wider framework of the global context of teacher de-professionalization; that such debates might be seen instead as case-studies of the ways in which centralized control, far from addressing any crisis, is actually using such claims to justify the claiming of content, of pedagogy and indeed, of the notion of teacher professional identity. The ‘good teacher’ is now someone who complies with the centralized agenda; and this agenda is represented through development of the competences and the standards statements. It is, in other words, the accountability agenda writ large. But does it have to be accepted as the dominant – indeed the sole model of knowledge? 524

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Bernstein (2000 [1996]) offers an alternative way to think about knowledge construction. Drawing on Durkheim’s construction of sacred and profane knowledge, Bernstein contends that the differing knowledge claims evident in debates such as those surrounding the English curriculum and English teachers’ professional identity are actually debates about different knowledge forms. The sacred knowledge is the ‘inner’ (curricular and professional) knowledge; the ‘profane’ the knowledge we have to deal with in order to address the external agencies with whom we must meet and whose external agendas must be answered. It is the ‘sacred’ knowledge – the subject values and beliefs and the knowledges found therein which mark out the professional – the teacher who not only has the right but the responsibility to define and engage with subject knowledge and pedagogy. In turn, teachers also have to be subject to control: the standards and competences model ensure that teachers can only progress to promotion – indeed, can only qualify – by compliance with the government teaching standards. The claim I wish to make here is that it is the ‘sacred’ knowledge which is under threat with the development of the technical–rationalist models of English presented through both the NC and the National Strategies. The dominance of profane knowledge through policy is threatening professionalism and ‘transforming teachers from professionals into technicians’ (Whitty, 1996: 9). This is no irrelevant debate for English teachers. As Bernstein points out: ‘Knowledge is [thus] divorced from persons, their commitments, their personal dedications . . . Once knowledge is separated from inwardness . . . then people may be moved about, substituted for each other and excluded from the market’ (2000 [1996]: 87).

Centralization and competences: an international agenda? Although we are focusing on England and Wales in this chapter, it is worth noting that the debates surrounding centralization through competences and standards are not limited to these countries alone. Ingvarson (1998) for example in Professional Standards: A Challenge for AATE? cites the work of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) in the USA as a positive mechanism for developing teaching and teachers. He states that: ‘Standards can be seen as rallying points (where we stand, what we believe in) and as specifications for measuring satisfactory performance (how good is good enough)’ (1998 :2). And goes on to claim that: This paper argues that teaching standards are the means by which AATE [the Australian Association for the Teaching of English] can develop its own professional development system for teachers of English. When teacher organizations demonstrate the capacity to develop creditable professional standards, they gain the right to claim the responsibility for setting the long term agenda for their members’ professional development. (1998: 2) It is interesting therefore to note the paper from Delandshire and Petrosky (2001), both English teachers based in the USA, whose analysis of the NBPTS suggests that, far from demonstrating professional development, the NBPTS is a highly damaging institution. Their paper, entitled Framing Teaching and Teachers? National Board English 525

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language Arts Certification in the US, looks at the early Adolescence/English Arts standard as a case-study. In the abstract to the paper they state that: In this paper we examine how professional teaching standards, their assessment machinery, and the ideas of authority, expertise, and certainty they represent, regulate teaching knowledge in ways that keep teachers from engaging in the intellectual work necessary for the development for new understanding about teaching. (Delandshire and Petrosky, 2001: 115) These papers seem to me to precisely represent the debates current in England and Wales, albeit it in slightly differing contexts. It is interesting to note that in Australia, via the work of the STELLA Project, English teachers are involved with developing standards for the teaching of English and literacy in Australia, but that these are quite different from the notions adhering to standards for centralized control: they relate instead to what ‘accomplished teachers of English and Literacy believe, know and are able to do’ and have for example under the Professional Knowledge heading: Teachers know their students Teachers know their subject Teachers know how students learn to be powerfully literate (STELLA site http://www.stella.org.au/index.php?id=2) Contrast these statements with the earlier cited example from the Literacy Strategy and the differences are immediately apparent: missing in the STELLA statements are the prescriptive content and pedagogies, the ‘teaching literacy by numbers’ approach; STELLA is a model which, in my view, the government education agencies of England and Wales might benefit from examining, not least in its assumptions that qualified English teachers do not need to be told how to teach English. But it is apparent, even from this brief examination, that the English curricula in England and Wales are not alone in being subjected to attempts to centralize and control.

Conclusion So where does this leave us? We began by exploring the ways in which the subject English has been shaped by government policy in the last 20 years, and the significance of the incursion of literacy into the English curriculum. We looked then at the ways in which the debates in the UK over the English curriculum might be symptomatic of the global moves in education to centralization, with particular claims on curricular and professional knowledge. But are these policy developments necessarily in and of themselves negative? It could be argued for example that neither the content or organization of the revised (2008) NC or the National Strategies at either primary or secondary level are inherently wrong; indeed, as we have seen, there are many strengths in these policy documents. But what remains is English by standards: a level of skills, and surely a ponderous and enervating representation of the subject about which John Dixon could once say: English is a quicksilver among metals – mobile, living and elusive. (1967: 1) 526

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References Ball, S.J. (1994). Educational Reform: A critical and post structural approach. Buckingham: Open University Press. Barber, M. (2001). ‘Large-scale education reform in England: A work in progress.’ Paper prepared for the School Development Conference, Tartu University, Estonia, April. Beck, J. (1999). Makeover or Takeover? The strange death of educational autonomy in neo-liberal England. British Journal of Sociology 20(2): 223–38. Bernstein, B. (2000 [1996]). Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity Theory, Research, Critique. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Bottery, M. and Wright, N. (2000). Teachers and the State: Towards a directed profession. London and New York: Routledge. Brooks, G., Gorman, T., Harman, J., Hutchison, D. and Wilkin, A. (1996). Family Literacy Works: The NFER evaluation of the Basic Skills Agency’s demonstration programs. London: National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) and Basic Skills Agency. Cameron, D. (1995). Verbal Hygiene. London and New York: Routledge. Cox, B. (1991). Cox on Cox: An English curriculum for the 1990s. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Davies, C. (1996). What is English Teaching? Buckingham: Open University Press. Delandshire, G. and Petrosky, A. (2001). Framing Teaching and Teachers? National board English language arts certification in the US. L1 Educational Studies in Language and Literature 1(2): 115–33. Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) (2007). National Literacy Strategy. London: DCSF. Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2002). Building on Improvement. London: DfES. Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2008). The National Strategies (2008). http://www. standards.dfes.gov.uk/primaryframeworks/literacy/ accessed November 2008. Dixon, J. (1967). Growth through English. Oxford University Press for NATE. Education Reform Act 1988. London: HMSO. Furlong, J. (2005). New Labour and Teacher Education: The end of an era. Oxford Review of Education 31(1): 119–34. Giroux, H.A. (1988). Teachers as Intellectuals: Toward a critical pedagogy of learning. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey. Hargreaves, A. (2003). Teaching in the Knowledge Society. NY and London: Teachers College Press. Hoyle, E. and John, P. (1995). Professional Knowledge and Professional Practice. London: Cassell. Ingvarson, L. (1998). Professional Standards: A challenge for AATE? http://www.aate.org.au/ view_journal.php?id=83&page_id=87 accessed Jan 2009. Kincheloe, J.L. (2003). Teachers as Researchers: Qualitative inquiry as a path to empowerment. London and New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Lewis, M. and Wray, D. (2000). Literacy in the Secondary School. London: David Fulton. Literacy Trust http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/research/researchindex3.html accessed November 2008. OfSTED (2005). The National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies and the Primary Curriculum (reference HMI 2395). London: OfSTED. Sachs, J. (1999). ‘Teacher professional identity: Competing discourses, competing outcomes.’ Paper presented at AARE Conference, Melbourne, November. STELLA Project (2001). http://www.stella.org.au/ accessed January 2009. Stenhouse, L. (1981). Curriculum Research and the Professional Development of Teachers. In J. Nixon (Ed.) Research as a Basis for Teaching: Readings from the work of Lawrence Stenhouse. London: Heinemann Educational Books.

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Street, B. (1997). The Implications of the ‘New Literacy Studies’ for Literacy Education. English in Education 31(3): 45–59. Street, B. (1998). Hobbesian Fears and Galilean Struggles: Response to Peter Freebody. Literacy and Numeracy Studies 8(2). Teacher Development Agency. Continuing Professional Development. http://www.tda.gov.uk/ teachers/continuingprofessionaldevelopment.aspx accessed November 2008. Whitty, G. (1996). ‘Teacher professionalism in a new era.’ General Teaching Council for Northern Ireland Annual Lecture, Queen’s University, Belfast, March. Whitty, G. (2006). Education(al) Research and Education Policy Making: Is conflict inevitable? British Educational Research Journal 32(2): 159–76.

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Part 6 Conclusion

45 Implications for research, policy and practice Richard Andrews, James Hoffman and Dominic Wyse

Introduction Each of the chapters in this handbook comes to its conclusions about what is worth researching, what the impact of research is on policy, and how research and policy, in turn, affect practice. It is not necessarily the case that research informs policy; nor that policy informs practice. The relationship between these three dimensions, while seeming to become more like an equilateral triangle in the first part of the 2000s, has now reverted to a less identifiable shape. One of the encouraging aspects of the contemporary relationship between research, policy and practice, however, is that changes in practice have continued to affect policy and research. What we can say as we move into the second decade of the 2000s is that teachers, lecturers and policymakers have a much wider range of research and other kinds of evidence to draw on; that they have a number of portals through which to find and gather such evidence; but that the key issue of transformation of such evidence into practice and policy remains elusive. The aim of the present handbook is to provide a rich resource for readers. We would like to encourage conversations between researchers, teachers, policymakers and lecturers about how such transformations might happen (perhaps through somewhat more informal partnerships and wider networks than have characterized recent reform movements) and in the process build sustained change and improvements for learners. As a starting point for this move we offer, in addition to the conclusions of individual chapters, an overview of the implications for research, policy and practice. We do so in the knowledge that we may not have picked up all the leads that individual contributors have given us.

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Research Research reviews and articles tend to reveal gaps as well as to provide us with results and insights. One of the gaps that the handbook collection as a whole has revealed, as well as its being pointed out by contributors, is the dearth of comparative research in the English, language and literacy teaching fields. Comparative study can take various forms: comparative case studies, large-scale attitudinal and other surveys (such as OECD studies), and curricular comparisons. The chapters comprising our selection and covering the cases of different countries’ approaches to language education are individualistic in nature; they encourage comparisons between chapters to be made by readers, but tend not to include direct comparison with other specified countries’ approaches within chapters. There are three possible routes to improving the comparative research base. One is to encourage the comparative education research community, through its journals and societies, to focus on linguistic matters; a second is for those in the language education field to seek funding for research that is international and comparative in scope; and the third is to support an increase in multilingual research, and to publish multilingually so that access to the research is widened. Two other dimensions of research that tend to be ignored are longitudinality and scale. In the English as an additional language (EAL) or English language learning (ELL) fields, for example most of the research published on both sides of the Atlantic and elsewhere since 2000 consists of small-scale studies. This dearth of longitudinal and large-scale studies is partly a matter of resource; for example individual doctoral students cannot be expected to carry out such studies, and policymakers tend to prefer a quicker fix. The nature of these studies is also a matter of methodological preference. Again, partly because of resource but perhaps also owing to linguistic rather than mathematical inclination, research in the field of English, language and literacy education tends to prefer analysis of qualitative (typically verbal) data. Where quantitative analysis of large data sets is possible in the field, it has traditionally focused on reading rather than on writing, and to ignore the more complex and yet more immediate and ubiquitous world of multimodality and digitized literacies. Large-scale studies of attitudes toward English, language and literacy education are only the beginning of a closer and more comprehensive look at actual language capabilities and performance. It should also be noted that most of the research in the fields in which we are interested takes place in the primary or elementary years of schooling. For example while there is a great tradition of pre-school research by ethnographers and sociolinguists, there is a dearth of studies of language use by 11-18 year olds and beyond. This perception is particularly true of reading studies and of research in the field of writing development, where there appears not be a coherent theory of writing process and development to underpin progress on this topic (a lacuna that is quickly being addressed by new handbooks). Somewhat differently, there is more research on multimodality, the use of new technologies and media (e.g. moving image) work in the 11-18 year group, and less in the primary and elementary years. But research on the role of writing and reading within multimodality are in their infancy. Furthermore, a number of systematic reviews that have tried to study the effects or impact of intervention in the language education and English teaching fields have discovered that there have been few large-scale trials that have tested interventions. Part of the problem here is the difficulty of identifying measurable outcomes of language learning; 532

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on occasion it is a resistance on the part of some to such methods; but there is also the difficulty in providing adequate and comparable control groups in the field. At an epistemological level there is a deeper reason for hesitation in embracing randomized controlled trials in language education research: the sense that asking about the effect of A or B in a tight causal paradigm is not appropriate for education, and especially inappropriate for language education, because of its complex cultural as well as linguistic nature. Increasingly, researchers have used mixed methods as an approach located in pragmatism, and one in which, although typically requiring the resources of larger research teams, can provide a methodology that to some extent counteracts the limitations of some narrowly positivist or naturalistic research. The small-scale and interpretive nature of most research in the language education field needs to be complemented by larger-scale studies, by longitudinality, by comparative studies and by a focus on the secondary/high school years in key areas such as writing development, as well as the elementary and primary ones, for example in relation to multimodality and the use of new technologies and media. Most important is that the research questions are carefully framed and – whether they take the form of questions, hypotheses or problems to be solved – that they are addressed rigorously. Where interdisciplinarity is under examination, and where a range of disciplines is used to provide the theoretical reference points for research, there needs to be careful consideration of how those disciplines relate to each other and how their methodologies and methods can best be used to solve the problem in hand.

Policy This handbook is published at a time when countries around the world are at different stages in the shaping of language education policy. In England, for instance, there is finally recognition on the part of government that a coherent English as an additional language policy is required, following decades of short-term initiatives that have resulted in a patchy, confusing system. The new framework for EAL and for world languages within England will provide a clearer recognition of the centrality of the English language to public life in a diverse society, but at the same time a recognition of the value of the diversity of heritage languages. There is, as yet, no close relationship between the ‘English’ emphasis and the learning of other languages, but a gradual understanding that the preservation and development of world languages are related to the ascendancy of English. In short, a new economy of language learning is emerging in England, the rest of the UK and worldwide. This economy recognizes the importance of Mandarin and Spanish in a new world order. The implications of such policies for the training and continual development of the teaching workforce are considerable. The question of English as a ‘native’ language, along with associated use and study of literatures, media and new technologies, is another major area of policy reform. Reform is needed, because the linguistic and communication landscape is changing faster than the curriculum, leading to disaffection among students if they do not find their conduits of expression flowing freely in schools. The late 1980s nationalization of the English curriculum in England carried with it an ideology based on American business approaches, with its discourse of targets, outcomes and measures; these reflected a commodification of learning and indeed of pupils and students. The result, over the last twenty years, 533

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has been an increased emphasis and increased frequency of testing; a plateau-ing of performance against the government’s own standards, especially at the end of primary/ elementary schooling; a persistent lagging behind of writing performance (worse for boys than for girls) in relation to reading performance; a conservatism within the curriculum (the servant of assessment) that has meant little change over the period. The economic meltdown of 2008, exactly twenty years after the founding of the so-called ‘National’ Curriculum in England (it does not cover Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland), has not necessarily caused but been coincident with a reaction to testing and increasing frustration with the curriculum as it stands. There remains, in spite of the important reports and subsequent debates about the national curriculum in 2009, a need for significant reform of the curriculum (both statutory and non-statutory) and pedagogy. One essential feature of this reform is the need for a better balance between control of the curriculum by government, by teachers, and by pupils. In the USA, the No Child Left Behind policy, drafted in 2001 and passed into law in 2002, has at its core a desire to make more equal the distribution of educational success around the country; in the US context, that means many children in so-called ‘minority’ groups will stand a better chance of success in reading, writing and mathematics. By 2005, according to National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) figures, achievement gaps in reading and maths between white and African–American nine-year-olds and between white and Latino/a nine-year-olds were at an all-time low. However, scores by 2007 did not indicate that those with hard core reading problems were getting any better; in effect, the same problem has persisted in England, where around 15–20% of 11-year-olds have not reached the required standard in reading over the period 1998–2008. The picture overall, in all age groups in the USA, is mixed in reading (whereas in mathematics there is steadier progress). In writing, there is a different picture: the NAEP 2007 ‘report card’ notes that at grades 8 and 12, ‘average writing scores and the percentages of students performing at or above Basic were higher than in both previous assessments’ and that ‘the White-Black score gap narrowed at grade 8 compared to 1998 and 2002 but showed no significant change at grade 12’ (http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/ pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008468, accessed May 2009). In general, however, it is probably true to say that writing pedagogy has fallen behind reading pedagogy in both countries; in England, the performance of 11-year-olds has lagged an average of 20 percentage points behind reading performance since 1997. The reasons for such a lag are many, but one of them is that writing research has been less extensive and perhaps less focused than reading research in the period from the 1970s to the present. We know less about how to teach writing well than we know about how to teach reading well. There is a more general trend, at least in the USA and England, towards pragmatism in educational policy. While the exact future of No Child Left Behind is unknown – and taking an optimistic view, it is likely that an era may emerge in which practice may have a stronger impact on policy, and ideological ‘certainties’ may be exposed – it feels like the period of reliance on ‘scientific evidence’ on which to ‘base’ practice and policy has passed, largely because such evidence was too partial or did not easily fit with policy priorities. In terms of bilingualism, or what is increasingly being called in Europe ‘plurilingualism’ (a more accurate term to describe the language profile of most people), there is a battle to be fought to persuade policymakers of the effectiveness of multilingual education in supporting both first and additional language learning. For some states in the USA, to have set up legal barriers to multilingualism in the name of establishing English as the official language seems both short-sighted and anachronous. 534

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In Norway, to take a very different example, concern is expressed about the tendency of young writers to be able to compose narrative and personal writing at the expense of argumentational writing, with all the conceptual benefits that come with such a critical focus. Like other countries that see their overall literacy score slipping down the international league tables, Norway is concerned to bolster the writing performance of its students with renewed focus on argument and on the formal structures and scaffolding of writing pedagogy. In many countries, we see what has emerged as a pattern: first, a concern that some aspects of literacy are less well developed than others (e.g. argumentational writing as opposed to narrative and personal writing); then a call for a more comprehensive and balanced English curriculum, usually accompanied by centralization as the government ‘takes responsibility’ for improving performance; then the inevitable increase in a battery of measures to gauge the progress and impact of curricular interventions (‘high stakes testing’); a gradual seeping in of pedagogical control as well as curricular control, leading to loss of teacher autonomy and agency. Such control eventually becomes unworkable, uninspiring and ceases to provide the results it is intended to deliver; and so a reaction sets in, freeing up teachers to have more agency within what and how they teach; allowing more space for creativity across the whole English and language curriculum; making the curriculum more closely related to the outside world; and enabling it to try to catch up with new technologies’ relationship with language learning. Perhaps the fundamental issue we face is to avoid a repeat of the more unproductive aspects of this cycle, hence the need to plan for the longer term; something that is often difficult because of timescales for national and international policy cycles.

Practice What are the general implications of the work collected in this handbook for the practising teacher or lecturer? These are more difficult to pin down for teaching than for policy or research, which tend to larger, less localized patterning; whereas teaching pedagogies are local, particularized, sensitive to context. Perhaps one of the key professional attributes for teachers is the ability to evaluate critically these local and national patterns in order to inform excellent teaching. But most of all, excellent teaching is informed by the drive to motivate pupils to learn, to understand and celebrate pupils’ developments, to evaluate promising pedagogy, with awareness of the increasingly international character of education and society, in order to contribute to higher levels of social justice. A central element in being an expert teacher of English, language and literacy is subject knowledge, built up partly in the degree that is taken prior to teaching, and which influences ways of thinking, ranges of sensibility, and disciplinary patterns of finding one’s way across a grid of vertical (taxonomic, hierarchical, concrete and abstract) and horizontal (sequential, logical) relationships. That knowledge is also acquired through a predilection for language and communication; an interest in how language modes relate to each other (e.g. speech to writing), but also how one mode of communication relates to another and what its particular affordances are. Such a range includes film, performing arts, fiction, etc. as well as an interest in the history of languages. The subject knowledge base, therefore, for a teacher of English, language and literacy in the twentyfirst century is an extensive one. It is part of the function of the present handbook to provide a guide to the territory. 535

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Second, there is pedagogic subject knowledge. This is the ability to transform the knowledge of the subject, across all its broad canvas, into ways in which knowledge can be shared, recreated, and in which learning becomes paramount. There are particular demands on the English and literacy teachers of the early twenty-first century. These include a need to make lessons engaging by drawing on material that is relevant, challenging and exciting; the ability to allow pupils and students space to find their own voices, their own perspectives on such material – and to work together to form a community of learning; expertise in designing transformation within a lesson or course of lessons, so that change occurs in the social dynamic of the classroom as well as in the pupils and students’ heads; ways to negotiate the canon of literature that is available; ways to use new technologies both for individual exploration, for homework, and for sharing ideas and experiences in the more public space of the classroom; balancing concentration on individual modes of communication (the visual, verbal – spoken and written – physical, tactile, spatial, aural, etc.) in time and space on the one hand, and multimodal and/or hybrid formats on the other; and the use of electronic and digital media to communicate with students and to recognize that they will also communicate between themselves. Third is the matter of harnessing assessment so that it becomes the servant rather than the master or mistress of learning. As indicated above in the policy section, the recent tendency has been the reverse: the domination of the curriculum and of learning potential and styles by assessment regimes. Assessment approaches in English, language and literacy education need to understand that the range of writing competence cannot be tested by end-of-course examinations; that although reading is more amenable to such testing, it cannot be tested by these means alone; and that multimodal competence and performance can almost certainly not be properly tested in an examination situation. The suggestion, therefore, is that to reflect the range of English, language and literacy skill and capabilities, and to track the development of those capabilities, some form of electronic/digital portfolio is essential. The analogy would be with an artist’s portfolio, but judged against criteria for progress that can be used formatively to push forward and support learning. It ought not to be impossible, in design terms, to work out benchmarks for progress – in writing for example – against which individual learners can measure themselves, provide data for generalized patterns of progress across a school, local authority/school board, state and/or nation. Such (e-)portfolios would provide an archive, evidence of capability and progress, and a platform for further development. Finally, no amount of reading of research is going to make a difference to the learning of young people in schools if it is not absorbed by the teacher and transmuted by him or her into knowledge that is a working knowledge – the kind of knowledge that is generated by thought, reflection and action. Ideas need to be tried out, and if they fail, need to be reflected on and something different attempted. Getting inside the process of learning to write, read; appreciating film, literature and theatre; composing in a range of modes and disseminating these compositions via a range of media – these perspectives are essential to good teaching and to create a climate for learning. Such inside knowledge gives confidence to the teacher, and that confidence leads to risk-taking, imaginative deployment of resources, an eye for new possibilities that will engage and transform young people. Without such enthusiasm and insight, teaching in the field of English, language and literacy education is likely to be constrained and unproductive. 536

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Furthermore, such insights and practices can inform new research and policy, as suggested in the opening paragraph to this chapter and in the section on policy. This handbook has been composed with a view to providing a picture of current and past research in the field of language and literacy teaching. In the spirit of critique and a willingness to challenge received ideas, we encourage readers of this volume to test some of its theories; to discuss and refute some of its conclusions and hypotheses; and to move the field forward in terms of the range of modes and media employed in learning. We would be delighted to hear of such advances.

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Index

Bold page numbers indicate figures and tables abstraction 155–7 academic writing 166–7, 274 accountability, and centralization 518–19, 521–2 action research 247 active questioning 60 adaptations, between media 25 adults, control and censorship 27 adverbial expressions 150–1 aesthetic 514; drama as 246–7 aesthetic texts 38, 41 aesthetics 39, 46 affective activities, literary reading process 46 Africa 7 after-school learning 18 age, of beginning formal school 14 agency, of students 64 agent-based theory 333 Akyeampong, K. 260 Alexander, R. 113, 117, 127, 255 Allington, R. 502–3 alphabetic code, understanding 141 Amtmann, D. 195 analytical genres 162 Anderson, N. 369–70 Andrews, A. 40, 514 Andrews, R. 175 Andringa, E. 46 animations 25 Anning, A. 223

538

anxiety, about set texts 34 Appadurai, A. 309 appositional compounds 92 appreciation, scaffolding 63 Archer, A. 166 Aristotelian deliberation 398 Arizpe, E. 24 Arthur see Hardman, F. Asian countries: cultural ethos 18; early education 15 assessment 7, 536 see also classroom assessment; implications of genre 80–1; international 414; range of 408; student participation 402–3; as transformative 410 assessment authenticity 64 assessment tests, for comprehension 74–5 attainment: authentic measurement 388; distribution 322; gender and literacy 319–21; remedying differences 324 attitudinal expression 151 attitudinal surveys 248 attributions 12 Au, K.H. 60, 112 Australia 8; educational policy and practice 514; effective teaching 513; large-scale studies 37; suggestions of political bias 33–4; syllabuses and curriculum frameworks 508–10; theoretical concerns and research 511–14

INDEX

Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 511, 512, 513–14 authentic tasks 61–2 authenticity 63–4 automaticity, handwriting 195–7, 198, 199 autonomous constructions of literacy 307 awareness, morphological 88–9 babbling phase 219 Badzakova-Trajkov, G. 236 Baker, S.K. 300 Bakhtin, M. 110 balance of rights hypothesis 112 Ball, T. 413–14 Ballou, F.W. 74 ‘banking concept of education’ 379–80 Banks, C. 61 Banks, J. 61 Barnes, D. 112, 245 Barone, D 312 Basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) 464, 465 Baumann, J.F. 90 Beagle, K.G. 299 Bearne, E. 24 Beavis, C. 358, 512 Beck, I.L. 60, 79 Beck, S. 163–4 behaviourism 216–17 Benton, P. 367–8, 371–2 Bereiter, C. 160 Berkenkotter, C. 165, 167 Berlie, J.A. 451 Berninger, V.W. 92–3, 139, 194, 195, 196 Bernstein, B. 309–10, 525 Best, R.M. 78 Bezemer, K. 159, 344–5 Bhabha, H.K. 308–9 Bialystok, E. 233–4 Biber, D. 211 Bickham, D.S. 224 big D/little d discourses 307 bilingual education 7 bilingualism 14–15, 374–5, 534 see also India; coexistence of language systems 236–7; and cognitive control 233–4; cognitive perspective 233–7; implications for English language teaching 237–8; language processing 234–5; lateralization 236–7; role of English 228–9; sub-Saharan Africa 487–8; theoretical perspectives 229–30

Blair, Tony 439 Bloom, B. 59 Blot, R.K. 212 Blum, I.H. 296–7 Boal, A. 246 Bogart, A. 380 Bollin, G.G. 288 Borzone de Manrique, A.M. 139 Bottery, M. 524–5 Bourassa, D. 186, 187, 188, 189 Bourdieu, P. 110, 278 Boyd, W.L. 498, 503 Boyle-Baise, M. 288 boys, underachievement 26 Bradley, L. 375 Bresnahan, P. 60 Brice Heath, S. 22, 211 Brine, A. 384 British Council 477 British Film Institute (BFI) 358 British Psychological Society’s (BPS) 392 Britton, J.N. 146, 245 Brock, C.H. 286 Brooks, G. 441 Brophy, J. 63, 254–5 Brown, A. 60, 112 Brownstein, A. 501 Bruner, J. 210, 217, 222–3, 245 Bruthiaux, P. 177, 178 Bryant, P.E. 186 Buckingham, D. 361 Burant, T.J. 288 Burn, A. 357, 363–4 Bus, A.G. 141 Butin, D.W. 290 Callaghan, James 443 Canada 37 Canadian Reading Habits 37 Carlisle, J.F. 89, 188–9 Carrington, S. 288 Cartwright, K. 60 case study research 285 Cassar, M.T. 185, 186, 188 causative process 154 Cazden, C. 112 Center for the Study of Reading (CSR) 59–60 centralization: and accountability 518–19; assessment and monitoring 521–2; of curriculum 519–21; as international issue 525–6; literacy 522–3

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Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) 247 Cervetti, G. 66 Chafe, W. 178, 206–7, 211 challenge 12, 13 change, pupil-induced 17–18 Chapman, M. 159 characters 48 Chemwei, B. 370 child-directed speech 222 childness 23 children: defining 23; on learning to write 142; as readers 22; responses to literature 24–5 Children’s and Young People’s Reading Habits and Preferences: The who, what, why, where and when 37 children’s literature: critical writing 24–5; literature about 23–4; overview 22–3, 27; theorizing 22–3; and visual media 23 Children’s Participation in Cultural and Leisure Activities 37 China 7; English language teaching (ELT) 448; Special Administrative Regions (SARS) 448 Chinese, compounding 93 Chinn, C.A. 114, 118 choices, in writing 172 Chomsky, Noam 216–17, 218 Chonchaiya, W. 224 Chou, H.K. 60 Christensen, C. 195, 196, 198 Christie, F. 162 Clarke, C. 36–7 classic literature: failure to teach 34–5; place in curriculum 40 classroom assessment see also assessment: communicability and accountability 407; effective 401–2, 404–10; evidence for importance 402–3; formative and summative 405–6; influences on 403–4, 404; overview 401; range of 408; situated interpretation 407–8; as transformative 410; transparency and reflection 406; validity and reliability 408–10 classroom discourse 5 classroom literacy environment see literacy environment classroom literacy environment profile (CLEP) 299–300 classroom studies, interaction 112–13 classrooms: changing pedagogic space 346–7; constructivist 380; displays and

540

configuration 347; dramatic activities 380–2; as poetry workshops 375–6; re-visualization of space 348–9; as space for change 317–19 clauses of purpose 151–2 Clay, M. 137 Clinton, Bill 497–8 cognitive/academic language proficiency (CALP) 464–6 cognitive activities, literary reading process 46 cognitive approaches, to motivation 11–12 cognitive constructive approaches, to motivation 12 cognitive control, and bilingualism 233–4 cognitive flexibility theory 53 cognitive principles 16 cognitive processing theory 160–1 Coiro, J. 333 Cole, M. 209–10, 307 collaboration, and language development 218 Collaborative Reasoning 114–16 Collins, J. 212 Collom, J. 374 Colombia 331 Colzato, L.S. 234 Comenius 479 commodification 533–4 communication, and literacy 396 communications, changing technologies 205 communicative competence 479–80 comparative studies: dearth of 532–3; reading literacy see reading literacy: comparative studies competences: as international issue 525–6; and standards 523–4 complex pedagogies, proceduralization of 15–18 composition see also writing: cognitive dimension 160–1; and handwriting 198; mediating factors 159; multimodal 163; post-secondary 165–7; secondary and post-secondary 157–8; social dimension 160, 163–4; sociocultural perspective 161–2, 164; textual dimension 160, 162–3; three dimensions 160–4 compound words and phrases 91–4; definitions and descriptions 91–2; German 91 compounding: developmental progressions 92–3; instruction and interventions 93–4; pedagogical literature 93

INDEX

comprehension 3, 17; assessment tests 74–5; cognitive model 60; defining 75; and genre see genre and comprehension; motivation for 62–5; political and social dimensions 60; predictors of achievement 77–8; sociocultural context 60–1; strategies 60, 65; as teachable 58; teacher’s role in teaching 59 comprehension strategies, developing 16 comprehensive instruction: explicit 64–7; post-1975 cognitive revolution 59–60; pre-1975 understandings 58–9; proposal 61–2; recent research 60–1; research review 58–61; situating 61–2, 63 computer games 357–8 conceptual ideas 65, 66 conditional clauses 151 conflict 485 conjunctive relations 151 Connors, R.J. 175 consequential validity 409 construct validity 409 context: of composition 163–4; of comprehension 60; and possibilities 214 contextualization 3 control, students’ sense of 12, 13 convergence culture 361, 363–4 Cooper, J. 287–8 cooperative learning 114; teacher education for 116 copulative compounds 92 Cosgrove, J. 433–4 Costa, A. 234 Coulthard, M. 114 Council for Cultural Co-operation 478 Council of Europe (CoE) 477–8, 479 Cox, B. 520 craft, drama as 246–7 Crain-Thoresen, C. 223 creative drama 243 creative literacy 362 creativity, and moving image 360–1 critical cultural studies 246 critical discourse analysis 271 critical linguistics 269 critical literacy 5, 267, 319, 362, 514; Australia 512; history 268–9; materials 274; overview 279; in practice 275–9; reading prompts 373–4 critical reading 269–72 critical writing 273–5 Croft, W. 99

crossover books 25 Crowhurst, M. 174 Csikszentmihalyi, M. 13 Culler, J. 372 cultural heritage 40 cultural literacy 362 cultural practices 17 cultural responsiveness 282–3; awareness of social justice/injustice 288; critical evaluation of research 289–90; developing teaching skill 285–6; ethic of care 287; field experiences 285; literature review 284–8; raising awareness of difference 287–8; recommendations for practice 290; responsibility for student outcomes 286; theoretical perspectives 283–4 cultural transformation 110, 113 culturally responsive pedagogy 5 culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) 283 culture: complexity of concept 282; contact and diversity 205; Singapore 18; teaching 480 cultures, oral and literate 207 Cummins, J. 465 curiosity 13 curriculum see also national curriculum: centralization of 519–21; changes in 519–20; literature as heart 27; nationalization 533–4; primary 442–3 Dalton, S.S. 259–60 Datta, M. 371, 372, 374 Davis, F.B. 59 de Bot, K. 237 De La Paz, S. 195 Deacon, S.H. 186 DeBray, E.H. 501, 504 decoding 17 ‘deep purposes’, of English 40 Degrees of Reading Power test 77 Delandshire, G. 525–6 democracy 111 dependent clauses 151–2 derivational morphology 88 design 41, 272, 514 detecting problems 48 developing countries 260 developmental interdependence hypothesis 464–7 developmental trajectories, in writing 146

541

INDEX

Dewey, John 294, 302 Dewitz, P.K. 17 DIALANG 481 dialogic enquiry 113 dialogic pedagogy see dialogical teaching dialogic, reading as 110 dialogical teaching 115–16; within cultural context 261; developing countries 259– 60; need for universalistic 259–61 difficulties in literacy: alternative perceptions 395–6; defining and perceiving 389; dyslexia 390–3; issues and their resolution 397; severe learning difficulties 390–3 digital age, teaching literature 42 digital literacy 311–12 digital technology 6, 268, 272 see also interactive communication technologies; anxieties 35; opportunities of 41–2 Dijkstra, T. 237 direct explanation 60 director, role of 380 disciplinary authenticity 64 discourse, and poetry 373–4 discourse of resistance 445 discrepancy model, of dyslexia 391 Document-Based Questions 164 Dombey, H. 115 Donlan, D. 53 Doonan, J. 24 Dowhower, S.I. 299 drama 5; aesthetic and artistic approaches 246–7; definition and scope 242; developmental theories 244–6; in early years education 242–3; experimental and quantitative research 248–9; games and exercises 385–6; higher education 243–4; implications for practice and research 249; participant receptual surveys 248; primary and secondary education 243; qualitative and mixed method research 247–8, 249; significance in learning 249–50; signs, texts and meanings 246; theoretical perspectives 244–7, 249 drama in education (DiE) 243 drama techniques 243 drawing 140–1 drawing inferences 48 Duffy, G. 60 Duffy, L. 224 Duke, N.K. 299

542

Durkin, D. 59–60 Durran, J. 357, 364 Durst, R. 165 Duyck, W. 235 dyslexia 390–3; defining 390–2; morphological processing 188–9; perspectives on 391–2; phonological processing 187–8; spelling 187–9, 190 Dyson, A.H. 213, 308 e-literature 41 Eagleton, T. 368, 369, 371, 372, 376 Early Years Foundation Stage 444 ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’ (Truss) 170 economics: globalization 439; and literacy 403 economy, and education 320 Edelman, M. 444 education: central control 6, 7, 8; and the economy 320; emergent trends 351–2; and politics 403; regulation 440–2; social organization 325 Education for All (EFA) 484–6 Education Reform Act (ERA) 1988 519 Edwards, A. 223 Ehrenworth, M. 176 Elementary and Secondary Education Act 1965 (ESEA) 496 see also USA elementary classroom observation measure (ECOM) 298 Elsasser, N. 111–12 emergent literacy 137 emergent writers, punctuation 177 emergent writing 140–1, 193 emotional responding 48 emotions 46 empiricism, view of language development 218 endocentric compounds 92 engaged reading 13–14 England and Wales: accountability and centralization 518–19; assessment and monitoring 521–2; centralization of curriculum 519–21; centralization of literacy 522–3; curriculum changes 519–20; drivers of curriculum change 518; grammar and writing 520–1; national curriculum 519–21; policy 533–4; professionalism 523; reading curriculum 520; standard English 520; standards and competences 523–4 England, policy changes 8

INDEX

English: compound words and phrases 91–2; defining 1; as ideological weather vane 317; macroaquisition 231–3; multimodal perspective 344–5; as ‘native’ language 533–4; new varieties 232; role and shape 351; role of the visual 350–1; social conditions 345; spread and change 230–1; as world language 473–5 English, E. 114, 117 English in Australia 512 English Language Learner Classroom Observation Instrument (ELLCO) 300 English Teaching: Practice and Critique 511, 514 enjoyment 3, 133–4 environmental disaster 485 Erasmus 479 ESL writers 161, 164, 166 essays, expository 162 ethic of care 287 ethics 39 ethnicity, and attainment 322 ethnographic studies 318 European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) 478 European Cultural Convention 478 European Language Portfolio 481 European Union (EU) 478–9 evaluating 48 Evans, J. 236, 370 events 49 evidence-based practice see evidenceinformed teaching evidence-informed teaching 4, 125–6, 128–34, 416 exocentric compounds 92 experimental studies, writing 129–30 expert readers 47 expert writers 161 explicit teaching 65–7 exploratory talk 112 expository essays, macrostructure 162 extrinsic motivation 11–13 factual genres 162 Faigley, L. 174, 175 Fairclough, N. 373 Fairclough’s three part model 271 fairness, in assessment 409–10 fairy tales 25 Fazio, M. 421

feminist studies 318–19 Ferguson, C.A. 222 field experiences, culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) 283 film education 358–61 film, grammar of 360 film language 359–60 film-of-the-book approach 356 Finders, M. 310 Finland 331 Finnegan, R. 211 Fisch, S. 224 Fish, S. 370 Flachmann, M. 384–5 flaps 186, 189 Florence, M. 166 flow experience 13 Flower, L. 161, 163, 194 fMRI data 236–7 forms of presentation: of literature 25; as shaping knowledge 349 forms, of writing 139 Foster, A. 36–7 Foucault, M. 267 Fractor, J.S. 297–8 Freebody, P. 269 Freire, P. 60, 268, 273, 380 Friend, A. 188 Frith, U. 99 Fuchs, L.S. 77 functional systemic grammar approaches 171 funds of knowledge 308 Fusarelli, L.D. 503 future, of literature 41–2 Gallimore, R. 112 Galton, M. 117 game design, and gender 363 game literacy 363 Gamse, B.C. 499 Gan, L. 14–15 Ganske, K. 94 Gardner, H. 245–6 Gathercole, S. 194 Gavelek, J. 60 Gee, J. 64, 213, 307 gender 317; equity and underachievement 321–3; and game design 363; and identity 317–19; interactive communication technologies (ICT) 332; literacy and attainment 319–21; and reading performance 431–2; remedying

543

INDEX

differences in attainment 324; and sense of self 318–19; and underachievement 320–1 gender identities 322 gender stereotypes 318 generative transformational grammar 171 genre: conceptualizations 75; and reading achievement 76–7 genre and comprehension: assessment implications 80–1; conceptual backdrop 75–6; implications of research 80–3; instruction implications 81–2; overview 74–5; policy implications 82–3; research 76–80 genres 48, 162; in children’s literature 24–5; and gender 318; socio-cognitive approach 165 German, compound words and phrases 91 Gibson, R. 382, 384 Gillies, R.M. 114 globalization 7; lack of research 439; and policy development 438–40; progress of 439; as rationalization for policy 445; risk regulation 440–2 goals 12, 13, 18–19 Golestani, N. 237 Goodluck, H. 222 Goodman, J. 221 Goodman, Y.M. 137 Goody, J. 208 Gopnik, A. 217 Goswami, U. 106 Gottschalk, K. 165 governments, control of education 6, 7, 8, 319 Graddol, D. 474 gradual release of responsibility 60, 63 Graham, S. 127, 130–4, 175, 195, 196–7 grammar: of film 360; future of teaching 178; perspectives on 171; rhetorical 175–6; of visual design 276; and writing 173–6 grammar and punctuation: need to reconceptualize 178–9; overview 170; public anxiety 170–1 grammatical metaphor 153–4, 162 graphic novels 25 graphonomics 196 Graves, D. 194 Graves, M.F. 90–1 Great Divide theory 207 Greece 207–8 Green, B. 40, 269 Greeno, J.G. 58

544

Grela, B.G. 224 guessing 17 guided participation 112 Guthrie, J.T. 13, 66 Gutiérrez, K.D. 309 Guzak, F.J. 59 habitus 309, 360 Hake, R. 175 Hale, A. 288 Hall, N. 177–8 Halliday, M.A.K. 148, 149, 153, 218, 222, 269, 342, 343 Halliday’s functional grammar 270, 274 Hancock, T. 171, 172 handwriting 133; automaticity 195–7, 198, 199; and composition 198; orthographic-motor integration 195–6; paradox of 193–4; pedagogic ways forward 197–8; problems 196–7; school effect 197–8; underestimation of importance 198–9; and writing 194–6 Hardman, F. 115, 116, 489 Hardy, B. 22 Harley, T. 218, 222, 237 Harste, J. 116, 137 Hartman, D.K. 60 Havelock, E.A. 207–8 Haviland, J. 443 Hay, C. 439–40 Hayes, H. 126–7, 185 Hayes, J.R. 138, 160, 161, 194 Heathcote, D. 246 Hedrick, W.B. 286 Henry, M.K. 90 Herber, H. 59 Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. 114 Hicks, T. 501 high density teaching 392 high-stakes tests 18–19 higher education, academic writing 274 Hildreth, G. 137 Hilton, M. 435 HIV/AIDS 485 Hjortshoj, K. 165 HMI reports, poetry teaching 26 Hodges, C. 357 Hoffman, J.V. 300, 417 Holbrook, D. 354 holism 5 Hollindale, P. 22, 23 holophrastic phase 219

INDEX

home and school literacy: areas needing research 312; cultural studies theories 306, 308–9; digital literacy 311–12; movement of practices across domains 310; overview of relationship 305–6; sociocultural theories 306, 307–8; sociological theories 306, 309–10; theoretical perspectives 306–10 Home School Knowledge Exchange Project 308 Homer 4 Hong Kong: compared to Macao 456–7; ELT approaches 454–5; overview 453; professional requirements for English language teachers 455; resource allocation 455–6; sociolinguistic and educational environments 453–6; use of English and Cantonese 454 Hoshino, N. 235 Howie, M. 513 Huckin, T. 165, 167 Hull, R. 236 Hymes, D. 479–80 ICT see interactive communication technologies ideas, as context of debate 439 ideational meaning 343 identities: cultural 40; and reading 27; and texts 34 identity: and gender 317–19; and image production 360; and learning 140 identity theory 332 ideological constructions of literacy 307 ideology: and reading instruction 414–16; USA 500–3 Ieong, S. 449–50, 451, 452, 453 Iliad 4 image forming 371 images 344–5, 346–7 see also moving image; increased role 351; starting points 348 imitation, and language development 217 immature writing 174 Improving America’s Schools Act 1994 (IASA) 497–8 inclusion 397 indefiniteness 46 India: developmental interdependence hypothesis 464–7; English in education 463–4; linguistic profile 462; overview 461–2; overview of bilingual education 469; teachers’ skills and resources 468;

teaching of English 467–9; textbooks 468; Three Language Formula (TLF) 463; types of schools 463–4 indirection 166 individual bilingualism 229–30 infant-directed speech 100 infants, language development 219–20 information technology 6 informational comprehension 82–3 see also comprehension informational text 299 Ingvarson, L. 525 initial teacher training (ITT) 442, 444 Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) 114, 256–9 inside out approach 384–5 instruction: implications of genre 81–2; proceduralization of 15–18 instrumental goals, motivational costs 18–19 Integrated Learning Systems (ILS) 336 interaction: classroom studies 112–13; and language development 217–18, 223; overview 110–11; policy implications 117–18; structure 114–16; teacher education for 116 interactionism, view of language development 218 interactive communication technologies (ICT) 6 see also digital technology; agent-based theory 333; current landscape 330–1; future of literacy and ICT research 337–8; and gender 332; international responses 331; inward perspectives 333–4; inward research 335–6; limitations of research 329; outward perspectives 332–3; outward research 334–5; perspectives and theories 331–4; qualitative and mixed methods research 336–7; research and findings 334–7; school-ward perspectives 334; school-ward research 336–7; scope and influence 328–9; universal design theory 333–4 interactive teaching, theoretical basis 111–12 interactive whiteboards (IWBs) 346–8; and writing 350–1 intercultural understanding 480 interdisciplinarity 2 interest 3, 12, 133–4, 343 international assessments 414–15; criticisms of 434–6; future of 436 international comparisons 441 see also reading literacy: comparative studies

545

INDEX

international literature, lack of 26–7 International Reading Association 331 internet resources 382–3 interpersonal meaning 343 interpretation 54–5 intervention studies 16–17 intrinsic motivation 11–12, 13 involvement 13 Iser, W. 110 Janssen, T. 52, 53 Japan 331 Jayman, J. 176 Jeffery, J. 163–4 Jenkins, H. 361 Jocson, K. 375–6 John-Steiner, V. 111–12 Johnson, D.D. 59 Jones. A. 17–18 Jones, D. 196, 198 Jordan, M. 174 Journal of Aesthetics in Education 248–9 Juhasz, B.J. 92 Jusczyk, P. 220–1 Kamil, M.L. 60 Kamler, B. 275 Kantor, H. 497, 498 Kaomea, J. 60 Keen, J. 175 Kenya 489–90 Kessler, B. 185 kiasu 14–15, 18 Kilpatrick, W.H. 62 King, C. 116 Kinneavy, J.L. 175 Kirby, D. 288 Kirsch, I. 433 Kissler, L. 382 Knapp, J. 370–1 Knobel, M. 333 knowledge: modes and practice 349; pedagogic 536; shaped by form 349; of subject 535–6; working knowledge 536–7 knowledge construction 284, 525 Kolln, M. 175–6 Kovelman, I. 236 Krcmar, M. 224 Kress, G. 24, 38, 40, 41, 159, 166, 173, 268, 271, 272, 276, 344, 345, 514 Krol, K. 116, 118 Kroll, J. 235, 370

546

Kruger, A.C. 221–2 Kucan, L. 79 Kuczaj, S.A. 218 Kuhlman, W. 375 Labbo, L.D. 334 Lacey, P. 394, 395, 396 Lai, M.K. 16–17 Lam, W.S.E. 41 Lancaster, L. 138 Langer, J.A. 78–9 Langer, S. 244 language: colonial 259; defining 1; and drama 244–7; film 359–60; formal qualities 371; as innate 217; local 487–8; oral and literate 206–7; social theories 246; theoretical perspectives 5 language acquisition 98–9 language acquisition device (LAD) 217 language development: adult support 222–3; beyond infancy 223–4; carer modelling 221; Chomsky’s influence 216–17; developmental trajectory 220; infants 219–20; perspectives on 218, 222–3; teenagers 225; and television 223–4; through interaction 217–18; vocabulary development 220–2 language instinct 217 language of instruction 488, 491 Language Proficiency Requirements (LPR) 455 Lankshear, C. 333 large conceptual ideas 65, 66 large-scale education reform 319 large-scale studies, of literature teaching 36–8 lateralization, in bilinguals 236–7 Law, Y.-K. 114 Leander, K. 312 learned helplessness 12 learning progression, and moving image 361 learning, sociocultural view 111–12 Leavis, F.R. 354 Lee, Y. 64 legends 25 Lehman, B.A. 79 Lemhofer, K. 235 Leu, D.J. 77 Levin, I. 141 Lewis, A. 392–3 library centres 296–8 Lifelong Learning Programme 478–9 Limba 211 lingua franca, English as 232

INDEX

linguistic development, and syntactical complexity 173–4 linguistic imperialism 230–1 linguistics: critical 269; systemic functional perspective 162 literacy: centralization 522–3; challenging traditional conceptualizations 395–6; changing definitions 193; changing nature of 512; and communication 396; and cultural difference 205; defining 1; difference from orality 206–9; difficulties in learning 389–90; and drama 244–7; dyslexia 390–3; emergent trends 351–2; experiences 311; gender and attainment 319–21; global significance 389–90; holistic perspective 390; as ideological 110; ideological and autonomous constructions 307; influences on 403–4, 404; interactive perspectives 110–11; moving image 361–2; multimodal 167; and phonological development 106; play-centred/work-centred definitions 322–3; and power 212; severe learning difficulties 393–5; skills-based approach 390; social conditions 345; transition from teacher- to self-direction 325 literacy campaigns 212 literacy capital 309 literacy education, freedom and oppression 284 literacy environment see also text environment: dimensions 295; as dynamic 294; early studies with young children 296–7; holistic perspective 301; physical text 301; in practice 295–6; print-rich 296–301; research advances 301 literacy gap 155 literacy portfolios 408 literacy research, social turn 167 Literacy Strategy 389, 390 literacy task force (LTF) 441 literacy underlife 310 literary criticism 368 literary literacy 39–40 literary reading process 46–7 literary study 368 literary texts, good and weak novice readers 52–3 literary work, defining 368 literature: future of 41–2; as heart of curriculum 27; suggestions of misuse 34;

in twenty-first-century curriculum 38–40 Literature Circles 116 literature for children see children’s literature literature-related literacy 40 literature teaching, large-scale studies of 36–8 Littleton, K. 116 local language literacy 487–8 Locke, T. 40 Logsdon, D.M. 296–7 Lohr, L. 298 longitudinal studies, dearth of 532 Lord, A. 207 Lowe, R. 497, 498 Luce-Kapler, R. 41 Luke, A. 269 Luria, A.R. 209–10 Lysaker, J. 287 Macao: available training 452; compared to Hong Kong 456–7; English language education 450–3; lack of quality control 451–2; lack of standardization 452; overview 449; proposed innovations in ELT 452–3; resources for development 451–2; sociolinguistic and educational environments 449–50; teaching and learning English 450–1 MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MCDI) 224 Macbeth, K. 165–6 McCarthey, S.J. 307 McClay, J. 357–8 McColl, A. 498 McEneaney, J.E. 333 McGill-Franzen, A. 298, 497, 501–3 machinima 363 MacIver, M.A. 503 Mackey, M. 24, 37 McNelis, M. 298 macroaquisition, of English 231–3 McVee, M.B. 60, 289 Malekele, G. 491–2 Manuel, 37 Marian, V. 236 Marsh, D. 439–40 Marsh, J. 223–4, 311 Martin, J.R. 162 Martin, P. 34 Martin-Rhee, M.M. 233 masculinities, diverse 322

547

INDEX

Mason, J.M. 112 Massey, A.J. 174 Masterson, J. 221 Matthew effect 197 Matthiessen, C.M.I.M. 148, 149 mature writing 174 Maybin, J. 310 Mayeux, L. 224 meaning: anchoring 350; changes in 88; construction of 60; promoting valuing 63 meanings, in learning drama 246 media education 358–61 media literacy 355 media literacy, three Cs model 362, 363 media, non-traditional 41 media texts 355 medium of instruction 450, 454, 463, 464, 465, 466, 488, 490, 491 Medwell, J. 197–8 Mee, C.Y. 14–15 Meek, M. 24 mental representations 46 mentorship 374–5 Mercer, N. 113, 116 meritocracy 15 Merton, R. 295 metacognition 59–60, 406 metacognitive activities, literary reading process 46 metacognitive principles 16 metacognitive responding 48 metafunctions 343 metalinguistics 90 metaphorical expressions 153–4 metaphorical significance 372 Mexico 331 Micciche, L. 176 middle range theories 294–6 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 484 Mirak, J. 222 mirror perspective 294 Misson, R. 38, 39, 512 Mitchell, D.E. 498 Moats, L.C. 16–17 (modal)affordance 343 modes 343; knowledge and practice 349 Moje, E.B. 309 Moore, D. 79 Moore-Hart, M.A. 285–6 Moran, M. 440, 442 Morgan, W. 38, 39, 512 morphemes, acquisition 219–20

548

morphological awareness 88–9, 94 morphological knowledge 185–6; and spelling 182 morphological processing, dyslexia 188–9 morphology: compound words and phrases 91–4; derivational 88; developmental progressions 88–9, 92–3; instruction and interventions 89–91; overview 87–8, 94–5; and phonology 106; research 89–91; and spelling development 185–6 Morrow, L.M. 296, 297 Moss, G. 310, 323, 325 mother-tongue education 464 Motherese 100 motivation 2–3; principles of 11–12; for reading 12–14; shift from intrinsic to extrinsic 13; theoretical approaches 11–12; for writing 133–4 motivational approach, to reading 4 motivational costs, of instrumental goals 18–19 moving image see also images: attitudes to 354–5; computer games 357–8; creativity 360–1; film and media education 358–61; and learning progression 361; literacy 361–2; machinima 363; new forms 362–3; production and identity 360; production work 356–7; and teaching of language and literature 356–8 Mullin, M. 383 Mullis, I.V.S. 76–7 multicultural curriculum 282 multicultural texts 282 multilingualism, interdisciplinary approaches 228 multiliteracy 397 multimedia 514 multimodal composition 163 multimodal research 344–5 multimodal texts 355 multimodality 6, 41, 167, 246, 342, 514, 535; academic writing 166; anxieties 35; case studies 346; changing pedagogic space 346–7; displays and configuration in classrooms 347; drama 249; emergent trends 351–2; interest 343; key concepts 342–3; metafunctions 343; (modal) affordance 343; mode 343; moving image literacy 361–2; multimodal orchestration 344; as perspective on English 344–5; re-visualization

INDEX

of pedagogic space 348–9; semiotic resources 343; social conditions 345; texts 272; and writing 349–50 multiple intelligence, and learning in drama 245–6 Mutasa, V. 492 Myhill, D. 146, 148, 170, 174 myths 25 Nagy, W.E. 88, 92–3 Naigles, L.R. 224 names 141 naming, and renaming 273 narrative texts, understanding 46 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 331 National Council for Teaching English 37–8 national curriculum 519–21, 533–4 see also curriculum; changes in 521; grammar and writing 520–1; reading 520; standard English 520 National Curriculum (England) 194 National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) 248 National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy (Australia) 416 National Literacy Strategy (NLS) 115, 116–17, 414–15, 440–2, 444, 522–3 National Reading Campaign 415 National Reading Panel (USA) 7, 416 National Theatre 247–8 Native Speaking English Teacher (NET) scheme 456 nativism: and language development 222–3; view of language development 218 NCERT 468 Neuman, S.B. 298 New Criticism 369 new imperialism 438 New Literacies Research Team 77 New Literacies Studies 307–8 new literacy studies 268, 332 New London Group 173, 332 New Zealand: curriculum 510; educational policy and practice 514; intervention studies 16–17; theoretical concerns and research 511 Nicol, J.A. 90 Nierstheimer, S.L. 286–7 Nikolajeva, M. 24 No Child Left Behind 7, 403, 496, 498–9, 503, 504, 534

Nodelman, P. 23 Noethe, S. 374 nominal group, expanding 149 non-congruent grammar 152–5 non-finite clauses 152 non-native English speakers 100, 106, 107 non-traditional media 35 Norway 535 Norwich, B. 392–3 nouns, lexical development 221 novice readers 46–7 novice writers 161 Nunan, S. 176 Nunes, T. 186 Nystrand, M. 115, 213, 257 Obied, V. 374 official languages 230 OfsTED 26; Poetry in Schools 36 Olson, D.R. 210, 212–13 Olson, G.M. 78 Olson, R.K. 188 O’Neill, C. 381 Ong, W. 208–9 online reading and interpretation 48–9 online reading processes 47–52 ontogenesis of writing: developmental phases 147; first phase 147; four developmental phases 148–57; move to non-congruent grammar 152–5; movement into abstraction 155–7; overview 157; overview of research 146–7; second phase 147–8 Openshaw, R. 413–14 ORACLE projects 117 oracy 205–6 oral reading 16 orality 4; and cultural difference 205; difference from literacy 206–9; psychodynamics 208; use of term 205–6 orality and literacy 205; psychological perspectives 209–10; situated perspectives 210–13 orthographic consistency 104–5, 106 orthographic knowledge, and spelling 182 orthographic-motor integration 195–6, 197–8 orthographic transparency 104–5 orthography, and spelling development 184–5 outside in approach 384–5

549

INDEX

Pahl, K. 309 Painter, C. 222 Palin, Sarah 275–9 Palincsar, A. 60, 112 paradigm shifts 513 Paraskevas, C. 176 Paré, A. 75 parental anxiety, as motivation 15 parents, teaching of children 14–15 Parker, D. 357 Parry, M. 207 passivity 12 Patterson, A. 38 Patterson, E. 287 Patterson, J. 224 Pearson, P.D. 59, 501 pedagogic subject knowledge 536 pedagogy: teacher-led recitation 255–9; universalisms 254–5; universalistic principle 259–61 Peer, L. 390–1 peer-response approach 166 Pellegrino, J. 401–2 Pelletier, C. 363 Perera, K. 173 performance 41; Shakespeare 383–7 performance data 319, 322 Perin, D. 130–4 Perry, N. 60 personal authenticity 64 personal genres 162 personal growth models 369, 370 Peskin, J. 369, 372–3 Peters, D. 79 Petrovsky, A. 525–6 phoneme grouping 183 phonemes 98; child’s perception 220; influences in early spelling 184 phonological awareness 220 phonological deficit 187 phonological loop 138 phonological neighbourhood density 102–3, 106 phonological processing, dyslexia 187–8 phonological representation 3 phonological skills, and spelling 182 phonology 98; core aspects of development 99–100; cross-language differences 101–2; cross-language similarities 100; and morphology 106; neighbourhood density 102–3; re-representing as letters are learned 104–5; research questions 103; sonority profile 101–2; and

550

spelling development 183–5; syllable complexity 101 phonotactic templates 99–100 physical space 403 Piaget, J. 244–5 picture books 24 Piedmont study 211 Pierrehumbert, J. 100 Pinker, S. 170, 217, 222 play 94, 218, 242–3, 322–3; drama and learning 244–6 Podlozny, A. 248 poetry: as ‘charged’ language 371–2; classroom as workshop 375–6; conceptualizing study 368–9; conventions 372; defining 368–9; and discourse 373–4; implications for policy and practice 376; as mode of perception 370–1; as mode of signification 371; multiple meanings 372; neglect of 25–7; overview 367–8; reading 369–74; reading prompts 373–4; reading strategies 372; as self discovery and personal development 369–70; writing and performance 374–5 Poetry for the People (P4P) 375–6 Poetry in Schools 36 Poetry Research Project 371–2 poetry teaching, HMI reports 26 policy 533–5; implications of genre 82–3 policy changes: England 8; research and practice 531 political bias, suggestions of 33–4 politics: and educational standards 403; globalization 439–40 Port, R. 98 Portugal, and Macao 449–50 positioning 343 post-secondary composition 165–7 Potter, J. 360 poverty 484–5, 497, 502 power, and literacy 212 Power, M. 442, 444 power relationships 172 practical wisdom 398 practice 535–6; factors influencing choice of approach 397–8; modes and knowledge 349; research and policy 531 pragmatism 534 pre-linguistic phase 219 pre-service teachers, cultural responsiveness 284–5

INDEX

predicting 48 prepositional phrases 149–50 Pressley, M. 300–1 pride 12 primary curriculum 442–3 principles, cognitive and metacognitive 16 print 6 print-rich environments: early studies with young children 296–7; range of importance 297–8; and reading development 296–301; and student achievement 298–9; what counts for whom? 299–301 prior knowledge 65 privatization 503–4 proceduralization, of instruction 15–18 process approach 193–4 process drama 243, 381 process-orientation 45 processing decisions, during writing 138–9 Production of School English Project (SEP) 344, 349 production work, moving image 356–7 profane knowledge 525 professionalism 523 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 331; achievement outcomes 427–31; combining variables for explanation 433–4; criticisms 434–6; engagement in reading 432; gender 431–2; high and low achievement 430; mean scores 427–8; participation, focus and scope 425–6; socioeconomic status 432–3; socioeconomic status and engagement 433; variations in performance 429 Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) 436 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 76–7; achievement outcomes 427–31; combining variables for explanation 433–4; criticisms 434–6; engagement in reading 432; gender 431–2; high and low achievement 430; mean scores 427–8; participation, focus and scope 425–6; socioeconomic status 432–3; variations in performance 429 pronunciation, changes in 88 prosodic reasoning 178 prosodic structures 100 Pruksananonda, C. 224

psycholinguistic grain size theory 106 psychological space 403, 406 pull-out remediation 497 punctuation 177–8 punctuation and grammar see grammar and punctuation pupil motivation 2–3 Purcell-Gates, V. 213 Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) 354–5 quantitative textual analysis 317–18 questioning, as reading strategy 53–5 questions, types and frequency 257 race 497 Randi, J. 61 Ranker, J. 163 Ratner, N. 223 readers: as active 59–60; good and weak novices 47–53; novice and expert 46–7 reading: approaches to teaching 3; children’s ideas about 16; for choice 323; critical 269–72; international assessments 414–15; and interpretation 55; motivation for 12–14, 19; motivational approach to 4; national curriculum 520; for pleasure 37; procedural 323; for proficiency 323; responses to status 323 reading achievement, and genre 76–7 reading aloud 15, 48 Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America 37 reading development, and print-rich environments 296–301 Reading Differences 26 Reading Excellence Act 1998 (REA) 498 Reading First 499–500 reading instruction, responsibility for 14 reading instruction: teacher preparation: future research 421; improving 419–20; interest and debate 413–14; reasons for interest 414–16; reflection 402, 420–1; research findings 416–17; variability 417–19 reading literacy: comparative studies: achievement outcomes 427–31; combining variables for explanation 433–4; criticisms of international assessments 434–6; engagement in reading 432; future of international assessments 436; gender 432; gender

551

INDEX

and performance 431–2; key factors in performance 431–4; participation, focus and scope 425–6; PIRLS and PISA assessments, comparison 426; socioeconomic status 432–3 reading processes, thinking aloud studies 47–53 reading prompts 373–4 reading readiness 307 reading status, responses to 323 reading strategies: implications of research 55–6; poetry 372 reading the world 60–1 real world authenticity 64 reasoning, prosodic 178 receptive vocabulary, and television 224 reciprocal teaching 60, 112 recitation 114–15, 116 recitation scripts 255–6 Reder, L.M. 53 redesign 272–3 Reed, J.H. 13 reflective practitioner 402 regulation, of risk 440–2 Reid Lyon, G. 504 Reinking, D. 333–4, 336 relating text parts 48 relating to experience 48 relating to knowledge 48 relationship building 287 reliability, classroom assessment 408–10 remanagerialization of risk 440 representation, drama as 246–7 Rescorla, L. 222 research: gaps in 532–3; location 532; policy and practice 531; scale of studies 532–3 resistance, discourse of 445 responsibility, students’ sense of 12 responsive teaching 112 responsiveness 282, 283 retelling 48 Reutzel, D.R. 297 Reynolds, D. 113, 114 rhetorical grammar 175–6; professional views 176 rhythm 100 Rice, M.L. 224 Riggio, M.C. 384 risk, regulation of 440–2 Risko, V. 421 ritualization, of learning strategies 16 Rogers, L. 132, 133, 134

552

Rogers, T. 289–90 Rogoff, B. 112 Roller, C. 417 Romaine, S. 230 Rose Report 415 Rosenblatt, L. 60, 110 Ross, S.M. 298 Roth, M. 64 Rowe, D.W. 138 rule of significance 372 Russell, D. 127–8, 159 Sacks, P. 502 sacred knowledge 525 Saddler, B. 175 Saenz, L.M. 77 Saggers, B. 288 SATS 521–2 Saxton, M. 222 scaffolding 67, 162–3, 223 Scandinavia 7; assistance from outside region 477–8; increasing use of English 476; languages 472–3; learning English 475–7; levels of proficiency 481; research and practical tools 479–81; success in teaching English 482; textbooks 480; use of term 472 scapes 309 Scardamalia, M. 160 Schallert, D.L. 13 Scheuer, N. 142 schism, research and practice 67 Schleppegrell, M. 162, 176, 179 Schon, D. 402 school choice 503–4 school leaver competence 414 schools, effect on handwriting 197–8 Schunn, C.D. 53 Schwartz, A.I. 235 scientifically-based reliable, replicable reading research (SBRR) 7, 498, 500, 504 Scott, C. 24 Scribner, S. 210, 307 secondary schools, changing beliefs about literary education 45 secret garden 442 Sefton-Green, J. 356 segmentation, of words 220–1 self-assessment tools 481 self-corrections 16 self-determination 12 self-efficacy 12

INDEX

self-questioning: implications of research 55–6; overview of research 53–5; research study 54–5 self-regulation 406; and motivation 12 self-worth 12 semiotic resources 343 semiotics 246 sense of self 318–19 sentence-combining 174–5 sentences 173 service-learning 283 Sesame Street 224 set texts, anxiety about 34 setting 49 severe learning difficulties 393–5 Seymour, P.H.K. 104, 189 Shachar, H. 114 Shaffer, D. 217 Shakespeare: dramatic activities in the classroom 380–2; fear and resistance 379–80; internet resources 382–3; as literature and theatre 387; live performance, film and video/DVD 382–3; outside in and inside out approaches 385; performing 383–7 Sharer, P.L. 79 Sharples, M. 173 short stories, students’ reading and interpretation 47–52 Shulman, L. 295–6 sign-making 342 Signorini, A. 139 signs, in learning drama 246 simple model of comprehension 58 Sinclair, J. 114 Singapore 14–15, 18–19 Singer, H. 53 single subject studies, writing 129–30 situated literacy 211 situated practices 296 situation models 46 Skinner, B.F. 216–17 Skutnabb-Kangas, T. 461, 466 Slobin, D. 222 Smagorinsky, P. 60 Smart, G. 75 Smith, F. 117, 139 Smith, L.J. 298 Smith, M.W. 52 Snow, C.E. 222 social class, and attainment 322 social conditions, literacy and English 345

social context, language 5 social exclusion 397 social forces, and literacy 403 social interaction, and language development 217–18, 222–3 social justice/injustice 288 social practice 274; literacy as 110; writing as 171–2 social semiotic theory 166–7, 342 social situation, and motivation 12 societal bilingualism 229–30 sociocultural perspectives 283–4 sociocultural space 404, 406 socioeconomic status, and reading literacy 432 Solsken, J. 322 solving problems 48 sonority profile 101–2 sound-letter mapping 184 specific learning difficulty (SpLD) 390–1 speech 173 speech act theory 479 spelling: development theories 182; dyslexia 187–9; linguistically-based approach 190; morphology and development 185–6; orthography and development 184–5; overview 189–90; phoneme grouping 183; phoneme influences 184; phonology and development 183–5; sound-letter mapping 184 Spiro, J. 375 Spiro, R.J. 60 SPRINT study 117 standard English 520 standards, and competences 523–4 Stanovich, K. 197 starting points 348 Steinbergh, J. 375 STELLA Project 526 stereotypes 322 Stevens, L.P. 500 Stone, D. 443–4 Storkel, H. 221 story appreciation 54 strategies 60 streaming, Asian countries 15 Street, B. 110, 212, 307 Stringfield, S. 503 structure 49 style 49 Styles, M. 24, 25–7 sub-Saharan Africa: access and participation 485–6; colonial legacy 488; linguistic

553

INDEX

context 492; literacy 486–8; local languages 487–8; overview 484–6; teaching of English 489–90 sub-Saharan countries 260 subject knowledge 535 subjectivities, shaping 34 success, markers of 12 suffixes, spelling 186 summer reading loss 502 Swanson, H. 194, 195 syllable awareness 100 syllable complexity 101 syncretic literacy 308 syntactical complexity, and linguistic development 173–4 Syrquin, A. 166 systemic functional linguistic (SFL) grammar 148 systemic functional perspective 162 tales, traditional 25 talking: infants learning 219–20; in teaching 255–6 Tan, J. 18 Tanzania 490–2 task demands, and writing performance 139 tasks, narrow 62 Taylor, N.E. 296–7 teacher education, for cooperative learning 116 teacher-led recitation 255–9 teacher preparation 5–6 teacher quality 320 teachers: as assessment experts 404–5; concerns about teaching literature 35–6; knowledge 523–5; philosophies and beliefs 299; preparation for reading instruction see reading instruction: teacher preparation; standards and competences 523–4; as writers 375 teaching: explicit 65–7; as political act 290 technology 41; in the classroom 346–7; and communication 205; as social and cultural tool 345; and writing 349–50 telegraphic speech 219 Teletubbies 224 television, and language development 223–4 temporal space 403 text environment 294–5 see also literacy environment; as mediating 301; physical 301 text experiencing 45 text transcription skills 133

554

texts 6; evolution 41; in learning drama 246; multicultural 282; positioning and manipulation 277; traditional 25 textual meaning 343 Tharp, R.G. 112, 259–60 The Audit Society 442 The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching and assessment 476, 480 thematic unity 372 Theme choice 149 themes 49 theoretical concerns and research, Australia and New Zealand 510–14 theory: changes in 35–6; role of literature in curriculum 38 theory of praxis 64 think aloud protocols 372 thinking aloud 47–52 thinking aloud studies 47–53, 78–9; poetry 372–3; taxonomy of levels 59 third space theory 308–9 Three Continents Project 344, 349 three Cs model of media literacy 362, 363 Three Language Formula (TLF) 463 threshold level project 480 Tierney, R. 60 Tikly, L. 438 time 49 Tolchinsky, L. 139 Tomasello, M. 217, 221–2 Townsend, T. 34 transcription 133, 139, 194 transformation: congruent to non-congruent 162; between media 25 translation 194 Treiman-Bourassa Early Spelling Test (T-BEST) 188 Treiman, R. 100, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189 trust 442–5 Tsesmeli, S.N. 189 Tucha, O. 196 twenty-first-century curriculum, nature and place of literature 38–40 Uganda 490 uncommonsense 148, 153, 155 under the desk literacies 310 underachievement: boys 26; context of 320–1 unifying principles 65 United Kingdom 37, 331

INDEX

United States see USA universal design theory 333–4 universal grammar 217, 218 Universal Primary Education (UPE) 484, 485–6; prospects for 486 USA 7 see also Elementary and Secondary Education Act 1965 (ESEA); No Child Left Behind; charter schools 503–4; federal legislation 496; ideology and evidence 500–3; interactive communication technologies (ICT) 331; intervention studies 16–17; large-scale studies 37; maths and science 502; parental polling 503; policy 534; privatization and school choice 503–4; Reading First 499–500; supplementary educational services (SES) 503; Title 1 497–8 utilitarianism, effects of 22–3 utterances 173 Vai people 210, 307 Vaid, J. 236 validity, classroom assessment 408–10 Valli, L. 499–500 valuing, of comprehension 63–4 van Heuven, W. 237 Van Keer, H. 66 van Leeuwen, T. 24, 166, 268, 272, 276, 345 variability, reading instruction: teacher preparation 417–19 verbal group structures 149 verbal interaction 223 verbal protocol studies see thinking aloud studies Vihman, M. 99 visual design, grammar of 276 visual literacy 24–5 visual media, and children’s literature 23 visual, role in English 350–1 visual texts, international literature 26–7 visuospatial sketchpad 138 vocabulary development 220–2 vocabulary instruction 65 voice 165 Volosinov, V.N. 271 Vygotsky, L.S. 111, 113, 209–10, 244–5, 255, 402 Wales see England and Wales Warner, C.D. 381 Warren, A. 368 Waters, G.S. 186

Watson, M. 440 Watson, V. 22, 27 Watt, I. 208 Weintraub, N. 196–7 Wellek, R. 368 Wells, G. 113, 213, 223 White, T.G. 90–1 Wigfield, A. 13, 363 Williams, J.M. 175 window perspective 294 Winn, W.D. 139 Winne, P. 60 wisdom of practice 295 Wolfe, M.B.W. 77–8 Wolfsberger, M.E. 299–300 Wong, B. 195 Woodcock–Johnson III Tests of Achievement 78 word play 94 words, segmentation and recognition 220–1 working knowledge 536–7 working memory 138–9; in writing 194–5 Workman, L. 236 workshops 375–6 worth, students’ sense of 12 Worthy, J. 287 Wright, N. 524–5 writers, expert and novice 161 writing see also composition: approaches to teaching 3–4 see also writing: early years; assisting strategic behaviour 131–2; cautions and solutions 135; choices in 172; in contemporary classrooms 349–50; critical 273–5; as design 173; evidenceinformed teaching 125–6, 128–34; forms 139; and grammar 173–6; and handwriting 194–6; mature and immature 174; models of process 194; motivation 133–4; need for more intervention research 135; ontogenesis see ontogenesis of writing; overview 125–6; process approach 130–1, 193–4; as social practice 171–2; strategies 161; students’ knowledge 134; text transcription skills 133; working memory in 194–5 writing and development, theoretical perspectives 126–8 writing: early years see also writing: environment 140; importance of context 142; overview 137–8,

555

INDEX

142–3; processing decisions 138–9; sociocultural and cognitive theories 140; transition to conventional 140–2 writing intervention studies 129 writing performance, and task demands 139 writing practices, academic disciplines 166–7 Wyse, D. 4, 7, 415, 445 Yamagata, K. 141 Yee, A.H. 451–2 Yore, L. 166 York, M. 384 Young Australians Reading study 37

556

Zabrucky, K. 79 Zamuner, T. 221 Zeedyk, S. 223 Zeigler, J.C. 104, 106 Zhang, J. 93 Zhao, Y. 61 Zimmerman, B.J. 61 Zimmerman, F. 224 Zipes, J. 23 zones of proximal development 111, 402, 406 Zukowski, A. 100 Zutell, J. 186