Teaching research-based literacy skills in training courses

Abstract

A growing awareness of literacy issues among adult learners has spawned many responses in educational programmes, including the embedding of these skills into existing courses. Embedding literacy teaching is now integral to most low-level courses in New Zealand tertiary education as well as many training programmes. A parallel development occurring in many educational contexts is that of basing teaching practices on research findings. While this approach has long been standard in fields such as health and engineering, it has only become a serious consideration in education over the past decade, especially in the schooling sector. This approach has been made possible by the work of educational researchers using large-scale meta-analyses of research (Hattie, 2009, 2011). This article looks at how trainers can include research-based strategies for teaching literacy skills. It is acknowledged that trainers in these courses can’t realistically provide intensive literacy teaching, but they can still minimise learners’ literacy difficulties and maximse their learning by incorporating strategies for learners to access the teaching content more readily. Neither is it expected that trainers would necessarily adopt all of these strategies; they are offered in the hope that trainers will experiment with them in their teaching, gradually adding them to their teaching repertoire.