Indigenous-Education-Review_DRAFT

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Review of Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory Bruce Wilson Darwin and Katherine regions took part in an Improving Literacy and Numeracy National Partnership (ILNNP) project designed to: improve students’ knowledge and skills in phonemic awareness and phonics; and improve teacher capacity to assess, plan for and teach early reading skills particularly phonemic awareness and phonics skills. This was a trial of a meaningful size, involving about 250 children, including roughly equal number of Indigenous and non‐Indigenous children. The team tested the students’ phonemic awareness before the project and after. In addition to trialing different approaches to improving student skills, the project also experimented with different kinds and levels of support for teachers (coaching and consultants versus grants and resources). Assessment data from the project indicate that phonemic awareness was consistently extremely low among Indigenous students in the early years of schooling, and substantially worse than levels among the non‐Indigenous students. Over the six‐month period between assessments, average gains of the order of 20% were achieved across all eight components of phonemic awareness, with Indigenous children showing greater percentage gains, though from a lower base. The results also demonstrated the value of coaching, which was associated with gains of about 23% compared to 14% without coaching (DoE, 2013A and DoE, 2013B). Related data demonstrate that the improvement in achievement in these areas is accompanied by corresponding improvement in reading scores using PM Benchmarks. The area broadly encompassed by phonemic awareness and phonics has been contested territory in Australia, with widespread and passionate debate both for and against (Fox, 2005; Snyder, 2008; Buckingham, 2013; Lewis, 2013). There is some evidence that teachers are uncertain about the area as a result of these debates. Many teachers undertook their pre‐service study at a time when ‘phonics’ was the enemy and for some tertiary teachers it still is. Many teachers also feel uncertain about their own knowledge in the area. As one research report puts it, discussing knowledge of language structure and the relationship between speech and print: DRAFT [T]eachers’ metalinguistic knowledge was not strong overall…. [S]pecialist teachers had superior knowledge, although as a group they only achieved a 73% success rate…. Pre‐service and general teachers were even less knowledgeable, with ratings of 54% and 62% respectively (Fielding Barnsley & Purdie, 2005). This suggests that if all teachers are to engage effectively and knowledgeably with phonemic awareness and phonics, two things will have to occur: the Department will need to endorse an approach based on these areas and provide evidence for its effectiveness, and teachers will require professional development opportunities in the foundational knowledge and skills involved. Phonemic awareness and phonics constitute only two of the key elements of literacy teaching. Our starting point is that without consistent, systematic, relentless teaching of phonemic skills and mapping of letters on to sounds (for at least 20 minutes every day), and the development of a sight vocabulary, many children will never gain the foundations of literacy. Beyond this however, a full literacy program be provided. This will also involve: developing syntactic awareness (knowing what is likely to come next grammatically in the English language); 65
Review of Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory Bruce Wilson learning the processes of selecting information to comprehend text; developing fluency; developing a good English vocabulary; hearing good literature that is beyond their reading capacity; understanding how to talk about texts; developing a rich oral language in English; learning how to construct texts; and reading books of all kinds: Big Books, picture books with captions, rhyming books and levelled readers. In the area of phonics and phonemic awareness there are two broad approaches that could be pursued. One approach is to adopt a whole literacy program that includes explicit attention to phonics and phonemic awareness within the context of a broader program. In this area, one of the variations of Direct Instruction is probably the approach with the best research base. The second approach is to adopt one or more of those programs that explicitly address phonemic awareness and phonics in a self‐contained way, but do not claim to provide solutions for a whole literacy program. The two programs of this kind that the review identified as in use in some schools and likely to be effective were Jolly Phonics and Crack the Code. While these programs do not fall explicitly under the heading of Direct Instruction, they do involve explicit skills‐based teaching. The review is still collecting data about these options, and the final report will make a definitive recommendation. In addition, a standard sight words list be used across all schools as a starting point to building automatic recognition of known words. The Oxford Word List and Dolch Sight Words are referred to in the Northern Territory’s ‘Prioritising Literacy and Numeracy’ program. The anecdotal, and sometimes formal, evidence collected in interviews and school visits suggests that practice in the remaining areas is stronger. Fluency, other aspects of vocabulary and comprehension seem better represented in practice. Oral language is also well represented, although the role of first language oracy and literacy remain contested. There are, however, many different programs in use, suggesting some policy inefficiency and potential for confusion among mobile students in bush schools. During the implementation phase of the phonemic awareness program, a more detailed internal analysis should be conducted of the different approaches to teaching of fluency, vocabulary and comprehension to determine common approaches that should be mandated in bush schools. DRAFT In addition, the Department should address the current position with regard to EAL/D teaching and expertise in schools and determine how EAL/D practice in schools can be improved and better supported. Assessment The absence of a common approach to literacy assessment apart from NAPLAN was noted above. This gap should be filled, initially with a mandatory dedicated early literacy test used to identify initial weakness in phonemic awareness. Instruments such as ACER’s Sutherland Phonological Awareness Test (SPAT‐R) or the Phonological Awareness Skills Test (PAST) are in use in some schools in the Territory. Both can also be used to measure progress over time. One such instrument should be used in all bush schools and, by preference, in all Northern Territory schools. 66
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