Advanced Literacies in the content areas

1
Advanced Literacies in the content areas

• Kristina Love
• Australian Catholic University

2
Overview

1. The concept of Advanced Literacies
2. Working with advanced literacies in Australia
3. Future challenges

3
1. Literacy some premises

• A major responsibility of all teachers,
  regardless of the subjects they teach, is to
  develop their students skills in handling
  literacy, both in reading and in writing.
• Proficiency in reading will help develop
  proficiency in writing, and vice versa
• Carefully structured oral interactions also help
  build literacy

4
Literacies insights from research

• Modern literacy is very diverse and complex,
  often requiring images, diagrams and graphs to be
  read and interpreted, alongside words.
• The nature of literacy changes fundamentally from
  Year 1 to Year 12, and the foundations laid in
  the early years are not sufficient to support the
  complex literacy demands of the later years of
  schooling

5
Theoretical insights into advanced literacies

• Christie Stenglin, 2006
• Christie Derewianka 2008
• Coffin, 1997, 2010
• Fang Schleppegrell 2008
• Schellepgrel Colombi, 2001
• Unsworth, 2006, 2010
• Veel, 1997

6
Year 3 Science

• The Little pygmy possum is the smallest in the
  possum family
• Its body is 5 to 65 centimeters long and its
  tail is another 6 centimetres. It weighs around 7
  grms. It has a cone shaped head. Its fur is a
  soft brown colour with a tight grey belly. It has
  very large rounded eyes. Its big toe, known as a
  hallax on each foot helps it to climb balanced
  with its tail which curls and grips branches.
• (from Christie Stenglin, 2006)

7
Advanced Literacy Year 7 Science

• The cells that line the nasal cavities have
  cilia, tiny hairlike extensions that can move
  together like whips. The whiplike motion of these
  cilia sweeps mucus into the throat, where it is
  swallowed.
• Identify potential language challenges.

8

• Technical language
• Long noun groups
• Re-packaging of noun-gt adjective (whiplike)
• Nominalisation (move -gt motion)
• Info in first sentence is compressed and becomes
  the point of departure for further elaboration in
  second sentence.
• This facilitates scientific reasoning, but
  challenges readers to unpack densely organised
  information

• The cells that line the nasal cavities have
  cilia, tiny hairlike extensions that can move
  together like whips. The whiplike motion of these
  cilia sweeps mucus into the throat, where it is
  swallowed.

9
Advanced literacy Maths
Congruent (spoken -like) form Nominalized (written-like) form
how long something is how far across something is how far off the ground something is length width height

• Relationships between multiple abstractions
• Area Length x Width
• Volume Area x Height

10
Nominalisation and abstraction

• The demands of increasingly technical and
  abstract mathematical language accumulate
  dramatically by high school, when many struggling
  learners are left behind.
• Teachers who can explicitly discuss such language
  features with their students, and their role in
  making mathematical meanings, can engage them
  more deeply with mathematical content (Huang
  Normandia, 2008).
• See NSW Maths for Literacy paper pg 9.

11
Scaffolding advanced literacies through talk
Maths

• T. What distance do you have to measure?S. The
  distance.T. Which distance?S. The distance from
  the vertex.T. Which vertex?S. (pointing) That
  one.T. Can you be more precise?S. The top left
  vertex.T. OK. So what do we measure?S. The
  distance from the top left vertex.

12

• T. Good. To where?S. The outside of the other
  shape. T. Im not sure what you mean. Where on
  the other shape?S. The bottom left hand
  corner.T. OK. And what do we call that shape?S.
  The object.T. OK. So the lines going to S.
  The bottom left vertex of the object.T. OK. Put
  that all together and tell me what youre
  measuring, what distance?S. The distance from
  the top left vertex of the image to the bottom
  left vertex of the object.
• Transcript Robert Veel, 1997

13
The language of mathematical reasoning

• Precision in use of language for locating and
  measuring
• Use of abstract and technical concepts
• Written-like conventions of the language
  preferred over spoken-like
• endophoric, not exophoric reference
• lengthy noun groups.

14
The challenge of advanced literacies

• Primary school cannot prepare readers for the
  specialised reading in high school eg
• Literary works
• Historical documents
• Scientific explanations
• Mathematical problems
• Here, Ss engage with more complex combinations
  of genres, in new contexts of learning that are
  further removed from their personal and everyday
  lives

15
Increased complexity of generic structure
16
(No Transcript)
17
(No Transcript)
18
From recounting history

• Year 10 History
• By 1929, American factories were turning out
  nearly half of the worlds industrial goods. The
  rising productivity led to enormous profits.
  However, this new wealth was not evenly
  distributed.
• How has information been packaged to build from
  sentence to sentence?
• Students can be explicitly taught to identify how
  information is presented in one sentence, then
  re-packaged as the point of departure for the
  next sentence.

19
to critiquing history

• From a text used to teach about the causes of the
  Boxer Rebellion in China.
• Imperialist powers had been competing to carve
  the country into spheres of influence for years,
  while enforced opium addiction and widespread
  corruption had reduced most of the populace to
  abject poverty (Denny, 2008)
• Students must unpack abstract and highly
  nominalised concepts (bolded).
• and recognise that what are presented as
  facts are often interpretations to be
  evaluated, as historians make more or less
  explicit judgements about the people and events
  in history.

20
Recognizing ideology

• In evaluating the Boxer text as a commentary on a
  period of Chinese history, students must assess
  the writers 21st century post-colonial stance by
  focusing on his choice of value-laden epithets
  (abject), verbs (carved and reduced) and
  nouns (corruption).
• Students need support in learning to read in
  these highly specialised ways, drawing attention
  to how such language operates to construct a
  particular argument about history
• ie learning to be critical historians, able to
  interrogate various viewpoints.

21
Learning to interrogate

• In evaluating the Boxer text as a commentary on a
  period of Chinese history, students must assess
  the writers 21st century post-colonial stance by
  focusing on his choice of value-laden epithets
  (abject), verbs (carved and reduced) and
  nouns (corruption).
• Students need support in learning to read in
  these highly specialised ways, drawing attention
  to how such language operates to construct a
  particular argument about history
• ie learning to be critical historians, able to
  interrogate various viewpoints.

22
Interrogating multimodally

• Web site on the one child policy in China
  http//factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid128ca
  tid4subcatid15

23
Advanced literacies and multimodal texts

• The multi-generic and multi-modal nature of
  texts in education
• LASS Unit 5 Screens 3-6, 11-1

24
Advanced literacies and image-text relations

• New research into image-text relations
• Image equals () verbal text
• Image adds to () verbal text
• Image elaborates on (x) verbal text
• Image contradicts (-) verbal text
• Unsworth http//www.pucsp.br/isfc. Proceedings
  33rd International Systemic Functional Congress
  2006

25
Image (clarifies) verbal text

• In the verbiage, the information about fly traps
  is simply constructed fly traps from old PET
  drink containers to catch flies. The nature of
  the trap and how it catches flies are clarified
  by the image.

26
Image (extends) Text

• In the verbal text, the absorption of evaporated
  moisture in the air, its movement and eventual
  precipitation is described without any mention of
  'clouds'. It is in the diagram that the formation
  and transport of clouds and precipitation from
  them are specified

27
Image x (elaborates) text

• When an image enhances the text by adding
  causal, temporal or spatial meanings
• The cropped colour photograph relates to the bold
  caption below it by manner/means

28
Image - (contradicts) text

• Pictorially the levels are allocated equal
  proportions
• Verbal text states that each level is of
  radically different depth
• What is explicitly stated in the verbiage about
  the relative depths of the different ocean zones,
  is strongly visually contradicted.

29
2. Working with advanced literacies

• Zammitt Framework for multiliteracies
• BUILT, LASS and LASS
• Other curriculum support materials focus on
  Maths
• NSW materials on Maths
• Parkin Hayes article (program with Indigenous
  communities)

30
Zammitt (2006) Framework for multiliteracies
31
Using the Framework

• Evaluate the pedagogy underpinning this TLF site
• http//www.thelearningfederation.edu.au/for_teache
  rs/sample_curriculum_content/tm_-_civics_and_citiz
  enship.html

32
BUILT
33
BUILTs structure
34
Literacy Across the School Subjects

• New film footage of high school teachers
• New insights from research on Academic Literacies
• Updated technologies

35
(No Transcript)
36
A taste of LASS

• Unit 1 interviews with world experts, students
  and teachers (Gatachi, Screen 20, video 2)
• Unit 4 Screen 3 Frogs exercise
• Unit 5 multimodal genres
• Units 6 7 supporting literacy pedagogy
• Unit 8 planning around literacy.

37
LASS Plus (Recounts)

• First in a series of 6
• http//www.eshowcase.unimelb.edu.au/packages/lass

38
Other curriculum materials

• Focus on Maths
• NSW materials on Maths
• Parkin Hayes article (program with Indigenous
  communities)

39
3. Challenges
40
Challenges in Sweden?

• Teachers attitudes?
• Resources development?
• Others?

41
References

• Christie Stenglin, 2006 Understanding English
  language and literacy development
  http//www.edfac.unimelb.edu.au/knowledgetransfer/
  downloads/LiteracyPositionPaper.pdf
• Christie, F Derewianka, B (2008) School
  Discourse. Continuum Press
• Fang, Z. and Schellepgrell, M. (2008) Reading in
  the secondary content areas a language based
  pedagogy. Ann Arbor University of Michigan
  Press.
• Gibbons, P. 2002. Scaffolding Language,
  Scaffolding Learning Teaching Second Language
  Learners in the Mainstream Classroom. Portsmouth,
  NH Heinemann.
• Kress, G. (2003) Literacy in the New Media Age,
  Routledge, London and NY.
• Love K, Pigdon K, Baker G, with Hamston J. (2005)
  Building Understandings in Literacy and Teaching
  (BUILT) CD ROM 3rd Edition, The University of
  Melbourne, Vic.
• Love K, Baker G, and Quinn, M. (2008) Literacy
  Across the School Subjects (LASS) DVD, The
  University of Melbourne, Vic.
• Schellepgrell, M. C. Colombi Eds (2002)
  Developing Advanced Literacy in first and second
  languages meaning with power. Hillsdale, NJ
  Erlbaum
• Unsworth, L. (2006) E-literature for children
  Enhancing digital literacy learning. Routledge
• Unsworth, L. (2007) Image/text relations and
  intersemiosis Towards multimodal text
  description for multiliteracies education. Online
  publication available at http//www.pucsp.br/isfc.