EDUC3526 Literacies Across the Curriculum in the

Middle and Secondary Years - 2019 S1

Assignment 2: Exploring and understanding literacy

My position on what constitutes literacy/ my preferred way of thinking about literacy.

Literacy is a broad term and can be defined in many different and somewhat contradictory ways.
This is dependent on the focus of the individual defining it and could refer to anything from a
reading and writing proficiency to the ability to be verbally literate, along with anything in between.
The Australian curriculum defines literacy as a skill which is “fundamental to a student’s ability to
learn at school and to engage productively in society” (ACARA 2016). While this is a very broad way
of describing literacy the dictionary meaning is quite the opposite and states that literacy is “the
ability to read and write” (Oxford dictionary, 2019). While both are correct in their own ways I feel as
though the curriculum definition does a much better job of encapsulating what literacy really is by
definition. In my opinion literacy can’t be defined by just one aspect as this wouldn’t be fair to which
ever student’s strengths don’t fall under that banner. For example if an educator puts too much
weight on reading and writing as literacy then the student’s who excel through verbal literacy are at
a disadvantage within that environment. This can work both ways and so I believe the curriculum
definition is far superior in that literacy is viewed as a skill which contributes to all aspects of
learning.

Overall my exact view on what constitutes literacy would be quite open ended. Whether it’s reading
and writing literacy, sports literacy, communicative literacy or any other aspect of being literate I
don’t believe that any are necessarily more important than others. I value literacy across all domains
for the numerous benefits they each provide and feel as though students who may not be effectively
literate in one area should not be looked down upon, as they may be very proficient in terms of
literacy within a different field.

How this understanding of literacy will guide the way I intend to plan for the teaching of literacy in
my classroom.

With the understanding that literacy in all forms are equally important and that an educator should
not focus too heavily on just one area, a few pedagogical strategies start to form. The first of which
is arguably the most important and this is to always be providing your students with varying
assessment methods. An example of this would be a teacher who over the course of a semester uses
different aspects of literacy to test their students including communicative and written literacies in
the forms of oral presentations and written pieces such as essays. By doing this the teacher is not
only able to observe the different strengths and weaknesses of their students across all aspects of
literacy but this can also be very important for the students who may struggle in a particular area. By
using this method a student who is less gifted as a writer but excels as a speaker or vice versa gain
the opportunity to display their competence within literacy, something that may have completely
gone unnoticed if the varying assessment methods were not used. The effectiveness of these less
formal assessment methods such as oral presentations are backed by the research of numerous
studies including one conducted by Nor and Shahrill, where they discovered the immense effect this

Daniel Barker Student ID: 2186451

EDUC3526 Literacies Across the Curriculum in the
Middle and Secondary Years - 2019 S1

form of communicative literacy can have on improving students understanding of topic material
(Nor, Shahrill, 2014). Similarly a study by Mallette discussed the positive impact that literacies can
have on all subject areas and the ways in which these less literacy focussed subjects can still
contribute to the development of the students in that area (Mallette, 2005).

As a pre-service health and physical education teacher this information is very important to me as it
provides evidence to my belief that even in a subject with a smaller focus of written literacy,
development can still be made. With a majority of the subject being focussed on the physical
however, most of the literacy advantages the students will obtain will more than likely fall under the
communicative and sports literacy branches. Not to say that there are no opportunities to develop
students reading and writing literacy because there definitely are these are just less common.

The four resources model is a something that I value a great deal and feel as though it would be a
very helpful tool when planning to teach literacies in any class. The model provides four areas of
literacy, these being code breaking, text participation, text use and text analysis along with
definitions of these and what types of resources would target them (Henderson, 2019). Within a
physical education setting the content being taught will more often target the code breaking and
text participation aspects of the model. As these focus on everything from transferral of knowledge
from past experiences, to breaking the codes of not just written but also visual and spatial systems.
These are key concepts within the practical and theoretical sides of senior school physical education
and nutrition.

Past assignment feedback reflection

The main three areas of feedback I received on my last assignment which helped to shape this piece
were grammatical errors, referencing errors and most importantly ensuring I use good resources to
back my stronger and more interesting points. I made a point of focusing on these three points in
order to improve the overall quality of this assignment. These changes can be seen through fewer
run on sentences and proper capitalisation, proper use of italics within referencing and finally
multiple resources which back claims made regarding the usefulness of varying assessment
methods.

Daniel Barker Student ID: 2186451

EDUC3526 Literacies Across the Curriculum in the
Middle and Secondary Years - 2019 S1

References

Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority. (2016) What is literacy.

Retrieved from https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/resources/national-literacy-and-
numeracy-learning-progressions/national-literacy-learning-progression/what-is-literacy/

Henderson, R. (Ed.) (2019). Teaching literacies: Pedagogies and diversity (2nd ed.).
Docklands, Vic: Oxford University Press.

Literacy. (2019) In Oxford dictionary. Retrieved from

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/literacy

Mallette, M. H., Henk, W. A., Waggoner, J. E., & DeLaney, C. J. (2005). What matters most?
A survey of accomplished middle-level educators' beliefs and values about literacy. Action in
Teacher Education, 27(2), 33-42.

Nor, H. N. H. M., & Shahrill, M. (2014, June). Incorporating the use of poster and oral
presentations as an alternative assessment in the teaching of secondary mathematics.
In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Social Sciences Research(pp. 369-
378). ICSSR 2014, WorldConferences. net Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia.

Daniel Barker Student ID: 2186451