EFA Global Monitoring Report 2006
Effective literacy teaching
Concept paper
Anne McGill Franzen PhD.
International Reading Association
(mcgillfranzen@aol.com; amcgillf@utk.edu)
Submitted by:
Jennifer Bowser
International Reading Association
(jbowser@reading.org)
May 2, 2005
1
Effective literacy teaching emphasizes helping people to become independent
life-long learners, yet many education systems slip into a narrow focus on literacy as a
mechanical, word-centered process. Decoding and word recognition are, arguably
straightforward to teach and assess. The literacy skills required in today’s societies,
however, require an early start in processing skills to effectively evaluate, analyze and
articulate information in oral, print, or graphic form. These skills require not only the
fundamental literacy skills of pronouncing words but also, fluent, automatic and strategic
comprehension of text. During January to June 2005, the International Reading
Association (IRA) will be engaged in a 3-country research project to support teachers’
knowledge about the literacy process. Teachers and non-formal facilitators are being
encouraged to demonstrate and model reading, writing and communicative processes, and
through diagnostic teaching and more qualitative assessment of children’s literacy
development, target appropriate strategies for instruction. Briefly, IRA researchers are
examining whether professional training for teachers in diagnostic techniques will help
the participants develop a broader understanding of the process of becoming literate that,
in turn, will lead them to base instruction on the literacy strategies learners need.
Diagnostic teaching is the “process of diagnosing student abilities, needs and
objectives and prescribing requisite learning activities” (Retrieved online from :
www.ibe.unesco.org/international/DocServices/Thesaurus/ 00001796.htm). Through
diagnostic teaching, the teacher monitors the understanding and performance of students
before teaching the lesson, while teaching, and after teaching the lesson. Diagnostic
teaching can inform teachers of the effectiveness of their lessons with individuals, small
groups of students, or whole classes, depending on the instruments used. Within a
diagnostic teaching perspective, assessment and instruction are interacting and
continuous processes, with assessment providing feedback to the teacher on the efficacy
of prior instruction, and new instruction building on the learning that students
demonstrate (Guskey, 2003).
Teachers may evaluate student learning on the spot, or collect data at different
points in time and compare progress over units of instruction. Moment-by-moment
assessments allow teachers to tap into students’ developing understandings about reading
and students’ use of strategic processing to understand and remember text, and enable
teachers to correct misconceptions immediately. Observations recorded over time allow
teachers to identify patterns of development and document learning gains. Both “on-therun” assessments and systematic records of teachers’ observations of students’ learning
over time can supplement the more quantitative and summative assessments that the
ministry or school mandates and are more likely than end-of-term assessments to develop
teachers’ capacity to improve the quality and appropriateness of instruction.
Diagnostic assessments are themselves educative for teachers. By introducing
the concept of diagnostic teaching and the monitoring techniques to support such
instruction, teachers will be better able to recognize reading as a developmental process
and target instruction to meet the needs of individuals and groups. As students progress
toward reading proficiency, they gain control over different components of the reading
process. Yet, not all students will be at the same level of proficiency or need the same
instruction (Spear-Swerling, 2004). Students progress through overlapping stages in a
developmental sequence that leads to proficiency in reading. Starting with “visual-cue”
2
word recognition, wherein students memorize the configuration of words, to increasing
awareness of phonology and the way sounds map onto letters in an alphabetic language,
students gradually consolidate their use of larger letter patterns to recognize words
effortlessly and automatically. At the “automatic word recognition” stage, students are
able to orally read text fluently, with speed and prosody. As students become fluent
readers, they are likely to devote more attention to comprehension, routinely using
background knowledge and strategic processing to understand and remember text. By
the time students reach “reading proficiency,” their reading comprehension equals or
surpasses what they can glean from listening to lecture presentations. Nonetheless, not all
students progress through these stages at the same rate, and in any given classroom, there
will be students who need different kinds of support from their teachers. For example,
some students may be able to decode words but only slowly and with great effort. Others
may be fluent word callers but lack vocabulary and the ability to read strategically for
comprehension. Thus, students’ vocabulary, background knowledge, fluency, interest
and motivation, as well as the ability to accurately identify words, all influence their
reading comprehension.
Through professional development, teachers will be able to recognize the
importance of the various components of the reading process and identify and use
assessment and instruction to support the development of these components. Teachers
who participate in the diagnostic teaching workshops will have a more elaborated view of
the reading process, beyond students’ ability to decode words and memorize text. In
particular, teachers will recognize the importance of automatic word recognition, that is,
the ability to read high frequency words and phonetically regular words accurately and
fluently, and the importance of strategic reading, that is, the ability to make inferences
and monitor and repair understanding when reading different genres of text.
The diagnostic teaching techniques presented in the workshops cover the entire
continua of reading development. Teachers will be able to demonstrate how to assess and
support students’ emerging reading behaviors, such as concepts about print and basic
decoding, among the youngest or least experienced readers. By using a fluency rating
rubric, such as that developed for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and
determining students’ words correct per minute on an oral reading of a short passage,
teachers also will be able to identify more experienced students’ fluency and put into
practice activities to support automatic word recognition, such as dramatic readings or
rereadings of text. Teachers will demonstrate how to assess and instruct students in
comprehension strategies before, during and after reading. Before reading, teachers will
assess whether students can preview, set a purpose for reading, and bring prior
knowledge to bear on the topic of the reading. During reading, teachers will assess
students’ ability to develop predictions and questions, and monitor text understanding.
After reading, teachers will assess whether students can remember or summarize what
they read. Teachers will learn as well to analyze and interpret non-traditional ways of
processing and responding to text, such as verbal protocols and drawings that make
visible the thinking of students for teachers to evaluate.
As teachers learn to administer and interpret these diagnostic assessments, they
themselves will develop a more elaborated understanding of the reading process. In order
to assess comprehension of narrative text and the adequacy of students’ retellings, for
example, teachers must themselves learn to identify the story elements of character, plot,
3
setting, problem and resolution. Likewise, in order to evaluate whether students are able
to navigate nonfiction texts, teachers first must be able to recognize the organizational
patterns in particular informational texts, for example, cause and effect, or comparison
and contrast, and then identify and teach the comprehension strategies that students are
not using.
Thus far, two weeks of workshops have been conducted by IRA volunteers for a
small number of teachers, ministry, and university collaborators in Winneba, Ghana,
followed by a week of classroom observations; and one week of workshops and
representative classroom observations in Njoro, Kenya. Related research on the use of
diagnostic techniques to inform teaching in African countries is limited. The Improving
Educational Quality (IEQ) Project, a partnership among the American Institutes for
Research (AIR, Save the Children Federation and the field offices of Mali (Hutchison,
1997), Malawi (QUEST, nd), Uganda, and Ghana created training manuals for
continuous assessment and several research tools for observing classrooms, keeping track
of textbooks, and interviewing local school faculty (AIR, 1996). Recently, the SubRegional Conference on Assessment (2003) published reports prepared by participating
countries in IEQ projects. A feasibility study in Malawi (Mchazime, 2003), reported that
continuous assessment can be used as a teaching tool, but challenges, particularly large
class sizes, mitigate against successful implementation. In Swaziland, the prognosis was
less promising: continuous assessment did not reduce the drop-out rate or retention in
grade (Mkhonta, 2003). Unless teachers see assessment as a professional responsibility,
the report cautioned, efforts to implement it will not work. Further, the context must be
“sympathetic” —teachers need professional development to learn how to do it, they need
time to carry out assessments, and they need access to supplies and materials
Similarly, preliminary reports from the field suggest that teachers in the IRA
project are most receptive to those techniques that can be implemented in large classes
with few textbook resources, that are directly related to the content of course syllabi, and
that can be adapted to local language and resources with modest preparation and
planning. University collaborators in teacher preparation have thus far been able to
maintain a schedule of classroom observations and teacher support in the intervening
weeks between workshops. IRA researchers and university collaborators are also
examining curriculum and textbooks as contexts that can support or constrain capacity to
implement diagnostic teaching practices and the development of strategic reading by
learners. Early results of IRA’s qualitative data and observations in Ghana and Kenya
will be shared in case study and summary form at the 4th Pan-African Reading for All
Conference, “Literacy for Sustainable Development,” in Ezulwini, Swaziland, August,
2005.
Works Cited
Boison, C. (2003). Development and uses of a 100 high-frequency sight word
recognition list for children with reading failure. In A. Arua (Ed.), Reading for all in
Africa (pp. 77-79). Newark, DE: IRA.
4
Guskey, T. R. (2003). Using data to improve student achievement. Educational
Leadership, 60 (5), 6-11.
Spear-Swerling, L. (2004). A roadmap for understanding reading disability and other
reading problems: Origins, prevention and intervention. In R. Ruddell & N. Unrau
(Eds.), Theoretical models & processes of reading (pp. 517-573). Newark, DE: IRA.
Hutchison, J. (1997). Linking literacy assessment and the curriculum in the Malian
school. IEQ. Available online: www.ieq.org
Mchazime, H. (2003). Integrating primary school curriculum and continuous assessment
in Malawi. Learner Assessment for Improved Educational Quality: An Exchange of
Current Ideas and Best Practices (pp. 41-49). Paper presented at the Sub-Regional
Conference on Assessment, Livingston, Zambia: USAID.
Mkhonta, L. (2003). Continuous assessment at primary school in Swaziland. Learner
Assessment for Improved Educational Quality: An Exchange of Current Ideas and Best
Practices (pp. 35-40). Paper presented at the Sub-Regional Conference on Assessment,
Livingston, Zambia: USAID.
AIR (September, 1996). IEQ Multiple Method Evaluations. Available online:
www.ieq.org
QUEST for Learning. (nd). Research Component: IEQ Project in Malawi: A partnership
between Malawi Institute of Education and Save the Children/US. Pupil Assessment
Manual: Chichewa, English & Mathematics. Available online: www.ieq.org
5