The Use of Children's Literature in Teaching

A study of politics and professionalism within teacher education

Alyson Simpson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134661459
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Use of Children's Literature in Teaching reveals the impact of politics, professional guidelines and restrictive measurements of literacy on the emerging identities of young teachers. It places renewed emphasis on the importance of creative teaching with children's literature for the empowerment of teacher agency to enhance the learning of their students.

Framing the debate alongside the issue of teacher autonomy, Simpson describes results from a two-year study, which brings together information from interviews, surveys, document analysis and digital stories from Australia, Canada, the UK and the US to assess the role of children's literature in pre-service teacher education. Through cross-cultural comparison, this research captures the different levels of connection between politics, education systems, higher education and pre-service teachers. It exposes how politics, narrow views of professionalism and program structures in teacher education may adversely affect the development of pre-service teachers.

This book presents a strong case that reading and responding critically to literary texts leads to better educational outcomes than basic decoding and low-level comprehension training. As such, this book will be of great interest to researchers and scholars working in the areas of teacher education and literacy and primary education. It should also be essential reading for teacher educators and policymakers.

1 Asking the difficult questions

1Do you believe that a child’s understanding of the reading process can be fairly (and completely) tested by multiple choice questions?

Yes / No

2Which group of letters is a real word?

Ning

Nong

Nang

3Do you believe that the first question represents a set of preconceived values?

Yes / No

Introduction

At the top of the page are three questions that are met with three further questions rather than answers to remind the reader that questions shape what it is possible to say in reply. The questions are posed as a deliberate move to show how this book will aim to provoke response by providing conflicting views of the same issue. They are purposefully value laden in the way they direct the reader. The decision to present such challenges at the start of the chapter is taken to unsettle the reader.

One of the key drivers for this book and the TARDIS (teaching about reading: dialogic interactions) study that informs it is the unresolved tension around the teaching of reading and the preparation of pre-service teachers to become teachers of reading. The teaching of reading is a “highly discussed and debated part of education and of life in general” (Murphy 2013: 2). This debate has been framed in different ways over the years in various enquiries, most often in terms of a battle, which has passionate foes on opposing sides of what has been termed a “productive struggle” (Kosnik, Rowsell, Williamson, Simon and Beck 2013: xv). The title of the book, The Literacy Wars (Snyder 2008), signifies the problematic that exists for educators, parents, teachers and politicians. Researchers continually face the problem that “the issues that should be the ones being debated are not the ones politicians and the press are highlighting” (Goodman in Clark 2014: 177). The dependence of politicians on public support and the fact that many of the most heated discussions take place in the media and are inflamed by voices with little or no teaching experience only exacerbates the situation. The powerful triumvirate of parents, press and politicians place constant pressure on teachers and teacher educators to get it right where literacy is concerned (Shanahan 2014; Craig Post 2014; Hibbert 2015; Kumashiro 2015). Positioning in global OECD rankings for reading test scores causes angst for many when literacy achievement is interpreted through economic discourse (Murphy 2013). A holistic view of the child as learner and the meaning making purposes of learning to read literary texts as a socially situated activity have been lost in the push to meet performativity goals in high-stakes literacy tests (Pearson and Goodin 2010; Roberts-Holmes 2014).

In the pursuit of productive ways to teach reading, it is often the case that public opinion instead of researched informed enquiry has the loudest say, as social and cultural debates are shaped by political and economic forces (Snyder 2008: 6). Politics clashes with pedagogy in the public arena through “unrelenting attacks on education in the mainstream media” (Fuller 2014: 63) and the end result is a “poor public and professional image” (Louden 2008: 358) for initial teacher education (ITE) and greater pressure on teachers. Through various public statements and enquiries into the teaching of reading, teacher education has been cast as “mediocre” (Kumashiro 2015: 1), “toxic” (Sydney Morning Herald, October 3, 2012) or “at best, ineffectual and, at worst, harmful and insidiously ideological” (Borko, Liston and Whitcomb 2006: 199). Over time the built-up effect of reports such as these has constructed deficit views of the teaching profession (Kosnik et al. 2013) and turned ITE into a ‘problem’ that needs to be fixed (Cochran-Smith and Fries 2005). The solutions evolving over the last ten years display a greater dependence on regimented accountability practices as a measure of control over teacher independence through “policy epidemics” and “quality audits in academies, colleges and unis” (Comber and Freebody 2013: 66). This move has been reported as an active attack against teacher professionalism (Day and Gu 2010; Kayi-Aydar 2015) as it removes opportunities for teacher autonomy (Furlong, Barton, Miles, Whiting and Whitty 2000; Day 2007) and impacts on their choice of texts.

When teachers are disciplined to follow prescriptive approaches to teaching reading to improve test scores the challenge to their professionalism leads to “possible compromisation of student learning” (Plunkett and Dyson 2011 in Buchanan et al. 2013: 113) and increased attrition rates (Le Cornu 2009). Meeting “seemingly pointless bureaucratic demands” (Comber and Nixon 2009: 334) drives teachers’ attention away from their interest in choosing the best pedagogy to meet their students’ needs. The losers in the battle are the students who miss out on the opportunity to learn to read with literary texts in engaging ways (Cullinan 2000; Christie and Simpson 2010); the pre-service teachers (PST) who find opportunities to build their intellectual independence and professional identity closed off by “competing perspectives” (Beijaard, Meijer and Verloop 2004: 115); and the teachers whose ability to deal with the complexity of reading through a range of integrated approaches is hampered by imposed “educational initiatives” and increasing “parental demands” (Ee and Chang 2010: 321). Seen at a level of cultural impact, such restrictions on students, PST and teachers acting as “autonomous individuals” (Giroux 2003: 5) reduces their ability to act as agentive participants in their own learning communities, which limits their potential contributions as public citizens in a democratic society. Therefore, as education is the provocateur of human development, this study of the teaching of reading has personal, institutional as well as political ramifications. Rather than distancing the research from the political scene, and matters of concern regarding policy and pedagogy, the study confronts these issues head on to take a purposeful stand against the continual cycle of teacher despair to “mobilise energy” in support of educated hope (Singh 2007: 335). The goal is to ensure that PST are taught the value of teaching beyond mere levels of competence, and inspired to believe they can make a difference as educators “despite policy factors over which they have no control” (Day and Gu 2010: 191). To achieve this end, PST need to experience the potential of engagement in professional decision making and curriculum design (Cohen 2010) and become agentive teachers who help their students become “critical, thoughtful, engaged citizens” by developing “capacities to think, question, doubt, imagine the unimaginable” (Giroux 2015: np).

Although much prior research has investigated the teaching of reading and many government reports have been written on the topic, few of those studies or reports placed children’s literature at the heart of their study or viewed the situation from the perspective of the pre-service teacher. There is a twin rationale for focusing on teacher preparation as well as theory and policy in the study reported in this text. One angle is that the view from the front line of initial teacher education in eight different campuses in four nations gives the reader comparative insight through the grounded experience of individuals. As others have noted, “in order to understand teachers, we need to have a clearer sense of who they are: the professional, cultural, political, and individual identities which they claim or which are assigned to them” (Varghese, Morgan, Johnston and Johnson 2005: 22). The other reason for choosing to view teacher education through ITE programs is that PST who have been prepared through current practices will teach students of the future. So it is at the level of teacher education that generational change is possible. This investigation into ITE is deliberately set against the perception that “structural imperatives trump rhetorical commitments for educational researchers” (Labaree 2004: 191). It takes seriously the position that “teacher education must begin […] by exploring the teaching self ” (Bullough 1997: 109). Therefore, this book will contribute to the debate about the teaching of reading through a comparative research methodology that reports on data collected from institutions where children’s literature is embedded in teacher education programs. The weight of evidence provided by this cross comparative meta-analysis of programs and those who teach and learn in them should give educators a solid platform on which to argue the case for a variety of agentive pedagogic approaches to teaching reading with literary texts. As research shows links between teaching practices and students’ ability and enthusiasm for reading (Cullinan 2000), the results will point to implications for literacy policies, pre-service teacher education and the provision of professional development for teachers.

The political context for teaching reading with children’s literature

In this section a brief overview of current political and education debates is presented to set the background against which new questions may be asked about how teachers need to be prepared to teach twenty-first-century learners to read with literary texts. A more detailed examination of policy impact is taken up in Chapter 3. This discussion is set in a particular historical context where heated debates continue about how young children should be taught to read. It addresses how curriculum should be shaped; what pedagogies should be used; and what counts as literacy. In the last ten years major investigations into teaching in primary schools have included The Cambridge Primary Review (Alexander 2009a) in the UK, The Reading First Final Report (Gamse, Jacob, Horst, Boulay and Unlu 2008) in the US and the National Inquiry into Literacy (2005) in Australia. Each one of these reports was directed to investigate existing educational programs to assess their success in supporting children’s learning. Each one reported on perceived failures and made recommendations that were driven by the political situation of the time.

A particular case in recent history, which illustrates the dynamic situation, stands out. After the extensive recommendations from The Cambridge Primary Review were reported (Alexander 2009a), a planned policy change promising significant revision of approaches to the teaching of reading in UK schools was mooted. However, these plans were abandoned when a change of government occurred and a new policy informed by far more constraining concepts of literacy and reading theory was put in place. The end result for the UK is the current mandate for teachers to limit young learners to read through systematic synthetic phonics. As such phonics-based programs encourage teachers to use simplistic texts with easily decodable vocabulary, the corollary is that teachers avoid the use of literary texts with complex words (Lu and Cross 2012; Pullinger 2012). Because the emphasis of this particular approach to teaching reading is more on the decoding of sign and sound relationships over the production of meaning, researchers view it as the antithesis of how children should be taught to read (Wyse and Styles 2007; Moss 2009; Dombey 2009; Bearne and Styles 2010; Pearson and Hiebert 2010; Emmitt, Hornsby and Wilson 2013; Clark 2014). Reading meaningless texts removes the impetus for students to learn to read because the texts they read are not engaging. This problematic situation, where teachers are instructed to work against what research shows to be good practice, is driven by the fact that politicians and educators often work with competing conceptualizations of literacy (Ellis and Moss 2014; Cremin, Mottram, Collins, Powell and Safford 2014). As a result teachers, and more increasingly teacher educators, are caught between conflicting guidelines for teaching and assessment and are put under increased professional pressure to make crucial decisions for their students.

Literacy testing is a hot media topic. Every year a crisis of some kind or another in literacy standards is reported in the press, which stimulates conversations about teaching standards, approaches to teaching and the role of higher education in teacher preparation. When the tone of the debate becomes strident enough, as in headlines such as “Teacher prep programs get failing marks” (Sanchez in Fuller 2014: 63) and “Better By Degrees – Teacher entry scores targeted in bid to lift classroom standards” (Chilcott 2010), demands are made to politicians to find a solution to the problem. The link between the media and the current drive for policy change is clear, as Clark states, “they are responsible for the emphasis on testing” (Clark 2014: 177). Yet when the topic of literacy is examined from a historical perspective it is clear that according to public knowledge there has been discussion of crisis in education since the time of Plato. The critique is often caused by conflicting beliefs about what the teaching of literacy should encompass.

Since its establishment as a viable term through inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1883, the word literacy has slowly devolved from referring to a person who is ‘well read’ to meaning someone who has control of the skills needed to communicate in reading and writing. Hence, due to the conceptual splitting of learning about reading and writing into fields of language, literature AND literacy, as with traditional views of reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic, literacy eventually became associated with knowing the basics. This, in Nel and Paul’s words, equates to “a low-order, mechanical, even superficial ability related to the simple decoding of black letters on a white page” (Nel and Paul 2011: 141). By the mid-twentieth century a survey of policy documents from the four countries in the study shows that literacy was a key driver of educational policy and large-scale testing was chosen as the means by which information about student success could be measured. Testing at national or international levels became the trusted, ‘scientific’ evidence base for governments seeking validation of their education programs in constrictive educational discourse. Now, governments constantly hold up results of student performance on international literacy tests, such as PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), which is used to assess the Scientific, Mathematical and Reading achievements of students in 65 nations and territories, as a measure of an individual country’s success on a worldwide comparative scale.

Less well known are the PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) tests. The PIRLS tests are structured around three dynamic components of reading to assess students’ purposes for reading; their processes for comprehension; and their reading behaviours and attitudes as they read for information and for literary experience. The PIRLS tests, which measure children’s reading achievement after four years of schooling, are measurements cast in a particular style and controlled by test design to produce contrasting types of information. As the PIRLS framework is based on an interactive, constructive view of reading, the test carefully distinguishes between the use of multiple-choice questions to assess comprehension processes and more open-ended constructed response questions that incorporate extended answers in order to assess students’ abilities to make more complex interpretations or evaluations. The PIRLS test structure supports the critique that where multiple choice tests are used to test literacy, the complexity of answers is reduced to suit the design of the test, not what the learner may be able to express.

Multiple choice questions can not cope with individuality, so where they are used what is assessable in terms of student learning is limited to a lowest common denominator in order to create standardization (Resnick 2010). Here is where a glitch appears in the system. There is nothing inherently wrong in taking a snapshot of a student’s knowledge in a skills-based demonstration unless it is the sole measure of student success that is reported centrally and taken as the only viable indicator of a student’s learning. But, what if the questions being asked in standardized tests can’t test what is most valuable? What if education systems use results limited to only part of a student’s knowledge to represent all of their understanding about language, literacy and literature? Many literacy educators have been expressing such concerns in recent years in the US, UK, Canada and Australia through professional associations such as ALEA (Australian Literacy Educators Association), UKLA (United Kingdom Literacy Association) and the International Literacy Association (ILA). For example, the resistance to NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) testing in Australia through campaigns such as Say No To NAPLAN and similar movements in the US against the Reading First program show that there is increasing anxiety amongst researchers and teachers. These groups are driven to action as they perceive that the good practices they know work well to help children learn to read using children’s literature are put at risk by reductive measurements of literacy success, narrow conceptualizations of the reading process and prescriptive pedagogies matched with text sets written with controlled or nonsense vocabulary.

A noted impact of the use of standardized testing in English/literacy programs is a drop in student scores on high-level questions that need interpretative critical thinking. The release of PISA results in 2011 set off alarms in Australia as the PIRLS results did in the UK and the Reading First results did in the US (Gamse, Bloom, Kemple and Jacob 2008). The use of standardized testing regimes such as NAPLAN initially appeared to be benign but PISA results over time show that Australia’s rank has dropped, especially in terms of its performances at the highest level. It appears that the focus of schools more on basic achievement levels and not so much on “the development of sophisticated reading of complex text” is partly to blame (Barry McGaw in Professional Voice 2010: 5). For the UK, the PIRLS results show a similar trend where reading literature for pleasure has dropped over time in relation to increased teaching of skills and subskills and reduced opportunities for independent reading (Cremin, Mottram, Collins, Powell and Safford 2009: 12). The worrying corollary to these findings is that readers on the lower scale of achievement who spend less time on deep, wide reading are unlikely to make gains in reading attainment to leap the “socio-economic gap” (OECD 2010).

In summary, the impact of standardized testing is being felt by children, pre-service teachers and in-service teachers, which does not bode well for the future when all stages of the teaching learning education cycle have had their worth measured and reported against limits insufficient to equate to their learning potential and blind to the times in which students are learning. For teaching and assessment to be responsive to the whole student, rather than just training them in basic skills, educators, policy makers and assessment designers need to take into account broader views of learning about reading than just the “five elements of reading” (Dooley et al. in Fuller 2014: 68). Responding to research, a more comprehensive approach to the teaching of reading in ITE would embed literary texts at its core and incorpor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Asking the difficult questions
• 2. Research design: asking the right questions
• 3. Political and professional contexts and controls
• 4. Analysis of initial teacher education programs
• 5. Conversations with initial teacher educators and children’s literature specialists
• 6. Identity formation in initial teacher education
• 7. Politics, professionalism and position statements
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index