Shaping reading pedagogy and assessment for sustainable learning

The conditions of reading acquisition in contexts of low literacy. A child’s cultural, linguistic and cognitive distance from school language can make comprehension the critical issue in reading acquisition. Assessments of... [ view full abstract ]

The conditions of reading acquisition in contexts of low literacy.
A child’s cultural, linguistic and cognitive distance from school language can make comprehension the critical issue in reading acquisition. Assessments of reading development tend to encounter ceiling effects in phonological skills within the first few years of schooling; but the gap in comprehension subsequently widens between advantaged and disadvantaged students in relation to school literacy.
The purpose of this paper is to show what kind of pedagogy, from early grades onwards, can result in "beating the odds" for children in disadvantaged contexts. It draws on socio-linguistic theory, comprehension research and research into literacy development in a second language to show why the discontinuities between literate and social languages can affect the development of the cognitions necessary for word and text-level comprehension in the early grades; and the registers and content of academic genres from upper primary.
The development of comprehension bears on poverty reduction and access to sustainable futures because comprehension is associated with school success. The evidence is strong that particular home environments promote the kind of literacy that results in school success. However, research also shows that the success practices of such homes are replicable in schools in high poverty, low literacy contexts – not only in advanced economies but also in poor countries of Africa, Asia and the Pacific.

Aligning reading assessment with national goals Monitoring Trends in Educational Growth (MTEG), initiated in 2012, is an international assessment program especially appropriate to those countries where education systems are in... [ view full abstract ]

Aligning reading assessment with national goals
Monitoring Trends in Educational Growth (MTEG), initiated in 2012, is an international assessment program especially appropriate to those countries where education systems are in rapid development. Key aims of the program are to provide policy-relevant information about learning and the factors related to it, focusing on the needs expressed by the country; and to track growth in learning over time. Developed in partnership with the Afghanistan Ministry of Education, MTEG was administered at Grade 6 in 2013, and will be administered at Grade 3 later in 2015. The assessment of reading at Grade 3 draws on the five components of reading recommended in the 2000 US NRP Report, but with a strong emphasis on listening and reading comprehension. The MTEG approach in the assessment of reading is distinguished from that of other reading assessment programs that operate in low income countries: the focus of these programs is largely, sometimes exclusively, on decoding. MTEG reading supports the Afghan national curriculum emphases, not only on the development of literacy skills, but also more broadly on promoting and strengthening children’s ability to think and reason – abilities integral to reading comprehension. The aims articulated in the official curriculum are directed at bringing about social change, reducing poverty, and creating a more stable society. This paper will outline the MTEG reading assessment framework with particular reference to its application at Grade 3, present available results, and discuss issues arising from this approach to reading assessment in fragile situations.

Monitoring reading globally for the post 2015 development goals The Global Education Monitoring Centre of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER-GEM) has initiated the development of a set of learning metrics.... [ view full abstract ]

Monitoring reading globally for the post 2015 development goals
The Global Education Monitoring Centre of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER-GEM) has initiated the development of a set of learning metrics. The intention is to develop a means of measuring and reporting on learning outcomes that will support the measurement needs related to the Post-2015 development goals. Initial activity was through what was referred to as the Learning Metrics Partnership (LMP), which was explored as a joint initiative of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and ACER-GEM.
The ACER-GEM thinking aims to develop a set of nationally and internationally comparable learning metrics in mathematics and reading, and then facilitate and support their use for monitoring purposes, in partnership with interested countries.
The learning metrics will support national governments to effectively measure and monitor learning outcomes for policy purposes. Rather than involving the development of a new test or testing program, this initiative will support the use of existing assessments of various kinds (including citizen-led, regional and national assessments) by assembling a pool of calibrated items that could be used to facilitate measurement and reporting of local learning outcomes against common metrics.
A key output of this work would be a common learning metric for reading, spanning early primary school to early secondary school.
In conceptualising the reading metric, comprehension is represented as the central developmental continuum, with other components of early reading – such as decoding skills – mapped differentially according to the linguistic specificities of different languages.

Intergovernmental negotiations on the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals will conclude in September 2015 and it looks likely that there will be an education goal underpinned by targets focused on improved and equitable... [ view full abstract ]

Intergovernmental negotiations on the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals will conclude in September 2015 and it looks likely that there will be an education goal underpinned by targets focused on improved and equitable learning outcomes. This will give new emphasis to reading development, as a foundation for successful learning and the futures it makes possible. To date, the recommendations of the 2000 US National Reading Panel (NRP) have played a large part in shaping ideas about reading pedagogy and assessment for children in developing as well as developed contexts. Although the NRP recommended treating comprehension as one of the five essentials of reading pedagogy, early reading interventions have been dominated by decoding. Further attention is warranted as to whether that emphasis is likely to be the most effective way to repair the main observed problem in developing contexts, namely comprehension deficits. To what extent is the framing of solutions for struggling readers in advanced economies applicable to contexts in which the gulf between home and school environment in culture, language and learning is much deeper and more pervasive?
This symposium assembles a number of studies that argue the importance of comprehension in reading pedagogy and assessment if improved learning outcomes from schooling are to be achieved. It addresses the subtheme questions concerning which assumptions and principles should underpin pedagogy and assessment for sustainable futures, and what the relationship should be between international assessments and local conditions and priorities.