Janet Soler

Roger Openshaw

This study addresses the critical issue of literacy crises around the world questioning their wider sociological and educational impact and demonstrating how literacy crises in one country can stimulate and shape literacy crises elsewhere.

Children Still Can't Read!

Literacy Crises and Reading Policies

Gavin Reid

Janice Wearmouth

This book enables practitioners to reflect critically upon the choices available to them in assessing and supporting students who experience difficulties in literacy development. Includes analysis of common barriers such as dyslexia and bilingualism.

Research, Policy and Practice

Meeting Difficulties in Literacy Development

Reading Across International Boundaries, edited by Roger Openshaw and Janet Soler, clearly demonstrates these broader characteristics of debates about the teaching of reading. It sets the educational issues firmly in the context of the social, cultural and political dynamics that inform and animate them and give them their meaning. It does so by setting out to understand their historical and comparative dimensions. Establishing the historical context highlights the origins and also the longevity of the problems and conflicts that are now widely familiar. The comparative approach also gives purchase on the wide range of approaches taken to these issues in nations around the world. More than this, however, this collection takes us into the realm of international influences. It underlines how debates in this area are not simply national, but are international and global in their scale. Moreover this is the case not only in relation to the broad fabric of policy debate, but also in the everyday struggles of pupils, parents and teachers in schools, classrooms and homes. Such an agenda is unsettling and provocative. It has the potential to challenge received opinion, to hustle preconceptions. It may also propose alternative visions for the improvement of teaching in this area that might be taken up and taken seriously in different localities or even more broadly. Most of all, it enables us to enrich and broaden our understanding of the learning and the teaching of reading at a time when awareness and vision are sorely needed. This collection of articles by leading scholars based in several different countries will be a significant contribution to the research field, but also a major resource when put to good use by policy makers and practitioners, as it should surely be.

History, Policy and Politics

Reading Across International Boundaries

This book provides a range of interdisciplinary and international perspectives on difficulties in literacy development. The high-profile team of contributors provide ethical and policy discussions, as well as contextualising individual and collective strategies to addressing difficulties in literacy development. The chapters break new ground by encompassing a wide range of perspectives related to critical literacy, socio-cultural, cognitive, and psychological viewpoints, to help inform practice, policy and research into literacy difficulties. Issues addressed include: *the different ways literacy can be conceptualised through social-science based disciplinary perspectives *the issues at the centre of current public and professional debates surrounding literacy difficulties and how these have impacted upon pedagogical responses *the impact of these wider political and social issues on individual students. This reader forms the basis of the Open University’s Difficulties in Literacy Development course, but will also be of interest to postgraduate students, teachers, researchers, education professionals and policymakers who are keen to address difficulties in literacy development.

Exploring Politics, Culture, Ethnicity and Ethics

Contextualising Difficulties in Literacy Development

Patricia Murphy

Kathy Hall

This book foregrounds pedagogy in a way that challenges readers to reflect on themselves as teachers and learners, and to be reflexive about their own practices and contexts. Learning involves a transformation of identity which occurs through negotiation and repositioning, through new ways of relating, and through different ways of participating in practices. This book examines the meaning and implications for pedagogy in educational and workplace settings, and the role of the teacher in this sociocultural view of learning. By illustrating the mediated nature of agency and identity, the chapters (re)conceptualise the teacher and the learner and show different ways of supporting learning and being a teacher. The settings represented range from nursery to university and from out-of-school to insitutionally-based and work place situations. Curricular aspects represented include popular culture, critical literacy, multimodality, the arts, and new technologies. Teachers and student teachers, as learners, are also represented in the accounts assembled. The book takes a sociocultural view of learning and considers the pedagogical implications of this view. It explores different meanings of pedagogy and considers notions of cultural bridging and the processess of transforming identities. The contributions challenge ways of thinking about practice, both teaching and assessment, and argue for practices that bridge between learners′ worlds, their communities and educational institutions. Drawing on the international literature, this book will be essential reading for students of curriculum learning and assessment in all sectors from pre-primary to further and higher education. It is suitable as a core text for masters and taught doctorate programmes. It will also be of interest to a wide range of professionals involved with curriculum, learning and the practice of teaching and assessment. This book is relevant to those in work-based and professional education and training, and in informal educational settings, as well as traditional educational institutions at all levels. A unique collection in a field that is underrepresented, it will also be of interest to an academic audience.

Janet Soler

Books

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