November: back to buggy basics
October: literacy changes lives: books and turkey twizzlers
September: eReaders and the reinvention of reading
August: the literacy plateau
July: the Conservative party's approach to literacy policy
June: age raging - the debate around age guidance on children's books
May: putting families at the heart of the literacy challenge
April: communication is crucial - the Bercow review
March: the launch of the National Year of Reading
February: culture, creativity and literacy
January: reading today
Viewpoints from 2007
Viewpoints from 2006
The launch this month of our Talk To Your Baby research on baby buggies has aroused a huge amount of interest. The research, conducted by the University of Dundee, demonstrates how buggies that face the pusher offer more opportunities for communication than buggies that face away. The findings are compelling and have been seized on by the media. This is great news and a significant moment, we hope, in promoting the importance of communicating with babies in the national consciousness.
As well as the key message that talking to your baby supports their development in an extraordinary way, the research has encouraged discussions about underlying issues.
Firstly, it has prompted reflections on the extent to which common behaviour, so prevalent in society that it is practically invisible, has massive implications for the way babies develop. Simple changes to this behaviour may prompt richer communications, yielding disproportionate benefits. As a society, we need to maintain a critical awareness of how we interact with children, constantly seeking to enrich potential development experiences, especially (but not solely) with babies.
Secondly, the price of pusher-facing buggies is vastly higher than that of buggies that face away. Research from the USA has demonstrated that the language and vocabulary which children from poorer households are exposed to, is more limited than that experienced by children in more affluent households. There is a strong argument that families from poorer homes should be given access to pusher-facing buggies and the extra opportunities for interaction they offer. However, the higher pricing of pusher-facing buggies makes this unlikely. Therefore, the families who would benefit most are those least likely to be able to afford them. The market effectively increases the inequality.
Another theme that emerged is misplaced parental guilt. The mothers taking part in the study enjoyed the pusher-facing buggies more because they enjoyed the interaction with their babies. However, they felt that it was probably not as good an experience for their baby as being able to look out and see the world. All the evidence from the research contradicts this assessment. So where did the nagging sense come from that enjoying communication with your baby is somehow self-indulgent? And how do we dispel it?
The challenge is to "permission" communication with babies, not just while using buggies but at every available opportunity. We need to get the idea out there and embedded in behaviour that talking to your baby is profoundly beneficial for them – as well as a joy for parents and carers.
Jonathan Douglas, November 2008
There has been some comment in the media this month on celebrities who have proudly claimed to have “never read a book in their life”. Philip Hensher kicked off the debate with a robust article in the Independent on Jamie Oliver. The article noted how dangerous it was to decouple literacy from success and how misleading it is to have role models like Oliver “cite himself as a lesson in where you can get to without reading a book at all”.
At the same time, the National Literacy Trust published an overview of how literacy is central to living a healthy, full and social life, called Literacy Changes Lives.
The report brings together a range of powerful data which demonstrates how dangerous it is to create the myth that success is easy without literacy. The research demonstrates that people with lower levels of literacy are:
• more likely to lead solitary lives:
o 43 per cent live alone, compared with 30 per cent of men with good literacy skills
o 22 per cent still live with their parents, compared with nine per cent of those with good literacy skills
• less happy with their lives: only 50 per cent are ‘satisfied with life so far’, compared with 78 per cent of men with good literacy skills
• more likely to aim low: 38 per cent have low career aspirations compared with 13 per cent of men with good literacy skills.
However, the basic message that literacy is fundamental to fulfilling your potential is not widely understood. Jamie Oliver’s perspective is frighteningly prevalent. Most worryingly, it is a view that is particularly common among those groups most likely to face deprivation or exclusion. For instance, we know that only 24 per cent of parents from social groups C2DE are likely to associate reading with being successful (consumer data from 2008 National Year of Reading research, April 2008).
Therefore, for a celebrity, particularly a celebrity who has a strong working-class profile, to be promoting the myth that literacy and success are not interlinked is potentially dangerous. We want to look at the impact of how positive and negative messages about literacy from role models impact on learners. So over the next few months the National Literacy Trust will be undertaking a large-scale piece of research examining how role models impact on young people’s perception of the importance of literacy and of themselves as readers.
We know that aspirations are crucial to skill development. We know that celebrities have a strong role to play in creating these aspirations. Let’s hope that celebrities who understand the damage that unhealthy diets have on young people also begin to understand that negative perspective about literacy skills can be equally damaging.
Jonathan Douglas, October 2008
if:book, the think tank dedicated to exploring the future of the book, recently held a meeting to explore the potential of the Sony eReader.
At first sight the eReader is an exceptionally traditional-looking device; it is bound in leather, black text sits upon a white screen and the preloaded titles are classics that are out of copyright . What is perhaps is more startling is that the ambition of the eReader really is as traditional as its appearance suggests. It wishes to replicate the book reading experience as closely as possible.
Even with this conservative aspiration the eReader offers significant benefits, particularly for those who have to read massive quantities of print. Editors will be spared torn ligaments, holiday makers will pack slimline luggage and literary judges and reviewers will require less space, thanks to a technology that can store up to 160 novels.
But it is surprising that such a traditional concept of literature is enshrined in leather-bound technology. In many ways this is an opportunity missed. The opportunity to develop non-linear narrative, to hyperlink for elucidation, to introduce sights and sounds to the novel all exist in new media. The emergence of new technology offers an unprecedented moment in which literature might be redefined. Imagine how Tristram Shandy or Ulysses might have been written in a new media age.
The conversation at the if:book meeting focused on whether editors and authors will maximise the potential of new media to redefine literature or whether they will default to the traditional model of the book on page or screen. The answer was equivocal. This is a shame. For many young readers it is the hybrids of storytelling and interactivity which are alluring and where their literacy is being engaged and fostered. Retreating from this kind of publishing will mean retreating from this kind of audience.
The launch of initiatives such as Wordia.com offer an alternative approach to using new media to engage readers. Wordia is a new kind of dictionary which allows anyone to upload a video clip from their phone or webcam in which they define a word which is significant to them. It’s interactive and personalised, it has clearly learnt from social networking and it makes the most of the current potential of technology. Most importantly Wordia understands that the added value of technology for most people is about being part of a community.
New forms of reading and writing are redefining the skills that are required to be literate. This is challenging for everyone who is committed to raising literacy standards. However it also offers immense opportunities to engage learners and support readers not just with novelties but by genuinely enriching reading and writing in new ways.
Jonathan Douglas, September 2008
August saw the annual publication of the key stage 1 and 2 Sats results. Fortunately, the picture for literacy is that the high levels of attainment achieved through initiatives over the past ten years, such as the National Literacy Strategy, have been maintained.
However, over the past four years the impact of these programmes seems to have plateaued. The 2008 figures reveal that children reaching the level expected for their age in key stage 2 English has improved by one percentage point to 81 per cent. At key stage 1, the results remained constant with 84 per cent of children reaching the expected level 2 or above.
When you compare these results with those of a decade ago, there is much reason for celebration. This year’s figures represent a significant improvement and visibly demonstrate the impact that centrally positioning literacy in education policy has had.
For a small number of children, for example those with certain special educational needs, reaching the expected levels may be an unrealistic aspiration. Yet the challenge remains: how do we improve the literacy skills of what Lord Adonis this month referred to as the “stubborn 20 per cent of eleven-year-olds”?
Following his review on the teaching of reading, Sir Jim Rose’s update on the education sector’s response makes specific suggestions for how the teaching of reading can be improved in line with his report. At the same time, important initiatives such as Every Child A Reader are focusing on specific strategies for those children who need intensive support.
Yet crucially, developing a love of reading also has a significant positive influence on children’s attainment. For this reason, parents have an essential role to play in supporting and encouraging language and literacy development. Research shows that parental involvement in their child’s literacy practices is a more powerful force than other family background variables, such as social class, family size and level of parental education (Flouri & Buchanan, 2004). (Download more research evidence related to parental involvement.) Parental involvement must start from birth, long before children reach formal educational settings.
The recent Bercow review reinforced the need to support children, and their families. To meet this need, this September, the National Literacy Trust will launch a new initiative, Early Reading Connects, which is based on the principles of the Early Years Foundation Stage. It is specifically designed to support early years practitioners in encouraging children and their families to develop a love of words, stories and reading. Over the next decade, the important role of the family in raising literacy levels will undoubtedly need to take centre stage.
Jonathan Douglas, August 2008
Amid increasing discussion about future UK political leadership, the National Literacy Trust has published an analysis of the official opposition party’s approach to tackling the literacy issue.
The Conservative party’s interest in literacy is well established. It is often forgotten that the foundations of the National Literacy Strategy were laid down by the last Conservative administration; Nick Gibb has become a powerful advocate for synthetic phonics; and John Bercow, Conservative MP for Buckingham has recently led the hugely important review advocating our national approach to speaking, listening and communication support for young people. However, as speculation about a possible future Tory administration intensifies, two distinct approaches to addressing literacy are emerging from the party’s policy debate.
The first approach implicitly sees literacy issues as a result of pedagogical failure and that a thorough implementation of a systematic approach to the teaching of synthetic phonics would “eradicate reading failure” as George Osborne, deputy leader of the Conservative party, put it recently.
The second approach puts the literacy issue in a family context and sees the acquisition of reading skills as relating to motivation and family background. Iain Duncan Smith’s Breakthough Britain (2006) suggests a range of strategies starting with a proposed family literacy programme and including “expert tuition using the skills of the whole community”.
A rounded and effective literacy policy will need to take account of both pedagogy and social context. As the cohort examined by the Institute of Education’s Effective Provision of Pre-School Education study advances through its primary schooling, the evidence suggesting the need for effective educational experiences to interlock with a positive home learning environment becomes more compelling. This offers a framework for developing an holistic approach to literacy policy. This is the approach the National Literacy Trust will be lobbying for as the parties develop their manifestos; it is also the approach that the most innovative local authorities (many of them Conservative) are developing to support learners.
Jonathan Douglas, July 2008
Children’s books are back in the headlines with the current debate about the inclusion of age guidance on the back of books.
The debate is a highly visible demonstration of the passion that underpins the creation of literature for young people; even if, in the middle of the 2008 National Year of Reading, we would have wished the book trade to be united in celebrating one of the UK’s strongest creative sectors.
The motives of both sides in the debate are impeccable: those in favour of age banding want to empower those who aren’t comfortable with book buying by providing them with guidance; those against are keenly aware of the complexities of children’s reading development and the fact that this development is rarely linear.
At a deeper level the debate is beginning to reveal two contrasting approaches to books and the balance of power between reader and writer. One approach centres around defining the book by the author’s intention. The other is a reader-centred approach which defines the book by the relationship with the reader. Inevitably many authors will tend to the former and those who market books will tend to the latter.
If one sees a book as a work created by an author and appreciated by the reader, then the book will be packaged based on the identity of the work. If the book is seen as a collaboration, with the reader taking a more active role in the creation of the book, then the cultural values and identity of the reader become more important. For the former group the idea of age banding is intrusive and inappropriate; for the latter it is a useful tool for guiding the reader to the book.
There are skilled professionals who can introduce readers to books – specialist booksellers, children’s librarians, teachers – who don’t need this kind of guidance. They are comfortable with an author-centred product because they can make the author/reader connection based on professional experience. However, many book-buyers may appreciate extra guidance, especially when children’s books are available outside of these traditional settings.
In the end, writers need to have faith in the integrity of the design of their books and readers need to personally connect with the book as an object as well as its contents. Those who promote children’s books need to be given space to connect the right child to the right book at the right time. Ultimately, this means that age ranging will probably never be wholesale or systematic but neither will it ever be obliterated. The debate is a demonstration of a creative relationship at the heart of a creative experience – the act of reading itself.
Jonathan Douglas, June 2008
2008 marks the fifteenth anniversary of the National Literacy Trust. Later this year, we will be making an exciting announcement about how we will celebrate the anniversary. Inevitably, it is a moment when we look to the future and begin to identify the priorities of the next decade. With current social, economic and financial uncertainties, this is contentious. However, we believe that even with these uncertainties we can identify one theme that needs to be proactively tackled as a policy priority if literacy standards are to rise – family literacy.
The evidence base linking the home learning environment to literacy attainment is compelling. The NLT has recently appointed a full-time researcher to begin to assess and analyse this. We will be publishing analyses of this evidence base over the coming months.
During the 15 years of the NLT’s existence, public policy has increasingly acknowledged this growing evidence: the creation of a target for local library use by families in Sure Start areas; Government funding for Bookstart; the announcement of the 2008 National Year of Reading in the context of Every Parent Matters. At the same time, public policy towards the family has become more proactive, reflected recently in the renaming of the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the content of the subsequent Children’s Plan.
There is a growing awareness of the imperative of engaging families amongst literacy professionals. It is a message that we hear loud and clear as we talk to colleagues around the country.
The National Literacy Trust has sought to address this priority by coordinating the Family Reading Campaign, which was launched in January 2007 and which united a range of powerful agencies with a focus on making every home a reading home. Forward-looking authorities have seized upon this initiative as a powerful framework for planning their National Year of Reading.
Looking to the next 15 years, the National Literacy Trust is committed to championing family literacy. It will be at the heart of our activity. That means that we:
• advocate and lobby for public policy that supports family literacy
• challenge and support other agencies and local authorities in the development of strategies and initiatives which support family literacy
• develop National Literacy Trust projects and resources which exemplify this approach.
Through the last 15 years, the National Literacy Trust has been a key player in the massive changes in national literacy support. In 15 years' time, the extent to which we have positioned families at the heart of the literacy challenge will be a key indicator of our success.
Jonathan Douglas, May 2008
The National Literacy Trust (NLT) believes that full literacy is the ability to speak, listen, read and write in order to fulfil an individual’s and, ultimately, society’s potential. Speech, language and communications underpin the ability to develop reading and writing skills. They are the foundation of literacy and learning. As the Rose Review stated:
"Speaking and listening, together with reading and writing, are prime communication skills that are central to children's intellectual, social and emotional development."
The publication of the interim report of the Bercow Review of services for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs is an exciting moment in the development of full literacy support for all children, which the Rose review describes.
John Bercow’s interim report is a very powerful document. The voices and frustrations of children and young people, as well as parents, carers and practitioners come through in the report as it assesses the current strengths, but more frequently weaknesses of existing speaking and listening support:
“The shortage of speech and language therapy means there is a postcode lottery in place.”
“I had to do a lot of phoning and have got a lot of dead ends before I can find out the information I need.”
Two complementary agendas are at work in the Bercow review – the delivery of specific support for children with speech, language and communication needs; and the development of universal approaches, which raise the profile and general support for speaking and listening skills in schools, communities and homes. It is the universal agenda in which the NLT has a specific role to play.
Talk To Your Baby is the NLT’s campaign to encourage parents and carers to talk more to children from birth to three. It aims to create a universal culture in which early communication is appreciated and promoted. Other initiatives from the NLT seek to embed the development of speaking, listening and communication skills within wider literacy activity using popular culture as a framework to work with target audiences. For instance, Kick into Reading trains community coaches, academy students and first-team players from football clubs as storytellers to deliver storytelling workshops to children and young people. These initiatives are hugely important in supporting the delivery of more specific interventions to address speech, language and communication needs.
One of the recommendations of the Bercow Review is for a campaign “similar in scope and investment to the National Year of Reading”. This is a great idea when linked to the wider recommendations for the development of the speech, language and communication sector. The early signs of the 2008 National Year of Reading campaign indicate that a national campaign can be focused to tackle negative assumptions about a literacy activity amongst specific target groups. This kind of national campaign for speech, language and communication would need a strong infrastructure to support increased demand on services. It would need to establish who the priority groups are to be for the key messages of the campaign. On these foundations, it could be a major step forward in establishing a universal appreciation that communication is crucial'.
Jonathan Douglas, April 2008
The stage is set for the public launch of the 2008 National Year of Reading (NYR) – an extraordinary opportunity to rediscover the vital role of reading in enabling individuals and society to realise their potential.
All of us who work to promote literacy – teachers, tutors, librarians, writers, publishers - must enjoy 2008. This is a celebration of what we believe in. But the NYR also challenges us. The NYR is necessary because we have not been successful yet in working with the specific NYR target audiences. If we are to successfully work with these audiences after 2008 then the reading and literacy sector needs to learn new strategies and approaches developed by the NYR campaign and embed them urgently in our ongoing work.
Even before the campaign is launched, three key themes have emerged through our planning which challenge the way in which we deliver literacy and reading promotion:
• A broad and expansive definition of reading that explicitly includes the diverse reading experiences particularly of young people. This definition needs to validate online, digital, newspaper and comic reading. This is vital in order to support more people in identifying themselves as readers. Our promotion of reading needs to start with what people love and the reading activity that already exists.
• Collaborative working that brings together the work of all who are stakeholders in promoting reading. This approach is typified by the consortium leading the NYR and modeled in local authority coordinating groups. These stakeholders need to be as varied as the definition of reading and as extensive as the audiences we need to attract. Through the NYR a range of agencies will be working together towards common targets.
• A strategic perspective that seeks to embed the promotion of reading and literacy in policy and strategy at every level from national government policy through local authority structures to individual school improvement and development plans.
None of these challenges are new but the preparation for the NYR highlights their urgency and the delivery of the NYR offers the sector a framework to address them.
Ultimately, the NYR must impact not only on attitudes, skills and reading habits but also the way in which we work together to promote reading and literacy. A refreshed and reformed reading and literacy sector will be more responsive to the ongoing challenge the NYR will address; the creation of a reading nation.
www.yearofreading.org.uk
Jonathan Douglas, March 2008
The concept of a universal cultural offer has been bounced between the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF, previously DfES) for a number of years. But it had got stuck in practical and conceptual questions: how can the cultural sector develop the capacity to deliver the offer? How can a cultural offer be truly cultural and not default to an arts and museums offer? In contemporary society, what culture should be offered and what culture is relevant to young people?
The announcement by the DCMS and DCSF of the intention to spend five years developing a comprehensive cultural offer - five hours a week of quality arts and cultural education - moves the discussion forward. Existing cultural education and arts programmes will work together to establish new capacity, and a second wave of the Cultural Hubs programme will establish local partnership models for delivering the offer.
In the proposals literacy appears in two places. In the first instance, participation in reading and writing is embedded in the offer. Young people will be offered the opportunity to “engage creatively with library and archive services”. They will also be offered the opportunity to “produce a piece of creative writing, take part in a reading group, or listen to authors talk about their work”. Literacy is also mentioned in discussion of the concept of “cultural literacy” – the skills required to participate in culture, based on formal literacy.
The first mention of literacy potentially represents a significant commitment to address some of the attitudinal issues identified by recent studies, which suggest that young people are turned off by reading - an activity which is seen as geeky and unattractive. To position reading so centrally within a cultural offer suggests an ongoing commitment to build on the National Year of Reading and reposition reading as a creative and culturally relevant activity.
The second of the themes highlights that literacy underpins the cultural offer. The ability to communicate, read and write define the extent to which we can participate in culture. It is therefore not surprising that research and practice have demonstrated how participation in culture and the arts can support the acquisition of literacy skills.
Literacy needs to be positioned strongly within any strategy to develop our individual or shared cultural capital. It is to be hoped that literacy initiatives are linked into the development of the cultural offer to demonstrate this relationship and open up cultural participation to the largest possible groups of young people.
Jonathan Douglas, February 2008
As we enter the National Year of Reading, three significant pieces of research are informing our understanding of the literacy challenge which we face:
- Teachers as readers describes the relationship between the personal identity of teachers as readers and their role in promoting reading in the classroom
- Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) provides an international context for children’s literacy in the UK – but also helps illuminate the dynamic relationship between literacy skills and reading motivation, enjoyment, confidence and attitude
- The National Literacy Trust’s “Young people’s self-perceptions as readers” research , published in January, gathered evidence from over 1,600 children on what they thought a reader was and whether they considered themselves to be readers
These three pieces of research complement each other. Together they identify one of the most serious challenges the National Year of Reading needs to address: a renewal of the definition of reading in schools and in society.
Many young people feel excluded by the reading promoted by schools, libraries and those whose job it is to engender a love of reading within them. However, many of these young people read: they read online; they read magazines; they read comics. These trends have been highlighted both by PIRLs and the recent NLT research. However many of these readers fail to identify with a reading culture which they feel is predominantly defined by fiction, non-fiction and poetry books .
PIRLs highlighted how relatively infrequently newspapers and comics are used by English and Scottish teachers in the classroom. The teachers as readers research suggests that the problem may be made worse by the low levels of awareness many teachers have of the range of titles in traditional format which figure in today’s reading choices.
The challenge is to redefine reading to accommodate contemporary reading habits - to validate and yet to challenge. To accommodate established reading patterns as well as signposting developmental opportunities.
The National Year of Reading is facing this challenge but all of us in the business of teaching and promoting reading need to be stakeholders in its redefinition, challenging our own professional and personal assumptions.
When all forms of reading are represented in literacy policy and practice, that’s when we move on to address the even more challenging definition: what is meant by a reader?
Jonathan Douglas, January 2008
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