Literacy and Social Responsibility; Multiple Perspectives; Frances Christie; Alyson Simpson

Edited by

Frances Christie [+–]

University of Sydney

View Website

Frances Christie is Honorary Professor of Education at the University of Sydney and Emeritus Professor of Language and Literacy at the University of Melbourne. She has worked for many years in language and literacy education, and has had a considerable research and publishing record in the area. Recent books have included (2002), Classroom Discourse Analysis: A Functional Perspective, Continuum: London and NY; (2005) Language Education in the Primary Years, University of NSW Press: Sydney; (with J.R. Martin, eds.) (2007), Language, Knowledge and Pedagogy: Functional Linguistic and Sociological Perspectives, Continuum: London and NY; (2008) (with B. Derewianka), School Discourse: Learning to Write across the Years of Schooling, Continuum: London and NY.

Alyson Simpson [+–]

University of Sydney

Alyson Simpson is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. She teaches in undergraduate and postgraduate pre-service teacher programs and supervises research candidates studying in the area of literacy / English education. Her research projects have examined designs for elearning and concepts of visual literacy in higher education and primary schools. She is the co-author of Children’s Literature and Computer Based Teaching, Oxford University Press: London (2005) and author of Reading Under the Covers: Helping Children to Choose Books, Primary English Teaching Association: Newtown (2008).

This volume brings together a number of people professionally engaged in the study of literacy, either because they are teachers or teacher educators of language and literacy, or because they are involved as social and/or educational workers researching or providing programs to address the needs of people at risk because of inadequate literacy skills. It thus sets up a dialogue between these two communities of writers, all bringing different perspectives to the issues, some from the context of Literacy Education, others from the context of Social Work. All are committed to the view that provision of effective literacy programs is a matter of equity and social justice, though the ways in which they address such a view can differ. Issues addressed include: the changing nature of literacy in the modern world; the impact of the multimodal environment in which literacy now functions; the implications of this environment for pedagogical practices in the teaching of literacy; the causes and consequences of social disadvantage in learning literacy among various groups; and means to address such disadvantage.

Literacy and social responsibility [+–] 1 – 8

Frances Christie,Alyson Simpson £17.50

University of Sydney

View Website

University of Sydney

Few educational issues stir public debate and discussion more often and more volubly than literacy. Community interest in it seems high, given the range of newspaper articles that regularly report aspects of literacy: student literacy performance in school, literacy levels in the workforce, programmes to promote improved literacy teaching, and/or periodic laments about literacy standards. Moreover, governments throughout the English-speaking world devote signiﬁcant ﬁnancial resources to literacy education, while teacher education programmes, typically of some years’ duration, attach importance to the preparation of teachers to teach literacy. And, so the evidence suggests, with some frequency, governments call either for new inquiries into the teaching of literacy or for new policy and curriculum statements to do with the teaching of English, in which literacy has always an important role.

Literacy as a theme in educational theory and policy [+–] 9 – 23

Frances Christie £17.50

University of Sydney

View Website

I shall argue in this chapter that the problems arise because of a lack of an adequate theory of language. Such a theory will, among other things, provide an explanation of the grammatical differences between speech and writing, seeing them as manifestations of the same linguistic system, which children learn to deploy for a range of purposes as they mature, and a model for tracing the developmental changes in control of literacy that occur with the movement from childhood to adolescence. The origins of the dichotomies referred to were old. However, they achieved a particular prominence in the drive to promote and extend opportunity to large numbers of children in the elementary schools of the nineteenth century. In such schools the educational goals were in many ways quite limited, and their aspirations for the teaching of reading and writing reasonably constrained. Much has changed since the appearance of widespread elementary or primary schooling, and the levels of educational attainment required in the twenty-ﬁrst century are greater than in the past. High levels of literacy performance are needed in the contemporary world as an essential aspect of the educational attainments sought. Moreover, a great deal of current educational research suggests the wisdom of adopting a model of literacy studies that is based on an adequate theory of language, stressing the interrelated nature of reading and writing, and the manner in which the written language changes as children grow and move from the primary into the secondary school years. It is in the transition from childhood to adolescence (when children also pass from the primary to the secondary school) that written language changes quite markedly, as I shall argue, and it is no accident that it is then that many children begin to drop behind in their school performance.

Multiple literacies: implications for changed pedagogy [+–] 24 – 39

Alyson Simpson,Maureen Walsh £17.50

University of Sydney

Australian Catholic University

This chapter is written at a time when heads of government use mobile technologies to reach the public via instant messages and when school children deal comfortably with multiple simultaneous modes of communication (more often at home than at school). Developments in digital and mobile technology have contributed to radical changes in communication, and these developments have signiﬁcant implications for the deﬁnition of literacy in the twenty-ﬁrst century and for its applications within educational contexts. As new technologies enable classrooms to be connected, not only via corridors, but also by networks of electronic pathways, this chapter aims to show how the social context of school and concepts of literacy have been signiﬁcantly altered.

Socially responsible literacy education: toward an ‘organic relation’ to our place and time [+–] 40 – 55

Peter Freebody £17.50

University of Sydney

This chapter outlines some meanings of ‘social responsibility’ in the area of literacy education. It suggests that the term be taken to lead educators toward reconsidering their students, their own practices, and their educational materials and assessments in two ways: across place (the variety of lived social conditions that they and their students inhabit) and through time (the role of literacy education in connecting their own and their students’ past, present and future). This chapter turns ﬁrst to the past to examine social responsibility as a key to the connection between literacy and schooling, and then to some available scenarios of futures for schooling, to draw out their differing implications for literacy educators, and the role of knowledge in learning and schooling. A particular focus is the role of literacy education in the acculturation of youngsters into the powerful curricular forms of knowledge and discourse around which secondary education is built. The argument is that students come to engage the speciﬁc literacy demands of the various curriculum areas from the middle primary years onward. Their participation in their own secondary schooling and in their further education and training depends crucially on how well they can engage these high-stakes literacy demands. Further, however, their efﬁcacy as citizens who belong when and where they are, and who act effectively with an understanding of that sense of belonging, also relates strongly to their literacy capabilities.

Literacy and the Arts [+–] 56 – 70

Robyn Ewing £17.50

University of Sydney

This chapter begins with the assertion that an Arts-led literacy curriculum is imperative if today’s students are to leave school with a sense of their own identity and a place within their social world, along with the creative and ﬂexible literacy skills needed for life in the twenty-ﬁrst century. Embedding the Arts in formal literacy learning contexts enables educators to enhance students’ imaginative capacities. This is central to student learning because, as Wordsworth (in Egan 1992: 25) proclaimed, imagination is ‘reason in her most exalted mood’. Kieran Egan’s Imaginative Research in Education (IERG) website reminds us that imagination is ‘the ability to think of the possible, not just the actual, it is the source of invention, novelty and ﬂexibility in human thinking …it greatly enhances rational thought’. Initially this chapter provides a deﬁnition of how the term ‘the Arts’ should be understood for this discussion. A brief justiﬁcation for the role of the Arts in imaginative learning follows, speciﬁcally in relation to the literacy curriculum and drawing on a range of relevant research and literature. Finally, two recent exemplars of Arts-led literacy programmes with primary students demonstrate the power of such curriculum experiences.

The social context of literacy acquisition: achieving good beginnings [+–] 71 – 86

Tony Vinson £17.50

University of Sydney

My exploration of what is needed to give all of Australia’s children a good start to their education has taken me to the springs of social disadvantage, a life condition affecting the individuals, families and communities with whom I have worked throughout my ﬁve decades of social-work practice. My conclusion is that, in the absence of compensatory educational experiences and appropriate forms of social support, a substantial number of today’s socially disadvantaged small children are positioned to become tomorrow’s frustrated and rejected adults. I want to begin by recalling some scenes that I have encountered during my recent observations of 20 of New South Wales’ pre-schools attached to public schools and/or kindergartens in public schools. The study was conducted in 2005–2006, and the ﬁndings were reported to a body called the Public Education Alliance at a conference staged at State Parliament House, Sydney, and received wide media coverage. I must emphasise that, by design, the majority of the schools in my sample were located in not-well-off communities in the Australian state of New South Wales, and in some instances they served decidedly disadvantaged neighbourhoods, including some Aboriginal ones. The scenes that I recount are fundamental reality tests for measures intended to provide all of our children with good beginnings to their education. Moreover, though they are drawn from Australian observation, they are relevant for all other societies where young children experience social disadvantage.

The experience of Youth Off The Streets [+–] 87 – 100

Fr. Chris Reiley,Karelynne Randall £17.50

Youth Off The Streets

Youth Off The Streets EDEN Learning Centre

This chapter gives an account of the Youth Off The Streets programme, which I commenced in Sydney in 1991. Youth Off The Streets is a community organisation working for young people who suffer from one or more of several problems: they may be chronically homeless, drug dependent, recovering from abuse and/or long term disengaged from schooling, and as a result they are abjectly disadvantaged. We support these young people as they work to turn their lives around and overcome immense personal traumas caused by neglect and physical, psychological and emotional abuse. The programme is strongly committed to the principle that all such youth are capable of rehabilitation. One essential aspect of their rehabilitation will be participation in effective educational activity, and we recognise that literacy is a necessary resource to help them achieve an adequate education and develop into independent responsible beings.

Beating educational inequality with an integrated reading pedagogy [+–] 101 – 115

David Rose £17.50

University of Sydney

View Website

David Rose is a Research Fellow with the University of Sydney, currently coordinating a national research program in language and literacy for Indigenous Australians. This project, Learning to Read: Reading to Learn, works with schools across Australia, as well as Indigenous teacher training programs in University of Sydney and University of South Australia.

In the 1980s a great social movement was sweeping remote Indigenous communities in Australia, in which families were leaving the government settlements and missions of the assimilation era, and taking their children home to their ancestral lands. As part of this ‘homelands movement’, I worked for many years for the Pitjantjatjara people of central Australia. To be able to work for such a great ideal was an honour and an inspiration, as well as a steep educational experience, learning how to interact in a very different culture, to speak a different language, and to raise a family in the harsh conditions of desert living and working. But I was fortunate to have some of the greatest teachers and role models anyone could hope for – the Pitjantjatjara elders who were the leaders of the homelands movement.

Enhancing literacy education for refugee children [+–] 116 – 129

Denise Lynch £17.50

University of Sydney

This chapter will brieﬂy review the history of refugee settlement in Australia, before going on to identify the major groups of refugee children and youth who currently come to the country. It will then discuss the needs of each group, drawing attention to the legal, structural and political difﬁculties that can often impede the progress of refugee children and youth. In addition, the chapter will consider those educational programmes that offer positive learning experiences to refugee children. Finally, in the light of the discussion, it will conclude with some observations about the types of best practices that are needed for refugee children in the future.

Envoi [+–] 130 – 136

Frances Christie,Alyson Simpson £17.50

University of Sydney

View Website

University of Sydney

Conclusion

Index

Index [+–] 137 – 141

Frances Christie,Alyson Simpson FREE

University of Sydney

View Website

University of Sydney

Index

Reviews

This edited text emphasizes an important contemporary theme. Increasingly, literacy is being associated with aspects of advantage and disadvantage, social inclusion and social exclusion. All the authors explore interesting and pertinent areas and this book makes a valuable contribution to the field.
Professor Barbara Fawcett, University of Sydney

The editors indicate in the opening chapter of this volume that there is less formal dialogue between social workers and literacy educators than is commonly thought. This is certainly the case, and the current volume takes an important step towards a productive synthesis of the best thinking in each field in the Australian context. The volume provides a theoretically and methodologically strong foundation upon which this dialogue can continue to build, both nationally and internationally. Its ten chapters draw on the authoritative research and field experience of significant thinkers in literacy education and welfare, each one of whom in turn draws on other well-respected data to support a compelling case for the closer articulation of the two fields.
Associate Professor Kristina Love, University of Melbourne

This volume has many merits — the main one being that it is a collection of scholarly papers, with appropriate citations, regarding the academic literature. A second merit lies in the main thesis of the authors which concerns a call for more collaboration between educators and social workers for a richer pedagogy to foster literacy. …This volume is an excellent contribution to literacy scholarship and is certainly worth reading.
Philippa Mungra, English as an International Language Journal, Vol 6, Issue 2, November 2011

.

Books and Journals in Humanities, Social Science and Performing Arts

Frances Christie [+–]

University of Sydney

View Website

Alyson Simpson [+–]

University of Sydney

Table of Contents

Reviews

Related Journal

Related Interest

Search Equinox

Subjects