In our recent discussions with The National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy we have come to understand that there is more good will than everyone around the table first thought in addressing what in other jurisdictions has become known as the reading wars.(1)
For those parents and others who may not have heard, these "reading wars" have been waging in our classrooms for several decades over an issue that should be about the critical attributes of teaching ALL of our Australian children to be able to read but has instead polarised over just a few methods of teaching.(2)
Although the polarisation (also existing in other Western Countries(3)) creates differences in philosophical "hopes" for how our children learn, there appears a common understanding that it is more important that we turn "hope" into some evidence based reality for the many children who have not been successful in climbing aboard the vehicle that opens the world of knowledge: - that is, learning to read.
Theories and positions aside, the first meeting of the Reference Group shared a wonderment and great respect for those who teach our children to read... be they teacher, parent, specialist or combinations thereof. We agree that we have but a brief opportunity to turn the petty battle among strategies and sectors into a more mature scientific inquiry into "what works" and "what would it take" to make ALL Australians at least fundamentally literate?
What is the problem?
A preponderance of the evidence presented in Rowe's Draft Review(4) gives us both great hope that we can move to the systemic and wide-spread, evidence based practices that he has so eloquently outlined, and yet great sadness that the critical variable(5) outlined in this work is so far removed from this position. Thus, if it were not hard enough to address the fact that too many Australian children cannot read, our mission to advance the literacy of children is compounded by an additional need to build a bridge across competing paradigms of thoughts and attempt to avoid the "wars" that have plagued this mission for 3 decades or more, both here and elsewhere.
Of course we should not discourage the processes aplenty that have led the 70%(6) or more of our nation's children to become literate, yet we cannot avoid addressing those who cannot. It appears "there is an elephant in the lounge" but no one seems to be noticing: - the 77% of our indigenous children who do not read well, 53% of our poor children do not read well, largely unknown numbers of our labelled children do not read well, making up 29% of all of our children do not read well. These populations reflect too large a portion of those not getting jobs, ending up in our support systems and other societal institutions as adults, not to take significant notice.
For a "knowledge nation" some will argue that the majority of children are readers and thus these are "sufficient numbers", others will quibble about the numbers and their accuracy. However these are the few with what Felman calls a passion for ignorance(7) who choose to do nothing.
We are standing at the crossroads of accepting that the majority shall read and a minority will never read … and all of the consequences of this course(8) OR developing a passion for becoming a fully knowledgeable nation.(9) The problem is simple (albeit large). Doing nothing new is also simple. Continuing to accept that we fail 10% of some groups, 20% of others, 50% and even 70% of other groups and nearly 30% of all Australian students is very hard; particularly knowing we need not allow any student to fail to learn to read.(10)
Ours is the position of taking the hard road to discerning the efficacy of bringing what these 70% have achieved to as close to 100% as we are able. Thus, ours is not a debate of how to make those who CAN read, more literate, as it seems that these processes are sufficiently known to not pose an immediate threat to our nation to the children themselves, their parents or our teachers.
What poses a serious challenge to our nation is bringing at least basic literacy to those not meeting the standards11 who have struggled to climb aboard the vehicle of reading. While there remains some concern about how these data are derived and how they are aggregated and used, we do support the view that we must gain some agreement on a baseline figure so that we can measure our progress in recovery. Considering ACER is one our premier educational research institutes, the 1997 ACER figures seems a good place to start.
Results – National Literacy Survey – (ACER 1997)(12) |
||
Year 5 |
% meeting the standard |
% not meeting the standard |
| Main Sample (total) | 71 |
29 |
| Males | 65 |
35 |
| Females | 76 |
24 |
| English Language Background | 72 |
28 |
| Language Background other than English | 56 |
44 |
| High Socio-economic Status | 87 |
13 |
| Medium Socio-economic Status | 71 |
29 |
| Low Socio-economic Status | 47 |
53 |
| Special Indigenous Sample | 23 |
77 |
Endnotes
- Snow, C. E., Burns, S. M., & Griffin, P. (Eds.). (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. National Research Council. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. The field of reading is one that has long been marked by controversies and disagreements. Indeed, the term "reading wars" has been part of the debate over reading research for the past 25 years... The knowledge base is now large enough that the controversies that have dominated discussions of reading development and reading instruction have given way to a widely honored pax lectura, the conditions of which include a shared focus on the needs and rights of all children to learn to read... the focus of attention has shifted from the researchers' theories and data back to the teacher, alone in her classroom with a heterogeneous group of children, all awaiting their passports to literacy.
- The Inquiry's background research has uncovered a revealing finding: i.e. the bulk of our teachers (79%) are entering the workforce trained and encouraged in a method of teaching reading not supported by research, and that 67% of such teachers only know of this method. In Westwood, P. (1999). Constructivist approaches to mathematical learning: A note of caution. In D. Barwood, D. Greaves, & P. Jeffrey, Teaching numeracy and literacy: Interventions and strategies for "at risk" students. Coldstream, VIC: Australian Resource Educators' Association.
- The National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching Children To Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction. See also Snow et al (1998).
- Rowe, K., Purdie, N., & Ellis, L. Australian Council for Educational Research. (March, 2005). A review of the evidence-based research literature on effective teaching and learning strategies for students with learning difficulties, especially in reading literacy. A draft discussion paper prepared for the Committee and Reference Group for the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy. Australian Government, Department of Education, Science and Training.
- Quality teachers. In Rowe et al (March, 2005).
- Australian Council for Educational Research. (1997). Literacy Standards in Australia. Commonwealth of Australia: Canberra. Snow et al (1998): The many children who succeed in reading are in classrooms that display a wide range of possible approaches to instruction. In making recommendations about instruction, one of the challenges facing the committee is the difficult-to-deal-with fact that many children will learn to read in almost any classroom, with almost any instructional emphasis. Nonetheless, some children, in particular children from poor, minority, or non-English-speaking families and children who have innate predispositions for reading difficulties, need the support of high-quality preschool and school environments and of excellent primary instruction to be sure of reading success.
- Felman, S (1982) Psychoanalysis and teacher education: teaching terminable and interminable. Yale French Studies 63, 21-44. Cited in Allan, J. (2002). Productive pedagogies and the responsibilities of inclusion. Teaching... has to deal not so much with lack of knowledge as with resistances to knowledge. Ignorance... is a passion inasmuch as traditional pedagogy postulated a desire for knowledge - an analytically informed pedagogy has to reckon with the passion for ignorance. Ignorance, in other words, is nothing other than a desire to ignore... It is not a simple lack of information but the incapacity - or the refusal - to acknowledge one's own implication in the information.
- Such as pointed out extensively in Rowe's point 9.1, 'The literacy and behaviour overlap' and point 9.2 by Barkeley and Pfiffner – both in Rowe et al. (March, 2005).
- As is deemed realistically possible for most as described by Lyon (2003) in Rowe's point 9.2 p. 46 in Rowe et al (March, 2005).
- Also see Lyon (2003) in Rowe's point 9.2 p. 46 in Rowe et al (March, 2005).
- ACER. See endnote 6. The Minister has emphasised that his real concern is for those children [who] are struggling at school with reading... and aren't always getting the kind of support that they actually need. Opening address by the Minister to the Committee of the Inquiry.
- ACER table in Wills and Jackson (2000). We don't need to leave them behind: Rapid improvement of literacy at high school. Also see endnote 6.
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