Session Information
31 SES 09 B, Investigating Literacy Education in Europe: Multiple contexts, multiple methods
Paper Session
Contribution
Definitions of literacy have changed over the last decades. Previously, literacy was primarily defined as technical skills; whether an individual was able to decode letters to sounds (read) and encode sounds to letters (write). Today, literacy is defined as a multifaceted competency of reading, understanding, expressing, and communicating, which cannot be separated from the social and cultural background of individuals and the identity of individuals (Perry, 2012; Ross & Gibson, 2010). Furthermore, literacy is viewed as a means of personal promotion and as one of the fundamental premises for social progress such as education for all, gender equality, sustainable development and democracy (UNESCO, 2018). Literacy has therefore increasingly gained worldwide focus and PISA surveys have contributed to this attention. In Iceland their results, showing declining reading comprehension among 15 year old students, have raised concerns about literacy teaching (Halldórsson, Ólafsson, & Björnson, n.d.). Those concerns have been followed with emphasis in the National Curriculum (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2012), in a white paper (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2014) and a national covenant on literacy.
In Iceland there are rather little research on literacy education. A report made for the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture indicates a long tradition of bottom-up approach and synthetic phonics aimed at teaching children to decode, building fluency in reading and reading comprehension, in the first years of schooling (Leiknisdóttir, Guðmundsdóttir, Björnsdóttir, Jónsdóttir & Jónsson, 2009). In contrast is the top-down approach to literacy that rests on the idea that the literacy process originates in children's experience of the matter, their language awareness and knowledge of the subject matter of the text, children are exposed to text in an independent search for meaning, (Lipson and Wixson, 1991; Vacca, Vacca, Gove, Burkey, Lenhart & McKeon, 2009).
The Beginning Literacy (hereafter BL) is a literacy approach that builds on an interactive model of literacy education. It is directed at the first two years of the primary school and was developed at the University of Akureyri, School Development Centre. Since 2006 compulsory schools in Iceland have been able to implement this programme (Eggertsdóttir, 2009) and about 45% of the all compulsory schools have done so. BL assumes that neither emphasises of the bottom-up and top-down approaches to literacy education are sufficient by themselves but need to interact (Lipson & Wixson, 1991; Vacca et al., 2009). In BL this interaction is achieved by moving students’ learning through a threefold cycle: from exposure to authentic quality texts, through a phase of decoding and ‘technical’ work and finally to a phase of reconstruction. Literacy is regarded as a social activity and a braid of reading, understanding, writing and oral expression. Furthermore BL emphasises inclusion where the learning needs of all children are met within the class (Tomlinson & Moon, 2013), through interdependent collaboration, scaffolding and active learning (Eggertsdóttir, 2009; Soderman, Gregory & McCarty, 2005).
The aim of the present study was to investigate if differences in approaches to literacy education, in terms of emphasis teachers put on various aspects of literacy teaching and learning, were found between schools that have implemented BL and schools that use other literacy approaches (non-BL schools)
Method
The present study draws on data from a larger research project which had the main aim to investigate literacy education taking place under the banner of Beginning Literacy in light of the international research literature and Icelandic educational policy. Case studies were conducted in six schools where interview and observation data was obtained and documents analysed. Questionnaires were sent to teachers in grades one to four (N = 916) and principals (N = 121) in 121 schools. Sixty eight of which had implemented BL and 53 had not (Non-BL schools). Furthermore a questionnaire was sent to 9885 parents in the same schools. This paper presents findings from the teacher questionnaire which was sent to all teachers in participating schools who were at the time involved in teaching students in the first four grades. In total 595 respondents participated in the survey (response rate was 65%). Particular attention is paid to whether there is a difference between how much emphasis teachers place on different learning elements of literacy, and on the implementation of learning and teaching, in schools that use the BL approach to literacy education and schools that use other methods. Data analysis will be carried out using both descriptive statistics (frequency tables and crosstabs) and multivariate analysis (logistic regression) focusing on differences in education practices between BL and Non-BL schools while controlling for individual characteristics, such as teaching experience and education.
Expected Outcomes
At the point of this writing, only preliminary findings are available. They indicate that both BL schools and non-BL schools work with all major aspects of literacy, but emphasis is little different. In both BL and non-BL schools, similar emphasis is placed on letter- and sound knowledge. However, there are indications that in BL schools more emphasis is placed on reading comprehension, vocabulary and reading for pleasure, but in non-BL schools, more emphasis is placed on reading fluency, handwriting and spelling. In the BL schools teachers more frequently introduced a book through discussion with students as the basis for further literacy activities, and less frequently read books to children without discussion or connection to literacy activities. The preliminary results further indicate that in the in BL schools there is less seat work with published workbooks, rote learning and gap filling exercised but more emphasis placed on homemade exercises tailored to the literacy aspects at hand, more use of learning games and cards, and more emphasis on learning skills. In the Non-BL schools whole-class teaching seemed to be more frequent and the same held for individual seat work. In sum the findings indicate that there is less difference between BL and Non-BL schools, but where there is difference it indicates that the teachers in BL schools place more emphasis on aspects or literacy education akin to the interactive model.
References
Eggertsdóttir, R. (2009). Beginning Literacy – An interactive approach. In B. Culligan (Ed.) The changing landscapes of literacy: Building best practice, (pp 279–293). Dublin: Reading Association of Ireland. Halldórsson, A. M., Ólafsson, R. F. &. Björnsson, J. K. (n.d.). Helstu niðurstöður PISA 2012: Læsi nemenda á stærðfræði og náttúrufræði og lesskilningur [Main results of PISA 2012: Students‘ literacy in mathematics and science and readeing comprehension]. Reykjavík: National Testing Institute. Leiknisdóttir, A. M., Guðmundsdóttir, H., Björnsdóttir, Á. E., Jónsdóttir H. H., & Jónsson, F. H. (2009). Staða lestrarkennslu í íslenskum grunnskólum [The state of reading instruction in Icelandic compulsory schools]. Publishing place and publisher not mentioned. Retrieved from http://brunnur.stjr.is/mrn/utgafufskra/utgafa.nsf/RSSPage.xsp?documentId=4D59A0E31F2C3435002576F00058DD1B&action=openDocument Lipson, M. Y. og Wixson, K. K. (1991). Assessment and instruction of reading disability: An interavtive approach. New York NY: Harper Collins. Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. (2012).The Icelandic national curriculum guide for compulsory school: General section. Retrieved from http://brunnur.stjr.is/mrn/utgafuskra/utgafa.nsf/RSSPage.xsp?documentId=C590D16CBC8439C500257A240030AE7F&action=openDocument Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. (2014). White Paper - on education reform. Retrieved at https://www.stjornarradid.is/media/menntamalaraduneyti-media/media/frettir2015/Hvitbok_ENSKA_04.pdf Perry, K. H. (2012). What is literacy? A critical overview of sociocultural perspectives. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 8(1), 50-71. Ross, P. & Gibson, S. A. (2010). Exploring a conceptual framework for expert noticing during literacy instruction. Literacy Research and Instruction, 49(2), 175-193. doi:10.1080/19388070902923221 Soderman, A. K., Gregory, K. M. og McCarty, L. T. (2005). Scaffolding emergent literacy: A child – centered approach for preschool through grade 5. (2. útgáfa). Boston MA: Pearson Tomlinson, A. C. and Moon, T. R. (2013). Assessment and student success in a differentiated classroom. Alexandria VA. ASCD. UNESCO. (2018). Literacy. Retrieved at https://en.unesco.org/themes/literacy-all Vacca, J. A. L., Vacca, R. T., Gove, M. K., Burkey, L. C., Lenhart, L. A. and McKeon, C. A. (2009). Reading and learning to read. (7th edition). Boston MA: Pearson.
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