INFORMATION LITERACY and evidence-based practice
Teachers and teacher-librarians collaborate to establish an ongoing, school-wide literacy programme to teach students the process of research and the procedural skills of information literacy.
Literacy
Teachers and teacher-librarians collaborate to establish an ongoing, school-wide literacy programme to teach students the process of research and the procedural skills of information literacy.
How well do our students learn what we set out to teach them? There are many opinions, but not enough facts. This article summarises the results of 35 years of international surveys of achievement in reading, mathematics, and science. There is some support for our reading programmes in the cross-national data, but serious questions remain about our weaknesses in mathematics and science.
How effective are secondary school students’ information-literacy skills in the tertiary environment? When the authors looked at the expectation Years 12–13 teachers have of their students’ information-literacy competence in their first tertiary year, and compared this with polytechnic lecturers’ experience of first-year students’ competence and the students’ own expectations of their confidence and competence, some thought-provoking patterns emerged.
Investigating suspected underachievement in literacy in an intermediate school revealed that the levels of achievement in reading and writing were indeed a concern, especially the writing of Years 5–9 students. Teachers from the intermediate, seven primary schools, and one secondary school worked together to strengthen their curriculum understandings of students’ writing and the coherence of their classroom and instructional practice.
Can teachers themselves answer the questions they ask the children in their classrooms as part of instructional literacy programmes? This article explores the results of a Phonological Awareness Test administered to a sample of teachers in order to establish their personal phonological awareness understandings.
In recent years, the cries for teachers to have high expectations for all their students have been heard far and wide—yet, research in the expectancy area carried out at the whole class level has been sparse. This article reports findings from a study aimed to address this gap in the literature. Teachers who had high or low expectations for all students in their classes were identified. Student achievement in reading, and their self-perceptions, were tracked for one year.
Critical literacy is a critical thinking tool that encourages readers to question the construction and production of texts. This article discusses the findings from a collaborative research project that examined the use of critical literacy strategies in guided reading. Specifically, the authors discuss the strategies of: direct teaching of metalanguage; questioning; text selection; and (re)structuring of guided-reading lessons.
How do students from minority groups develop effective literacy skills? The perceptions of two groups of Pasifika students—one achieving and one underachieving in literacy learning—are compared. They identify pedagogical practices and family or community factors as influential on their literacy learning.
Collaborating in the secondary department of an area school, teachers and researchers developed their understanding of content area literacy and their skills in developing instruction to address literacy challenges across curriculum and assessment tasks. The teaching approaches they developed succeeded in raising students’ literacy skills and knowledge.
Practical Research for Education, 38, October 2007, pp. 44–49 (reprinted with permission)
Evaluation of a pilot programme in UK primary schools to support children (often British born) who are beyond the initial stages of acquiring English as an additional language to develop the cognitive and academic language required for academic success.