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Teacher research and literacy support JEFF LEWIS Literacy With the advent of a prescribed curriculum, national standards, and the literacy hour, both the content and the methodology of the literacy curriculum are now largely given. Whilst it is too early to know exactly what the effects of these changes will be, there is certainly one danger that we need to be aware of. I am referring to the possible loss of space available for practitioner research into the most effective way to offer support to those in need, in their own professional context, in the area of literacy development. In this article I wish to discuss the potential of teacher research in this area, and to give examples of some recent small-scale research carried out by practising teachers. Teachers researching Firstly, let us consider what is distinctive about teacher research. Literacy is perhaps the most researched area in education, with literally thousands of studies contributing to the debate. Despite all this activity, there is still no consensus as to the best way to help young children, especially those experiencing difficulty, achieve in this area. The teacher in the classroom, faced with failing readers, has to make decisions on a day-to-day basis. Some of these decisions will be informed by the research literature, some by past experience, some by a process of problem solving unique to the particular case, and some by hunches. Most formal research wishes to deal with generalisations; teachers dealing with failing children are forced to deal with particulars. Often they will be faced with the children who are precisely the exception to the rule, those outside the statistical probabilities claimed for research findings. The processes by which teachers systematically examine their own practice are therefore of a different nature from those employed in large-scale research. It is not that one set of procedures is inherently superior to another, they just serve different purposes. The present literacy strategy is the outcome of an as yet uncompleted large-scale research project. It is certainly not the only currently available research project (see Brooks, Flanagan, Henkhuzens and Hutchinson 1998), but is the one which has found favour with policy makers. Its aim is to develop practice which is suitable for most of our pupils; whether that practice is suitable for all ages and abilities remains to be seen. Whether this aim is achieved or not, the individual problems facing individual teachers and schools are likely to still exist. Not even the most evangelical supporters of the literacy strategy claim that it will solve all the problems associated with literacy, though there is a danger that children who experience difficulty despite full immersion in the project will once more come to be seen as deficient. That is, the source of the difficulty will be seen as residing in ‘within child’ factors, factors that are within the province of specialists, and not an issue for mainstream practice. The reality, however, will continue to be that skilful and insightful teaching, and an ability to search for individuated, differentiated, sometimes novel approaches will help individual children more than adherence to a single set of practices, be they ever so efficacious for the vast majority of children. Committed teachers of children with special needs, in my experience, are keen not only to maintain and update their knowledge base, but also to develop the skills and methods for examining their own practice so that they themselves can generate knowledge about their practice. In so doing they become teacher-researchers, systematically reviewing and extending their own practice, and making the fruits of their investigations available to others. The processes by which they achieve this are not identical to those of the research community, but my claim is that their findings make a valuable contribution to our knowledge. The teachers I will be discussing undertook their research as part of a programme leading to higher degrees in education, Support for Learning Vol. 14 No. 3 (1999) 135 © NASEN 1999. Jeff Lewis discusses recent examples of teacher research into literacy support. The two examples given are aimed at those groups of pupils for whom the national literacy strategy may prove problematic. Both cases highlight the importance of a child’s self-efficacy beliefs regarding literacy.

Teacher Research and Literacy Support

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Teacher research andliteracy support

JEFF LEWIS

Literacy

With the advent of a prescribed curriculum, nationalstandards, and the literacy hour, both the content and themethodology of the literacy curriculum are now largelygiven. Whilst it is too early to know exactly what theeffects of these changes will be, there is certainly onedanger that we need to be aware of. I am referring to thepossible loss of space available for practitioner researchinto the most effective way to offer support to those inneed, in their own professional context, in the area ofliteracy development. In this article I wish to discuss thepotential of teacher research in this area, and to giveexamples of some recent small-scale research carried outby practising teachers.

Teachers researching

Firstly, let us consider what is distinctive about teacherresearch. Literacy is perhaps the most researched area ineducation, with literally thousands of studies contributingto the debate. Despite all this activity, there is still noconsensus as to the best way to help young children,especially those experiencing difficulty, achieve in thisarea. The teacher in the classroom, faced with failingreaders, has to make decisions on a day-to-day basis.Some of these decisions will be informed by the researchliterature, some by past experience, some by a process ofproblem solving unique to the particular case, and someby hunches. Most formal research wishes to deal withgeneralisations; teachers dealing with failing children areforced to deal with particulars. Often they will be facedwith the children who are precisely the exception to therule, those outside the statistical probabilities claimedfor research findings.

The processes by which teachers systematically examinetheir own practice are therefore of a different nature fromthose employed in large-scale research. It is not that one setof procedures is inherently superior to another, they justserve different purposes. The present literacy strategy is theoutcome of an as yet uncompleted large-scale researchproject. It is certainly not the only currently availableresearch project (see Brooks, Flanagan, Henkhuzens andHutchinson 1998), but is the one which has found favourwith policy makers. Its aim is to develop practice which issuitable for most of our pupils; whether that practice issuitable for all ages and abilities remains to be seen.Whether this aim is achieved or not, the individual problemsfacing individual teachers and schools are likely to stillexist. Not even the most evangelical supporters of theliteracy strategy claim that it will solve all the problemsassociated with literacy, though there is a danger thatchildren who experience difficulty despite full immersionin the project will once more come to be seen as deficient.That is, the source of the difficulty will be seen as residingin ‘within child’ factors, factors that are within the provinceof specialists, and not an issue for mainstream practice.The reality, however, will continue to be that skilful andinsightful teaching, and an ability to search for individuated,differentiated, sometimes novel approaches will helpindividual children more than adherence to a single set ofpractices, be they ever so efficacious for the vast majorityof children.

Committed teachers of children with special needs, in myexperience, are keen not only to maintain and update theirknowledge base, but also to develop the skills and methodsfor examining their own practice so that they themselvescan generate knowledge about their practice. In so doingthey become teacher-researchers, systematically reviewingand extending their own practice, and making the fruits oftheir investigations available to others. The processes bywhich they achieve this are not identical to those of theresearch community, but my claim is that their findingsmake a valuable contribution to our knowledge.

The teachers I will be discussing undertook their researchas part of a programme leading to higher degrees in education,

Support for Learning Vol. 14 No. 3 (1999) 135© NASEN 1999.

Jeff Lewis discusses recent examples of teacherresearch into literacy support. The two examplesgiven are aimed at those groups of pupils for whomthe national literacy strategy may prove problematic.Both cases highlight the importance of a child’sself-efficacy beliefs regarding literacy.

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a programme that I have been involved in as tutor for severalyears. Even though the aim of gaining a higher degree hasbeen achieved, these teachers are now able to continuethe work of systematically examining and extending theirpractice. When a teacher comes to embark on a piece ofresearch leading to a dissertation the temptation is often toselect an area of investigation that is in principle notresearchable within the context of normal classroompractice. An example would be wishing to ‘prove’ theconnection between two variables such as self-conceptand reading ability, or to develop interventions that aregeneralisable to all contexts. These things can, of course,be researched, but they would require projects that hadaccess to a large number of subjects, in a variety of contexts,and a sufficient time span to allow for a longitudinal study.

After a period of reflection, the teacher will then redefineher project so that it becomes a practical possibility. Thisusually entails identifying an actual concern in her currentpractice, and finding a way of discovering how far thetheoretical ideas developed by large-scale research areapplicable to her own context. This raises, for some, a problemabout the value of this research to other practitioners. Asthe results are necessarily context specific, and small-scale,how are they generalisable to the larger constituency offellow professionals? Such an objection would seem toreveal a naïveté about how research findings are translatedinto practice. At the level of policy (national or regional),research that is more generalisable is more likely to beuseful. In terms of affecting individual practice, however,research that speaks to an individual teacher’s needs and toher sense of the actual are more likely to be embraced.

A clear and perceptive account of how teacher researchmay come to function in this way is provided by Gallas(1994). She tells of the development of her own stance as ateacher-researcher, and how her experience as a member ofa teacher-researcher seminar helped her to realise theimportance of teacher stories. She says:

Teachers tell stories about their classrooms. At theirbrief lunch breaks, in after-school gatherings and meetings,when speaking with new acquaintances, they transmitinformation about what they do through story, or thepersonal anecdote (Phillips 1992). In the story, thecontent almost always ties meaning to an emotive value.Useful stories, for teachers, are those that ring true,stories that are evocative of their own lives in theclassroom. Each story we hear forces us to situateourselves in relation to the personal truths that thestoryteller is relating; each story, although not a fiction,presents many perspectives and many meanings ratherthan one focused and conclusive meaning. Teacherstories, although not cloaked in an attitude of knowing,are about what teachers know about children, learningand teaching.

This does not mean that all stories and anecdotes arelikely to be equally accurate, meaningful or useful. Theteacher-researchers I am discussing have gone to great

pains to prepare their narrative, through systematic reflection,by relating their stories to research literature, and by givingthought as to how they may collect and make sense of data.Having done so, fellow teachers are able to read theirfindings from the position that Eisner (1979) terms a‘connoisseur’, judging the authenticity of the account, andthe degree of applicability to their own situation. Themethodology that Gallas describes then tends to theinterpretive, qualitative and ethnographic end of theresearch methods spectrum. Whilst the individual teachermay find quantitative methodologies useful in unravellingaspects of her professional universe, these are still onlylikely to provide results necessarily limited by the scale ofher own operation. The power of the finished report tospeak to other practitioners will more likely be derivedfrom the authenticity with which the teacher gives anaccount of her work in the messy but familiar milieu of thebusy classroom with a million and one uncontrolledvariables. Teacher research written up in this way is typifiedby Clifford (1986) as follows: ‘Embodied in writtenreports, these stories simultaneously describe real culturalevents and make additional moral, ideological, and evencosmological statements … these kinds of transcendentmeanings are not abstractions or interpretations “added” tothe original “simple” account. Rather they are the conditionsof its meaningfulness.’

The teacher research I will now discuss, then, is part of agrowing corpus of practitioner research whose findings layno claim to generalisation, but whose aim is to illuminategreater questions by rigorous attention to the detail ofparticular cases.

A case study into early literacy acquisition in at-riskchildren

The first study was carried out by a literacy support teacherin a primary school in the south-west of England (Murdoch1998). As Gallas (1994) suggests, classroom research oftentakes as its starting point a question, or confusion: ‘Thejourney I take to answer that question or see into theconfusion often leads to places I never intended to go.’ Thisis unlike most formal, funded research, wherein the originalresearch submission has to lay out the journey in greatdetail before funding is granted. Like that of other teachers,Ann Murdoch’s work journeyed into new areas, and raisedquestions which turned out to be more significant than theoriginal proposal would have allowed for, questions which,it is intended, will form the focus of future research projects.The research started with questions and confusions. Shesupported literacy for those children judged to be in need ofextra help. In this particular situation, these children werenormally forwarded for extra help after two (unsuccessful)years of normal classroom instruction.

What Ann then found herself dealing with was not onlythe teaching of the mechanics of literacy, but also theeffects of two years of failure. This would manifest itself ina disinclination to fully immerse oneself in the task for fear

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of yet more failure, and the development of a range ofdiversionary tactics, aimed at avoiding the teachingencounter, but often interpreted as evidence of behaviouraldifficulties, stigmatising the child still further. Teachers oflow attainers often feel that with their skills and experience,the teaching of literacy does not in itself present them withgreat problems, once the damage to the child’s self-imagehas been restored to the level where his intention in a lessonis to learn, rather than to avoid the task.

Ann’s first set of questions concerned the wisdom of waitinguntil the child was patently failing before help was provided.This may simply have been a case for assigning supportstaff to the reception class and monitoring the outcome.Further questions arose about what form such an interventioncould take. Was there really some method that could helpthese children at an early stage? How would the recipientsof the intervention be selected? Did the problems lie morein the affective than the cognitive domain?

Analysis and intuition suggested that the focus for attentionshould be the system by which early literacy was developed,and how emergent difficulties were diagnosed and dealtwith. This required attention not only to the children, butalso to the teaching they were given, the roles given toclassroom assistants and to parents, and to the organisationof learning support within the school. As is often the case,it was felt that not only should attention be given tomethod, but that the context within which the method wasto be practised would have to be made more responsive.Many support teachers will recognise the frustration ofknowing what could be done to support a child, but offinding it almost impossible to persuade colleagues tochange their ‘tried and tested’ systems of organisation.To many, it seems, change is threatening and potentiallydestabilising; it is more convenient to attribute failure to‘within child’ features and send for a ‘remedial’ expert,rather than look for alternative ways of doing things. Afterthe necessary period of presenting her case to staff meetings,enlisting support from potential change agents, securingthe backing of management, and an opportunity forchange occasioned by changes in personnel, Ann’s projectcould be developed and evaluated. During this time she wasable to think deeply about the nature of the proposedintervention.

What characterises teacher research here is the way inwhich the dynamic nature of the classroom leads to theredefinition of the direction of research even as it proceeds.Ann and her colleagues were already aware of good practicein supporting literacy development, but as the context oftheir operations was about to change, they had to be sensitiveto the dynamics of the situation, rather than imposing uponit methods that had worked well in other situations. Here,for the first time, she was to work with children justembarking on the ‘royal road’ to literacy, rather thansupporting those who were already deemed to be in specialneed. The question that came to guide her thinking was, ‘Isthere a way to teach these children from the outset that willnot lead to the negative affective states that we find in them

two years down the road?’ It was here that the possibilityof immersing herself in the wider theory of language wasinvaluable.

From Ann’s own intuition, coupled with her experience asa teacher and as a mother of young children, a furtherquestion arose. Why was it that young children achieve aremarkable degree of success in learning their first languagein the oral mode, yet were not able to use this learningpower when learning the written mode? Clearly there aredifferences between the two modes, but is that sufficient toexplain the discrepancy between the success of somechildren in their development of the two modes? Thehorrific possibility emerged that if we taught oracy in thesame way as we taught literacy, there might be far morepeople who could not or would not speak. Research intolanguage acquisition was read extensively, and connectionsmade between the way that the child’s prime carerssupported his acquisition of language, and the ways inwhich literacy acquisition was supported in the classroom.Ann’s hypothesis developed into the form of ‘If we couldreplicate as far as possible the conditions in which childrendevelop oracy, would this aid the development of literacy?’

This immediately gave her research a ‘whole language’orientation. Since the heyday of the Frank Smith/Goodman/Real Books crusade of the eighties, whole-languageapproaches have attracted much criticism (see Donaldson1989 cited in Beard 1993, Macmillan 1997). One of thetargets of this criticism has been the supposed linksbetween first language learning and literacy acquisition.Ann found support for her emerging hypothesis in thework of Cambourne (1988), and in the field of specialneeds, from Keefe (1996). Cambourne claims that the oraland written forms of the language are only superficiallydifferent:

By ‘superficially different’ I do not mean ‘triviallydifferent’. I’m using superficial in the sense of ‘on thesurface’ not in the sense of ‘unimportant’. Of course thetwo modes of language differ in many complex andinteresting ways. Of course the two require differentkinds of knowledge which learners must acquire inorder to operate with and on them. Of course there arecertain aspects of the use of the written mode whichrequire specific knowledge which can’t be carried overfrom the oral mode and vice versa.

However, in terms of how the brain processes them, atthe deep levels of production and comprehension, thereare no differences of great moment. Reading, writing,speaking and listening, while different in many respects,are but parallel manifestations of the same vital humanfunction – the mind’s effort to create meaning.

If this were to be true, then we would find it hard to explainwhy, for most, one mode seems harder to master than theother. (This is not always true; profoundly, prelinguallydeaf people learn to read without the benefits of priorfacility with speech, and the Portsmouth Project (Buckley

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1993) has found that reading as a first language, out ofwhich oracy grows, is appropriate in the case of childrenwith Down’s syndrome.)

Two possibilities suggested themselves to Ann. Firstly,speech has been part of the human condition for perhapshundreds of thousands of years, and a cultural expectationhas developed whereby it is assumed that children willlearn to speak, and the actions of those around them arepredicated on this assumption, helping the expectation tobecome a reality. No such cultural expectation yet attachesto the relatively recent phenomenon of literacy, and perhapsthe actions of those around the child give a more negativesuggestion, that the child will find this difficult, and maynot succeed. Ann and her colleagues, then, needed to developways of interacting with beginning readers that gave themessage ‘of course you can’, rather than the message, ‘youcan’t’.

The second possibility lay in the types of interaction bywhich significant others encourage language acquisition. Itis no longer widely believed that language acquisition isautomatic, rather that it is the product of social interaction.Chomsky’s notion of a biological Language AcquisitionDevice (LAD) has been replaced by what Bruner terms aLanguage Acquisition Support Service (LASS) (seeDonaldson 1978). Research into language acquisition (seeSnow and Ferguson 1977, Wanner and Gleitman 1982)suggests that the specific interactions that can aid languagedevelopment may be collectively termed ‘motherese’ or,more accurately, ‘caretaker speech’. These interactionstake place in a context of shared meaning, are sharplyfocused on the present functioning of the child, and areexpected to lead to improved communication. Specifically,the child’s growing competence is celebrated with eachachievement. Surface features of pronunciation and syntaxtake second place to meaning, though the more conventionalusages are modelled and extended in a context of meaning.The child’s idiosyncratic utterances are cherished, andoften pass into the family vocabulary, sometimes to theembarrassment of the child as she grows older. The child’sachievements are reinforced, and although the child realisesthat she has a lot to learn about the language game, she isnever made to feel like an incompetent. As the childdevelops, the interactions may well become more focusedon approximating the child’s utterances to the conventionallyaccepted usages, though accuracy of meaning and truthfulnessare more likely to be commented on than surface form.

Perhaps most significantly, the child’s efforts, from theirearliest babbling, are treated as serious efforts to communicate,rather than as mistakes. The adult drags intentionality fromthe child’s actions, injects intentionality into the discourse,and models for the child how this implied intention, tocommunicate, may be fulfilled. This is rather different fromthe experience of many children in the school situation,where accuracy is expected from the outset, where praisemay be focused on the quality of the child’s performance,rather than on the quality of his engagement, and where theexercise may not appear to have any human importance

beyond its own satisfactory completion. Such a scenariodoes not apply to all classrooms, of course, but in thisparticular case it was felt that the interactions were a longway from approaching the kind of direct and mutuallyfulfilling engagement that typifies the young child’s initialencounters with language.

Ann’s project, then, was to develop and evaluate an interventionthat not only utilised good practice in literacy development,but which also nurtured particular styles of interactionbetween teacher and learner. In this, and other projects thatteachers have embarked upon, evidence is accumulatingthat it is not the particular intervention that is important, butthe style of the interaction and the effect it has on the learners’image of themselves as being usefully and successfullyengaged in a worthwhile enterprise that is important andinteresting to all concerned. Ann developed a systembased on research into early literacy development. It wasmultisensory, encouraged simultaneous development oforacy, reading and writing, paid attention to phonological,syntactical and semantic aspects, used a variety of media,used the children’s own experience and so on.

Most of the methods which are used in her literacy sessionswill be well known to most teachers. She found the use ofa ‘Wedge’, a free-standing prismoid which can be writtenon using felt pens, or used with magnetic letters or fordisplay, particularly useful. The writing of sentences ontostrips of paper that the child could cut up and reassemblewas also found to be particularly effective, especially whena follow-on sentence was constructed to extend the meaningof the sentence in a realistic narrative. The collection of‘stacks’ of books, all of which contained certain key wordsthat the children could search for and identify, was also auseful technique. It is likely, though, that several elementsof the programme could be replaced with other techniqueswithout being deleterious to the programme as a whole.What Ann’s data show most conclusively is the effect thatthe style of interaction had on all those involved, includingthe adults. The project was organised so that the childreninvolved had two or three ‘special times’ a week in whichthey and an adult would work through the elements of theprogramme. Because the adults in the project, mainlyclassroom assistants, had been trained to respond in certainways, celebrating the child’s efforts, showing enjoyment intheir involvement, modelling and extending rather thancorrecting, and showing faith that the child would ultimatelyjoin the club of competent literacy users, they becameenthusiastically involved in their work. This deep engagementand enthusiasm became infectious, so that the childrencame to see themselves as important and competent. Ratherthan experiencing the chore of listening to failing readersstumble through the pages of a set reader, they came toshare in the wonder of small yet significant breakthroughsin the child’s developing competence with the writtenword.

Another of the criticisms of whole-language approacheshas been that they involve ‘minimal teaching’ (Donaldson1989 cited in Beard 1993). This may represent the pedagogy

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of some exponents who believe that the children will workit all out for themselves. Minimal teaching would not be apart of a system based on the interactive theory of languagedevelopment. Ann’s teaching sessions are intensive, andthe adult is playing an active role throughout. It is not theamount of teaching that makes this approach distinctive,but the style. Rather than having complete control over theagenda, the teacher learns to be responsive to the child’sneeds as they emerge. This is not, however, a laissez-faire,reactive responsiveness. The adult, as a more experiencedlearner, is not afraid of leading when she senses it isappropriate, for she is attempting to maintain a balancebetween her knowledge of language, the needs of the child,and the maintenance of the learning relationship in decidingwhen and how to intervene.

Ann collected data on performance measures; these wereencouraging, though small-scale. Far more significant wasthe host of qualitative data collected from those involvedwhich pointed to changes in attitude, and her collection ofpieces of the children’s work that show the features of theirdevelopment. The study is beautifully written, and gives arealistic insight into a group of adults and children workingtogether to learn about literacy, and also themselves.

At the beginning of the project, one child was distracted byalmost anything that occurred in the classroom. It wasalmost as if anything was preferable to him than engagementin the task. After a while, he became an enthusiastic participant,often lost in the task no matter what was going on aroundhim, and wanting more ‘special time’ than the team couldprovide.

A young girl in her first term at school was initially sodisruptive, running round the room, attacking other childrenand staff, that the school would only accept her on apart-time basis. She seemed to have none of the ‘desirableoutcomes’ expected of a successful pre-school experience,and the worlds of print, of the classroom, and of groups ofother children were all equally alien to her. After a while,as she became accustomed to the attentions of her supportingadult, she began, slowly at first, to produce ‘written’ outputthat at least she was able to understand. Slowly, individualletters and then words became discernible, and the qualityand the quantity of her work improved. Her behaviour inother areas of the school improved dramatically, so that shewas included on a full-time basis. Further, it was nolonger assumed that, like her brother and sister before her,she would be destined for the local special school beforevery long. Emboldened by her own successes she tookthe methodology home with her, and was teaching hernon-reading elder sister the rudiments of literacy. The mostmoving piece of data in the whole study is undoubtedly theentry in her home–school comment book where her parents,in imperfect English, report their pride and excitement attheir daughter’s progress.

There are many other revealing snapshots in the study, butthis last one in particular raises further important questionsfor investigation and research. With the current concern

with the growing rates of disruption, particularly in theearly years, is it possible that attention to the details of theadult–child interaction, along the lines outlined in thisstudy, will have a more profound effect than specificprogrammes of behaviour modification? Secondly, whatscope is there for extending the programme so that thechildren themselves become, as peer tutors (as advocatedby McNamara and Moreton 1993), important players in thetask of giving sufficient time to all of the children whorequire support with their literacy development? Not allschools would wish to invest as much as Ann’s did in therecruitment and training of classroom assistants; peers,parents and volunteers from the community may well beable to plug the gap.

Increasingly, as her research developed, the potential ofparents assumed a greater importance, and will form thesubject of Ann’s future research and development. As partof her work, Ann visited parents at home shortly beforetheir child was due to start school. During this visit shewould demonstrate her methods by working with the childin the parents’ presence. She would then talk to the parentsabout how they could support the child at home. In so doingshe was mainly encouraging them to behave in the ways thatthey already knew, and had adopted, perhaps automatically,in helping their children learn to speak. When they realisedthat they were not being asked to do anything ‘technical’,and were explicitly told not to make the experience stressfulfor themselves or the child, the parents became full partnersin guiding their children towards confidence with the writtenword. One of the children in the study seemed to bedeveloping aversions to the programme, and not fullyparticipating. On investigation, it was found that the child’smother, in her keenness for her child to succeed had been,in Ann’s words, ‘laying a trip on her’, and pressurising thechild instead of entering into the experience as she hadbeen requested. The next stage of Ann’s research will focusfar more on the role of parents, and how a commonapproach at home and school may ease a child from theirremarkable success in mastering the oral mode towardsequal facility in the written mode.

The contribution that this piece of research makes to thecurrent situation is that it provides a framework forthinking about the needs of young children for whom themethods of the national literacy strategy may yet proveinappropriate. It is clear that some of the young children inAnn’s study would not have been able to benefit fromwhole-class interactive teaching; some, indeed, would nothave been likely to remain in their seats for long enough.The introduction to the world of literacy that they receivedin the project, however, has brought them to the stagewhere they are now able to take part in normal classroomactivities, and also are able to take an active part in theirown learning. There has been much debate recentlyconcerning the wisdom of too early an introduction to formallearning. Most of our European colleagues are amazed thatwe introduce formal instruction at the ages of 4 and 5, andthe Steiner movement believes that it is actually harmful todo so before the age of 7. Whichever view is correct, there

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are likely to be young children who will need a differentform of support, and the work of Ann and her colleaguesindicates one of the approaches that may be helpful.

A case study of children with entrenched literacy difficulties

The problem of what to do about those children who,despite good teaching and the provision of extra help,exhibit entrenched difficulties with learning to read wasaddressed by another teacher on our programme (Trenerry1998). Maggie Trenerry is an experienced learning supportteacher. She works for a county support team in theSouth-West, and visits several schools, supporting pupilsand their teachers. The dynamics of developing a researchprogramme were similar in principle to those alreadydiscussed, so I will focus more on the programme that sheresearched. Over time, she has developed interventions tohelp her in her task of giving individual help to junior-agedchildren with entrenched reading difficulties. Her methodsare largely based on the precision teaching model advocatedby Solity and Bull (1987). In this, her assumptions aboutthe learning of literacy are markedly different from thoseheld by Ann. As we shall see, however, these two teachers,working independently and from different starting positions,converged during the process of research and its attendanttutorial support on the importance of learner self-image.

At first Maggie wished to evaluate the programme that shewas using so successfully. In the process of firming up herresearch hypothesis, however, she was forced to lookbeyond the content of the programme. Was it the methodsthemselves, or her teaching style that made a difference?What did she actually transmit to her students during thelearning encounter? In what ways did the students changeas a result of the support they received? Guessing thatpositive changes in learner self-image may be at the heartof her success, she steeped herself in the literature onself-esteem.

This construct is perennially popular with teachers ofchildren with special needs. The ideas associated withenhancing self-esteem and the links with attainment have aseductive plausibility, and almost everyone wishes that theclaims made for the importance of the ideas are in fact true.Setting out to systematically test out the ideas, however, isfar from easy. As Marsh (1990) has pointed out, most of theresearch in the area is flawed in that it is based on a globalnotion of self-esteem rather than on the specific element oflearner self-image that is being addressed, and that themeasurement instruments used do not distinguish sufficientlythe multifaceted and hierarchical nature of the construct.Even the popular and influential work of Lawrence (1973,1985) does not give the practitioner much clue as to theactual dynamics of what is happening, and again self-esteemis taken as a global construct. Dissatisfied with much ofwhat she read, Maggie eventually focused on that part ofthe self-image known as self-efficacy, the belief as to howfar one is likely to succeed in particular tasks (see Schunk1987, Pajares 1996 and Bandura 1997).

Maggie’s research question, then, focused on those elementsof her programme that specifically set out to alter in a positivedirection the self-efficacy beliefs of her students. She cameto believe that although her systematic, step-by-step teachingmethods were important, there are many other similarsystems that might be equally efficacious. What she reallywanted to know was whether it was possible to break intothe negative loop of destructive self-belief evidenced bymany with entrenched reading difficulties, and what effecta more positive view would have on the learning behaviourof her pupils.

In her teaching encounters with the mixed age juniorchildren (6 years 10 months – 9 years 2 months, all withreading ages registering at 5 years or below), Maggiebuilt in elements aimed at increasing levels of perceivedself-efficacy. The sessions normally took place in an areaaway from the classroom, with no more than two childrenplus the support teacher. This allowed for the building of awarm and sympathetic relationship between the adult andthe individual child. In such a climate, risk taking isfacilitated; the child’s efforts are not open to public scrutiny.As children with low self-esteem and negative self-efficacybeliefs are often loath to risk further failure, this is anessential aspect of the relationship.

At first, some of the children involved spent most of theirtime in well-tried diversionary tactics, seeking to avoid thetask. One child persistently commented on the time, seemingvery anxious not to be late for lunch, or imagining that hewas missing playtime. Another child, in week one, twistedthe edge of her skirt in her hands throughout much of thesession and whispered her answers. Another ‘sat hunchedin his seat with arms tightly drawn into his waist. His eyeswere large and starey’.

The most vulnerable child leaned back in his chair, armsacross his chest, and responded to questions with ‘I don’tknow’. By the second week he was still leaning back in hischair, with his jumper wrapped around his head and face. Ittook several weeks for him to feel no longer impelled tosquirm in his chair, and read in an exaggerated baby voice,and then only from a familiar book that he had memorised.

These behaviours are almost certainly triggered by feelingsof insecurity and fear of failure. Whilst the children areinvesting so much time and psychological energy in suchface-saving tactics, there will be little energy left forlearning, no matter how expert the tuition. The situation isoften exacerbated because the child is unable to accept thepositive encouragement that he so dearly needs. The mostvulnerable child, when he achieved his ‘100 word certificate’,received a round of applause from his classmates. Hisreaction was to turn and run out of the room. As Hanko(1994) has pointed out, for discouraged children praise isinsufficient; they must be helped to re-attribute theirsuccesses to their own efforts, and overcome the effects ofself-consistency, the dynamic whereby we work very hardto maintain our self-image, even if it is a negative one.Change, even positive change, is sometimes just too risky.

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The programme utilised many games that both the adultand the child could become involved in and enjoy. Thisformat allowed for optimum learning conditions of highchallenge with low stress.

Alongside the cultivation of a warm and non-threateningclimate, attention had to be paid to pace. Discouragedchildren are likely to judge their own performance againstunattainable and/or distal goals. This often compoundspreviously held feelings of hopelessness or ‘I don’t careanyway’ bravado. The programmes format allowed forsmall challenges which, when achieved, provided thelearner with frequent, important feedback on progress andregular opportunities to celebrate success. The sort ofencouragement which asks for too much delayed gratification,– ‘If you do “x” then “y” will eventually result’ – is oflittle use to discouraged learners. They need to look at theimmediate, and understand that they contributed to theirown achievement: ‘You have achieved “x”; how did youmanage it, and how can you repeat it?’

The next element that typified the administration of theprogramme was ‘delegated control, of task difficulty’. Thechild is invited to choose the level of difficulty of the task.At first children may choose the easy or the familiar, butgradually, emboldened by success, they come to choosemore difficult and challenging tasks. As Maggie reports,‘Stress and anxiety are reduced both by giving individualsperceived control over the level of difficulty of learningchallenges and, by open recognition of the level of taskdifficulty by all concerned, through implied permission tofail.’

A crucial aspect of the programme was the use of prediction.In games, for example, the child is asked to predict howmany questions/words s/he will get right. Other children andthe responsible adult will also make predictions. The subjectchild will often begin by systematically underestimatingher/his success; this again gives permission to fail, and theopportunity to celebrate success. Other children will normallymake a higher prediction (once they have been taught toforgo the opportunity for teasing), which has the effect ofsupporting the child as s/he displays the confidence of thelearner’s peer group in her/his ability to succeed.

In the programme, the administrator, paradoxically, alwayspredicts a success rate well below that of her actual estimationof the child’s expected success rate, which, in the contextof the mastery learning principles employed in the programme,should always be 100 per cent. The adult’s consistently lowprediction rate seems to be counterintuitive, and flies in theface of advice arising from research on expectancy effectsand self-fulfilling prophecies. Surprisingly, however, thistactic seems to be supportive of the student. Maggiereviewed a significant body of research which sheds lighton this puzzling phenomenon. It appears that the messageswhich imply high expectations are transmitted not primarilythrough the words we use, but through non-verbal cues.The teacher’s facial expression, her tone of voice and herposture combine to relay to the child that s/he is expected

to succeed; the verbal predictions are seen as a form ofbanter in a game situation. The effect is that the child ismotivated to ‘prove the teacher wrong’, and in fact thecombination of teaching method and non-verbal signalsconveying confidence in the child’s ability to do so combineto make it very likely that the child will exceed theteacher’s stated prediction, giving pleasure to the child andgiving the teacher ample opportunity to congratulate thechild.

There are some, no doubt, who will feel uneasy with thepatent inauthenticity of the verbal interchange. The evidence,however, supports the view that there is a kind of ‘I knowthat you know that I know’ understanding developingbetween the adult and child in which they are jointlyconspiring to inject mutual involvement into the teachingencounter, which is mutually motivating. The interchangesinvolved also strike me as very similar to those employednaturally by parents when encouraging their very youngchildren to develop in a whole range of endeavours: ‘Nowlet’s see if you can take FOUR steps, one … two … three… FOUR! Wonderful!’, all delivered with mock surprisebut genuine pride.

The final technique which was specifically aimed at theself-efficacy construct was the eliciting of positive ‘I’statements from the child. The aim was to allow the childto regularly hear her/himself say, and mean, such things a‘I can’, I will be able to’ and ‘I want to do it myself’. Thisis partly achieved by setting challenges that the child willbe able to achieve, and underestimating verbally the child’sexpected level of success, as described above. It is importanthere that the programme administrator ensure that challengesare only made when they are likely to be met by confident,positive ‘I’ statements. Further, the adult reinforces anypositive self-referential verbal comments that the childrenmake about themselves. As Maggie explains:

The presumption behind this particular interactiontechnique (which applies to the ‘control’ and ‘prediction’techniques) is that, by hearing themselves regularlyverbalising positive ‘I can’ statements – which in thepast they would probably not even have dared to think,let alone speak – individuals will be more directly, andmore powerfully, influenced to alter negative learnerself-images and self-beliefs than by hearing assertive‘You can’ statements from adults.

The results that Maggie reports are again small-scale, yetencouraging. Most, though not all, of the children madesignificant gains in their reading attainment. All, however,made positive gains of some magnitude in self-image andself-efficacy measures. The data here were collected frominterviews, the use of self-report measures, from observationsand from the collection of comments from other involvedadults. Some other interesting findings emerge. Onegirl’s rate of improvement accelerated after the end ofthe intervention. This holds out hope for those whoseperformance had not started to improve. Perhaps byaltering their beliefs about their ability to learn, we may be

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making it possible for them to make greater use of futurelearning encounters. In so doing we may be belatedlyopening them to the ‘Matthew Effect’ (see Stanovich1986), whereby ‘to them that have, yet more will be given’.If this is so, then, we would expect the results of theintervention to be increasingly apparent even after the endof the intervention. Maggie also collected pre- and post-intervention scores on a standardised test of number skills.Half of the children had also made significant improvementsin this area. The dynamics whereby a positive change inself-efficacy beliefs and attainment achieved in one areamay be generalised to other areas of functioning would beworthy of further research.

One of the questions asked before and after interventionconcerned the child’s view as to how well s/he wouldeventually be able to read as an adult. Maggie closes herreport with this excerpt from one of these interviews:

At pre-data interview, Joseph, the anxious child with‘startled rabbit’ eyes, was asked how good he thought hewould be at reading when he was grown up. Hunched inhis chair and whispering his reply, he said he thought hewould be ‘Not very good …’ and chose a sad face torepresent his feelings, because ‘…When Mum getsbabies and they can read and I can’t it makes me feelsad’.

At post-data interview Joseph immediately chose a‘smiley’ face in response to the same question. Asked togive a reason for his choice Joseph sat upright, made fulleye contact with the author, puffed up his chest andreplied ‘Because … I might not be very, very good, it’sjust that I know I’m going to be good.’

The reading future seems hopeful for Joseph, for, asHenry Ford once said; ‘whether you think you can orwhether you think you can’t, you’re probably right’.

Discussion and conclusions

These two pieces of teacher research give pointers, then,when considering those for whom the literacy strategy maynot prove to be appropriate. A combination of theapproaches would indeed be powerful, so that childrenwould be given positive attitudes in the first place, and asafe place to renew their confidence should discouragementset in.

There remain, of course problems in generalising thesefindings. People may well ask how far the encouragingresults shown were a function of the commitment andpersonalities of the teachers involved. Or how far there wasa ‘Hawthorne Effect’, whereby change and novelty themselvesare responsible for measurable improvements. (Much associal scientists are wary of Hawthorne Effects, I’m suremany teachers would welcome them on a regular basis, asmaintaining motivation so that good teaching has a space inwhich to become effective is a perennial problem.) The

teachers involved were very aware of these problems, anddid all that was possible to control for them. It is clear,though, that the elements which constitute their teachingpersonas did indeed affect the outcomes. Without theirability to develop warm and trusting relationships, withouttheir indefatigable belief in the potential of each child, andwithout their ability to demonstrate the depth of their concernand so engage the reluctant learner, they could not haveworked so effectively in the affective domain of children’sfears and insecurities. What they have shown, however, isthat these qualities can be acquired and practised by others.They have also provided structured programmes that allow,indeed demand, the cultivation of those qualities. From theevidence presented in these two studies it can be seen thatmastering the mechanical aspects of the programmes is notsufficient to achieve gains. The relational aspects of thelearning encounter must also be consciously developed. InMaggie’s study, one child appeared not to be as eager toplay the games as he had been. On investigation it appearedthat a classroom assistant, who had been provided with thematerials, was enthusiastically winning all the games, andonly adding to her pupils’ sense of incompetence.

The teacher research reported here, then, started withpractitioners reflecting on their practice and takingdeliberate and systematic steps to bring about improvements,using the available research literature, and giving dueconcern to their own research methods. Their findings,while not claiming to be totally generalisable, will certainlyprovide signposts and perhaps inspiration to other teachersfacing similar situations. Their outcomes certainly justifythe notion of professional development as the engagementin researching and improving one’s own practice ratherthan being the recipient of competences handed down fromabove.

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CorrespondenceJeff LewisFaculty of Art and EducationUniversity of PlymouthDouglas AvenueExmouthDevon EX8 2AT

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