New times: the place of literacies and English in the curriculum

Libby Limbrick and Margaret Aikman

Abstract

The article¹ discusses the varied and changing concepts of literacy and English. It is argued that these changes have implications for the place of literacy in the New Zealand curriculum. Literacy and literacies must be more explicitly addressed at all levels of the curriculum and within all curriculum areas. Reference is also made to how literacy is addressed in the curriculum documents of some other English-speaking countries.

Introduction

In this, the first decade of the 21st century, it is evident that we live in very different times from a generation ago—and, indeed, even a decade ago, when the current New Zealand curriculum for English was developed. In these new times of globalisation, increased communication through information technology, greater intra- and inter-national communication, and an increasingly skills-driven society, high levels of literacy are demanded of all citizens. In such a society, what should be the place of literacy in the curriculum? Should literacy be a focus of the English curriculum statements? If so, should it be a focus at all levels of the curriculum, or just the early levels, and should English be the focus for the upper levels? Is literacy the responsibility of just English teachers, or do all teachers have a responsibility for literacy learning? For that matter, what is English, and what is its relationship to literacy? Or should we be talking about literacies? These questions have been challenging the educators who are currently engaged in reviewing the New Zealand curriculum framework, particularly the English curriculum.

Debates about the relationship between English and literacy, and concerns about literacy levels, have been common in countries where English is an official language, such as Australia, England, Singapore, and Canada, for the last two decades; see Literacy for All in Australia (Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs, 1998), the Literacy Task Force Report (1997) in England and Wales, and the “no child left behind” legislation (2001) in the United States. While concerns were expressed in New Zealand about the roles of literacy and the subject of English in the early and mid-1990s, it was not until the late 1990s that these came into sharp focus (Ministry of Education, 1999a). The concerns were largely as a result of international assessment data that showed wide disparities in outcomes for specific groups of students—in particular, Māori and Pasifika students. As a result, literacy achievement has contributed to the anxiety over curriculum emphases and has become a crucial education goal. Higher student achievement in literacy is a key policy priority for New Zealand, as it is for a number of other English-speaking countries.

The tension in the relationship between the subject of English and literacy arises in part because, as Luke(2004) states, “English educationhas reached a crucial moment in its history … because of changing demographics, cultural knowledges, and practices of economic globalization” (p. 85).

The debate is further complicated because of the range of interpretations of what the subject of English is, and what it is for, as well as multiple conceptualisations of literacy, and what is involved in becoming literate. For some, it seems that English and literacy are almost interchangeable; for others, they are distinguishable fields of learning. Is English a study of the language of English-speaking people, or is it literary studies? Is it communication studies, or is it a specific set of skills that should be acquired within a wider context of learning? Should the curriculum be an English curriculum, a language curriculum, a literacy curriculum, a literacies curriculum, or a communication curriculum? Should it be all of these?

At a time when the structure and content of the New Zealand curriculum are being reviewed, and educators are establishing a “design for the future” (Kress, 1995, p. viii), it is essential to come to some consensus over these issues because:

[English is] above all, the subject which deals with the means of representation and communication: the means whereby we say who we are, to ourselves and to others; the means whereby we can examine the visions others before us have had about themselves and their times; and the means of giving voice to our visions, for ourselves, and for others: the proposal of alternatives for debate, and, after that debate, for common action.

(Kress, 1995, p. viii)

And as Luke (2004) argues:

… without a radical re-look at purposes, consequences, powers and practices of English, and by implication literacy, (our addition) we risk descending into politically driven and historically naīve arguments over methods competencies and approaches. (p. 94)

What is the difference between literacy and English?

Before examining the differences and similarities between learning in English and in literacy, it is useful to try to establish what is English and what is literacy. We will also look at how, over time and across communities, understandings of these two concepts have differed.

What is English?

Is English the study of language or literature, or indeed literatures? Is it becoming literate? Or is it all of these? Peel, Patterson, and Gerlach (2000) point out that English as a subject is only 150 years old. Prior to that, it was simply the language of England, and of countries initially colonised by the English. Studying English was learning to speak and, for some, to write the language. According to Peel et al., in the 18th century and earlier English was taught by means of a set of practices designed to teach what we now call literacy. The English language as we know it now only became established in the Middle Ages; reading and writing were restricted to a minority of the population. It was not until the mid-19th century that the study of English was split into language and literature, and not until the mid-20th century that the subject was divided into expressive English, imaginative writing, and literature for primary and lower secondary school; English and media studies in upper secondary schools; and critical theory and interdisciplinary studies in universities.

Today it seems that once again English as an intellectual field is being destabilised by rapid sociodemographic and economic, cultural, and linguistic change. As Green (2001) puts it, “speculating on how English teaching is changing and what it will look like in the future is a perhaps all too familiar exercise in recent times. But it is unavoidable …” (p. 249).

For a long time English has been a complex subject with different, even competing, approaches to teaching and learning, all of which are still influential today. Within the past 50 to 60 years these approaches have included: a skills approach, with an emphasis on the procedures for reading (decoding) and writing (encoding); cultural heritage and growth approaches, which have emphasised personal growth and knowledge of a literacy heritage; and the critical–cultural approaches, which acknowledge that literacy practices vary from site to site and are culturally bound, emphasising the importance of analytic and critical approaches to literacy and the cultural and political implications (Wyatt-Smith, 2002). Wyatt-Smith acknowledges that, in Australia, approaches to the teaching of English are frequently eclectic, incorporating aspects of various philosophies and pedagogies. This would probably be true in New Zealand as well.

Peel et al. (2000) argue that similar tensions exist in England, Australia, and the United States. In these countries there are professional associations for teachers of English that have a strong identity, but even within these countries there are differences as to what is the subject of English— the outcome, they claim, of the “incursions of cultural studies, media studies, drama, communication studies and literacy practices associated with electronic communication technology” (p. 346). They go on to suggest that a shift towards literacies will be the dominant trend as we enter the 21st century, and that literary studies themselves will become increasingly specialised and elitist. Many of these shifts, they claim, are the result of the impact of new technologies that allow students in schools to work not only in a range of media but in collaborative and global ways that could not previously be imagined. Luke (2004) agrees that it is becoming increasingly hard to define or classify English, partly because, despite these widespread changes in society, school curricula tend to be conservative, and partly because teachers generally have strong loyalties to particular historical versions of English:

There is disquiet among English Teachers … some wonder aloud whether English teaching might return to a kind of depoliticized ‘normalcy’ of a stable and uncontested curriculum taught to groups of students with more or less similar English-speaking backgrounds. Yet others ask why and how schools can persist in teaching as if there were such a curriculum and as if today’s students were the monolingual and mono-cultural print-based kids of another era. (Luke, 2004, p. 93)

Luke suggests that these tensions are exacerbated partly because in English, in comparison with mathematics and science, the body of knowledge that informs the curriculum and the pedagogy is less clear cut: that is, there is less distinction between content and practice in English than there is in maths or science. Unlike other subjects, English is the content under study and also the medium through which it is studied—it is “both subject and object, lingua franca and corpus, instructional medium and messages” (Luke, 2004, p. 91).

In England, the most significant shift has been from a debate about English content—the reading and production of imaginative literature— to a government-directed focus on a problem with literacy. There, English means something very different in primary schools from what it means in secondary schools, and in further education (Peel et al., 2000, p. 30).

There seems to be a consensus that it is difficult to define what English is, partly because it is a hybrid subject. Teachers of English have traditionally been uneasy about the definition of their subject matter. Inevitably, the edges of the subject have become blurred, creating for the teacher a perpetual crisis of identity. As we will examine in the next section, definitions of literacy have been equally changeable, and at times ephemeral.

What is literacy?

Literacy and literacy education have undergone radical transformation even within the past 100 years, and in recent times have been hotly debated.

Traditional views of literacy

In New Zealand, as in Canada, Australia, the United States, and England, the “great debate” over literacy education has taken the form of a near-continuous heated dialogue over instructional extremes such as phonics and whole language. The debate has centred more on a search for finding the “right” and “correct” scientific methods of teaching reading and writing, and targeting these at marginalised groups, and less on the concepts of literacy and the implications of changing interpretations of literacy for literacy education. As Stephen May (2002) has noted, these debates have generated more heat than light.

In fact, until recent times the term “literacy” was rarely used other than in relation to “illiteracy”. The curriculum statements and handbooks of the Ministry of Education, and previously the Department of Education, referred only to reading and writing up until the late 1990s. The English curriculum published in 1994 uses the term language, referring to literacy only once: “Seeking to develop high levels of literacy, the English curriculum therefore establishes language aims for the three ‘strands’ …” (Ministry of Education, 1994, p. 6). The stated aims focus on language. Essentially, in this context, the use of the term literacy means literacy in written English; that is, reading and writing.

In the later part of the decade, The Learner as a Reader (Ministry of Education, 1996) talks about the “power of literacy” and begins to describe literacy more broadly. For example, “literacy is not limited to paper and books” and “literacy involves reading and writing texts which use a variety of linguistic and symbolic codes. There are also different media” (p. 11).

The term literacy has more recently been used by the Ministry of Education in many of its policy, strategy, and curriculum statements, professional development initiatives, teacher handbooks, and research. For example, the National Government established a goal to address “the literacy crisis”. However, this goal related only to reading and writing.

Neither the Literacy Taskforce (Ministry of Education, 1999a) nor the Literacy Experts Group (Ministry of Education, 1999b), set up to establish a strategy informed by research, defined literacy, but both referred consistently to reading and writing. In 1999, competence in reading and writing was what was accepted as literacy in New Zealand.

Freebody and Luke (1990), Luke and Freebody (2001), and subsequently Freebody (2004), writing about the roles of a literate person (the terms “practices” and “resources” are used in the later papers), were an influence in moving this debate from a polarised view of reading and writing to a wider understanding of what it means to be literate and an understanding of the complexity of the concept of literacy. They introduced the notion that, in order to be literate, a reader (and, by implication, a writer, listener, speaker, viewer, and presenter) needs to be a code breaker, a text participant, a text user, and a text analyst.

The most recent definition of literacy in handbooks for teachers (Ministry of Education, 2003, 2004) states that “literacy is the ability to understand, respond to, and use those forms of written language that are required by society and valued by individuals and communities” (2003, p. 13). The parameters are still reading and writing, although the place of oral and visual language is acknowledged. It is stated that literacy involves combinations of text and image and needs to take into account changing social and cultural environments as well as the influence of technology on communication. It is surprising, perhaps, that this definition does not reflect comments later in the text, which appear to recognise that over the last decade a substantial body of literature has been written about critical literacy, multiliteracies, and new technologies.

In some other contexts, definitions and conceptualisations of literacy have become richer and more future-focused. We will examine some of these in the following section.

Evolving views about literacy

Although today many people will still argue that literacy is the ability to read and write, many definitions of literacy are broader. These definitions recognise that literacy is influenced by the complexities of texts and practices required by increasingly diverse communities using rapidly changing communicative modes. Literacy (including reading and writing) is becoming increasingly understood as a social and political construct that is influenced by sociocultural experiences and expectations. As Gee (2000) says:

A Discourse-based, situated, and sociocultural view of literacy demands that we see reading (and writing and speaking) as not one thing, but many: many different socioculturally situated reading (writing, speaking) practices. It demands that we see meaning in the world and in texts as situated in learners’ experiences—experiences which, if they are to be useful, must give rise to midlevel situated meanings through which learners can recognize and act on the world in specific ways. (p.6)

May (2002) and Au (2001) argue that there are many literacies other than traditional “academic literacy” that must be acknowledged and valued if students from diverse backgrounds are to become literate.

Unsworth (2002), indeed, maintains that the concept of being literate is an anachronism because being literate today will not constitute being literate in the future. He asserts that we can only consider that we are in a state of becoming literate.

Consider these two definitions, for example:

Literacy is the flexible and sustainable mastery of a repertoire of practices with the texts of traditional and new communications technologies via spoken language, print, and multimedia.

(State of Queensland, Department of Education, 2000, p. 9)

Literacy is most productively understood as an open-textured category of socio-cultural practices.

(Freebody, in press)

It appears that definitions and explanations of literacy in the 21st century are more pervasive, open, and yet contextually bound, than in previous times. They may be used with very broad connotations—for example, computer literacy, dance literacy, scientific literacy—implying “flexible and sustainable mastery of texts”, where texts are interpreted as meaning systems in a specific context.

Multiliteracies

The rapidly changing nature of literacy in the 21st century has led to the term “new literacies” being used by a number of writers (e.g., Kalantzis, Cope & Harvey, 2003; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Leu, 2000; Leu, Kinzer, Coiro & Cammack, 2004). Others suggest that the term “multiliteracies” better captures the complexity of the plurality of texts, which include visual, audio, spatial, and gestural elements, as well as the written form, are included, and which use a multiplicity of communication channels that influence “literate practices”. The term “multiliteracies” also takes into account the cultural and linguistic diversity evident in communities globally (Kalantzis et al., 2003; The New London Group, 2000). This diversity includes subcultures such as technical, sports, and adolescent peer groups, in which literacy is used in specific and specialised ways:

Texts are integral parts of innumerable everyday ‘lived, talked, enacted, value-and-belief-laden practices’ that are carried out in specific places and at specific times (Gee et al., 1996:3). Reading and writing are not the same things within a youth zine culture, and online chat space, a school classroom, a feminist reading group or within different kinds of religious ceremonies.

(Lankshear & Knobel, 2003, p. 8)

The New London Group (2001) provides a cogent and convincing argument that to be literate in a multiliterate world is to be able to access, and use, a range of design elements in making and creating meaning through integrated multimodal texts. Conceptualising literacy as multiliteracy transforms views of what it means to be literate today. The group challenges the view that literacy refers only to formal standard written language. It asserts that, today, we need to be engaged in a revisioning of literacy for the future: becoming literate is an active process of “designing the future”. Kress (2005) and Johnson and Kress (2003) argue that the changes in social, economic, cultural, and technological aspects of society imply that we cannot continue with existing theories of meaning, because “globalisation is placing new demands on the kinds of ‘literacies’ we need in the workplace as much as in the communication demands of everyday life” (Johnson & Kress, 2003, p. 5).

The influence of multimodal and multilingual texts on literacies has highlighted the need for definitions of literacy to include “critical literacy”. Critical literacy (or critical awareness, or critical thinking) has become pervasive in discussions on literacy and literacy education, and in policy statements, but the terms are used interchangeably and inconsistently (Jesson, 2001; Lankshear & Knobel; 1997). Jesson proposes that critical thinking emphasises strategies and processes to enable learners to think critically, whereas critical literacy focuses on appraising the world views contained in texts.

Lankshear and Knobel (1997) suggest that there are three ways in which critical literacy becomes part of literacy and literacy practices:

It is predominantly critical literacy, as described in the last bullet point, that is implicit in changing concepts of multiliteracy and is concerned with issues to do with access and equity (Comber, 2001; Freebody, in press; Kress, 2000; Lankshear & Knobel, 1997, 2003; Luke, 2000; Luke & Elkins, 2000). It is often argued that critical literacy belongs in the upper levels of primary and secondary schooling; however, as Comber (2001) asserts, critical literacy is an aspect of literacy today that must start in the early years of literacy learning.

In trying to answer the question “What is the difference between literacy and the subject of English?” we have identified a range of views that are held about each term. What is significant, and similar, is that both are constantly evolving.

It appears that the tension inherent in literacy versus English is most problematic in secondary schools. In resolving this tension the concept of English literacies, promulgated by Wyatt-Smith (2002), is worth considering. This concept assumes that cultural, social, and cognitive factors are all implicated in both literacy and in English, and consequently in students’ literacy achievement. Becoming literate involves cultural knowledge and understanding of social practices that use language for thinking and making meaning in the culture (Gee, 2000). The implications are that English as a subject needs to include knowledge of how a language works in particular texts, and how it typically works in a culture. In this model, English literacies integrate social semiotics, literate capabilities, and explicit knowledge of how language works in texts and how ideologies are incorporated in discourses and linguistic choices. This last aspect includes knowledge of a wide range of texts: for example, canonical texts, online texts, and texts valued in different cultural communities.

Literacy and English are clearly part of a paradox. Literacy is a component of English, but is also wider than the study of English; and yet English is a part of literacy. Literacy, then, is both particular and universal.

Literacy, like no other element in the culture of our society, is bound up with cultural and social possibilities. It represents a society’s means of representing the world to itself; it is its means of representing itself to itself.

(Kress, 1995, p. 74)

When, where, and how should literacy be addressed in the New Zealand curriculum framework?

In this section we address the question of where literacy and English should be separated—or if, indeed, they should be separated at all. We also look at how literacy might be included in curriculum documents other than English.

The introduction of the national literacy strategy (Ministry of Education, 1999a) was followed by a period of consultation to review curriculum developments. This consultation process, summarised in the Curriculum Stocktake Report (Ministry of Education, 2002), renewed the discussion about the place of literacy in the curriculum framework. Overall, the report recommends a more explicit focus on literacy, with references to critical literacy in the achievement objectives and to literacy in the essential learning areas. The outcomes of the curriculum consultation process and more recent discussions on the online curriculum project (www.talk21earn.think.com) have raised several themes that are relevant to this paper, and identified in national and international literature. These themes (discussed in more detail below) are the need for literacy to be addressed at all levels of the school, the need for greater curriculum integration, and the need for a more future-oriented curriculum focus on literacy.

Literacy needs to be addressed at all levels of the curriculum

While the role of literacy is self-evident early in English education, it is just as pivotal in English in the middle and upper compulsory levels of education.

At present, some secondary English teachers do not consider it their task to teach basic literacy skills such as reading and writing, arguing that literacy skills should be well established by the time students enter secondary school (May, 2002), and that Years 9 and 10 should be the start of preparation for qualifications such as the National Certificate of Educational Attainment (NCEA) (Ministry of Education, 2002). However, implicit aspects of literacy are assessed in NCEA English, particularly at Levels 1 and 2, where students are required to produce formal writing and to read and understand written texts. By setting literacy standards for students to achieve, NCEA is encouraging teachers to be more aware of students’ literacy needs. Such an emphasis demands that English teachers address explicit aspects of literacy teaching and learning. This is the trend in other English-speaking countries such as England and Canada, where literacy is being included in secondary school curricula.

Clearly, if literacy learning is conceptualised as a spiral process in which one is always becoming literate (Unsworth, 2002), then there should be an explicit focus on multiple aspects of literacy learning at all levels of the curriculum.

Literacy needs to be integrated throughout the curriculum

An Australian report, Literacy Demands of the Post Compulsory Curriculum (Cumming et al., 1998, cited in Wyatt-Smith, 2002), which examined the demands on and the place of literacy in secondary schools, has proposed that literacy needs to be addressed in all curriculum areas as well as at all levels. But, it asserts, rather than a “literacy across the curriculum” approach, a more apposite term is “curriculum literacies”. The writers argue that the more traditional definitions of literacy as a single set of skills, primarily reading and writing, are not appropriate for the environments in which students engage in multiple literacies almost simultaneously, as in secondary schools. The concept of curriculum literacies “promotes the development of an increased pedagogic sharpness on literacy as it is enacted in curriculum-specific ways” (Wyatt-Smith, 2002, p. 60). This view recognises that there are semiotic systems and ways of communicating that are subject specific. English teachers, therefore, should not be solely responsible for teaching literacy. Subject specialists must be actively engaged in literacy learning and teaching.

In New Zealand this view is being supported by a number of educators (such as Davey, 2003; English, 2002; May, 2002; Wright, 2004) who advocate that curriculum specialists at all levels of the school need to take responsibility for teaching the specific vocabulary and language use of their curriculum areas. In their view, literacy should be specifically conceptualised within particular curriculum areas.

In an effort to address widespread concerns about curriculum crowdedness and compartmentalisation the Curriculum Stocktake Report (Ministry of Education, 2002) recommends that cross-disciplinary teams should be involved in the revision of the New Zealand curriculum framework.

Literacy needs a more explicit and future-focused role in the curriculum

Literacy and the subject of English were previously debated at the time of the development of the English in the New Zealand Curriculum document in 1992–1994, when English was sited within the Language and Languages area. However, as we noted earlier, the final English curriculum document mentioned literacy on only one occasion (Ministry of Education, 1994, p. 6).

The Curriculum Stocktake Report addresses the issue of literacy in a revised national curriculum. It recommends that the eight essential skills be reduced to five, and frames them as “broad concepts of literacy skills” that need to be seen as “fundamental to learning in the essential learning areas” (Ministry of Education, 2002, p. 14). The proposed modified essential skills are more directly related to literacy. They are: creative and innovative thinking; participation and contribution in communities; relating to others; reflecting on learning; developing self-knowledge; and making meaning from information.

The report further recommends that the aims and achievement objectives of the revised curriculum should be more future focused. Again, an explicit reference is made to literacy. The proposed future-focused themes are: social cohesion; citizenship; education for a sustainable future; bicultural and multicultural awareness; enterprise and innovation; and critical literacy (including digital literacy).

This more future-focused view of literacy suggests the influence of writers such as Kress, Luke, and the New London Group. However, there needs to be greater discussion of the specific ways in which the New Zealand curriculum can reflect this recommendation.

Literacy issues for teachers

Currently, the voice of the primary and secondary school sectors appears to be represented by different organisations with different perspectives. The New Zealand Reading Association represents the views of primary and intermediate school teachers through its publication of Reading Forum New Zealand. The New Zealand Association of Teachers of English represents those of secondary teachers through its publication English in Aotearoa. An example of the tension between literacy and the subject of English being a greater issue for secondary teachers than primary teachers is that English in Aotearoa has published approximately 11 articles over the last four years that address this relationship. Over the same time, however, there appear to be no articles in Reading Forum New Zealand that directly address the issue. In Australia, although English teachers and literacy teachers are represented by different organisations (the Australian Association of Teachers of English and the Australian Literacy Educators’ Association respectively), both groups work closely together on literacy and English issues for the teaching profession.

A second issue is that, although some schools appear to have embraced the notion that literacy is a cross-curricular, school-wide concern (Taylor, 2002), many schools continue to see literacy initiatives as the domain of the English teacher. It is encouraging, however, to find recent developments in some secondary schools that suggest changing views about the place of literacy, and where the responsibility for literacy teaching lies (Wright, 2004). An increasing number of primary and secondary schools have appointed teachers to Literacy Leader positions to co-ordinate whole-school planning. It is acknowledged that this has been more problematic for secondary schools, which have large student populations and timetables organised around specialised subjects, than for primary schools, where literacy is more often a key organising principle.

Another issue is that of diversity. For many teachers in New Zealand in 2005, the “kaleidoscopic” classes (Nicholls, 2003) they face are culturally, linguistically, and ethnically diverse. Teachers need a robust understanding of language and literacy development for learners of English as an additional language as well as those for whom it is their first language (Au, 2001).

New Zealand teachers are also faced with a lack of clarity in official documents about what literacy is. As discussed earlier in this paper, definitions that frame literacy as the ability to read and write are increasingly seen as too narrow. There are calls for a more comprehensive future-oriented definition of literacy that will equip learners for the information-based economies and mass-media cultures in which they will need to participate.

There are strong indications that the place of literacy needs to be more explicit throughout the English curriculum, at all levels. Wyatt-Smith (2002) sees the need for a sharpened focus on literacy, especially at secondary levels. Looking towards the future, we need to identify the place of literacies in specific curricula, and teachers need to take responsibility for literacies in their curriculum areas. This is going to require discussion on what literacy means in the 21st century’s multimodal, multilingual, and multicultural global community.

Future imperatives

It is evident that the debate about the place of literacy in English has been ongoing. As we have discussed, this has been exacerbated by lack of agreement on what constitutes literacy, where it should be taught, and what constitutes English itself. There is considerable evidence that understandings of literacy are undergoing radical shifts under the influence of globalisation and changing technologies.

While literacy outcomes have traditionally been implicit in the English curriculum, greater emphasis is now placed on the important role that literacy plays in all aspects of effective learning, and in raising achievement for diverse groups of learners. There is a widely expressed urgency to meet the needs of diverse student populations. In New Zealand, a number of schools are turning to the literacy initiatives of other countries and states, such as Queensland’s New Basics initiative (State of Queensland Department of Education, 2000), for greater guidance.

Along with a growing acceptance that literacy is an integral component of English, literacy needs to be a curriculum component at all levels and all curriculum areas. However, there is still disagreement about what literacy skills are, and whether they are generic to all curriculum areas or specific to each curriculum. While both the handbook Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9–13 and the Literacy Leadership programme affirm the view that teachers in all subject areas need to teach literacy strategies, the focus has tended to be on teaching generic strategies, such as how to identify the main ideas in text and how to use graphic organisers. There needs to be more discussion of whether there is a generic set of literacy skills that can be applied across all curriculum areas, or whether there should be a focus on specific curriculum literacies (Literacy Task Force Report, 1997; Wyatt-Smith, 2002).

The curriculum documents of a few English-speaking countries suggest that many of the issues challenging New Zealand are being experienced elsewhere—with a range of responses. A common theme is that there needs to be a more explicit focus on literacy at the upper levels of compulsory schooling. Similar debates about literacy and English canbe found in England, Singapore, Queensland, Tasmania, Ontario, and South Africa,² all of which acknowledge the influence of technology and increasing globalisation on an understanding of what it means to be literate. South Africa has undertaken a far-reaching reform of its whole curriculum, in which English language arts have been subsumed into a much larger curriculum area called “language, literacy and communication”.

Kress (2002) states that he has no doubt that this move is absolutely correct. It appears that only South Africa and the innovative New Basics programme in Queensland have moved away from an umbrella title of English for the curriculum document.

To ensure that both present and future students participate fully in the society in the new times of the 21st century, it is critical that dialogue about the place, purpose, and nature of literacy English occurs within and between all sectors of schooling (early childhood, primary, and secondary), particularly with those involved in teacher education.

In conclusion, we cite the Literate Futures Report (State of Queensland Department of Education, 2000). For the educational community, the task is “to begin a rigorous debate over which repertoires of literacy practices students will need in the economies and cultures, communities and institutions ….” (p. 9), in New Zealand as elsewhere.

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Notes

1&;&;&;&;This article is an abbreviated version of a discussion document prepared for and funded by the Ministry of Education.

2&;&;&;&;Queensland: http://education.qld.gov.au/corporate/newbasics Canada: http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng

England: www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primary

Tasmania: http://www.education.tas.gov.au/english/liteng.htm

Singapore: http://wwwl.moe.edu.sg/syllabuses

The authors

Libby Limbrick (PhD, MA(Hons), DipTchg) is head of the Centre for Language and Languages at the Faculty of Education, University of Auckland. She is involved in pre- and in-service teacher education and is a member of a number of Ministry of Education advisory groups and the English curriculum review reference group. As national director of the consortium of three teacher education institutions she led the development and delivery of the training programme for the Resource Teachers: Literacy, which continues as a graduate and postgraduate diploma of literacy education.

Email: l.limbrick@ace.ac.nz

Margaret Aikman (MEd(Hons), DipTchg) is principal of Hay Park School, a decile 1 primary school in Mt Roskill, Auckland. She worked for several years as a senior lecturer in the Centre for Language and Languages at the Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, where she was involved in pre- and in-service education, and literacy research and professional development projects.

Email: MargaretA@haypark.school.nz