Indigenous-Education-Review_DRAFT

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Review of Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory Bruce Wilson views were echoed in Australia’s National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy, which recommended that: [T]eachers provide systematic, direct and explicit phonics instruction so that children master the essential alphabetic code‐breaking skills required for foundational reading proficiency. Equally, that teachers provide an integrated approach to reading that supports the development of oral language, vocabulary, grammar, reading fluency, comprehension and the literacies of new technologies. (DEST, 2005, p. 38) Konza supports the addition of oral language as part of the Big Six program (Konza, 2010). This is likely to be critical for Indigenous children, especially those without oral English. Second language learners often begin to learn to read English with little knowledge of basic grammatical structures and vocabulary. For these learners, ‘learning to read becomes less about comprehension or getting information from text than a tool for developing basic language skills’ (Nassalji, 2011, p. 175). In Australia, the Australian Council for Educational Research has recently conducted a literature review for the New South Wales Ministerial Advisory Group on Literacy and Numeracy (Meiers et al, 2013). This review identified eleven whole‐class literacy interventions and five small‐group or individual programs. It concluded that there was no robust research evidence on the impact of Accelerated Literacy; Best Start; First Steps; Language, Learning and Literacy; Literacy on Track; Literacy Lessons; Focus on Reading; Off to a Good Start: Learning to Read K–2; Principals as Literacy Leaders; Reading Matters; or Reading to Learn. There was some evidence of the impact of Successful Language Learners, a whole‐school ESL approach, and two small group intervention programs: MINILIT and QuickSmart Literacy. Only Reading Recovery and MULTILIT, both of which are small group or individual intervention programs, were supported by a robust base of research evidence. How to proceed Effective whole‐school literacy approaches for the Northern Territory would need to include all of the essential curriculum elements: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension and oral language. Recommended changes in approach will require significant professional development, coaching and feedback. Approaches recommended for bush schools, however, should be easy to implement and require relatively limited training DRAFT loads for teachers. The experience of Accelerated Literacy and other programs is that complex programs requiring high fidelity in implementation are likely to fail. It is the view of the reviewer that the Department should set common approaches to literacy. Consistent with the ‘two systems’ approach recommended by the review, bush schools should be required to use programs and approaches that are demonstrated to be effective. Town schools should start with the common approaches but have support to identify additional evidence‐based approaches and to innovate within the limits of what is known about the essential elements of literacy teaching. During this period, it is recommended that implementation of the Australian Curriculum should be undertaken only cautiously in the first four years of schooling. The priority should be literacy development, and additional learning areas should be introduced only to broaden the literacy program. Beyond Year 3, the Multiple Year Level materials, which were developed specifically for remote schools, should be used as the means of implementation of the first four learning areas in the Australian Curriculum in bush schools. Schools using these materials were positive about them but in remote and very remote locations usually 63
Review of Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory Bruce Wilson felt that there was too much material to cover. This is a function of the Australian Curriculum, rather than a problem specifically of the materials. It will in part be addressed by improvements in student literacy. The review argues that using these materials will make the task more realistic, but will not solve the underlying problem of excessive volume in the primary years of the Australian Curriculum. Which literacy programs should be mandatory? The review has been struck by the extent to which phonemic awareness was cited as a weakness in specific literacy programs. Evidence from Reading Recovery (Tunmer et al, 2013) and Accelerated Literacy (Robinson et al, 2009A) suggest that these programs, although designed for poor readers, seem to fail with those readers who have the greatest problems: Indigenous children with little or no English or literacy behaviour. In both cases, reviews have found the programs were weak in phonological and phonemic awareness (Tunmer, 2013; Monash, 2008). Beyond the experience of Indigenous children, the value of phonemic awareness (and the teaching of phonics) is based on compelling evidence. There has been significant research and policy attention to the importance of these elements both as key entry behaviours for reading and as indicators of later reading success. The US National Reading Panel argued that phonemic awareness and letter knowledge (phonics) were the best two school‐entry predictors of how well children will learn to read in their first two years of literacy learning at school (National Reading Panel, 2000). Research has indicated that both high intensity short‐term study and longer‐duration study are effective (Carson et al, 2013; Shapiro and Solity, 2008). Failures of programs like Accelerated Literacy (AL) are probably related to the fact that only 12% of the very remote Indigenous population speaks English in the home, compared with 89% of the provincial Indigenous population (ABS, 2013). These children come from cultures that have always been non‐literate. DRAFT Yonovitz and Yonovitz (2000) argue that there is strong evidence that phonemic and phonological awareness are critical to emergent literacy, and that children do not spontaneously associate spoken or signed utterances with written language symbols unless they are provided with adequate models or otherwise taught to do so: Many indigenous cultures have not traditionally had written languages and have to make an enormously difficult transition to be included in literate society (Ibid.). Support for this view comes from Konza, who reiterates the critical importance of phonological awareness (Konza, 2011: 2) and phonics: Learning the relationship between letters and the sounds they represent is ‘nonnegotiable’ if children are to become independent readers (Ibid.: 3). Konza also argues that while embedded approaches to phonics (drawing attention to lettersounds incidentally) can work for children with already rich literacy backgrounds and experiences, those children who do not come from literate backgrounds are likely to need more explicit and systematic teaching of analytic and synthetic phonics. Early evidence from the Northern Territory supports this view. A number of schools in the 64
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