Improving literacy and content learning across the curriculum? How teachers relate literacy teaching to school subjects in cross-curricular professional development

Abstract

This study examined how teachers relate literacy teaching to their ordinary subject teaching in professional development settings. The study is conducted within the large Swedish professional development program the Literacy Boost (in Swedish "Läslyftet"), which can be viewed as an example of an international focus on reading ability beyond early and beginning reading. Such a focus may be well-grounded, but it also raises concerns of how teachers of different school subjects are addressed in such programs. The findings of this study show that participating teachers express four approaches of relating literacy teaching to subject teaching, indicating different types and degrees of coherence between professional development content and teachers' teaching practice. While all teaching activities described by teachers aimed at improving students' general literacy, this was mostly done in the form of additional activities rather than being embedded in the ordinary teaching concerning curricular objectives of school subjects. These results suggest that differences in how texts are used and interpreted in different school subjects should be given higher priority in the design of both content and form of professional development programs to better support subject teaching.

Persuasion and resistance. Large-scale collaborative professional development as a policy instrument

“…The empirical material for this article is drawn from a larger data set, all collected by the author, which consists of observations of PD meetings and interviews with coaches and participating teachers at six schools in three municipalities during the academic year 2015-16 (see also Kirsten, 2019). In order to raise the likelihood of variation in the empirical material, the schools were chosen for variations in their student composition, grades taught, academic results and geographical locations (inner city/suburb/ small city/rural).…”

Primary preservice teachers' perspectives of their literacy mentoring experiences during professional placement

“…In response, the Australian Curriculum emphasises the importance of literacy being integrated across the curriculum (Australian Centre for Educational Research [ACER], 2017; Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2010a[ACARA], , b, c, 2011Gonski et al, 2018). It is recognised that not only English teachers need to be effective teachers of literacy; all teachers need to understand how literacy can be embedded across learning areas (ACARA, 2010a(ACARA, , b, 2011(ACARA, , 2017Faulkner, 2012;Faulkner et al, 2012a, b;Kirsten, 2019;Scott et al, 2018). If preservice teachers are to graduate with the knowledge and practice for literacy teaching, they require rigorous university coursework and effective mentoring in literacy teaching during their inschool professional experience.…”

“…Being literate can impact students' learning across the curriculum (Faulkner et al, 2012a). Additionally, literacy is an essential skill for living, and if students are to have positive lives, it is imperative they have teachers who are effective at literacy teaching (Kirsten, 2019). While studies have investigated the mentoring of science (Abed and Abd-El-Khalick, 2015;Hudson et al, 2005;Masters, 2009;Miller et al, 2019), technology (Charbonneau-Gowdy et al, 2016) and mathematics (Cavanagh and Prescott, 2011;Hudson, 2007), currently there is a dearth of literature about effective mentoring of literacy teaching during professional experience.…”

“…It is recognised that not only English teachers need to be effective teachers of literacy; all teachers need to understand how literacy can be embedded across learning areas (ACARA, 2010a, b, 2011, 2017; Faulkner, 2012; Faulkner et al. , 2012a, b; Kirsten, 2019; Scott et al. , 2018).…”

Kompetensutveckling för professionella lärare?

“…Vissa lärarkategorier, såsom gymnasielärare, var dock mindre positiva och insatsernas effekter på lärare som individer var tydligare än effekterna på lärare som kollektiv, exempelvis vad gäller lärarsamarbete. 4 Forskningsinitierade studier har bland annat undersökt Matematiklyftets forskningsgrund (Boesen, Helenius, & Johansson, 2015), relationen mellan Matematiklyftets modulinnehåll och effekter på elevers lärande (Lindvall, 2017), handledares roll inom Läslyftet (Andersson Varga & Randahl, 2017), samt hur lärare relaterar Läslyftets literacyaktiviteter till sin ämnesundervisning (Kirsten, 2019). I jämförelse med dessa rapporter och studier undersöker vi i denna artikel kollegialt lärande-modellens underliggande logiker snarare än insatsernas effekter, genom en analys av de problemrepresentationer som uttrycktes för att rättfärdiga modellen i policytexter vid modellens tillblivelse inom ramen för Matematiklyftet.…”