Working Across the Literacy Landscapes of Children’s Lives

Working Across the Literacy Landscapes of Children’s Lives International Reading Recovery Institute Kaitiakitanga: Nurturing Literate Futures July 17-19, 2019 Auckland NZ Sue Ellis Strathclyde University

Literary & literacy cultures in classrooms and schools • Guardianship; Protection; Strengthening; Caring; Nourishing • Why literacy research & practice are so contested. The problems for class teachers and schools. • Reading Recovery as a healthy disrupter & enabler: • Teachers’ understandings • Professional & policy assumptions • Research foci directions

The problem of understanding literacy & literary teaching & learning • There are many ‘regimes of truth’: • Psychology • Linguistics • Sociology • Anthropology • Philosophy • History • Economics • Literature • Neuroscience • Education studies, Policy studies, Behavioral…

The problem for teachers is.. • All these disciplines offer useful insights • But all offer a different ‘truth’ – a different lens. They see different problems, different kinds of evidence, different methodologies, different solutions… • Some conflict, some exist in parallel, some dovetail • Gemma Moss (2016): policy struggle – the rights of different disciplines to define what matters

In schools… • Teachers must negotiate and navigate this landscape • Inherent instability: finding a balance, keeping a balance is hard • Classroom practice can become a battleground for other people’s questions, evidence, debates and careers

Wenger-Treyner: Teachers navigate a landscape of knowledge communities –active, creative alignment – “knowledgeability”

Wenger-Trayner et al (2015): Professional knowledge looks seamless but… • ‘Landscape of practice’ -different knowledge communities - complex, shifting, contradictory; contested definitions of what counts as knowledge • Professional knowledge is not certain – a complicated pathway to a ‘meaningful moment of practice’; • Explicit focus on aligning & working across knowledge frames to make professional judgments and imagine alternatives.

Cognitive knowledge, skills; phonics; comprehension, linguistic & text knowledge engagement for school subjects etc. Cultural/social capital, Practices, funds of knowledge, beliefs, ideas, experiences, people, activities, home literacies Personal/social identity, aspirations, entitlement how presenting & how positioned as a learner by self & others; mindset Value & navigate many kinds of insight: Strathclyde 3 Domains Model

My special place • .

Problem definitions and solutions for schools • Deliberately lightly specified: no ‘tick-lists’ • The biggest influences are social class, poverty, race and gender but… • Different lenses make certain practices seem acceptable / unacceptable

Brian Street (1997): Is literacy …? • Autonomous – Literacy is uniform – a set of universal knowledge and skills that do not change & all must acquire. Some find it easy, others harder. • Ideological – A behaviour rooted in social contexts. Depending on your community, you learn different beliefs about what it is for, what matters, different behavioursabout how to think and talk about texts, and get different amounts of practise.

Historical: reading = speaking (learned texts; oral performance; full stops = beats) • When he was reading, his eyes ran over the page and his heart perceived the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent. …We wondered if he read silently perhaps to protect himself in case he had a hearer interested and intent on the matter, to whom he might have to expound the text being read if it contained difficulties, or who might wish to debate some difficult questions. If his time were used up in that way, he would get through fewer books than he wished. Besides, the need to preserve his voice, which used easily to become hoarse, could have been a very fair reason for silent reading… (St Augustine of his patron & teacher St Ambrose) • Jajdelska, E. (2007)

Silent reading: the reader as an (internal) hearer of a writer’s words prompted an avalanche of change • The sentence as the basic unit of prose (Pauses have a new function when reading silently). • The birth of the ‘all seeing narrator’ & new ways to mark shifts in time, place & speaker… • New consumption patterns for reading; • New ideas about childhood education • New moral status for recreational reading.

Different communities use literacy differently… • Brian Street: Literacies in an Iranian village – (schooled, Qoranic, commercial) • David Barton & Sarah Padmore: N.England community literacies - writing • Shirley Brice Heath: Trackton, Roadville & Maintown.

Childrearing practices (A. Lareau 2011) • The logic of middle class families: concerted cultivation • Organized activities: • required adult time/ attention/ labour • structured environment - same age group • expected to argue, interrupt, express opinions, discuss abstract topics, question, entertain • Children pester and whine • adults know how schools work; supportive but questioning of schools; coached children to be likewise

Poverty & W/C families: natural growth • Few organised activities • greater autonomy in leisure time; more independent & entertain themselves • closer extended family ties (nicer) • separate adult/child lives: less discussion & debate; narrower range of topics; • more biddable & respectful: no interruptions, complaints, opinions • adults less knowledgeable - of the world, of how institutions work; of homework; more trusting of teachers

The difference: Entitlement • Poverty children tended not to: • ask for stuff (no pestering) • offer opinions, hold the floor • whine - even think of getting adults or organisations to change to better suit them • …and so got no practice in doing it.

In school this entitlement means… • M/C 5 yr olds nag teachers for help. Poverty in the same classroom struggle and wait. • M/C children speak, interrupt, and argue. They take the ‘talk time’. Poverty are silenced, less power, and fewer opportunities to develop their language skills • It plays out as participation and as emotional/social connections, with impacts across the curriculum, including the literacy curriculum

Luis Moll et al: Funds of knowledge • Accumulated knowledge generated by families and is linked to: • Experiences (including work experiences) • Social practices • Social history • Visit households and get to know the families (teachers as learners) and the knowledge they hold. Then use it in class.

And so… literacy in schools is not equal • Families have histories and knowledge. Schools recognize some as valuable but not others. (Luis Moll et al 1992– funds of knowledge) • Everyone brings to school a virtual schoolbag of home/community knowledge and experiences. Some find theirs are unpacked, recognized & validated in school. Others are not even asked to open their bag (Thomson 2001)

Identity • Reader Identity affects what you want to read, talk about, how you talk & what you take from reading. • Learner Identity and interest affects persistence, self-efficacy, willingness to have-a-go, response to temporary set-backs, time on task & time to learn • How others position you as a reader/ learner affects your access to texts, social networks, capacity to navigate barriers, incidental learning opportunities, time on task and time to learn. • Intrinsic motivation reaches the parts that extrinsic motivation fails to find

Triumph smiles

Identity: deeply social & requires a bit of space • You can’t buy a programme for reader identity - what students do for each other -reading as part of social fabric of the classroom. It takes skill to foster & links to broader issues: • Choice “I’m the sort of person who… • Esteem: “My opinion matters” • Agency: “I can have a go at this” • Peers: “In my social group we…” • It requires open choices & social spaces where young people can define themselves as readers/writers in relation to their peers and to texts

Informal spaces matter, but the spaces must be social, not just physical… • Moss & McDonald (2004): reading networks - library borrowing • The class with strong networks : • Made spaces for the children to work out what sort of books they liked – lots of series fiction, hooks and hot books • An alpha-male as a keen reader • Fewer rules re. what to read, for how long. Focus on quality reading experiences. • RESULT: pupils worked out what was worth reading; had opinions; knew what they liked; social; book recommendations

Guthrie and Klauda (2014) • The extent to which children feel part of a reading community affects what they read, how much they read, how they approach texts and tasks, and the engagement, persistence and motivation they bring.

Cognitive knowledge, skills; phonics; comprehension, linguistic & text knowledge engagement for school subjects etc. Cultural/social capital, Practices, funds of knowledge, beliefs, ideas, experiences, people, activities, home literacies Personal/social identity, aspirations, entitlement how presenting & how positioned as a learner by self & others; mindset Timing & response across the domains

Our challenge: the mix matters • Effective teachers who reach a meaningful moment of practice • have knowledge and use it • understand cognitive; cultural/social capital, reader/learner identity; inclusion; community & family; race; rural/urban divide; cultural inequalities and poverty inequalities • have high aspirations, enquiring attitudes, innovative practices… and are grounded, evidence based & who seek social equity

We tried it out • Trial 1: 600+ teachers (13,000 pupils): mixed schools • Trial 2: 92 teachers: inner city high poverty schools • Trial 3: 330+ teachers: rural high poverty schools • Explicit focus on how teachers align different knowledge frames and work across them to make professional judgments. It is not seamless • ‘evidence out there’ and ‘evidence in here’ • The ‘art’ and ‘science’ of evidence use;

Study 1 found… • Attainment rose across children from all income-levels (p value < 0.01). • The tail of underachievement shortened across all income levels • The attainment gap between rich and poor narrowed significantly (p value < 0.01). • Schools became kinder, more welcoming places (Director of Education view)

Not new knowledge, but new attention: • “[The] cognitive domain. That’s what I focussed on [before]. Didn’t pay attention to the other two, certainly not consciously. Not in my planning or teaching.I may have aware of children who didn’t go to library or some parents not getting so involved but I didn’t do anything with that information. I didn’t really think about it” • Reframed as evidence which required action • Move from deficit models

A different kind of attention • “I always used to check the vocabulary and teach them the meanings of any words they didn’t know for their comprehension of the piece. But now I know that the vocabulary teaching, well it‘s doing a bigger job. It isn’t just about teaching them that word, it’s teaching them all the social living and general knowledge stuff that goes alongside that. Telling them wider stories about the world outside this estate”

Identity • I hadn't thought about our identities as readers as a factor in learning to readbefore, however I now see that it is extremely important in terms of motivation andengagement. It's something that I now discuss with the children I teach • As a child who was not a confident reader. I now understand the impact identity hadon me and can relate this to learners.

Cultural/ social capital • I think that previously, I did not really think about how a child's experiences of theworld made such a difference to their understanding of what they read. • The difference it makes to a child's engagement in reading and with a text when theycan share with teachers what their funds of knowledge are and me having a clearerunderstanding of what children bring to reading; what they already know and howthey relate to books/texts.

Professional learning • Cultural / social capitals needs most “cooking time”; the shift to an ‘asset based’ view needs constant attention and support • Noticing improves within-domain understandings • The mix helped articulate a ‘theory of change’ - where to intervene, the ripple effect across domains, noticed & made ‘Plan B’ if necessary • Professional persistence matters!

Sustainable, grounded re-definition of ‘the whole child’ • Responsive teaching: meaningful conversations that embrace difference, not ‘good activities’ • Pathways to impact: identify points of intervention, levers for change & pathways to impact. • Reading as part of the social fabric of classrooms: active management -prompts, resources, spaces • Impact not input e.g. relaxation and pleasure • Understand where parents are coming from: less judgemental; more realistic

Our duty and our privilege • To make literacy equally rewarding for all • To locate the best research knowledge out there, and use it • To explore and use knowledge from all 3 domains, understand its capacity to underpin creative teaching and its key role in delivering equity. • To teach literacy in ways that young people can navigate their way in the world, not just in school

Mihi koe mo te whakarongo • sue.ellis@strath.ac.uk

References • Barton, D., & Padmore, S. (1991). Roles, networks and values in everyday writing. Writing in the community, 58-77. • Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. cambridge university Press. • Jajdelska, E. (2007). Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator. University of Toronto Press. • Lareau, A. (2011). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. Univ of California Press. • Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into practice, 31(2), 132-141. • Moss, G. (2016) Knowledge education & research: making common cause across communities of practice. British Educational Research Journal, 42 (6), 927-944. doi:10.1002/berj.3249

References • Moss, G., & McDonald, J. W. (2004). The borrowers: Library records as unobtrusive measures of children's reading preferences. Journal of Research in Reading, 27(4), 401-412. • Street, B. (1997). The implications of the ‘New Literacy Studies’ for literacy education. English in education, 31(3), 45-59. • Street, B. (2013). Applying earlier literacy research in Iran to current literacy theory and policy. International Journal of Society, Culture & Language, 1(1), 1-9. • Wenger-Trayner, E., Fenton-O'Creevy, M., Hutchinson, S., Kubiak, C., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (Eds.). (2014). Learning in landscapes of practice: Boundaries, identity, and knowledgeability in practice-based learning. Routledge.Research Journal, 42 (6), 927-944. doi:10.1002/berj.3249

Working Across the Literacy Landscapes of Children’s Lives