One of the most significant and consistent findings from all three overseas observation studies reviewed earlier (Beder & Medina, 2001; Besser et al., 2004; Scogins & Knell, 2001) was that there was not a high incidence of literacy, numeracy and language skill teaching occurring in the classrooms; furthermore, the literature review (Benseman et al., 2005) confirmed the importance of these ‘deliberate acts of teaching’ in achieving literacy, numeracy and language outcomes. In general terms, this study also confirms this finding. Teaching in LNL classrooms does not necessarily equate with a high rate of explicitly teaching LNL skills.
All of the teachers in the study utilised some form of initial assessment,36 but the methods they used varied considerably. In some cases, a colleague in the organisation carried out the initial assessments, but some of the teachers did not use these assessments, preferring to do their own. These assessments included background information about the learners, their motivations and goals and estimations of skill levels across literacy, numeracy and language areas. Few mentioned assessment tools that were diagnostic in their analysis. Individual Learning Plans (ILPs) are used by most of the teachers, albeit in different ways. Some appeared to be largely an administrative requirement, while others were updated regularly and used as the basis for detailed planning of sessions and used collaboratively with the learners.
The low incidence of deliberate acts of teaching was especially true of the teaching of reading skills. While we observed some sessions where there were sustained, deliberate acts of teaching reading skills, there were also a comparable number where there were very few, or even none. In the latter, there were neither stand-alone teaching sessions nor spontaneous teaching arising out of miscues. Probably the most frequent response we saw in relation to miscues was for the teacher to simply supply the correct word and encourage the learner to move on to the next piece of text. Many of these occurrences had a sense of the teacher wanting to ‘rescue’ the learner by quickly supplying the missing or mistaken word and thereby avoiding a sense of embarrassment or failure for the learner.
The 15 teachers did not use a very wide range of teaching strategies for teaching reading in the sessions that we observed. In the follow-up interviews, few identified strategies in addition to what we had observed. The predominant strategy was probably that of learners reading a piece of text (either silently or aloud) and the teacher asking questions about the content (usually about vocabulary rather than broader comprehension) or supplying additional information about the subject content. We observed about a third of the teachers teaching alphabetics and only a couple of these teachers did extended teaching of these skills. While there was quite a lot of vocabulary building in the sessions observed, we did not see much explicit teaching for comprehension or fluency. ESOL learners were largely taught the same way as other students in the study.
36 More detailed information about LNL teachers’ assessment tools and procedures will become available with the completion of a NZCER survey of this area early in 2005.