Powerful and playful literacy learning with digital technologies

The increased availability of tablet technologies in many homes and early childhood educational settings has transformed play-time and the subsequent opportunities that emerge for literacy learning. What children do with the digital applications (apps) on these technologies demands our attention, particularly as we consider the ever-increasing market of apps marketed to enhance the basic literacy skills. While there are varying degrees of quality amongst available apps, some apps have potential to foster children\u27s play and language development in unexpected and interesting ways. As educators, we need to acknowledge the role \u27digital play\u27 can play in our pedagogical interactions and the possibilities these offer for literacy learning. To do this, we need to examine ways that children engage with technology as they learn to read, write, listen, and communicate. This paper argues children\u27s digital play offers teachers new opportunities to support, inform, reform, or transform the literacy with experiences we encourage children to participate

Interpreting the images in a picture book: Students make connections to themselves, their lives and experiences

Picture books are an important and accessible form of visual art for children because they offer, among other things, opportunities for making connections to personal experiences and to the values and beliefs of families and communities. This paper reports on the use of a picture book to promote Year 4 students\u27 making of text-to-self connections, which they expressed through visual art. A funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992) lens was used to analyse the representation of students\u27 out-of-school lives and experiences within the artworks. In this paper, we argue for a pedagogical approach that creates opportunities for children to respond to picture books through visual art, identifying artworks as powerful avenues of insight into children\u27s funds of knowledge that can inform literacy pedagogy

Using short films in the classroom as a stimulus for digital text creation

Reading and creating stories is a longstanding pedagogical approach to literacy learning in elementary school classrooms because stories offer personal and human experiences to which students can relate and respond. Stories, including digital forms such as short films, offer accounts of what it is to belong to a community and its worldviews and practices. Opportunities to identify, challenge, and respond to these views in the creation of their own texts develop in students broadened understandings of themselves and others. This teaching tip reports on Australian grade 6 students responding to messages they identified in a short film. The students used iPads to plan, create, and share stories that convey alternative perspectives on the messages they identified

In-school professional development: supporting teachers with the inclusion of critical literacy in their classrooms

The voluminous literature within the field of teacher professional development presents varied components of what constitutes meaningful professional development experiences for teachers. The case reported herein describes how components identified from an analysis of the literature have been incorporated within an inschool model of professional development to support primary teachers as they explore their literacy teaching within their own school and individual classrooms. These ongoing, in-school professional development experiences aimed to support and encourage pedagogical change as the teachers reviewed their classroom teaching and learning practices with emphasis on critical literacy. The importance of the school professional culture, the organisation of time, professional relationships, the location for professional development, and the need for purposeful interactions will each be explored in the description of the experiences

“This side is the real world and the other one is like Minecraft” Using an almost wordless picture book to explore Japanese primary school students’ cultural awareness

English has been introduced as a core subject in primary schools across Asia over the past decade. Besides aiming to improve the English proficiency of Japanese primary school students, Japan’s recent reforms also mandate the development of children’s awareness of cultures other than their own. However, relatively little is known about pedagogical strategies to achieve cultural awareness in the Japanese primary school classroom. The objective of this study was, therefore, to utilize an almost wordless picture book and examine the ways children interpret stories about people from cultures other than their own. This study explored the independent meaning-making practices and processes of six Japanese primary school students as they viewed, without teacher intervention, Mirror, an Australian almost wordless picture book about the daily lives of an Australian and a Moroccan family. Interview and observation data provided insights into the children’s meaning-making processes and the ways they interpreted the messages within the stories that led to a range of understandings and misunderstandings across the cultures. The paper concludes with a discussion about pedagogical implications for supporting the development of cultural awareness, for challenging cultural stereotypes, and for facilitating English language learning processes

An examination of the enablers and inhibitors surrounding the establishment of a school university partnership: The Grays Point Project

Collaboration between academics, staff and students is promoted as a way to foster professional relationships, foster change and develop common understanding across both the school and university contexts. In a time when education is under frequent criticism it is necessary to break down the barriers between the two contexts and work together collegially. It is within this climate that a small team of academics from the Faculty of Education at the University of Wollongong and teachers from Grays Point Public School (a southern suburb of Sydney) have launched a collaborative research project. As we begin this professional journey we have begun to identify the specific roles and responsibilities for each party. We recognise that personnel from both the school and the university contexts have tremendous knowledge they are able to share. As we embark on this partnership, it is our aim to weave value-added, mutually beneficial and collaborative relationships into our on-going professional interactions. However, this partnership has not come easily. In our articulation of our journey as we establish this professional relationship, we are able to identify a number of enablers and inhibitors that have impacted upon the experience

Who do parents perceive is pressuring them to buy unhealthy (and healthy) foods?

Increasingly, academic and lay discussion of children’s nutrition has focused on the role of the media, and marketing more generally, in influencing children’s food choices. While numerous studies have focused on the direct effects of chidlren’s exposure to advertisng on their food preferences and choices, there have been fewer studies on the role of marketing in influencing parent’s decisions about what foods they give to their child. We surveyed parents about their children’s food requests and the perceived influences on their food choices; and found that parents experience, or perceive, a number of external pressures on them in making food choices for their children

What I say isn’t always what I do: Investigating differences in children’s reported and actual snack food preferences

The current study sought to explore discrepancies between children’s stated snack food motivations and actual food choices, using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) as a measure of implicit attitudes towards ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ foods. Participants were children aged 6-12 years (n=118), from two primary schools on the South Coast of NSW, Australia – a public school in a semi-rural suburb south of a sea-side city and a public school in a largely residential northern suburb of the same city. The children completed a questionnaire about motivations for snack choices, participated in an activity, completed two further questionnaires, selected snack foods from an in-class store, and participated in two rounds of an IAT ‘game’ pairing pictures of snack foods with positive and negative words. As hypothesized, the majority of children reported ‘healthiness’ as their primary motivator for snack food choice, but when faced with an actual purchase decision predominantly chose unhealthy snacks. It appears that children may have internalized the ‘moral’ values attributed to healthy and unhealthy foods and that this process influences both their explicit and implicit attitudes. However, their actual food choices are likely to be influenced by other factors, and thus more complex to understand and influence

Rethinking the literacy capabilities of pre-service primary teachers in testing times

This paper demonstrates how teacher accreditation requirements can be responsibly aligned with a scholarly impetus to incorporate digital literacies to prepare pre-service teachers to meet changing educational needs and practices. The assessment initiatives introduced in the newly constructed four year undergraduate Bachelor of Education program at one Australian university are described and analysed in light of the debates surrounding pre-service primary teachers' literacy capabilities. The findings and subsequent discussion have implications for all literacy teacher educators concerned about the impact of standardised assessment practices on the professional future of teachers