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Author
profiles Doctor Ron Brimble
has had experience as a primary school teacher and principal. He has Bachelor of
Arts of Education from the He
has a special interest in literacy and lectured in Language Arts at Professor
Diana Davis has extensive experience in curriculum
development and research in the area of English. She has a research Masters
degree in Australian Literature and a Bachelor of Education from the University
of Melbourne and a PhD in the Social Psychology of Language from Monash
University. She has a special interest in oracy and, in particular, in listening
– the area of language most often taken for granted and hence neglected in
favour of reading, writing, or even speaking. Professor
Davis was a member of the National Committee on English Teaching. She was Chair
of the Curriculum Committee of the Board of Senior Secondary School Studies in CHAPTER 1CREATING RESPONSIBILITIES FOR LEARNING AND TEACHING1.1 Primary and Secondary Education in a Digital WorldThe recent UNESCO report on Education for the Twenty-First Century (Delors 1998) indicates that education is fundamental to each individual’s personal and social development through the four pillars: (i) learning to know, (ii) learning to do, (iii) learning to live together and (iv) learning to be (p.97). Recognition
of the centrality of these pillars creates challenges for curriculum planners
and teachers at all levels of education in a world which is increasingly
dominated by more sophisicated technologies that require fundamental changes in
teachers’ roles. To a greater extent than ever before, educators are charged
with creating permeable boundaries between the real world and classroom
practices. These contexts require teachers to: (a) be sensitive to the world’s expanding knowledge sources and technologies for accessing information and (b)
plan learning experiences and processes which
encompass change and diverse challenges. Technological changes in a digital world have transformed workplace practices which require both creative thinking by individuals and the ability to communicate ideas, given that many such communications occur with unseen participants through telecommunications and the internet. The resultant transformation of the workforce and the requirements of commerce and industry inevitably impact upon the qualities required by students entering the workforce; qualities in addition to knowledge and learning skills. Many employers seek individuals who display vision and enthusiasm, are confident and friendly, possess a positive attitude and are good communicators. In order to promote these qualities, schools are challenged to create learning environments to enhance personal development and learning skills. The internet has created a borderless world in which all individuals are able to pursue lifelong learning for which classroom learning must lay the foundation in intellectual, physical and social ways. Successful engagement in learning includes the development of cultural understanding, making decisions, self-motivation, acquiring competencies, and sharing ideas/information through interaction. It is suggested that the foregoing guides recommended by Delors (1998) form a guide for achieving these foundations in both primary and secondary schools. 1.2 The Successful
School Leaver
High
unemployment with competition for university places and jobs has resulted in a
secondary school focus on qualities that facilitate a successful transition from
school to tertiary institutions and/or the workforce. Consequently, teachers are
challenged to plan learning experiences with potential for enhancing these
qualities. In this context, the Mayer Report (1992) has established strong links
between education and employment by proposing the following competencies needed
for participating effectively in the workforce. (i) Collecting, analysing and
organising information (ii) Communicating ideas and
information (iii) Planning and organising
activities (iv) Working with others and in teams (v) Using mathematical ideas and
techniques (vi) Solving problems (vii) Using technology (Mayer, 1992:3) These
competencies reflect the qualities needed by individuals to succeed in the
transition from school to tertiary institution and/or workforce. Acquisition of
these competencies thus provides a foundation of knowledge and skills with
potential for ensuring that the individual will be able to acquire the
specialised vocational skills needed for success in the workforce. While the
secondary school curriculum needs to incorporate learning experiences that
ensure students develop these competencies, these competencies have similar
relevance for the primary school where foundations are laid for acquiring and
developing them - along with oracy, literacy and numeracy. 1.3 Perceptions of
Purposes and Strategies for Learning in the Twenty-first Century
A study of students’ perceptions of purposes and strategies for learning in the upper primary school (Brimble, 1988) indicates that students in the upper primary school relate learning to everyday needs and future job prospects. These data suggest that students partly evaluate the relevance of their learning in terms of perceived, however inchoate, long-term goals; hence the importance for teachers to relate students’ learning to everyday needs. Learning
experiences that relate to students’ everyday needs may incorporate
experiences which provide insights into tasks performed by people in the
workforce e.g., a study of the report genre may include: (a) reading and comparing newspaper reports and (b)
inviting a newspaper reporter into the
classroom to talk about his/her reporting and his/her role in the production of
the newspaper. Class
newspapers, which incorporate a range of genres, may be established by teachers
and students to encourage purposeful writing by students for a particular
audience. At the secondary school level, school newspapers may be established to
focus on the culture of the school and related events. The school newspaper thus
has potential for tapping into the lifestyle of students incorporating their
interests and leisure time activities. At
this level, real links between school and the workforce may also be established
via work experience. Carefully planned work experience has potential for
creating links between school learning and learning in the workforce. In order to establish insights into
school learning and future job prospects, two bank executives, two accountants
and a travel consultant were requested to comment on the ways decisions were
made in their respective institutions. All of them clearly indicated that most
decisions in their institutions were made by a group after discussion rather
than by an individual. These persons clearly expressed the importance of their
being able to express and listen to ideas/information in group contexts in order
to draw conclusions and plan efficient work practices in order to make
decisions. Moulds
(2005) indicates: the process of decision-making can be defined as the
process of generating and applying criteria to form a judgement or making an
evaluation involving the following steps: ■ identify the situation in which a
decision or judgement needs to be made ■ identify the criteria you
consider to be important to the decision ■ determine which criteria have the
highest priority in making the decision ■ examine how the situation for
decision-making fits these criteria. (p.10) The
ability to make decisions in group contexts was examined further by examining
relationships between ability to work in groups and successful operation as a
travel consultant. These relationships are revealed in the following extracts
from the interview conducted with the travel consultant. ●Ability
to work as a team Interviewer: And what does the group do, Debra? Does it make decisions? Does it plan? What is the main function of the group? Debra:
The main function of the group is to operate on a day-to-day basis. Over a
period of time they need to coordinate with each other to work together to
answer phone calls from travel agents and provide assistance to travel agents to
make bookings. As a team, they need to work together to make decisions with me
and without me when I am absent. ●Working
as a team member Interviewer: Are you saying that every individual has an individual role in the group? Debra:
They have, but it is important that they work as a team member rather than as an
individual. The individual role is present when he/she has an individual job
during the day. Members come in during the day and are given advice or
directions by me or by one of the group members. They will be told what their
job is for the day and, if required, will be given directions for achieving that
job. In order to complete the job, they have to work with other members of
staff. ●Leadership
role Interviewer: And what would you say was your main role as team leader? Debra:
The main role is to give guidance to the staff to keep them organised and keep
them together as a team so that they, I guess, achieve functions and get the job
done. I also help members perform well as part of the group. ● Recruitment qualifications Interviewer: I tend to think that if you were employing a new staff member, one of the requirements would be the ability of that staff member to work in a group. Would that be correct? Debra: Yes. When we recruit staff for that environment, we actually put them in a group role as part of the interview. As a team leader, I get involved in the recruitment and we put them in a team environment to see how they operate. We actually give the group an activity to see if the recruit leads the other members, works with other group members or works individually. We also test them for ‘motivational fit’, which refers to whether they fit into that team as a member of the team. Interviewer: I assume that, generally speaking, a prospective, new member of staff who has had experience in a group and has worked in a group would have some advantage in acquiring a position in your environment. Would that be true? Debra:
Yes, they would, simply because they have the interaction skills required. I
believe, and many people are coming to the same conclusion, that you can teach
them, one: computer skills, and two: how to handle the job, but they are at a
disadvantage if they have difficulty working with other people. If they have had
experience working in a cooperative environment, they have an advantage. The foregoing relationships between ability to work in groups and succeed as a travel consultant focus attention on the need for laying foundations for cooperative learning and developing communication skills in group contexts at all levels of education. Fundamental to the pursuit of literacy is the development of communication within group contexts that provide opportunities for students to acquire and develop language and cognitive processes as members of a cooperative learning team. 1.4 The Pursuit of
Literacy
In
the nineties, Responses
from the Federation provided forums during which particular issues were
discussed to formulate constructive responses to the Federal Government’s
policy on language. The Federal Government’s Policy included reference to
Australian English and languages other than English so that language development
in both primary and secondary classrooms might incorporate both the development
of Australian English and languages other than English. These studies
represented an important step towards intellectual and cultural growth through
language study by taking account of the multicultural nature of Australian
society and the importance of cultural studies for communication across cultures
both within and beyond Through
the consultative processes, the Australian Commonwealth Government has assumed
the role of promoter of national cooperation and collaboration in addressing
educational priorities. These promotions have shown that there are educational
issues such as enhancement of literacy which are of importance for all states
and which might be enhanced through the exchange of ideas. With the exchange of
ideas come challenges for all levels of schooling throughout In
the development of literacy at all levels of schooling by all states working
collaboratively to achieve improvements in literacy and numeracy for all
children, Literacy for All: The Challenge for Australian Schools (1998)
includes the following statements as a guide for developing a broad policy
framework. ▼Literacy is integrally related to
learning in all areas of the curriculum, and enables all individuals to develop
knowledge and understanding. Reading and writing, when integrated with speaking,
listening, viewing and critical thinking, constitute valued aspects of literacy
in modern life. (p.6) ▼It is essential that the early
primary school curriculum is designed and organised to provide sufficient time
and opportunity for all children to acquire effective literacy. (p.7) ▼The variety of children’s
experiences of literacy-related activities prior to school entry, and in their
individual dispositions to learning, means that no single approach to teaching
literacy will be appropriate for all learners. ▼New electronic communication
technologies bring new literacy demands; the relationship between literacy and
technology is an area for active professional investigation. (p.29) ▼New technological developments
mean that students will need to learn to deal with new forms of text, such as
Hypertext. Ways of accessing and using these texts need to be addressed directly
in the classroom. This means that all teachers have responsibility for the
development of literacy skills, and that although teachers of English as a
specific curriculum area and teachers of English as a second language have
obvious and historically grounded principal responsibilities to ensure that
students become fully literate, all teachers of all students in all subjects or
curriculum areas share this responsibility. (p.38) ▼Particular groups of children, including Indigenous children, children whose first language is not English, and children from some socio-economic groups, will have particular needs, to which schools and the schooling system must be responsive. (p.42) The
National Literacy and Numeracy Plan described in Literacy For All (1998)
draws attention to important dimensions of literacy which should be considered
in the search for national solutions to literacy problems. In the pursuit of
solutions to the literacy problem an important outcome has been a focus on the
problem of literacy at all levels of education. Parents and teachers are
beginning to work together to examine relationships amongst literacy, gender,
culture and social status in their search for solutions to literacy problems.
Persons from the workforce are also concerned with the development of literacy
as it relates to the many dimensions of industry and commerce. This
Plan expresses the need for literacy to be developed in the early years of
schooling to enable students to make satisfactory progress in their learning,
thus placing literacy at the centre of learning. It draws attention to the
diversity of learning needs and difficulties in the early years of school. It
also provides a framework for a plan of action for all states to enlist the aid
of all stakeholders (parents, teachers, students, educators, principals,
education authorities, employers and governments) in the pursuit of literacy for
lifelong learning. The
teaching of literacy is still an important topic in which the Commonwealth
Government has shown keen interest and generated keen debate on the teaching of
literacy. Lovet (2005) has included quality teaching in the literacy debate. In
the context of the teacher making a difference, he states : Quality teaching
also emphasises the importance of learning being relevant to the students’
world of experience and the vital role to be played by a supportive environment.
(p. 4) The role of the teacher is important for the development of literacy and teachers need to take account of how to engage students in the learning process in which they develop cognitive, linguistic and social skills. The challenge for teachers thus becomes the creation of learning contexts in which students are challenged and engage in processes that meet those challenges. 1.5 Communication
as Literacy Fundamental
Inclusion
of technologies is needed at all levels of teaching/learning to enable students
to cope in the digital world. However, this should not be seen as an ‘add
on’ dimension of education but a form of learning which contributes to
students’ acquisition of learning and presentation skills. In the primary
school context, this may mean a paradigm shift. The basis of literacy is the early learning of oral language by the individual within the culture of the family. During the preschool years, the young child spends a great deal of time exploring the environment and engaging in a range of learning experiences. Through these the child uses listening and speaking for a range of functions and becomes a more effective learner. Consequently, literacy may be developed by building on these experiences within contexts that focus on communication and meaningful learning. Classroom
interactions that utilise oral language may be generated through teacher-led
class discussions and student discussions. This interaction incorporates
exchange of ideas and opinions through the use of verbal and nonverbal language
codes including oral, gestural and graphic modes. Discussion
provides opportunities for students to ask and respond to questions, and respond
to each other’s ideas. Discussion also has the potential for providing
opportunities for students to: (a) clarify and expand their interpretations of text-based material, (b) evaluate texts and peers’ interpretations, (c) reflect on their own thinking, (d) review and master subject matter, (e) work together to develop interpersonal skills and construct meaning and (f)
heighten their sense of accountability (Kletzien
and Baloche, 1994). Student
discussions thus create social contexts in which knowledge is transmitted and
structured as individuals interact with each other in communicative learning
contexts. Learning thus becomes a social process through interaction during
which knowledge is transmitted and structured. Teachers
may create communicative contexts which ensure that students engage in quality
interaction so that they develop sensitivity to the contextual differences
imposed by the learning tasks and other individuals engaged in these learning
tasks. For example, a learning task in science creates a context different from
one established for solving a social problem in the school. As students engage
in learning, they use language which, since it is determined partly by the
nature of the learning task, may or may not include opportunities to explore
meaning and/or elaborate ideas. Hence it is vital for students to understand the
context of language and be aware that speech is context-dependent and that
writing is context-independent so that they can take account of these factors in
their communications through oral and written language. However, particular
disciplines influence the contexts of learning and generate oral and written
texts appropriate for that discipline. For example, learning contexts in science
may generate scientific reports and social science learning contexts may
generate comparisons of culture. Multiple
literacies are developed through interaction incorporating linguistic and
cognitive processes across a range of learning contexts that derive content
across the disciplines of the curricula. Consequently, literacy becomes a means
of personal development achieved through enhancement of listening, speaking,
reading, writing and viewing in a range of contexts. Learning
classrooms are those in which communicative contexts generate the learning
through interaction between teacher and student, and between student and
student. Communication, language and learning are then enhanced within
meaningful social contexts. Within
the communicative framework of literacy, group learning is perceived as
fundamental for enhancing the various aspects of literacy within meaningful
learning contexts which lay foundations for lifelong learning. Click on the cart below to purchase this book:
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