According to UNESCO's statistics, the number of illiterates in the world is verging on one million. A conservative estimate of the number of children who have no access to schooling brings that figure to more than one hundred million. School failure, brought about by overcrowding, poor facilities, unqualified teachers, and lack of materials only adds to the problem. The authors in this volume cover the many facets of the fight for literacy.
Literacy has become central to debates on policy and practice in education in the UK and other English-speaking countries. This book introduces teachers to current thought on the place of literacy in education, providing many different perspectives. It charts the latest ideas, and relates practical and policy concerns to an understanding of theoretical issues. Concise and accessible, it connects with key aspects of the experience of professionals and students alike, and provides issues for group discussion or individual study, as well as suggestions for further reading.
There is a mutual dependence between poverty and academic achievement, creative pedagogies for low-income pupils, school models that ‘beat the odds’, and the resiliency of low-income families dedicated to the academic success of their children. This book examines the connection between poverty and literacy, looking at the potential roles and responsibilities of teachers, school administrators, researchers, and policymakers in closing the achievement gap and in reducing the effects of poverty on the literacy skill development of low-income children. There are numerous suggestions about how to improve schools so that they respond to the needs of low-income children; some argue for school reform, while others advocate social reform, and yet others suggest combining both educational reform and social reform. Without a strong foundation in literacy, children are all too often denied access to a rich and diverse curriculum. Reading and writing are passports to achievement in many other curricular areas, and literacy education plays an important role in moving people out of poverty toward greater self-sufficiency post-graduation. Schools and home environments share responsibility for literacy skill development; in school, literacy equals the acquisition of reading and writing skills, but it is also a social practice key to social mobility. The achievement gap between low-income, middle-class, and upper middle-class students illustrates the power of socioeconomic factors outside school. This book was originally published as two special issues of Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties.
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.
