Reading 21st century literacyChapter 1 Examining literacy in t.docx

Reading: 21st century literacy
Chapter 1: Examining literacy in the twenty-first century, pp. 2-
26, of your eText provides a useful discussion of literacy
practices, with particular attention given to the contemporary
context.
CHAPTER 1
Examining literacy in the twenty-first century
Discovering what makes a good reader and a good teacher of
readers
Jason was six and had already suffered a number of setbacks
with heart surgery as a baby. He came to school aggressive and
disinterested in everything school had to offer. On his first day
of Year 1, he did not see the point in reading quietly, writing
freely or working together with his peers. I thought ‘how do I
turn a student like Jason into someone who values reading?’ As
the bell rang to dismiss the class for the day, a very large man
appeared at my classroom door. ‘If you have any problems with
Jason, let me know and I will sort him out when he gets home.’
This parent reaffirmed for me that force is never the solution.
Jason may not go home to a home of readers; he may not have
access to books that he just can’t put down, and he may not be
tucked into bed at night and go to sleep with thoughts of the
BFG, Dirty Bertie or Superfudge. As his teacher, I believed that
I could provide the impetus for reading by tapping into his
interests and bridging the gap between his limited literacy
experiences outside of school and the rich, meaningful literacy
experiences of the classroom. Many Jasons enter our classrooms
and far too many fall through an ever-widening gap. The
barriers to literacy success become more and more impenetrable
as readers like Jason progress through the year levels. So, what
can we do to address the reading needs of our students? This

book is packed with ideas, strategies and information about
creating the best opportunities for literacy learners.
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It also examines the theoretical underpinnings that drive the
choices teachers make about literacy instruction.
The one-size-fits-all curriculum does not cater for the diversity
of learners sitting in our classrooms. There is no teachers’
manual that guides what we do on a daily basis and no
prescriptive set of lesson plans or set of blackline masters can
identify the needs of your students. Literacy instruction starts
with understanding your students and making available
authentic literature, providing opportunities for students to
work collaboratively with others, encouraging students to
inquire and ask questions, and creating a classroom that
accommodates a diversity of perspectives. Literacy teaching is
not a one-size-fits-all task to be carried out in a one-size-fits-all
classroom.
I have had the privilege of observing many outstanding literacy
teachers. Their in-depth understanding of literacy learning, their
passion for teaching and their willingness to know and trust
their students have been critical to their classroom success.
Literacy research has come a long way in the past thirty years
and the benefits of children working in groups, oral and written
language development, brain research, and the role of authentic
literature are a few of the research areas impacting on
pedagogy. Readers like Jason have the potential to be insightful
and engaged readers; however, reading materials, instruction
and literacy experiences must be aligned with students’ interests
and community practices. Literacy learning is dynamic,
multifaceted and fun. Recall a book from your childhood that
you could not put down. It is that same love of reading that
readers like Jason are desperate to discover.
Over the years, I have come to understand the connection
between my beliefs about literacy development (how reading is
learned and what literacy is for) and the types of reading events
and activities that can take place in the classroom. My beliefs

are based on values, attitudes, knowledge, history as a reader
and networks of interactions with others. These practices then
become the ways in which reading is defined for a particular
community (namely students, teachers, parents and
administrators). From my work as a teacher, researcher and
teacher educator, I now have a view of literacy that is socially
and critically situated.
I WONDER …
What do you recall about learning to read at school?
What are some guiding assumptions that your teachers may have
had about learning to read?
What is your fondest memory of reading in school? Why was
this memory significant for you?
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Teaching children to read and write is intensely interactive,
intellectually complex, engaging and challenging. Teachers
must decide on how to best meet the needs and challenges of all
their learners in the classroom. At the same time, teachers must
be mindful of accountability issues, national testing,
benchmarking and other outside pressures that make their daily
mark on instruction. When walking around a school, it does not
take long to realise that even teachers in the same school
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can operate from different implicit assumptions about literacy
development. In some classrooms, literacy is a static and
universal experience. All children receive essentially the same
curriculum, working through the same skills at the same time.
Literacy is viewed as a one-size-fits-all perspective. In such
classrooms, students’ life experiences are not seen as
contributions to literacy development.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
After studying this chapter, you should be able to:
identify the literacy gaps children experience in the twenty-first
century
describe the various models of schooling and their impact on
literacy learning and teaching

understand the guiding principles for effective and meaningful
literacy development in primary classrooms
describe the role the Australian Curriculum plays with regard to
literacy
appreciate the impact of one’s personal vision on literacy
development and teaching.
The gap: Literacy practices in school and outside of school
When asked what literacy is and how to teach literacy to young
children, many people offer singular definitions that literacy
involves reading and writing print-based materials. They have
images of children reading school textbooks and writing book
reports and essays. People generally hold on to such
explanations because these descriptions often reflect their own
elementary school backgrounds. There is a prevailing belief that
how they learned to read and write will work for the new
generation. What is not considered, however, is how incredibly
different children’s experiences around texts are in the twenty-
first century.
Literacy in context 1.1
Create a timeline of five to ten significant literacy moments in
your life. These events can be both positive and negative. When
do you remember learning to read? What books did you love as
a child? Who has had an influence on your literacy life? What
about writing events?
Students in today’s primary classrooms were born into a
kaleidoscope of images, print and sounds. They are constantly
bombarded with visual, audio and print technologies that
provide endless possibilities for interpretation and meaning
making. Favourite characters from books are now seen on small
and large screens (e.g. TV, movies and video games),
emblazoned on t-shirts and other personal belongings, and are a
source for interactive websites and other multimedia venues.
Children are able to navigate effortlessly among the many
formats of technology, as well as interact with these formats at
the same time. Children growing up in the twenty-first century
understand the fluidity of images, words, logos and icons; they

attend to not only the print on a page but also to the
topographical design of a page in print or on the screen (Moss,
2001). They pay attention to layout, captions and the
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visual presentation of information. Moreover, as children
interact with a range of textual materials and resources, they
come to participate in broader descriptions of reading and
writing.
Email, blogs, software applications, websites, text messages,
novels, list-servs, picture books, essays, textbooks, newspapers,
magazines, instant messaging, reports, chatrooms, music lists
and graphic novels are just a few of the textual resources that
children access as they construct meaning in classrooms and in
their daily lives. While students engage with this vast array of
textual materials in a variety of settings, many classroom
contexts continue to reflect a more static and traditional view of
what ‘counts’ in literacy practices. Given the speed with which
technologies advance, there seems to be an ever widening gap
between the literacy experiences offered in school, and those
available for students outside school walls. A report by Lenhart,
Arafeh, Smith and Macgill, (2008) indicates that students find it
difficult to see relationships between their home and school
digital literacy practices. The report found that even though
today’s students are ‘embedded in a techrich world’ (p. ii), they
do not regard their expertise in email, instant and text
messaging — ‘the material they create electronically’ (p. i) —
as ‘real’ writing. Such findings suggest that there is much work
to be done in understanding the digital divide between literacy
practices used inside and outside of school. In classrooms,
literacy is often approached from a print-based, linear
perspective, while literacy uses outside of school have a
pervasiveness of flexibility and multimodality. In order to make
sense of our current literacy practices for primary-aged
students, it is important to consider the views people have about
literacy development, how schools are organised to achieve
particular goals, and how departmental policies and national

priorities drive these actions.
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Perspectives on what it means to be literate
[T]he views that people have of what literacy involves, of what
counts as being literate, what they see as ‘real’ or appropriate
uses of reading and writing skills, the ways people actually read
and write in their daily lives, these all reflect and promote
values, beliefs, assumptions and practices, which shape the way
life is lived within a given society and, in turn, influence which
interests are promoted or undermined as a consequence of how
life is lived there. (Lankshear & Lawler, 1993, p. 43)
We must look at our beliefs about reading and writing. What
does it mean to be literate? Is it enough for the reader to be able
to read at a Year 5 level; or must the reader be able to critically
think about what he or she has read? Our beliefs about what it
means to be literate inform how we teach reading and writing.
Ideologies are systems of beliefs people carry with them as they
navigate their daily living. These beliefs are cultural, gendered,
religious, historical, political and social. As systems, they
function to create a view of reality that is seemingly
commonplace. In Australia, for example, it is expected or
commonplace that children will become proficient readers and
writers, and that these practices will be learned in school. Four-
and five-year-olds anxiously await kindergarten because they
believe it is a place where they will learn to read. It is also
expected that nine- and ten-year-olds will ‘make connections
between the ways different authors may represent similar
storylines, ideas and relationships’ (ACARA, 2013, p. 52).
Also, current literacy practices in classrooms indicate that
another common belief is that national testing is an adequate
method for documenting students’ skills and abilities in reading
and writing.
What is reading? Write your response on a sticky note. Share
your response with three other classmates and collectively

rewrite a definition of reading.
Review a sample of texts (e.g. picture books, young adult
novels, adult novels, magazines, websites, textbooks,
advertisements). What does one need to know to successfully
read and understand the different texts?
As a group, summarise, compare and evaluate the most
important aspects of reading.
Ideologies about reading and writing development are based on
values and always involve social contexts and histories. The
past three decades have demonstrated that there are competing
perspectives on the purpose for literacy development. For some,
literacy development should create productive citizens and
members of the workforce. For others, literacy should transform
the world, and in the process value diverse viewpoints,
experiences and histories of those involved (Cardiero–Kaplan,
2002). At the centre of all the debates on literacy teaching and
learning is how people define literacy and, ultimately, how they
define schooling. The next section details three possible ways
of thinking about schooling practices and the impact on literacy
development. The impact of departmental policies and school
priorities can be felt in the classroom through the types of
materials and activities available to teachers and students.
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Models of schooling that impact literacy development
The implicit theories and ideologies that people hold about
literacy, learning and teaching contribute greatly to the ways in
which schools are structured and organised. These theories are
the very fabric of how society views the purpose of schooling.
The context in which children learn to read and write can vary
tremendously — from traditional models of instruction to more
progressive and critical models. In the following discussion,
three models of schooling are presented along with how the
model of schooling impacts the nature of literacy instruction in
particular classrooms.
Learning is about skill building: Industrial model

The industrial model of schooling has persisted throughout the
twentieth century and now into the twenty-first. Schooling
practices designed according to this model are developed to be
efficient, uniform and competitive. The ideological perspective
in the industrial model is meant to create a workforce that is
compliant, punctual and accountable. In some respects, not
much has changed over the years. The technologies may be
more sophisticated but the pedagogy and the environment are
very much the same. Seymor Papert (1993) commented that
someone from the nineteenth century could enter a
contemporary classroom and know at a glance where they are.
The industrial model for schooling emphasises an ‘assembly
line’ model with standardised materials and events.
In an industrial model, there is a push to create uniformity
across schools, irrespective of the context in which they exist.
This means that all students should be provided with essentially
the same content and curriculum that focus on mastery of
identified skills. Reading and writing skills often move from
simple to complex. In doing so, all learners are expected to
attain the same understandings (Leland & Kasten, 2002).
While there are alternative models of schooling throughout
Australia, a driving force that keeps many schools attached to
an industrial model is the National Assessment Program –
Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). NAPLAN occurs in Years
3, 5, 7 and 9 and compares students’ results in literacy and
numeracy across
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all Australian states and territories. All students in the same
year are assessed in the domains of reading, writing, language
conventions (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and numeracy.
The tests provide schools, parents and education authorities
with comparisons over time and the identification of students
who fall at or below national minimum standards. Parents
receive an individual report on their child’s achievements in
their NAPLAN assessments compared to their school results and

their Australian cohort. Results for all schools are available on
the My School website, www.myschool.edu.au, and allow for
comparison of schools’ performances. My School enables the
profiles of almost 10 000 Australian schools to be searched.
Statistical and contextual information about schools is also
available, and schools can be compared with statistically similar
schools across the country.
NAPLAN is one way the federal government holds schools
accountable for achieving adequate yearly progress (AYP) in
the areas of literacy and numeracy. Given that accountability is
a significant aspect of the industrial model, schools use
standardised assessments to judge whether or not students
accomplish the desired outcome of meeting national standards.
The industrial model for education focuses on standardisation
and having students in an ‘assembly line’. Therefore, literacy
materials are standardised with an emphasis on skills. Students
complete reading worksheets and other activities focused on
attaining accuracy. Performance is critical. The teacher often
evaluates the quality of the performance by measuring student
work against predetermined standards and other benchmarks.
For example, a teacher in a Year 5 classroom considers how
students respond on an activity sheet attached to Olive’s Ocean
by Kevin Henkes (2003) that focuses on characterisation, plot
and setting. This work is then displayed on a bulletin board with
teacher comments that address the standard. Little room exists
for students to construct their own version or interpretation.
Students are held accountable for demonstrating a level of
proficiency in a literacy task before moving on to the next skill
or to a higher level.
To further highlight an industrial model for schooling, consider
Ms Day’s Year 1 classroom. Ms Day teaches at a school where
teachers are mindful of improving student results as there is
particular concern that the school is not performing well on
NAPLAN. Ms Day implements a prescriptive literacy program
that focuses on discrete skills in the reading process. In one
particular lesson early in the school year, Ms Day asks her

struggling readers to manipulate magnetic letters to form a list
of words that is in the same word family (mat, fat, cat, rat, sat
etc.). Students then complete a worksheet that has them
matching the words with pictures. Students write the words at
the bottom of the page. In later lessons, Ms Day has students
read from a decodable text that emphasises the rhyme pattern of
-at. Students read such sentences as ‘Up went the cat. The cat
saw a rat. The rat sat on the mat.’ Reading and writing
instruction from this viewpoint concentrates on sounds, letters
and direct comprehension of text in a sequential order. The
lesson is offered because it is a lesson contained in a reading
scheme previously used in the school and part of the prescribed
curriculum set by the publishing company who produced the
scheme.
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Given the lack of flexibility in the prescribed program, Ms Day
is not able to take into consideration her students’ experiences
with words and texts. She does not acknowledge how some of
her students have had many experiences with the ‘old
favourities’ The Cat in the Hat (Dr Seuss, 1967) and Eric
Carle’s Have You Seen My Cat? (1997). Conversations with
other teachers remind Ms Day of the constant pressure to move
students through the curriculum, while attending to such
standards and benchmarks as ‘know how to decode new and
familiar words using common letter/sound relationships’.
(Curriculum Corporation, 2005, p. 5).
Investigating a question: Inquiry model
In contrast to the industrial model of education, where the focus
is on compliance and accountability, an inquiry model of
schooling promotes the notion that schools should represent
one’s real life. There is not a one-size-fits-all perspective, but
learning and teaching can take many forms depending on the
students and teachers in the classrooms. The goal of education
should be to ‘cultivate productive differences’ (Eisner, 1990).

In the early part of the twentieth century, John Dewey
advocated developing curriculum with students’ interests in
mind. An inquiry model suggests that learning is best achieved
when students are invited to participate in making decisions
about their learning process: for example, locating topics and
interests to study; choosing materials to use; finding ways to
represent their learning (e.g. PowerPoint slides, reports,
dioramas, videos, wiki pages). The tasks and activities are
authentic and meaningful to the learners as they discover the
world in which they live. Reading and writing instruction
expands to include texts commonly used in settings outside of
classrooms (e.g. newspapers, news magazines, websites).
Within an inquiry model, teachers facilitate students’ learning
rather than direct it. There is an emphasis on ‘lifelong learning’
that is critical in nature and not dependent on standards or
minimums (Leland & Kasten, 2002).
The inquiry model of education recognises diversity and
multiple ways of knowing. Inquiry is learning from knowledge
domains and using the habits of mind of writers, scientists,
artists and historians. The inquiry model values and affirms the
cultural knowledge and language practices students bring to the
classroom. Literacy is not a competitive enterprise where some
students succeed and others fail; but rather literacy development
is collaborative with students working together on various
questions and projects.
Imagine Ms Day’s ideological perspectives shifting from an
industrial model to an inquiry model. Her literacy curriculum
embraces a greater degree of flexibility and authenticity. She
acknowledges and values that children come to school
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with different experiences, interests and strengths. The focus
for her curriculum is not just on skills, but on making meaning.
Her role shifts from transmitter of information to demonstrator
of different ways of learning, such as offering art as a way to
respond to texts, investigation centres for students to pursue
questions and writing centres to explore different genres.

Discussions about various topics are more conversational in
nature. Meanings are drawn from the text as well as personal
experiences.
Ms Day’s reading curriculum is not defined by a particular
prescriptive program (learning the -at word family), but by
students’ current interests. Ms Day’s students live in a
beachside community and they expressed an interest in the
recent shark attacks off the coast of Western Australia. To build
on this interest, Ms Day creates a text set on different kinds of
sharks, including picture books, websites and newspaper articles
on the attacks and ocean safety. Additionally, Ms Day made
available audio books on iPods and the computer for those
students that may need more support in reading the text. The
readability of the texts in the set is not controlled as it is in the
prescribed reading program. The literacy events and practices
include sustained and authentic uses of texts for seeking
information and answering inquiry questions. Children immerse
themselves into the inquiry by reading and writing about sharks
and shark attacks. They work collaboratively in groups that are
organised according to the different questions being pursued.
Reading and writing in an inquiry model are for purposes that
will make a difference in the lives of students as they learn
about the habitats and life cycles of sharks and ocean safety.
Texts and materials used for an inquiry into shark attacks
Problematising the status quo: Critical model
The industrial model requires students to know the basics but
not to question or challenge the perspectives presented in the
text. The inquiry model focuses on students’ personal interests.
A third model of schooling, the critical model, raises questions
about power, gender, social structures and identity, offering a
more global context for learning. In a critical model of
education, the conversation focuses on the ways in which
various literacy and cultural practices privilege and/or
marginalise people. Moreover, teaching and learning are seen as

political acts.
The critical model challenges long-held commonplace beliefs
and understandings. A critical literacy ideology encourages
students to interrogate the text and the curriculum, and ponder
whose voice is missing and how the story might be told from a
different perspective. So, when students in Year 3 read
biographies of early Australian explorers, they begin to question
why others are not included on the list (e.g. Indigenous
explorers, recent explorers, women explorers). Texts are placed
within historical and cultural contexts that provide a sense of
place. A critical literacy ideology empowers students and
teachers to actively participate in a democracy and move
literacy beyond text and into social action. Many educators and
parents believe that this critical perspective is not appropriate
for younger children because the texts are too difficult and the
issues too complex. While there may be a need for more
scaffolding and demonstration, young children are capable of
considering socially significant and important issues (Chaffel,
Flint, Pomeroy & Hammel 2007; Heffernan & Lewison, 2005;
Lewison, Flint & Van Sluys, 2002).
Questions posed by Year 1 students studying sharks and the
environment
If Ms Day operated from a critical ideology perspective, her
literacy curriculum would invite students to examine questions
related to social issues such as the environment, global weather
patterns and pollution that may lead to sharks swimming in
shallow water. Students may begin to investigate and
interrogate current environmental policies and practices. Similar
to the inquiry model, the texts are not controlled or prescribed,
enabling children to glean information from a variety of
sources.
The models of schooling as discussed here are found in
classrooms around the country. In some classrooms, national
testing has pressured teachers into focusing on organising their
curriculum around the teaching of discrete and sequential skills.

However, other schools work from an inquiry model where the
curriculum is student centred and students collaborate across
ages and year levels to understand the different functions that
literacy serves. Other schools have in place a critical model and
recognise that reading and writing do not take place in a
vacuum but occur in larger social, cultural, political and
historical contexts.
What lies beneath these three models of schooling are
assumptions about teaching and learning. The industrial model
presupposes that the ‘content of what an educated person should
learn was assumed to be universal; [therefore] all learners
received the same curriculum’ (Leland & Kasten, 2002, p. 8).
The inquiry and critical models of schooling are rooted in
significantly different assumptions, including the premise that
learning occurs when students have opportunities to construct
understandings with others, to explore their own interests and to
consider socially significant and real-life issues.
One of the goals of this book is to help teachers bridge the
chasm between the literacy experiences students have outside of
school and their literacy learning in the classroom. Recent
educational research and theory [e.g. Technology and
multimodal texts, (Kress, 2003; Kist, 2005; Leu, Kinzer, Coiro
& Cammack, 2004), New Literacy studies (Barton & Hamilton,
2000; Street, 1995), four roles of the reader (Freebody & Luke,
1990), critical theory (Freire, 1973; Shannon, 1990), social
constructivism (Vygotsky, 1978), and reader response
(Rosenblatt, 1978)] suggest useful guidelines for teaching
literacy today. In the next section several guiding principles for
effective literacy instruction are examined.
Six guiding principles for teaching reading and writing in the
twenty-first century
The industrial model of schooling has outlived its usefulness in
preparing students for their futures. With the rapid growth and
expansion of technology, participation in a variety of literacy
events and practices is more accessible than ever before.
Children have access to classmates in other parts of the world;

are reading texts that are available on the internet; and are
creating new formats and designs for information.
The following guiding principles for teaching reading and
writing present a broad perspective of literacy development and
set the foundation for each chapter in this book.
The first of these six principles declares that reading and
writing are not isolated, but rather involve social and cultural
understandings. The second principle notes that literacy should
be purposeful and take social goals into consideration. The third
principle states that some approaches to literacy are more
influential than others. Fourth, literacy is learned through
inquiry. Fifth, students use their knowledge and experience to
learn to read. The sixth principle suggests that everyday types
of materials and multimodal texts can be used to teach reading
and writing.
Principle 1: Literacy practices are socially and culturally
constructed.
What does it mean when it is said that literacy is ‘socially and
culturally constructed and situated’? The focus here is not on
the specific skills a reader or writer can do, but rather the
relationships that are established (Hamilton & Barton, 2001).
Any time people are engaged in reading and writing events, they
are constructing social relationships with others. When you
think of someone reading, or writing, do you envision someone
alone at home, in the library or maybe on public transport? That
is a common way to think about reading and writing but often
we read and write with others. Particularly in classroom
settings, reading and writing events involve groups of readers
and writers. Classrooms are collections of racial, ethnic and
cultural groups. This diversity is a resource. The different ways
students respond to and create meaning are valued. Children
often interact with each other and the teacher as they work in
reading groups, participate in book discussions and share their
writing with peers. These activities recognise the cultural and
linguistic diversity that students have as they enter the

classroom. Furthermore, these activities point to the fact that
literacy development is socially situated.
Literacy is collaborative and connected to life experiences of
the students.
How does this work in the classroom? Children learn how to do
literacy as a result of being a member of a group — whether the
membership is in a family, a neighbourhood, a place of worship,
or a classroom. Because they are members of these groups,
children observe others engaged in a variety of literacy
practices. For example, Rory, age 3, observes his mother
creating and using a grocery list when going to the shops. He
watches her write out the list of needed items and, while at the
shops, he also watches as she crosses off the items as they are
placed in the shopping trolley. These brief encounters with text
are authentic venues for how reading and writing are used to
accomplish particular tasks in the world. Other home literacy
practices occur because they have meaning and are useful in
people’s lives — for example, writing phone messages, reading
the mail, surfing the on-screen TV guide for a particular
television show, reading the newspaper, selecting an option on
the DVD menu, having a story routine before bedtime and
reading websites. Children learn that literacy involves and
extends to many people and has many goals.
Looking at what people do with literacy, with whom, when, and
how is central to the concept of literacy as a social practice.
Children also learn that different literacy events have different
expectations. Completing a skills worksheet requires a
particular way of being (quiet and individual), as does engaging
in a literature discussion about a favourite story (knowing group
etiquette and sharing ideas). Children become aware of what is
expected of them, what is important with regards to the literacy
event, and how to meet teachers’ and group members’ goals and
expectations. When completing a worksheet, children figure out
that there is often just one answer, while in a literature
discussion they discover that the teacher may value multiple

interpretations. Literacy practices, then, are not just about
learning a particular set of skills; literacy also includes learning
how to be socialised into
particular social practices in particular settings (Bloome &
Katz, 1997). For example, students need to know how to discuss
their ideas in a group setting, and how to write down and
present their ideas to others. This is all part of literacy. Literacy
practices do not exist in isolation. They are a part of social
relationships and networks. In this way, literacy is a socially
and culturally situated practice.
Principle 2: Literacy practices are purposeful.
We use different literacy practices to achieve different goals.
Barton and Hamilton (1998) identify a number of reasons why
people engage with literacy practices — that is, to:
organise their lives (e.g. agendas, daily journal)
communicate with others (e.g. letters, email and instant
messages)
entertain (e.g. novels and greeting cards)
document experiences (e.g. memoir, and poems)
make sense of their worlds (e.g. books and internet sites)
participate in social life beyond their immediate context (e.g.
reading about others).
Reading and writing practices in classroom settings can be
organised in ways that are authentic and purposeful, as the
above list suggests. Most of these events are social; meanings
are constructed as a result of working together. There are
abundant opportunities in classrooms to engage children in real-
life, social experiences involving literacy. Reading and writing
logs, journals, daily agendas and plans for inquiry projects help
children to organise their time during the school day. To
communicate with others, children write letters, email and text
messages. Reading and writing events inside other disciplines
(e.g. music, maths, science) can be designed to support learning
concepts and making meaning. Such practices might include
reading informational texts, recording facts in learning journals,

documenting questions, engaging in discussions, presenting
newly-learned information, creating powerpoint slides, and
other activities. The personal narratives, poems, essays and
other texts students compose during class are opportunities to
document their lived experiences. Students may read literature
selections for entertainment. Reading literature also encourages
learning beyond the immediate context in which they live. All
of these support the idea that people read and write for a reason.
Observe a classroom’s literacy block of time. What are the
types of literacy events that occur during this time? Pay close
attention to how the teacher and students interact with each
other. What are the types of roles they take on in the literacy
events? What are the purposes for these literacy events? Discuss
your impressions with peers.
Principle 3: Literacy practices contain ideologies and values.
Literacy practices are not neutral. They carry with them values,
ideologies, and beliefs about how the world should be organised
and operate. Recall the discussion on ideological perspectives
and models of schooling. Some literacy practices are more
valued in an industrial model (decontextualised vocabulary
skills) and others in an inquiry or critical model (reading
authentic texts to support vocabulary development). Brian
Street (1984, 1995) introduced two perspectives around literacy:
autonomous and ideological.
Autonomous model
An autonomous model suggests that literacy practices are
cultural and context free; that literacy in and of itself will affect
social and cognitive functions. Adult and basic literacy
programs often operate with this perspective — that if the
person learns to read and write, he or she will be a better citizen
with a brighter economic future (Quigly, 1997; Terry, 2006).
However, this perspective does not consider the social and
economic conditions of their lives. Literacy is seen as neutral

and universal.
To illustrate an autonomous view at the classroom level,
schools-based literacy practices are often seen outside the
context of everyday life. The practices and events one engages
in during school are usually separate from everyday practices
found in the larger social context. Students are asked to
complete worksheets and respond to literature in ways that are
very much defined by the school. Take, for instance, how
literature is usually read in the classroom. Children are
regularly expected to answer low-level, literal questions that do
not enhance the quality of the reading experience, such as
‘What are the characters’ names in Harry Potter?’ Occasionally,
inferential questions are asked (e.g. What would you do if you
were Harry?). On their own, however, students may
spontaneously share their excitement while reading the Harry
Potter series (Rowling, 1998) by discussing favourite characters
and re-enacting various scenes. In doing so, children address
more complex and sophisticated themes of the story.
School literacy practices often position literacy as an individual
exercise, whereby reading and writing are privileged over oral
language or other meaning making systems (e.g. drama, art,
music). The work students and teachers do around reading and
writing is accepted as natural and inevitable (Hall, 1998). There
are no questions about whether or not children should strive to a
particular standard or achieve a particular basic skill. The
autonomous model assumes that children should reach a specific
standard of skill; there is no questioning of this approach to
literacy. Skills and standards are established as ‘givens’. To
challenge such an idea would seem as though one does not care
about standards.
Ideological model
Counter to the autonomous model is what Street (1984) refers to
as the ideological model. This model of literacy takes into
consideration the ideologies and values that are associated with
the people engaged in the literacy practices. In other words,

literacy practices are embedded in a particular world view and
these practices are a part of the cultural milieu. An ideological
model suggests that literacy practices are related to people’s
everyday lives.
When teachers and students assume an ideological model of
literacy, they engage in literacy practices that are meaningful
and purposeful to those involved. These practices offer
opportunities to legitimise uses of literacy outside of school
contexts; to value alternative ways of meaning making (e.g.
oral, drawing, music, movement); and to recognise that literacy
is collaborative. From an ideological perspective, then,
classroom literacy practices are connected to the life
experiences of the students. In Ms Barwick’s Year 3 classroom,
the students express interest in the recent increase in ‘boat
people’ hoping to migrate to Australia. Many of the students in
Ms Barwick’s class are from Vietnam. They have life
experiences in border crossing based on their personal
experiences or those of a relative. Collaboratively, students read
and write about these events as they shape their own
understandings about immigration policies and practices. They
write letters to politicians, hold debates and problematise the
issues that confront their families.
Principle 4: Literacy practices are learned through inquiry.
Operating with an inquiry stance is critical to being an effective
teacher and, in particular, an effective reading teacher. In
chapter 11, an inquiry curriculum is discussed in more detail.
An inquiry stance is one that positions the teacher as a ‘problem
poser’ (Freire, 1985), asking questions about the ways in which
children come to make sense of squiggles on a page. With an
inquiry stance, a teacher considers that there may be more than
one way to approach the teaching of reading and writing.
Inquiry is not so much seeking the right answer (because there
often is not a singular answer), but rather seeking resolutions to
questions and issues. This opens the possibility for viewing
literacy in a more complex and dynamic fashion, rather than in

a one-size-fits-all formula. Teachers working from an inquiry
stance begin with what they know and juxtapose this knowledge
with new perspectives. In doing so, they come to new insights
while continuing to ask more questions.
What has been your experience with an autonomous model of
literacy? What has been your experience with an ideological
model?
What benefits or difficulties might occur if more ‘givens’ about
literacy development were challenged?
What would a classroom that uses authentic texts for literacy
development look like?
Share your responses with peers.
Inquiry implies a ‘need or want to know’ premise. For teachers,
the emphasis is on nurturing inquiry attitudes or habits of mind.
Students who actively make observations, collect, analyse,
synthesise information and draw conclusions are developing
useful problem-solving and learning skills. To illustrate,
students in Ms Cunningham’s Year 4 classroom are studying
their local community and they engage in a series of questions
around the contributions people have made to their community,
historical markers in the community and the history of the
monuments in the community. The students use a number of
resources — including text sets, interviews and photographs —
as well as go on an excursion. The knowledge and skills
students acquire in this inquiry can be applied to future ‘need to
know’ situations that students will encounter both at school and
at work. Another benefit that inquiry-based learning offers is
the development of habits of mind that can last a lifetime and
guide learning and creative thinking.
Children learn to participate in literacy events in a variety of
places.
Principle 5: Literacy practices invite readers and writers to use
their background knowledge and cultural understandings to
make sense of texts.

Children come into school bringing their varied linguistic
backgrounds and personal experiences. A child’s cultural
context and experience (e.g. considerations regarding what
types of texts are available in their home or whether English is
the child’s second, third or fourth language) play a significant
role in which literacy events and practices are valued in the
home and community in relation to which ones are valued in the
school context.
Moll, Amanti, Neff and Gonzales (1992) introduced the term
funds of knowledge as a way to talk about the historically and
culturally accumulated bodies of knowledge that people have
access to as they navigate their daily worlds. (See chapter 3 for
a more in-depth discussion on funds of knowledge.) For some
children, these funds of knowledge and experiences will closely
match the literacy engagements that are prevalent in school
settings (e.g. story reading, library trips, writing lists and other
documents, drawing pictures, talking about a previous
experience). Children with such practices as part of their
repertoire are said to have what Bourdieu (1986) notes as
cultural capital. Cultural capital consists of the resources at
hand that children draw upon as they make sense of the texts
and the literacy practices surrounding such texts. These
resources may be social, linguistic or cultural.
Other children may enter school without such a close alignment
between what they know and do and school-based literacy
practices. For children who may not have access to this type of
cultural capital, it means their ways of participating may not be
seen as valuable, or ‘count’ in the larger context of what it
means to be in school. Knowing the latest version of a video
game console, how to text message on a mobile phone, or the
power strength of a Pokémon trading card usually does not
count toward developing literacy knowledge. Acknowledging
the funds of knowledge and cultural capital that children bring
to the literacy event creates space and opportunities for children
to build on what they know as they engage with unfamiliar

practices around literacy development.
Literacy practices involve digital media.
How do children’s different linguistic, social and cultural
resources impact their literacy experiences in school settings?
What home experiences are made visible in classroom literacy
events?
It is important to consider how some literacy practices and
behaviours are privileged over others, and how teachers might
create more space in their curriculum for students to share their
interests, passions and resources in ways that matter. Disrupting
the notion that there is one universal way of thinking about
literacy (an autonomous view) is necessary to shift the
perspective of literacy as a set of neutral skills to a perspective
that literacy is socially and culturally constructed; that the
materials and availability of particular kinds of texts in the
classroom library matter to the students and the teachers they
work with.
Principle 6: Literacy practices expand to include everyday texts
and multimodal texts.
Children quickly learn to identify important icons such as
McDonald’s, The Wiggles, Nike, favourite cereal brands, and
cartoon characters’ names such as SpongeBob SquarePants and
Mickey Mouse. The early attempts often occur without explicit
attention or instruction. Rather, children are immersed in print
all around them, and as they progress through the year levels
they begin reading Pokémon and other trading cards, Harry
Potter series books, stories from reading anthologies,
Eyewitness books, and surfing the internet for information on a
hobby or interest. The notion of text expands to include
materials including ‘everyday’ materials such as
advertisements, Pokémon trading cards, information about
Beanie Kids or Gogo’s Crazy Bones and an array of posters.
Children live and operate in a world where language is not the

only form of communication: images, graphics, sound and the
nonlinear nature of such texts are also significant. As
Lotherington (2004, p. 317) states:
It is important to remember that the children in elementary
schools today were born into a world complete with digital
gizmos. To them, typewriters are almost as old-fashioned as
dinosaurs. Their history is one of computerization.
The multimodal literacies (a combination of linguistic, visual,
auditory and spatial modes) children are exposed to, through
interactive digital media, play a significant role in the ways
they access and use text (both print based and visual). Before
coming to school, many children will experience some sort of
interactive digital media, whether it is DVD movies, electronic
‘educational toys’ (e.g. Leapfrog), software applications for
computers, or handheld gaming devices such as Nintendo 3DS.
The access to digital media increases as children learn to surf
the internet for information; play online games, download music
files onto their iPods or smartphones; utilise text messaging,
email and chatrooms for communication; design blogs and
create movies with portable digital devices. Even children who
do not have access to home computers and other digital
platforms are able to access them at school, public libraries, and
friends’ and relatives’ homes.
Along with the digital world, there is also an explosion of what
Vasquez (2003) calls ‘pocket monsters’ (e.g. Pokémon, Yu-Gi-
Oh, DragonballZ, Digimon). These television-based cartoon
characters are central to trading card games. Young children
collect and trade cards. There are a wide range of icons,
abbreviations and symbols on each card that refer to
characteristics and attributes of the creature character. Children
are quite adept at ‘reading’ these cards and understanding the
available textual information. Not only are children reading and
trading cards, they are also redesigning and creating their own.
Redesigned cards indicate that children are sophisticated in
their interactions with these texts and digital media platforms.

Student-created trading cards
In school, then, it is critically important that teachers are more
aware and accepting of the multiliteracies that children bring
with them. These literacy practices can be used to support
reading and writing practices in school settings. Instead of
writing a book report, children can create digital movies to
explore the theme of the book. They can use text messaging to
talk about disruptions of grammar and conventions as well as
when this text messaging format of writing is appropriate and
acceptable.
List some of your experiences with young children and digital
media. What have you observed as they interact with these new
technologies?
Observe how children access and use technology in school
settings. What do these interactions say about the ways in which
digital media is viewed as a tool for learning?
The upcoming chapters in this book explore the following topics
in teaching reading and writing to primary school children: oral
language, culturally relevant pedagogy, models of reading,
curricular programs, emergent literacy, phonics, vocabulary,
comprehension, literature discussions, assessment, inquiry and
struggling readers and writers. Each of these topics (chapters)
uses the six guiding principles as a framework for discussing
how to effectively teach literacy.
Pedagogies for the classroom
Interview a small group of students about their perceptions and
understandings of what reading and writing are for. Possible
questions to ask include:
Why do people read and write?
How did you learn to read and write?
Who helps you with your reading and writing?
When you are reading, what do you do when you come to a
word you don’t know?
What types of things do you like to read? What do you like to
write?

Who do you know who is a good reader or writer? What makes
them that way?
How would you help someone who is having trouble reading?
How would you help someone with their writing?
Where do you like to read or write?
How do you choose what you read or write?
How often do you read or write in school and at home?
How do you feel about writing? How do you feel about reading?
Do you like to write? Why or why not?
Do you like to read? Why or why not?
How do you decide what to write about?
The Australian Curriculum
In 2008, Australian education ministers agreed on a national
curriculum to play a key role in delivering quality education to
all students from Foundation to Year 12. This decision was
based on a review of contemporary views of education and
documented in the 2008 Melbourne Declaration of Educational
Goals for Young Australians. It acknowledges the changing
ways in which young people learn, ‘promotes equity and
excellence and supports young Australians to become successful
learners, confident and creative individuals and active and
informed citizens’ (Australian Curriculum Assessment and
Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2010). This Australian
Curriculum (ACARA 2012a) sets out: the core knowledge,
understanding, skills and general capabilities important for all
Australian students. The Australian Curriculum describes the
learning entitlement of students as a foundation for their future
learning, growth and active participation in the Australian
community. It makes clear what all young Australians should
learn as they progress through schooling. It is the foundation
for high quality teaching to meet the needs of all Australian
students.
The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority
(ACARA), an independent authority, is responsible for the
design of the Australian Curriculum through consultation with
stakeholders including teachers, principals, governments, state

and territory education authorities, professional education
associations, community groups and parents.
According to ACARA, the benefits of implementing a national
Australian Curriculum are:
School and curriculum authorities can collaborate to ensure
high quality teaching and learning materials are available for all
schools.
Australian students will be better equipped with the skills,
knowledge and capabilities necessary to enable them to
effectively engage with and prosper in society, compete in a
globalised world and thrive in the information-rich workplaces
of the future.
Greater consistency for the country’s increasingly mobile
student and teacher population. (ACARA 2012b)
The Australian Curriculum: English curriculum (ACARA, 2013,
p. 4) is designed around three themes:
Language: knowing about the English language
Literature: understanding, appreciating, responding to,
analysing and creating literature
Literacy: expanding the repertoire of English usage.
The Australian Curriculum was trialled in 2012 in Australian
Capital Territory schools. The following example shows advice
provided by a principal and a practising classroom teacher for
pre-service teachers implementing the Australian Curriculum.
A principal’s perspective
We want our emerging teachers to remember that real contexts
lead to real learning and contexts will and should look different
for different people and groups. With this in mind, pre-service
teachers will be less likely to allow the curriculum to become a
controlling driver and have confidence to work with it and adapt
to student needs and interests. Teachers know their students and
their multilayered identities best and must always place
‘learning that matters’ at the centre of their planning decisions.
Perhaps the most important thing for pre-service teachers is to
hold a deep understanding of the intent behind the Australian
Curriculum: English. We love how this document elevates

literature to its rightful place and presents an expectation that
great texts are used, meaning is key and skills are developed in
context.
The Australian Curriculum is a framework — not a pick-up-and-
go manual. It provides a map of destination points but teachers
will always need a thorough knowledge of the terrain of English
as a learning area. It should support but not limit teachers’
decisions about what is the right pathway for each student.
While the Australian Curriculum describes the ‘what’, teachers
remain charged with the responsibility of designing the ‘how’ of
curriculum implementation.
Wendy Cave, Macquarie Primary School, ACT
A teacher’s perspective
It is crucial that pre-service teachers familiarise themselves
with the document. They have to know how to use it and what it
contains. The Australian Curriculum is set out in learning or
subject areas. Each of these subject areas includes a rationale
and a set of aims, an overview of the organisation of the
learning area, year level descriptions, content descriptions,
achievement standards, annotated student work samples and a
glossary. The learning area English is broken into three strands:
Language, Literature and Literacy. Sub-strands follow the
strands and each sub-strand is broken down further into year
level content descriptions.
Although the content descriptions are organised by year level —
that is, Foundation, Year 1, Year 2 and so on — it is essential
for teachers to know and understand the content descriptions
below their year level and above their year level. To be
effective, teachers need to start at point of need and for many
students, point of need doesn’t fall in their current year level.
However, the ultimate aim is for students to be working at their
current year level and to have achieved the Achievement
Standard for their year.
Kelly Booker, Executive Teacher, Macgregor Primary School,
ACT
Creating a vision for effective literacy instruction

All teachers bring to the classroom their understandings and
beliefs about literacy that influence decision making on a daily
basis. As evident in some classrooms, teachers group students
by ability for reading instruction, and they operate from implicit
assumptions that some skills are needed to be mastered before
one can move to the next level. Other teachers, like Ms Barwick
in the earlier example, offer their students opportunities to
interact and collaborate through various literacy events,
believing that literacy practices are embedded in the lives of
their students. Long before teachers enter the classroom, they
have a vision or image of what teaching reading will be like.
They hold images of the classroom (e.g. the arrangement of
furniture, types of materials accessible to the students), the
students (e.g. who will be in the classroom) and their own ideal
classroom practices (e.g. what type of teacher will they be).
These images may at times be congruent with what is actually
happening in the classroom; however, at times they may be at
odds with the current context. For many teachers, their visions
of the ideal classroom are unstated and implicit. Yet, when
these visions become visible, teachers may develop a more
defined sense of purpose (Hammerness, 2003) and, ultimately,
provide a literacy curriculum that is meaningful for students in
the classroom.
A teacher’s vision of what constitutes an ideal is personal and
individual. Duffy (1998) explains that when teachers develop
their own stances (visions), they also develop a ‘focused
mindfulness’ about their actions. This mindfulness is not based
on someone else’s vision for the future, but rather their own
values and intentions for the students in their classrooms. Duffy
notes that when given the opportunity to think deeply about
their practice, teachers began to seek alignment between what
they valued about teaching, learning and literacy and what
actions they were taking in the classroom. For example, current
and recurring debates in the field of literacy instruction include
questions such as ‘Should writing instruction include timed

writing prompts?’ or ‘Do levelled readers support reading
development?’ Questions framed this way really allow for only
one particular vision to emerge. However, when such questions
are asked differently — for example, ‘Given your vision for a
writing curriculum, what contributions do timed writing
prompts make?’ or ‘Given what you envision for students, what
role do levelled readers play in supporting students’ literacy
development and knowledge?’ — they allow space for teachers
to construct responses that reflect their own understandings of
literacy development and what they acknowledge as central to
creating literate students.
Create your vision of the ideal classroom engaged in literacy
practices. Consider the following five questions:
What are the sights and sounds of the classroom?
What are the types of materials students are accessing?
What is the role of the teacher? The students? The curriculum?
How do these factors relate to student learning?
What is the relationship between the classroom and the kind of
citizens you want to see in the twenty-first century?
Summary
This chapter provided a foundation for thinking about literacy
practices in the twenty-first century. Literacy practices are
rapidly changing from print based and linear, to multimodal and
digital. The definitions of reading and writing are changing
along with the technologies. Children are beginning to redefine
what it means to be ‘literate’ and how to flexibly navigate the
fluidity of images, words, logos and icons that appear before
them (either in print or on a screen). While there are significant
advances in our technologies and children’s access to such
technology, we continue to operate with outdated models of
schooling. There are three models of schooling discussed in this
chapter: industrial, inquiry and critical. The industrial model
emphasises compliance, punctuality and accountability. The
inquiry and critical models of schooling encourage students to
select personally meaningful topics and issues, to use authentic

texts (literature), to collaborate with others and to consider
alternative perspectives.
The guiding principles addressed in this chapter provide a
framework for addressing literacy development in the twenty-
first century. These six principles include:
Principle 1: Literacy practices are socially and culturally
constructed.
Principle 2: Literacy practices are purposeful.
Principle 3: Literacy practices contain ideologies and values.
Principle 4: Literacy practices are learned through inquiry.
Principle 5: Literacy practices invite readers and writers to use
their background knowledge and cultural understandings to
make sense of texts.
Principle 6: Literacy practices expand to include everyday texts
and multimodal texts.
These principles impact the type of curriculum, materials and
activities that teachers make available in their classrooms.
Moreover, as teachers begin to consider these principles in light
of their literacy curriculum, they begin to create particular
visions. Envisioning a meaningful and productive literacy
curriculum requires that teachers think deeply about their
practice. They seek alignment between their ideologies and
what they value and their instructional decisions and activities
in the classroom.
Terms to remember
Adequate yearly progress (AYP)
Autonomous model
Critical model
Funds of knowledge
Ideological model
Ideologies
Industrial model
Inquiry model
Multimodal literacy
National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy
(NAPLAN)

From theory to practice
How do you see the guiding principles described in this chapter
playing out in classroom literacy programs?
What tensions do you see between the guiding principles and
literacy instruction in an industrial model?
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A classmate in my pre-service teacher education program,
Rachel, and I often catch the train to our practicum school
together. During our half-hour train trip through the city, we
often discussed the courses we were required to take and how
they were going for us. One day, we compared courses that were
very helpful versus the courses we felt were less helpful. I told
Rachel that I didn’t think there were enough theory-based
courses in our program. This got a strong reaction out of
Rachel. Although the two of us agreed on many aspects
regarding our pre-service teacher education program, this was
apparently not going to be one of them.
Rachel questioned how theory-based courses could be helpful to
learning how to teach. She thought that there was already too
much theory taught in our courses and not enough practical
information. She wasn’t convinced that theory-based courses
were necessary. ‘What we really need,’ Rachel said, ‘are more
opportunities to learn what to do with kids. What if I have a
struggling reader in my class? I want to know a few different
activities to do with the student, so that he or she will learn how

to read.’ I, on the other hand, felt that having a solid
understanding of different theories would help us as pre-service
and novice teachers make more sense of all the different
positions and arguments that experienced teachers, researchers
and politicians have. I suggested to Rachel that without
knowledge of the theories that teaching methods and materials
are based on, it would be difficult for us to understand and
explain the reasons behind the various methods we use in the
classroom. What if, while teaching, we find that a method we
are using with our students is not working? How can we begin
to understand why the method failed if we don’t have theory-
based knowledge to draw from? How do we begin to explain
why we teach the way that we do when asked by parents and
administrators? We continued to talk back and forth, trying to
understand the role of theory in all of this. Like Rachel, I
wanted to be well equipped with strategies and activities, but I
also wanted to make sure that my teaching was grounded in
theories that were aligned with my own ideological perspectives
about how children learn.
Lev Vygotsky
Following my conversation with Rachel, I began to reflect on
the various theorists that have influenced the way I think about
teaching, learning and literacy. Developmental theorists, such
as Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky explored how children
construct knowledge. Piaget identified various stages of
children’s development, while Vygotsky examined the
influences of social and cultural factors on children’s
knowledge construction and cognitive development. Despite
their differences, Piaget and Vygotsky agreed that biological
and environmental factors play an equally important role in
children’s development, and that children are active in the
construction of their own knowledge.
Jean Piaget
Another theorist who had a tremendous influence on my

thinking is John Dewey. Dewey emphasised the importance of
experience on children’s development. Dewey perceived growth
and learning as ongoing processes that extend beyond classroom
experiences. Like Vygotsky, Dewey believed construction and
reconstruction of knowledge to be essential to people’s
understanding of society and of themselves, and not a process
that only children undergo. Dewey (1990) also suggested that
children should be encouraged to contribute to the curriculum.
In fact, children’s contributions should be evident in classroom
situations and in the classroom environment. Lillian Katz, who
is an influential scholar in the field of early childhood
education and whose work is very much in line with Dewey’s
theories, argued that too often in our classrooms, young
children are asked to engage in mindless tasks — such as
colouring, tracing lines, and filling in workbooks — that do not
challenge children’s cognitive development (Katz & Chard,
1989). Instead, children should be encouraged to interact with
their environment, content, and people around them in ways that
are personally meaningful.
John Dewey
All of the theorists mentioned primarily emphasised a
progressive, child-centred approach to teaching children, where
the interests of the learner are central, real life experiences are
valued, individual children are viewed as important, and the
learning process is just as critical as the outcome. Although I
support the child-centred approach, other theorists with a more
critical slant have influenced my perspectives on teaching,
including Paolo Freire and James Banks. Paolo Freire (1970)
uses the metaphor of the banking system to describe the
traditional classroom. In describing this approach, the teacher is
often seen as the depositor of knowledge whereas students are
perceived as the depositories of that knowledge; they are
expected to receive, memorise, and regurgitate information that
they are given. Freire (1970) stated that through this method,
teachers are assuming students have no prior knowledge of what

is being taught nor do students have the capability to question
what is being taught. In this way, students become oppressed
while teachers become the oppressors, most certainly without
realising it. As children continue storing their deposits, they
become increasingly incapable of developing critical
consciousness, which in turn may result in simplistic ways of
viewing the world unless they are exposed to critical
consciousness later on. James Banks (2004) adds to Freire’s
argument by stating that teachers and schools that value
bettering society must see the important role of multicultural
education in our schools as a means to obtaining a democratic
and diverse society.
Knowing these different theorists and their perspectives helps
me envision a classroom in which each student’s experiences
are valued and that these experiences are connected to new
concepts and insights in meaningful and powerful ways. I also
see myself more as a facilitator of children’s knowledge rather
than someone who applies the banking method and deposits
information into a student’s head. I realised that my ideas about
teaching aligned with aspects of progressive and critical
theories, that I can articulate my teaching perspectives as
belonging to these schools of thought. Theory informs practice
just as practice can inform theory. The knowledge of both
contributes to my growth and to how I view teaching and
learning.
As pre-service and in-service teachers, we all desire to become
good teachers, but unless we are knowledgeable of and
challenged to reflect on how different theorists define good
teaching, we are left to simply accept as best practice the
teaching methods that are taught to us. What we learn in our
pre-service teacher education programs may be representative of
good teaching methods, but we should be prepared to
intellectually critique those methods.
I WONDER …
What connections does Ms Campbell see between theory and
practice?

How do you see theory playing out in your own teaching
practice?
What learning theories are you familiar with?
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Inquiries in how children learn to read are ones that continue to
fuel questions and disagreements in research arenas, pre-service
teacher education programs, political debates, staff meetings,
and in parent and teacher meetings at local schools. Do children
learn to read by using books with highly regulated and
decodable words? Should children first identify sounds
(phonemic awareness) and map those sounds onto various letters
and eventually words (phonics)? Or should children be exposed
to whole texts that offer authentic uses of language and, through
immersion and demonstrations, begin to make sense of the text?
How one answers these questions depends on which theories of
learning and the reading process one ascribes to. These theories
then lead to particular kinds of curriculum and activities in the
classroom.
Politicians, administrators, curriculum developers, and national
education agencies often present the illusion that teaching
children to read is really quite simple. Teachers need only to
implement the prescribed curriculum and children will learn to
read. Missing in this equation is a discussion of the theory or
theories that the curriculum is based on. This is the stance that
Rachel in the opening vignette assumed. She wanted to know
activities rather than theory. What Ms Campbell points out,
however, is that it is important to know theory and the
connections to curriculum. When teachers understand theory,
they are able to create a literacy curriculum that reflects what
they believe about teaching, learning and literacy. Experienced
teachers know that the debate is not really about teaching
reading. It is about how children learn.
This chapter focuses on developing a knowledge base about the
reading process. Beliefs about the reading process and how
children learn to read have a direct impact on reading models,
curricula, and the texts made available in the classroom.

Included in this chapter are different theories and perspectives
about the reading process. These theories inform the
instructional decisions that teachers make on a daily basis.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
After studying this chapter, you should be able to: understand
the interrelationships between reading theories, curriculum and
classroom practice explain how the four literacy development
theories — behaviourism/bottom-up, psycholinguistics/top-
down, transactional and critical — link to classroom practice
describe how student and teacher responses to reading
curriculum implementation create a recursive process.
What does theory have to do with curriculum building?
Chapter 1 established the relationship between ideological
stances about teaching and learning and various models of
schooling. The connection between what one believes and how
schools are organised can be further narrowed to consider the
relationship between reading theories, curriculum and classroom
practices. Take, for example, a teacher who believes that
learning to read and write is a social endeavour. As part of her
literacy curriculum, she invites children to participate in
literature discussions. This teacher also believes that children
learn when their interests are addressed. She then considers
texts and materials for the literature discussions that reflect
students’ interests (e.g. based on gender, cultural background
and hobbies).
Consider the numerous classrooms you have observed. Select
one teacher and address these questions:
What did the classroom arrangement look like? How were desks
and chairs arranged — in small groups and work centres, or in
rows with desks all facing one direction?
What types of texts were available for students to read —
levelled readers, children’s literature, chapter books, or a
combination?
What kinds of engagements and activities were offered?
Given your findings, what assumptions can you make about how

the teacher views learning to read and write?
Building curriculum is dynamic and responsive; it is about
putting beliefs into action. Curriculum is not a set of
unchanging mandates, but rather an organisational device that
helps teachers think about their classrooms and the practices
that operate in their classrooms (Short & Burke, 1991; Short,
Harste, w/Burke, 1996). Curriculum should be in a constant
state of flux to meet the needs of the students in particular
classroom situations (Mills & Clyde, 1990).
Pedagogies for the classroom
Go to the Australian Curriculum website
(www.australiancurriculum.edu.au) and read the Aims and
Rationale for the English curriculum. What types of classroom
practices do you think are being encouraged through the new
Australian Curriculum? Present your findings using a mind map.
Discuss how this compares to current classroom practice that
you have seen through observations or practicum experiences.
While it is tempting to match particular beliefs and theories to
curricula and activities, it is not usually that simple. In some
cases, there may be a disconnect between what one believes
about how children learn to read and write and the type of
curriculum implemented in the classroom. A teacher may
believe that reading is about meaning making, but use a
curriculum that emphasises word identification and phonics at
the expense of constructing meaning. This disconnect often
happens when there are external pressures from local, state, and
federal mandates. In recent years pressure to achieve in
National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy
(NAPLAN) testing has left little room for teachers to consider
their own theoretical positions in relation to teaching reading
and writing. Given particular mandates, teachers, particularly
beginning teachers, often find themselves implementing
curriculum without much consideration of the underlying
theories. Because curriculum is based on theory, it is important
to be familiar with different theories of how children learn to
read and write.

The following questions may serve as a starting point for
linking theory to curriculum building.
FIGURE 4.1 Theory as a foundation for classroom instruction
Uncovering your beliefs about teaching and instruction
What constitutes good teaching? What constitutes good teaching
of reading?
What environments support literacy learning?
What knowledge and experiences are most valued?
Focusing on these questions begins to challenge traditional
ways of thinking about theory, curriculum and classroom
practices as static and unchanging entities. The next section
profiles four beginning teachers as they make decisions
regarding classroom instruction. The connections between
theory, models, curriculum, and practices are made visible as
each teacher considers instructional practices in light of what is
believed about literacy and learning.
Week 2
Chapter 5: A new generation of readers: Skills and abilities of
children in the new millennium (McLachlan, Nicholson,
Fielding-Barnsley, Mercer & Ohi, 2014, pp. 68-80), provides a
useful discussion of some of the key concepts introduced this
week, including multimodality and multiliteracies. It situates
these terms within the classroom context, and also considers
how these understandings interact with models such as the Four
Resources Model.
A new generation of readers: skills and abilities of children in
the new millennium
Hill and Mulhearn (2007) argue that the term multiliteracies is a
useful way to combine understandings of the ways in which
print-based literacy and digital technologies combine.
Commenting on their study of Australian children’s engagement
with multiliteracies, Hill and Mulhearn (2007, p. 61) state:
Digital literacies and print based literacy are not oppositional

concepts, both are required. In fact, traditional print based
reading and writing was found to be vitally important. For
example, writing was significantly important as a memory tool,
for planning, designing and recording ideas and information.
Reading was critically important for predicting, scanning,
interpreting, analysing and selecting from the abundance of
information. Interestingly the children switched effortlessly
between genres, scanning material for information, following
procedures, searching by scrolling through menus, and
interpreting icons and written instructions on tool bars. In other
words, although reading, writing, listening and speaking are
paramount, today’s students must be able to do more, as they
decipher, code break, achieve meaning and express ideas
through a range of media, incorporating design, layout, colour,
graphics and information.
Martello (2007) suggests that children today experience:
• Multiple sign systems. • Multiple modalities of literacy.
• Recursive communication and cognitive processes. (Recursion
is the process of repeating items in a self-similar way; it
involves, for instance, trying out all possible routes through
electronic games.)
• Literacies which encompass electronic, techno, digital, visual
and print-based media. Martello also argues that children
experience most of these multiliteracies in their homes and
community backgrounds and often their knowledge and
experiences outstrip those of their teachers. Martello suggests
that children use their experiences and knowledge for
multimodal communication which encompasses either spoken or
written language, visual images or all three together
(multimodal). The New London Group (1996; Cope & Kalantzis
2000) explain that these understandings involve what they call
‘design elements’, which include audio, visual, gestural,
linguistic and spatial meaning, or all five elements together,
which they term ‘multimodal’. As an example, Hill (2005)
found the three- to four-year-old children could represent
meaning with digital photos and text and could also import slide

shows, change lay-out and so on.
Information technologies impact on children’s experiences of
literacy, from the food and clothing they consume to the toys,
media and electronic games by which they are entertained.
Children’s access to and experience with these literacies in
early childhood and the junior school will situate them in a
variety of new social practices. As Luke and Grieshaber (2003,
p. 8) argue, new information technologies inuence the ‘everyday
practices of child-rearing and play, socialization and cognitive
development, and of course, text practices and pathways to
literacy’.
Marsh (2005b) proposes that children construct their identities
in relation to the media and popular culture that they encounter
in homes and communities. She argues that the texts and
artefacts rooted in popular discourse are pivotal to the range of
skills, knowledge and understanding which facilitate decoding
and encoding of a variety of multimodal texts and are essential
ingredients of play, rituals and developing identity.
McNaughton (2002) similarly argues that the centre or school
curriculum must be wide enough to incorporate the familiar
while unlocking the unfamiliar, thus building on the knowledge
and understandings that children bring from engagement with
literacy practices at home. For this reason, teachers need
knowledge of the literacies that children encounter out of the
school or centre so that they can build on children’s literacy
understandings, as well as introducing them to approaches to
literacy that they have not encountered at home.
Marsh (2005a) states that children are immersed in digital
technologies in their homes and wider community settings,
which are part of cultural, media and digital literacy practices.
Marsh cites a survey of 1852 parents and caregivers of children
aged birth to six years in England which found the following:
• Children spent an average of just over two hours engaged
with a screen each day (TV, DVD, computers, games etc.)
• 22 per cent of children can turn the TV on by age one, 49 per
cent by age two.

• 53 per cent of children used a computer at home on a typical
day.
• 27 per cent below four years of age used a computer
independently at home.
• 47 per cent could use a mouse and click by age four. • 27 per
cent had used a digital camera to take photos.
• 15 per cent had used a video camera. Although the survey
revealed significant use of information and communication
technologies (ICT) by children at home, a parallel survey of
these children’s teachers revealed that many teachers were
uncomfortable with the use of digital technologies in the
classroom. In particular, 25 per cent of teachers did not plan for
the use of computers in the early childhood setting, 74 per cent
never planned for the use of digital cameras and 81 per cent
never planned for the use of video cameras. In addition, 83 per
cent said that they would never plan for children to visit
websites during their time in early childhood. Marsh states that
this mismatch of home and centre or school experiences is of
obvious concern for children’s developing knowledge and skills.
In a similar study in Australia, Zevenbergen and Logan (2008)
found that 95 per cent of four- to five-year-old children had
access to computers somewhere outside of the educational
setting, with 87.31 per cent of children having access to a
computer in the home context. The majority of use was for
educational games (59.9 per cent), non-educational games
(79.54 per cent) and drawing (48.92 per cent), with some use of
software packages, writing activities, modelling or copying of
others, internet searching and free play. According to Vaughn
investigates how a mouse works the parents, these children were
developing a range of computer-related skills, such as using a
mouse, nding letters and numbers on a keyboard, using drawing
tools, loading CDs and DVDs and using a printer. Of interest is
that boys were more frequent users of computer technologies
and are more likely to play games, both educational and non-
educational, which has implications for curriculum planning for
boys in educational settings. Roberts, Djonov and Torr (2008)

also identied gender differences in their study of children’s use
of e-games.
In a small study of 11 four-year-olds in Tokyo, Yamada-Rice
(2010) found that visual-based media were well utilised in all
homes, with most children using DVDs, drawing, picture books,
television, websites, cameras, mobile phone cameras, drawing-
based software, visual email and webcams for use with Skype in
their weekly or monthly activities at home. Yamada-Rice
suggests that the study, while small and with a relatively
privileged group of children, suggests the importance of
working with the visual mode with young children.
The implications of these studies are obvious. Children are
entering early childhood and primary with a range of skills,
abilities and experiences that children of the past did not have,
and therefore teachers of the future need to both understand
ICT, and plan for their use in the classroom if they are going to
provide a curriculum that is culturally and socially meaningful
to children. As Turbill (2002, n.p.) argues:
Reading and the learning-to-read process is certainly a far more
complex process in the ’00s than it was in the ’60s. It is
imperative, I believe, that teachers of reading – and particularly
teachers of early reading – broaden their view of what reading
is in today’s world. The digital world is here to stay, and it is a
highly literacy-dependent world in which readers and writers
need to have highly refined skills and access to multiple
strategies that go beyond paper-based print texts.
Yelland (2006) argues that there has been a ‘moral panic’
around the use of technology and computers, in particular in the
early childhood setting. She says this is often framed around the
notion that children will spend so much time on a computer that
they will not experience traditional play materials, although this
myth has not been reinforced by research. In fact, Yelland cites
a study by Shields and Behrman (2000) that demonstrated that
children between two and seven years of age spend on average
34 minutes per day using computers at home, with use
increasing with age, and that computer use at home is associated

with slightly better school achievement. Furthermore, children
score better on literacy, maths, computer knowledge and
following instructions than children who have not experienced
computers (Blanton et al. 2000). Yelland argues that the
computer and other digital technology should just be considered
like any other resource in early year settings, like blocks or
puzzles. She considers that the ‘moral panic’ position has raised
questions about what children will get out of using technology.
These questions are not usuallyasked in relation to traditional
play materials such as books, puzzles, blocks and play dough.
So, should popular culture feature in early childhood education?
In prior-to-school settings, few would regard children’s
knowledge of the characterisation, storylines and narrative plots
in popular culture as valid or even remotely related to literacy,
even though children enjoy reading this material and it
motivates interest in literacy (Marsh 2007). In contrast,
children’s knowledge of characters in traditional children’s
literature, book-handling skills, concepts about print, print
directionality and conventions are often used as the sole
indicators of children’s orientation to literacy (Makin et al.
1999).
This focus on ‘school literacy’ alienates some children, who
feel that their knowledge and skills are not valued. Centres and
schools need to have a range of images and texts that reflect
diverse cultures, languages and family structures (Marsh 2007)
and to encourage text reconstruction through retelling,
replaying, rewriting and redrawing from different perspectives,
with different characters and values. Gee (2004) proposes that
children cannot feel that they belong when their homes and
community practices are ignored, dismissed and unused. Many
children who are exposed to popular media and digital
literacies, such as the internet, video and computer games, use
forms of language that are complex and technical, which is very
different from that valued in schools and centres. While the
children may find these literacies more compelling, they may
not be utilised in the educational setting (Marsh 2007). These

children often disengage with ‘schooled’ literacies and
pedagogies that fail to draw on knowledge and experiences
gained outside schools and centres.
Thinking about technology and teaching for the next generation
of learners: multimodal approaches
So, if traditional approaches to literacy are unlikely to engage
the new generation of learners, who are more likely to have
experienced multimodal approaches to gathering information,
then what do teachers need to do in the classroom? Luke and
Freebody (1999b) argued some time ago that for children to be
able to engage with multiliteracies, they need to be able to do
the following:
• break the code of text
• participate in the meaning of text
• use text functionally
• critically analyse and transform texts.
Encouraging understanding of multiliteracies requires teachers
to be able to promote critical literacy, so that children can
engage with different literacies and understand their strengths
and weaknesses. Teachers need to encourage children to
question taken-for-granted values, beliefs and assumptions
underpinning texts and social relationships. They need to open
them up to alternative perspective taking. For example, teachers
could encourage children to search for resources on the internet
for their project topic on ‘recycling’ and consider the various
arguments put up for either use of natural resources and the
disposal of waste. For children who have never experienced
composting, worm farming or recycling plastics and papers, all
the ideas will need critical discussion and evaluation of what
perspective is being presented.
The main elements of a multiliteracies pedagogy (New London
Group 1996), or the approach to teaching and learning, include:
· situated practice, in which learning is based in children’s
experiences
· overt instruction of the metalanguages needed to talk about
designed artefacts

· critical framing, which takes into account the cultural context
of the designs
· Transformed practice – application of ideas in new contexts.
These elements require teachers to think about children’s
progress in literacy in different ways – an idea that is further
developed by Bearne (2009).
Bearne (2009) argues for the development of a framework for
describing children’s multimodal texts, based on the semiotic
theory of Michael Halliday (1978). Semiotics is the study of
signs and sign processes and includes the meaning of language.
Bearne suggests the following analytic categories for analysing
children’s texts:
· image – content, size, colour, tone, line, placing/use of space
· language – syntax and lexis
· sound/vocalisation – content, emphasis, volume, vocal
intonation, pause, pace
· gaze – direction of gaze of communicator or character in
representation
· Movement – gesture and posture.
Bearne states that analysing children’s texts using this
framework provides more information about the child’s thinking
and understanding than an analysis within a traditional literacy
lens (spoken or written language), as much would be missed.
She suggests teachers provide models, examples and deliberate
teaching about different features of texts and modes and how
they communicate to an audience. In addition to a multimodal
pedagogy, Bearne suggests there is a need for some way of
describing and assessing children’s progress, as current national
testing in most countries is based on written evidence.
Assessment of children’s multimodal text production is not
readily catered for.
In Australia, the Department of Education, Science and
Training’s (DEST) Raising the Standards proposal (2002) notes
that teacher competency in the use of ICT is related to
dimensions of ICT. Teachers with higher levels of ICT
competence are argued to be best placed to support children’s

learning within a multiliteracies framework.
There are a few frameworks for multiliteracy teaching and
learning that are worth thinking about for use in classrooms.
The first framework is by Unsworth (2001), which employs a
dual model framework. Both models have a circular design. The
first, the ‘Literacy Development cycle’ (LDC), focuses on
pedagogy and includes stages of modelled, guided and
independent practice. In this model, students move from
teacher-guided lessons to independent construction of
multimodal texts. Zammit (2010) states that the LDC draws on
an approach to literacy developed in the late eighties in
Australia, utilising the theories of Jerome Bruner (1978, 1985)
and Lev Vygotsky (1978), emphasising scaffolding and working
with students towards independence.
Unsworth teams the LDC model with the CAMAL (Curriculum
Area Multiliteracies and Learning) framework, which provides a
structure for designing learning experiences that integrate
explicit teaching about what texts and images mean. Although
both models draw on the notion of scaffolding learners towards
independence, Zammit (2010) argues that the dual model is
cumbersome, is only focused on written and visual modes, and
doesn’t make explicit that teachers need to teach the ‘critical
framing’, which is the final stage of independent practice in the
LDC.
The New London Group (1996) pedagogical approach and the
revised version entitled ‘Learning by Design’ (Healy 2008;
Kalantzis & Cope 2005) can be seen to be similar to Unsworth’s
dual framework, in that both recognise the active,
developmental nature of learning and describe an ‘active
pedagogy’ (Cope & Kalantzis 2000) which moves students from
understanding to challenging existing ideas and creating their
own products in different formats. The Learning by Design
framework has four processes of learning: experiencing,
conceptualising, analysing and applying within a curriculum
area. These are roughly equivalent to the New London Group’s
four processes of situated practice, overt instruction, critical

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