The author proposes that the literacy practices of a community reflect the cognitive affordances of the script onto particular speech varieties in a sociocultural system. Most research on children’s literacy in Zambia has focused on individual literacy as a set of measurable competencies that can be assessed independently of context, construing language variety or instructional input as extraneous variables. A more integrated focus on literacy as a socially distributed practice in the context of a multilingual African society highlights cooperative learning and flexible communication across language boundaries.

Author: Robert Serpell

Source: Serpell, R. (2020). Literacy and child development in contemporary African society. Child Development Perspectives.

• Children’s opportunities to acquire competence in reading, writing, and understanding texts are distributed unevenly across socioeconomic sectors, posing a challenge to applied research- and evidence-based policy.
• A sociocultural theoretical framework is proposed for understanding the relationship between literacy and child development in the historical context of sub-Saharan Africa and the region’s relations with the rest of the world.
• Literacy is construed as a socially distributed cultural practice within which communication is mediated by the cognitive affordances of particular languages, scripts and technologies.
• Children are introduced to the practice through the participatory appropriation of a system of meanings in institutional settings that reflect the community’s history.

Theoretical and historical framework

• The cognitive work of written communication is socially distributed among participants and scaffolded by technology.
• In learning to read and write, children discover the possibilities for communication afforded by script.
• By allocating graphic symbols to represent elementary speech sounds, an alphabet can map the words of any natural language onto a small set of letters.
• In Zambia, children learn to decode in two ways: Bantu languages, which have a transparent orthography, and English, with much more opaque orthography.
• Societies in which bi- or plurilingualism is prevalent tend to assign different social functions and status to different speech varieties; speakers combine different types flexibly in a single utterance with code-switching or translanguaging.
• Becoming literate expands a child’s communicative competence and provides opportunities for participating in cultural practices.
• Enrolling children in institutionalised basic schooling is designed to prepare them to enter those adult communities of literate practice through the participatory appropriation of a system of meanings that informs the world of literate practices.
• In most African nations, formal schooling was first imposed by Christian missionaries from Western societies as a method for ”civilising” Africans and later consolidated by colonial administrations.
• Zambia’s current public education curriculum is deeply infused with Western cultural hegemony, specifying as principal learning objectives a set of competencies deemed conducive to success in a modern, industrialised economy.
• English is the language of power in Zambian society.
• The various indigenous Bantu languages are preferred for informal everyday discourse and religious worship.
• Nowadays, initial literacy instruction is offered in one of seven indigenous Bantu languages designated by zone.
• English is introduced gradually, first as a subject in grades 2 to 4, then as the principal medium of instruction.

Policy implications

• If primary school teachers are to serve effectively as “bicultural mediators,” they may need training in the use of a “meta-language” to articulate the interrelated concepts of sound, letter, syllable, and word, drawing learners’ attention to how the rules that govern spelling and decoding differ between the language of power and their familiar indigenous languages.
• In a plurilingual society, instructional practices for early literacy may benefit from adopting a more flexible approach to nurturing plurilingual communicative competence, including hybrid forms, from ensuring pupil involvement in classroom practice, and hence a learner-driven and centred pedagogy.

In this meta-analysis of single-subject design writing intervention studies, 88 studies in which it was possible to calculate an effect size were located. Nine writing treatments were identified as effective. These were strategy instruction for planning/drafting, teaching grammar and usage, goal setting for productivity, strategy instruction for editing, writing with a word processor, reinforcing specific writing outcomes, prewriting activities, teaching sentence construction skills, and strategy instruction for paragraph writing.

Author: Leslie Ann Rogers & Steve Graham

Source: Rogers, L.A. & Graham, S. (2008). A meta-analysis of single-subject design writing intervention research. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100(4), 879-906. DOI: 10.1037/0022-0663.100.4.879

• Many children do not learn to write well enough to meet classroom writing demands.
• Concerns about writing are not limited to elementary and secondary schools; college instructors estimate that 50% of high school graduates are unprepared for college-level writing demands.
• At school, weaker writers are less likely than their more skilled peers to use writing to support and extend learning in content classrooms.
• Their chances of attending college are reduced, as writing is used to evaluate many applicants’ qualifications.
• At work, writing has become a gateway for employment and promotion.
• Why do so many students not write well enough to meet grade-level demands?
• One possible reason is that schools do not do an adequate job of teaching this complex skill.
• The National Commission on Writing (2003) offered the following recommendations: double time students spend writing, assess their writing progress, use technology to advance the learning and teaching of writing, and better prepare teachers to teach writing.
• The impact of these recommendations is likely to be reduced if teachers do not use effective instructional practices.

Need for a meta-analysis of writing interventions tested via single-subject design studies

• A practical approach for identifying effective writing practices is to conduct systematic reviews of writing intervention research.
• With meta-analysis, an effect size is computed for each empirical study investigating a specific treatment. It then is averaged across studies to provide a summary statistic on the intervention’s effectiveness.
• However, only two meta-analyses have computed effects sizes for treatments tested via single-subject designs, and they only examined a single treatment: teaching strategies for planning/revising.
• Thus, the primary purpose of this study was to conduct a more extensive meta-analysis of single-subject design writing interventions to identify effective writing practices for students in grades 1–12.

What is a single-subject design study?

• In single-subject design studies, each participant serves as their own control, with performance before and during or after intervention repeatedly measured to establish performance patterns before treatment and compare performance patterns across experimental phases (e.g., baseline versus treatment).
• One manipulation for establishing experimental control involves the introduction and withdrawal of treatment.
• A second manipulation involves the staggered introduction of the treatment. For example, treatment is implemented with one student to determine whether it influences their performance predictably. Then the treatment is executed with another student to determine whether the pattern is replicated. This systematic delay in introducing the treatment continues until all students receive instruction.
• Experimental control is established only if performance on the dependent measures is stable during each testing phase. There is no trend in the pattern of baseline performance in the direction predicted by the intervention.
• In addition, experimental control is not established until at least three demonstrations show that the manipulation had the predicted impact.
• Single-subject design examines the effectiveness of treatment at the individual level.
• External validity is established by systematically replicating effects across multiple participants, locations, and researchers.

Why a meta-analysis of single-subject design studies is important

• First, the meta-analyses of true- and quasi-experimental investigations of writing interventions have identified only 12 interventions that improve the writing of elementary and secondary students.
• A meta-analysis of single-subject design writing interventions has the potential to broaden current evidence-based recommendations.
• Second, a meta-analysis of single-subject design studies also has the potential to strengthen, undermine, or nuance the trust that can be placed in one or more of the 12 writing treatments identified as effective earlier.
• Third, most of the true- and quasi-experimental writing intervention research has been conducted with students representing the full range of writing ability in a typical classroom. In contrast, single-subject design studies often involve students’ experiencing difficulty.

The study

This meta-analysis draws on but dramatically extends the two previous meta-analyses of single-subject strategy instruction research in writing. The primary research question of this review was, which writing practices tested via single-subject design procedures are effective with students in grades 1–12?

Method

Studies were included if they involved grades 1–12 students and provided data to calculate the effect size. Overall, 119 documents were found, from which 88 were suitable. Studies were categorised based on treatments used, and summary statistics were calculated only to those categories that included at least four studies. The ten treatment categories were: strategy instruction (planning/drafting), teaching grammar/usage, goal setting for productivity, strategy instruction (editing), word processing, reinforcement, prewriting activities, sentence construction, strategy instruction (paragraph construction), and self-monitoring.

Conclusions

• Writing is a critical skill in an advanced technological society.
• Ensuring that students become skilled writers involves teachers’ use of effective writing practices.
• Recommendations:
  • Teach students strategies for planning/drafting both narrative and expository text. This is effective with struggling writers in grades 2–8 and typical writers in grades 4–8.
  • Teach grammar skills to struggling writers directly.
  • Set clear and specific goals to increase students’ writing productivity.
  • Teach students strategies for editing their compositions.
  • Make it possible for students to use word processing as a primary tool for writing.
  • Reinforce students for their writing productivity.
  • Engage students in prewriting activities for gathering and organising ideas in advance of writing.
  • Teach students how to form complex sentences.
  • Teach students strategies for writing different types of paragraphs.
• When implementing the recommendations, it is helpful to continually monitor the treatment’s effects to see whether it is effective under new conditions.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of task-focused behaviour on reading fluency, spelling and comprehension and to examine the role of the different literacy skills in subsequent task-focused behaviour. Finnish-speaking children (N = 207) were followed from preschool until fourth grade and were tested for reading fluency, spelling and reading comprehension, and teachers rated the children’s task-focused behaviour. Task-focused behaviour was a significant predictor of later reading comprehension and spelling skills. All three literacy skills predicted subsequent task-focused behaviour.

Author: Riikka Hirvonen, George K. Georgiou, Marja-Kristiina Lerkkanen, Kaisa Aunola & Jari-Erik Nurmi

Source: Hirvonen, R., Georgiou, G.K., Lerkkanen, M.-K., Aunola, K. & Nurmi, J.-E. (2010). Task-focused behaviour and literacy development: A reciprocal relationship. Journal of Research in Reading, 33(3), 302-319. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9817.2009.01415.x

• It is reasonable to assume that other factors besides cognitive ones may impact children’s literacy development.
• Children’s positive self-concept and efficacy beliefs are grounded upon positive experiences in previous learning situations.
• Efficacy beliefs and self-confidence promote expectations of success in new learning situations, which further lead to more effort and task-focused behaviour.
• The extent to which children’s task-focused behaviour may impact their literacy learning might vary according to how challenging the particular task is.
• It may be assumed that motivational factors, such as task-focused behaviour, are more likely to affect the process of learning to read in opaque languages.
• The difficulty of literacy learning tasks may also vary within a particular language.
• For example, in a longitudinal study with Greek primary school children, it was found that task-focused behaviour predicted children’s subsequent spelling and reading comprehension, but not their reading fluency in later grades (Georgiou et al., 2010)
• The present study aimed to extend Georgiou et al.s’ findings in a sample of Finnish-speaking children followed through from preschool to Grade 4.

The study
The present study highlights the benefits of engaging ELLs in multiliteracies pedagogy, based

This study aimed to determine the cross-lagged relationships between children’s task-focused behaviour and their literacy skills. The research questions were:

1. Does task-focused behaviour predict reading fluency, spelling and comprehension after controlling for the preceding literacy level?
2. Do reading fluency, comprehension, and spelling predict task-focused behaviour after controlling for earlier task-focused behaviour?

Methods

A total of 207 children (111 boys and 96 girls) were examined during their preschool and first, second and fourth school years. Children’s prereading skills were tested, and the teacher rated their task-focused behaviour during preschool. In the first, second and fourth grades, the children were tested in reading fluency, reading comprehension and spelling; their task-focused behaviour was rated by the teacher.

Conclusions

• The results showed that task-focused behaviour measured one year earlier contributed to the prediction of reading comprehension and spelling skills over and above their previous levels. However, it did not add to children’s reading fluency prediction.
• Children’s task-focused behaviour predicted their spelling skills almost as strongly as it predicted their reading comprehension.
• On the other hand, reading fluency, comprehension, and spelling measured a year before accounted for almost an equal amount of the variance in children’s task-focused behaviour after controlling for earlier levels of task-focused behaviour.
• Being good at something strengthens one’s self-efficacy beliefs and expectations of future success and motivates one to try and learn, thus increasing task-focused behaviour. On the other hand, having difficulties affects one’s self-efficacy beliefs negatively and makes one give up and avoid challenges.
• Attention, therefore, must be directed to how children interpret their success in learning situations because negative learning experiences are likely to lead to low efficacy beliefs  and expectations of failure, leading further to low levels of effort and task-avoidance behaviour.

This article presents the results of a review of published literature on the use of the multiliteracies pedagogy to teach English Language Learners (ELLs). Five emerging themes related to the potential benefits of the multiliteracies approach are identified and discussed in this article: (i) student agency and ownership of learning; (ii) language and literacy development; (iii) affirmation of students’ languages, cultures, and identities; (iv) student engagement and collaboration; and (v) critical literacy.

Author: Shakina Rajendram

Source: Rajendram, S. (2015). Potentials of the multiliteracies pedagogy for teaching English language learners (ELLs): A review of the literature. Critical Intersections in Education: An OISE/UT Students’ Journal, 3, 1–18.

• Multiliteracies pedagogy is based on the need for students to develop a broad repertoire of literacy practices that are not confined to traditional views of literacy and traditional approaches of literacy instruction.
• Introduced in 1996, multiliteracies pedagogy is grounded in two main ideas: (i) the expanding variety of text forms related to the expansion of mass media, multimedia, and the Internet, and (ii) the increasing importance of linguistic and cultural diversity.
• Multiliteracies pedagogy aims to create learning environments in which the blackboard, textbook, exercise book, and test are augmented, and at times replaced, by digital technologies.
• It supports a multimodal approach where learners move between linguistic, visual, auditory, gestural and spatial modes of meaning-making and learning.

The study Four components of multiliteracies pedagogy

• Situated practice is about providing meaningful experiences for students to participate in their own learning by building on their lived experiences.
• Overt instruction occurs when the teacher provides active intervention and scaffolding to help students gain conscious understanding and control of their learning.
• Critical framing helps students to analyse what they are learning from a critical perspective in relation to the historical, social, cultural, political, ideological, and value-centred relations of particular systems of knowledge and social practice.
• Transformed practice occurs when students apply what they have learned in new contexts by transforming existing meanings to design new meanings.

The study
The present study highlights the benefits of engaging ELLs in multiliteracies pedagogy, based on a review of studies that have been conducted among ELL participants or immigrant students in various countries and at various educational levels.

The data

This literature review included 12 studies based on the following inclusion criteria: (1) studies using the multiliteracies framework or other aspects of the multiliteracies pedagogy such as multimodality; (2) studies with ELL participants; and (3) studies conducted within the last ten years.

Conclusions

• Today’s students must possess multiple literacy skills that can enable them to utilise the potential of the diverse modes of communication offered by new technologies.
• The potential of multiliteracies pedagogy to equip students with these skills is enormous because of the opportunities it provides for multimodal forms of expression through the technology-based interdisciplinary explorations of texts.
• Multiliteracies pedagogy can be especially powerful for ELLs as it enables students to exercise agency and take ownership of their learning, it supports students’ language development by providing them with authentic, communicative purposes for learning and practicing language, it helps students to reflect on and recreate their multilingual and multicultural identities, and it increases student engagement and promotes collaborative learning.
• There is still the need for assessments to be developed in response to the multimodality of contemporary literacy.
• Apart from the lack of appropriate assessment of multiliteracy practices, there are also other challenges to instantiating a pedagogy of multiliteracies in the ELL classroom. For example, typically, introductory second/foreign language courses that claim to use multimodal strategies do not incorporate the critical framing component of the multiliteracies pedagogy in a systematic manner.
• Additional professional development activities for ELL teachers should provide varied opportunities for them to engage with multiliteracy concepts and pedagogical strategies.

Authors: Morgan Mumba and Sitwe B. Mkandawire

Source: Mumba, M. and Mkandawire, S. B. (2020). “Reading Achievements of Pupils with Pre-School Background and Those without at One Primary School in Lusaka District of Zambia.” Malcolm Moffat Multidisciplinary Journal of Research and Education, 1(1): 53–80.

In Zambia, some pupils participate in early childhood education, whereas others do not. This comparative study sought to highlight the importance of early childhood education when it came to learning literacy skills in primary education. In general, early childhood education and pre-school have been seen to give children some important social and academic skills. In Zambia, pre-school is not compulsory, and therefore the purpose of the study was to examine if there were any differences in performance between pupils who attended pre-school education in comparison to those who did not as far as the technical reading of letters, syllables, and simple words was concerned. Other possible factors affecting reading achievement in Zambia were also discussed. The researchers hoped to produce information based on empirical evidence that could be useful for those who decide the country’s educational policies. At the moment, only a small fraction of Zambian children attended pre-school.

The study

• The objective of the study was to compare technical reading skills of pupils with and without a pre-school background and establish teachers’ views about factors affecting pupils’ reading achievements. The research questions were the following:
  • What were the reading achievements of pupils with a pre-school background and those without in Grade 2?
  • What were the views of teachers regarding factors that affected pupils’ reading achievement from different backgrounds in Grade 2?
• A mixed method research design was applied; both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to collect and analyse data.
• Forty pupils of one primary school who were in Grade 2 were administered a technical reading test of print letters and words; half of them had a pre-school background, and the other half did not.
• The reading test was adopted from the National Literacy Framework through the Primary Literacy Programme assessment tools and modified to focus on technical reading only.
• Pupils’ knowledge of vowels and consonant sounds in the regional official language, Nyanja, and their ability to read words consisting of one or more syllables were assessed.
• The pupils’ parents (thirty-six in total) were interviewed to find out about the pupils’ language background.
• Quantitative data were obtained from a class test for pupils while qualitative data were obtained through interviews with twelve early grade in-service teachers and one head teacher.

Quantitative data from the test were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social
Sciences (SPSS), whereas the findings from the interviews were analysed thematically by grouping related data together into themes

Implications

• Teachers considered pre-school education as an important factor in reading achievement, but the reading test results of this study did not support this view.
• These findings raise questions about the quality of pre-school education in Zambia. The study further noted that, although it covered a narrow sample size and assessed only a part of learning (reading letters and simple words), the pre-school education curriculum should be rechecked and revised to address essential segments of childhood education.
• Parents should be informed about the importance and impact of their involvement in their children’s education.
• Class sizes should be smaller in early childhood classes.

Author: Sitwe B. Mkandawire

Source: Mkandawire, S. B. (2017). “Familiar Language Based Instruction versus Unfamiliar Language for the Teaching of Reading and Writing Literacy Skills: A Focus on Zambian Languages and English at Two Primary Schools in Lusaka.” Zambian Journal of Language Studies, 1(1), 53–82.

This study aimed to find out if pupils in Grade 1 who were learning literacy skills in a local language in government schools were participating more actively than those learning in English in private schools, and vice versa. Despite the pace of pupil participation level in early grade classes, the major problem in the Zambian education system has been low literacy levels and high dropouts. One factor for this might be the language of instruction that some pupils did not know so well. However, since 2013, pupils from Grades 1 to 4 started learning in one of the seven regional official Zambian languages in government public schools, while most private schools still use English from early grade classes.

The study

• This study aimed to find out if pupils in Grade 1 learning literacy skills in a local language would manage to learn better than those whose language of instruction was English at one government school and one private school.
• The research questions were the following:
  • What was the nature of the classes in the two schools?
  • To what extent did the medium of instruction at the two schools facilitate learning?
  • What was the level of class participation on the part of the pupils in class in the two schools?
  • What was the attitude of the pupils, parents, and teachers towards the use of the chosen medium of instruction in schools?
• Data was collected from sixty-seven participants from two primary schools. Forty-two participants were pupils, ten were parents, and fifteen were teachers (three of whom were in the position of head teacher).
• In another school, the language of instruction was mainly a local language, Cinyanja, while in another school, which was private, pupils were learning in English.
• Three methods were used to collect data: face-to-face interviews, focus group discussions, and lesson observation. The data collected was analysed using thematic analysis.

Implications

• Primary school teachers should be allowed to use multiple languages in classrooms to facilitate learning so that pupils can learn literacy skills faster.
• The limited capacity to participate in discussions in English can be seen also at the national level, where very few Zambians take part in discussions concerning social and political issues.
• Using an unfamiliar language such as English might be harmful to a child’s productive and mental processes as they do not participate actively in classes. By contrast, using a familiar language empowers the child to think, act, and process information faster.
• Children learn to value their cultural heritage when local languages can be used in education. The use of local languages also helps a sense of belonging and identity develop.

The article compared language ideologies among two groups of teachers: pre-service teachers in Norway and in-service teachers in Zambia. The study showed that, although teachers shared common challenges in handling multilingual classes present in both educational systems, their language ideologies were different, which affected the way they sought to overcome those challenges. Norwegian teachers preferred mostly monoglossic language ideologies, whereas Zambian teachers conveyed heteroglossic ideologies. These ideologies relate to local conditions, which are very different in Zambia and Norway.

Authors: Jonas Y. Iversen and Sitwe B. Mkandawire

Source: Iversen, J. Y. and Mkandawire S. B. (2020). “Comparing Language Ideologies In Multilingual Classrooms across Norway and Zambia.” Multilingual Margins, 7(3), 33–48. 

The study was motivated by the fact that both countries are facing challenges related to the multilingualism in early grade classrooms, even if the historical, political, and linguistic background of these two countries is very different. In Norway, the number of immigrants is reported to be increasing over the past decades, and there is a change towards a multilingual society. Zambia, on the other hand, has a long history of multilingualism, with seven official regional languages and many more unofficial languages. Soon after independence, Zambia adopted a monolingual education system as part of nation-building project where English (a colonial language) was used as a national language and the medium of instruction from Grade 1 to university; this was the policy from 1966 to 1999.

• Comparing language ideologies of different countries opens a possibility to learn from each other as well as to learn about one’s own culture.
• With the term language ecology, researchers are referring to the thinking about multilingualism that takes different dimensions of the relationships between languages into account. To be able to compare two countries, their language ecologies must first be defined.
• The dominant language ideology affects language policies in education as well as teachers’ actions when facing multilingualism. The way languages are managed in a society is never neutral nor apolitical. Language ideologies define the value of languages.
• Educational programmes founded on monoglossic language ideology legitimate monolingual linguistic practises, whereas educational programmes founded on heteroglossic language ideology support dynamic multilingual linguistic practises in the community (García, 2009).

The Study

• The aim was to find out how teachers from Norway and Zambia considered the role of multilingualism in their education systems and what kind of language ideologies we could find behind the teachers’ views.
• The data was collected in focus group interviews. Norwegian teachers were pre-service teachers, and Zambian teachers were in-service. In Norway, seven focus group interviews were conducted with twenty-four pre-service teachers in total from two teacher education institutions. From Zambia, there were thirty-six in-service primary school teachers who participated in the study.
• Participant utterances were analysed with the qualitative content analysis method. The content was divided into three main categories: the teachers’ comments on multilingualism as a challenge; comments on solutions to these challenges; and comments on language policies in education.
• Participant utterances were connected to either monoglossic or heteroglossic language ideologies. Then these language ideologies were considered in light of the language ecology of the given country.

The Implications

• The study shows that there are some similarities in the language ideologies of the two countries as both groups describe the same kind of challenges in multilingual classroom and idealise a classroom where everyone is able to communicate with others.
• In Norway, a clear line between the Norwegian ‘us’ and the multilingual ‘other’ was noticed. Student must have sufficient proficiency before being able to participate in Norwegian classes; they needed to be assimilated into the Norwegian language.
• Zambian in-service teachers seemed to accept a higher extent of multilingualism in their classrooms, and they were ready to use other languages present in class other than the official language of instruction in a flexible manner.
• It seems that Zambian in-service teachers were following a heteroglossic language ideology, which does not fit the government’s monoglossic language ideology, where one regional official language was expected to be used in class.
• Zambian in-service teachers’ willingness to use other languages as support or as a resource can be linked to the language ecology of the country. In Zambia, people are used to interacting with different languages in everyday life.
• The paper urged Norwegian pre-service teachers to learn from Zambian in-service teachers’ pragmatic ideology and openness towards multilingualism in the classrooms, a landmark concept that suggests the global north should tap knowledge from the global south.

In this article, it is demonstrated how the authors created a context in which digital storytelling was designed and implemented to teach multilingual middle school students in a summer program. Tasks and activities were designed to align with the four components of a multiliteracies pedagogy (i.e., situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformative practice) in order to engage the students in exploring their multiple literacies and identities by using multiple semiotic modes and resources (e.g., texts, images, and sounds). The digital storytelling lesson shows that multiliteracies practices can be a powerful venue for second-language learners and teachers.

Authors: Tuba Angay-Crowder, Jayoung Choi & Youngjoo Yi

Source: Angay-Crowder, T., Choi, J. & Yi, Y. (2013). In the classroom: Putting multiliteracies into practice: Digital storytelling for multilingual adolescents in a summer program. TESL Canada Journal, 30(2), doi: 10.18806/tesl.v30i2.1140

• In this article it is demonstrated how the theoretical concept of multiliteracies can be applied to a pedagogic practice.
• It is described how 12 adolescent multilingual students were engaged in the multiliteracies practice of digital storytelling (i.e., multimedia composing that consists of texts, images, and sounds to tell stories) during a summer program.
• The Digital Storytelling Class was designed in order a) to examine how a theoretical framework (i.e., multiliteracies) could be translated into teaching multilingual adolescents; and b) to create a context in which students could explore their multiple literacies and identities using multiple semiotic modes and resources.

Multiliteracies

• The term multiliteracies addresses the multiplicity of communication channels and media and the increasing saliency of cultural and linguistic diversity.
• The multiliteracies theory of pedagogy integrates four components: a) situated practice; b) overt instruction; c) critical framing; and d) transformed practice.
• Situated practice is an immersion in meaningful practices within a community of learners who are capable of playing multiple and different roles based on their background and experiences.
• Overt instruction includes active interventions on the part of the teacher and other experts that scaffold learning activities and allow the learners to gain explicit information.
• Through critical framing, which involves both cognitive and social dimensions of literacy pedagogy, students step back from what they have learned, critique their learning, and extend and apply their learning in new contexts.
• Transformed practice involves students’ transfer, reformulation, and redesign of existing texts and meaning-making practice from one context to another.

Digital storytelling

• Digital storytelling can provide students with rich opportunities a) to explore, express, and reflect on themselves; b) to enhance critical thinking; c) to foster academic achievement; and d) to build leadership skills.
• For multilingual adolescent students, digital storytelling can provide an opportunity to design multimodal narratives that represent and reflect on their sociocultural identities and their lives.

The study

The digital storytelling class took place in a traditional classroom and a computer lab for 90 minutes twice a week during a four-week summer program, and 12 students in Grades 7 and 8 were carefully selected to take part. All the students were children of immigrants and spoke a language other than English at home.

Designing and conducting the digital storytelling class

• The class was designed and conducted for a total of seven sessions.
• Building a foundation for digital storytelling (Sessions 1 and 2)
  • During the first week, situated practice and overt instruction were employed to teach the students ‘what digital storytelling is,’ ‘how it can be created,’ and ‘why students need to consider their purpose and audience in digital storytelling.’
  • In the first session, a needs analysis was conducted in which students reported their preferred out-of-school activities, their use of technology, and their L1 proficiency.
  • The students brainstormed potential topics for their digital stories based on initial conversations about their interests.
  • The students were challenged to reflect critically on their topic selection and to reframe their choices while raising questions that helped them think harder about whether their topics could serve their purposes and entertain their audience.
  • Also, overt instruction was offered that aimed to scaffold learning activities and give students explicit information about the nature of digital storytelling.
  • After an initial free writing phase, the students filled out a storyboard template while carefully considering multiple modes (e.g., narration, images, audio) for each slide so that they could express their meaning effectively and creatively in their digital stories.
• Writing narrative for digital storytelling (Sessions 3 and 4)
  • The second week centred on strengthening the students’ narratives of their digital stories.
  • A series of situated writing activities were implemented in class, such as responding to writing prompts, outlining a narrative, composing a structured essay based on their outlines, and participating in individual writing conferences.
  • For example, students were asked to respond to ‘What message do you want to convey to your audience?’
• Orchestrating text, image, and sound (Sessions 5 and 6)
  • The primary tasks during the third week involved selecting appropriate images and sound, modifying linguistic text, and recording a narration.
  • The students were lead to reflect critically on their process of composing, from writing print-based narratives to selecting and orchestrating both linguistic and non-linguistic modes for a digital story.
  • Students were asked questions such as, ‘What effect does this image or sound have on your overall meaning?’
  • Students’ insertion of narrative or text in their first or heritage language and their consultations about their projects with parents and other adults in their communities were indications of transformed practice at work.
• Reflecting, sharing, and celebrating (Session 7)
  • During the last week, students celebrated their final productions by reflecting on the whole process of creating digital stories and sharing their projects with an audience.
  • Students were asked questions such as ‘What was it like to make the project?’

Conclusions

• Engaging students in multiliteracies gives us some valuable insights into what counts as literacy learning and teaching and how we reframe literacy pedagogy in classrooms.
• Both conventional print-based and computer-based multimodal composing practices seem to help students expand their literacy repertoire and means of expression.
• Digital storytelling can develop students’ leadership skills as they work as a team, set goals, manage time and resources, and construct a positive identity.
• Providing specific guidance to students throughout the digital storytelling process and creating a collaborative environment in which both students and the teachers learn from one another are essential to an efficacious multiliteracies pedagogy.

This study investigated bidirectional links between the quality of teacher-child relationships and children’s interest and pre-academic skills in literacy and math and gender differences in them. Teacher-perceived conflict predicted lower interest and pre-academic skills in both literacy and math. Results were similar for boys and girls.

Authors: Eija Pakarinen, Marja-Kristiina Lerkkanen, Jaana Viljaranta & Antje von Suchodoletz

Source: Pakarinen, E., Lerkkanen, M.-K., Viljaranta, J. & von Suchodoletz, A. (2021). Investigating bidirectional links between the quality of teacher-child relationships and children’s interest and pre-academic skills in literacy and math. Child Development, 92(1), 388-407. DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13431

This study investigated bidirectional links between the quality of teacher-child relationships and children’s interest and pre-academic skills in literacy and math and gender differences in them. Participants were 461 Finnish kindergarteners (six-year-olds) and their teachers (n = 48). Teacher-perceived conflict predicted lower interest and pre-academic skills in both literacy and math. Results were similar for boys and girls. Implications for reducing conflictual patterns of relationships together with promoting other factors are discussed.

• Kindergarten represents a crucial context in which children develop school-related skills and patterns of engagement that form the basis for the development of later competencies important for academic success.
• Above and beyond children’s skills, previous literature has highlighted the benefits of positive teacher-child relationships for both academic and socio-emotional outcomes.

Teacher-child relationships

• Supportive relationships with teachers are defined by a combination of high levels of closeness and low levels of conflict.
• Close relationships with teachers are characterised by warmth, approachability, and open communication.
• In such relationships, children can use their teacher as a secure base from which to take advantage of the learning opportunities provided.
• Coercive relationships can be characterised as conflictive ones where tension and anger exist within the teacher-child relationship.
• Teacher-perceived conflict with children has been linked to less favourable outcomes, such as lower achievement and higher levels of problem behaviours.

Theoretical perspectives on teacher-child relationships and child outcomes

• Relationship-driven models are based on attachment theory, arguing that warm and supportive relationships between children and caregivers are crucial for favourable developmental outcomes.
• Self-determination theory (SDT) posits that individual propensity to seek challenges and enjoy mastering new learning unfolds when basic psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness are met in the classroom.
• Child-driven models propose the opposite direction of influence, that is, children’s academic skills and interest in learning affect the quality of their relationships with their teachers.
• Bidirectional models are based on transactional theory, assuming that developmental outcomes are the product of a combination of an individual child’s characteristics and the experiences and aspects of their environment.

The study

The goal of the present study was to examine possible bidirectionality between teacher-child relationship quality measured by teacher-perceived closeness and conflict with individual children and child outcomes measured by the child’s interest and pre-academic skills in literacy and math.

Research questions:

1. Do closeness/conflict predict child outcomes (relationship-driven model), or do child outcomes predict closeness/conflict (child-driven model), or are closeness/conflict and child outcomes reciprocally related (bidirectional model)?
2. Does gender moderate the associations between teacher-child relationship quality and child outcomes?

The participants were 461 children (222 boys) enrolled in 48 kindergarten classrooms from 32 centres.

Conclusions

• The relationship-driven model best described the data for interest and pre-academic skills in literacy and math: teacher-perceived conflict predicted lower interest and skills in both literacy and math.
• The results were largely similar for boys and girls.
• It can be suggested that a relationship with one’s teacher without conflict and coercive interactions meets children’s needs for relatedness and belonging at school and therefore supports the development of their intrinsic motivation and achievement.
• It can also be suggested that teacher-perceived coercive interactions and negative emotions are harmful for children’s engagement in learning and diminish their interest in academic tasks.
• Because teachers may be more able to provide support, praise, and constructive feedback than to decrease conflict, interventions and teacher preparation programs should focus on building and fostering the positive aspects of a relationship with each child.
• Teacher education programs may benefit from educating teachers not only about academic content and pedagogical practices, but also about strategies that build supportive relationships with children.

The purpose of the study was to examine whether teacher’s individualised support affects students’ reading skills and interest in classrooms with different teaching styles. The results showed that relations between individualized support and students’ later reading comprehension skills and interest differed between classrooms with different teaching styles. While individualized support enhanced interest in reading in classrooms employing mixed child-centred and teacher-directed styles, it inhibited interest in classrooms with child-dominated styles.

Authors: Eve Kikas, Gintautas Silinskas, Anna-Liisa Jõgi & Piret Soodla

Source: Kikas, E., Silinskas, G., Jõgi, A.-L. & Soodla, P. (2016). Effects of teacher’s individualized support on children’s reading skills and interest in classrooms with different teaching styles. Learning and Individual Differences, 49, 270-277. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2016.05.015

The purpose of the study was to examine whether a teacher’s individualised support affects students’ reading skills and interest in classrooms with different teaching styles. The participants were 552 children (273 boys) and their 21 homeroom teachers. The results showed that relations between individualized support and students’ later reading comprehension skills and interest differed between classrooms with different teaching styles. While individualized support enhanced interest in reading in classrooms employing mixed child-centred and teacher-directed styles, it inhibited interest in classrooms with child-dominated styles. In the classrooms with child-dominated teaching styles, higher individualised support was related to lower reading comprehension skills.

• Outside of home, teachers constitute the most proximal environmental context for young children’s academic and motivational development, yet they differ in teaching practices, teaching styles, and how they individualise their teaching.
• While some studies have shown that increased individualised instruction has a positive impact on children’s skill development, others have not.
• Based on active, leading roles of teachers or children, three dimensions of teaching practices – child-centred, teacher-directed, and child-dominated – have been described.

Child-centred practices

• Teachers actively organise children’s learning activities.
• They consider children’s interests, allow children to construct their knowledge, and provide emotional support and encouragement.

Teacher-directed practices

• Teachers give detailed tasks and frequent feedback, praise children for correct answers rather than effort, and children have to usually follow teacher directions.

Child-dominated practices

• Teachers remain quite passive.
• They respond to children’s questions and interrupt only when violations of discipline occur, giving feedback when asked but rarely providing emotional support.

The study

This study examined whether the effects of individualised support for reading skills and interest differ depending on whether teachers utilise different teaching styles.

Hypotheses:

1. Individualised support in child-centred and mixed classrooms will have a positive effect on both skills and interest.
2. Individualised support in child-dominated classrooms will have a negative effect on all studied outcomes (reading fluency, comprehension, and interest).

The participants were 552 children from seven schools and 21 classrooms and their homeroom teachers.

Conclusions

• Classrooms with different teaching styles maintained different relations between individualised teacher support and students’ later reading comprehension skills and interest.
• Individualised teacher support did not have any significant effect on reading skills and interest when the child-centred style was used in the classroom.
• In the groups with teachers using the mixed teaching style combining child-centred and teacher-directed practices, individualised support was negatively related to students’ comprehension skills, but it had a supportive effect on their interest in reading.
• In the classrooms with child-dominated teaching styles, individualised support tended to predict lower interest and reading comprehension skills.
• Teachers should be encouraged to apply both child-centred (e.g. considering children’s interests when providing reading material, focusing on comprehension during reading activities, providing emotional support in reading activities) and teacher-directed (e.g. practicing reading accuracy and fluency) types of activities but avoid relying on child-dominated practices.