Scaffolding academic literacy using the reading to learn methodology: an evaluative study

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The primary aim of this study was to test and assess the efficacy of an innovative literacydevelopment intervention, Reading to Learn (RtL), with Grade 11 students at two schoolswithin the Winelands District of the Western Cape. The RtL intervention, originally designedto address inequitable literacy development outcomes of students from marginalisedcommunities in Australia, was undertaken against the backdrop of increasingly seriousconcerns regarding literacy development in primary and secondary education in South Africa.Recent research has confirmed that poor literacy performance at school cannot be divorcedfrom social conditions and educational practices that may exclude some and privilege otherlearners. In this study, RtL was designed purposefully to scaffold the development of moreadvanced academic literacy skills, with special support being offered to students with thegreater need, whilst still providing sufficient stimulation for better performing students. Acharacterising feature of RtL is its affordance of equal opportunities to students from outsidemainstream Discourses, by providing explicit access to the Discourse of formal schooling.The theoretical conceptual framework of RtL is derived from the work of Halliday (languageas a text in a social context), Vygotsky (learning as a social process) and Bernstein (educationas a pedagogic device for maintaining inequality).The two central research questions considered (i) whether RtL could be effective in a smallscaleSouth African secondary school context, and (ii) whether RtL outcomes in such acontext would be comparable to other studies of RtL conducted elsewhere. Using a long-termaction research design, this mixed methods inquiry into academic literacy developmentworked with students' writing portfolios collected throughout the RtL intervention. Alinguistic biographical questionnaire was used to gather student-specific data. Student workwas assessed, codified and given numerical literacy scores which allowed for descriptive andmore advanced statistical data analysis. A number of cases were closely analysed to illustratethe nature of the intervention and students' levels of literacy pre and post intervention.Triangulation of the various kinds of data revealed how general data patterns emerging fromthe small-scale statistical analysis relate to contextual features specific to local social andeducational conditions.The findings of this study showed that students' academic literacy skills improved over the duration of the RtL intervention. The greatest area of improvement across all students (regardless of school context) was evidenced in more advanced schematic structuring of both the narrative and academic essay genres. From a cross-sectional (across schools) perspective, the greatest overall improvement in written literacy skills was among the weaker cohort of students from the peri-urban township school. The phenomenon of weaker students making greater overall gains was also evidenced from a time series (within school) perspective. This encouraging finding indicates a possible convergence (or 'catch-up') effect, for students previously categorised as academically weak, regardless of school context, meaning that the documented convergence effects also seemed to occur irrespective of students' socioeconomic circumstances. Furthermore, the findings of this study, with regards to the efficacy of RtL, are comparable to findings from other studies conducted globally, those in Australian studies, in particular.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University