Editorial.
Rennie, Jennifer
Welcome to the October edition of AJLL. The issue comprises a
variety of articles that report on national and international literacy
research. In the first article, Text Complexity in the U.S. Common Core
State Standards: A Linguistic Critique, Zhihui Fang uses systemic
functional linguistics to critique text complexity in the common core
state standards (CCSS) in the United States. It is suggested that the
goals of the CCSS can best be attained when students have opportunities
to work with texts of sufficient richness and appropriate complexity
whilst being supported through the 'enactment of linguistically
informed literacy pedagogies'. The second article, Direct
Instruction fit for purpose: applying a metalinguistic toolkit to
enhance creative writing in the early secondary years, Sally Humphrey
and Susan Feez also within the field of systemic functional linguistics
report on a study with English teachers from four Australian secondary
schools. They describe a pedagogy developed in collaboration with Year 7
and 8 teachers that makes visible to students the specialised discourse
of creative writing. The third paper, How is Disciplinary Literacy
Addressed in the Science Classrooms? A Singaporean Case Study, by
Kok-Sing Tang continues with the theme of specialised discourse. It
reports on a study which examined the classroom practices of two physics
and two chemistry teachers in Singapore in order to better understand
how disciplinary literacy is currently addressed in the teaching of
secondary school science. The fourth paper, NAPLAN data on writing: a
picture of accelerating negative change, by Clare Wyatt-Smith and
Christine Jackson situates the National Assessment Program-Literacy and
Numeracy (NAPLAN) in an historical context and argues for a sharpened
focus on writing standards as benchmarks in NAPLAN and how these relate
to achievement standards in the Australian Curriculum. The final paper,
Emergent Reading Comprehension: Social Imagination and
Kindergarteners' Readings of a Wordless Picture Book, by Judith
Lysaker, Kelly Shaw and Zaira Arvelo Alicia, reports on a cross-case
analysis of six young children's wordless book readings. They show
how the use of social imagination appears to be critical in making sense
of a story and that understanding the minds of others leads to more
complex thinking during the reader-text transaction. Implications for
classroom practice and research are discussed.
We hope that you enjoy reading these articles and look forward to
receiving contributions from teachers and researchers.
