This site has been developed to provide you with tools, resources, and ideas to support you in your role as Literacy leader.
Use the diagram below to navigate to each phase of the teacher inquiry cycle.
A key function of literacy leadership is leading pedagogical change through the teaching as an inquiry tool. This is clearly explained in Leading from the middle: educational leadership for middle and senior leaders
The following are your cornerstone resources that you will need to have extensive knowledge of and refer to almost daily. Ensure that you and your teachers have copies of each and bring them to all meetings for ready reference.
Leading inquiry
The New Zealand Curriculum provides a succinct rationale for teachers to inquire into the effectiveness of their teaching: “Since any teaching strategy works differently in different contexts for different students, effective pedagogy requires that teachers inquire into the impact of their teaching on their students” p. 35.
Read a case study about a teacher using an inquiry approach to improve the narrative writing of her mainly Pasifika learners.
This section will develop your understanding of inquiry in a literacy context. It has been divided into the following parts:
The New Zealand Curriculum provides a succinct rationale for teachers to inquire into the effectiveness of their teaching: “Since any teaching strategy works differently in different contexts for different students, effective pedagogy requires that teachers inquire into the impact of their teaching on their students” (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 35)
Inquiry into the literacy teaching – literacy learning relationship is a cyclical process in which the teacher asks:
What is important (and therefore worth spending time on), given where my students are at?
This focusing inquiry establishes a baseline and a direction. The teacher uses all available information to determine what students have already learned about literacy and what they need to learn next.
What literacy teaching strategies (evidence-based) are most likely to help my students learn this?
In this teaching inquiry, the teacher uses evidence from research and from their own past practice and that of colleagues to plan teaching and learning opportunities aimed at achieving the outcomes prioritised in the focusing inquiry.
What happened as a result of the teaching, and what are the implications for future teaching?
In this learning inquiry, the teacher investigates the success of the teaching in terms of the prioritised outcomes, using a range of assessment approaches. They do this both while learning activities are in progress and also as longer-term sequences or units of work come to an end. They then analyse and interpret the information to consider what they should do next.
Effective professional development employs a similar inquiry cycle as effective teaching, and for a similar reason:
Since any professional development strategy works differently in different contexts for different teachers, effective professional developers require inquiry into the impact of their facilitation on their teacher-learners.
As a Literacy Leader responsible for teacher professional development you need to:
The first step in any literacy teaching or professional development cycle is to identify your students’ learning strengths and needs in relation to the literacy demands of the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC). For example, in a unit on Planet Earth and Beyond in Science, students will likely be required to understand and use technical vocabulary, read scientific texts that present unfamiliar and sometimes complex information, and write an explanation (for example, about an aspect of science such as erosion or the water cycle), and so on as determined by the curriculum concept being taught. Teachers need to know what the literacy demands are before they can plan deliberate student-focused inquiry, and teaching actions.
Using the Literacy Learning Progressions and National standards to frame your inquiry
It is important that teachers find out about more than just their students’ literacy achievement – they also need to know about literacy-related knowledge, skills, strategy use, and attitudes. Much of this information will not be provided by any single, standardised assessment.
The Literacy Learning Progressions (LLP) and National standards are a valuable tool for framing teachers’ student-focused inquiry as they describe the literacy-related knowledge, skills and attitudes students are expected to have at different levels of the curriculum.
For some English language Learners it will be more appropriate to use the English Language Learning Progressions.
A practical outline of how teachers can use student-focused inquiry to inform their planning, teaching and evaluation:
‘The focus should be on the effectiveness of day to day teaching activities, not additional programmes’ P104 Timperley and Parr
It is important to base your inquiry on a wide range of formal and informal sources of information. Many important aspects of the literacy knowledge, skills, and attitudes described in the Literacy Learning Progressions and English Language Learning Progressions are not assessed by tools such as e-asTTle or PAT. For example, consider different ways you might find out how well your students are doing in relation to this expectation:
“...increasingly control a repertoire of comprehension strategies that they can use flexibly and draw on when they know they are not comprehending fully, including such strategies as:
(LLP, Ministry of Education, 2010)
Formal literacy tools such as:
Informal classroom-based evidence such as:
Student voice
Your students are an important source of information about teaching and learning in your school as they experience it first-hand every day.
Student voice can include:
One approach that some schools have found manageable and effective is for teachers to select four to six target students. Decisions about what students to include will depend on the professional learning focus. For example, if a teacher who identified that some groups (such as Māori boys) were making lower than expected progress, some of these boys could be included in a target group.
Discussions with students could be used to identify their perceptions of:
The teacher can then closely monitor the impact of changed teaching practices on students in this group. This monitoring might include the teacher:
After you have identified specific student literacy learning needs, the next step is to find out what the school can do differently to address these.
A useful process for teacher-focused inquiry is to:
Focus on those remaining hypotheses that teachers and leaders can influence and which are likely to create the most change.
Effective professional development employs a similar inquiry cycle as effective teaching, and for a similar reason:
Since any professional development strategy works differently in different contexts for different teachers, effective professional developers require inquiry into the impact of their facilitation on their teacher-learners.
As a Literacy Leader responsible for teacher professional development you need to:
Busy teachers are more likely to engage in professional learning about literacy when they see how it complements - rather than competes with- student’s learning in other areas of the curriculum. It is important that teachers can see links between literacy PD and other professional learning they have been involved in. Otherwise teachers may feel overloaded.
All teachers are required to give effect to The New Zealand Curriculum (NZC). The NZC delivers very clear messages about literacy teaching. These messages are implicit in the vision, principles, values, key competencies, and learning areas sections of the curriculum.
Literacy in the New Zealand Curriculum
The following extract, from the introduction to the Learning Areas section of NZC, makes it clear that teachers are responsible for teaching literacy in all learning areas:
The Literacy Learning Progressions support the NZC by describing the literacy related knowledge, skills and attitudes that students need at different levels.
It is very important that you engage with teachers’ existing beliefs about literacy learning and teaching:
Factors that influence engagement
Teachers’ willingness to engage deeply in professional learning will be affected by how much they believe that improving students’ literacy:
The following sections describe different ways you can help teachers see the benefits of professional learning about literacy.
Teachers and schools can make a difference
There is overwhelming evidence that “Notwithstanding the influence of factors such as socio-economic status, home and community, student learning is strongly influenced by what and how teachers teach” (Timperley, 2008, p. 6).
Everything in this website is informed by evidence that:
The belief that teachers can make a difference is called teacher efficacy. The belief that teachers and leaders working together can make more of a difference is known as collective efficacy. An important part of the
Literacy Leader role is to consistently promote individual teacher and collective efficacy.
Building efficacy
Some ways to build individual teacher and collective efficacy:
Changing teacher practices before changing teacher beliefs?
Sometimes, teachers’ beliefs about value of new literacy practices do not change until after they try them for themselves. Seeing new approaches work for their students is very motivating for teachers. The Literacy Leader can then build on this interest and help the teacher understand in a deeper way why this approach was effective.
Student perceptions are valuable because students personally experience our classrooms at first hand. Student voice can be a powerful way of giving teachers a reason to engage in literacy learning opportunities.
Student voice can be collected in a variety of ways, such as through:
At the beginning of a literacy intervention, student voice can be used to find out their knowledge and beliefs about:
Case study: using student voice to engage teachers in Te Kotahitanga
While this example is from a secondary school setting, the messages and principles are worth considering for all teachers.
In order to engage teachers in rethinking their theories, Te Kotahitanga employed a Kaupapa Maori strategy of ‘collaborative storying’. Early in the professional development experience, teachers were presented with stories that had been compiled during an earlier phase of the project. These stories came from students (both engaged and non-engaged), their parents/whnau, principals, and teachers and concerned the influences on students’ educational engagement and achievement. There were marked differences between the descriptions of daily realities provided by the students themselves, those parenting them, principals, and teachers. The extremes were represented by the teachers and the students.
“Culture counts - knowing, respecting and valuing who students are, where they come from, and building on what they bring with them makes a difference to both teaching and learning”
(Ka Hikitia: Managing for Success. Maori Education Strategy 2008-2010, Ministry of Education, 2008, p. 20)
One way for teachers to make ‘culture count’ is to include a balance of ‘mirror’ and ‘window’ texts in their programmes. Mirror texts reflect students’ own culture and experience while window texts give insight into unfamiliar ideas, perspectives, and experiences (Gangi, 2008).
Another way is to always encourage students to make connections to their own prior learning and experience. One further way is to treat students’ linguistic knowledge (such as knowledge of their first language) as a valued resource.
Helping Māori students achieve their potential
An important challenge for all New Zealand schools is to address current disparities in outcomes for Māori students.
These Māori concepts or principles are vitally important:
Attending to these principles is essential if Māori students are to feel truly valued and therefore become meaningfully engaged in classroom learning activities.
Assessment information is valuable at all levels of our education system. Your role as a literacy leader requires you to ensure that data is aggregated at different levels across the school ensuring that the first response is as a classroom teacher and analysing what it is saying about each student.
For students who are not making sufficient progress to reach expected levels of literacy achievement the following should be in place:
An inquiry tool has been developed to support your school’s self review of effectiveness in meeting the needs of these students.
At classroom level assessment information is used to decide on the most appropriate learning opportunities for students, to provide feedback and identify their next learning steps. It should be used to design and adapt teaching programmes and to ensure continuous progressions toward learning goals in manageable learning steps. It can also be shared with parents as part of learning partnerships.
At the school level it can identify areas of greatest need for resourcing purposes and inform strategic planning and development. By disaggregating data to identify sub-groups of students such as Māori, Pasifika or boys; and individual student with special education needs it is possible to track their progress and to ensure that those groups that are not achieving at the levels they should be are making accelerated gains. Assessment data is also used to evaluate the effectiveness of the school’s curriculum and teaching programmes.
Gathering assessment data
When gathering information it is important that teachers are clear about what information is to be gathered and why. To do this they will also need to be clear about what they are planning to teach and the learning goals (intended outcomes for the students) so that they can select and administer appropriate assessments.
The Assessment Tool Selector provides useful information that schools can use to select assessment tools to suit particular purposes. It provides information about the tools most frequently used in New Zealand schools, in every curriculum area up to and including Year 10. It outlines strengths and limitations of each tool and allows you to compare tools to decide which one is the most suitable.
Analysing data
As a Literacy Leader you will need to ensure that information is gathered from many sources as no single assessment tool or observation will give a complete picture of a student’s capabilities. Information from various sources (classroom literacy activities, conversations, guided reading lessons), settings (intervention programmes, homes, communities) and from across the curriculum should be analysed to develop a full picture of each learner.
Teachers should be provided with opportunities to work together to analyse assessment information through activities such as moderation. The process of talking through the implications of the evidence helps to clarify what should be looked for and to establish a sound basis for overall judgements.
The following are general principles for analysing data and reflecting on it from Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1 – 4 (Ministry of Education, 2003 p.64)
It can be helpful to consider the questions that you wish to answer through your analysis of assessment information. These will determine what data you need to collect how you collate and analyse it. The following questions are worth considering.
How much information will you need? Insufficient information will not give you a clear and balanced picture of a child’s overall achievement, too much data (in particular too many assessment tools used) will take up valuable teaching time and possible lead to duplication of information.
Can you collate data in such as way that you can use it for multiple purposes and to answer a range of questions? By entering sufficient information into your School Management System (SMS) or an Excel spreadsheet you will be able to select what you need quickly and easily. Key things to include are:
Other things that may be useful are:
You will identify other areas that are useful to your school and can simply add more columns to your database as the need arises.
A key principle of formative assessment practice is that student should be engaged meaningfully in the learning process and that they should share the responsibility for setting their learning goals These conversations can also allow teachers and literacy leaders to discover what is working for whom, where changes need to be made to teaching approaches and how the child’s language, identity and culture will need to be taken account of when designing or co-constructing learning experiences for and with them. Aspects to consider include:
Encourage teachers to ensure that learning conversations are both nurturing and specific by:
Formal and informal interviews with students about their learning can help to establish what is working well and where improvements in teaching approaches might be made. Often the literacy leader is well placed to have these discussions with students as they are familiar, but not directly involved in the child’s teaching. Open questions that can be helpful include:
Reading and writing are integral to the English learning area of NZC and the key competency Using language, symbols, and texts. However, there are literacy demands implicit in all curriculum areas and teachers will need to make these explicit for learners. Teachers need to be clear about these reading and writing demands as well as student’s lived experiences in relation to culture, language, and identity so that they can deliberately integrate the teaching and assessment of literacy with curriculum content.
As literacy is a socio-cultural practice, students bring their culture, language and identity with them to the classroom. The strategy of ako emphasises that teachers should learn from their students and that teaching practice should be deliberate, reflective and informed by current research. Students are more likely to achieve when they see themselves and their culture reflected in curriculum subject matter and learning contexts.
When making overall judgements about progress and achievement in literacy, teachers will need to consider specifically how well each student is using reading and writing as interactive tools to enable them to learn in all curriculum areas.
Learning to read and write is a complex, cumulative process. The ELP handbooks note that:
Each student will arrive at school with different skills, knowledge and attitudes to literacy which can be built on as they gain literacy proficiency.
While there are essential skills and items of knowledge that all students will need to master at an early stage, students will learn different items at different points in time and do not need to have identical banks of knowledge to be operating on texts at a similar level. Neither do students needs to master large item knowledge sets prior to starting to read or write. Instead, most students will develop item knowledge and processing skills simultaneously while reading and writing.
The expectations that teachers hold about the potential of individuals and groups of students have been demonstrated to impact directly on the outcomes that these students experience. Teacher’s expectations should be informed by evidence rather than assumption and all students should have challenging but achievable goals that are reviewed often.
If a student is not making sufficient progress to meet age-related goals, then is the responsibility of the teacher and the school management to work with that student and their parents, family and whānau to make changes to their learning programmes and opportunities. All students should have access to a combination of teaching approaches that ensure they are making the best possible progress and achieving to the highest standard possible.
One of the challenges you may experience as a literacy leader in your school is supporting teachers to move away from associating ‘difference’ with deficit. This can affect teacher’s ability to motivate and engage with their students and therefore can affect outcomes for those students. This is of particular concern for Māori, Pasifika, ESOL and student with special education needs as they are the groups that research evidence shows us teachers often have low expectations of.
The section on building efficacy – link to section on managing change - deals specifically with challenging teacher’s deficit theorising.
