Playing the game: critical literacy,gender justice and issues of masculinity

This paper explores issues of critical literacy, gender justice and masculinity through ‘Mr A’s’ story. Mr A is head of English at ‘Grange College’ – an all boys’ school in a large urban centre in Queensland (Australia). The paper highlights how the privileging of rationality, control and ‘the masculine’ within Mr A’s ‘teaching‐as‐usual’ discourse constrains his efforts to pursue gender justice through critical literacy. While Mr A scaffolds his students’ critical analysis of gender and power in texts, his investments in teacher/student binary relations draw rigid boundaries between himself and his students in ways that delegitimise the terrain beyond the rational and ignore a theorising of the self. Drawing on Mr A’s story within Davies’ theorising about the possibilities of critical literacy, this paper adds to key work in arguing the importance of teachers’ interrogating their classrooms as lived texts where the relations of domination and power that derail the social justice possibilities of critical literacy can be made both recognisable and revisable. Such interrogation is foregrounded here as particularly urgent within the current moment where rationalist discourses within and beyond schools are increasingly working to circumscribe and constrain teacher practice in ways that stifle transformative social agendas.     

基于学科核心素养的教学目标结构及其表述

学科核心素养的提出为课堂教学目标的制定提供指导和引领作用,教学目标能通过实际的课堂落实学生学科核心素养的发展,学生学科核心素养的发展需要落实到具体的课堂教学目标中。基于学科核心素养的教学目标结构在教学目标指向学生内外共同发展的基础上,主要表现为关键知识、关键能力、必备品格等三个方面,并以遵循核心素养的内在诉求,遵循学科教学的特性,基于学生学习的教学及回归育人的根本为逻辑依据。在进行学科核心素养的教学目标表述时需要基于课程标准,以促进学生学科核心素养的发展为根本指向;关注内容选取,聚焦学生学科核心素养的培养;凸显学生本位,以学生为教学目标的行为主体;关注目标评估,以促进学生学科核心素养教学目标的达成为主旨。     

基于核心素养的中学英语文学阅读课程实践与思考

《中国学生发展核心素养》提出"全面发展的人"的培养目标,学科教师要在课程实施中落实学生核心素养的发展。基于核心素养的中学英语文学阅读教学实践从语言学习、认知发展、社会生活三方面促进学生的发展。在语言学习目标层面,学生在准确理解故事文本基础上,通过准确拼读、流利朗读、正确复述、互动讨论、创新表演、创意写作等系列活动,提高语言理解、赏析和创意表达能力;在认知发展层面,学生在语言交流活动中培养思维的逻辑性、批判性和创新性,掌握语言知识学习策略,提升分析和解决问题能力、元认知能力;在社会生活层面,学生通过一系列阅读、思考和创作分享活动,形成正确的人生观、价值观,培养自尊、自信、自强的良好品格,学会做人、做事,提高文明素养和社会责任感。     

Digital storytelling and the nature of knowledge

While storytelling pedagogy presents novel perspectives and affordances to educators, a fundamental question that bears attention is the match between storytelling pedagogy and the nature of knowledge. Quite simply, the problem may be posed thus: is storytelling the optimum means for teaching all forms of knowledge? While rather obvious matches occur for knowledge in the social science, humanities, languages and literacy education, would storytelling pedagogy ‘work’ for the natural sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics classrooms? If so, what may be optimum means to integrate storytelling instruction in these latter kinds of classrooms? In this study, we report on the results of an implementation of digital storytelling in a grade five science classroom. Using what we termed the ‘edu-tainment’ approach, we asked students to design a digital story that communicated a scientific concept embedded within the narrative structure—characters within the narrative would experience the effects of the concept, the quality of the story being proxy indicators of students’ understanding of the scientific concept. We propose that this pedagogical strategy presents a strong challenge to discern students’ understanding, and we also discuss the effect of knowledge forms on the success of this pedagogy.     

Building Scientific Literacy in HIV/AIDS Education: A case study of Uganda

The term scientific literacy is defined differently in different contexts. The term literacy simply refers to the ability for one to read and write, but recent studies in language literacy have extended this definition. New literacy research seeks a redefinition in terms of how skills are used rather than how they are learned. Contemporary perspectives on literacy as a transfer of learned skills into daily life practises capture the understanding of what it means to be scientifically literate. Scientific literacy requires students to be able to use their scientific knowledge independently in the everyday world. Some models for teaching towards scientific literacy have been suggested including inquiry‐based learning embedded in constructivist epistemologies. The inquiry‐based model is posited to be effective at bringing about in‐depth understanding of scientific concepts through engaging students’ preconceptions. In order to establish whether directly engaging students’ preconceptions can lead to in‐depth understanding of the science of HIV/AIDS, a case study was designed to elucidate students’ prior knowledge. From questionnaires and classroom observations, Ugandan Grade 11 students’ persistent preconceptions were explored in follow‐up focus group discussions. The inquiry process was used to engage students with their own perceptions of HIV/AIDS during the focus group discussions. Findings suggest that students need to dialogue with each other as they reflect on their beliefs about HIV/AIDS. Dialogue enabled students to challenge their beliefs while making connections between ‘school’ and ‘home’ knowledge.     

Teaching Grammar and Testing Grammar in the English Primary School: The Impact on Teachers and their Teaching of the Grammar Element of the Statutory Test in Spelling,Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG)

The research examined the impact on teachers of the grammar element of a new statutory test in Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG) in primary schools in England. The research aimed to evaluate the nature and the extent of changes to the teaching of grammar and to wider literacy teaching since the introduction of the test in 2013. The research explored teachers’ responses to teaching grammar to a statutory test format, and how teachers implemented rapid curriculum change in their classrooms. The research sought to learn the perspectives of teachers as they adjusted to new English assessments and new expectations for children’s language in the primary school. This paper draws on teacher interviews (n = 16) and an online survey of teaching staff (n = 170). Teachers discuss their knowledge, understanding and enjoyment of grammar at their own level, and their skills for teaching pupils; they also discuss their observations of how pupils have responded to explicit grammar teaching and the grammar test. The data give some insights into the processes for teachers of applying new requirements for teaching and testing grammar, and how teachers strive to make grammar accessible to children. The findings discussed in this paper are: (1) since the introduction of the statutory SPaG test in primary schools, time spent teaching decontextualised and contextualised grammar has increased significantly; (2) grammar is now taught explicitly and formally as a classroom literacy routine; (3) the test format influences grammar teaching content and approaches; (4) teachers observe that pupils enjoy learning grammar and taking the test; (5) teachers disagree about the extent to which explicit grammar teaching and testing have a positive impact on pupils’ language and literacy skills; (6) teachers feel more confident about teaching grammar.     

Developing writing skills of learners with persistent literacy difficulties through explicit grammar teaching

The benefits of grammar instruction in the teaching of writing is contested in most English‐speaking countries (Jones et al., 2012). The majority of Anglophone countries abandoned the teaching of grammar in the 1950s based on the conclusions that it had no positive impact on learners’ development of reading, writing and language (Locke, 2005). Through an action research design, this study aims at gaining a further understanding of how the explicit teaching of grammar in context can benefit learners with persistent literacy difficulties by adapting the Grammar for Writing materials (Myhill, 2013). It intends to improve educational practice (Koshy, 2010) through action, analysis and reflection.     

高中化学教学中学生核心素养的培养

高中化学教学中,培养学生的核心素养是教学的基本任务之一。在新的时代背景下,要对学生进行化学核心思想的教育,就必须立足于化学学科本身,立足于化学课堂教学,对学生进行核心素养知识的培养,紧扣核心素养的思想观念,在实践教学中注重宏观和微观知识的结合,有效地引导学生实验探究,启发他们的科学思维,通过这一系列的措施,就能够很好地培养学生的化学素养。     

Film choices for screening literacy: the ‘Pygmalion template’ in the curriculum as contact zone

This study discusses the representation of (the) literacy (myth) in popular movies and a teaching and research project on cinematic literacy narratives. It attempts to reveal the existence of a powerful ‘Pygmalion template’ in contemporary movie culture. Focusing on a discourse or culture clash ‘Pygmalion movies’ simultaneously contribute to the discursive construction and deconstruction of the literacy myth. Because of their polysemic character, these films offer fertile grounds for inquiring into the problematic nature of literacy acquisition and discourse or culture clashes. Inviting pre‐service teachers to reflect on these issues, the authors created a curriculum as contact zone in which films are used as a primary source of knowledge and insight together with students’ movie analyses and interpretations, personal narratives, and theoretical readings. This exploratory study of on‐line discussion groups revealed the students’ contradictory and competing movie readings. Organizing the curriculum as a contact zone deepened the students’ and one’s own understanding of literacy as an ideological site of struggle in (movie) culture.     

Genres and Genre Theory: A Response to Michael Rosen

This paper responds to Michael Rosen’s blog entries, ‘How Genre Theory Saved the World’, arguing that genre theory in the tradition of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) has made an important contribution to language and literacy pedagogy. It emerged in the Australian context in about 1980 and was initially developed in response to educational theories that tended to focus on ‘processes of learning’ and the role of the teacher as ‘facilitator’ only of these processes. This was at the expense of more structured and goal-directed language curricula which provide guidance and support to language and literacy learners, especially in learning to write. Genre theory, supported by extensive research using the SF grammar, identifies certain elemental genres for teaching; they are canonical because each is part of an assemblage of related genres, which successful students learn to manipulate, playing with them and adapting them for their own purposes. Learning the genres of a culture is part of learning how that culture means.     

Are secondary school graduates prepared for the studies of natural sciences? – evaluation and analysis of the result of scientific literacy levels achieved by secondary school graduates

ABSTRACT

Background: In Slovakia, no relevant information is available about the scientific literacy levels achieved by secondary school students.

Purpose: The objective of the research was to identify the levels of scientific literacy among students in the last year of grammar school and examine to what extent this determined the subject chosen for a school-leaving exam, which is related to a student’s personal preferences, as well as to the student’s profile and preparation for university education.

Sample: The research sample consisted of 221 students from 17 grammar schools located in various regions of Slovakia.

Design and methods: To identify the level of scientific literacy, we applied the Test of Scientific Literacy Skills.

Results: The students achieved the lowest success rate in the skill focused on the identification of the research design elements and its strengths and weaknesses. A comparably low success rate was also observed in the skill focused on the justification of the conclusions based on quantitative data. Other difficulties were identified in the field of understanding the basics of statistics, thus indicating an insufficient level of mathematical literacy of the students in the abovementioned field. By contrast, the highest success rate was achieved in the skill focused on the correct application of the scientific results for social purposes.

Conclusions: At the end of secondary school studies, the scientific literacy among Slovak students is at the average level. No differences were observed in terms of gender. In terms of the subjects chosen by the students for their school-leaving exams, we observed that those students who took a school-leaving exam in Biology or Chemistry achieved significantly better results in the test. By contrast, the students who reported on Geography and Civics as the subject of their school-leaving exam achieved significantly worse results in the test.     

Supporting students’ literacy development in the secondary school

Abstract

This paper highlights the importance of teaching all students in inclusive settings multiple literacies through their subject disciplines in the secondary school. After briefly discussing the responsibilities of the major stakeholders in the literacy process, the author provides examples of how strategies can be used to improve students’ literacy skills in the different subject disciplines.     

Negotiating critical,postcritical literacy: the problematic of text analysis

Critical literacy has been a particular focus in literacy education in the past two decades. Literacy models such as the ‘four resources’ model provide a significant framework for a critical understanding of texts and the social and cultural practices that inform them. In this paper, I draw on the ‘four resources’ model to argue that the success of the framework in developing critical literacy depends upon focusing adequate analytic attention on those subjectivities used in such practices. The intersubjective classroom dynamics and the subjective engagement of literacy practitioners are of equal importance in determining the meanings co‐constructed among subjects. I argue that beyond being text analysts, reflective practitioners, that is the teacher, and students as a group, can engage in postcritical negotiations of the text, contribute to new meaning possibilities and adopt an ongoing critical stance. Applying this literacy model successfully requires acceptance of a multiplicity of interpretations, collaborative practice between teachers and students and fluid subject positions. The paper concludes by considering the problematic of the classroom as a dynamic site for textual and cultural contestation of multiple perspectives.     

Using information and communication technologies to engage students in the later years of schooling in learning content and literacy: Case studies of three teachers

Literacy for a 21st century context is far more complex than reading and writing print. As society and information and communication technology (ICT) has changed, so what counts as literacy and how a person is deemed to be literate has changed. Students from low socio-economic backgrounds in the later years of schooling require access to multiple literacies mediated through ICT and to teachers who are willing to provide opportunities for them to be taught explicitly. ICT can promote the learning of the content as well as learning the literacies associated with specific subject areas. This paper will focus on how three teachers in the later years of schooling (years 9–12) used technology to enhance learning and engagement of students in learning the literacies associated with their subject. They challenged the hegemony of print literacy by providing opportunities to develop students understanding, critique and creation of multimodal texts, but also supported students in achieving more effective print literacy. These teachers provided appropriate teaching for students from low socio-economic backgrounds, engaging them in thinking, feeling and acting at high levels while simultaneously providing positive messages about their knowledge, ability, control, place and voice. Their pedagogical approach supported the development of cultural and social capital that will enhance their students’ life options.     

情境创设在高中思政教学中的应用分析

思政学科的教学目的是培养学生的思政学科核心素养,在高中思政课堂上,为了提升学生学习课程的积极性以及教学效率,创设情境服务教学是当今时代的趋势。不仅能够帮助学生在具体情境下深化理解思政理论知识,还能全面发展学科核心素养,为社会发展储备综合素质型人才。     

主体意识：缺失与唤醒——以初中科学主体性教学实践为例

科学课程教育的根本目的在于培养学生的自主意识、主体价值和科学精神。主体性教学凸显了科学教育的本质属性,彰显了科学教育的发展方向与时代诉求,兼具“内生性”和“外发性”的特点。当前的初中科学教学主体意识缺失,其核心在于教师对学生的主体性重视不够和学生的自我主体性认识不清,遮蔽了科学教育的价值。积极强化教师的学生主体认识,唤醒学生的主体意识,改进课堂教学模式,是实现初中科学主体性教学的重要手段。     

中国古代蒙学教育对语文阅读教学的启示

中国古代,儿童在经历启蒙阶段的集中识字教育后,进入阅读训练阶段,此阶段的主要教学内容,一是配合《四书》、《五经》,教学生阅读简短的散文故事;二是教学生阅读浅易的诗歌;三是教学生属对.借鉴古人的经验,现代语文阅读教学,可以从插图故事入手到以图画再现情境、创造语文“导读法“,培养学生的诵读习惯.     

Representing and practising meaningful differences in a well‐structured but complex art curriculum

This paper conceptualizes the secondary art curriculum as a well‐structured but complex knowledge‐domain, with the aim of emphasizing meaningful differences in the way creative grammar operates in the following gatherings of art practices: Pre‐historic and non‐European cultures; Ancient and European cultures before c. 1800; Romantic and Modern culture from c.1800 to c.1950; and Late‐and Post‐modern culture from c.1950 onwards. The gatherings are further differentiated into pre‐modern practices of Gemeinschaft (community) and modern forms of Gesellschaft (association). Practices of Gemeinschaft use the creative grammar of accretion and the grammar of omission to emphasize meaningful differences. The earlier phase of Gesellschaft inherits the grammar of accretion and omission from Gemeinschaft in the attempt to sustain the expression of meaningful differences. The late‐ and post‐modern phase of Gesellschaft adopts a nihilistic creative grammar to level such differences. Approaches to teaching the grammar of each gathering of art, and the related practices, are explored in a well‐structured way by students using ‘know‐how’ and ‘know‐that’ grammar. By conceptualizing and teaching an art curriculum in this way, students develop the insightful knowledge to understand how their life‐world, as embedded in a technological understanding of being and its technological nihilism, compares with alternative understandings of being as articulated by different cultural grammars.     

Interpretive responses to images in picture books by primary and secondary school students: Exploring curriculum expectations of a ‘visual grammatics’

As well as maintaining the central role of literature, the new Australian Curriculum: English emphasises the multimodal nature of literacy and requires students in primary and secondary schools to develop explicit knowledge about visual and verbal grammar as a resource for text interpretation and text creation. This study investigated the use of visual grammatics in interpreting picture books by students across Years Four, Five, Seven and Ten following an intensive professional learning programme undertaken by their teachers. A proposed framework describes variation in students' interpretive stance from tactical to diegetic to semiotic. Levels of student semiotic understanding are differentiated and differences between students' oral and written interpretations are discussed in relation the need for explicit teaching of written interpretive responses to multimodal literary texts, drawing on an articulated visual and verbal grammatics appropriate to the teaching of English in primary and secondary schools.     

Combining ‘subject knowledge’ with ‘how to teach’: an exploratory study of new initial teacher education for teachers of adult literacy,numeracy and English for Speakers of other Languages

This paper is based on a research project that explored a UK Government initiative to improve the quality of teaching adults, numeracy, literacy and English as a second other language. The findings will be of interest to teacher educators generally and also to those involved in teaching adults, language, literacy and numeracy. The paper reports on the main findings of the research and sets the context for the presentation of models and concepts for rethinking how to meet the diverse prior experience and qualifications of those on teacher training programmes, as well as the challenges of relating a deeper understanding of ‘what you teach’ and ‘how you teach it’. Among the many issues raised by this paper, priority is given to the importance of the sequencing and organization of teacher training courses to meet the individual needs of trainees, who in the context of teaching adults in the UK have very different levels of teaching experience, prior subject knowledge and learning needs.