Language Policy Unit - DG II Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France

www.coe.int/lang

Subject literacies and access to quality education

Strasbourg, 27 – 28 September 2012

SUBJECT LITERACIES AND ACCESS TO QUALITY EDUCATIONStrasbourg, 27 – 28 September 2012

Focus on Subject Literacy: Recent Developments in Northrhine-

Westfalia

E. Thürmann, H. J. Vollmer

SUBJECT LITERACIES AND ACCESS TO QUALITY EDUCATION, STRASBOURG, 27 – 28 SEPTEMBER 2012

Curriculum development

Curriculum developmentROUTINE PROCEDURE FOR CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

maths

Coordinating task-group at ministerial level decides on general principles

sets up working groups of subject specialists

gives advice to working groups, trains on the job

surveys interim results at two stages

edits and finalises curricular documents

designs and proposes follow-up initiatives for implementation

las

so-sci

art

science

phys-ed

rel-ed

L2´s

…

maths

Curriculum development

COORDINATING TASK-GROUP AT MINISTERIAL LEVEL DECIDES ON GENERAL PRINCIPLES:

• underlying basic pedagogical principles (e.g. task-based learning, student-centred teaching)

• basic curricular principles and „philosophies“ (e.g. performance specification of outcomes, specification of competences)

• Curriculum structure (e.g. chapter headings, table of contents)

• Organisational parameters for working groups (e.g. recruitment, time-frame, management)

• …

common template for working groups

Curriculum developmentSUBJECT LITERACY: GENERAL LIST OF EXIT CRITERIA

Linguistic means and language elements: General – words/expressions – sentence -text

Curriculum developmentSUBJECT LITERACY: GENERAL LIST OF EXIT CRITERIA

Cognitive-communicative functions / strategies

Naming, defining

Describing, portraying Reporting, narrating

Explaining, clarifying

Assessing, judgingArguing, taking (up) a

stance Modelling, simulating

Curriculum developmentSUBJECT LITERACY: GENERAL LIST OF EXIT CRITERIA

specifies

•five partial competences: classroom interaction, information retrieval and processing, presenting learning results, cognitive/language functions, availability of textual/language means•through sets of descriptors (> 90)•with reference to subject-specific indicators

•is offered to curriculum development groups („Hauptschule“) as a structural grid as well as a pool of resources

Curriculum development

Students are capable of …

differentiating between the basic types of text that may be used for reporting (such as minutes or transcripts, test descriptions, reports on work experience, press articles, media reports and accident reports) and taking account of their features in one’s own writing

Students are capable of …

differentiating between the basic types of text being used for finding out more about the past (such as minuits, press articles, media reports, annals, chronicles and other historical primary and secondary sources).

Conversion of the general list into subject-specific descriptors and indicators, e.g. History

Curriculum development

Students are able to …

Identify the meaning of of parts of words of Greek or Latin origin, e.g. cytoplasm, protoplasm, dactyl-, derm- …

Conversion of the general list into subject-specific descriptors and indicators, e.g. biology

Curriculum development

Conversion of the „general list“ into subject-specific descriptors and indicators

About 2/3 of descriptors remain unchanged

Need to add descriptors is confined to cognitive/language functions and genres

Reference to subject-specific content leads to enrichment of indicators

Curriculum development

• Since 2011 a chapter of subject literacy has become an integral part of core curricula in Northrhine-Westfalia and curriculum development groups have adopted the General list of exit criteria as a point of departure and a resource tool for their endeavours to specify subject-specific descriptors and indicators.

• However, in the process of appropriating the list of general criteria of subject-literacy the inventory of relevant descriptors had been reduced and simplified to such an extent that it does not serve planning/evaluation/assessment purposes on an operational level.

• Educational authorities seem to have become aware of linguistic issues in subject teaching; however decision-makers are still reluctant to go into specifics on a national level.

• There is a fair chance that literacy frameworks and rubrics become operative on the meso- and micro-levels (= indiviual school – classroom) if stake-holders experience a need for tools.

Curriculum development

General options for bridging the gap between content standards and implicit academic

language

• Option one: content + general academic language + content specific language requirements

• Option two: content + content specific language – separate document for general academic language

• Option three: content + content + content specific language – General academic language incorporated into las

• Option four: content only – subject-specific guidelines below the curricular level

Literacy coaches

Elizabeth G. Sturtevant

http://carnegie.org/fileadmin/Media/Publications/PDF/LiteracyCoach.pdf

Literacy coaches

… effective, continuing, and supportive staff development—for teachers, administrators, and key district-level personnel—is critical to success. Key players in the change process are literacy coaches—master teachers who provide essential leadership for the school’s overall literacy program. This leadership includes helping to create and supervising a long-term staff development

… their major role is to work with content teachers across the curriculum to help them implement and utilize strategies designed to improve their students’ ability to read, write, and succeed in content courses.

Elizabeth G. Sturtevant: The Literacy Coach

Literacy coaches

• Encourage ESL teachers to serve as resources for content-area teachers and help them understand how ELLs learn language.

• Serve as the experts for their schools on research and practice for adolescent ELL language development, and share new findings with colleagues.

• Help teachers design instruction that helps improve language learners´ability to read and understand content area information

• identify teaching strategies that take into account ELLs’ different proficiency levels while moving them toward grade-level literacy.

CHANGE AGENTS

SUBJECT-LITERACY SPECIALISTS

Literacy coachesTraining of > 60 senior teachersPractical coaching experience parallel to compact input by university language experts (= 8 modules, 1.5 days).

• Many kinds of German – the particular language of schooling• How children and young people acquire language(s)• Educational standards and the empirical basis for language-sensitive

classroom development• School- and classroom-development strategies and models focusing on

language support• German as a subject and its specific contribution to a whole-school

language support programme• Social studies and its specific contribution to a whole-school language

support programme• Mathematics and science and their specific contribution to a whole-school

language support programme• The special language support needs of “late comers” (immigrant learners

arriving at an advanced age)

Classroom development

Tools for change-ready schools, e.g. classroom observation grid