what is literacy important in education

What you need to know about literacy

What is the global situation in relation to literacy.

Great progress has been made in literacy with most recent data (UNESCO Institute for Statistics) showing that more than 86 per cent of the world’s population know how to read and write compared to 68 per cent in 1979. Despite this, worldwide at least 763 million adults still cannot read and write, two thirds of them women, and 250 million children are failing to acquire basic literacy skills. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the worst disruption to education in a century, 617 million children and teenagers had not reached minimum reading levels.   

How does UNESCO define literacy?

Acquiring literacy is not a one-off act. Beyond its conventional concept as a set of reading, writing and counting skills, literacy is now understood as a means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich and fast-changing world. Literacy is a continuum of learning and proficiency in reading, writing and using numbers throughout life and is part of a larger set of skills, which include digital skills, media literacy, education for sustainable development and global citizenship as well as job-specific skills. Literacy skills themselves are expanding and evolving as people engage more and more with information and learning through digital technology.  

What are the effects of literacy?

Literacy empowers and liberates people. Beyond its importance as part of the right to education, literacy improves lives by expanding capabilities which in turn reduces poverty, increases participation in the labour market and has positive effects on health and sustainable development. Women empowered by literacy have a positive ripple effect on all aspects of development. They have greater life choices for themselves and an immediate impact on the health and education of their families, and in particular, the education of girl children.  

How does UNESCO work to promote literacy?

UNESCO works through its global network, field offices and institutes and with its Member States and partners to advance literacy in the framework of lifelong learning, and address the literacy target 4.6 in SDG4 and the Education 2030 Framework for Action . Its Strategy for Youth and Adult Literacy (2020-2025) pays special attention to the member countries of the Global Alliance for Literacy which targets 20 countries with an adult literacy rate below 50 per cent and the E9 countries, of which 17 are in Africa. The focus is on promoting literacy in formal and non-formal settings with four priority areas: strengthening national strategies and policy development on literacy; addressing the needs of disadvantaged groups, particularly women and girls; using digital technologies to expand and improve learning outcomes; and monitoring progress and assessing literacy skills. UNESCO also promotes adult learning and education through its Institute for Lifelong Learning , including the implementation of the 2015 Recommendation on Adult Learning and Education and its monitoring through the Global Report on Adult Learning and Education. 

What is digital literacy and why is it important?

UNESCO defines digital literacy as the ability to access, manage, understand, integrate, communicate, evaluate and create information safely and appropriately through digital technologies for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship. It includes skills such as computer literacy, ICT literacy, information literacy and media literacy which aim to empower people, and in particular youth, to adopt a critical mindset when engaging with information and digital technologies, and to build their resilience in the face of disinformation, hate speech and violent extremism.

How is UNESCO helping advance girls' and women's literacy?

UNESCO’s Global Partnership for Women and Girls Education, launched in 2011, emphasizes quality education for girls and women at the secondary level and in the area of literacy; its Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE) project (2005–15) targeted women; and UNESCO’s international literacy prizes regularly highlight the life-changing power of meeting women’s and girls’ needs for literacy in specific contexts. Literacy acquisition often brings with it positive change in relation to harmful traditional practices, forms of marginalization and deprivation. Girls’ and women’s literacy seen as lifelong learning is integral to achieving the aims of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.  

How has youth and adult literacy been impacted in times of COVID-19?

Since the start of the pandemic, several surveys have been conducted but very little is still known about the effect on youth and adult literacy of massive disruptions to learning, growing inequalities and projected increases in school dropouts. To fill this gap UNESCO will conduct a global survey “Learning from the COVID-19 crisis to write the future: National policies and programmes for youth and adult literacy” collecting information from countries worldwide regarding the situation and policy and programme responses. Its results will help UNESCO, countries and other partners respond better to the recovery phase and advance progress towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 on education and its target 4.6 on youth and adult literacy. In addition, for International Literacy Day 2020, UNESCO prepared a background paper on the impact of the crisis on youth and adult literacy.

What is the purpose of the Literacy Prize and Literacy Day?

Every year since 1967, UNESCO celebrates International Literacy Day and rewards outstanding and innovative programmes that promote literacy through the International Literacy Prizes. Every year on 8 September UNESCO comes together for the annual celebration with Field Offices, institutes, NGOs, teachers, learners and partners to remind the world of the importance of literacy as a matter of dignity and human rights. The event emphasizes the power of literacy and creates awareness to advance the global agenda towards a more literate and sustainable society. 

The International Literacy Prizes reward excellence and innovation in the field of literacy and, so far, over 506 projects and programmes undertaken by governments, non-governmental organizations and individuals around the world have been recognized. Following an annual call for submissions, an International Jury of experts appointed by UNESCO's Director-General recommends potential prizewinning programmes. Candidates are submitted by Member States or by international non-governmental organizations in official partnership with UNESCO.

Related items

• Lifelong education

Chapter 1. What is Literacy? Multiple Perspectives on Literacy

Constance Beecher

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” – Frederick Douglass

Download Tar Beach – Faith Ringgold Video Transcript [DOC]

Keywords: literacy, digital literacy, critical literacy, community-based literacies

Definitions of literacy from multiple perspectives

Literacy is the cornerstone of education by any definition. Literacy refers to the ability of people to read and write (UNESCO, 2017). Reading and writing in turn are about encoding and decoding information between written symbols and sound (Resnick, 1983; Tyner, 1998). More specifically, literacy is the ability to understand the relationship between sounds and written words such that one may read, say, and understand them (UNESCO, 2004; Vlieghe, 2015). About 67 percent of children nationwide, and more than 80 percent of those from families with low incomes, are not proficient readers by the end of third grade ( The Nation Assessment for Educational Progress; NAEP 2022 ).  Children who are not reading on grade level by third grade are 4 times more likely to drop out of school than their peers who are reading on grade level. A large body of research clearly demonstrates that Americans with fewer years of education have poorer health and shorter lives. In fact, since the 1990s, life expectancy has fallen for people without a high school education. Completing more years of education creates better access to health insurance, medical care, and the resources for living a healthier life (Saha, 2006). Americans with less education face higher rates of illness, higher rates of disability, and shorter life expectancies. In the U.S., 25-year-olds without a high school diploma can expect to die 9 years sooner than college graduates. For example, by 2011, the prevalence of diabetes had reached 15% for adults without a high -school education, compared with 7% for college graduates (Zimmerman et al., 2018).

Thus, literacy is a goal of utmost importance to society. But what does it mean to be literate, or to be able to read? What counts as literacy?

Learning Objectives

• Describe two or more definitions of literacy and the differences between them.
• Define digital and critical literacy.
• Distinguish between digital literacy, critical literacy, and community-based literacies.
• Explain multiple perspectives on literacy.

Here are some definitions to consider:

“Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society.” – United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

“The ability to understand, use, and respond appropriately to written texts.” – National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), citing the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC)

“An individual’s ability to read, write, and speak in English, compute, and solve problems, at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job, in the family of the individual, and in society.” – Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), Section 203

“The ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society.” – Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), as cited by the American Library Association’s Committee on Literacy

“Using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential.” – Kutner, Greenberg, Jin, Boyle, Hsu, & Dunleavy (2007). Literacy in Everyday Life: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NCES 2007-480)

Which one of these above definitions resonates with you? Why?

New literacy practices as meaning-making practices

In the 21 st century, literacy increasingly includes understanding the roles of digital media and technology in literacy. In 1996, the New London Group coined the term “multiliteracies” or “new literacies” to describe a modern view of literacy that reflected multiple communication forms and contexts of cultural and linguistic diversity within a globalized society. They defined multiliteracies as a combination of multiple ways of communicating and making meaning, including such modes as visual, audio, spatial, behavioral, and gestural (New London Group, 1996). Most of the text’s students come across today are digital (like this textbook!). Instead of books and magazines, students are reading blogs and text messages.

For a short video on the importance of digital literacy, watch The New Media Literacies .

The National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE, 2019) makes it clear that our definitions of literacy must continue to evolve and grow ( NCTE definition of digital literacy ).

“Literacy has always been a collection of communicative and sociocultural practices shared among communities. As society and technology change, so does literacy. The world demands that a literate person possess and intentionally apply a wide range of skills, competencies, and dispositions. These literacies are interconnected, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with histories, narratives, life possibilities, and social trajectories of all individuals and groups. Active, successful participants in a global society must be able to:

• participate effectively and critically in a networked world.
• explore and engage critically and thoughtfully across a wide variety of inclusive texts and tools/modalities.
• consume, curate, and create actively across contexts.
• advocate for equitable access to and accessibility of texts, tools, and information.
• build and sustain intentional global and cross-cultural connections and relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and strengthen independent thought.
• promote culturally sustaining communication and recognize the bias and privilege present in the interactions.
• examine the rights, responsibilities, and ethical implications of the use and creation of information.
• determine how and to what extent texts and tools amplify one’s own and others’ narratives as well as counterproductive narratives.
• recognize and honor the multilingual literacy identities and culture experiences individuals bring to learning environments, and provide opportunities to promote, amplify, and encourage these variations of language (e.g., dialect, jargon, and register).”

In other words, literacy is not just the ability to read and write. It is also being able to effectively use digital technology to find and analyze information. Students who are digitally literate know how to do research, find reliable sources, and make judgments about what they read online and in print. Next, we will learn more about digital literacy.

• Malleable : can be changed.
• Culturally sustaining : the pedagogical preservation of the cultural and linguistic competence of young people pertaining to their communities of origin while simultaneously affording dominant-culture competence.
• Bias : a tendency to believe that some people, ideas, etc., are better than others, usually resulting in unfair treatment.
• Privilege : a right or benefit that is given to some people and not to others.
• Unproductive narrative : negative commonly held beliefs such as “all students from low-income backgrounds will struggle in school.” (Narratives are phrases or ideas that are repeated over and over and become “shared narratives.” You can spot them in common expressions and stories that almost everyone knows and holds as ingrained values or beliefs.)

Literacy in the digital age

The Iowa Core recognizes that today, literacy includes technology. The goal for students who graduate from the public education system in Iowa is:

“Each Iowa student will be empowered with the technological knowledge and skills to learn effectively and live productively. This vision, developed by the Iowa Core 21st Century Skills Committee, reflects the fact that Iowans in the 21st century live in a global environment marked by a high use of technology, giving citizens and workers the ability to collaborate and make individual contributions as never before. Iowa’s students live in a media-suffused environment, marked by access to an abundance of information and rapidly changing technological tools useful for critical thinking and problem-solving processes. Therefore, technological literacy supports preparation of students as global citizens capable of self-directed learning in preparation for an ever-changing world” (Iowa Core Standards 21 st Century Skills, n.d.).

NOTE: The essential concepts and skills of technology literacy are taken from the International Society for Technology in Education’s National Educational Technology Standards for Students: Grades K-2 | Technology Literacy Standards

Literacy in any context is defined as the ability “ to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, and create information in order to function in a knowledge society” (ICT Literacy Panel, 2002). “ When we teach only for facts (specifics)… rather than for how to go beyond facts, we teach students how to get out of date ” (Sternberg, 2008). This statement is particularly significant when applied to technology literacy. The Iowa essential concepts for technology literacy reflect broad, universal processes and skills.

Unlike the previous generations, learning in the digital age is marked using rapidly evolving technology, a deluge of information, and a highly networked global community (Dede, 2010). In such a dynamic environment, learners need skills beyond the basic cognitive ability to consume and process language. To understand the characteristics of the digital age, and what this means for how people learn in this new and changing landscape, one may turn to the evolving discussion of literacy or, as one might say now, of digital literacy. The history of literacy contextualizes digital literacy and illustrates changes in literacy over time. By looking at literacy as an evolving historical phenomenon, we can glean the fundamental characteristics of the digital age. These characteristics in turn illuminate the skills needed to take advantage of digital environments. The following discussion is an overview of digital literacy, its essential components, and why it is important for learning in the digital age.

Literacy is often considered a skill or competency. Children and adults alike can spend years developing the appropriate skills for encoding and decoding information. Over the course of thousands of years, literacy has become much more common and widespread, with a global literacy rate ranging from 81% to 90% depending on age and gender (UNESCO, 2016). From a time when literacy was the domain of an elite few, it has grown to include huge swaths of the global population. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which are some of the advantages the written word can provide. Kaestle (1985) tells us that “literacy makes it possible to preserve information as a snapshot in time, allows for recording, tracking and remembering information, and sharing information more easily across distances among others” (p. 16). In short, literacy led “to the replacement of myth by history and the replacement of magic by skepticism and science.”

If literacy involves the skills of reading and writing, digital literacy requires the ability to extend those skills to effectively take advantage of the digital world (American Library Association [ALA], 2013). More general definitions express digital literacy as the ability to read and understand information from digital sources as well as to create information in various digital formats (Bawden, 2008; Gilster, 1997; Tyner, 1998; UNESCO, 2004). Developing digital skills allows digital learners to manage a vast array of rapidly changing information and is key to both learning and working in the evolving digital landscape (Dede, 2010; Koltay, 2011; Mohammadyari & Singh, 2015). As such, it is important for people to develop certain competencies specifically for handling digital content.

ALA Digital Literacy Framework

To fully understand the many digital literacies, we will look at the American Library Association (ALA) framework. The ALA framework is laid out in terms of basic functions with enough specificity to make it easy to understand and remember but broad enough to cover a wide range of skills. The ALA framework includes the following areas:

• understanding,
• evaluating,
• creating, and
• communicating (American Library Association, 2013).

Finding information in a digital environment represents a significant departure from the way human beings have searched for information for centuries. The learner must abandon older linear or sequential approaches to finding information such as reading a book, using a card catalog, index, or table of contents, and instead use more horizontal approaches like natural language searches, hypermedia text, keywords, search engines, online databases and so on (Dede, 2010; Eshet, 2002). The shift involves developing the ability to create meaningful search limits (SCONUL, 2016). Previously, finding the information would have meant simply looking up page numbers based on an index or sorting through a card catalog. Although finding information may depend to some degree on the search tool being used (library, internet search engine, online database, etc.) the search results also depend on how well a person is able to generate appropriate keywords and construct useful Boolean searches. Failure in these two areas could easily return too many results to be helpful, vague, or generic results, or potentially no useful results at all (Hangen, 2015).

Part of the challenge of finding information is the ability to manage the results. Because there is so much data, changing so quickly, in so many different formats, it can be challenging to organize and store them in such a way as to be useful. SCONUL (2016) talks about this as the ability to organize, store, manage, and cite digital resources, while the Educational Testing Service also specifically mentions the skills of accessing and managing information. Some ways to accomplish these tasks is using social bookmarking tools such as Diigo, clipping and organizing software such as Evernote and OneNote, and bibliographic software. Many sites, such as YouTube, allow individuals with an account to bookmark videos, as well as create channels or collections of videos for specific topics or uses. Other websites have similar features.

Understanding

Understanding in the context of digital literacy perhaps most closely resembles traditional literacy because it is the ability to read and interpret text (Jones-Kavalier & Flannigan, 2006). In the digital age, however, the ability to read and understand extends much further than text alone. For example, searches may return results with any combination of text, video, sound, and audio, as well as still and moving pictures. As the internet has evolved, a whole host of visual languages have also evolved, such as moving images, emoticons, icons, data visualizations, videos, and combinations of all the above. Lankshear & Knoble (2008) refer to these modes of communication as “post typographic textual practice.” Understanding the variety of modes of digital material may also be referred to as multimedia literacy (Jones-Kavalier & Flannigan, 2006), visual literacy (Tyner, 1998), or digital literacy (Buckingham, 2006).

Evaluating digital media requires competencies ranging from assessing the importance of a piece of information to determining its accuracy and source. Evaluating information is not new to the digital age, but the nature of digital information can make it more difficult to understand who the source of information is and whether it can be trusted (Jenkins, 2018). When there are abundant and rapidly changing data across heavily populated networks, anyone with access can generate information online. This results in the learner needing to make decisions about its authenticity, trustworthiness, relevance, and significance. Learning evaluative digital skills means learning to ask questions about who is writing the information, why they are writing it, and who the intended audience is (Buckingham, 2006). Developing critical thinking skills is part of the literacy of evaluating and assessing the suitability for use of a specific piece of information (SCONUL, 2016).

Creating in the digital world makes the production of knowledge and ideas in digital formats explicit. While writing is a critical component of traditional literacy, it is not the only creative tool in the digital toolbox. Other tools are available and include creative activities such as podcasting, making audio-visual presentations, building data visualizations, 3D printing, and writing blogs. Tools that haven’t been thought of before are constantly appearing. In short, a digitally literate individual will want to be able to use all formats in which digital information may be conveyed in the creation of a product. A key component of creating with digital tools is understanding what constitutes fair use and what is considered plagiarism. While this is not new to the digital age, it may be more challenging these days to find the line between copying and extending someone else’s work.

In part, the reason for the increased difficulty in discerning between plagiarism and new work is the “cut and paste culture” of the Internet, referred to as “reproduction literacy” (Eshet 2002, p.4), or appropriation in Jenkins’ New Media Literacies (Jenkins, 2018). The question is, what kind and how much change is required to avoid the accusation of plagiarism? This skill requires the ability to think critically, evaluate a work, and make appropriate decisions. There are tools and information to help understand and find those answers, such as the Creative Commons. Learning about such resources and how to use them is part of digital literacy.

Communicating

Communicating is the final category of digital skills in the ALA digital framework. The capacity to connect with individuals all over the world creates unique opportunities for learning and sharing information, for which developing digital communication skills is vital. Some of the skills required for communicating in the digital environment include digital citizenship, collaboration, and cultural awareness. This is not to say that one does not need to develop communication skills outside of the digital environment, but that the skills required for digital communication go beyond what is required in a non-digital environment. Most of us are adept at personal, face- to-face communication, but digital communication needs the ability to engage in asynchronous environments such as email, online forums, blogs, social media, and learning platforms where what is written may not be deleted and may be misinterpreted. Add that to an environment where people number in the millions and the opportunities for misunderstanding and cultural miscues are likely.

The communication category of digital literacies covers an extensive array of skills above and beyond what one might need for face-to-face interactions. It is comprised of competencies around ethical and moral behavior, responsible communication for engagement in social and civic activities (Adam Becker et al., 2017), an awareness of audience, and an ability to evaluate the potential impact of one’s online actions. It also includes skills for handling privacy and security in online environments. These activities fall into two main categories: digital citizenship and collaboration.

Digital citizenship refers to one’s ability to interact effectively in the digital world. Part of this skill is good manners, often referred to as “netiquette.” There is a level of context which is often missing in digital communication due to physical distance, lack of personal familiarity with the people online, and the sheer volume of the people who may encounter our words. People who know us well may understand exactly what we mean when we say something sarcastic or ironic, but people online do not know us, and vocal and facial cues are missing in most digital communication, making it more likely we will be misunderstood. Furthermore, we are more likely to misunderstand or be misunderstood if we are unaware of cultural differences. So, digital citizenship includes an awareness of who we are, what we intend to say, and how it might be perceived by other people we do not know (Buckingham, 2006). It is also a process of learning to communicate clearly in ways that help others understand what we mean.

Another key digital skill is collaboration, and it is essential for effective participation in digital projects via the Internet. The Internet allows people to engage with others they may never see in person and work towards common goals, be they social, civic, or business oriented. Creating a community and working together requires a degree of trust and familiarity that can be difficult to build when there is physical distance between the participants. Greater effort must be made to be inclusive , and to overcome perceived or actual distance and disconnectedness. So, while the potential of digital technology for connecting people is impressive, it is not automatic or effortless, and it requires new skills.

Literacy narratives are stories about reading or composing a message in any form or context. They often include poignant memories that involve a personal experience with literacy. Digital literacy narratives can sometimes be categorized as ones that focus on how the writer came to understand the importance of technology in their life or pedagogy. More often, they are simply narratives that use a medium beyond the print-based essay to tell the story:

Create your own literacy narrative that tells of a significant experience you had with digital literacy. Use a multi-modal tool that includes audio and images or video. Share it with your classmates and discuss the most important ideas you notice in each other’s narratives.

Critical literacy

Literacy scholars recognize that although literacy is a cognitive skill, it is also a set of practices that communities and people participate in. Next, we turn to another perspective on literacy – critical literacy. “Critical” here is not meant as having a negative point of view, but rather using an analytic lens that detects power, privilege, and representation to understand different ways of looking at texts. For example, when groups or individuals stage a protest, do the media refer to them as “protesters” or “rioters?” What is the reason for choosing the label they do, and what are the consequences? 

Critical literacy does not have a set definition or typical history of use, but the following key tenets have been described in the literature, which will vary in their application based on the individual social context (Vasquez, 2019). Table 1 presents some key aspects of critical literacy, but this area of literacy research is growing and evolving rapidly, so this is not an exhaustive list.

An important component of critical literacy is the adoption of culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy. One definition comes from Dr. Django Paris (2012), who stated that Culturally Responsive-Sustaining (CR-S) education recognizes that cultural differences (including racial, ethnic, linguistic, gender, sexuality, and ability ones) should be treated as assets for teaching and learning. Culturally sustaining pedagogy requires teachers to support multilingualism and multiculturalism in their practice. That is, culturally sustaining pedagogy seeks to perpetuate and foster—to sustain—linguistic, literary, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling.

For more, see the Culturally Responsive and Sustaining F ramework . The framework helps educators to think about how to create student-centered learning environments that uphold racial, linguistic, and cultural identities. It prepares students for rigorous independent learning, develops their abilities to connect across lines of difference, elevates historically marginalized voices, and empowers them as agents of social change. CR-S education explores the relationships between historical and contemporary conditions of inequality and the ideas that shape access, participation, and outcomes for learners.

• What can you do to learn more about your students’ cultures?
• How can you build and sustain relationships with your students?
• How do the instructional materials you use affirm your students’ identities?

Community-based literacies

You may have noticed that communities are a big part of critical literacy – we understand that our environment and culture impact what we read and how we understand the world. Now think about the possible differences among three Iowa communities: a neighborhood in the middle of Des Moines, the rural community of New Hartford, and Coralville, a suburb of Iowa City:

You may not have thought about how living in a certain community might contribute to or take away from a child’s ability to learn to read. Dr. Susan Neuman (2001) did. She and her team investigated the differences between two neighborhoods regarding how much access to books and other reading materials children in those neighborhoods had. One middle-to-upper class neighborhood in Philadelphia had large bookstores, toy stores with educational materials, and well-resourced libraries. The other, a low-income neighborhood, had no bookstores or toy stores. There was a library, but it had fewer resources and served a larger number of patrons. In fact, the team found that even the signs on the businesses were harder to read, and there was less environmental printed word. Their findings showed that each child in the middle-class neighborhood had 13 books on average, while in the lower-class neighborhood there was one book per 300 children .

Dr. Neuman and her team (2019) recently revisited this question. This time, they looked at low-income neighborhoods – those where 60% or more of the people are living in poverty . They compared these to borderline neighborhoods – those with 20-40% in poverty – in three cities, Washington, D.C., Detroit, and Los Angeles. Again, they found significantly fewer books in the very low-income areas. The chart represents the preschool books available for sale in each neighborhood. Note that in the lower-income neighborhood of Washington D.C., there were no books for young children to be found at all!

Now watch this video from Campaign for Grade Level Reading. Access to books is one way that children can have new experiences, but it is not the only way!

What is the “summer slide,” and how does it contribute to the differences in children’s reading abilities?

The importance of being literate and how to get there

“Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope” – Kofi Annan, former United Nations Secretary-General.

Our economy is enhanced when citizens have higher literacy levels. Effective literacy skills open the doors to more educational and employment opportunities so that people can lift themselves out of poverty and chronic underemployment. In our increasingly complex and rapidly changing technological world, it is essential that individuals continuously expand their knowledge and learn new skills to keep up with the pace of change. The goal of our public school system in the United States is to “ensure that all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live.” This is the basis of the Common Core Standards, developed by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center). These groups felt that education was too inconsistent across the different states, and today’s students are preparing to enter a world in which colleges and businesses are demanding more than ever before. To ensure that all students are ready for success after high school, the Common Core State Standards established clear universal guidelines for what every student should know and be able to do in math and English language arts from kindergarten through 12th grade: “The Common Core State Standards do not tell teachers how to teach, but they do help teachers figure out the knowledge and skills their students should have” (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2012).

Explore the Core!

Go to iowacore.gov and click on Literacy Standards. Spend some time looking at the K-3 standards. Notice how consistent they are across the grade levels. Each has specific requirements within the categories:

• Reading Standards for Literature
• Reading Standards for Informational Text
• Reading Standards for Foundational Skills
• Writing Standards
• Speaking and Listening Standards
• Language Standards

Download the Iowa Core K-12 Literacy Manual . You will use it as a reference when you are creating lessons.

Next, explore the Subject Area pages and resources. What tools does the state provide to teachers to support their use of the Core?

Describe a resource you found on the website. How will you use this when you are a teacher?

Watch this video about the Iowa Literacy Core Standards:

• Literacy is typically defined as the ability to ingest, understand, and communicate information.
• Literacy has multiple definitions, each with a different point of focus.
• “New literacies,” or multiliteracies, are a combination of multiple ways of communicating and making meaning, including visual, audio, spatial, behavioral, and gestural communication.
• As online communication has become more prevalent, digital literacy has become more important for learners to engage with the wealth of information available online.
• Critical literacy develops learners’ critical thinking by asking them to use an analytic lens that detects power, privilege, and representation to understand different ways of looking at information.
• The Common Core State Standards were established to set clear, universal guidelines for what every student should know after completing high school.

Resources for teacher educators

• Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework [PDF]
• Common Core State Standards
• Iowa Core Instructional Resources in Literacy

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Neuman, S. B., & Celano, D. (2001). Access to print in low‐income and middle‐income communities: An ecological study of four neighborhoods. Reading Research Quarterly, 36 (1), 8-26.

Neuman, S. B., & Moland, N. (2019). Book deserts: The consequences of income segregation on children’s access to print.  Urban education, 54 (1), 126-147.

New London Group (1996). A Pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures.  Harvard Educational Review, 66 (1), 60-92.

O’Brien, J. (2001). Children reading critically: A local history. In B. Comber & A. Simpson (Eds.), Negotiating critical literacies in classrooms (pp. 41–60). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Ordoñez-Jasis, R., & Ortiz, R. W. (2006). Reading their worlds: Working with diverse families to enhance children’s early literacy development. Y C Young Children, 61 (1), 42.

Saha S. (2006). Improving literacy as a means to reducing health disparities. J Gen Intern Med. 21 (8):893-895. doi:10.1111/j.1525-1497.2006.00546.x

UNESCO. (2017). Literacy rates continue to rise from one generation to the next global literacy trends today. Retrieved from http://on.unesco.org/literacy-map.

Vasquez, V.M., Janks, H. & Comber, B. (2019). Critical Literacy as a Way of Being and Doing. Language Arts, 96 (5), 300-311.

Vlieghe, J. (2015). Traditional and digital literacy. The literacy hypothesis, technologies of reading and writing, and the ‘grammatized’ body. Ethics and Education, 10 (2), 209-226.

Zimmerman, E. B., Woolf, S. H., Blackburn, S. M., Kimmel, A. D., Barnes, A. J., & Bono, R. S. (2018). The case for considering education and health. Urban Education, 53 (6), 744-773.U.S. Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences.

U.S. Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2022 Reading Assessment.

Methods of Teaching Early Literacy Copyright © 2023 by Constance Beecher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

The Complete Guide to Educational Literacy

Educational literacy is hugely important and is the driving factor in how well students make progress, but why? Why is it that literacy is important in all subjects?

What is Educational Literacy? Educational literacy is the driving factor in all subjects. In order for students to learn, they need to be able to access the learning. Educational literacy is more than just being able to read, write and spell, it is about students being able to interpret, react, articulate and express their thoughts. 

In the introduction to the Education Endowment Foundation’s Literacy guidance reports , Sir Kevan Collins states that:

“ disadvantaged students in England are still significantly more likely than their classmates to leave formal education without being able to read, write and communicate effectively ”

“young people who leave school without good literacy skills are held back at every stage of life”.

What is Literacy?

We cannot, and should not, assume that the literacy of children is a solely academic pursuit and school responsibility; literacy is a ‘Life Skill’ and as such we as teachers and instructors play only a part in its development – hence why so much of literacy must be seen as domain-specific; the prefix of ‘educational’ helps to signpost this.

“We believe literacy is the ability to read, write, speak and listen well. A literate person is able to communicate effectively with others and to understand written information.”

The National Literacy Trust (NLT)

Literacy is the gateway to accurate communication, to being understood.

If, like me, you seethe with rage whenever someone can’t read or interpret ‘Parent & Child Parking’ or ‘Keep Dogs on Leads’ then the foundation of this ire is perhaps the lack of literacy (if we are being generous) of the supposed culprit.

To be literate (in all its forms) is to understand.

This understanding can be on a surface (explicit) level or can be deeper, using inference and association to draw out hidden or implied meanings. Literacy is more than just being able to spell – it is being able to interpret, react, articulate and express across a range of mediums.

The NLT in 2008 also stated that literacy has a “ significant relationship with a person’s happiness and success “; if we can, as they cite above, read, write, speak and listen well we can succeed in a range of contexts and scenarios.

However, these skills, unlike many, are not innate; they have to be taught to some degree of fluency to ensure that success.

The development of Literacy skills within a child is a journey that starts from their very first breath and continues throughout their school career, across the phases and subjects, and then into their varied and respective disciplines of work and adult life.

Every area of society has its own language and method of communication, and Literacy therefore becomes an essential aspect of everyone’s existence; to read, write, speak and listen in these is to exist within them.

In 2009 Beck and McKeown stated that “ reports from research and the larger educational community demonstrate that too many students have limited ability to comprehend texts “.

We cannot let this continue.

Why is Literacy Important in an Educational Context?

Essentially, in order to enable students to communicate and express themselves in the wider world they need to be able to read and write!

Every subject and phase has its own literacy requirements but ultimately we need to ensure students can access the learning , wherever that is taking place.

Much literacy is inadvertently picked up from home and social interactions, which is where the Matthew Effect begins to take hold. In 1983 Wahlberg & Tsai coined the term ‘Matthew Effect’ in order to describe the cumulative advantage of educative factors such as reading, based on the verses from Matthew’s Gospel. –

“ For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath “.

Essentially, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

In 1986 Stanovich took this further to look specifically at literacy acquisition, looking at how to solve what he called “ rich-get-richer and poor-get-poorer patterns of reading achievement “.

His paper is lengthy but the main and relevant findings are that reading well from an early age helps to build not only sequential understanding but also syntactic skills, vocabulary knowledge, general knowledge and develops memory and cognitive functioning, as well as building empathy and confidence in students.

The link here to cognition and the processes of learning are made explicit, and the idea that we need those facts to develop that knowledge are reinforced.

In the mid-1990s Hart and Risley conducted some research into American families that looked at the everyday language encountered by children in their early years and noted some startling data in relation to social and family dynamic and the early acquisition of words.

To quote their 2003 American Educator paper , the children grew “like their parents ” in “ vocabulary resources and in language and interaction styles “.

They found that vocabulary use at the age of 3 was “ predictive of measures of language skill at age 9 -10 ” and said vocabulary was also “ strongly associated with reading comprehension ” in later stages of Primary development.

The 30 Million Word Gap

They came up with the concept of a 30 Million Word Gap; those children growing up in disadvantaged or literacy-poor households were, by the age of 4, exposed to 30 million fewer total words in interaction and conversation with them than those from a more prosperous and literacy-rich environment.

Essentially, students from disadvantaged backgrounds suffer from an early age and continue to suffer because of it – that Matthew Effect cited above.

Naturally, if you aren’t good at something and are not encouraged in it you lose interest in it and then become almost fearful of it.

…and we wonder why so many students claim to not like reading!

There is a growing need to ensure that students are trained to access the academic language and conventions of different subjects.

Strategies grounded in disciplinary literacy aim to meet this need, building on the premise that each subject has its own unique language, ways of knowing, doing, and communicating.

This starts as soon as communication and interactions are recognized. Child Language Acquisition is a fascinating area of research and interest.

It can also be argued that much of the poor behavior in classrooms can be attributed to the students’ disengagement when a text is too complex or the vocabulary has not been properly decoded.

One of the key things to force home early in the great literacy battle is that it is not all about spelling and grammar – far from it.

Too often the focus is on the written word and how literacy (or the lack thereof) can manifest itself in poor quality extended writing or badly spelt student responses.

In fact much of literacy is around the ability to read and understand material in a range of contexts – reading must be taught explicitly across the key stages, and reading ages and ability must be taken into account when preparing material.

David Didau puts it nice and bluntly – “ just because students struggle to read doesn’t mean they’re thick “.

We have to constantly cater for the development of the literacy in the disciplines we are working within.

Literacy – in particular reading – can be taught alongside or in conjunction with all content within lessons and follows similar cognitive paths; working memory (and the capacity thereof) has a direct effect on reading ability as students can feel overwhelmed by poorly edited or presented material.

Their comprehension of the material they are presented with is also hugely context specific and relates to their general or disciplinary knowledge. I often find that I assume a student can infer a particular idea or emotion when in fact they lack the factual wherewithal to make the connection.

Understanding a text is a problem to be solved, and we cannot solve problems without facts!

What are the Barriers to Effective Literacy Instruction?

There are many barriers, of course – a lot of them are systemic and difficult to shift, but often these are also attitudinal; expectations are low so outcomes remain capped.

Yes, many students come to education significantly behind their chronological age in terms of reading ability and comprehension, but we must be positive and outward-facing in our approach, as well as realistic about what the barriers to understanding really are.

We must never make assumptions!

Let’s take an example :

If we read the following with a knowledge of cricket we can understand entirely what is going on, but if we have no working knowledge of that wonderful game then we are at a loss; lots of words we might understand, but absolutely no context!

Danger of assumption!

Jos Buttler hit a century but England were unable to force victory in their final warm-up match against New Zealand A in Whangarei. Resuming on 88 on day three, Buttler made 110 to help his side post 405 in reply to the hosts’ 302-6 declared.

( I have zero cricket knowledge, I can read the words but I have no idea what they mean! Paul Stevens-Fulbrook ).

Context is King!

The ITT Core Content Framework (2019) uses a “ Learn That ” and “ Learn How To By ” format to provide a basis for each Teaching Standard. Literacy falls under TS3, so we can benefit by looking at the basic statements of competency and performance in this area. Firstly:

Learn that…

“Every teacher can improve pupils’ literacy, including by explicitly teaching reading, writing and oral language skills specific to individual disciplines.”

This is key as it firmly places the responsibility at the door of all teachers, not just the cardigan-wearing book lovers in the English department.

Literacy must be seen as a whole-school responsibility with a discipline-by-discipline adaptive strategy – key generic ideas that can be modified to suit each subject area. To go back to George Sampson in 1922:

“Every teacher is a teacher of English because every teacher is a teacher in English”.

Pithy, but apt !

Now let’s look at the next stage of the framework – HOW to teach Literacy:

Learn how to by…

• Discussing and analyzing with expert colleagues how to support younger pupils to become fluent readers and to write fluently and legibly. 

• Receiving clear, consistent and effective mentoring in how to model reading comprehension by asking questions, making predictions, and summarizing when reading. 

• Receiving clear, consistent and effective mentoring in how to promote reading for pleasure (e.g. by using a range of whole class reading approaches and regularly reading high-quality texts to children). 

• Discussing and analyzing with expert colleagues how to teach different forms of writing by modelling, planning, drafting and editing.

Key phrases for me here are the “ expert colleagues ” and “effective mentoring”.

Standards only really improve if people share and collaborate to ensure mutual success; just as we as teachers model best practice in our classrooms so must we as teacher educators model the highest standards of pedagogy.

We also see herein the repetition of the word ‘ model ’ – students need to be shown the process of literacy; they need to hear the words being used in correct (and incorrect) contexts, they need to have explained to them why choices have been made, they need to see good writing and Oracy modeled and developed over time.

They need to be told stories that help them align concepts with understanding and where vocabulary is championed and celebrated.

Teaching Literacy Across From Early Years to Secondary

For more support and ideas the Education Endowment Foundation reports are an excellent starting point, summarizing and synthesizing the best evidence in Literacy development from Early Years through to Secondary.

They are too detailed and phase-specific to go into individual details here but the common threads running through the recommendations are as follows:

• Prioritizing development of Literacy skills, including Oracy
• Developing self-regulation and motivation when planning, drafting and developing written pieces
• Extensive practice, including modelling and guidance until independence can be obtained and fluency reached
• Promotion of active reading strategies
• Disciplinary approach (moving to Secondary), prioritized across the curriculum and promoting the specialist vocabulary of each subject area (discipline).
• Balanced and engaged approach to reading ability that integrates decoding and comprehension
• High-quality (a much-repeated phrase in the literature) assessment to identify issues and support to solve them

We learn more about Literacy and its development from their work:

• There is a growing need to ensure that students are trained to access the academic language and conventions of different subjects. 
• Strategies grounded in disciplinary literacy aim to meet this need, building on the premise that each subject has its own unique language, ways of knowing, doing, and communicating

We have a duty to ensure that the development of disciplinary literacy is coherently aligned with curriculum development.

For example, in Art, that the development of drawing skill is paired with teaching students how to make high quality annotations utilizing specialist vocabulary.

A good way of explaining this is to look at the command words used in each subject for the purposes of assessment and instruction – does ‘evaluate’ in English mean the same as ‘Evaluate’ in Mathematics?

Not directly, no; a very different process using different tools but the same word – how easy it is for students to become confused if the vocabulary is not taught explicitly within the domain.

If they can’t read or understand what the question is asking them to do, how on earth can they get to the right answer!

As Geoffrey Petty states in his excellent Evidence Based Teaching from 2009, “ many students believe that ‘describe’, ‘explain’, ‘analyze’ and ‘evaluate’ all mean pretty much the same thing: ‘write about’. “.

Our approach to literacy development must be strategic and planned, not random or one-off. It must be iterative, monitored and evaluated, knowing of course what ‘success’ looks like.

As with anything, know what you want to achieve and plan towards it; the starting point is ‘what problem do I need to solve?’, and this should be aligned with the specific disciplinary need of the literacy – extended writing? Spelling of key terms? Grammar? Paragraphing? Expression? Response to a source text? Labeling a diagram? Writing in bullet points? Inference?

The best approach from a subject perspective is to consider the specific literacy needs within the subject itself, especially the final assessment papers – how do students have to read or write in order to achieve?

A great source of material are the annual exam board reports which often cite where questions have been misunderstood, material misinterpreted or errors made that can be grouped under ‘literacy’.

Use assessment and judgment to diagnose the problem, ascertain the need and then prescribe the appropriate solution; focus on the outcomes and vary the process dependent on the cohort to ensure an equitable approach.

Practical Approaches to Teaching Literacy. Where to Start.

So, what can we do? Let’s start with vocabulary – to quote Mary Myatt from Gallimaufry to Curriculum :

“If we are serious about closing the gap between those pupils who come from language-rich backgrounds and those who do not then we need to pay careful attention to the building of vocabulary”.

Here are some suggestions from Margaret McKeown in her 2019 paper ‘ Effective Vocabulary Instruction ’:

• Choosing words to teach
• Inclusion of morphological information
• Engaging students in interactions around words

McKeown states that “ effective instruction means bringing students’ attention to words in ways that promote not just knowing word meanings but also understanding how words work and how to utilize word knowledge effectively “.

The building blocks of literacy; understanding meaning.

When we learn to read we follow a process – Basic, Intermediary, Disciplinary – moving from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn’; this takes time and no shortage of effort from all concerned, including the students!

Time and effort are the constituents of practice, and practice is very much what is needed!

An understanding of memory and cognition is essential to embedding literacy concepts in students from an early age and encouraging the recall and application of appropriate vocabulary, so we as teachers have to keep ourselves abreast of the literacy skills and needs of our students in their domain so we can plan and instruct appropriately.

As far back as 1985 McKeown et al stated that “ a desirable goal of vocabulary instruction is to enhance higher order processing skills such as comprehension ” and urged that the method chosen was carefully researched in order to ensure it was the most effective way of getting to the desired end-goal.

As we know, one size very rarely fits all so be careful to design an intervention or strategy that will optimize the chances of achieving your desired outcome(s).

McKeown et al’s key message though was a simple one:

Regular encounters with the vocabulary in a range of contexts to see how words function in different settings is the best approach; practice, practice, practice!

The more students hear words, read words, write words and experience words in action the greater their exposure, the greater their confidence and the higher their motivation and self-efficacy, no matter how transient in this your role as the classroom teacher who sees them for 3 hours a week may feel.

A good starting point for your own practice and what to teach when is to consider the three ‘tiers’ of vocabulary:

• Tier 1 – basic vocabulary
• Tier 2 – high frequency and multiple use / meaning vocabulary (cross-discipline)
• Tier 3 – subject-related / domain specific.

The focus for teaching varies according to phase, age and need but much work in schools is focused around Tier 2 and Tier 3.

Teachers need to understand the basic cognitive processes and the way students take on information, as well as transfer from working to long-term memory and the subsequent retrieval.

A good way to reinforce and practice vocabulary and its use is of course through regular review and retrieval practice, interleaving and re-visiting it throughout a teaching sequence, as with any concept or key idea.

Information needs to regularly recalled otherwise it will be completely forgotten – especially vocabulary!

Strategies for Teaching Literacy

As mentioned above, once you have identified your students and their needs you can begin to offer interventions and use a range of strategies to promote and develop the literacy in your classrooms; start where you have the most control!

Literacy does need to be a whole-school focus but the groundwork is done through the individual instruction of the teachers.

Here are a few techniques you can try:

• The Frayer Model – a great technique for exploring definitions, meanings, non-meanings and vocabulary use, and very good for retrieval
• Morphology – explicit deconstruction of words and their formations and meanings to help create connections promote what Alex Quigley calls “ word consciousness ” (a curiosity for and about words)
• Quizzing and low-stakes testing – again a great way to retrieve and practice using vocabulary in correct contexts
• Sketching, Mapping, Graphic Organizing and Drawing (not explicitly Dual Coding – careful!), in particular the Drawing Effect*(See reference section below); to return to Beck and McKeown (2009), “ The importance of making connections among ideas is paramount “
• Scaffolds such as Structure Strips (which can be gradually removed or adapted to fade out the teacher support and promote independent practice from students)
• Flashcards – the Leitner method, perhaps? Try combining aspects of Paivio’s work on Dual Coding Theory and have the term and image on one side and the definition on the other; the students can create these themselves or you can help avoid those “ seductive details ” (Harp & Mayer) and create models yourself
• Encouraging reading out loud, making the link to performance – reading out loud has benefits; this is The Production Effect – producing something with new information straight away to anchor it in your mind (Forrin and MacLeod 2018)
• Story-telling; give words and phrases life, character, worlds and settings – connect them to personal experiences and emotions to make them more concrete
• Oracy – promote academic and intellectual debate within your classroom at all times; celebrate the use of language and how it can be a tool for critical and analytical debate 

In Closing The Vocabulary Gap , Alex Quigley suggests the following considerations when teaching vocabulary in context:

• Mis-directive contexts; these are unhelpful and guide students towards incorrect meanings (irony / sarcasm / word play)
• Non-directive contexts; these offer little help at all with the definition of a word
• General contexts; non-specific surrounding descriptions to allow a student to possibly infer the meaning of a word
• Directive contexts; where enough precise information or description is given in order to make meaning clear

Quigley promotes a SEEC model – Select, Explain, Explore, Consolidate – when working with vocabulary, and from then on into reading.

Beck & McKeown also promote exploring words in a range of contexts so they think about how the words work.

Once students can understand the texts and see writing at work they then become more able to emulate and mirror these skills in their own work. Remember that literacy is not just vocabulary, but vocabulary is Literacy!

As ever, small steps are important to avoid swamping students or unbalancing that cognitive load that is so important to their ability to take on, retain and use material – less is often more!

Also, if you can, consider the power of support outside the classroom – the impact of parental engagement (remember the Matthew Effect?).

Senechal and LeFevre (2002) found that the amount of books a child was exposed to by the age of 6 was a positive predictor of their reading ability by the time they turned 8 – a cross-stage approach!

Conclusions in Educational Literacy

You will always be modelling to students, either consciously or not; you teach because you care and you want to develop students and their opportunities and chances for success.

There can be a clear link drawn between Literacy, Social Mobility and Cultural Capital and cycles can be broken, gaps can be closed, but those gaps have to be acknowledged in order to help find suitable solutions.

Whatever subject you teach, you have a responsibility to ensure students know and understand it – all of this knowledge and understanding comes from words and language, meaning that you have a responsibility as a teacher to promote words and language – literacy.

Don’t go for a scattergun approach; use the evidence, use your assessment (high-quality), use what you garner from your assessment to help make informed decisions (otherwise there was little point in conducting the assessment in the first place…) and put in place robust, supported and well-monitored strategies, allowing that degree of autonomy so valuable to success.

Trust your professional judgment and, above all, promote a love of reading!

References:

Rethinking Reading Comprehension Instruction: A Comparison of Instruction for Strategies and Content Approaches; Margaret G. McKeown, Isabel L. Beck, Ronette G.K. Blake (2009)

Some Effects of the Nature and Frequency of Vocabulary Instruction on the Knowledge and Use of Words: Margaret G. McKeown, Isabel L. Beck, Richard C. Omanson and Martha T. Pople: Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 5 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 522-535

Matthew Effects in Reading: Some Consequences of Individual Differences in the Acquisition of Literacy: Keith E. Stanovich; Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 360-407

Matthew Effects in Education; Wahlberg and Tsai; American Educational Research Journal Fall 1983, Vol. 20, No. 3, Pp. 359-373

* The Drawing Effect’ (Wammes, Meade and Fernandez, 2016).  

(Taken from my article for Impact for the Chartered College):

The study had found that ‘drawing a to-be-remembered stimulus was superior to writing it out’ and that ‘drawing pictures of words presented during an incidental study phase [provided] a measurable boost to later memory performance’.

Many studies show information presented as pictures compared to words (e.g., Paivio) is more likely to be remembered. Paivio’s theory was that the creation or formation of mental images aids retention and retrieval of information, which is the essence of learning. At its heart it is the use of pictures associated with key learning goals – in this case vocabulary. Where information is taken in via two channels – the verbal and the visual, retention and retrieval are strengthened; memory traces are doubled.

Essentially, ‘The Drawing Effect’ proposes that drawing leads to better later memory performance, and therefore enhances retrieval (Cohen’s d for Draw vs Write = 1.51 – other data published within the paper itself). They also suggest that ‘drawing improves memory by encouraging a seamless integration of semantic, visual, and motor aspects.’

Their feeling was that as well as deepening the semantic processing, the act of drawing provided mechanical information and response, similar to that gained from acting something out. There is a process behind the creation of an image that requires thought (and ‘memory is the residue of thought’ (Willingham)!). To take a word heard and manifest it as a visual representation requires the listener to process the word and generate its physical characteristics (‘elaboration’), see it in their mind (‘visual imagery’) and then draw it (‘motor action’). The picture is then a multi-pathway memory cue for later retrieval.

JD. Wammes, Melissa E. Meade & Myra A. Fernandes (2016) The drawing effect: Evidence for reliable and robust memory benefits in free recall, The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69:9, 1752-1776,

Paivio (1990) A Dual Coding Approach; Oxford University Press

Educational Literacy FAQ

Put simply, it is the different literacy skills needed to access and understand key concepts in subjects at school, as well as the overspill this has into the day-to-day life and success of an individual.

The OECD report of 2002 claimed that reading for pleasure is perhaps the single most important indicator of a child’s future success!

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What is literacy?

The word literacy is defined as the ability to read, write, speak and listen in a way that lets us communicate effectively and make sense of the world.

The importance of literacy

However, understanding the significance of literacy goes far beyond its definition.

Literacy is essential. Without literacy, it’s hard to live the life you want. From your earliest years, literacy skills help you develop and communicate. But when you have a tough start in life, it’s easy to fall behind.

At school, having the literacy skills to read, write, speak and listen are vital for success. If you find these things hard, then you struggle to learn. It affects your confidence and self-esteem.

As an adult, without these same literacy skills, you can’t get the jobs you want, and navigating every day life can be difficult – from using the internet, to filling out forms or making sense of instructions on medicines or road signs. If you have children, it’s hard to support their learning, and so the cycle continues.

Low levels of literacy undermine the UK’s economic competitiveness, costing the taxpayer £2.5 billion every year ( KPMG, 2009 ). A third of businesses are not satisfied with young people’s literacy skills when they enter the workforce and a similar number have organised remedial training for young recruits to improve their basic skills, including literacy and communication.

Literacy statistics

Our research underpins our programmes, campaigns and policy work to improve literacy skills, attitudes and habits across the UK.

Children who enjoy reading and writing are happier with their lives

Children who enjoy reading are three times more likely to have good mental wellbeing than children who don’t enjoy it. Read our research report from 2019.

1 in 15 children and young people aged 8 to 18 do not have a book of their own at home.

Children who say they have a book of their own are six times more likely to read above the level expected for their age than their peers who don’t own a book. Read our Book ownership in 2022 report.

Children born into communities with the most serious literacy challenges have some of the lowest life expectancies in England

A boy born in Stockton Town Centre (an area with serious literacy challenges) has a life expectancy 26.1 years shorter than a boy born in North Oxford. Read more.

1 in 2 children in the UK enjoy reading

Only 1 in 2 children and young people said they enjoy reading in early 2022, which is as low as the number has ever been since we first asked the question in 2005. Read more.

1 in 3 children in the UK enjoy writing

In 2023, 1 in 3 children and young people aged 8 to 18 said that they enjoy writing in their free time. Our 2023 report into children and young peoples' writing in 2023 showed that levels of writing enjoyment have reduced by 12.2 percentage points over the past 13 years. Read our full report.

Audiobooks can support wider literacy engagement

1 in 5 children and young people said that listening to an audiobook or podcast has got them interested in reading books. Read more.

Adult literacy rate

16.4% of adults in England, or 7.1 million people, can be described as having 'very poor literacy skills.' Adults with poor literacy skills will be locked out of the job market and, as a parent, they won’t be able to support their child’s learning.

But that's not the end of the story...

We believe that together, we can break the cycle. We believe that literacy is for everyone so we continue to work in schools and with communities to bring real change through our inspiring and evidence-based programmes, resources and activities.

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Critical literacy.

• Vivian Maria Vasquez Vivian Maria Vasquez American University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.20
• Published online: 29 March 2017

Changing student demographics, globalization, and flows of people resulting in classrooms where students have variable linguistic repertoire, in combination with new technologies, has resulted in new definitions of what it means to be literate and how to teach literacy. Today, more than ever, we need frameworks for literacy teaching and learning that can withstand such shifting conditions across time, space, place, and circumstance, and thrive in challenging conditions. Critical literacy is a theoretical and practical framework that can readily take on such challenges creating spaces for literacy work that can contribute to creating a more critically informed and just world. It begins with the roots of critical literacy and the Frankfurt School from the 1920s along with the work of Paulo Freire in the late 1940s (McLaren, 1999; Morrell, 2008) and ends with new directions in the field of critical literacy including finding new ways to engage with multimodalities and new technologies, engaging with spatiality- and place-based pedagogies, and working across the curriculum in the content areas in multilingual settings. Theoretical orientations and critical literacy practices are used around the globe along with models that have been adopted in various state jurisdictions such as Ontario, in Canada, and Queensland, in Australia.

• critical literacy
• critical pedagogy
• social justice
• multiliteracies
• text analysis
• discourse analysis
• everyday politics
• language ideologies

Changing student demographics, globalization, and flows of people resulting in classrooms where students have variable linguistic repertoire, in combination with new technologies, has resulted in new definitions of what it means to be literate and how to teach literacy. Today, more than ever, we need frameworks for literacy teaching and learning that can withstand such shifting conditions across time, space, place, and circumstance, and thrive in challenging conditions. Critical literacy is a theoretical and practical framework that can readily take on such challenges creating spaces for literacy work that can contribute to creating a more critically informed and just world.

Historical Orientation

Luke ( 2014 ) describes critical literacy as “the object of a half-century of theoretical debate and practical innovation in the field of education” (p. 21). Discussion about the roots of critical literacy often begin with principles associated with the Frankfurt School from the 1920s and their focus on Critical Theory. The Frankfurt School was created by intellectuals who carved out a space for developing theories of Marxism within the academy and independently of political parties. While focusing on political and economic philosophy, they emphasized the importance of class struggle in society. More prominently associated with the roots of critical literacy is Paulo Freire, beginning with his work in the late 1940s (McLaren, 1999 ; Morrell, 2008 ), which focused on critical consciousness and critical pedagogy. Freire’s work was centered on key concepts, which included the notion that literacy education should highlight the critical consciousness of learners. In his work in the 1970s Freire wrote that if we consider learning to read and write as acts of knowing, then readers and writers must assume the role of creative subjects who reflect critically on the process of reading and writing itself along with reflecting on the significance of language ( 1972 ). Together with Macedo in the 1980s, Freire popularized the concept that reading is not just about decoding words. In their work, Freire and Macedo ( 1987 ) noted that reading the word is simultaneously about reading the world. This means that our reading of any text is mediated through our day-to-day experience and the places, spaces, and languages that we encounter, use, and occupy. This critical reading can lead to disrupting and “unpacking myths and distortions and building new ways of knowing and acting upon the world” (Luke, 2014 , p. 22). As such this conceptualization of critical literacy disrupts the notion of false consciousness described earlier by Hegel and Marx (Luke, 2014 ).

The Frankfurt School scholars and Freire focused their work on adult education. For instance in the 1960s Freire organized a campaign for hundreds of sugar cane workers in Brazil to participate in a literacy program that centered on critical pedagogy. His work became known as liberatory, whereby he worked to empower oppressed workers. Critiques of Freire have focused primarily on claims that the liberatory pedagogy he espoused was unidirectional because educators liberated students. The binary represented here was also seen as problematic. Nevertheless his grounding work pushed to the fore the importance and effects of critical pedagogy as a way of making visible and examining relations of power to change inequitable ways of being. Work done by the Frankfurt School and Freire were overtly political and inspired the political nature and democratic potential of education as central to critical approaches to pedagogy (Comber, 2016 ) as seen in work done by researchers and educators such as Campano, Ghiso and Sánchez ( 2013 ), Janks ( 2010 ), and Vasquez ( 2004 ).

Luke ( 2014 ) noted antecedents to these approaches including early-twentieth-century exemplars of African-American community education in the United States that were established in many cities (Shannon, 1998 ), Brecht’s experiments with political drama in Europe (Weber & Heinen, 2010 ), and work by Hoggart ( 1957 ) and Williams ( 1977 ) on post-war cultural British studies amongst others.

Theoretical Orientations

Various theoretical paradigms and traditions of scholarship have influenced definitions of critical literacy and its circulation, as well as its practice. These include feminist poststructuralist theories (Davies, 1993 ; Gilbert, 1992 ) post colonialist traditions (Meacham, 2003 ), critical race theory (Ladson-Billings, 1999 , 2003 ), critical linguistics and critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995 ; Janks, 2010 ), cultural studies (Pahl & Rowsell, 2011 ), critical media literacy (Share, 2009 , 2010 ), queer theory (Vicars, 2013 ), place conscious pedagogy (Comber, 2016 ), and critical sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007 ; Blommaert, 2013 ; McKinney, 2016 ). Theoretical toolkits, or combinations of such theories have resulted in different orientations to critical literacy. As such it is viewed as a concept, a framework, or perspective for teaching and learning, a way of being in the classroom, and a stance or attitude toward literacy work in schools. These different theoretical orientations help shape different views. Regardless, “the project remains understanding the relationship between texts, meaning-making and power to undertake transformative social action that contributes to the achievement of a more equitable social order” (Janks & Vasquez, 2011 , p. 1). As such, regardless of the view one takes, a common understanding is that critical literacy focuses on unequal power relations—and issues of social justice and equity—in support of diverse learners. Diversity of learners includes taking the languages they bring with them to school seriously and understanding the ways in which multilingual children are treated unjustly when their linguistic repertoires are excluded from classrooms.

There are also those who argue that critical literacies are not just orientations to teaching literacy but a way of being, living, learning, and teaching (Vasquez, 2005 , 2014a , 2015 ; Zacher Pandya & Avila, 2014 ). Vasquez ( 2001 , 2010 , 2014b ) describes critical literacy as a perspective and way of being that should be constructed organically, using the inquiry questions of learners, beginning on the first day of school with the youngest learners. From this perspective it follows that such a perspective or way of being cuts across the curriculum. Similarly Zacher Pandya and Avila ( 2014 ) and Vasquez, Tate, and Harste ( 2013 ) note the need for critical literacy to be defined by individuals, within their own contexts, once they have learned about, and experienced, its central ideas. Comber discusses this in terms of teachers’ dispositions, which include their discursive resources and repertoires of practice (Comber, 2006 ). As such critical literacy can be described as “an evolving repertoire of practices of analysis and interrogation which move between the micro features of texts and the macro conditions of institutions, focusing on how relations of power work through these practices” (Comber, 2013 , p. 589). Janks ( 2010 ), Kamler ( 2001 ), and Luke ( 2013 ) have noted more recently the importance of not only analyzing text but also designing and producing it as well. In this regard, equally important is to understand the position(s) from which we analyze text and also the position(s) from which we design and produce texts.

Critical Literacy in Practice around the Globe

Critical literacy has taken root differently in different places around the world but most notably in South Africa (Granville, 1993 ; Janks, 1993a , 2010 ; Janks et al., 2013 ), Australia and New Zealand (Comber, 2001 , 2016 ; Luke, 2000 ; Morgan, 1997 ; O’Brien, 2001 ), and the United States and Canada (Larson & Marsh, 2015 ; Lewison, Leland, & Harste, 2014 ; Pahl & Rowsell, 2011 ; Vasquez, 2001 , 2010 , 2014b ).

For instance, in South Africa, Hilary Janks ( 1993a , 1993b , 2010 , 2014 ) used critical literacy as a tool in the struggle against apartheid. Her work focused primarily on young adults and adolescents “to increase students’ awareness of the way language was used to oppress the black majority, to win elections, to deny education, to construct others, to position readers, to hide the truth, and to legitimate oppression” ( 2010 , p. 12). To this end, she produced Critical Language Awareness (CLA) materials for use with older children in South African schools (Janks et al., 2013 ). In Australia, critical materials were created, in the form of workbooks, to deconstruct literary texts (Mellor, Patterson, & O’Neill, 1987 , 1991 ). Also in Australia, work deriving from postcolonial theory, was produced by Freemantle Press (Martino, 1997 ; Kenworthy & Kenworthy, 1997 ). Some of these materials informed work done in middle school and high school settings by educators and researchers such as Morgan ( 1992 , 1994 ), Gilbert ( 1989 ), and Davies ( 1993 ).

Critical literacy work with younger children began to take place in the 1990s in Australia, where Barbara Comber’s work has been very influential. In particular, her work with Jenny O’Brien on creating spaces for critical literacy in an elementary school classroom, using newspaper and magazine ads, has been highly cited in the literature (O’Brien, 2001 ). In the United States and Canada, Vivian Vasquez’s work with children between ages three to five opened the field for exploration in settings involving very young children by using their inquiries about the world around them to question issues of social justice and equity, using the everyday as text (i.e., food packaging, media ads, popular culture), as well as children’s literature. Although there are growing accounts of critical literacy work in early years classrooms (Sanchez, 2011 ; Vander Zanden, 2016 ; Vander Zanden & Wohlwend, 2011 ), more examples of practice are needed as demonstrations of possibility in school settings with young children.

Earlier critical literacy work in early childhood and elementary settings focused on critically reading and deconstructing texts as a way to help students question versions of reality in the world around them. For example, in Australia, O’Brien ( 2001 ) explored ways in which Mother’s Day ads worked to position readers of such texts in particular ways. She described this work as “helping her children probe representations of women, and setting them purposeful reading, writing, and talking tasks” (p. 52). At around the same time, researchers such as Ivanič ( 1998 ) and Kamler ( 2001 ) began highlighting critical writing in their work with older children. Janks ( 2010 ) refers to this as an important move that enabled us to think where we might go after critically reading a text. She notes, “because texts are constructed word by word, image by image, they can be deconstructed—unpicked, unmade, the positions produced for the reader laid bare” (Janks, 2010 , p. 18). A space is thus created for us to think about “how texts may be rewritten and how multimodal texts can be redesigned” (Janks, 2010 , p. 19). Such perspectives further informed the work of educators and researchers of critical literacy. Comber and Nixon ( 2014 ), for instance, attended “to the importance of children’s agency through text production and related social action” (p. 81). Examples of this include work done by Vasquez ( 2001 , 2004 , 2010 , 2014b ) in building critical curriculum using her preschool students’ inquiry questions about inequities within their school as a way to disrupt and dismantle such inequity and create new more equitable practices and places in which to engage in such practices. Reading the world as a text that could be deconstructed and reconstructed created a space for Vasquez and her students to disrupt and rewrite problematic school practices. As noted by Janks ( 2010 ), “if repositioning text is tied to an ethic of social justice then redesign can contribute to the kind of identity and social transformation that Freire’s work advocates” (p. 18).

The notion of design and redesign was introduced to the field through the New London Group ( 1996 ) in their paper on multiliteracies. Kress and his colleagues (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006 ; Mavers, 2011 ) extend this work stating the importance of design as “the shaping of available resources into a framework which can act as a blueprint for the production of the object, entity, or event” (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006 , p. 50). Janks ( 2003 ) refers to this as “a pedagogy of reconstruction,” while McKinney ( 2016 ) calls this transformative pedagogy. This pedagogy is integral to one of the most notable models to inform critical literacy practice, Janks’ Interdependent Model (Janks, 2010 ).

Critical literacy is also being used in state jurisdictions such as Ontario in Canada and Queensland in Australia, where governments have endorsed its use in school curricula. Its use is also growing in emerging and post colonial contexts (Norton, 2007 ; Lo et al., 2012 ). For instance, in her work in Karachi, Pakistan, Norton ( 2007 ) notes that students made frequent reference to the relationship between literacy, the distribution of resources, and international inequities. In Hong Kong, Lo et al. ( 2012 ) reported on “working with students to understand the social and political framing and consequences of texts” (p. 121). With regards to such work Luke ( 2004 ) has argued for the need to do justice to the lived experiences of physical and material deprivation in diverse communities throughout the globe. As such critical literacy should be adopted and adapted and should continue to emerge across a spectrum of political economies, nation states, and systems from autocratic/theocratic states to postcolonial states not only as an epistemic stance but also as a political and culturally transgressive position that works to create spaces for transformative social actions that can contribute to the achievement of a more equitable social order.

Influential Models

Different orientations to critical literacy have resulted in different models that impact critical pedagogy. Three influential models, in particular will be addressed here: Freebody and Luke’s Four Resources Model, Janks’ Interdependent Model, and Green’s 3D Model of Literacy.

Allan Luke and Peter Freebody have played a central role in making critical literacy accessible across continents. In particular their Four Resources Model (Luke & Freebody, 1999 ) has been widely adapted for use in classrooms from preschool to tertiary education settings. Their model focuses on different literacy practices that readers and writers should learn. These practices are learning to be code-breakers—recognizing, understanding, and using the fundamental features of written text such as the alphabet; learning to be text participants—using their own prior knowledge to interpret and make meaning from and bring meaning to text; understanding how to use different text forms; and becoming critical consumers of those forms—learning to critically analyze text and understand that texts are never neutral. Colin Lankshear and Michelle Knobel ( 2004 ) challenge Luke and Freebody’s model claiming it does not support literacy practices in a digitized world or for those who are “digitally at home”; those comfortable with and competent in using new technologies. In turn they offer examples of the kind of roles related to literacy practices in a digitized world assumed by authors of digital texts. These roles are as text designer, one who designs and produces multimedia or digital texts; text mediator or broker, one who summarizes or presents aspects of texts for others such as a blogger; text bricoleur, one who constructs or creates text using a range or collection of available things; and text jammer, one who re-presents text it in some way, such as by adding new words or phrases to an image as a way to subvert the original meaning (Lankshear & Knobel, 2004 ).

Larson and Marsh ( 2015 ), however, state that Lankshear and Knobel’s ( 2004 ) model focuses primarily on text production rather than text analysis. In comparison, Hilary Janks ( 2010 , 2014 ) in her model for critical literacy includes both text analysis and text design as integral elements. Janks’ model centers on a set of interdependent elements—namely access, domination/power, diversity, and design/re-design. She argues “different realizations of critical literacy operate with different conceptualizations of the relationship between language and power by foregrounding one or other of these elements” (Janks, 2010 , p. 23). She notes that these complementary and competing positions speak to the complexities of engaging with critical literacies and that they are crucially interdependent.

More recently, Comber reflected, “originally these approaches did not foreground the spatial dimensions of critical literacy”( 2016 , p. 11). Comber argues that insights from theories of space and place and literacy studies can create opportunities for designing and enacting culturally inclusive curriculum to support the needs of diverse learners. As such, in her work, one of the models she draws from is Green’s 3D Model of Literacy. This model is a multidimensional framework which argues that there are always three dimensions of literacy simultaneously at play: the operational, learning how the language works and ways that texts can be structured; the cultural, which involves the uses of literacy and in particular the ways that cultural learning is involved with content learning; and the critical, the ways in which we act and see in the world, along with how literacy can be used to shape lives in ways that better serve the interests of some over others. As such, Green’s model is a useful frame for unpacking links between literacy, place, and culture.

Debate, Controversy, and Critical Literacy

In spite of advances in the field with regards to critical literacy, there is still confusion about the difference between “critical” from the Enlightenment period, which focused on critical thinking and reasoning, and “critical” from Marx as an analysis of power. The debate and controversy around this continues. Definitions for critical literacy are often at the center of such debates, which are likely in response to attempts by some educators and researchers to pin down a specific definition for critical literacy. Theorists and educators including Comber ( 2016 ), Vasquez ( 2010 , 2014b ), and Luke ( 2014 ) maintain that as a framework for engaging in literacy work, it should look, feel, and sound different. As previously discussed, the models used as part of one’s critical literacy toolkit help contribute to the kinds of work one might accomplish from such a perspective. Critical literacy should also be used as a resource for accomplishing different sorts of life work depending on the context in which it is used as a perspective for teaching, learning, and participating with agency in different spaces and places. Vasquez ( 2010 , 2014b ) has referred to this framing as a way of being, where she has argued that critical literacy should not be an add-on but a frame through which to participate in the world in and outside of school. Such a frame does not necessarily involve taking a negative stance; rather, it means looking at an issue or topic in different ways, analyzing it, and being able to suggest possibilities for change and improvement. In this regard critical literacies can be pleasurable and transformational as well as pedagogical and transgressive.

Consequently, there is no such thing as a critical literacy text. Rather there are texts through which we may better be able to create spaces for critical literacies. The world as text, however, can be read from a critical literacy perspective, especially given that what constitutes a text has changed. For instance, a classroom can be read as a text, and water bottles can also be read as text (Janks, 2014 ). What this means is that issues and topics of interest that capture learners’ interests, based on their experiences, or artifacts with which they engage in the material world, as they participate in communities around them, can and should be used as text to build a curriculum that has significance in their lives.

Key Aspects of Critical Literacy

In spite of the fact that critical literacy does not have a set definition or a normative history, the following key aspects have been described in the literature. It should be noted that such key aspects or tenets would likely take different shape depending on one’s orientation to critical literacy.

Critical literacy should not be a topic to be covered or a unit to be studied. Instead it should be looked on as a lens, frame, or perspective for teaching throughout the day, across the curriculum, and perhaps beyond. What this means is that critical literacy involves having a critical perspective or way of being.

While working across the curriculum, in the content areas, diverse students’ cultural knowledge (drawn from inside the classroom and the children’s everyday worlds, homes, and communities), their funds of knowledge (Gonzales, Moll, & Amanti, 2006 ), and multimodal and multilingual practices (Lau, 2012 ) should be used to build curriculum. Because students learn best when what they are learning has importance in their lives, using the topics, issues, and questions that they raise should therefore be an important part of creating the classroom curriculum.

From a critical literacy perspective the world is seen as a socially constructed text that can be read. The earlier students are introduced to this idea, the sooner they are able to understand what it means to be researchers of language, image, spaces, and objects, exploring such issues as what counts as language, whose language counts, and who decides as well as explore ways texts can be revised, rewritten, or reconstructed to shift or reframe the message(s) conveyed. As such, texts are never neutral. What this means is that all texts are created from a particular perspective with the intention of conveying particular messages. As such these texts work to position readers in certain ways. We therefore need to question the perspective of others.

Texts are socially constructed and created or designed from particular perspectives. As such, they work to have us think about and believe certain things in specific ways. Just as texts are never neutral, the ways we read text are also never neutral. Each time we read, write, or create, we draw from our past experiences and understanding about how the world works. We therefore should also analyze our own readings of text and unpack the position(s) from which we engage in literacy work.

Critical literacy involves making sense of the sociopolitical systems through which we live our lives and questioning these systems. This means our work in critical literacy needs to focus on social issues, such as race, class, gender, or disability and the ways in which we use language to shape our understanding of these issues. The discourses we use to take up such issues work to shape how people are able to—or not able to—live their lives in more or less powerful ways as well as determine such ways of being as who is given more or less powerful roles in society.

Critical literacy practices can be transformative and contribute to change inequitable ways of being and problematic social practices. As such, students who engage in critical literacy from a young age are likely going to be better able to contribute to a more equitably and socially just world by being better able to make informed decisions regarding such issues as power and control, practice democratic citizenship, and develop an ability to think and act ethically.

Text design and production are essential to critical literacy work. These practices can provide opportunities for transformation. Text design and production refer to the creation or construction of multimodal texts and the decisions that are part of that process. This includes the notion that it is not sufficient to simply create texts for the sake of “practicing a skill.” If students are to create texts they ought to be able to let those texts do the work intended. For instance, if students are writing surveys or creating petitions, they should be done with real-life intent for the purpose of dealing with a real issue. If students write petitions, they should be able to send them to whomever they were intended.

Finally, critical literacy is about imagining thoughtful ways of thinking about reconstructing and redesigning texts, images, and practices to convey different and more socially just and equitable messages and ways of being that have real-life effects and real-world impact. For instance critically reading a bottle of water as a text to be read could result in examining the practice of drinking bottled water and changing that practice in support of creating a more sustainable world.

New Directions

New directions in the field of critical literacy include finding new ways to engage with multimodalities and new technologies (Comber, 2016 ; Janks & Vasquez, 2010 ; Nixon, 2003 ; Nixon & Comber, 2005 ; Larson & Marsh, 2015 ), engaging with spatiality, time, and space (Dixon, 2004 ), place-based pedagogies (Comber, 2016 ; Comber & Nixon, 2014 ), working across the curriculum in the content areas (Comber & Nixon, 2014 ; Janks, 2014 ; Vasquez, 2017 ), and working with multilingual learners (Lau, 2012 , 2016 ). These new directions for critical literacy, amongst others that may develop, reiterate and remind us of what educators who have been working in the field of critical literacy for some time have maintained (Comber, 2016 ; Janks, 2014 ; Luke, 2014 ; Vasquez, 2014b )—that there is no correct or universal model of critical literacy. Instead “how educators deploy the tools, attitudes, and philosophies is utterly contingent … upon students’ and teachers’ everyday relations of power, their lived problems and struggles” (Luke, 2014 , p. 29) and the ways in which teachers are able to navigate the (P)politics of the places and spaces in which their work unfolds. Janks insists that critical literacy is essential to the ongoing project of education across the curriculum (Janks, 2014 ). She notes,

in a perfect world in which social differences did not determine who gets access to resources and opportunity, we would still need critical literacy to help us read the texts that construct the politics of everyday life. In the actual world—where a 17-year-old boy sells one of his kidneys for an iPad; … where millions of people lack access to drinking water or sanitation—the list is endless—it is even more important that education enables young people to read both the word and the world critically. (Janks, 2010 , p. 349)

as one way to engage learners in powerful and pleasurable literacies that could contribute to creating a more critically informed and just world.

Further Reading

• Comber, B. (2013). Critical literacy in the early years: Emergence and sustenance in an age of accountability. In J. Larson & J. Marsh (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy (pp. 587–601). London: SAGE.
• Comber, B. (2016). Literacy, place, and pedagogies of possibility . New York: Routledge.
• Dixon, K. (2010). Literacy, power, and the schooled body: Learning in time and space . New York: Routledge.
• Janks, H. (2010). Literacy and power . New York: Routledge.
• Share, J. (2009). Young children and critical media literacy. In D. Kellner & R. Hammer (Eds.), Media/Cultural Studies: Critical Approaches (pp. 126–151). New York: Peter Lang Publishers.
• Kamler, B. (2001). Relocating the personal: A critical writing pedagogy . New York: State University of New York Press.
• Lewison, M. , Leland, C. , & Harste, J. C. (2014). Creating critical classrooms: Reading and writing with an edge (2d ed.). New York: Routledge.
• Luke, Allan (2013). Regrounding critical literacy: Representation, facts and reality. In M. Hawkins (Ed.), Framing languages and literacies: Socially situated views and perspectives (pp. 136–148). Routledge: New York.
• Pahl, K. , & Rowsell, J. (2011). Artifactual critical literacy: A new perspective for literacy education. Berkeley Review of Education , 2 (2), 129–151.
• Vasquez, V. (2014). Negotiating critical literacies with young children: 10th anniversary edition . New York: Routledge-LEA.
• Zacher Pandya, J. , & Ávila, J. (Eds.). (2014). Moving critical literacies forward: A new look at praxis across contexts . New York: Routledge.
• Blommaert, J. (2013). Ethnography, superdiversity and linguistic landscapes chronicles of complexity . Clevedon, U.K.: Multilingual Matters.
• Campano, G. , Ghiso, M. P. , & Sánchez, L. (2013). “Nobody one knows the … amount of a person”: Elementary students critiquing dehumanization through organic critical literacies. Research in the Teaching of English , 48 (1), 97–124.
• Comber, B. (2001). Negotiating critical literacies . School Talk , 6 (3), 1–3.
• Comber, B. (2006). Pedagogy as work: Educating the next generation of literacy teachers. Pedagogies , 1 (1), 59–67.
• Comber, B. , & Nixon, H. (2014). Critical literacy across the curriculum: learning to read, question, and rewrite designs. In J. Zacher Pandya & J. Avila (Eds.), Moving critical literacies forward: A new look at praxis across contexts (pp. 83–97). New York: Routledge.
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• Vasquez, V. (2014b). Negotiating critical literacies with young children: 10th anniversary edition . New York: Routledge-LEA.
• Vasquez, V. (2015). Podcasting as transformative work. Theory into Practice , 54 (2), 1–7.
• Vasquez, V. (2017). Critical literacy across the curriculum in k-6 settings . New York: Routledge.
• Vasquez, V. , Tate, S. , & Harste, J. C. (2013). Negotiating critical literacies with teachers . New York: Routledge.
• Vicars, M. (2013). Queerer than Queer. In J. N. Lester & R. Gabriel (Eds.), Performances of research critical issues in k-12 education (pp. 245–272). New York: Peter Lang.
• Weber, B. , & Heinen, H. (Eds.). (2010). Bertolt Brecht: Political theory and literary practice . Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
• Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Families reading at home is just one way a culture of reading is growing in Rwanda.

Why Does Literacy Matter?

Is anything more powerful than the ability to read and to write? Through written language, we convey beliefs, record knowledge, and explore our common humanity. Alphabets may be different around the world, but literacy—that core ability to make sense of the written word—is cherished across all cultures and traditions.

On this International Literacy Day (September 8), five EDC staff members reflect on why literacy matters. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more about literacy and International Literacy Day.

The greatest gift

Simon Richmond

"Creating the concept and system of reading is one of humankind’s greatest intellectual achievements. Reading and writing magnify our capacity to learn, which is the competitive advantage of our species and the very foundation of human civilization. When a child learns to read, she unlocks and accelerates an expanding process of re-forming her self-identity and of enacting her will within the world. What more can you give her? To read is to better understand, and to understand is the greatest gift of being human."

Unlocking the world’s secrets

Jackie Bourassa

"Sharing thoughts, ideas, and emotions is key to the human experience. Developing literacy skills facilitates effective communication. Over a lifetime, children hone their skills to read, write, speak, listen, think, and respond critically—skills that unlock the world’s secrets and provide unlimited possibilities. Literacy matters because of the endless doors it opens!"

After students in the Philippines learn how to read, they begin to read to learn.

The right of literacy

Life-changing experiences.

Bill Potter

"Strong literacy skills serve as foundational building blocks for positive social development. I’ve seen this pattern repeated all over the world. Literate mothers are better able to support their families’ health, and literate children and adults develop empathy through the stories they read. Empathy leads to social awareness and fosters more supportive communities.

"Unfortunately, too many children around the world are still not afforded the life-changing experience of learning how to read and write. We owe them this right of literacy and must continue our efforts to make reading a part of their lives."

A true expression of humanity

Nancy Clark-Chiarelli

"Natalie Babbitt, the acclaimed children’s author, once remarked, ‘It’s amazing that those 26 little marks of the alphabet can arrange themselves on the pages of a book and accomplish all that.’

"It’s true; the alphabet is a wonder. But it is also just a tool. It takes a skilled teacher to help any learner decipher those little squiggles so that they are transformed into words and ideas, into stories and songs. What we do with that knowledge, that literacy, is a true expression of humanity."

A community of learning

Carrie Lewis

"Literacy matters because it brings students into a life-long community of learning that links people across borders. Literacy matters because it engage citizens in meaningful ways to participate in building a society and government of their choosing. Literacy matters because in a world with a widening gap between connected and unconnected, reading and writing and its partner, critical thinking, allow young and old to engage on equal footing."

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Language and Literacy Development: Research-Based, Teacher-Tested Strategies

You are here

“Why does it tick and why does it tock?”

“Why don’t we call it a granddaughter clock?”

“Why are there pointy things stuck to a rose?”

“Why are there hairs up inside of your nose?”

She started with Why? and then What? How? and When? By bedtime she came back to Why? once again. She drifted to sleep as her dazed parents smiled at the curious thoughts of their curious child, who wanted to know what the world was about. They kissed her and whispered, “You’ll figure it out.”

—Andrea Beaty, Ada Twist, Scientist

I have dozens of favorite children’s books, but while working on this cluster about language and literacy development, Ada Twist, Scientist kept coming to mind. Ada is an African American girl who depicts the very essence of what it means to be a scientist. The book is a celebration of children’s curiosity, wonder, and desire to learn.

The more I thought about language and literacy, the more Ada became my model. All children should have books as good as Ada Twist, Scientist read to them. All children should be able to read books like Ada Twist, Scientist by the end of third grade. All children should be encouraged to ask questions about their world and be supported in developing the literacy tools (along with broad knowledge, inquiring minds, and other tools!) to answer those questions. All children should see themselves in books that rejoice in learning.

Early childhood teachers play a key role as children develop literacy. While this cluster does not cover the basics of reading instruction, it offers classroom-tested ways to make common practices like read alouds and discussions even more effective.

The cluster begins with “ Enhancing Toddlers’ Communication Skills: Partnerships with Speech-Language Pathologists ,” by Janet L. Gooch. In a mutually beneficial partnership, interns from a university communication disorders program supported Early Head Start teachers in learning several effective ways to boost toddlers’ language development, such as modeling the use of new vocabulary and expanding on what toddlers say. (One quirk of Ada Twist, Scientist is that Ada doesn’t speak until she is 3; in real life, that would be cause for significant concern. Having a submission about early speech interventions was pure serendipity.) Focusing on preschoolers, Kathleen M. Horst, Lisa H. Stewart, and Susan True offer a framework for enhancing social, emotional, and academic learning. In “ Joyful Learning with Stories: Making the Most of Read Alouds ,” they explain how to establish emotionally supportive routines that are attentive to each child’s strengths and needs while also increasing group discussions. During three to five read alouds of a book, teachers engage children in building knowledge, vocabulary, phonological awareness, and concepts of print.

Next up, readers go inside the lab school at Stepping Stones Museum for Children. In “ Equalizing Opportunities to Learn: A Collaborative Approach to Language and Literacy Development in Preschool ,” Laura B. Raynolds, Margie B. Gillis, Cristina Matos, and Kate Delli Carpini share the engaging, challenging activities they designed with and for preschoolers growing up in an under-resourced community. Devondre finds out how hard Michelangelo had to work to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and Sayo serves as a guide in the children’s classroom minimuseum— taking visitors to her artwork!

Moving into first grade, Laura Beth Kelly, Meridith K. Ogden, and Lindsey Moses explain how they helped children learn to lead and participate in meaningful discussions of literature. “ Collaborative Conversations: Speaking and Listening in the Primary Grades ” details the children’s progress (and the teacher’s methods) as they developed discussion-related social and academic skills. Although the first graders still required some teacher facilitation at the end of the school year, they made great strides in preparing for conversations, listening to their peers, extending others’ comments, asking questions, and reflecting on discussions.

Rounding out the cluster are two articles on different aspects of learning to read. In “ Sounding It Out Is Just the First Step: Supporting Young Readers ,” Sharon Ruth Gill briefly explains the complexity of the English language and suggests several ways teachers can support children as they learn to decode fluently. Her tips include giving children time to self-correct, helping them use semantic and syntactic cues, and analyzing children’s miscues to decide what to teach next.

In “ Climbing Fry’s Mountain: A Home–School Partnership for Learning Sight Words ,” Lynda M. Valerie and Kathleen A. Simoneau describe a fun program for families. With game-like activities that require only basic household items, children in kindergarten through second grade practice reading 300 sight words. Children feel successful as they begin reading, and teachers reserve instructional time for phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, and other essentials of early reading.

At the end of Ada Twist, Scientist , there is a marvelous illustration of Ada’s whole family reading. “They remade their world—now they’re all in the act / of helping young Ada sort fiction from fact.” It reminds me of the power of reading and of the important language and literacy work that early childhood educators do every day.

—Lisa Hansel

We’d love to hear from you!

Send your thoughts on this issue, as well as topics you’d like to read about in future issues of Young Children , to [email protected] .

Would you like to see your children’s artwork featured? For guidance on submitting print-quality photos (as well as details on permissions and licensing), see NAEYC.org/resources/pubs/authors-photographers/photos .

Is your classroom full of children’s artwork? To feature it in Young Children , see the link at the bottom of the page or email [email protected] for details.

Lisa Hansel, EdD, is the editor in chief of NAEYC's peer-reviewed journal, Young Children .

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The Importance of Literacy in the 21st Century

As an educator, one is given the responsibility of cultivating and strengthening young minds. An essential component of this task is ensuring students are literate. According to the latest report by the International Literacy Association (ILA), early literacy is considered vital, while Digital Literacy is a current trending topic. Another form of literacy that is important in the 21 st century is Culturally Relevant Literacy. Encouraging children to read and write at a young age and building on that foundation throughout their learning experiences as students, educators and parents alike are laying solid groundwork and equipping children with tools needed for their future success.

Early Literacy Deconstructed

Early literacy is defined as “what children know about reading and writing before they actually read or write.” According to everychildreadytoread.org , there are six pre-reading skills for children from birth through five years of age. These skills are:

• Print motivation: How excited and interested children are in books.
• Print awareness: Knowing how to follow words on a page, as well as how to hold a book.
• Phonological awareness: The understanding that words are made up of smaller sounds.
• Vocabulary: Knowing the names of things, feelings, concepts, and ideas as well as connecting the words to real life.
• Narrative skills: Ability to describe things and events; being able to tell and understand stories.
• Letter knowledge: Awareness that each letter is different and comes with a unique name and sound.

Educator awareness of each of these six skills serves to reinforce and prepare literacy skills of students even before children dive into their first book.

Digital Literacy

According to the American Library Association, “Digital literacy is the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills.” In a world that is becoming more technology driven on a daily basis, this skill-set is growing increasingly important. Digital literacy is already prioritized in several schools across the nation. The U.S Department of Education notes, “Technology ushers in fundamental structural changes that can be integral to achieving significant improvements in productivity.” The Department of Education also highlights the benefits of online learning, explaining, “Online learning opportunities and the use of open educational resources and other technologies can increase educational productivity by accelerating the rate of learning; reducing costs associated with instructional materials or program delivery; and better utilizing teacher time.” Examples of tech friendly schools can be seen all across the United States, from elementary schools to colleges and universities. Through the integration of technology into the learning experience, students are able to digest information through several different mediums, allowing a better opportunity for that information to be retained.

Culturally Relevant Literacy

Culturally relevant literacy is vital to ensuring that students receive the quality education that they deserve. According to the official blog of the National Council of Teachers of English , educators who prioritize culturally relevant teaching have the following characteristics:

• “hold high academic expectations,
• demonstrate cultural competence, the understanding that their own worldview and understandings may or may not align with those of their students, and
• are sociopolitically aware, that is, they have a willingness to acknowledge and critique inequity.”

Educators who embody these teaching practices create a culturally aware and diverse classroom environment that enables students to apply the principles they learn to daily life.

Benefits of Strong Literacy Skills

A solid foundation in literacy can be an essential aspect of career advancement or success. For many corporate or office positions, a requirement of the application process is to write a cover letter along with submitting a resume. A solid literacy foundation would play a vital part in the successful composition and presentation of such materials. Effective use of digital literacy skills also play a major role in nonverbal communication. Long distance communication via text message or instant messaging can often have messages that are skewed, because meanings may not be clear. Digital literacy plays a part in this by promoting contextual awareness, using both cognitive and technical skills.

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Where am I in the Reading Universe Taxonomy?

What Is Literacy Knowledge?

Literacy knowledge includes understanding print concepts and how printed language conveys meaning, and it refers to an awareness of the elements of different genre s of writing.  

A child's literacy knowledge begins to grow the minute an adult puts a book in their hand and shows them how to turn the pages. They learn how this mechanical object works … and they learn that this thing contains a story! Over time, with adult guidance, they figure out that the story actually lives in the printed letter s on the page.

This awareness and understanding that printed words carry meaning — that reading is a way to get information — opens the door to everything reading has to offer a child. They'll need to learn a lot more to crack the code and read themselves, but they are on the way! 

Children gain a wealth of literacy knowledge from the adults around them, who point out words on street signs, shows them that we read left to right, or that we put spaces between words when we write. Children learn most basic concepts of print during kindergarten. As texts become more sophisticated, other print features come into play — such as captions and glossaries. 

In addition to concepts of print, literacy knowledge covers genre , or categories of written language. For example, fiction and nonfiction are two broad genre s. And these two categories include further classifications, such as poetry and plays (for fiction) and essays and technical writing (for nonfiction). 

Teaching about genre provides students with a framework for understanding the common characteristics, themes, and structures of written material. Knowing how to navigate different types of texts from different genre s supports your students' comprehension. 

Fiction takes many forms in the early grades, including nursery rhymes, fairy tales, folk tales, fables, adventure stories, fantasies, and realistic fiction. Nonfiction deserves equal attention, as these texts offer important sources for building background knowledge , which is critical for comprehension. 

The Common Core Standards suggest roughly equal exposure to fiction and nonfiction in the early grades and provide some guidance about which features of genre students should learn. As students progress to middle and high school, the emphasis shifts to informational texts across the different content areas of science, history, and social studies. 

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Home » Literacy Lines » Literacy and Equity in Education

Literacy and Equity in Education

Having solid reading and writing skills is at the heart of student achievement and therefore must be part of the solution to achieving greater equity in the United States. As Suzanne Carreker points out, “With literacy comes academic success, informed decision-making, improved self-esteem, personal empowerment, greater economic opportunities, and active participation in local and global social communities. Ultimately, it is the gateway to lifelong learning… Without equity in literacy education, achievement gaps will persist and too many students will not reap literacy’s innumerable benefits.”

Unfortunately, too many students do not have access to quality literacy instruction. As the recent publication of the AFT’s A merican Educator devoted to reading instruction notes, “Today, about 20 percent of elementary students across the country struggle with learning to read, and another 20 percent are not meeting grade-level expectations in reading. But these nationwide averages mask a tragedy: among students growing up in under-resourced communities — mainly African American and Hispanic students and students whose home language is not English — about 60 to 70 percent have weak reading skills.” (p. 3)

Every child has the right to learn to read — we need to ensure that all students learn the reading and writing skills they need to succeed in school. In fact, two recent lawsuits represent efforts to establish a constitutional right to literacy for all students:

• A Detroit literacy lawsuit was recently settled, but the opinion of the judge that a right to read is implicitly guaranteed by the 14th Amendment will likely be cited in other cases that seek to establish a federal right to read.
• A group of students and their teachers sued the state of California for doing a poor job of teaching students how to read and won a $53 million dollar settlement so that the state’s lowest-performing schools have the resources to do better.

In recent weeks, I have been deeply moved by the recognition across the country that we need to do more to foster equitable educational opportunities. I am not an expert on equity instruction, but I know a lot about effective reading instruction and I believe it is an essential part of the equity solution. For this blog post, I’ve curated several sources that I hope will place a spotlight on equity in literacy instruction.

First, what does education equity mean? Zaretta Hammond, author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students explains in an interview with Collaborative Classroom that people use the term in a variety of ways with subtle but important distinctions. She notes,

“People talk about equity as if it had just one dimension, in an either-or way: it’s this, or it’s that. In reality, equity is a multifaceted and complex issue. I like the National Equity Project’s definition of educational, or instructional, equity: reducing the predictability of who succeeds and who fails, interrupting reproductive practices that negatively impact students, and cultivating the gifts and talents of every student…. Then there’s the ‘equity question’ related to instruction. That’s where conversations about instructional equity and culturally responsive teaching will come in. This facet of equity work requires us to remember that we are trying to improve instruction for diverse students who have historically been marginalized. Here the equity conversation has to re-focus on helping underperforming students of color, immigrant students, and poor students of any color build their skills and become powerful learners.”

Hammond goes on to specifically address literacy:

“Let’s take the case of literacy development. When it comes to literacy, the research has told us how learning to read happens: learning sound/spelling correspondence accurately, then building fluency while simultaneously engaging in word study and comprehension. But across the nation, too many minority children are more than one grade level behind in their reading, and it isn’t due to a lack of student “motivation.” It isn’t solely because there are no books in the home. There is a historical pattern of putting the least prepared teachers with neediest students. That’s an extension of our country’s history of “anti-literacy” laws that penalized those who taught people of color to read. “Separate, but equal” continued this practice de facto. Jonathan Kozol in  Savage Inequalities  documented the same patterns well into the 1990s. This is a critical element to bring into equity conversations.”

The problem starts in the earliest grades for students assigned to classrooms with teachers who do not meet their needs in terms of learning to read. A study found that 23 percent of below-basic 3rd grade readers dropped out or failed to finish high school on time, compared to 9 percent of basic-level readers and 4 percent of proficient readers. Students who lived or had lived in poverty were more likely to have lower reading text scores and were less likely to graduate from high school. (Hernandez, 2011, as cited in Carreker)

Lack of Teacher Knowledge About the Science of Reading

Research has demonstrated that student gains in literacy are the result of an interaction between teacher knowledge about literacy and teacher skill with instructional practices (Piasta et al, as cited in Carreker). There is broad consensus among literacy educators who follow well-established research findings about effective literacy instruction that students benefit from explicit instruction in the major components of reading that include: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, oral language and text structure. The problem is that too many teachers are teaching reading in ways that are counter to these findings, and this has huge implications for achieving literacy equity. One of the main reasons is that they do not receive sufficient training during their college nor once they begin teaching.

Many teachers are aware of this disconnect. Teacher Preparation and Equity topped the list of the International Literacy Association’s 2020 “What’s Hot in Literacy Survey”. Teacher preparation programs are not adequately preparing teachers to provide “effective reading instruction” according to 60% of the literacy educators, researchers and experts responding to the survey. And the 1,443 respondents — more than half of which are teachers — said the greatest challenge facing literacy is “addressing disconnects between the school curriculum and students’ actual needs in terms of literacy support and instruction.” Respondents also said addressing inequity in education and instruction is the area where they need the most support, and almost three-fourths said variability in teachers’ knowledge is the greatest barrier to achieving that goal. A spokesperson for the ILA notes, “The majority of teachers shoulder the responsibility for equity in education but more than half lack the support they need.”

Jasmin Lane’s 2019 blog post for Project Forever Free puts it this way:

“…less than 40% of elementary education programs nationwide have adopted the teaching of all five components of reading in their methods courses, and as a result, millions of children are still being taught to read with a flawed theory of reading. Schools have been allowed to fail our children without consequence, and more money for schools won’t solve the literacy crisis when the fundamental issue is that we aren’t being prepared to do our jobs. We must raise our bar. We can no longer be complacent and accept mediocrity as evidence of change. We must be the ones to demand evidence in our classrooms. So, while the traditional model of social justice educator has become a rallying cry of “Black Lives Matter” with a performative poster in a classroom, I take a different lens. I am a social justice educator with roots in the history of my grandparents, in the history of my community who has been failed by shoddy science in the name of a “progressive” education. Yes, Black lives matter. But in the context of schools, as educators, as people who claim that their life’s work is for Black, brown, and disenfranchised children, we can not fully proclaim that Black Lives Matter until Black literacy does.”

Phonics Instruction: For beginning instruction in the primary grades, a big part of the problem is that teachers are not using approaches to teaching foundational reading skills that are based on research. Emily Hanford in her 2018 report At a Loss for Words for American Public Media highlighted this problem in detail. She explains that the prevailing approach to teaching reading in America uses a “three cueing” system based on a disproven theory rather than a science-of-reading approach that includes explicit instruction and phonemic awareness and phonics. Hanford explains it this way:

“For decades, reading instruction in American schools has been rooted in a flawed theory about how reading works, a theory that was debunked decades ago by cognitive scientists, yet remains deeply embedded in teaching practices and curriculum materials. As a result, the strategies that struggling readers use to get by — memorizing words, using context to guess words, skipping words they don’t know — are the strategies that many beginning readers are taught in school. This makes it harder for many kids to learn how to read, and children who don’t get off to a good start in reading find it difficult to ever master the process. When kids struggle to learn how to read, it can lead to a downward spiral in which behavior, vocabulary, knowledge and other cognitive skills are eventually affected by slow reading development. A disproportionate number of poor readers become high school dropouts and end up in the criminal justice system. The fact that a disproven theory about how reading works is still driving the way many children are taught to read is part of the problem. School districts spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on curriculum materials that include this theory. Teachers are taught the theory in their teacher preparation programs and on the job. As long as this disproven theory remains part of American education, many kids will likely struggle to learn how to read.”

Vocabulary and Comprehension Instruction: In his recent article Limiting Children to Books They Can Already Read , Tim Shanahan points out the disservice that many teachers give students when they use the popular but ineffective approach to teaching reading around using leveled books. With this approach to teaching reading, students only have the opportunity to access books they can already read with accuracy and comprehension. Shanahan notes that research reveals that limiting students to texts they can already read “reduces their opportunity to learn by limiting their exposure to sophisticated vocabulary, rich content, and complex language (p.16).” He adds,

“That approach can have some unfortunate implications for students who are minorities and those from low socioeconomic backgrounds. What if, instead of segregating them into what some students call the ‘stupid books,’ we placed them in books with demanding vocabulary and taught dictionary skills, use of context and morphology? What if we taught them when it was essential to figure out an unknown word meaning and when they might be able to soldier on successfully without doing that? … If we are serious about raising reading achievement, we must think hard about whether it makes sense to continue teaching students to read books they can already understand so well…. This is not just an avenue to higher achievement, it is also an issue of equity.” (p. 17)

For students with dyslexia, the lack of teacher knowledge becomes more paramount. Because of the neurological basis for this reading disability, students must be taught by teachers who are well-trained in explicit reading instruction, particularly in the components of phonemic awareness, phonics and fluency. In his article Black Boys with Dyslexia Need Love and Learning, Not Shame and Prison the actor and dyslexia advocate Ameer Baraka writes writes about how his life might have been different if he had had a teacher who recognized his dyslexia and taught him how to read. Baraka notes:

“I was a teen who became part of the streets-to-prison pipeline…. Teachers knew I struggled with reading and spelling, and yet they were completely oblivious to the idea I might have a problem like dyslexia. They seemed to think I was a class clown. I was never pulled aside and asked any questions about why I wasn’t reading… I think a great, exceptional teacher can really understand which kids are hiding, which kids are ashamed. They can spot them and address them in a way that is pleasant.”

Achievement in school is an important gateway to achievement and success in life. I believe that learning to read and write is the cornerstone of all school learning and the key to that achievement. I have devoted my 45 years of literacy professional work to helping students, especially those who struggle with reading and writing. Through my work with Keys to Literacy, this means making sure that teachers have a solid foundation in evidence-based instructional practices. I realize now more than ever that this mission is critical because literacy must be part of the equity solution.

I’ll end with a link to a recent blog post in Edutopia by Hedreich Nichols titled “A guide to equity and antiracism for educators.” It is not focused on literacy, but it does include a large number of links to resources about creating an equitable classroom, improving cultural competence, and suggested social media sites.

• Baraka, A. (2019). Black boys with dyslexia need love and learning, not shame and prison. Education Post. Retreived from: https://educationpost.org/black-boys-with-dyslexia-need-love-and-learning-not-shame-and-prison/?fbclid=IwAR2o1IVNaaCrLlOOj1lLVNuzSNXeh0CjsC9vXUeMg-h4LCmmT53E4CuNxWM
• Carreker, S. Educational Equity: The Transformative Impact of Effective Instruction & Professional Development on Student Achievement. Lexia. Retrieved from: https://www.lexialearning.com/resources/white-papers/educational-equity-transformative-impact-effective-instruction-professional
• Hammond, A. A conversation about instructional equity with Zaretta Hammond, Part 1. Collaborative Classroom. Retrieved from: https://www.collaborativeclassroom.org/blog/a-conversation-about-instructional-equity-with-zaretta-hammond-part-1/
• Hanford, E. (2018). At a loss for words . American Public Media. Retrieved from: https://www.apmreports.org/story/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading
• Hernandez, D.J. (2011, April)  Double jeopardy: How third-grade reading skills and poverty influence high school graduation . Retrieved from: https://www.fcd-us.org/assets/2016/04/DoubleJeopardyReport.pdf
• Lane, J. (2019). Literacy: the forgotten social justice issue. Project Forever Free. Retrieved from: https://projectforeverfree.org/literacy-the-most-forgotten-social-justice-issue/?fbclid=IwAR1vacMLRv0rnSTaVr-a_XFGJXccAcMmEk6Gt1-ee6vkoE20D0J7pDq92_I
• Nichols, H. (2020). A guide to equity and antiracism for educators. Edutopia. Retrieved from: https://www.edutopia.org/article/guide-equity-and-antiracism-educators?utm_source=Edutopia+Newsletter&utm_campaign=5b54f5f480-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_061020_enews_resourcesfor&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f72e8cc8c4-5b54f5f480-84969991
• Piasta, S.B., Connor, C.M, Fishman, B.J., & Morrison, F.J. (2009). Teachers’ knowledge of literacy concepts, classroom practices and student reading growth .  Scientific Studies of Reading, 13 , 224–248.
• Shanahan, T. (2020). Limiting children to books they can already read . American Educator, 44 (2).

A special thanks to Colleen Yasenchock for sharing several of the resources I used in this post.

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11 Comments

Excellent. I have always maintained and promoted the belief that providing proper reading instruction is unequivocally, a social justice issue.

This is powerful. Thank you for this post.

Thank you, Joan! As an experienced ELA teacher, I have been struggling of late with the “progressive” notion that teaching literacy and grammar by raising the bar for our marginalized students is somehow oppressive and doesn’t value their diverse backgrounds. I expect great things from all of my students by holding them accountable to high standards and supporting them to reach those standards. There is nothing oppressive about that! Many thanks for a powerful perspective that that is exactly what I should be doing!

Joan, This is excellent. Judy Hochman

Thanks Judy!

Excellent Post! Thank you for providing facts about this crisis.

“Teacher preparation programs are not adequately preparing teachers to provide “effective reading instruction” according to 60% of the literacy educators, researchers and experts responding to the survey.”

“Yes, Black lives matter. But in the context of schools, as educators, as people who claim that their life’s work is for Black, brown, and disenfranchised children, we can not fully proclaim that Black Lives Matter until Black literacy does.”

“There is broad consensus among literacy educators who follow well-established research findings about effective literacy instruction that students benefit from explicit instruction in the major components of reading that include: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, oral language and text structure. The problem is that too many teachers are teaching reading in ways that are counter to these findings, and this has huge implications for achieving literacy equity. “

Excellent post. I truly agree with letting students read quality books with rich vocabulary and not box them in to reading books they can already read.

Yes equity has many layers.

Awesome articles on children not being able to read. I am lost for words. I am a prek teacher and I love reading to my students.

I just think it would be wonderful if I could get in on the many opportunities to help our kg, and 1, 2,3, 4, 5 grader struggling reader to learn how to read and like, then love reading.

So glad you found it helpful!

Literacy is a CIVIL RIGHT. Thank you for this powerful resource!

Literacy is a powerful force. Thanks for this amazing post!

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Literacy is More than Just Reading and Writing

NCTE 03.23.20 Diversity

From the NCTE Standing Committee on Global Citizenship

This post was written by NCTE member Amber Peterson, a member of the NCTE Standing Committee on Global Citizenship.

“History is written by the victors.” —Unknown

As committee members, we regularly wrestle with pinning down a comprehensive definition of literacy. The common definition, “the ability to read and write,” gets increasingly complex upon closer examination. What does mastery of reading and writing look like? How do we measure it? How do we weigh digital and technological proficiency? Where does numeracy come in? How do the values of our communities and cultural practices come into play? sWhen measuring literacy, which languages and dialects count and which do not?

Despite the complexity, literacy is the global metric we use to assess the health and competence of communities. High literacy rates have been found to correlate to everything from better access to economic opportunity, to better nutrition, to environmental sustainability.

In fact, bolstering global literacy underpins all of UNESCO’s 2030 Sustainability Goals, acknowledging the fact that ideals like gender equality, sustainable infrastructure, and eradicating poverty and hunger are not possible without literate populations. Correspondingly, UNESCO’s hefty definition of literacy is “a means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich and fast-changing world.” (UNESCO)

This focus on literacy as a tool for meaningful engagement with society makes sense. As our population expands and technology breaks down ever more barriers between us, the ability to communicate and interact with those around us becomes even more important. In our consideration of literacy, however, it is impossible to ignore the myriad ways that imperialist and colonialist systems shape gender and regional disparities in access.

Many historians propose that written language emerged at least in part as a tool for maintaining power. One’s class status dictated one’s access to literacy education, and often those without power were prohibited from learning to read and write at all. Colonialism, imperialism, and the sprawl of anglo-european, male-centered ideology from the 15th Century onward have created global power structures that still dominate today.

When considered from that perspective, it is no surprise that women make up two thirds of the world’s illiterate population, and that sub-Saharan Africa, the region arguably hit hardest by many of those inequitable power structures, has some of the lowest literacy levels in the world.

While our focus must and should be on providing everyone everywhere with the tools to “identify, understand, interpret, create, and communicate in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich, and fast changing world,” those persistent inequitable power structures dictate that progress will always be lopsided and slow.

As we slog onward, perhaps we also need to examine and consider more closely the world and experience of the “illiterate” as well. Only relatively recently has literacy been expected or even possible for the vast majority of society. For centuries, people have lived, laughed, traded, communicated, and survived without being able to read and write. Even today, though illiteracy can be a literal death sentence (studies have shown that female literacy rates can actually be a predictor of child mortality rates (Saurabh et al)), it is most certainly a metaphorical one wherein the experiences had and contributions made by those so afflicted are devalued both by design and by conceit.

We doom entire cultures and erase the experiences of entire populations by embracing the superiority of those who are literate, but illiteracy doesn’t mean ignorance. We can and should learn from everyone and we must provide other avenues to global citizenship for those who can’t read and write.

So what does this mean for our definition of literacy? At its simplest, literacy is the way that we interact with the world around us, how we shape it and are shaped by it. It is how we communicate with others via reading and writing, but also by speaking, listening, and creating. It is how we articulate our experience in the world and declare, “We Are Here!”

In my work as the director of program innovation for LitWorld, I get to interact with young people all over the world and examine the idea of literacy from many different angles. Resources for literacy education differ dramatically from one place to another, as do metric taking procedures and general best practices.

What does not change is the inherent drive for people to express themselves, to learn, and to grow. I see the enthusiasm with which young people jump at the chance to share stories of themselves and of the world, to be listened to and to absorb. I also see firsthand the devastating effect of being told that your story, your community, and your culture do not matter. I have witnessed the loss of confidence, the dwindling self-esteem, and the cycle of hopelessness that comes with the silencing of voices.

It is our charge as educators and as global citizens to embrace literacy in ALL of its forms.

5 Suggestions for Embracing Literacy for Global Citizenship in the Classroom

• Focus on students’ own stories . Find ways to center their experiences and lean in to opportunities to share them both informally and formally.
• Embrace ALL of the languages your students speak. Being multilingual is an asset, not a deficit! Many of our students are multilingual in ways we never acknowledge. Mastery of formal and standardized language structures is an important tool that every student deserves access to, but life often happens outside of and around those structures. Those everyday interactions are important, valuable, and valid as well.
• Provide regular access to diverse stories, images, experiences, and perspectives. The world is enormous and that diversity is beautiful. Help your students to see it as such. Providing access to underrepresented narratives and accounts helps to decolonize your classroom and normalize embracing the unfamiliar.
• Place value on reading, writing, speaking, listening, and creating in your students’ work. Ensure that reading and writing are not the only ways in which students are acknowledged and celebrated for taking in ideas, expressing their thoughts, or demonstrating understanding. Encouraging multiple modes of expression not only provides more opportunities for students to explore and display their own intelligence, it also primes them to seek information, inspiration, and knowledge from diverse sources.
• Read aloud together, and often . Reading aloud is effective across grade levels, despite the fact that this critical practice usually stops in elementary school. Reading aloud can provide access to content that students might not be able to access on their own. It is also a way of creating community and building a shared experience as a whole class.

The Standing Committee on Global Citizenship works to identify and address issues of broad concern to NCTE members interested in promoting global citizenship and connections across global contexts within the Council and within members’ teaching contexts.

Literacy. (2018, March 19). Retrieved March 2, 2020, from https://en.unesco.org/themes/literacy

Saurabh, S., Sarkar, S., & Pandey, D. K. (2013). Female Literacy Rate is a Better Predictor of Birth Rate and Infant Mortality Rate in India. Retrieved March 2, 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4649870/

The Sustainable Development Agenda—United Nations Sustainable Development. (n.d.). Retrieved March 2, 2020, from https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/development-agenda/

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Why is literacy important?

Literacy seems to be popping up everywhere at the moment. A recent report by Professor Stuart McNaughton, The Chief Education Scientific Advisor, explores the [rather bleak] Literacy Landscape in Aotearoa New Zealand . A UNICEF report reported that only 64.6 per cent of 15-year-olds in New Zealand have basic proficiency in reading and maths. And The Education Hub currently is working on a range of resources on literacy, with an initial focus on early reading. 

It perhaps was unsurprising then that a couple of weeks ago I received an email asking if I had any papers or research that addressed the question ‘Why is literacy important?’. It turned out to be a very good question. While I had a clear belief in the absolute importance of literacy, I did not have anything that clearly and succinctly outlined why it was so important. In this insight article, I provide a cursory exploration of the question.

Reading and writing are human inventions, which have enabled us to create, store and make available to others across time and space a physical record of information and knowledge. In doing so, they have enabled successive generations to build upon the learning of those before them, and have enabled participation in political and social discourse in a way not previously imaginable. As James Murphy explains, in a recently published book entitled Literacy; An evidence-informed guide for teachers : Written information has become the foundation on which the information revolution is built. Without access to this foundation, full participation in our society is impossible. Indeed poor literacy is so strongly correlated with poor life outcomes that it should be impossible to ignore.  And yet data from New Zealand suggests that over the past decade or so, the literacy achievement of 15 year olds has declined.  

While literacy often is equated with the subject of English at school, it is in fact fundamental to all curriculum areas, with each subject having its own peculiar literacy demands. We know, for example, that for some children who struggle with maths, it is not their mathematical knowledge that is lacking but rather they do not have the necessary reading skills (including background knowledge) to understand what a maths problem is asking them to do. It is essential, therefore, that schools are not only building students’ ‘generalised’ literacy but also their disciplinary literacy. Literacy, therefore, is the job of every teacher in a school. 

Literacy is essential for employment. At the most basic level, without it, it becomes challenging to search for or read a job advertisement, put together a CV, or read an employment contract. Within the discourse of the ‘future of work’, where an ever growing number of individuals and organisations are putting together lists of the must have skills and competencies for work in the twenty-first century, literacy, while often missing from the lists (for example here and here ) underpins nearly all of the skills identified. In order to be able to think analytically and critically, to continually learn, to make effective decisions, or to be cognitively flexible, it is essential that one has the ability to engage with, understand and apply the ever increasing flow of information and knowledge that surrounds them. 

Literacy further is at the heart of much civic engagement. Not only is much of the information released by the government and its associated agencies written, poor literacy also affects an individual’s ability to vote and therefore to engage in one of the foundations of democracy. Literacy also plays a fundamental role in everyday life; from being able to read labels on food at the supermarket, to reading road signs, to reading menus at the local café, or browsing the internet (not to mention being able to utilise the internet to leverage the ongoing learning opportunities that it offers).

There also is a growing body of evidence about the importance deep reading, of the kind that occurs in effective English classrooms as students engage with texts that tackle complex themes such as racism, otherness, and colonialism. As I’ve previously discussed , deep reading is an essential activity for building empathy and perspective taking in young people (and society more generally). Deep reading enables people to not only encounter but also to inhabit, through their immersive engagement with a written text, different lives, different perspectives and different worlds. Reading books and longer articles also is one of the best ways to learn how to think critically, understand complex issues and separate fact from fiction. This becomes all the more important (and concerning) given the current decline in reading for pleasure among adolescents (and other ages). 

So what do we do? There is a lot of research on the science of reading – that is, what goes into enabling someone to read. However, there is still more work to be done on the pedagogy of reading (as well as writing) – that is, what effective reading and writing instruction looks like at different year levels and across different curriculum areas – as well as ensuring that it is consistently taking place in all classrooms across New Zealand. Added to this, a crucial part of any work on literacy in schools must be building a love and appreciation of reading and all that it can offer. For that, children need to understand the joy, the power and the possibilities offered by the written word. 

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What is Literacy and Why is it Important?

What is literacy?

Literacy is most commonly defined as the ability to read and write.

But it’s not as simple as it sounds. Reading and writing abilities vary across different cultures and contexts, and these too are constantly shifting.

Nowadays, ‘reading’ encompasses complex visual and digital media as well as printed material. An elderly person who can read the newspaper might struggle to get information from Google.

Similarly, different cultures will have different perceptions of literacy. The writing traditions of the English language make reading comprehension an essential part of literacy, but this might not be as important in cultures or groups that rarely read printed material.

Why is literacy important?

Students need literacy in order to engage with the written word in everyday life.

Think of how often you use your own reading skills in everyday life. It’s not just articles like this one that require literacy, but signs, labels, and the messages on your phone, too.

The same goes for writing. Nowadays, even phone calls have given way to instant messaging and text-based communication, making the ability to read all the more important.

But beyond the functional level, literacy plays a vital role in transforming students into socially engaged citizens. Being able to read and write means being able to keep up with current events, communicate effectively, and understand the issues that are shaping our world.

Ways to support literacy development

Literacy development should be a combined effort between home and school. Here are a few things you can do to support early learners’ literacy skills:

Encourage reading

Reading is the first pillar of literacy, so encourage young learners to immerse themselves in it frequently and deeply. This should involve exposure to a broad variety of different genres, such as newspapers, novels, comics, magazines, films, reference material, and websites.

Discuss texts together

Actively discussing what has been read encourages learners to make connections and think deeply about the ideas contained in texts. Follow up the reading or viewing of a text with a discussion of what it made learners think and feel.

Use games and activities that support literacy development

• Write a half-page story that makes use of a new and unusual word or phrase.
• Describe a person or object with as many adjectives as you can think of.
• Information scavenger hunt: scour the web to find facts on a given topic within a set time frame.
• Recap the plot of a novel or film in your own words (as learners progress they can try to do this in as few words as possible).
• Have a competition to see who can find as many rhyming words as possible, starting from a given word. Learners could also write poems or songs with rhyme.

Make use of the library

Immersing children in a huge range of texts encourages them to dive in and explore. There’s no better place to do this than the school or community library.

Find a huge selection of printable literacy resources

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20 Research Articles for 2020

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• Critical Literacy's Ongoing Importance for Education
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"Critical Literacy's Ongoing Importance for Education" by Hilary Janks ( Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy , 2014)

The dual pandemics of COVID-19 and racial injustice require a critical reading of both the word and the world, along with the ability to imagine something better. Presenting a critical literacy framework based on the relation between language and power, Janks argues that educators must ground literacy instruction in practices that begin with prompting students to interrogate the role of language in creating disparities in society and then invite them to imagine possibilities for creating a more just world. Through a detailed example based on life in South Africa, Janks introduces five praxes for teachers to build a critical literacy practice. Teachers striving to meet the moment in which we are living will find inspiration for centering critical literacy practices in their classrooms.

— Reviewed by Emily S. Yerkes, University of Colorado Boulder

Janks, H. (2014). Critical literacy's ongoing importance for education. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 57 (5), 349–356. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.260

The 20 Research Articles for 2020 are available exclusively to ILA members. Sign in at the top of the page to access this resource.

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What is literacy?

Literacy is fundamental to a student’s ability to learn at school and to engage productively in society.

In the Australian Curriculum,

…   students become literate as they develop the knowledge, skills and dispositions to interpret and use language confidently for learning and communicating in and out of school and for participating effectively in society. Literacy involves students listening to, reading, viewing, speaking, writing and creating oral, print, visual and digital texts, and using and modifying language for different purposes in a range of contexts …

S uccess in any learning area depends on being able to use the significant, identifiable and distinctive literacy that is important for learning and representative of the content of that learning area   (ACARA 2016).

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Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

Jonathan Lambert

If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity — imagine having to write all your emails longhand.

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.

But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad — for both children and adults.

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In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand," says Ramesh Balasubramaniam , a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. "It has important cognitive benefits."

While those benefits have long been recognized by some (for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman , draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity), scientists have only recently started investigating why writing by hand has these effects.

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

Your brain on handwriting

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.

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"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp , a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

Gripping a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task, as it requires your brain to continuously monitor the pressure that each finger exerts on the pen. Then, your motor system has to delicately modify that pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head on the page.

"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher , an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.

That's not true for typing.

To type "tap" your fingers don't have to trace out the form of the letters — they just make three relatively simple and uniform movements. In comparison, it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type.

Recent brain imaging studies bolster this idea. A study published in January found that when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing " sync up " with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning.

"We don't see that [synchronized activity] in typewriting at all," says Audrey van der Meer , a psychologist and study co-author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that writing by hand is a neurobiologically richer process and that this richness may confer some cognitive benefits.

Other experts agree. "There seems to be something fundamental about engaging your body to produce these shapes," says Robert Wiley , a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "It lets you make associations between your body and what you're seeing and hearing," he says, which might give the mind more footholds for accessing a given concept or idea.

Those extra footholds are especially important for learning in kids, but they may give adults a leg up too. Wiley and others worry that ditching handwriting for typing could have serious consequences for how we all learn and think.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy — letters.

"Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher. Her work suggests the process of learning to write letters by hand is crucial for learning to read them.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

"This could be one of the ways that early experiences actually translate to long-term life outcomes," she says. "These visually demanding, fine motor actions bake in neural communication patterns that are really important for learning later on."

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

"If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer. "It's scary to think of the potential consequences."

Many states are trying to avoid these risks by mandating cursive instruction. This year, California started requiring elementary school students to learn cursive , and similar bills are moving through state legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin. (So far, evidence suggests that it's the writing by hand that matters, not whether it's print or cursive.)

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

During a meeting or lecture, it's possible to type what you're hearing verbatim. But often, "you're not actually processing that information — you're just typing in the blind," says van der Meer. "If you take notes by hand, you can't write everything down," she says.

The relative slowness of the medium forces you to process the information, writing key words or phrases and using drawing or arrows to work through ideas, she says. "You make the information your own," she says, which helps it stick in the brain.

Such connections and integration are still possible when typing, but they need to be made more intentionally. And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

It's possible that this might free up our minds to do other kinds of hard thinking, he says. Or we might be sacrificing a fundamental process that's crucial for the kinds of immersive cognitive experiences that enable us to learn and think at our full potential.

Balasubramaniam stresses, however, that we don't have to ditch digital tools to harness the power of handwriting. So far, research suggests that scribbling with a stylus on a screen activates the same brain pathways as etching ink on paper. It's the movement that counts, he says, not its final form.

Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

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Morris Goss learnt to read in his 40s. Advocates hope a 'structured literacy' teaching approach will help others

On a quiet weeknight, Morris Goss is curled up on the couch with his daughter, reading a book. 

The pair take turns reading pages aloud.

It's a treasured ritual for this family in Launceston, Tasmania, and one that Mr Goss doesn't take for granted; as he couldn't read until he was in his 40s.

"I couldn't do it. I couldn't break down the word to understand the word," he said.

Growing up on Tasmania's east coast, Mr Goss struggled in the classroom.

"Especially at exam time, everyone is sitting down and reading and writing and doing a test and you're looking at a page and you're thinking, 'I can't do this'.

Mr Goss worked as a trade assistant, doing jobs he could perform without having to read much.

"I'd empty bins and do all practical things. I used to … prep cars so painters could paint them, so I was more or less just a prep person."

While he was getting by with his practical skills, there were plenty of instances where words were a huge barrier for Mr Goss.

"Like the hospitals, you get forms and they've got really large words in them. It was hard," he said.

"Street names and stuff, that was a hassle."

When his daughter was born, Mr Goss was determined to read.

"So I could help her with schoolwork or just little things. I thought it was important to do that."

He found help at his local library through a free program called 26Ten.

With the help of tutors blocking out text in simple books and breaking down letter combinations into sounds, Mr Goss's world expanded.

"We'd go over it, then leave it alone for a little while and then go back over it and build on it, like building blocks."

Morris now uses his 'life-changing' skills with his daughter

Mr Goss' road to literacy was slow and steady as things started to click little by little.

But there's one moment that sticks out.

He was driving along a Launceston road he'd driven hundreds of times, staring at a word on a sign:

"I was looking at that sign for so long thinking, 'What's that word?'"

"And then it just clicked: Oh yeah, I know what that word is — it's a karate place where people can go and learn karate."

With regular classes over several years, Mr Goss learned to read enough to complete a TAFE course and an apprenticeship.

These days, he's a painter.

And he reads with his daughter every night.

"Sometimes she skips over words and I can say: 'No, you've got to do that one.'"

"It's been life-changing, with my employment and with my daughter."

We no longer know how many Australians are illiterate

Mr Goss is far from alone in his struggle to read.

In 2012, an international study from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found about 50 per cent of Tasmanians aged 15 to 74 were "functionally illiterate".

That statistic doesn't mean half of Tasmanians can't read a word, but it means their literacy levels are not high enough to do what modern life demands of them, such as filling out forms or reading instructions on medical prescriptions.

More than 10 years on, there's no comparable data to show where the literacy rate is now.

The previous federal Coalition government removed Australia from the following OECD study, so no updated statistic exists to demonstrate progress or lack thereof.

Literacy advocate Rosalie Martin is hopeful the rate has improved since 2012, even if there is no way to quantify the statistics.

"Since that data came out, there's been a tremendous amount of awareness building about the need to change the literacy rate not only in Tasmania, but right across the entire country," she said.

The Albanese government has begun its own survey to assess literacy levels, with results expected in 2026.

Structured approach to learning is key

Recent years have seen a nationwide push towards a "structured literacy" approach in schools across the country.

The structured literacy system teaches sounds from the "bottom up," as opposed to the "whole language" approach which relies on immersing children in language and counting on them to absorb it. Structured language includes phonics: the matching sounds with letters or groups of letters.

Last year, the Tasmanian government committed to implementing the structured approach in all schools by 2026.

A Department of Education spokesperson said "Qualiteach", a training program in structured literacy called was being rolled out, with nearly 5,000 teachers to start the program this year.

"All DECYP teaching and educational support staff are required to complete the first four foundational modules of Qualiteach by the end of 2024 and all 10 modules by the end of 2026," they said. 

Ms Martin is confident this will be a game changer for the literacy rate.

"When we implement these changes, and measure again, in another 10 or 12 years, I am extremely hopeful that we will have changed very significantly," she said.

That sentiment is shared by Morris Goss' tutor and 26ten coordinator Jess Panday.

Ms Panday said structured language — especially phonics — was the key to Mr Goss' success.

She said implementing this approach in schools would in future help people such as Mr Goss from reaching adulthood without the reading skills they needed.

"[Mr Goss], unfortunately, I think was caught in that 'whole language' approach … that's how you slip through the net if you can't just naturally absorb it," Ms Panday said.

"That's why it's so good that we've shifted now, in Tassie, and in many other states. I'm very excited as a literacy practitioner to see this is finally happening."

Program 'a community' for adult learners

Since 2012, nearly 5,000 people such as Morris Goss have joined 26Ten programs at local libraries.

"They say it takes a community to raise a child. It also takes a community to lift the literacy rate," Ms Panday said.

"So with Morris, we've had a number of tutors coming in working with him, we've been able to make sure that he gets the repetition that he needs.

"I think it's everybody's responsibility."

To Mr Goss, the structured language approach and supportive tutors were essential. But he needed something else too, which he had to find within himself.

"At the end of the day, it's up to me, it's up to the individual," he said.

"It's motivation and persistence."

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Developing and Validating the Artificial Intelligence Literacy Concept Inventory: an Instrument to Assess Artificial Intelligence Literacy among Middle School Students

• Published: 05 May 2024

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• Helen Zhang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8495-6920 1 ,
• Anthony Perry 2 &
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The rapid expansion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our society makes it urgent and necessary to develop young students’ AI literacy so that they can become informed citizens and critical consumers of AI technology. Over the past decade many efforts have focused on developing curricular materials that make AI concepts accessible and engaging to young learners; and yet, limited research investigated how to assess learners’ AI literacy, which is critically important to inform the teaching and learning of AI. This paper addresses this issue by reporting the development and validation findings of the AI Literacy Concept Inventory Assessment (AI-CI), a set of multiple-choice questions designed to assess understanding of AI literacy concepts among middle school students. The AI-CI consists of 20 multiple choice questions examining student understanding of four topics: AI general concepts, logic systems, machine learning general concepts, and supervised learning. The content validity of AI-CI was established through multiple rounds of expert panel reviews with AI educators and experts, observations of student learning of AI, and cognitive validation interviews. The validity of the AI-CI was established with a sample of 981 students and the pre-posttest reliability was established with a sample of 108 middle school students who learned AI through experiencing the Developing AI literacy (DAILy) curriculum. The findings show that the AI-CI is a valid and reliable tool to assess AI literacy at the middle school level.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation award #2022502 and #2048746. We are grateful to the teachers and students involved in this study. We thank Safinah Ali, Daniella DiPaola, Nathaniel Brown, and Olivia Szendey for assisting us with item development, data collection and analysis.

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Appendix 1: The list of the 20-item AI-CI

Appendix 2: The list of the initial draft of 30 items of AI-CI

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Unpacking VCU’s Decision to Reject Racial Literacy in Curriculum

by Kate Seltzer | May 13, 2024 | RICHMOND POLITICS , SOCIAL JUSTICE , VIRGINIA POLITICS

A proposed racial literacy requirement as part of VCU’s general education curriculum will not be implemented. In a 10-5 decision, the VCU Board of Visitors voted Friday to strike down the requirement, against the recommendations of the University Undergraduate Curriculum Committee (UUCC) and the VCU Office of the Provost. 

During a public comment period at the start of Friday’s Board meeting, students and faculty voiced support for the racial literacy requirement.

“I want to stress the essential career-readiness aspect of this new gen-ed requirement, a requirement that prepares VCU students to thrive in a local, regional, national and global economy,” said Shelli Fowler, an associate professor in the Department of English who taught one of the racial literacy courses this past year. 

Anesia Lawson, a junior and president of the school’s chapter of the NAACP, concurred. 

“Many of us are here today ready to speak on how important this requirement is to us,” she said. “We worked so hard. We followed the chain of command. We did the necessary steps.”

You can think of racial literacy as another category of general education requirements, like “quantitative foundations.” VCU students must take three to four credit hours of classes in this category, choosing one class from a list that includes things like algebra and statistics. Had the racial literacy requirement passed, students would have met the mandate by choosing one class from a list of 12 with titles like “Colorism in Society” and “Race and Racism in the United States.” 

Students and faculty pushed for a racial literacy requirement after the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. In December of 2020, the faculty senate voted to support an antiracism curriculum requirement. A racial literacy requirement was subsequently approved in 2021 by the general education committee (GEC) and then the larger UUCC. A racial literacy task force worked to move general education requirements around, such that the total credit hours required remained the same–it would not cost students additional time or money to complete their gen-eds.

In 2023, VCU Provost Fotis Sotiropoulos paused the implementation of the requirement, saying there was insufficient capacity for students. Since then, 10 additional courses were approved that would fulfill the requirement. Sotiropolous announced on April 26 that VCU had the capacity to introduce the requirement and was prepared to set it in motion immediately.

“I’m often asked if I support the implementation of this requirement. My answer is yes,” Sotiropolous said at Thursday’s Academic and Health Affairs Committee (AHAC) meeting. He cited the faculty-led approach and VCU’s 2028 strategic plan , which calls for a “redesign [of] general education to include expected competencies for the future of work: digital literacy, racial literacy and entrepreneurship.” 

“Right now, as far as I’m concerned, there is no reason to delay this requirement further,” Sotiropolous said. “On the other hand, I respect and recognize the Board’s authority to weigh in on whether we should have another requirement.” 

BOARD DECISION

The Board does have that authority to weigh in on graduation requirements, according to assistant attorney general and university counsel Jake Belue. But it’s unusual for the Board to weigh in to the extent it did here: Previous votes on whether specific classes should be implemented as part of a graduation requirement were part of broader strategic moves for the school, including the introduction of the University College.

“In our training as board of visitors members, we talk a lot about shared governance,” said board member Benson Dendy, who was appointed by Governor McAuliffe in 2016. “I really think that this is a violation of shared governance. I think we should support the Provost’s recommendation and look at the whole process that’s gone on over the last four years.” 

Other board members said that though they supported the 12 courses as elective classes, they would not support the initiative as a requirement to graduate. 

“I think it’s actually inconsistent with freedom of scholarship to mandate this,” said board member Ellen Fitzsimmons, who was appointed by Governor Youngkin in 2022, at Thursday’s committee meeting. “I think it’s a wonderful offering to students, but I think that the mandate actually works against broad academic freedom.”

Rector of the Board Todd Haymore, a Youngkin appointee, said the vote was not about the content of the courses, but solely about whether it was reasonable to add a graduation requirement. Not everyone bought that argument.

“If you leave it up to the Board, it becomes a political decision,” said board member Rev. Tyrone Nelson, appointed by McAuliffe in 2017 and Northam in 2021. “I don’t care what any of us say. We’re all political appointees. This board four years ago probably would vote in a different way than it would vote today.” 

REACTION AND GOING FORWARD

Graduate student Micah White is part of a student group called NotWelcomeAtVCU , a campaign focused on adopting the racial literacy requirement and asking the school to rescind its invitation to Youngkin as a commencement speaker. He said he was motivated to support the racial literacy requirement in part because of learning about the East Marshall Well Project .

“The VCU medical school specifically has a very direct link to enslavement and exploitation,” he said. “We need racial literacy for most, if not all fields of incoming students because without it, we run the risk of engaging in practices–not as extreme as that–but without an understanding of why the people we’re working with may have the feelings about the field we’re working in. Without the context, we perpetuate a lot of the harm.”

White said he’s disappointed in the decision.

“VCU administration and the Board of Visitors has shown us time and time again who and what they value, and we are well aware that it is not the students and faculty who they parade around as evidence of their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion,” he said. “The reality of this situation is well understood, and this is why NotWelcomeAtVCU exists in the first place. We will continue to agitate for and advocate on behalf of the students and faculty who continue to be disregarded.” 

Amy Rector, an associate professor of anthropology and the co-chair of the racial literacy committee, said she worries about what board intervention means for curriculum decisions going forward.

“[The requirement] is appropriate. It’s vetted, it’s good, it’s strong. It’s going to make our students better,” she said. “At the end of the day, the real concern is the Board of Visitors. If they can do this, then they have a type of authority that undermines the ability of us as a university to do our job.”

The racial literacy requirement garnered attention in March, when VCU sent draft syllabi of the proposed courses that would satisfy the mandate to the Youngkin administration at his request. 

Youngkin himself never weighed in on the courses. In a statement, his press secretary Christian Martinez said “the administration heard concerns from parents, students, and Board of Visitors members about VCU’s racial literacy coursework and asked for greater transparency around this potentially mandatory requirement for undergraduate students. The governor will continue to advocate for greater transparency in our public education institutions so students, families, and taxpayers can make informed decisions about what is best for them.”

Martinez did not respond to follow-up questions about intended next steps and whether other courses will come under similar review, instead referring RVA Magazine back to the above statement. 

But during the committee discussion, when some Board members sought more information on the requirement, VCU President Michael Rao seemed poised to hear more input from the Board going forward.

“I’m hearing the Board. Maybe you’re not all on the same page. Maybe it’s not a clear divide, but there is some divide, and I think you [the Board] need more information,” he said. “I think the Provost and the faculty ought to be talking a little bit more about this and responding to specific questions that the Board has, and come back and allow the board to exercise its authority, which it can exercise over pretty much anything, if you think about it.” 

Kate Seltzer

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'Wake up call', education expert warns of Malaysia's literacy crisis

S HAH ALAM - An education expert has sounded the alarm on Malaysia's literacy crisis, highlighting critical findings from recent studies conducted by the World Bank and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

Prof Dato Dr Ishak Haron cited recent studies that showed a significant portion of Malaysian students lack essential reading and writing skills.

He recommended for a grassroots approach, stressing the importance of early intervention at the preschool level to instill foundational literacy skills.

"Children can start learning as early as six years old, but starting a bit earlier, such as at five years old and below, is also acceptable.

“However, it's preferable to teach in Malay, avoid borrowing (words) from English. The phonics method can be utilised," he said when contacted recently.

Ishak emphasised the importance of integrating singing and reading techniques when teaching children.

He said their study with students lacked systematicity, although they did explore two or three popular teaching methods worldwide.

Two widely used methods globally were the Alphabet and Phonics method and the Whole Word method.

The Alphabet and Phonics method focused on teaching the ABCs and the sound of each letter.

On the other hand, the Whole Word method involved teaching children to recognise entire words, such as "mother," "father," "table," and "chairs," words that were familiar to children.

He said that when using the whole word method, students grasp the taught concepts by employing flashcards, like table and chair, then progressing to dissecting the words, such as "Table" into "TA-BLE."

He stressed this approach had a long history, particularly in the US during the literacy crisis around 1990, and in the UK, where they assessed the effectiveness of different methods.

Initially, the phonics method was favoured over the whole-word method.

“Alternatively, I advocate for a segmented approach in our education system. We don't necessarily have to combine both methods; they can be taught independently.

“My proposed method entails focusing solely on teaching vowel letters such as A, E, O, and consonant letters like B, C, K, three of each. We begin by mastering these six letters—three consonants and three vowels—then progress to combining them.

“For instance, we learn combinations like BA, BU, BI, and gradually build phrases such as Baba, Ibu, Bubu. Subsequently, we advance to constructing sentences, like 'kuku kaki aku'."

Subsequently, from that time, they could read from books and the key was to enable children to read slowly within two weeks, which built their confidence and motivated further study.

In traditional teaching, students were often asked to memorise all 26 letters of the alphabet.

While some may use singing to aid memorisation, they might forget certain letters, like "K."

Instead of focusing solely on memorisation, Ishak suggested moving directly to reading syllables and combined sentences to enhance learning efficiency.

He highlighted another factor contributing to delayed education was the two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, where 60 per cent of children were unable to attend school due to lockdown measures.

With many children missing out on school during this period of self-isolation, they lacked the foundational skills needed for learning.

Consequently, Ishak added when these children enter school and were presented with the same textbooks as their peers, they struggle to grasp the content due to the absence of foundational knowledge in reading.

Therefore, he urged teachers to prioritise teaching basic skills initially.

“Before delving into more complex subjects like science and geography, children need to acquire a vocabulary of up to 300 words and develop proficiency in reading Malay.

“It is essential to understand that children cannot engage with science or problem-solving activities if they haven't mastered reading skills,” he added.

He said if the nation failed to tackle this learning deficit among us, it would persist as a long-standing challenge.

Without the ability to read, children would find themselves immobilised, unable to progress.

Recently, the report "Bending Bamboo Shoots: Strengthening Foundation Skills" by World Bank report reveals that 24 per cent of Malaysian children starting primary school at age seven lack school-readiness skills due to a lack of preschool education, with 10 per cent of children aged four to six not having access to preschool.

The World Bank suggested enhancing Malaysia's early childhood learning programme while recognising the country's progress in expanding preschool education.

Furthermore, 42 per cent of Malaysian students failed to achieve reading proficiency by age 11, with lower-income families faced a more significant challenge, where 61 per cent lack reading proficiency.

By age 15, Malaysian students lag behind peers from Hong Kong, China, Japan, and Singapore in reading, science, and mathematics.

Limited access to quality early childhood education, teacher preparedness issues, and inadequate performance-tracking systems contributed to poor educational outcomes.

The report recommended expanding access to quality preschool education, implementing standardised learning assessments and providing ongoing teacher professional development based on international best practices.