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| … go into the world without the disadvantages of the previous generations whose illiteracy made them prey to the powerful and which confined their world of work, leisure and study and personal and social relationships. |
| Neelands, 2001, p. 1 |
Neelands (2001) sees literacy as the foundation for a pro-human society and as "the most important weapon in the arsenal that the poor, the dispossessed, the under-privileged can use to transform themselves and the societies that marginalise them" (p. 5). New emphases in literacy education seek to return some autonomy to teachers and schools, celebrate the art and artistry of teachers, and provide a humanising context for learning that is both imaginatively disciplined and creatively open rather than narrowly based in the acquisition of skills and procedures. Neelands (2001) and Luke (2001) argue that this will happen only through the intellectual engagement of students and their teachers with significant fields of study.
This raises question such as
- What are significant fields of study?
- For whom are they significant and why?
- How will these fields of study differ according to the social and cultural settings of the school?
- How will these fields be selected and by whom?
- What part might a social and cultural analysis and understanding of the school and its community play in this selection?
- How might we become aware of the literacy demands of each of these fields and the most effective pedagogies for meeting these demands?
- Are the nationally agreed learning areas such fields? If not, why not? What might replace them? Why?
These and related questions should guide professional dialogue on literacy education within the school and its community.
Literacy is sociolinguistic, with roots in the living experience of being in the world. Literacy and literacy education are situated, being located in particular times and places, are relational and involve students in ever-deepening intellectual engagement in educationally significant fields of study. Curriculum and pedagogy must reflect our understanding of these new times and places, be based on on-going cultural analyses and engage us intellectually. The current curriculum may not only be failing in such engagement, but may, indeed, be preparing students for a society that no longer exists.
All acts of communication take place in a cultural space. The words and sentences that make up a text can only be meaningfully understood and produced when there is a critical awareness of the cultural contexts and spaces in which texts are produced and received. This awareness necessarily involves a consideration of issues of power, tradition and cultural difference (Neelands, 2001). Understanding the traditions, power relationships and cultural differences that shape the school and its community are a key pre-cursor to planning curriculum and pedagogy for literacy education. Professional development programs that equip teachers with the necessary knowledge and diagnostic skills to enable such understanding are essential.
Literacy and the changing world of work
Predictions of employment in Australia show a decrease in employment that requires lmanual skills and a persistent increase in that requiring current and emerging forms of literacy. The current economy is increasingly de-unionised, out-sourced, subcontracted, made casual and feminised (Luke, 2001). There is corresponding delineation of life pathways, with frequent job changes and need for re-training.
The major challenge for literacy educators is to help young people meet these needs in emerging and increasingly technological cultures with accompanying dramatic changes in what counts as work.
| … all predictions in employment in Australia show a gradual but steady decline in jobs that require physical and manual dexterity and a persistent increase in jobs that require signing … an economy that is based on semiotics and information… |
| Luke, 2001, p. 9 |
This is a crucial matter. Jacob (2001) quotes from a study by the Dusseldorp Skills Forum (1998),
| A longitudinal study of Australia’s youth has shown that students’ skills in literacy and numeracy are more important than anything else in respect to their future educational and employment success. Literacy and numeracy skills are a better predictor of employment prospects, completion of schooling and entry to university than a students period of education, socio-economic background or type of school attended. (p. 10) |
New technologies and new work places will demand multi-literacies, many of which will be digital and are being continually developed. Whilst there is talk about the need for multi-literacies, we have yet to develop a more adequate understanding of what they are and how we might help others acquire them. This challenge is occurring against a background of a growing underclass, with major influences on literacy being poverty, particularly in rural regions and the sub-urban edges of cities, a non-English speaking background and the lack of connection between the lived experiences of boys and the curriculum and pedagogy of schools (Wilhelm, 2001). Current government initiatives do not appear to have arrested the growth of this underclass. Moreover, when students move to secondary school the lack of emphasis on literacy may exacerbate this situation. A focus on literacy across the curriculum has not been sustained, with many teachers withdrawing from their responsibilities for literacy development (Luke, 2001).
For Connor (2001), there is an accompanying danger of teachers "becoming convenient scapegoats for a faltering social justice agenda" (p.1). Yet, there are pressing reasons as to why we should develop a comprehensive and holistic approach to literacy education based on a deep understanding of literacy as a dynamic, evolving social and historical construction (Luke as in Connor, 2001, p.1). She warns that
|
Locating
disadvantage with the individual and their background has the potential
to develop a ‘blame the victim’ stance by government and
institutions and/or a ‘hierarchy of oppression’ which
pits disadvantaged groups against each other. |
| Connor, 2001, p.1 |
| Schools need to systematically refocus and re-invest in teacher development by preparing teachers to better contend with the pitch for pre-packaged commodities, which are being sold as universal cure-alls to literacy problems. |
| Luke,2001, p. 8 |
Literacy, pedagogy and curriculum
How do we cater for the differences in the breadth and depth of children’s experiences? We cannot base an education on the assumption that all children have access to the same linguistic resources and experience. Understanding and nurturing identity, whilst celebrating individual difference, is foundational to both curriculum and pedagogy. For Browett (2001), by| developing insights about the construction of culture and about their own cultural frameworks, students are able to reach deeper understandings about their personal identity and value, and about multiple ways of being in the world. A sense of self and the ability to successfully ‘engage with otherness’ are vital capacities for students (p. 1). |
For Neelands (2001), these capacities may be explored within a set of dialectics for which
| (T)he pedagogic context is expressed as the living dynamic generated by locating teaching and learning practices and the lived experience of schooling .. (p. 12). |
Neelands’ (2001) dialectical nesting reminds us of the need for students to be engaged in substantive discussions, to avoid de-contextualised teaching, to think of children as producers rather than reproducers of language. He cautions us to not lose sight of the energising interplay between what we plan to teach and the vivid living experience of those whom we teach. This includes recognising and making available the knowledge that will give students power both locally and more widely. We are "entitled to knowledge that will give us power" (p. 14). Literacy, in its many forms, gives us such power. It is essential that schools and teachers respond to the literacy needs of their students and their local communities with " a clear plan or map of where we are going, what we need to learn, how we will be valued" (p. 13). Within this plan, and the resultant curriculum and pedagogy, we need to recognise differences as a strength and as providing opportunities for, rather than suppressing, student achievement.
This dialectic is a powerful tool in helping us reflect on curriculum and pedagogy.
A Pedagogic contract for human learning
The pedagogic contract is expressed as a living dynamic generated by locating teaching and learning practices and the lived experience of schooling within a set of dialectics.Betwixt and between
| Mindfulness | Playfulness |
| We think about what we do | We feel safe to experiment, risk, fail, bend and stretch the rules |
| We take the human content and context of our work seriously | We play with languages and other sign systems to find the new, the unspoken, the fresh voice |
| We consider how what we learn might change us and who we are becoming | We are creative in the world |
| We are mindful of self, others and the world | Nothing is sacred |
| Planned | Lived |
| Our local communities have a clear plan or map of where we are going, what we need to learn, how we will be valued | We are human, with human needs, emotions, fears and dreams |
| We are entitled to the knowledge that will give us power | Our experiences shape our worlds, our learning and our "becomingness" |
| Our differences are our strengths | |
| Necessary constraint | Necessary freedom |
| We work within a community and live within its democratic traditions, codes and rules | We are individuals |
| We access and work with culturally powerful Genres of communication | We must have choices in our learning |
| We are free to change our worlds | |
| We have structure and structures to grow with | Knowing the rules gives us more choices, greater freedom to be |
| Imagination | Knowledge |
| We imagine what we cannot yet know | What we imagine is anchored to what we know |
| We imagine and re-imagine ourselves and others | We realise that what we think we know is often 'imaginary' (cultural) |
| We are free from ideologies that replace the imagination | We create our own map of the world |
| Imagining reminds us that we are human | We are changeable and so is the world |
Neelands reminds us that imagination and knowledge are inextricably entwined.
| We are individuals. We must have choices in our learning. We must be free to change our worlds and we must understand that knowing the rules, far from constraining us, gives us more choices, greater freedom to be (p. 19). |
Furthermore,
| We imagine what we cannot yet know… but what we imagine is anchored to what we know" (p. 19). |
When imagination is tied to knowledge of self, other and the world, when students are imaginatively engaged with knowing and understanding through the study of significant fields of knowledge, they become able to act upon their worlds in meaningful and humanly worthwhile ways. "We imagine and so create a particular kind of world" (Misson, 2001, p. 4). Students are able to imagine and re-imagine themselves. "We are changeable and so is the world" (p. 20). Through storying, creating, responding and reflecting in, for example, English education students can be encouraged to free themselves from personal and cultural constraints, to break free of stereotypes and ideologies and to create positive self-images. Misson (2001) points out " that critical and imaginative powers are very closely linked…"(p. 5). For Neelands, "imagining reminds us that we are human" (p. 20).
In becoming literate, we are drawn to consider the relationship between the individual, language and experience. Drawing on the work of Foucault, Misson (2001) suggests that in writing we are creating ourselves. "We write ourselves into being" (p. 6). We are creating a world. Moreover, we write with "pre-existent purposes, we write to express things" and in doing so "we are constantly surprising ourselves" (p. 8).
| In older models, the basic idea was that experience came to the individual and then the individual expressed it in language. These days we see language as much more central to the process than this suggests. The individual can only process experience through language, and experience acts through and creates a particular kind of individual. If an event happens, it can be seen through the various frames, discourses, and the stories we tell ourselves about that event will shape the person we are (p. 9). |
What teachers ought be doing is "making students capable of those different tellings, and making them able to discriminate which version they need to and can responsibly tell at a particular time" (p. 10). But
- What are the new stories students ought to tell and what discriminatory frames will we help them acquire?
- Will studying and teaching the traditional disciplines or the nationally agreed learning areas offer students sufficient and socially and culturally appropriate discriminatory powers?
- What
opportunities will there be for self-criticism?
- What role will the teaching of critical literacy play and what might this mean for screen-based learning?
Literacy and, indeed, critical literacy, needs to be conceived within a broader social order. This new order recognises literacy practices associated with screen-based technologies, for instance. For Snyder (2001), we are witnessing the emergence of a new communication order for which the term ‘communication practices’ might be a more useful term than ‘literacy practices’ " as it is less tainted by reductive interpretations, theoretically more generative and a politically more strategic move" (p. 1). This new order is "directly associated with the development of a communication system characterised by ‘its global reach, its integration of all communication media and its potential interactivity" (Castells, 1996, p.329).
The need for universal literacy is now urgent. "In today’s information age our individual and collective success depends on universal literacy" (Moustafa, 2001, p. 1). In her keynote paper, Moustafa reports on a large body of "independent, replicated, peer-reviewed research that has helped literacy educators move beyond traditional parts-to-whole reading instruction and into contemporary, meaning-based, and whole-to-parts reading instruction" (p. 8). She concludes that| Ultimately the answer is education — to take what we literacy educators know and disseminate it into the culture. Every college graduate must fulfil general education classes in math and science. Imagine if every college graduate were to have as one of his or her general education classes a class on how children learn to read and write (p. 9). |
These conclusions have major implications for both initial teacher education and professional learning for teachers. It may be argued, also, that all year 11 and 12 students should acquire knowledge, understanding and practical skills enabling them to help other young people develop early literacy. Indeed, such programs could be crucial to breaking the cycle of literacy disempowerment experienced by many people in our society. If we are serious about building a "learning society" should not such programs be a core component of general education curricula for all members of this society?
- What is the role of literacy, and especially the new order literacies, in building a learning society?
In this new order, the social practices related to work, education, home and entertainment are becoming increasingly blurred (Snyder, 2001, p.2). As a consequence, social institutions are beginning to articulate to one another in complex ways, often through the use of the new communication practices. For schools and their teachers and students we may now ask "to what extent will work, home, school and entertainment all be connected into the same system of symbol processing"? (p. 2) This is a vital question for those responsible for literacy education. It may be, for instance, that
- Visual
language can "move across cultural and linguistic distinctions
with greater ease than verbal language" (p.3), or that
- "There
is no longer a clear distinction between audiovisual media and printed
media, popular culture and high culture, entertainment and education,
information and knowledge"(p.3), or that
- "The uses of the technologies for commercial purposes will shape the social possibilities of the new communications media for the future thereby limiting educational usefulness" (p.3).
|
Adopting a critical approach to authentic visual texts from target cultures is one practical way for students to develop insights about the construction of culture and about their cultural framework (p. 5). |
For Tan (2001b), there are two types of visual literacy. The first is the one " restricted to the recognition of familiar things" (p. 2). This is based on control. It is the kind of reading we use when we look at maps, street signs and the like. It is often a passive decoding. In contrast, the second form of visual literacy is one that works through playful questioning, enigma and absurdity" (p. 2-3). This literacy is provocative rather than explanatory. For Tan (2001a), it represents the "window of the imagination" (p. 3).
| For me, that’s what creativity is — playing with found objects, reconstructing things that already exist, transforming ideas or stories I already know. It’s not about the colonisation of new territory; it’s about exploring inwards, examining your existing presumptions, squinting at the archive of experience from new angles, and hoping for some sort of revelation. What really matters is whether we as readers continue to think about things we have read and seen long after the final paged is turned. |
| Tan, 2001 b, p. 3 |
How important will it be for teachers to help open these windows for the young of this nation? How crucial is serious intellectual engagement with significant areas of human knowledge and understanding, such as the arts and the sciences, for developing creative, critical visual literacies? Moreover,
|
To produce students who are prepared to contribute actively, critically and responsibly to a changing society — English teachers are beginning to take account of the complex ways in which the use of information and communication technologies influences, shapes, perhaps transforms, literacy practices; they are beginning to consider the best ways to integrate the use of the new technologies into curriculum and pedagogy. |
| Snyder, 2001, p. 1 |
&Our capacity to both technically and creatively re-present ourselves in multiple ways is influenced by the private and public contexts in which we may find ourselves. This involves multi-literacies that enable us to re-present ourselves in ways that we value both individually and collectively. The study of literature provides rich and diverse opportunities for students to present and reflectively re-present multiple senses of being an individual.
| The fascination with literature at the heart of the English curriculum is also a fascination with the diversity and commonality of human individuality — an individuality that is based in different ways in which we all intersect with time and space and in how the immediate social and cultural influences that surround us shape and inform our experiences so that we are different, but also to share the differences with and through common cultural resources. |
| Neelands, 2001, p. 1 |
With the turn to the visual, as, for example, made possible by screen technologies, there are significant changes in the ways in which meanings are made. "The visual mode of communication may be gaining priority over the written mode" (Nixon, 2001, p. 2). This shift from verbal to more universal visual literacies is a profound manifestation of the movement to a global economy and the growth of multiculturalism. Children are going to have to learn to handle
| the iconic systems evident in many communicative practices. These include the icons and signs evident in computer displays like the Words for Windows package, with all its combination of signs, symbols, boundaries, pictures, words, texts, images, etc. |
| Street, 2001, p. 15 |
For Nixon (2001), English and literacy educators are, as yet, unable to anticipate the complexities and implications of the changes from verbal to visual communicative practices (p. 2). "Children’s differing access to and dispositions towards the media and ICT-related communication and culture may provide particular challenges for the development of an inclusive curriculum for the future" (Nixon, 2001, p. 2). Referring to Kress (2000), she suggests "research needs to be done into how some of the new media forms and modes of communication are actually experienced by children in their daily lives…"(p. 3). "It is important that these young consumers’ interests are taken seriously by educators and that opportunities are provided for them to explore the nature and political implications of the changing forms of media and communication in which their lives are embedded" (p. 10). Clearly, this last statement has major implications for the literacy learning, for the development of curricula and pedagogy and professional learning.
Snyder (2001), building on the work of Bolter and Grusin (1999), considers whether "new media achieve their cultural significance by paying homage to, rivalling and refashioning earlier media" and radically transforming them, or merely re-fashioning them by drawing on established media practices. She asks
- How revolutionary are computer-mediated practices?
- Is it
the dawn of a new literacy regime or the reshaping of an old one?
- What
precisely is radically different about the new practices?
- Which
practices are extensions of the old and familiar ways of doing and seeing
the world?
- Which are entirely new? (p. 3)
The new order of communication is characterised as a mixture of texts and images. The consequences for curriculum, pedagogy and teacher professional learning are immense. Curricula and pedagogy will have to recognise and understand the ever-increasing array of combinations of symbols, pictures, words, texts and images that define new order communication practices. Research and professional development will need to be generative of these understandings and their associated skills.
Becoming literate involves a substantial intellectual engagement in a major area of study (Luke, 2001). Whilst some of the new literacies will be closely linked to new technologies, understanding through becoming literate in, for example, science, English, other languages and the arts, will remain important components of the curriculum for all students. Yet, the movement to emphasise literacy across the curriculum with all learning areas having a vital part to play in students becoming literate appears to have been largely unsuccessful. Many teachers may have withdrawn from seeing literacy teaching as part of their responsibility. This has major and urgent implications for initial teacher education, curriculum planning and pedagogy, and teacher professional development.Recent research by Luke (2001) has shown that very few schools in the Queensland system have systematic and balanced literacy programs based on a cultural analysis of student needs. We need to recognise the need for cultural analyses as a basis for curriculum and pedagogical planning for literacy development. The search for a single teaching methodology for literacy, and reading in particular, has not been successful. Schools need to build balanced literacy programs based on a cultural analysis of the communities they serve. There is a need for considerable teacher and school development, including, for example, building diagnostic skills, fostering team teaching and mentoring, promoting community involvement and developing the capacity to share experience and expertise.This implies a return to the study of teaching. In particular, it suggests that focused reflection on the lived experience of teaching is crucial. For Edwards-Groves (2001), we need to ask questions such as
- What can we learn about ourselves, our teaching, and what our students learn, by closely looking at the interactions in the very context in which we work?
- What does looking at classroom transcripts teach us about effective literacy practices? Classroom life? Professional growth? (p. 1)
"Using focused reflection as an approach guides teachers to orient to specific aspects of their work. It keys them into thinking about meaningful learning through meaningful interaction" (p. 10). Focusing on teacher and student classroom talk, she suggests using questions such as the following to stimulate reflective thinking.
- How do
we construct literacy lessons? What is fore-grounded at the beginning
of a lesson (what do we say the lesson is about)?
- What do
we talk about mainly? What is made explicit in our lessons?
- Do our
students ‘hear’ and understand what the lesson is about in
relation to specific literacy learning?
- Does our
talk fully engage learners in their learning?
- What
literacy learning is left implicit, to be learnt incidentally?
- What learning is made transferable to other situations? What learning remains trapped within a single lesson?
- Do we
treat texts, themes, activities and resources as vehicles in which specific
literacy learning can emerge successfully? Or are they a primary focus?
- Are we
accomplishing what we are setting out to teach? How do we know?
- Do we
conclude lessons with connections to literacy learning?
- Do students
orient to learning, to aspects of literacy in their talk?
- Does the management of behaviour cut into learning? (p. 10) Literacy and literacy education, and their curriculum and pedagogy, must reflect our understandings of new times and places. Local interventions are enabled or disenabled by national, regional and local politics and economies as these relate to schools and systems. Understanding the changing places and contexts where we use literacy, where new technologies imply new literacies and a mix of literacies, is educationally paramount.
| School must be inclusive of its community’s cultural needs and the community needs to be supportive of the school to achieve this. |
| Woods, 2001, p.8 |
| Schools where higher literacy standards are achieved are synonymous with schools where the leadership skills of the principals and literacy resource teachers as well as year level coordinators are aptly applied. Schools that provide substantial, prolonged professional development in reading, writing and all other aspects of literacy and the teaching of English are also more effective.. |
| Woods, 2001, p.10 |
&We need to recognise that
| (t)he language our students bring to the classroom is a valid form of communication and needs to be valued linguistically if they are to acquire a deep knowledge and understanding of the English language in all forms. |
| Woods, 2001, p.11 |
There is a need for increased programmatic focus and guidance on the teaching of reading, especially for children with indigenous, non-English speaking backgrounds, minority groups and low socio-economic communities. We are seeing the emergence of a white male underclass linked to boys’ difficulties with becoming print literate. In a major qualitative study of the lives of boys and the role of literate activity in their lives, Wilhelm (2001) made findings that "bridged from their passionate interests out of school to the ways in which they conceived and enacted various literate practices" (p. 1). Four major themes emerged. These were
A need for a sense of control and competence
A challenge that requires an appropriate level of skill
Clear goals and feedback, and
A focus on the immediate experience (p. 1).
One of the key findings was that all of the boys in the study, including those most at risk, experienced a great sense of satisfying success in their out-of-school lives. Wilhelm concludes that understanding the sources of young men’s success and enjoyment outside of school may shed light on how schools can better serve them (p. 1). For these young men to succeed there is a need for their social lives to be recognised, for avoiding stress and an emphasis on active learning and the avoidance of routines. This has strong implications for curriculum and pedagogy and for the need of the social/cultural community studies advocated by Luke (2001). Placing curriculum and pedagogy in a familiar context to which young people can relate is very important. Conversely, attempting to use pre-packaged curriculum and teaching programs, or privileged literary texts, is unlikely to be successful. For Croker and Baxter (2001), there is a growing tension between emancipatory and normative views of literacy, and, consequently, between privileging literary texts and revaluing non-literary texts (p.1). These tensions often manifest as a contest between English and literacy education.
Literacy, teacher education and professional learning
For Luke (2001) it is time to re-professionalise teaching. We need to urgently and strongly re-focus on pedagogy in educational research, teacher education and professional learning programs for teachers. From research conducted for the Queensland Department of Education, he suggests that what is needed is- A statewide
focus on a balanced approach to the teaching of reading based on the
four resources model of Luke and Freebody (Luke, 2001). This includes
a balance between coding and systematic, pragmatic and critical practices
in literacy.
- A statewide
focus on the development of whole school programs that include an analysis
of local community linguistic and cultural resources and audits of teacher
expertise and possible community involvement.
- An emphasis
on the introduction of multi-literacies.
- Regeneration of professional development for teachers, including the re-building of teacher social networks and capital and the facilitation of intergenerational exchange between different groups of teachers.
1. Undertake appropriate cultural analyses relating to their school community as a basis for developing comprehensive and coherent whole school literacy programs across all areas of the curriculum. This may include, for instance, sociological, political, historical and ethical studies and should involve teachers from all areas of the curriculum, as well as school leaders.
2. Develop appropriate diagnostic skills to support whole school, class, group and individual literacy program planning, pedagogy and student assessment. These skills may be drawn from a wide range of areas of study such as communications, cognitive sciences, reading studies, visual arts studies and semiotics.
3. Understand more deeply emerging forms of literacy and their educational value for young people. This may include studies in media, critical literacy and communications together with an in-depth consideration of the history, philosophy, sociology and ethics of the purposes of educating. (I have used the active form here to emphasise the desirability of an active conception and to avoid interpretations that suggest a concern for a meta-narrative designated "education", often portrayed as "liberal education".)
4. Understand more deeply and interpret and implement local, state and national system policy requirements for literacy education. Thus extensive professional learning programs to assist teachers and school leaders make the necessary curriculum, pedagogical and assessment interpretations should accompany policy implementation.
5. Understand the place of literature in its widest sense in English and literacy education and be able to plan curricula, pedagogy and the assessment of student achievement that reflects fully the educational worth of the study of literature including its contribution to literacy education.
6. Understand deeply the English Learning Area and the ways in which it provides an educationally enriching context for the development of curricula and pedagogy.
7. Plan curricula, pedagogy and the assessment of student achievement that reflect these understandings and the educational value of multi-literacies. These would be programs to assist teachers and school leaders interpret the knowledge and understandings developed through the programs suggested above in ways that would yield curricula, pedagogy and assessment to fit the needs of their students whilst meeting regional and national requirements.
8. Plan curricula, pedagogy and the assessment of student achievement that reflect these understandings and the educational value of multi-literacies, particularly as these relate to intellectually significant fields of study such as the current, nationally agreed eight learning areas and including, particularly the study of English.
9. Use a wide range of modes of presentation in re-presenting their understandings, with particular attention to new technologies and their representational capacities. These programs would aim at assisting teachers and school leaders to present understandings using a variety of modes of presentation. These modes would be those appropriate for the forms of literacy seen to be of educational value to the students and would exemplify the ways of re-presenting understanding characteristic of the significant fields of study incorporated in the curriculum. Teachers and school leaders should have a cross curriculum and pedagogical knowledge and understanding of such re-presentation.
10. Develop deep educational understandings and an effective teaching repertoire related to teaching multi-literacies and select and justify those literacies that most adequately meet the needs of their students. Professional development programs would focus on the practical application of teaching strategies designed to meet these student needs, and would involve both modelling and the collection of exemplary examples of quality teaching.
11. Provide literacy programs that cater for the needs of student groups with particular literacy difficulties, such as students from non-English speaking backgrounds, indigenous students and boys, particularly in rural areas and sub-urban edge schools. This provision would occur recognising, as far as is possible, the dangers envisaged by Connor (2001), as discussed earlier. In designing these programs, teachers and school leaders should be guided by replicated research, trustworthy social and cultural analyses, understandings on the nature and value of the forms of literacy involved. Exemplary curriculum and pedagogical practices would be paramount.
This suggests a dramatically different and intellectually challenging approach to both pre-service, in-service and postgraduate teacher education. It would do much to re-professionalise teaching by providing a credible and ethically sustainable intellectual foundation for professional dialogue, inquiry and research.
A range of supporting research projects should accompany these programs. In order that this research can be used for making responsible educational decisions, it is vital that these projects be replicated. There is a vital need, also, for researchers, teachers and educational leaders to develop deep understanding of the conceptualisation of research approaches used. They should understand, for instance, the implications of emerging emphases on qualitative inquiry and modernist and post modernist research perspectives (Jacob, 2001, pp.7 — 10).
For Moustafa (2001), there is a "large body of independent, replicated, peer-reviewed research that has helped literacy educators move beyond traditional parts-to-whole reading instruction and into contemporary meaning-based, whole-to-parts instruction. This body of research shows again and again that while all children benefit from contemporary reading instruction, lower achieving children benefit the most. It also shows that universal access to age-appropriate books is a pre-requisite of universal literacy" (p. 8).
This could include research projects that aim to- Develop
a range of approaches that schools may use to undertake a community
cultural analysis that facilitates developing school literacy programs.
- Document
emerging forms of literacy and describe and illustrate their potential
educational value for selected cohorts of students.
- Develop
a range of approaches that will assist schools to monitor and evaluate
their literacy programs.
- Develop a range of models for developing whole school literacy programs.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of particular literacy teaching packages that may be used by some schools.
Afterword
Whilst it is not possible to capture all of the insights, understanding and suggestions emanating from the Conference, I believe this paper speaks very strongly to the future directions for literacy and English education. It demonstrates very strongly the urgent need to re-professionalise teaching and to do so, in the context of literacy education, by providing teachers with high quality professional learning and research programs. These programs would have as their focus the understandings and capacities detailed above and would be supported by research projects such as those suggested. This is a new, different and challenging agenda. This agenda has major implications for curricula and pedagogy. It reinforces the need for a move away from skills-reliant approaches to a range of approaches based on a deepening understanding of literacy, in its new and emerging forms, through intense engagement with intellectually challenging and professionally relevant studies. It emphasises the humanly transformative power of being literate and its deep connection with our lived experience both as individuals and as members of diverse communities. It sets forth for dialogue and action a program for literacy education that is complex and daunting, but without which the lives of many of the young people of this nation may become seriously dispossessed.The over-riding impression gained from the conference was one of converging understandings and of confidence and commitment to literacy and English education. This is not to suggest, however, that this is a time for complacency and indecision. Rather, decisive action in terms of research and professional learning opportunities is vital. This paper recommends an essential national agenda for empowering literacy and English education at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
References
Bolter, J. & Grusin, R. (1999). Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Browett, J. (2001). Critical Literacy and Visual Texts: Windows on Culture. Paper presented at the National Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Literacy Education and the Australian English Teachers Association, Hobart, Tasmania.Castells, M. (1996). The Rise of the Network Society, Volume 1, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. London: Blackwell Publishers.
Connor, J. (2001). Inequitable Literacies: Myths and Probabilities. Paper presented at the National Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Literacy Education and the Australian English Teachers Association, Hobart, Tasmania.
Croker, B. & Baxter, D. (2001). Counting Literature In? Balancing the National Literacy Agenda. Paper presented at the National Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Literacy Education and the Australian Association for Teachers of English, Hobart, Tasmania.
Edwards-Groves, C. (2001). Lessons from the classroom: What we learn about effective pedagogy from teacher-student interactions. Paper presented at the National Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Literacy Education and the Australian English Teachers Association, Hobart, Tasmania.
Jacob, A. (2001). Raising the White Flag in the Reading Wars. Paper presented at the National Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Literacy Education and the Australian English Teachers Association, Hobart, Tasmania.
Kress, G. (2000). A curriculum for thr future. Cambridge Journal of Education, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 133 — 145.
Luke, A. (2001). How to make Literacy Policy Differently: generational Change, Professionalism, and Literate Futures. Keynote address, National Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Literacy Education and the Australian Association for Teachers of English, Hobart, Tasmania.
Misson, R. (2001). What are we creating in Creative Writing? Paper presented at the National Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Literacy Education and the Australian English Teachers Association, Hobart, Tasmania.
Moustafa, M. (2001). Foundations for Universal Literacy. Keynote address given at the National Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Literacy Education and the Australian Association for Teachers of English, Hobart, Tasmania.
Neelands, J. (2001). Remember, we are human. Keynote address, National Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Literacy Education and the Australian Association for Teachers of English, Hobart, Tasmania.
Nixon, H. (2001). The Book, the TV Series, the Web Site…: Teaching and Learning Within the Communicational Webs of Popular Media Culture. Paper presented at the National Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Literacy Education and the Australian English Teachers Association, Hobart, Tasmania.
Snyder, I. (2001). A New Communication Order. ? Paper presented at the National Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Literacy Education and the Australian Association for Teachers of English, Hobart, Tasmania.
Street, B. (2001). Contexts for literacy work: the ‘new orders’ and the ‘new literacy studies’. In J. Crowther, M. Hamilton & L. Tett (Eds.), Powerful literacies, pp. 13 — 22. England & Wales: The National Organisation for Adult Learning.
Tan, S. (2001a). Originality and Creativity. Paper presented at the National Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Literacy Education and the Australian Association for Teachers of English, Hobart, Tasmania.
Tan, S. (2001b). Picture Books: Who Are They For? Paper presented at the National Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Literacy Education and the Australian Association for Teachers of English, Hobart, Tasmania.
Wilhelm, J. (2001). Boys and Books: Literacy and the Lives of Young Men. Paper presented at the National Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Literacy Education and the Australian Association for Teachers of English, Hobart, Tasmania.
Woods, D. (2001). Australian Indigenous Peoples Leading Literate Lives? Paper presented at the National Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Literacy Education and the Australian English Teachers Association, Hobart, Tasmania.
