Editorial introduction.

Rivalland, Judith ; Rohl, Mary ; Statkus, Susan 等

We feel this issue of the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy is a very important one. The theme focuses on international concerns about literacy development in the middle and upper years of primary school and how classroom teachers might address these concerns.

For the past 10 years, major policy platforms of governments in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States have been related to improvement of literacy standards. These policies initially focussed on improving literacy education and providing effective early intervention in the early years of school (Literacy for All, DEETYA, 1998; The National Literacy Strategy Framework for Teaching, DFEE, 1998; National Literacy Strategy, Ministry of Education (NZ), 2002; Reading First, National Reading Panel, 2000). Government policy makers claim there is evidence to suggest that these policies have increased the number of children who are successful in learning initial literacy in their first three years at school (National Report on Schooling in Australia, 2001). However, increased accountability and reporting has also made it possible to consider whether or not these increases in early literacy development are being maintained by children as they move through the middle and upper primary years of schooling. Such an examination of the available data has led to concerns about the reduced rate of on-going development in literacy for a number of children at this time of their lives. Teachers also report that many children arrive at secondary school without the prerequisite skills to access literacy in the different curriculum areas. We have invited educators from New Zealand, UK, USA and Australia to provide an international discussion about this topic and to offer some views as to how teachers might support children with their literacy learning in the middle and upper primary years.

McNaughton, Lai, MacDonald and Ferry, provide an account of a large-scale research project being conducted in New Zealand to examine the effective teaching of comprehension for children from 8 to 12 years of age. The research is based on the premise that to make shifts in comprehension outcomes for children who perform at the lower end of school literacy assessments, high quality teaching practices need to be put in place and school communities need to develop shared ideas, beliefs and literacy practices. Qualitative and quantitative data was collected to provide baseline data using repeated assessment measures as well as classroom observations of teaching. Schools with the highest proportion of indigenous and Pacific Island students were selected for the study. The baseline data shows that in these schools the cohorts were 2 stanines below the national averages, and there was a relatively flat line in stanines across year levels, suggesting that there was limited development as children moved from one year to the next. Through analysis of patterns of error, the preliminary findings of this three-year project indicate that frequently the children use too much prediction and guessing when attempting to comprehend texts. Although the teachers were observed providing explicit teaching of comprehension, it appears that more time needed to be spent on supporting enjoyment and the construction of meaning, with a specific focus on the use of evidence within texts to support these processes.

Raphael, Florio-Ruane and George continue the discussion about comprehension by providing a conceptual framework for literacy instruction in the middle and upper primary years. They emphasise the complexity of literacy instruction and encourage teachers to ignore simplistic solutions, while at the same time taking a principled approach to keeping children engaged once they have learned to read. They exemplify this discussion through the Book Club Plus program, which has been designed around the following four principles: language use is fundamental to thinking, the need to increase the role of literature in reading instruction, literacy education should prepare students to live and work in a diverse, democratic society, and narrative plays a central role in understanding and sharing our understandings with others. An interesting account of how to use literature to challenge children's understanding of texts, and the world more generally, provides valuable insights into the issues around maintaining and developing children's interest in literacy. Rich examples of how teachers plan to shape children's literacy learning through evoking responses to literature demonstrate how we might meet the diverse needs of literacy learners in the middle and upper years of primary school.

Through an examination of the differing profiles of children who failed a fourth grade state reading test in the United States, Sheila Valencia and Marsha Buly extend the discussion about complexity in literacy learning. They describe a study in which a range of qualitative and quantitative assessment tools made it possible to identify six different groups of children who had similar profiles. These different clusters of children were identified as: automatic word callers; struggling word callers; word stumblers; slow comprehenders, slow word callers; and disabled readers. An analysis of the different profiles of struggling readers shows how a 'one size fits all' approach to supporting children who have difficulty in the middle primary years is unlikely to help all children. This account of the literacy difficulties children face demonstrates just how important it is for teachers to look beneath test scores when devising appropriate programs for children. The evidence confirms the importance of teachers in the middle years of primary school devising instruction that includes multi-level, flexible, small group learning opportunities to provide guided practice in applying appropriate strategies that will meet the needs and characteristics of all learners in the class.

The National Literacy Strategy in the United Kingdom was funded in 1998 to support the development and improvement of reading and writing outcomes for children age 5 to 11. The targets set by the government have been met in the area of reading for both girls and boys, however writing still lags behind the improvement shown for reading. Benchmark data in some states of Australia also suggest a similar pattern of development with writing outcomes lagging behind reading outcomes and a flattening out of results as children move through the primary school and into secondary schools. Laura Huxford discusses the strategies that have been developed in the UK to give teachers the opportunity to understand more about how children develop as writers. She outlines a framework that is being used to capture progression in writing across the primary years. This framework provides a focus on textual organisation, the structural features of writing, sentence structure, vocabulary choice, grammar and spelling. Teachers will find this systematic account of how to support children to further develop their writing once they have actually begun to write, a very useful way to reconsider how to provide a balanced writing program. It is also evident that it may be necessary, at times, to focus different groups of children on different aspects of writing in order to meet the diverse needs of children in one classroom.

Finally, Marie Quinn extends the above discussion of writing development by providing a fine-grained account of how the development of a metalanguage for discussing specific grammatical knowledge can assist growth in children's writing. This fascinating account of classroom literacy practices in a Year 6 class demonstrates how teachers can support children as they struggle to learn new ways of writing. The study suggests that knowledgeable teachers play a pivotal role in helping children learn to write effectively. It also provides evidence that teachers can assist their students, even those who struggle, by learning more about the linguistic demands of texts themselves, and that at appropriate times children can benefit from explicit instruction about the grammar needed to successfully shape their intended meanings in written texts.

In this issue, we have attempted to provide an international perspective on literacy issues of concern in the middle and upper primary years. We hope that you will find this international perspective useful and that it gives you some new insights into the challenges of ensuring the ongoing development of children's literacy as they move through their primary years. We wish you all the very best for the end of the year and hope that you have an enjoyable start to 2005.