Literacy Beyond 2022—Return to a New Better

By Diane Devenyi

Abstract

In this article, I will consider the new challenges faced by educators in the wake of two years of interrupted classroom experiences due to a global pandemic. The literacy and learning gaps exposed for many students reveal the need to revisit how we educate our children. As the world returns to more in-person learning, there is a unique opportunity to whole-heartedly integrate decades of educational research that has yet to be experienced by millions of students. I will review various components believed to be necessary for literacy and learning development as I construct what I feel is a well-rounded approach to literacy for current inperson classroom and distance environments. I will also pay special attention to universal pedagogical practices that accelerate learning for all participants while giving those considered “at risk” the solid foundation they require.

Introduction:

For more than 20 years, I have been passionate about the effect that solid, well-rounded foundations in literacy and learning skills can have on human potential. I have also seen how challenging it has been to integrate decades of wisdom from those who study learning into universal classroom practices. My passion for reform has never waned as I developed hands-on workshops that apply accelerated learning techniques to turn around common literacy issues of poor spelling, messy writing, slow reading, and trouble turning thoughts into spoken or written words. When the world shut down in March 2020 for two weeks and then two years, I had to do what many businesses did: pivot to online learning experiences. It has been frustrating to see the challenges and failures of distance learning for many. I also saw, however, an opportunity to reshape learning so that the recent hyper-acceleration of technology in our lives can also accelerate learning and literacy skills for all.

In furthering this aspiration, I consider what constitutes a holistic literacy program that can meet the needs of more students than is currently the case in most in-person and distance classrooms.

Background:

I will conduct a literary review of theories and practices in literacy and learning and also add my personal experiences and observations in an attempt to define the components of a foundational literacy program that could maximize enriching the outcomes for all students.

Discussion:

In 2022 and beyond, schools are facing increasing challenges because recent distance learning options not only demonstrated uneven access to technology and a range of parental support, they made it clear that many students do not have the learning or literacy skills necessary to thrive in the distance or blended educational settings, or beyond, in their adult lives. The latter fact has serious implications for future social and economic experiences for these students and a country’s economic success.

In January 2021, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that nearly half of the Canadian adults struggle with literacy. The fact that many Canadian jobs are resource based, and do not require people to maintain literacy to do their jobs, has been proposed as an explanation, as well as the high percentage of newcomers to Canada for whom English or French are not their first language. Canada has not paid attention to this issue and is falling behind other countries in international skills assessments, such as Japan, Australia, Sweden, Finland and Holland. A change has been long overdue, and the capacity to bring higher literacy levels into reality must become a priority for the government. There are two primary reasons for promoting a literate populace: one is to achieve the humanitarian goal of offering opportunities to all citizens to participate fully in society; the other is to strengthen a country’s economy by maximizing the number of self sufficient individuals who contribute in various ways to the economy.

De la Mothe (2006) writes: In a knowledge economy, Canada needs skills and knowledge in the emerging areas of information, data, media and communications development, manipulation and acquisition…. The place to learn these skills is in schools. Schools – which are not traditionally considered part of a nation’s science system – provide the building blocks for the future of nations. Indeed, schools are the place to develop what students will need to participate meaningfully and successfully in the world; and literacy skills are at the top of the needs list (Slavin 1996; Weaver 1990, as cited in Pfeiffer, Davis, Kellogg, Hern, McLaughlin, Curry 2001). Gee (1996) states, “The most striking continuity in the history of literacy is the way in which literacy has been used, in age after age, to solidify the social hierarchy, empower elites, and ensure that people lower on the hierarchy accept the values, norms and beliefs of the elite, even when it is not in their self-interest or group interest to do so (Bocock 1986; Gramsci~1971). Our new global capitalism may well change the sorts of skills and values the society wishes to distribute to ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ kinds of people, but, without strong resistance, it will not eradicate these ‘kinds” (p. 36).

Literacy is at the hub of complex social systems. For this reason, it has received a great deal of attention from the academy over the past 100 years, which has generated significant disagreement about how to achieve reading fluency in the education system (Kammenui, 1998). Based on what I have read in the literature and personally experienced, I will define what I consider to be critical components for a wellrounded literacy program that can be used for any age and any skill level. Just as with any recipe, the outcome depends on the input; if we alter or omit any of the ingredients, the result may or may not be desirable. I submit that we risk leaving some citizens behind if we do not do our best to incorporate each element as fully as possible. Every person has their hook for engagement; the wider we cast our net, the greater our chances are for connecting to more students. Also, because I believe that an effective program will meet the needs of all learners, I will scrutinize each component to consider its potential for success with different populations.

The Components:

• Define the paradigm

There are two areas to address:

1. How we believe education should be delivered, and

2. What we believe about the potential of every child.

A reflection upon the following passage by Haim Ginott (1972) can be both stimulating and sobering:

“I have come to a frightening conclusion. I am the decisive element in the classroom. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my mood that makes the weather. As a teacher I possess tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humour, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or de-humanized.”

As we consider shifting a paradigm we must remember that this is not an easy task. In the classic book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions science historian Thomas Kuhn describes how the scientific community holds paradigms “like an accepted judicial decision in the common law.” He explains:

Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute. The success of a paradigm…is at the start largely a promise of success discoverable in selected and still incomplete examples. Normal science consists in the actualization of that promise.

This means that scientists (and all of us) are compelled to produce more data to support the paradigm, preferring consistency to novelty. Anomalies are overlooked until they become too disruptive to ignore. The classroom “anomalies” have been increasing in number; now is the time to apply a consistent paradigm within which they will all succeed.

We are still largely under the influence of an education system that has its roots in ancient Greece and with Plato. It was believed then that if we could articulate something, that was an indication of our rational grasp of it. This intellectual activity was seen as the only path to true adult knowledge (Egan 1996). The development of triadic dialogue – teacher initiate, student response, teacher follow-up, particularly when teachers follow a script to ensure students get the “right” answer—matched the framework of this system well (Wells 1999).

Unfortunately, in many instances, this context for learning has not been satisfying for students and educators, particularly when meaningful feedback is not part of the process. In Dumbing Us Down , upon receiving an award for excellence in teaching in New York City, John Gatto describes himself as “the sevenlesson school teacher” who has been hired to teach English but finds himself instead teaching confusion, class position, indifference, intellectual and emotional dependency, provisional self-esteem and that one can’t hide (unless you go to the bathroom).

In recent years some teachers have moved toward a classroom paradigm that incorporates the inquiry approach: a system of shifting traditional forms of dialogue by having teachers ask students for explanations, justifications, amplifications and points of view as they co-construct meaning (Wells 1999). Characteristics of more effective teachers have been identified as follows (Mercer 2004):

1. They used Q&A sequences not just to test knowledge but also to guide the development of understanding.

2. They taught not just “subject content”, but also procedures for solving problems and making sense of experience.

3. They treated learning as a social, communicative process. How a teacher approaches his or her students can have a tremendous impact on the learning experience for everyone (including the teacher). The more time educators practice sensitively facilitating learning, scaffolding when necessary and scheduling in time for student discovery opportunities and reflection, the more satisfying the outcome is likely to be for everyone. A New York Times on the Web (2006) article quotes Tim O'Reilly, the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media: Creativity is no longer about which companies have the most visionary executives, but who has the most compelling “architecture of participation.” That is, which companies make it easy, interesting and rewarding for a wide range of contributors to offer ideas, solve problems and improve products?

Imagine how a classroom that provides an “architecture of participation” would feel for everyone, and particularly for those students who only thrive when their input is valued. The best teachers know the effectiveness of this approach; sometimes we need to step back and re-evaluate our practices. We may in fact give students many opportunities to contribute but discover, upon self-assessment, that we control student engagement with interruptions and well-intentioned “guidance” (Cunningham 2002).

The second aspect of the recommended paradigm is the attitude toward student potential. Academic success is attributable to a variety of social, emotional, intellectual and academic factors (Samway & McKeon 1999). Social stigma attached to caste-like minority groups affects the performance of minority students in different settings. For example, Korean students perform poorly in schools in Japan (where they are treated as a caste-like minority) but do well in schools in the United States (DeVos & Lee 1981, as cited in Samway & McKeon 1999).

Another factor that can have an impact on a student’s success is the Pygmalion effect. First identified almost 40 years ago, it is now widely accepted that a teacher’s expectations about a student’s success can influence that student’s behaviour and ultimate success (Rosenthal & Jacobson 1968). Teachers must be aware of their assumptions and hold visions of success for their students. Teachers who maintain a persistent belief in the abilities of all students to learn mathematics have demonstrated that students can achieve significantly greater results than were previously achieved (Mighton 2003). While the specific program taught did have an impact, at the core of the program was a belief that students who were struggling could succeed and would be more likely to learn if they had an enriched experience rather than a watered-down version of the curriculum. Stanford professor Carol Dweck has more recently been sharing the power of growth mindset, where individuals believe in and work toward developing their talents through effort, strategies and input from others (Dweck 2017). Mindset is not a magic bullet she cautions, and praise for process must reflect result so that improvement is continually iterated.

• Minimize disorientation

How we observe the world affects its “reality” to us. The act of seeing involves much more than physical awareness, and all prior experiences of the observer affect the processing of images (Hanson 1972). Many individuals can disorient their perceptions by using their mind’s eye (imagination) to see something other than what we would call reality (Davis 1997). This can be valuable for creative endeavours such as fine art, music, drama, writing, athletics and science. It can feel very comfortable for these individuals, who may or may not know they are disoriented when expressing their talents. However, the same disorientation will not likely serve them well when they practice literacy. If the symbols we use (the alphabet and punctuation marks) are not consistently perceived and integrated, some individuals will struggle with reading and writing; others will find these activities impossible.

Awareness of the tendency of some students to be disoriented is the first step toward resolving their confusion, both for the teacher and the student. Visualization and physical exercises can create neural pathways in the brain to maintain, at will, orientation for reading and writing (Davis 1987). As many people who practice some form of meditation will attest, even those who do not struggle with this difficulty will benefit from learning how to be focused, relaxed and ready to learn. For this reason, activities that enhance focusing, balancing (in the body) and taking responsibility for one’s learning are appropriate for all learners and enhance classroom management in a way that honours everyone. Also, activities that develop resiliency facilitate the release of any stress that disorientation may have caused. These could include simple breathing exercises, and to paraphrase Adlerian psychologists, learning to adjust one’s energy to “meet the needs of any situation.”

• Create learning communities!

Studies about achievement in cooperative learning groups (Yager 1985; Yager 1986) have spawned programs that provide guidelines for, inter alia, creating more inclusive classrooms where participants practice knowing, respecting and learning with each other (Gibbs 2001). The extra effort involved in becoming literate when we already have the ability to communicate orally demands some incentive. When we feel a connection to others, we are more likely to want to communicate with them using appropriate cultural modes. In a society where literacy is a valued form of communication, children will be naturally inclined to seek inclusion via literacy (Tardella 1999). If an individual who is so motivated experiences literacy in playful and relaxed ways, accelerated learning can occur (Rose & Nicholl 1997).

Second language learning environments are very effective when the group only moves forward once every student has mastered a concept and each is motivated to keep up with the group (Rose & Nicholl 1997). A commitment to supporting each other maintains both relevancy (connection) and relaxation (due to support). There is also research that shows that socialization is necessary for comprehension because readers must use prior knowledge to give meaning to written words (Just and Carpenter 1987; Perfetti 1985, as cited in Stanovich 2000).

The oral nature of many community-building activities needs to be appreciated as the foundation upon which literacy can be built rather than as a less sophisticated step in the process of becoming literate. By examining non-literate traditions, we may better understand the transition of Western children from orality to literacy, improve literacy rates, and improve the richness of literacy we can achieve (Egan 1996). More attention must be paid to developing exploratory talk among students, which is “that in which partners engage critically but constructively with each other’s ideas” (Mercer 2004, p. 133).

In the inclusive classroom, a context of connection and acceptance becomes even more important. Everyone wins when every member of the class experiences a sense of value and support; learning how to be together with each other is recognized as being a life-long process. Imagine how it would feel for everyone if every class established a collective vision of confidence in each student’s ability to succeed and together knew how to recover from stress, whether caused by confusion, embarrassment or regret.

• Maximize phonological awareness

Phonological awareness is one of the best predictors of future literacy. Students who arrive at school exhibiting a weakness in phonological awareness, whether due to a disability, a lack of pre-school exposure to discourse and/or written materials, or diversity of culture (so that English phonological awareness is lacking) need extra support (Lyon 1994, Lyon 1995). Many children with learning disabilities are limited in their ability to process phonological information. Most importantly, they do not readily learn how to relate letters of the alphabet to the sounds of language (Lyon, 1995).

Much of the attention given to developing programs for increasing phonological awareness has focused on the sounds of letters and letter combinations (Donnelly, Thomson, Huber & Schoemer 1999). What if instruction in phonological awareness included more hands-on experiences with the alphabet? What if some individuals cannot integrate these symbols without exploring the letters in ways beyond merely seeing them on cards or books and copying them onto paper with a pencil? We may presume that the phonological awareness challenge is related to the processing of sounds, but we cannot be sure. Literate cultures prepare their children with distinctive forms of thought and understanding (Egan 1996). Part of this preparation includes early exposure to written language through books; we also encounter written language from signage visible everywhere we go. Pre-literate students can usually demonstrate their knowledge of the written language used in their culture by creating marks that resemble the language’s alphabet (Harste, Woodward & Burke 1984). If the letters themselves are causing confusion, then making connections between letters and sounds will be hindered.

A K-1 pilot of the Davis Learning Strategies program that introduced the alphabet by having students create their own alphabets out of modelling clay and learn 100 basic sight words (meaning and symbol) through visualization and sculpting found that first grade students in the program scored significantly higher than a control group in the mastery of the words. Follow-up data collected two years after the pilot was completed indicated that no special education referrals had been made for any of the 86 children who had participated, and gifted referrals were higher than for the average population (Pfeiffer et al. 2001). This type of experience appears to be remedial for some and can enrich learning for everyone. An experienced teacher has asked: “… Teaching decoding and phonemic awareness doesn’t hinder those lucky children who would become readers almost effortlessly, but it does allow those who need better instruction to become readers too….Opening up the world this way also has benefits for the rest of us….Surely there is such an enrichment for the able reader who is exposed to the wonderful songs, word play and word games that we use for teaching decoding and phonemic awareness?” (Stanovich 2000) I submit that we all benefit when we practice learning through all of our senses, even if we are learning “almost effortlessly.”

• Make it meaningful, interesting and fun

All discourse, whether oral or literate, is in aid of something. As social beings, we learn to communicate our physical and emotional needs by developing our basic interpersonal communication skills. We could all live and die with these abilities, but as humans, we are living organisms who are programmed to seek out richer experiences. This is why we have created schools and opportunities for deeper learning where cognitive academic language proficiency is required. When introducing children to the world of higher order thinking, we need to be careful not to see orality as a replacement for literacy; both can contribute to each other (Egan 1996). It is also important to keep learning exercises meaningful for children (Vygotsky 1978). According to Teale, “the field has, de facto, acted as though there is a literacy learning process that is essentially acontextual and a cultural” (Teale 2003). One way that meaning has been brought into the classroom is through the use of play.

The effect of play on learning has been well studied and reported. Play leads to written language development through the use of second-order symbolism of objects—for example, a block can represent a bakery in a community structure—that develops into the system of second order symbolism known as writing (Vygotsky 1978, p. 110). It is also natural and fun for children. The Waldorf, Montessori, Reggio Emilia, Sudbury Valley and many other school systems value play as an important part in learning.

Introducing a classroom mailbox center into a kindergarten class is one effective way to use play in developing literacy skills in children (Tardella 1999).

The use of psychological triggers to gamify experiences in social media motivates millions of users to seek likes and shares as they scroll endless feeds. Online learning is also being gamified and the online platform Xperiencify.com boasts a student transformation success rate of more than 50% when the industry standard for online students to complete and report a transformation from a course has been closer to a mere 3%.

What about bringing meaning to children by offering them opportunities to process deep understanding while engaging the whole brain and body? Hands-on learning is essential for some activities, for example, driving a car or performing surgery. I submit that it is as important for developing deeper cognitive and literacy skills. The Davis system referred to above uses dialogue, visualization and sculpting of abstract concepts to facilitate a richness of meaning that is rare in most pedagogy. It was originally designed to meet the needs of learners whom Davis refers to as “picture thinkers” –people who cannot understand abstract words and concepts unless they can attach a visual picture to it in their mind (Davis 1997). For picture thinkers, and most of us to some extent, all pronouns and articles can present challenges to comprehension, as do the myriad abstract concepts we encounter every day. When a child can create a sculpture of the definition of the word “the”—“that one which is here or has been mentioned” is but one of thirteen definitions in a children’s dictionary (Agnes 1999)— depth and comprehension happen.

According to Chomsky (2002), “Language is a kind of latent structure in the human mind, developed and fixed by exposure to specific linguistic experiences.” In other words, the brain is much like a computer: if we do not run the proper program in either one, neither works effectively. By offering a more holistic literacy practice in our classrooms, we will meet the needs of all students and ensure that those who flourish when their hands and imaginations are fully stimulated are running the appropriate programs in their brains.

• For 2022 and beyond

In case we didn’t know it, the past two years have demonstrated our need to be connected when we cannot be together physically. We have also seen how that desire drove the technology to change how we interact and learn radically. Zoom and other virtual meeting platforms jumped forward to make in-person meetings an option rather than a requirement. Blended learning (both in-person and virtual lessons) can also now be successful in ways never imagined a few short years ago. Khan Academy has been working since 2005 to “flip the classroom” by offering high-quality lessons as homework lessons so that teachers can spend classroom time identifying blocks and working to resolve the confusion. Lessons that would normally be assigned as homework benefit from immediate teacher support. When in-person learning is not an option, we now have choices. These advances do require access to technology, however, and even developed countries such as Canada and the United States have yet to fill the digital divide among some populations. As parts of the world return to life that permits being physically together again, we need to remember what was learned about foundational gaps among many students during distance learning as we push forward to integrate new possibilities. Literacy remains as important as ever in the foreseeable future (if there is such a thing!) despite visual technologies that promise experiences beyond words.

Summary:

There are many effective methods for teaching literacy, as well as ever-increasing challenges being presented to teachers in the form of students’ diverse life experiences and abilities. I believe that it is time to gather the ingredients we know to be supportive of student engagement and success and include each one of them in our future universal design pedagogy with deliberate awareness. This is a task that requires effort and flexibility on everyone’s part that will produce great dividends. Given the growing complexity of needs in our classrooms, I believe that the time for creating the necessary shift is now.

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About Author

Diane Devenyi, JD, MEd, is a former tax lawyer and education advocate; when her three children were young, she experienced the challenges of learning differences.

It has become her life-long passion. With more than 20 years in the field, she shares her research on literacy and learning in a 4-book Dear Genius series. Dear Genius, Your letter dis-order is showing! as the first available on Amazon in February 2022. She hopes that children everywhere (and even adults) can finally find relief and the freedom to soar in their zone of genius.

Diane can be reached at diane@thelearningforce.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianedevenyi/ New Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/englishliteracy5.0