Society/Culture To what extent are Universities to blame for the current children's literacy crisis?

[Cmarsh]

How to ensure students get the teaching and support they need to read well - ABC Education

What do state and territory governments need to do to ensure every child is taught how to read well, regardless of where they go to school? Amy Haywood from the Grattan Institute explains.

www.abc.net.au

Popular teaching style 'contrary to science' costing Australia $40 billion, report finds

One-third of Australian students are failing to learn to read proficiently, at an estimated cost to the economy of $40 billion, according to a new study.

www.abc.net.au

One third of students are below minimum standard for reading.

For decades, many teachers have been teaching in the non scientific whole of language method where students are assumed to read by associated pictures and not teaching the more scientificality backed method of phonics and explicit instruction.

Primary school teachers are a product of their training - the Universities.

So why aren't Universities directly blamed for responsibility for their contribution to this mess?

 

[Gethelred]

How to ensure students get the teaching and support they need to read well - ABC Education

What do state and territory governments need to do to ensure every child is taught how to read well, regardless of where they go to school? Amy Haywood from the Grattan Institute explains.

www.abc.net.au

Popular teaching style 'contrary to science' costing Australia $40 billion, report finds

One-third of Australian students are failing to learn to read proficiently, at an estimated cost to the economy of $40 billion, according to a new study.

www.abc.net.au

One third of students are below minimum standard for reading.

For decades, many teachers have been teaching in the non scientific whole of language method where students are assumed to read by associated pictures and not teaching the more scientificality backed method of phonics and explicit instruction.

Primary school teachers are a product of their training - the Universities.

So why aren't Universities directly blamed for responsibility for their contribution to this mess?

I mean...

Australia's population in 2000 was 19.03 million. It's now 26.5 million. In the past year, India and China were the biggest two immigrant sources, with England in third; of the top 10 nations, 7 are from non-english speaking countries (or at least, countries with the national language being other than English. India has large English speaking populations, and so does Hong Kong). These people emigrate with families, frequently, and those kids are frequently raised bilingually. All of which to say it's harder to teach literacy when you also have to teach english language alongside it.

The other side of it is, there's a rather predictable long bow being drawn here: of course a conservative is seeking to kick education around over student failings in standardised testing. You've not really demonstrated that schools aren't teaching phonics at all either; merely pointed to low literacy standards and asked why they're not teaching it.

If you want people to humour you when you want to go on a journey, at the very least you need to give me a reason to go with you.

 

[Andre]

Universities or Education departments? Whole word teaching is garbage. Phonics (with Fitzroy readers), is how I was mostly responsible for my kids learning to read, rather than the school doing it. I don’t blame the teachers, they don’t get much input into what they get to use. Phonics has always been better, so hopefully the recent debates around this kicks whole word learning to the bin, where it belongs.

 

[kickazz]

Whole word teaching is garbage. Phonics (with Fitzroy readers), is how I was mostly responsible for my kids learning to read, rather than the school doing it.

Phonics should be prioritised, but whole word teaching does have its place, particularly in a language like English.

Where they get the idea that reading is 'natural' and you just 'do it' or whatever they say - I'd like to see an actual academic paper that says that cos it sounds like bullshit.

Most important thing for reading is that kids are exposed to it, parents should read, first to, then with, their children. As mentioned by the West Sydney uni academic, different styles suit different students - you can't cater for all easily in the classroom but you can at home.

 

[btdg]

Phonics should be prioritised, but whole word teaching does have its place, particularly in a language like English.

Where they get the idea that reading is 'natural' and you just 'do it' or whatever they say - I'd like to see an actual academic paper that says that cos it sounds like bullshit.

Most important thing for reading is that kids are exposed to it, parents should read, first to, then with, their children. As mentioned by the West Sydney uni academic, different styles suit different students - you can't cater for all easily in the classroom but you can at home.

The latter part is definitely the problem.

If anything, the whole language movement was popular in the 1980s and 1990s and has died a long slow death since. Some teachers still use a hybrid approach but since the early 2000s everything in education has been about evidence-based practice and it's been clear for a long time that phonics is supported.

And yet... the downward trend in reading achievement levels starts after that time period, peaked in the 90s/early 2000s and has declined even as schools have swung heavily back towards phonics. It's also mirrored in an equivalent downward trend in writing, numeracy and science performance scores, which indicates the issue isn't a reading specific practice, it is broader.

The problem to me also isn't teachers / teacher quality. I've been in education long enough and there are far fewer objectively bad teachers now than before. There's a bit more turnover (particularly losing young people) but also far more consistency of 'solid' practice, particularly in primary schools.

There's clearly more at play, and in my experience it is more about:

• a much higher proportion of Australians from non-English speaking backgrounds, for whom reading (and sounding out words in particular) is far less intuitive
• less reading and more technology. The facebook 'pivot to video' was huge here. Even in the early 2000s people used to read a LOT: newspapers, magazines, websites, forums etc all had a much bigger role in the world. Now it is all images and video. I would say half my secondary age students are readers (mostly fiction... almost no informative or persuasive) and half NEVER read anything longer than a comment on an instagram post outside of school house
• far fewer parents who value and respect the importance of education in the way they used to. Far fewer parents who 'want their kid to have a better life than them'. Even in the middle classes, where going to uni is an assumption, it's far more about unique little Johnny battling his ADHD so he can do an RMIT course in applied digital media (which is really a TAFE program repackaged for middle class parents) than it is about being a doctor/lawyer/engineer
• alongside this is the increasingly normal desire for parents (and students) to externalise everything about their child. They're not behaving badly, they have ADHD. It's not that they can't read, it is a learning difficulty, or the school is at fault, or... I can barely remember speaking with a parent who would just roll up their sleeves and say "Ok, I'll just read to them for 2 hours extra each night then". It always starts with blaming the school, shifts through to 'well I'll get a tutor' and then onto harranguing doctors for a diagnosis...

If universities have a role to play in this it isn't in relation to phonics, but:

• a continued insistence on teacher education as a philosophical exercise ('lets learn about theories of psychosocial development') rather than a practical craft;
• a particular tendence of universities to pander to modern young people and reinforce/normalise what is above. Lectures recorded and online, so you don't have to go in person, for example. But that's not education specific, and a bit more of an 'old man yells at cloud' thing anyway, I guess

 

[Gough]

Phonics should be prioritised, but whole word teaching does have its place, particularly in a language like English.

Where they get the idea that reading is 'natural' and you just 'do it' or whatever they say - I'd like to see an actual academic paper that says that cos it sounds like bullshit.

Most important thing for reading is that kids are exposed to it, parents should read, first to, then with, their children. As mentioned by the West Sydney uni academic, different styles suit different students - you can't cater for all easily in the classroom but you can at home.

Channel 9 cricket yearbooks for Christmas every year from the time I was about five taught me to read better than any school readers did.

 

[Rusty Brookes]

Channel 9 cricket yearbooks for Christmas every year from the time I was about five taught me to read better than any school readers did.

And to take up smoking Benson and Hedges

(Only kidding!)

 

[Leeda]

No we all are to blame...kids are chortling at the idea of reading books...there is an abundance of spelling
mistakes as well as hydroneuferial ranking of the tedious ..."7look at me".....

Cantering to the effusive LOTR...

 

[ShanDog]

There are definitely institutional issues that need to be addressed, some of which are the fault of universities and some of which are the responsibility of government. The problem is that they feed into each other until one of them breaks the cycle.

In SA, phonics, levelled readers and the like is still the mainstream method of teaching reading literacy, which is excellent - it's the only proven method that works for the vast majority of kids. However, I believe that's not the case for all education systems around the country (but haven't looked this stuff up in a while). OP is correct that the whole of language method is complete arse, and kids who have been brought up with that are starting behind the 8-ball.

It's hard to say who has the burden of fixing the bad pedagogical practices of schools because the university system is what churns out the ideological biases of the future government or education department leaders, who then reinforce those practices in the public schools' policies.

From my experience, a significant issue is an aversion to streaming kids by ability, which is almost purely a political decision. If you don't stream kids, you don't get the opportunity to put additional support systems in place to help bring them up to where they should be. Instead, they get lost in the crowd and continue moving up the year levels, getting further and further behind. We set them up to fail.

Further, I was a secondary English teacher, and hardly any of my education degree was about teaching middle and senior high school kids HOW to read. It was almost entirely about child development, political issues associated with curriculum and other similar topics. A sprinkling of 'How to plan a lesson', and then off we go to teach high school kids who still read at third-grade level, with no idea how to deal with that.

 

[FreoGirl]

I blame parents. I had this argument over and over when my son was at primary school. If you don't normalise reading and writing in the home, and spend time engaging with them, then their best mentor is letting them down. In a busy classroom, teachers just don't have time to sit down for hours with a kid (if there's say 30 in the room), but parents do!

 

[Rooboys Rool]

There are definitely institutional issues that need to be addressed, some of which are the fault of universities and some of which are the responsibility of government. The problem is that they feed into each other until one of them breaks the cycle.

In SA, phonics, levelled readers and the like is still the mainstream method of teaching reading literacy, which is excellent - it's the only proven method that works for the vast majority of kids. However, I believe that's not the case for all education systems around the country (but haven't looked this stuff up in a while). OP is correct that the whole of language method is complete arse, and kids who have been brought up with that are starting behind the 8-ball.

It's hard to say who has the burden of fixing the bad pedagogical practices of schools because the university system is what churns out the ideological biases of the future government or education department leaders, who then reinforce those practices in the public schools' policies.

From my experience, a significant issue is an aversion to streaming kids by ability, which is almost purely a political decision. If you don't stream kids, you don't get the opportunity to put additional support systems in place to help bring them up to where they should be. Instead, they get lost in the crowd and continue moving up the year levels, getting further and further behind. We set them up to fail.

Further, I was a secondary English teacher, and hardly any of my education degree was about teaching middle and senior high school kids HOW to read. It was almost entirely about child development, political issues associated with curriculum and other similar topics. A sprinkling of 'How to plan a lesson', and then off we go to teach high school kids who still read at third-grade level, with no idea how to deal with that.

The ACT has conducted a review and is going to change to phonics:

Expert panel recommends ACT government overhaul literacy and numeracy education with more centralised approach - ABC News

amp.abc.net.au

 

[raskolnikov]

My parents taught me to read before I even started school. First day of prep the teacher, "This is the letter A". Me, "This is going to be a long year". Reading starts at home.

 

[Gough]

My parents taught me to read before I even started school. First day of prep the teacher, "This is the letter A". Me, "This is going to be a long year". Reading starts at home.

John Waters put it best, if you go home with someone and they don't have any books don't f*** them.

 

[Kram]

 

[james haish]

Reading among adult population is declining generally. Books hardly sell like they used to. We are a post-literate society.

 

[barreness]

Reading among adult population is declining generally. Books hardly sell like they used to. We are a post-literate society.

This is true for me. Used to be a voracious reader, like book a week, and it has slowly died in the last decade

Podcasts and audiobooks, then i'll double screen a dating app or bigfooty, hate this about me but it's difficult to change. Must be hard for kids growing up these days

Does it matter how we consume our media? I think so, can't quantify it though, can still read.....kinda

 

[james haish]

This is true for me. Used to be a voracious reader, like book a week, and it has slowly died in the last decade

Podcasts and audiobooks, then i'll double screen a dating app or bigfooty, hate this about me but it's difficult to change. Must be hard for kids growing up these days

Does it matter how we consume our media? I think so, can't quantify it though, can still read.....kinda

People arranging their books by colour signalled the death of reading

 

[nut]

I blame English, it’s dumb. …. So many stupid rules etc … FFS some worlds are spelt the same and have different meanings and are pronounced differently …
Let phonetics fix the spelling of the words…. No silent letters etc…
Fix the langwidge … and let it evolv …

 

[the_interloper]

This is true for me. Used to be a voracious reader, like book a week, and it has slowly died in the last decade

Podcasts and audiobooks, then i'll double screen a dating app or bigfooty, hate this about me but it's difficult to change. Must be hard for kids growing up these days

Does it matter how we consume our media? I think so, can't quantify it though, can still read.....kinda

Same as me, it's kind of shit. The only time I read now is on summer holidays

 

[SaintsSeptember]

How to ensure students get the teaching and support they need to read well - ABC Education

What do state and territory governments need to do to ensure every child is taught how to read well, regardless of where they go to school? Amy Haywood from the Grattan Institute explains.

www.abc.net.au

Popular teaching style 'contrary to science' costing Australia $40 billion, report finds

One-third of Australian students are failing to learn to read proficiently, at an estimated cost to the economy of $40 billion, according to a new study.

www.abc.net.au

One third of students are below minimum standard for reading.

For decades, many teachers have been teaching in the non scientific whole of language method where students are assumed to read by associated pictures and not teaching the more scientificality backed method of phonics and explicit instruction.

Primary school teachers are a product of their training - the Universities.

So why aren't Universities directly blamed for responsibility for their contribution to this mess?

Do teachers choose the method they are to teach?
I would suspect that the education department dictates how the children are to be taught, and the universities instruct the upcoming teachers in that method.

 

[SaintsSeptember]

Reading among adult population is declining generally. Books hardly sell like they used to. We are a post-literate society.

I used to read a ton of books. Now i read a lot of stuff online.
Reading is just incredibly more efficient than waiting for some clown on Youtube to ramble on.

Of course if you can't read well, the reverse is true, and those who are semi-illiterate can probably bluff their way through a lot more easily now.

If someone gets to the point where reading is relaxing, that's what it should be.

 

[Gethelred]

Do teachers choose the method they are to teach?
I would suspect that the education department dictates how the children are to be taught, and the universities instruct the upcoming teachers in that method.

I'm currently teaching early high school low level literacy - as in, direct phonics education - but take what I'm saying with the following caveats: I've been at this for just under a year. While I can tell you what my school does and what I was taught, I cannot speak across multiple schools or across different universities; I can speak for some, but not all. I also have done a masters of teaching, not a batchelor's in education; I can't speak for what's done in the undergrad. Teaching also has been subject to legislative changes over the past 10-15 years, in which teachers used to be able to enter into a school with a tertiary diploma - the old dip. ed - rather than a university qualification, and teachers before this might've been subject to increased supervision/guidance from departments rather than the current status quo. I've also only ever worked at a single public school in a poor part of Melbourne; extrapolating that to a private school in the SE like Hailebury is fraught.

Speak to someone with more experience than me - or departmental experience, like Carn The Berries or Roylion (sorry for tagging the two of you without asking!) - should you want to know more about earlier eras.

Education at university is a hodgepodge of child developmental psychology, pedagogical theories with varying levels of applicability or usefulness, and behaviour management in too small samples for use in an actual classroom. It could be the way I've been taught myself - as my masters has ostensibly been almost entirely online - but the time dedicated to curriculum planning and pedagogy so far outweighs behaviour management that it's uncanny; I've had to do so much more of the latter in practice than the former.

What pedagogy is provided is multifaceted. Schools will have their own particular approaches, and those approaches will adhere to something you've learned about; you are encouraged to create your own playbook, but the second you enter a school you will have a method and a curriculum to follow that will impose restrictions. Outside of that, you are allowed as a professional to plan and work within your own pedagogical framework as you want; provided you're not stepping outside what your direct superiors - your head of faculty/specialty area, campus/house/team leader, or principals - want, you've got carte blanche as a professional to work through things using what tools suit.

... which should tell you something about the pedagogies taught at university: you are taught a lot of different ones, some of which you'll attach to more than others, but you are encouraged to treat them as tools to be used when circumstances suit rather than the be-all-end-all.

What is imposed on public schools by departments is twofold, policy and curriculum. We have the curriculum levels which are assessed at VCE level via ATAR, and the Victorian curriculum from prep to 10 to prepare students for them. Policies include ensuring schools are a safe place for students (anti-bullying and inclusiveness, race and gender being the big ones but also religion) as well as ensuring that schools are managed well fiscally. If a program is a drain - no matter how well or effective it is - it's going to get questioned by management until it's either justified or thrown out for something cheaper (I've also never worked above ground level, so I could be very wrong here!). Curriculum proscribes content to an extent - it's much more rigid at VCE level, as texts and topics are proscribed by the department - and you must keep it in mind when you are planning/writing assessments but do not outright state, "You must teach students X using method Y." Your school might play a role here, but my school's planning meetings are extremely flexible as far as pedagogy goes; you are encouraged to use what works for you in your classroom.

Does that answer your question some?

 

[Carn The Berries]

I'm currently teaching early high school low level literacy - as in, direct phonics education - but take what I'm saying with the following caveats: I've been at this for just under a year. While I can tell you what my school does and what I was taught, I cannot speak across multiple schools or across different universities; I can speak for some, but not all. I also have done a masters of teaching, not a batchelor's in education; I can't speak for what's done in the undergrad. Teaching also has been subject to legislative changes over the past 10-15 years, in which teachers used to be able to enter into a school with a tertiary diploma - the old dip. ed - rather than a university qualification, and teachers before this might've been subject to increased supervision/guidance from departments rather than the current status quo. I've also only ever worked at a single public school in a poor part of Melbourne; extrapolating that to a private school in the SE like Hailebury is fraught.

Speak to someone with more experience than me - or departmental experience, like Carn The Berries or Roylion (sorry for tagging the two of you without asking!) - should you want to know more about earlier eras.

Education at university is a hodgepodge of child developmental psychology, pedagogical theories with varying levels of applicability or usefulness, and behaviour management in too small samples for use in an actual classroom. It could be the way I've been taught myself - as my masters has ostensibly been almost entirely online - but the time dedicated to curriculum planning and pedagogy so far outweighs behaviour management that it's uncanny; I've had to do so much more of the latter in practice than the former.

What pedagogy is provided is multifaceted. Schools will have their own particular approaches, and those approaches will adhere to something you've learned about; you are encouraged to create your own playbook, but the second you enter a school you will have a method and a curriculum to follow that will impose restrictions. Outside of that, you are allowed as a professional to plan and work within your own pedagogical framework as you want; provided you're not stepping outside what your direct superiors - your head of faculty/specialty area, campus/house/team leader, or principals - want, you've got carte blanche as a professional to work through things using what tools suit.

... which should tell you something about the pedagogies taught at university: you are taught a lot of different ones, some of which you'll attach to more than others, but you are encouraged to treat them as tools to be used when circumstances suit rather than the be-all-end-all.

What is imposed on public schools by departments is twofold, policy and curriculum. We have the curriculum levels which are assessed at VCE level via ATAR, and the Victorian curriculum from prep to 10 to prepare students for them. Policies include ensuring schools are a safe place for students (anti-bullying and inclusiveness, race and gender being the big ones but also religion) as well as ensuring that schools are managed well fiscally. If a program is a drain - no matter how well or effective it is - it's going to get questioned by management until it's either justified or thrown out for something cheaper (I've also never worked above ground level, so I could be very wrong here!). Curriculum proscribes content to an extent - it's much more rigid at VCE level, as texts and topics are proscribed by the department - and you must keep it in mind when you are planning/writing assessments but do not outright state, "You must teach students X using method Y." Your school might play a role here, but my school's planning meetings are extremely flexible as far as pedagogy goes; you are encouraged to use what works for you in your classroom.

Does that answer your question some?

Sorry all, I can't add much/anything to this conversation... I was involved in the administrative side of schools, not curriculum delivery.

 

[kickazz]

but the time dedicated to curriculum planning and pedagogy so far outweighs behaviour management that it's uncanny; I've had to do so much more of the latter in practice than the former.

Yes, generally speaking Universities are more about the big picture and so it is right they focus on those more theoretical concepts, even if you may not apply them so much.

As for the latter, behaviour management, well I'm being pretty reductive here, but that has traditionally been the responsibility of parents first, teachers second. A big problem these days is teachers knowing about and trying to explain behavioural issue to parents who are in complete denial and do no cooperate.

 

[Cmarsh]

Again, nothing In the article casting an eye over what is being taught to University education students despite continued substantial problems in primary and high school student literacy and numeracy.

One in three students failing to meet English and maths standards, NAPLAN data shows

One in three Australian school students are still not meeting literacy and numeracy benchmarks, and more than one in ten are so far behind they need additional support, the 2024 NAPLAN results show.

www.abc.net.au