Understanding Literacy Development

This book presents an account of literacy learning based on what effective teachers and learners actually do. It demonstrates how literacy develops in social and communicative exchanges. Learning to be literate - - like all learning -- involves negotiating meanings with others, through whom learners clarify, confirm and expand their understandings of literacy and how they can use it.

This approach demands a focus on learning itself, rather than on the alleged complexity of written language. Failure to learn is due to failure in communication and this book establishes a framework to enhance the understandings required of children learning to read.

The book draws on videotaped research during literacy sessions in Australian schools and is principally addressed to primary teachers. It will also interest academics and teacher educators. This account of how children learn to be literate breaks new ground by presenting an account of literacy learning based on what effective teachers and learners actually do. The book demonstrates how literacy develops in social and communicative exchanges. Learning to be literate - like all learning - involves negotiating meanings with others, through whom learners clarify, confirm and expand their understandings of literacy and how they can use it.

This approach demands a focus on learning itself, rather than on the alleged complexity of written language. Failure to learn is due to failure in communication and this book establishes a framework to enhance the understandings required of children learning to read.

Based on videotaped research during literacy sessions in Australian schools, Understanding Literacy Development records the practice of three experienced teachers working in different schools, all of who use similar techniques in their classrooms. There is a class of 5-year olds, a class of 9-year olds, and a class in a special school of children with emotional and personality disorders. In each, the teachers’ engagement with the students as they set about writing is recorded and analyzed so that we can see what succeeds, why, and how these approaches can be adopted in primary classrooms.

Designed mainly for primary teachers, this book will also interest academics, teacher educators and students, and teachers of children with special needs.

Peter Geekie teaches in the Faculty of Education in the University of Woollongong, Australia, and is internationally recognized as an authority on literacy acquisition.

Brian Cambourne teaches in the Faculty of Education in the University of Woollongong, Australia, and is internationally recognized as an authority on literacy acquisition.

Phil Fitzsimmons teaches in the Faculty of Education in the University of Woollongong, Australia, and is internationally recognized as an authority on literacy acquisition.