U.S. and Australian Views of the Teaching of Reading - Literature review Example

REVIEW OF U.S. and AUSTRALIAN VIEWS of the TEACHING OF READING 1. Introduction Generally, learning to read is essential to both children and adult’s education goal as it open up new opportunities and knowledge that they can use to do deal with the requirements of modern life such as reading manuals, newspapers, classified listings and so on (Pang et al. 2003, p.6). More importantly, people today are living in a society where school-based learning is founded on the development of reading skills (Wolfe & Neville 2004, p.1) thus lack of reading skill can have a strong negative effect in many aspect of our life. Research shows that a child who does not learn the reading basic early cannot learn other skills and is unlikely to prosper in school or progress later in life (American Federation of Teachers 2004, p.5). The problem in reading achievement is so severe that the National Commission for Education in the United States filed their recommendations as early as 1995 that all children, starting at their early years in school, must achieve a good grasp of literacy through reading (Riley 1996, p.1). This is because poor reading ability is connected to low academic level based on the results of several studies showing that reading ability is associated with school performance (Bloom & Perfetti 1976 in Riley 1996, p.6). In a study conducted in the U.S. in year 2000, eighty percent of students identified as having learning difficulties are poor readers (Louden (2000) cited in Department of Education, Science, Training 2005, and p.5). The “No Child Left Behind” campaign during the time of President George W. Bush was impelled by the nearly 70 percent of students in grade schools failing the national reading test (Jorge W. Bush 2001, p.4). In a research conducted by Flowers (2007, p.1-5), African American students achievement in reading is below the level of their peers. Some of the issues found were failures in early language and literacy development during their preschool years and inadequate guidance from teachers and parents. In Australia, the government move to conduct a national inquiry about student’s literacy development was encouraged by the results of international assessments in reading literacy conducted in years 2000 and 2003 where almost 30 percent of students are not meeting the literacy skills required for further education. The result of 1996 National School English Literacy Survey for instance, indicates that the number of students in Year 3 and 5 who are not performing well in school are having difficulties in reading (Masters & Forster 1997b, cited in Department of Education, Science, Training 2005, p.6). 1.2 The United States View of the Teaching of Reading The American view of the teaching of reading was influenced by a research-based data gathered by the National Reading Panel, which was created by the U.S. Congress in consultation with the Secretary of Education in 1997. The 1999 report of the NRP shows that teaching children to manipulate phonemes in words was highly effective and applicable to all learners and varying teaching conditions. The findings suggest that children can read more effectively when they are aware of phonemic thus teachers are encouraged to use phonics instruction to help beginners understand the relationship of letters to sounds Based on the metal-analysis conducted, systematic phonics instruction enhances reading of 6th graders particularly those that are having difficulty learning to read (NRP 1999, p.7). In the United States, phonemic awareness instructions can be taught and learned thus with the use of some technique such as phoneme isolation, identity, categorization, blending, segmentation, deletion, addition, and substitution students learn to notice, think about, and manipulate sounds in spoken language. Phonemic awareness is of great importance to classroom teachers as it also helps students learn to spell. Along with phonemes manipulation using the letters of the alphabet, phonemic awareness becomes more valuable as it helps students read words more effectively. Similarly, learning to segment sounds with letters help students learn to spell words. Focusing on one or two types of phoneme manipulation enhances the effectiveness of phonemic awareness instruction because the other types of manipulation technique will not add to confusion (National Institute for Literacy 2006, p.6). The United States educational system recognizes the importance of reading practice to fluency thus different instructional approaches were formulated. These include teacher or parent guided Repeated Oral Reading procedures to enable effective word recognition, fluency, and comprehension in all grade levels. Another is Independent Silent Reading that requires minimal guidance to encourage students to read more independently. In terms of comprehension, vocabulary and text will be incorporated in oral reading instructions. The rationale is to improve comprehensive skills by teaching students to use some strategy whenever they encounter difficulties in what they read. Since students who received effective strategy instructions are more likely to have high score in standardized test, teachers should strive to teach their student reading strategies they can use effectively (Bergeron et al., 2003, p.10). Although students may find these strategies incidentally on their own, formal instructions can be more effective particularly when their teacher demonstrate such strategies until such time they can master it (NRP 1999, p.13). The true measure of reading performance according to McCormack & Pasquarelli (2009, p.1) is when they are on their own thus enabling children to read strategically is very important. Independently, children can decode and decipher unknown words using strategies learned from their teacher. The NRP report in 2000 favours reading strategies than reading volume because there was no evidence to support the idea that reading more improve reading skills. However, this does not mean that the report is discouraging children to read but rather emphasizing that guided reading and learning reading strategies is more effective based on evidence (Hiebert 2009, p.31). Teaching of reading in America recognizes the importance of teacher preparation and comprehension strategies instruction. Given that teaching reading comprehension is complex, teachers are required to a have full knowledge of the content that will be presented in text and strategies themselves. In addition, they must determine which strategy work best for their students. In line with these teaching requirements, teacher education program is required and pre-service teachers must gain more knowledge through guided teaching and other theories and methods. Similarly, practicing teachers are required to continue their education or acquire in-service education. The rationale for these requirements is the fact the professionally developed teachers generate more student achievement (NRP 1999, p.16). Teaching of reading in American schools also recognizes the importance of computer technology for reading instructions. This is because most the studies conducted shows positive results such as speech recognition, hypertext, and word processing. It may be also possible to enhance and reading and comprehension using multimedia presentations and Internet applications (NRP 1999, p.18). In summary, the American government and educators believe that direct teaching of decoding, comprehension, phoneme awareness instruction, systematic and explicit instruction, more frequent exposure to various texts, independent reading, vocabulary instruction, comprehension strategies, and frequent writing can have a positive impact of students reading ability. In addition, teaching reading is complex and requires considerable knowledge and skills. The success of every student therefore depends on his or her teacher’s ability to teach. The classroom demands direct, systematic, and explicit instructions and therefore more teacher preparation is required (American Federation of Teachers 2004, p.11). Take for example the issue of poor reading abilities of African American students based on the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress and the 2002 Educational Longitudinal Study. Results of both study suggests that black eight grader’s reading scale score is far below compared to average white students of the same grade level. Although there are a number of individual and social factors contributing to black student’s poor reading performance, teacher quality is still a major contributing factor in black student’s underachievement. According to Flowers (2007, p.425), teacher’s knowledge, values, and skills influences American student’s achievement thus teacher must be very familiar with content and able to employ the best strategy to enhance students learning. For instance, phonemic awareness training is more effective in small groups and the time spent teaching children to read is influential to their success. This means teachers are not only expected to be skilled but willing to spend more quality time with their students. Teacher quality is a nationwide issue in the United States because of the significant impact it can bring to learning and overall students school effectiveness. For this reason, the common view in the United States is to improve teacher education. A reform in teacher education that would make the teaching profession a job with a research-base and formal body of knowledge, fully prepared, and fully certified with certain professional standard (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner 2005, p.40). 1.3 The Australian View of the Teaching of Reading Since the key policy for the Australian Government is to focus on activities that would enhance and sustain improvement in the literary and numeracy skills of their students, the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy or NITL. The aim of this inquiry is to find the real level of teaching of reading in Australian schools, identify students with reading difficulties and assess reading proficiency of all students in general. In addition, the objective of this inquiry is to find and evaluate teacher education and preparation in delivering reading instructions. The details of these objectives have been affected by a number of Australian academics and reading researchers that are concern with how reading is being taught in Australian Schools and can be considered a general view of teaching of reading in the country. Their view asserts that the old whole-language approach to the teaching of reading is no longer applicable as evidenced by student’s poor reading skills due to useless teaching practices that were generally influenced by the predominant approach. Australian believes that its young citizens are valuable in its social and economic prosperity but this is not possible if they lack the level of literacy required. The most effective way to realize this aspiration is to give them quality schooling. However, as mentioned earlier, results of international assessment of reading literacy shows that a high percentage of Australian students are low achievers in reading or do not meet the minimum performance standards of reading to effectively participate in further schooling. Similar to the United States, the Australians accepted the idea that early and subsequent literacy instruction in school should help students acquire knowledge in the alphabetic system, decode new words, master vocabulary, and remember meanings of spoken language presented in text. Although it may not be a sufficient condition for the teaching of reading, systematic and explicit phonics coupled with direct instruction is accepted as the most effective approach for children with or without reading problems (Department of Education, Science, and Training 2005, p.12). In actual teaching, there are number of considerations for effective teaching practices particularly in children’s early years. Australian recognizes that effective teaching for children with reading difficulties should involve development of reading competencies and quality teaching. Reading competencies include phonological knowledge and skills in identifying a word and re-reading of text to enhance familiarity. The other competency is comprehension where students can easily identify and process the information contained in phrases or sentences. This may also include understanding the purpose of reading a particular text and awareness of the requirements they need accomplish to attain the goal of the reading task. Finally, reading strategies that they can use to identify the main ideas of the text and achieve the goal of the reading tasks. All these reading competencies must be taught to children thus quality teaching is required. Similar to the United States, the quality of teaching in Australia is also a major issue. The rationale for requiring quality teachers is the reality that reading competencies cannot be achieved if the teacher is not well informed or knowledgeable in this field. As stated in the Department of Education, Science, Training 2005, p.28), quality teaching requires more than just an ability to teach but deep knowledge of content and how these contents can be learned by students. These requirements suggest that the teacher should be very familiar with strategies that can help students learn to read and assess their reading proficiency. More importantly, the requirements also suggest that teachers should continue professional learning to enhance and sustain quality teaching. This professional learning may occur while a teacher shares and collaborate with other teacher, being a member of a professional learning team, or joining a formal professional development programme. In summary, teaching of reading in Australia is more than just understanding learning difficulties, educational disadvantage, and problems arising from individual student behaviour or social status but the need for quality teaching and learning provision. Therefore, teacher professional development that is based on proven practices that are evidently effective in enhancing student’s learning outcome is being given priority over other teaching method. Teaching quality or having an effective teacher has a number of benefits as it can enhance student’s attitude toward teaching and learning and desire for higher achievement. The NSW Report of the Review of Teacher Education in 2000 suggests that the characteristics of an ideal and effective teacher for Australian students include being familiar and knowledgeable of the subject being taught, enthusiastic of what they teach, and encourage everyone to learn (Ramsey 2000, p.12 cited in Department of Education, Science, Training 2005, p.38). It is therefore clear that in Australian context, student interest or desire to learn is greatly affected by the quality of teacher handling the class and for this reason it can be assume that student achievement is closely related to quality of teacher education and teaching. 2. Conclusion The United States view of the teaching of reading is no different from Australia. Both countries recognize the importance of reading in student’s overall achievement and the value of having knowledgeable and highly skilled reading teachers. The issue of poor reading performance was challenged by evidence-based research that in turn generated valuable information that can help improve teaching of reading. In Australia for instance, the whole-language approach was found no longer applicable and systematic and explicit phonics instructions is more practical and effective for children with or without reading difficulties. In America, the finding of the National Reading Panel suggests that suggest that use of phonics instruction can help beginners better comprehend the relation between letters and sounds. More importantly, it is also recognize that systematic phonics instructions delivered by highly skilled teacher can greatly improve reading. There are a number of approaches being considered in the teaching of reading in the United States and like Australia; teachers are primarily being encourage to teach their students reading strategies that they can use independently and effectively. Along with teacher quality, teachers are required to have full knowledge of the content and reading strategies. The reason for encouraging teachers continues education is the fact the professionally developed reading teachers can produce better students. The view of the United States and Australia in the teaching of reading is generally the same as they both take into consideration the value of research-based facts and recommendations. 3. 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