62
understanding within the text. In addition, phonics, spelling, writing, reading, and oral communication are all included as part of a balanced approaches. Learners are encouraged to read diverse books and write, giving phonics the contextual attention it deserves for a successful and meaningful reading. Thus the balanced approaches are research grounded and comprehensively view literacy as inclusive without putting emphasis on one aspect of literacy at the expense of another (National Reading Panel, 2005). For example, a teacher using balanced approaches will value the instruction of both reading and writing, use of basal readers and also give learners writing tasks to strengthen their literacy skills.This allows diversity and flexibility in teaching and reading becomes a cognitive-linguistic activity which comprises several other skills such decoding, writing and comprehension (Pretorius et al., 2016).
Balanced approaches to reading also encourage recreational reading which improves autonomous learning, creativity, intelligence, comprehension, communicative competence, literacy development, motivation and attitudes towards language learning (Verbeek, 2010).
However, recent research indicates that reading for enjoyment has declined significantly in the last years in South African context (Phindane, 2014). Several reading instructional intervention by the South African DBE at the national and provincial level have been implemented and incorporate ideologies of teaching reading from International Reading Association (IRA) and National Reading Panel (NRP). For instance, the Reading Association of South Africa (RASA) established in Cape Town in 2004 is a support and motivation from IRA, to which it is affiliated. Provincial branches of RASA were formed to support and promote effective reading approaches and suitable for various contexts (Department of Basic Education, 2013a, 2015).
63
Moats & Foorman, 2003; National Early Literacy Panel, 2008; Piasta et al., 2009). There is a growing consensus that teachers at the FP should be deeply grounded in the language knowledge to enable them to effectively apply the principles in the classrooms. According to Moats (2014, p. 77), teaching English literacy at elementary level requires:
A well-prepared teacher, with a solid grasp of both the complexities of English orthography and the language systems that print represents in order to teach students recognition of written words. Without such knowledge, the teacher is likely to promote guessing strategies (“What might make sense here?”), bypass strategies (“Skip that and go on.”), the belief that accuracy does not matter (“Nice try.”), or rote memorization of higher frequency words…. Even if they use one of the many well-designed and scripted intervention programs, teachers must rely on background knowledge of their own to tailor lessons for individual students.
This means that teacher content knowledge is a backbone to what they practice in the classroom. It also means that if the teachers are not well prepared in terms of content knowledge and pedagogical strategies, would end up enacting procedures that may not be efficient in the classroom. Several international studies assert that teachers at the elementary level generally display inadequate knowledge about language and literacy concepts, literacy development and the literacy pedagogies needed for effective teaching at this critical phase of learning (A. E.
Cunningham, Perry, Stanovich, & Stanovich, 2004; Foorman & Moats, 2004; Moats, 2014).
According to research, the effective teaching of reading and writing requires the teacher to enact a specialised body of knowledge. This body of knowledge is complex and made of actively relating blends of teacher knowledge in emergent literacy and English language structure; explicit knowledge on the literacy concepts, systematic and explicit knowledge on reading components and approaches; as well as the effective teaching strategies to enable children’s literacy development (Kuccer & Silva, 2013; Moats, 1999, 2009b, 2014; Piasta et al., 2009).
The person who can enact this specialised knowledge is a highly qualified professional teacher who acquires the teacher knowledge from a formal programme and informally, from their working contexts. The desire to understand this specialised body of knowledge in literacy is created by the fact that a gap continues to prevail between classroom practices and the research on how to teach reading and writing at the FP in the South African context (Kimathi & Bertram, 2015; van der Merwe & Nel, 2012).
64
Informed by research, the Table 3.2 details the assumptions of what the teachers need to know, in order to effectively teach reading at the FP.
Table 3.2: The relationship between the components of reading and teacher knowledge Reading
components (taught at FP)
Kinds of TK needed to teach the components of reading
( A blend of subject knowledge and practice focused knowledge) Phonemic
awareness TK on how to recognise relationships in phonological processes, reading, spelling and vocabulary is vital. These skills enable the FP teachers to equip the young readers phonemically and support their ability to blend and divide phonemes (sounds) that are associated with graphemes. Teachers are able to precisely identify and make decisions about confusable sounds and words.
Phonics A teacher should be able to recognise prefixes, suffixes, roots and the morphological structure of words to help learners to recognise words, draw the meaning and recall the spelling more easily. Phonological awareness is also tied to other decoding skills or approaches.
Fluency Teachers need to have the language structure knowledge at the sub-lexical level, at the level of semantic organisation and discourse structure to enable them to assign learners to appreciate reading texts and techniques to enable learners achieve fluency in reading and subsequently, writing, at this phase of learning.
Vocabulary Teachers’ knowledge of the English language structure such as phonology, semantics, morphology, orthography, syntax, pragmatics and grammatical rules and meaning is vital to enable the teaching of vocabulary.
Comprehension. This requires the teacher to apply the linguistic concepts such as the text organisation, genre, pragmatic and syntax (sentence/text structure) knowledge.
Adapted from van der Merwe & Nel (2012); Moats (2009)
This implies that the literacy teacher knowledge base has both theoretical and practical aspects, where the formal gives an understanding of the subject such as literacy theories and concepts, while the latter gives the teacher the strategies of teaching (Shalem, 2014b; Winch et al., 2015).
According to Van der Berg, Spaull, Wills, Gustafsson & Kotzé (2016), professional knowledge for teaching consists of three components, namely subject knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and classroom competence. The subject knowledge refers to content knowledge which the teacher is appointed to teach. Subject knowledge for teaching encompasses the theory, research base and methods related to the teaching of a particular subject. Classroom competence describes the practical ability teach in student group context.
Teachers need to have sufficient knowledge of all the elements that pertain to the task of teaching children to read. According to the South African Department of Education (2008b, p.
12), teachers responsible for teaching the foundation phase learners must have knowledge of the five components of reading, namely: phonemic awareness, word recognition, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension (details in Table 3.2). In 1997, the US governmental agencies and Congress set up the National Reading Panel (NRP) to assess the status of research-based
65
knowledge, as well as the effectiveness of various approaches to teaching children to read (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). Similarly, the South African Department of Basic Education (2011) explicitly stressed the importance of focusing on these five components of reading.
Furthermore, in the development of emergent literacy, learners need to first of all develop meta- linguistic skills to enable them to identify and analyse specific sounds necessary for effective reading and writing (Reeves et al., 2008). Phonological development (including phonological awareness) provides the bridge between language and literacy, whereas higher-level phonological skills (e.g. sound manipulation and substitution) facilitate written language development in terms of reading and spelling (N. Nel & Müller, 2010; Pretorius & Klapwijk, 2016). Children who are exposed to the knowledge and skills of reading, spelling and writing are able to communicate precisely and develop rich vocabulary, grammar and discourse skills (International Reading Association, 2007). Similarly, adequate language development is required to facilitate the language required for numeracy (Taylor et al., 2013).
A strong theoretical reasoning from the linguistic experts and empirical data suggest that teachers’ acquisition of content and procedural knowledge leads to changes in teacher practice, beliefs and consequently improves the learners’ reading skills (Shalem, 2014b). This is a call to professional developers and policy makers to strengthen professional development initiatives for practicing teachers, as well as the pre-service courses, to enable explicit literacy practices at the foundation level. For instance, a recent proposal for an online professional teacher learning programme for the FP teachers argues that, “Teachers need to know how reading develops, how good readers differ from weak readers, how to asses them, what cognitive, affective, motivational and environmental factors affect reading development, how to plan literacy time on a micro and macro level” (Pretorius et al., 2016, p.7).