Senior secondary Literature courses in Australia all aim, to various extents, to develop students' critical literacy skills. These aims share emphases on reading, reflecting and responding critically to texts, on critical analysis and critical ideas, and on forming interpretations informed by critical perspectives. Critical literacy is not…

Coverage of reading and reading instruction in initial teacher education is highly contested, with the "reading wars" representing decades of debate concerning approaches that should be promoted to teachers-in-training. Empirical evidence strongly endorses explicit and systematic teaching of code-based skills as a starting point,…

Despite the generally highly individualised educational needs of children, when it comes to reading, three collective patterns of concern tend to arise. Research explicitly highlights the disparity that at-risk children and children with a disability may face in the classroom, as well as the longstanding ripple effects of early language and…

This article presents the outcomes of a study conducted in Victoria, Australia, that recognised teachers' knowledge and understanding of phonics teaching, and early literacy acquisition processes more generally. In total, 45 teachers and 220 students from the 18 focus schools who engaged in the reform initiative agreed to participate in this…

Recent research in the United States suggests that student performance differences between private and public schools disappear once student and school level characteristics are controlled for. This is an important result as it suggests that in the absence of such differences delivery of education through public means can be as efficient as that…

This paper reports on three Victorian early career Foundation to Year Two (F-2) teachers and the impact of leadership on their daily pedagogic decision-making about the teaching of reading. Data sets from each teacher drew on observations of three of their reading lessons and researcher-generated field notes, a semi-structured teacher interview,…

In this article, I respond creatively to the recent Australian Government Department of Education Teacher education expert panel [TEEP] report entitled "Strong Beginnings." Released in July 2023 and led by Professor Mark Scott AO, the report outlines problems pertaining to teacher education in Australia. It aims to improve student…

This article explores primary school teachers' views and practices in literacy instruction to support students' word knowledge development. This study provides insights into how primary school teachers with a deep interest in literacy understand and apply the literacy strategies they employ in their classrooms, and how previous professional…

Purpose: Children learning to read in English must learn to read words with varying degrees of grapheme-phoneme correspondence regularity, but there is very little research comparing methods of instruction for words with less predictable or irregular spellings. Therefore, we compared three methods of instruction for beginning readers. Method:…

Narrative inquiry has long been respected as a qualitative approach to researching the lived experiences of participants. Used widely in educational research the approach enables insights into the practices, perspectives and preferences of teachers, most often considering a small number of participants within a close circle of influence. In…

Supportive digital resources are key to supporting educators' pedagogic practices in teaching children to be literate. But locating suitable resources can be confusing, with as claims about products being educational, aligned with curriculum outcomes, and even as 'silver bullets'. In Australia, a lack of specificity in national and state…

In the famous Djuranydjura story from North-East Arnhem Land, when the visiting 'Macassan' offers the Yol?u ancestral dog rice, shoes and blankets, he rejects them all, in favour of his own land and resources. At Gäwa homeland on Elcho Island, this powerful story is reinterpreted to include the arrival of balanda (white) teachers, and their focus…

Learning to read is a process that begins well before children commence formal schooling and well before children learn to decode print. Children's early reading skills are, first and foremost, foundationally contingent upon children's oral language and phonological awareness proficiencies -- skills that can be mapped across a continuum of…

Purpose: We report the qualitative findings from a survey of elementary teachers regarding reading instruction. The purpose is to extend on quantitative findings in a previously described survey to gain a more in-depth understanding of Australian elementary teachers' approaches to the literacy block in their schools: how this is used, who makes…

The aim of the present study was to determine the efficacy of a small-group reading instruction program that was delivered over two school terms to Australian students in Years 3 through 6. A large cohort (n = 239) of primary school children was assessed on their literacy skills before and after receiving 'MacqLit', a phonics-based program…