Frameworks for Literacy Education Reform

Research is the differentiator between the reliable and the uncertain, the element that provides an unimpeachable credential of practical validation. When advocating for literacy education reforms, stakeholders should settle for nothing less, avoiding the temptations of political expediency that too often limit the prospects for sustained student achievement.What's needed to move the needle on literacy learning within a research-validated perspective. To this end, ILA offers four frameworks for developing and evaluating literacy education reforms, each focused on a specific component of the education sector: literacy teaching and teachers, schools and schooling, student support, families and community.Each framework sets out a list of research-validated approaches to literacy advancement that is designed to function as a blueprint or rubric to inform, refine, and assess proposals for reform. The more such proposals are aligned with these approaches, the stronger their potential will be to produce meaningful and sustained improvements in literacy education. Moreover, each framework includes a detailed list of supporting sources to facilitate exploration into the underlying research base.There is much that can be done to raise students' literacy achievement, and many individuals and organizations must accomplish the work. We must pool resources both within and outside of schools, including those of teachers, school administrators and supervisors, universities, parents, the business community, policymakers, and foundations. Collectively, these stakeholders can have a positive impact on the literacy learning of children and adolescents and, in turn, create a pathway for success for the next generation.These frameworks are meant to provoke conversation and inspire action to use multiple pathways to support the literacy achievement of all children. There is much to be done and there are many to draw from in order to ensure equitable, accessible, and excellent educational opportunities that will result in high literacy achievement for all. This is every child's right and everyone's responsibility. The time to take action is now.

Accommodating multiculturalism and biculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand: implication for language education.

The field of language education in Aotearoa New Zealand, as elsewhere, has developed significantly since its early and almost exclusive focus on the acquisition of English literacy in schools. As the field has expanded, so too has the range of language education sectors addressed and the theoretical approaches and understandings employed in relation to language and literacy education. Both developments have resulted in a more coordinated literacy education policy - exemplified to date most clearly in the New Zealand Literacy Taskforce - and a more situated, less monolithic understanding of the widely different literacies available to learners. Despite these developments, however, one area still remains noticeably under-theorised and marginalized in relation to the ongoing development of language and literacy education policy in Aotearoa New Zealand - the place of second language learners within it. This paper explores this lacuna and the potential policy implications of addressing and integrating first and second language educational concerns within an evolving national literacy education policy. This has particular implications for the further development of bilingual education - both for Maori and, possibly, other minority groups - and for the related possibilities of multicultural education. It also requires a wider and clearer recognition of minority language education rights, as developed within both international law and political theory, in order to apply these rights appropriately to an Aotearoa New Zealand context which is currently witnessing rapid and extensive demographic (and linguistic) change

Media Literacy: An Alternative to Censorship

Media literacy education has come a long way since the 1970s, when the first "critical thinking" courses were introduced in a few American schools. Most educators today understand that with the revolutionary changes in communication that have occurred in the last half-century, media literacy has become as essential a skill as the ability to read the printed word. Equally important, media literacy education can relieve the pressures for censorship that have, over the last decade, distorted the political process, threatened First Amendment values, and distracted policymakers from truly effective approaches to widely shared concerns about the mass media's influence on youth

Feasibility Analysis and Scheme Design of Library Information Literacy Education Game APP

The article outlines the concept of information literacy and the background of national information literacy education. Under the current situation of national information literacy education, it proposes a new idea of information literacy education game APP, analyzes its feasibility, and finally designed the implementation plan for information literacy education game APP from four aspects: establishes a development team, design principles, scenarios and levels design, promotion and evaluation

The literacy myth: literacy, education and demography

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What (actually) matters in literacy education: Contributions from community psychology

This paper describes the critical role community psychology theories played in reframing literacy research involving mainly Māori and Pacific peoples’ extended families and communities. Within a critical social constructionist paradigm, ecological systems theory and holistic, integrative theories of wellbeing brought much-needed new thinking to how family-focused adult literacy education might be theorised and practiced. This reframing marks a challenge to and movement away from still-dominant Western individualistic, behavioural orientated, skills-based and formal economy-focused ways of thinking about people’s literacy abilities. It highlights the important role of community psychology in developing theory, informing policy and enhancing practices in culturally diverse education settings to achieve both educational and quality of life aims. Improving quality of life is not possible through literacy education in and of itself, but rather through the inculcation in programme design and delivery of those things which are fundamental and critical to the participants’ overall wellbeing and welfare

Escritura Colaborativa Digital en los Semilleros de Investigación para la Formación en Literacidades

The pedagogical innovation herein described, which emerges within the framework of research education, seeks to articulate digital collaborative writing between teacher educators and student teachers. The text consists of four parts. With the background of research training in teacher education, we first outline academic and digital literacies, which serve to theoretically scaffold the proposal. The second part explores its core categories: research seedbeds, collaborative writing, and digital writing. Then, the exercise of collaborative writing between teacher educators and student teachers is described considering methodological aspects that have served to implement it and that can guide its subsequent evolution, particularly in relation to multimodality. We conclude that collaborative writing as a pedagogical strategy has not been sufficiently investigated, yet it may contribute to the preparation of new researchers as it focuses on the development of academic and digital literacies.Con esta propuesta pedagógica, que surge en el marco de la formación en investigación, se pretende articular la escritura colaborativa digital entre maestros formadores y en formación [MF&Mf]. El texto consta de cuatro partes. Tomando la formación en investigación para los maestros como telón de fondo, se empieza por esbozar las literacidades académicas y digitales, que sirven como andamiaje teórico para la propuesta. En la segunda parte se exploran sus categorías centrales: los semilleros de investigación, la escritura colaborativa y la escritura digital. Luego se describe la propuesta de escritura colaborativa entre MF&Mf en virtud de aspectos metodológicos que han servido para implementarla y que pueden orientar su posterior evolución, particularmente en relación con lógicas multimodales. Se concluye que la escritura colaborativa en tanto estrategia pedagógica es un ejercicio poco investigado que puede contribuir a la formación de nuevos investigadores desde un enfoque en literacidades académicas y digitales

The use of evidence in language and literacy teaching

Literacy education deserves evidence-based decisions. Low literacy costs the British economy between £1.73bn and £2.05bn per year (KPMG 2006) and the social and emotional costs are equally high. Yet we know that children who struggle with literacy can make fast progress when the instructional content and pedagogy closely match their needs. This chapter describes some of the paradigms and problems associated with the use of evidence in language and literacy education with examples from specific interventions and programmes. It raises issues about how literacy teachers are professionalized to attend to evidence, both the evidence in front of them and the research evidence 'out there'. It argues that to support teachers in using evidence effectively, we need to frame the research evidence about effective content, pedagogy and learning in ways that recognize the power and limitations of different evidence paradigms. To ensure that all children make fast progress, we need to appreciate how teachers develop broad and diagnostic understandings of literacy and literacy learning and of how policy and curriculum frameworks impact on the classroom decisions they make

Media Literacy in the Hungarian Educational Policy Arena (1995-2012) = A médiaműveltség a magyar oktatáspolitikában (1995-2012)

The aim of this dissertation is to understand and present the position of media literacy in Hungarian education policy, the historical path of media literacy education in Hungary, and the roles of various actors in the development of media literacy education. The research project had three major questions: How and why did media literacy education in Hungary make its way into the public education system during the 1990s? In what ways did this area of study evolve over time? What is the position of media literacy education in the contemporary education system in Hungary? For finding the answers to these questions, the methodology builds on a research framework inspired by critical discourse analysis and interpretive policy analysis

Margaret Douglass: Literacy Education to Freed Blacks in Antebellum Virginia

In the 19th century, voices for social reform reached a high pitch—both figuratively and literally. Recognizable women’s voices were heard in various reform movements: Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, Dorothea Dix, Harriet Tubman, Catherine Beecher and her sister Harriet Beecher-Stowe. These women were active in bringing about change in the societal roles and treatment of women, children, slaves, freedmen, and persons who were illiterate, disabled, poor, or incarcerated. A name not as recognizable, yet often held as an example of activism for educational rights of emancipated blacks, is that of Margaret Douglass—a white Virginian woman who was jailed for a month for violating an 1849 law prohibiting the teaching of reading and writing to freedmen. Although Douglass’ actions and the consequences faced for them have earned her a modicum of notoriety, further consideration may affirm that the limited status she holds as a social activist is warranted