Literacy, Home and School

Research And Practice In Teaching Literacy With Parents

Peter Hannon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135399214
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Parental involvement in the teaching of reading and writing has often lagged behind practice, though schools in many countries now recognise the importance of parental involvement. The ideas presented in this book offer new ways of thinking about parental involvement and should interest both researchers and practitioners. It relates the recent growth of involvement to broader considerations of the nature of literacy and historical exclusion of parents from the curriculum.; Descriptions are given of key findings from research into pre-school literacy work with parents and parents hearing children read, and a framework to underpin practice is offered. The author gives a critique of evaluation methods in the field and suggests how parental involvement should be evaluated together with a view of research findings to date and issues needing further study. The book concludes with an appraisal of what was learned from research and what needs further enquiry.

Chapter 1
The Meaning of Literacy

Imparting literacy to the next generation has historically been seen as the task of schools. However, in this book I argue that much of children's literacy learning takes place before school or out of school — mainly in fact, at home. This is a challenge for schools. Instead of relying on in-school learning to promote literacy, the problem is how to build upon or extend at-home learning. The key is to involve parents more in the teaching of literacy — a part of their children's education from which they have often been excluded. I hope to show how teachers can work with parents, not only in the school years, but also before children start school, how involvement can be achieved in various ways, and how these deserve further development and evaluation.

Before getting into the detail of what should be done, this first chapter seeks to justify some assumptions. These are: that literacy is important for children and adults; that it is unequally distributed in society and strongly related to home experiences; that literacy teaching should always be part of some wider concern; and that we have to be careful about which kinds of literacy we promote. This will help identify some implications for how we can begin to think about school-home relationships in this field.

Is Literacy Really that Important?

Today, there is widespread anxiety about literacy in almost all countries throughout the world. In those where large sections of the population are illiterate, universal literacy is seen as essential for reaching political, economic and health goals. But even in industrialized countries where there has been compulsory schooling for generations, there is concern about the persistence of a minority of illiterate adults, complaints about the inadequacy of workforce literacy skills needed for competition in international markets, and controversy about how children should be taught literacy.

Some of the literacy panic is probably attributable to the needs of politicians to generate anxiety about matters they can then make a show of tackling. It may be in the interests of some groups in society if the 'literacy crisis' diverts attention from other problems of social order, unemployment, or educational provision (or if it can be presented as the root cause of such problems). But does that mean that altogether too much is made of literacy and that there is no literacy problem? Does it matter whether all children are enabled to become fully literate? Does it matter whether children acquire their literacy in or out of school? To address these questions, I want to begin by re-examining the value of literacy — culturally, personally and educationally.

The Cultural Importance of Literacy

Literacy is the ability to use written language to derive and convey meaning. In the teaching of literacy one generation equips the next with a powerful cultural tool. Written language enables members of a culture to communicate without meeting; to express and explore their experience; to store information, ideas and knowledge; to extend their memory and thinking; and, increasingly nowadays, to control computer-based processes.

Communication between people who do not meet — and perhaps never could meet — is one of the most obvious uses for written language. This means, for example, at a mundane level, that parents can send a note to school to explain a child's absence or, at a more profound level, that a single author's work can reach millions of readers. The writers and readers who are in communication may know each other or they may be complete strangers, widely separated by distance and time. They may even be separated by many generations. The written language may be used for a letter, a financial transaction, a vehicle repair manual, a public record, a news report, a legal statute, a novel, a recipe, or a philosophical argument. Literacy means being able to make fuller use of such shared cultural resources and being able to interact more fully with an enormous range of other people.

Thus literacy means much more than just decoding letter-sound correspondences in reading or forming letters and spelling correctly in writing (vital though these skills are). No one reads simply to decode or writes simply to form letters. It is fundamentally a matter of understanding others' meanings or communicating meaningfully with them rather than exercising specific perceptual and motor skills.

In human history the development of written language must have meant a change of the same order as the earlier evolution of spoken language. Not only did writing facilitate within-group communication and recording for our ancestors but it greatly accelerated the process whereby one generation could build upon the accumulated knowledge of previous generations.

A key use of written language, from earliest times, has been to express and to explore human experience. At first this was in written versions of spoken forms such as stories, myths, songs, poetry or drama — written probably to aid memory. Subsequently, writing became more important in the development of these forms so that the written versions preceded the spoken ones. In many narrative genres (most obviously the novel) the written form stands alone. Children and adults who are able to read such material therefore have access to a vast and intricately depicted range of human experience and reflection stored in the literature of the world. For those who are illiterate in this sense, that door is closed.

Writers can also use written language to communicate with themselves. They may do so simply as an aid to memory when, for example, writing a shopping list or noting appointments in a diary. They are in effect writing to themselves in the future. It can go further, however, when an author seeks to organize his or her thoughts by writing them out, reading them (almost as if they were someone else's), reviewing, and then revising them. Howard Becker explains how such writing can aid thinking.

First one thing, then another, comes into your head. By the time you have the fourth thought, the first one is gone. For all you know, the fifth thought is the same as the first. . . You need to give the thoughts a physical embodiment, to put them down on paper. A thought written down (and not immediately thrown into the wastebasket) is stubborn, doesn't change its shape, can be compared with the other thoughts that come after it. (Becker, 1986, pp.55-6)

The nature of literacy in a culture is repeatedly redefined as the result of technological changes. The introduction of new materials (stone tablets, skins, papyrus, paper) and new mark making methods (scratching, chiselling, ink, the printing press, typewriters, ballpoints, laser printers, and so on) has meant both new users and new uses for written language. The consequences of such changes can be very complex — not just in terms of more literacy but different literacy (Eisenstein, 1985). Our literacy today is consequently very different from that of medieval England not just because the printing press is more efficient than having scribes copy manuscripts in monasteries but also because printing and other technologies have stimulated entirely new uses for written language (e.g. tax forms, novels, postcards, advertisements) unimagined by medieval society.

Information technology today will have repercussions in the future that are hard to predict. Written language has taken on a new importance as a method of human-machine communication — usually in inputting instructions or data through a computer keyboard (i.e. writing) and in reading from a screen. This may eventually be superseded by other methods based on graphic displays and direct voice input/output but for reasons of speed and efficiency these will almost certainly still require literacy at least in being able to read messages on screen. It is sometimes claimed that advances in information technology reduce the need for literacy but this is to ignore the fact that a great deal of this technology is devoted to the storage, organization, and processing of text. On-line help systems are often heavily text dependent. Also, information technology appears to generate a huge amount of ancillary printed material in the form of user manuals, specialist magazines and other documentation. The idea that information technology might eliminate the need for children to acquire literacy is implausible — although it may well transform the nature of their literacy.

The Personal Value of Literacy

Imagine becoming, for some reason, unable to read or write but still having to live in a literate culture. What would it mean? For most readers of this book it would mean giving up their present employment, a massive loss of independence, and reliance on family, friends and others to accomplish the simplest tasks of everyday life. It would mean being denied all the uses of literacy discussed so far. The far reaching implications of such a personal disaster are a further measure of the value of literacy.

It is not just readers drawn from a narrow, highly educated section of society who value literacy. Anyone in an industrialized society who has difficulties in reading or writing immediately faces many other problems. There is the fear of being stigmatized as illiterate, which means that many go to extraordinary lengths to disguise their inability to use written language ('I haven't got my glasses' or 'I haven't got a pencil'). One could argue that this is simple prejudice — to be resisted like other kinds based on race, gender or disability — but illiteracy by itself and without any other social process means exclusion from many aspects of the culture whether it be reading books, football results, TV listings, food packaging or filling in simple forms and sending greeting cards. Job opportunities (and even the confidence to seek employment) are extremely limited or in some circumstances non-existent. The capacity to act as parents in modern society (or at least the ease with which it can be done) is severely limited. It is perfectly true that none of these problems would arise if society was less dependent on written language — in that sense one could 'blame' society rather than the individual — but that is little comfort for those concerned.

The meaning of literacy for those who have not acquired it is best expressed in their own words. This is what some young adults told interviewers in a national survey (ALBSU, 1987).

I'm frightened if someone comes to the door with anything that has to be read. I couldn't fill in an application form for a job if I wanted to.

I try to read books but I don't get any difficult words from them. If letters come someone has to read them for me.

On a motorway I can't read the signs. At work I have, problems with filling in the shipping sheets and things.

It stops me getting a better job, a more secure one.

For adults who are parents, the difficulties can be particularly distressing.

My children are starting to read and I can't read stories to them.

It's embarassing — very embarassing in so many ways. For instance, if I send the kid to a shop I can't write out what I need.

I'd like to help my daughter with her school work. I can just cope at the moment but I won't be able to soon.

The stories of those without literacy tell us what it means for those who do have it. Case studies reported by Peter Johnston (1985) show how much people have to do to compensate for a lack of literacy. At school their coping strategies may include memorizing text, listening carefully for oral instructions, bluffing, relying on help from classmates. After leaving school the strategies identified by Johnston were mainly preventative — avoidance of print in any potentially social situation.

For example, Bill participates in business meetings for which and at which he must read material. His strategy is to be sure to spend some time 'shooting the breeze' with other participants before the meeting to pick up the gist of things. At the meeting he says nothing until asked for his opinion, by which time he has been able to gain enough information to respond. He reported that this also makes him appear conservative and thoughtful. Charlie reads the prices on gas pumps to get the right gas in his car and truck. He cannot read the words but uses the price hierarchy as his information source. Unlike many readers for whom the price is not so relevant, he always remembers the current prices. (Johnston, 1985, p. 159)

Impressive as these strategies are, they do lead to problems. Bill was sometimes found out (trying to read to his young children, reading a paper at work); Charlie sometimes put diesel in his truck by mistake. Both were prone to severe and incapacitating anxiety when an encounter with written language could not be avoided.

Literacy in Education and Intellectual Development

Educationally, literacy is the key to the rest of the curriculum. Virtually all schooling, after the first year or two, assumes pupil literacy. This is particularly so to the extent that children are expected to work independently of teachers, for that requires them to read worksheets, written directions, reference materials, and so on. Many schools are anxious to encourage this pattern of pupil learning from the earliest possible stage — which means establishing literacy as soon as possible after school entry. The corollary is that children who find reading and writing difficult are disadvantaged in all areas of the curriculum.

The effectiveness of schools in establishing literacy has been a recurrent issue of controversy. In 1972 in England, for example, it led the government to set up the Bullock Committee to enquire into standards and methods of teaching. The Committee received evidence from many people who believed standards of literacy had fallen but it pointed out that similar complaints could be found in the Newbolt Report of 1921 where one employer had stated that 'teaching of English in present day schools produces a very limited command of the English language' (DES, 1975 p.3). The Bullock Report, although widely acclaimed by professionals in education and highly influential, did not silence critics for long. By the end of the 1980s the controversy had surfaced again and further reports were required (DES, 1990; Cato and Whetton, 1991). Parallel developments can be found in other industrialized countries.

Debates in this area are usually characterized by (or fuelled by) inadequate information about true levels of literacy — whether rising or falling — and deeply held convictions that one method or another is the only way to teach reading or writing. However, what they clearly demonstrate is how widely the teaching of literacy is considered an important matter — culturally and politically as well as educationally.

It has been argued by some educationists that literacy has profound consequences for intellectual development. Vygotsky suggested that writing means acquiring an explicit knowledge of the sounds and grammar of a language which helps 'the child rise to a higher level of speech development' (1962, p.101). He further argued that writing demands abstraction of two kinds. The first is at the level of psychological processes.

Written speech is a separate linguistic function, differing from oral speech in both structure and mode of functioning. Even its minimal development requires a high level of abstraction. It is speech in thought and image only, lacking the musical, expressive, intonational qualities of oral speech. In learning to write, the child must disengage himself [s?c] from the sensory aspect of speech and replace words by images of words. Speech that is merely imagined and that requires symbolization of the sound image in written signs (i.e. a second degree of symbolization) naturally must be as much harder than oral speech for the child as algebra is harder than arthmetic. (Vygotsky, 1962, pp.98-99)

The second kind of abstraction arises from the fact that writing, unlike speech, cannot be part of a dynamic social situation such as a conversation and therefore has to be more consciously directed by the child.

The motives for writing are more abstract, more intellectualized, further removed from immediate needs. In written speech we are obliged to create the situation, to represent it to ourselves. This demands detachment from the actual situation. (Vygotsky, 1962, p.99)

The influence of reading has been explored by Margaret Donaldson (1978). She has argued that 'the early mastery of reading is even more important than it is commonly taken to be' because, from the standpoint of psychological theory, children's thinking develops when something gives them pause and they have to consider more than one possibility. She suggests that,

the lasting character of the print means that there is time to stop and think, so that the child has a chance to consider possibilities — a chance of a kind which he [sic] may never have had before. (Donaldson, 1978, p.95):

There may well be other ways in which this kind of thinking could be developed but literacy is clearly one, very powerful, way.

Inequalities in Literacy and the Importance of the Home

Despite the evident importance of literacy, there are wide variations in the literacy abilities of children and adults. Reference has already been made to adults with literacy difficulties. They constitute a small but significant minority in Britain (and in comparable so...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface
• 1 The Meaning of Literacy
• 2 From Exclusion to Involvement
• 3 Understanding the Case for Involvement
• 4 Working with Parents of Preschool Children
• 5 Working with Parents of School-age Children
• 6 A Closer Look at Hearing Reading
• 7 Other Involvement
• 8 The Need for Evaluation and Research
• 9 Evaluation by Tests
• 10 Evaluation by Participants
• 11 What Have We Learned? What Do We Need to Know?
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index