The dominant thread of the work I present here is an analysis of children's text production. I begin with a book I co-wrote in 1991 [Cath Farrow wrote Chapter 3] containing a framework which forms the basis of much of my later analysis of multimodal texts. In that first book I offer a critique of genre theory so that a second thread traceable through A Writing Policy in Action and the later chapters presented here is about genre in writing from its early adoption into a view of literacy in the UK through to current issues of multimodal texts [see Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996] and the ways in which these cross genre boundaries. My interest lies in the ways in which texts are shaped to have coherence, and this means considering what has become a pivotal part of my current work: a concentration on text cohesion. The gradual shift in my focus towards multimodal texts relates to two other areas of interest: popular forms of text, their place in cultural settings and their impact on children's text production; and the demand for a more precise description of the texts children now produce which goes beyond simply giving status to the verbal elements. In presenting a critical reflection on my publications, my concern is to outline the possibilities for a new theory of' literacy', based on cohesion, which takes into account a range of texts beyond written genres. For me, it must also be a critical theory and this inevitably means taking into account the popular cultural forms of texts which children absorb and use, so that this statement presents a cultural theory of text which acknowledges and honours the agency of the young text-maker. Any adequate educational theory has to take into account: theories of individual development; issues of pedagogy, classroom culture and the nature of knowledge; and social, cultural ideological and political discourses which surround schools, classrooms and learners. This is a demanding agenda in a relatively short context statement and whilst I offer background discussion, I have decided to concentrate on my analysis of children's texts and their production. In sketching an integrated theory of multidimensional text, my starting points are: children's production of texts, how these can be analysed and the implications for teaching. However, I begin with some of the theoretical background to my writing over the years to give the broad context.

The present longitudinal study was designed to investigate discourse characteristics of fathers with their language impaired child and their younger normal language-learning child of the same language stage (Brown 1973). Furthermore, the study includes a comparison of fathers and mothers in conversation with their language-impaired child. Developmental trends in the children's communication skills are also examined. Analysis of the parent-child conversations includes: I Structural analysis which measured MLU, total number of turns, number of utterances per turn and amount of non-verbal turns for both members of the dyad. II Functional analysis which involved an examination of conversational acts for both parents and children. III Appropriateness analysis which focused on both the parent's and child's responses to requestives. IV Initiation/Response analysis which evaluated the ability of participants to both initiate and respond. V Topic analysis which included measures of both topic initiation and maintenance for both participants. VI Communicative contingency analysis which examined the relationship between the child's communicative behaviour and the parent's response. The contingency of parental replies in terms of discourse function was also examined. It was found that variability across the fathers was pronounced. Furthermore, the results revealed the considerable diversity among not only the young language learners, but also in the highly individual communicative skills of the parent-child dyads. Clinical implications are discussed.

This research explored the learning experiences of pupils during literacy intervention sessions in English primary schools, by examining the moment-by-moment interactions between teaching assistants and pupils. Teaching assistants have taken increasing responsibility for teaching and learning, including the teaching of group intervention sessions aimed at supporting those pupils not making expected progress in literacy. The effectiveness of any intervention is reliant on the moment-by-moment interactions as social-constructivist theory indicates that it is in these interactions that shared meaning is negotiated and scaffolding provided. However, there is a lack of research into how this occurs in the interactions between teaching assistants and pupils generally, and specifically during these intervention sessions. The research took a multiple-case study approach. Fine grained linguistic analysis of observation based empirical data in the form of video recordings of intervention sessions provided the basis for theory development. This was done through the analytical framework of conversation analysis, situated within the broader field of linguistic ethnography. The research identified that interactions are strongly focused on the organisational principles of the task and task completion, rather than developing the learning experiences of individual pupils and the group. Teaching assistants provide high levels of support, leading to potential pupil reliance on this support due to a lack of development of interactional and metacognitive skills for self and reciprocal scaffolding. The research has implications for policy in relation to provision for pupils who are falling behind in literacy. It is argued that a theory of oral pedagogy needs to be developed which can be used to clarify the pedagogical role of the teaching assistant, and there needs to be continuing professional development for teaching assistants in order to improve the quality of their moment-by-moment interactions with pupils.

The purpose of this study was to follow the development of literacy acquisition in a group of early childhood students and to understand how a socio-cultural understanding of literacy affects my understanding of home / school literacy practices. Conducted on a small island in the Commonwealth Caribbean, my primary aim was to understand what happens to children in order for them to learn to read and write, and to follow their linear progress of this over the course of an academic year. Additionally I also wanted to understand the role of homes, families and communities in this process and to examine how my practices as a teacher impacted on this. Using qualitative methodology from an ethnographic perspective, this dissertation explored the varying factors that have implications on literacy acquisition. The study was based on my observations as a kindergarten teacher, along with the perspectives of my co-constructors (parents and student participants). Six students and their parents/ guardians were used as case studies to illuminate the findings, I was able to use interviews, artefacts collected and my observations of them over the course of a year both in their primary learning environment, the home, and at school. Four questions guided this research process; 1. What literacy skills are my students expected to master in kindergarten? 2. What is my role as the teacher in facilitating literacy acquisition, what experiences do I provide for my students in the classroom and how do I use the home and family literacy practices to enhance the instructional process? Through the teacher's eyes, literacy development in the early childhood years: a qualitative research project from an ethnographic perspective. 3. At the end of kindergarten what are the literacy skills my students possess? How does this compare to the skills they possessed when they began kindergarten? How do home/ family literacy experiences facilitate this development? 4. How does a socio-cultural understanding of literacy affect my understanding of home/school literacy practices? My research findings highlight that literacy serves a unique purpose to families. Children's experiences with literacies reflect their cultural identities and the value they place on its role in everyday family experiences and practices. These family literacy experiences are unique, varied and rich and serve as the model and the impetus for children as they aim to develop foundational literacy skills. A cross- case analysis of my co-constructors revealed five main themes that emerged from the findings; literacy as a socially and culturally constructed, dominant parent influences, globalisation as a need for change and perceptions on the purposes of literacy. Though the findings of this study are not generalisable, the findings have implications for practice and policies in the Paradise Cays. I conclude that literacy instruction be culturally responsible and relevant to the needs of children. Additionally, I also posit that pedagogical practices employed take into account the family experiences of children and use them as a means to enhance the learning experience.

The literature shows that there are limitations in continuing professional development (CPD) programmes that prevent teachers of the Arabic language (TALs) at elementary schools in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) from benefitting fully from these programmes to enhance their teaching skills. To resolve this problem, this study was undertaken, utilising the principles of andragogy as the theoretical framework and employing evaluation research as a methodology. The methodology consisted of four phases. The first (exploratory) phase involved administering a needs analysis questionnaire to 39 male TALs to identify the teaching skills they required, then conducting semi-structured interviews with six male TALs (who would also participate in the second, third and fourth phases), to elicit their views on the characteristics of effective CPD that would help to improve their teaching skills. The outcomes of this exploratory phase were considered in constructing the development phase, in which two experts took part, and the execution phase, which established the procedures for planning and implementing the CPD programme. Finally, the evaluation phase identified the requirements that the CPD programme must meet in order to improve the target group's teaching skills in the next stage of its design. It concluded that the CPD programme designed for this study was capable of addressing the stated problem. Based upon the outcomes of the above four phases, the study resulted in the design of a relevant CPD programme to improve TALs' teaching skills and one that was suitable in the context of CPD in the KSA.

No description available.

This mixed methods research provides insights into the current statutory provision for Moving Image Media Education (MIME) in NI's post primary curriculum. The advocacy document which promoted its curriculum inclusion, lA Wider Literacy: The Case for Moving Image Media Education in Northern Ireland' (NIFTC/BFI, 2004), argued that moving image is crucial to our understanding of literacy in the 21st century, where print based literacies are being superceded by multiliteracies. This research illustrates how far the advocacy document has impacted on current curriculum practices by providing a snapshot of the existing provision and dissemination of MIME in NI's post-primary schools. The perspectives of teachers and other associated stakeholders, involved in the delivery of MIME, indicate that there are challenges and misconceptions associated with MIME as a new literacy. The research reveals eight enabling factors are pre-requisites to MIME becoming a curriculum imperative: (i) agreed pedagogy, (ii) agreed policy, (iii) research, (iv) strategic unity of purpose among stakeholders, (v) funding mechanisms, (vi) appointed post-holders inside and/or outside school, (vii) supportive senior management teams and (viii) ongoing CPD - pedagogical and technical training. 'A Wider Literacy' has had its successes. Northern Ireland is the only region in the UK to offer Moving Image Arts at GCSE and A Level, and to have MIME as a statutory part of its KS3 curriculum. However, it is clear it is not universally accepted as "applicable in all subjects" (NIFTC/BFI, 2004, p.5), as intended. Moreover, it seems unlikely that MIME will become a curriculum staple until it becomes a compulsory part of all initial teacher training courses and is officially endorsed by DENI as an essential teaching and learning strategy. Until then this multiliteracy will remain "contentious in terms of classroom practice and teacher education" (Carrington and Robinson, 2009, p.3).

This life history study examines how the changes in language and literacy policy in lower grades impacted on teachers’ classroom practices from independence in 1957 to 2014. As a result of British colonial rule, English is the official language in Ghana and other sub-Saharan African countries; English is also used in many schools, yet most young children enter school with no prior knowledge of the English language. Consequently, the language of instruction in lower grades has always been a contested issue. There are some who prefer the use of local language and see the use of English as inculcating Western values and culture in the African, thus depriving children of the knowledge of African traditional values. On the other hand, those in favour of English, argue that the use of local language was a means of providing inferior education to Africans by colonial governments. These differing views have led to changes in the language policy for lower grades since the country’s independence in 1957. Although there have been a number of studies on the language policy in lower grade, there is a gap in the literature on understanding how colonial rule and Western education influences the language/s used in Ghanaian schools to support children’s literacy development. In addition, there is little or no research to understand how policy changes in language and literacy have affected lower grade teachers’ classroom practices. This study therefore adopts a postcolonial theoretical perspective and has used in-depth interviews to collect data from seven lower grades teachers on the use of different language and literacy policies over the past six decades. The findings suggest that teachers’ personal values, beliefs and teacher training play a significant role in their attitudes towards language and literacy policy and their classroom practices. Though teaching in the local language helped in classroom interaction, making children more active, the study found that teachers’ knowledge of local language was hampered by the fact that local language was an optional subject in Senior High School. The English-only policy was seen as being responsible for children’s inability to understand and communicate freely in class, thereby making teaching difficult for teachers. The findings also show that, though the National Literacy Acceleration Programme (NALAP) was seen as a positive move to make children literate in both local language and English, the question of the use of a particular local language and the place of English in lower grades remains unresolved. This study concludes that young children’s literacy development depends to a large extent on an individual teacher’s language expertise in the local languages and English and their ability in using and teaching both efficiently in the classroom.

This thesis investigated the possibility of two metalinguistic factors, one operating at the level of the word, namely phonemic awareness, and one operating at the level of the sentence, namely semantic and syntactic awareness interacting in the initial stages of reading and spelling. Both were assumed to be interacting in the development of reading and spelling in young Maltese speaking children. To investigate this issue, a two year longitudinal study using a sample of 132 children at the ages of four and five years was conducted. The children were seen over two occasions spread over four sessions of testing before they were administered tests for literacy. During these four sessions, measures of phonemic and semantic and syntactic awareness were administered to the subjects. Most of these were administered before the onset of literacy. Standardised intelligence, vocabulary and sentence comprehension and concepts about print tests as well as writer devised measures of visual and verbal short-term memory were also administered to the subjects. Children's literacy development at the end of the two years was assessed through a standardised reading test in Maltese and other measures for reading comprehension, word spelling and guided writing compiled by the writer. The results indicated that explicit phonemic awareness was the metalinguistic factor which affected word level and sentence level processes. Unlike in various studies in the English language, implicit phonemic awareness was not found to affect word level processes. The contribution of semantic and syntactic awareness was weak and statistically insignificant. It appears that the graphophonemic regularity of the Maltese orthographic system renders the implicit phonemic element and the semantic and syntactic element relatively unimportant in accessing the phonemic structure of words and meaning in words and sentences. Explicit phonemic awareness predicted word reading, reading comprehension, spelling and guided writing skills independently of I.Q., vocabulary, sentence comprehension, knowledge about print and verbal and visual short-term memory.

This piece of work consists of three papers. The first paper is a systematic review of literature investigating the effectiveness of preschool, classroom-based literacy interventions used with children living in economic disadvantage. The review consists of nine studies, the majority of which found significant short term effects of intervention. Two of the studies reported long term outcomes which were found to be non-significant. Consequently, recommendations for further research included exploration of a wider range of factors in raising the literacy levels of children from economic disadvantage. The second paper is a bridging document which explains how the various decisions in this piece of work were made, including the research focus, methodology, method and analysis. Through the bridging document, ontology, epistemology and reflexivity are explored and ethical and quality issues are discussed. The third paper describes and discusses a piece of empirical research. Following on from recommendations in the systematic review, a wide range of factors which may be useful in enhancing the literacy levels of children from economic disadvantage were explored. A participatory model of research was used which involved training six pupils from a school situated in a deprived area to carry out research with their peers. The group produced a collaborative mind map and interviewed five of their peers. Six themes emerged from these methods: resources, strategies, skills, people, enjoyment and practice. The benefits and limitations of using a participatory research model are discussed. The data gathered was deemed to be useful but not necessarily better than that gathered using more traditional non-participatory methods. Implications and suggestions for further research are explored.