Jennifer Rennie

Diverse Literacy Learners: Deficit Versus Productive Pedagogies

Purpose – Our purpose in this chapter is to argue for a rethinking of the way we approach diversity in the classroom. We argue that the diversity of contemporary classrooms is a positive resource that can benefit all learners.Design/methodology/approach – We open our chapter with vignettes from both authors to help the reader understand our own experiences of working with diversity in classrooms. We then define diversity and outline why it is important. Finally we provide overviews of different theoretical perspectives on diversity which are helpful for positioning diversity in positive rather than deficit ways.Findings – We provide evidence from the literature from different theoretical perspectives on diversity in the classroom and show how they are helpful for thinking about literacy teaching and learning in contemporary classrooms.Research limitations/implications – We intentionally highlight approaches to working with diversity, which view diversity as a resource rather than a problem that needs to be fixed. These align with our personal experiences of working with diversity in the opening vignettes.Practical implications – In this chapter we provide classroom teachers with examples from our various research and personal experiences to illustrate how the diversity of classrooms can be empowering for students and teachers alike.Originality/value of chapter – Teachers and other educational stakeholders must acknowledge and embrace the diversity of our classrooms today. Viewing diversity as a resource for learning is potentially empowering and transformational for all students.

Mobilising community? Place, identity formation and new teachers’ learning

This paper analyses data from a longitudinal study which foregrounds the category of ‘place’ to ask: How do new teachers learn to do their work, and how do they learn about the places and communities in which they begin teaching? Surveys and ethnographic interviews were carried out with 35 new teachers over a three-year period in a region of rural Australia known for its disadvantage. In this paper we focus on the analysis of ethnographic data about ‘community’ which revealed that these new teachers understand the relationship between schools and communities in superficial ways through commonly circulating categories of school-community relationships. Cutting across these categories, however, a storyline analysis revealed that they enacted community through entrenched and taken for granted binary discourses of community as either a cosy place of belonging and comfort, or an abject place of deficit and disadvantage. The failure of new teachers to develop a more nuanced understanding of comfortable communities, and the abjection of communities that are different from their own classed experience, raises important questions in relation to outcomes for rural and regional children. We suggest that the site of teacher education, and the first years of teacher learning at work, are critical for learning ‘community’ as our study suggests that these assumptions become more entrenched as new teachers are further socialised into the institution of schooling.

Connecting Children, Community and Curriculum

Literacy achievement of Australia’s Indigenous youth continues to be a matter of concern. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which reports internationally on 15-year-olds’ reading, mathematical and scientific literacy skills, shows that in 2009 little more than 60 % of Australian Indigenous students achieved higher than proficiency level 2 in reading literacy. These trends are similar in other countries such as the United States where the literacy standards of Black and Hispanic students are well below their White American counterparts. There is a growing body of research that suggests that schools connect best with students of middle class, Anglo backgrounds. Further research into effective literacy instruction suggests that students who were most likely to succeed in school came from home backgrounds where “family literacy practices” most closely resembled those of school. In this chapter I report on a study that investigated the literacy practices of the home and school communities of 10 Indigenous students in their last 6 months of primary school and their first 6 months of high school. The study found that these students used literacy in their community activities in a variety of ways and that in their communities they were successful learners. In both the primary and high school setting they were less successful and struggled with literacy. Finally, I discuss a number of key ideas that emerged from the data that might facilitate school literacy learning experiences for these students.

Going Remote: Narratives of Learning on an Indigenous Professional Experience Placement

A lack of specialist knowledge and skills in teachers, as well as high levels of teacher turnover has contributed to the reported poor educational outcomes of Indigenous students in remote communities in Australia. In response to these reports, Australian universities have been required to include curriculum and pedagogical content that addresses two specifically focused Indigenous standards in their initial teacher education provisions. To enrich these standards, universities have offered placement opportunities in Indigenous communities for pre-service teachers. In this chapter, I report on a newly designed remote Indigenous placement through the presenting and analysing reflective narratives written by four pre-service teachers who participated in the placement. Many aspects of the stories are distinctive with respect to the individuals and their experiences, but commonalities emerge in the form of four over-arching strands of story: stories of equity and social justice; stories of building relationships and collaboration; stories of the ‘right’ pedagogy; and stories of Learning on Country.

Preparing Teachers to Work with and for Remote Indigenous Communities: Unsettling Institutional Practices

This chapter reports on data from two separate Australian Government-funded projects related to the development of a remote professional experience. The first project, PREEpared (https://www.preepared.com) was interested in finding ways to better prepare pre-service teachers and teacher educators to counter oppressive curriculum and pedagogy and work with and for Australian remote communities in the context of Initial Teacher Education (ITE). The second involved planning, implementing and evaluating two remote placement experiences to understand the experiences of all relevant stakeholders. The question of how can ITE best serve remote communities was posed and a themed analysis conducted from a range of interview responses. Findings suggest those in initial teacher education need to unsettle some of the taken-for-granted professional education practices and documents the essential elements of a curriculum necessary to prepare pre-service teachers to work and learn in ethical, respectful and reciprocal ways. Analysis suggests that a specialised initial teacher education curriculum and professional experience that acknowledges and respects local needs and contexts is needed to adequately prepare teachers to work in and for remote communities where it is difficult to both attract and retain teachers.

Interactivity and Mobile Technologies: An Activity Theory Perspective

Expert teachers are pragmatic in their curricular planning and instruction through embedding the use of mobile technologies towards providing their students with meaningful learning experiences. They use technology as a cornerstone within their instructional design. This study examined how pedagogy, professional learning and mobile technologies impact a teacher’s ability to utilise a learner-centred interactive approach. Qualitative data were collected and analysed using the six-step activity theory in conjunction with a case study design were data was collected from four teacher participants through interviews, classroom observations and lesson plans. Data revealed that teaching and learning sequences involving mobile technologies were found to have varying degrees of learner–teacher interactivities, ranging from complete teacher control to total learner control. This range of interactivity can serve as a teacher guide to mobile learning design using appropriate pedagogy integrating apps in conjunction with other classroom resources to yield improved student outcomes.

Community Literate and Numerate Practices: Making the Connections to School

This paper discusses the continuities and discontinuites between the literacy and numeracy practices of a Torres Strait Islander community, community primary school and urban high school.