Literacy teaching and learning in e-Learning contexts

Chapter 6: Discussion

In this chapter we summarise the key research findings and consider their implications.

Building capacity with multi-modal texts

The purpose of this research was to investigate how e-Learning contexts can be used effectively to support the literacy learning needed for the 21st century. In a multi-media age it is no longer sufficient to teach students how to make meaning solely of and with print texts. Students are faced with multi-modal texts on a daily basis. In a globalised world with diverse local communities it is no longer sufficient to teach students solely how to use Standard English and to do so only in classroom contexts. Students need to know how to learn and transform the discourses of all the communities to which they wish to belong. In a knowledge society students need not only an understanding of existing knowledge but the capacity to use and transform it according to changing needs and contexts.

Students need to be able to break the code, make meaning, use, and analyse multi-modal texts. They need a meta-knowledge which they can apply to new text forms that have not yet emerged or situations they have not yet encountered. In the e-fellows’ classrooms there were many examples of students building these capabilities. It is our hope that these examples may be of use to other educators as they provide opportunities for other students to develop their literacy capabilities.

The findings of this research suggest that there are a number of affordances of ICTs and effective e-Learning environments that may help teachers provide the conditions needed for literacy learning to occur. In particular, the e-fellow projects provided students with opportunities to: work with freedom and constraint; work with diverse others; specialise according to their strengths and interests; share ideas; revisit ideas; and work with experts. These are all conditions which complexity thinking researchers have found to be present as complex systems emerge and evolve.¹⁸ These conditions may not cause learning but they are necessarily present when effective learning occurs.

The findings from this research highlight some of the ways in which ICTs, in and of themselves, offer affordances for literacy learning. In particular, we found that ICTs enabled students: to have greater choice about how to make meaning of and with texts; to work with diverse others; to specialise according to individual strengths and interests; to share ideas; and to reflect on, revisit, add to, and adapt ideas over time.

Engagement and achievement when working in different modes

One of our most interesting findings is that, in many of the e-fellows’ classrooms, there were students who over the course of the project showed increased ability to read and write print texts, even though this was not the primary mode in which they had chosen to work. In many cases these were students who teachers described as lower performing readers and writers. Discussions about the importance of working across a range of modes sometimes engender a concern that functional literacy will be neglected and that reading and writing achievement will drop. The findings of this study suggest that such concerns may be unfounded or at least overstated. Instead, our findings suggest that opportunities to make meaning in a range of modes may in fact have the opposite effect—that is, of increasing achievement in reading and writing, especially for students with a history of underachievement in these areas.

For a country with one of the longest tails of underachievement in reading and writing in the OECD, and with an over representation of Māori and Pacific students at the lower end, this is an important finding. It is worth remembering here that the e-fellows’ projects were situated in schools covering a wide range of deciles and with quite different student populations, and that this finding held across many of them.

There are four possible reasons for this finding, each slightly different but related. It is likely that they operate in combination. These reasons relate to: student engagement; the multi-modal nature of all texts; the co-construction of learning; and developing meta-knowledge. We describe each of these in more detail below.

Student engagement

The e-fellow projects provided students with a wide range of choice about which modes to make meaning with. This meant that a greater proportion of students had opportunities to work from their strengths and pursue their interests. The e-fellows reported higher levels of student engagement during their e-fellow projects than in more traditional literacy activities. This was especially evident for students with a history of underachievement and lack of engagement. Evidence of high levels of engagement included increased: “on task” behaviour, levels of concentration and perseverance, willingness to spend out-of-school time on project work, and fewer behaviour management problems. The e-fellows also observed increased confidence and willingness to take risks with print texts and had anecdotal data and assessment results indicating improved achievement in reading and writing. This finding suggests that increased achievement and engagement in one mode may be associated with increased achievement and engagement in others.

The multi-modal nature of all texts

Another reason for our finding that improvement in one mode seemed to be associated with improvement in another relates to the idea that all texts are multi-modal at some level. Acts such as selecting music to support the message, choosing a colour to represent mood, or choosing the pitch of voice for a character, more often than not, require the interpretation of text (the script, story, a verbal narrative, and so forth). Conversely, as students make meaning of and with print texts they are at some level practising meaning making using visual image, vocal expression, and so forth.

Co-constructing learning

When taking on specialist roles in group work, students learnt from each other. The e-fellows found that although students took responsibility for different roles to complete a shared task, in most cases all group members became better at all of the roles, not just the one they were responsible for. For example, an expert in script writing working with an expert in making meaning through music resulted in both students becoming better at script writing and interpretation of script through music. This resulted from the need to work closely together to ensure that each part of the shared production complemented the others.

Building meta-knowledge

Finally, and most importantly, it is possible that working across modes gave students opportunities to develop a meta-knowledge of meaning making that can be applied to all texts, including print. In times when text types rapidly change, this is an essential skill. Learning the conventions of existing text types has its place but will not necessarily equip students with the ability to interpret and articulate new text forms yet to emerge. An understanding of the principles of meaning making, however, does provide students with tools that can be applied to future, and as yet unknown, text forms.

Although we did not see many examples of e-fellows directly teaching the meta-knowledge of meaning making, we did see examples of students learning it. This led us to conjecture that

"literacy learning in e-Learning contexts can enhance the possibilities of students developing this meta-knowledge. We see two main reasons why this might be so."

The first is that working in e-Learning contexts provides opportunities to compare meaning making processes in many different modes and so helps students build an understanding of the principles of meaning making in a way that is not possible when focusing on only one mode. Fellows found that the act of working across modes provides the opportunity to discuss and develop a big picture understanding of how meaning making works, in much the same way that learning a foreign language teaches the principles of languages.

The second reason that e-Learning contexts support the development of meta-knowledge is that when technologies are new the systems of meaning making are more visible. The word “technologies” is used here in its broadest sense here to encompass the technology of oral language, of print, of image, and so forth. The truth of this claim can be shown historically. The advent of the alphabet, and the printing press, led to much debate about the principles of meaning making because these became visible in a way that the principles of meaning making for oral forms of communication were not. Davis, Sumara, and Luce-Kapler (2008) argue that this invisibility is due to our embodiment of language.

"The irony of a technology such as language is the manner in which it conceals its tremendous complexity. We don’t see language as a technology because we embody it. By contrast, cutting edge tools impose themselves on our consciousness, demanding focused attention to understand and manipulate." (p.138)

On most occasions language use is not something we consciously construct. It “just is”. New language technologies provide us with an important opportunity to show students (and remind ourselves) of the constructed (rather than neutral) nature of language, what it can and cannot do, what it allows and disallows. Through studying the workings of language in areas where the workings are more visible because they are new (new technologies) we can help students to see the less visible ways in which older and more familiar technologies (such as oral language, and print) work, and how these technologies also function to shape our experiences and those of others. If we are interested in social justice and equity we cannot afford to overlook these teaching opportunities that new technologies provide. And if we do not take the opportunity while the technologies are new we will lose them. Davis et al. (2008) locate this responsibility with educators:

"…the educator has two major responsibilities when it comes to technology: opening up new vistas of possibility by attending to emergent technologies, and preventing the shut down of other possibilities by technologies that have become invisible to their users." (p. 138)

We interpret the term “educators” to include all those working in the field of education, not just teachers. This includes policy makers, teacher educators, professional development providers, and researchers.

This leads us on to the final section of this chapter. How do we ensure that many more teachers and students have opportunities to explore the possibilities and constraints provided by emergent and existing technologies? Could we, and if so, how would we, scale up the experiences of the e-fellows and their students?

How do we maximise the benefits?

Our findings suggest that the e-fellows (and others like them) can be catalysts for change beyond the walls of their own classrooms. By the end of the e-fellowships this had occurred in three of the e-fellows’ schools, and was beginning to do so in others. This was not a case of e-fellows providing formal professional development sessions for their staff, or even reporting back on their projects at staff meetings. It was that the passion for their work and that of their students was infectious. Other staff members wanted to be involved. However, we also note that this scaling up effect happened with the presence of particular conditions. These were to do with the school context, the deep subject knowledge of teachers, the presence of ICT tools and policies that supported their work, and opportunities to disseminate findings.

The scaling up effect described at the start of this section requires the support of school leaders. One of the criteria for e-fellow applicants is guaranteed principal support. Most of the e-fellows had very high levels of school support.

The availability and reliability of ICTs varied enormously across schools and had a considerable impact on the type of projects the e-fellows designed and the possibility of implementing them. Many came from very well equipped schools in terms of ICTs and support staff. Others did not. One of the e-fellows designed a project that was dependent on students having access to home computers because the school ones were rarely available and not easily accessible. One e-fellow completely changed her project topic after the fellowship had begun due to school ICT difficulties. Many had to compromise or invent solutions to unanticipated problems on a just-in-time basis. One struggled with school ICT policies that blocked student access to the information they needed. The capacity to scale up is dependent on the mitigation of problems such as these.

Deep subject knowledge

Scaling up also requires teachers with deep expertise in their subject. The findings of this study indicate that teachers who have had pedagogically-focused ICT professional development and know their subject well can work out for themselves how to create e-Learning environments that support students to learn and transform discourses.

Deep subject or disciplinary knowledge is not acquired quickly. It is obtained through extended study, for example, by completing tertiary-level qualifications, and by participating and contributing in “real world” discourse communities. All of the teachers in this study had experienced either one or both of these.

This is particularly important in terms of focussed planning and management of learning outcomes and the teacher inquiry cycle, as outcomes can become “woolly” if not clearly identified or articulated in terms of setting learning goals and peer assessment, and less experienced teachers could well lose their way and be captured by the technology rather than the learning focus.

Opportunities to disseminate findings

Another way of scaling up is through sharing examples of effective teaching and learning. We saw many examples of this happening within and beyond the e-fellows’ schools, mainly through word of mouth and connections made online.

Dissemination opportunities were also embedded in the structure of the e-fellowships. The e-fellows produced e-portfolios on their projects that are available to the general public on-line. They also each presented at either The New Zealand Reading Association Conference or Ulearn.

Where to next?

This study provides information to support a broader and more inclusive concept of literacy than solely the capacity to read and write Standard English, and one that that better supports students living and learning in the 21st century. Our findings in this exploratory study suggest that increased achievement and engagement in one mode may be associated with that in others. It would be interesting to do a more formal investigation into possible associations between engagement and achievement across different modes of meaning making.

The e-fellows’ projects were all situated in the learning areas of English, the arts, and to a lesser degree, the social sciences. As indicated in Chapter 1, this was representative of the applicants for 2009 e-fellowships overall. Consequently the findings presented in this report pertain primarily to literacy learning in these disciplines. However, we also need examples of literacy learning in e-Learning contexts within other disciplinary areas such as science and mathematics. Further research might also investigate teaching and learning about the ways in which literacy learning in one discipline might be similar to and different from that in another.

Footnote

18. For further information about complexity thinking as it applies to education, seeDavis et al. (2008) and Davis & Sumara (2006).