Lisa Zimmerman

Profiling classroom reading comprehension development practices from the PIRLS 2006 in South Africa

The South African 2006 and 2011 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) findings continue to highlight major concerns about the quality of reading literacy teaching in primary schools. Of specific concern is the lack of representation of the sampled South African learners at the PIRLS international benchmarks, revealing a distinct lack of their development of thinking and reasoning abilities for reading comprehension. To shed light on potential reasons for learners’ reading comprehension difficulties, this article presents selected findings on teachers’ reading comprehension development practices emanating from the investigation of one KwaZulu-Natal and five Gauteng province case study schools from the national South African PIRLS 2006 Grade 4 sample. These cases represented a range of educational contexts across the South African PIRLS 2006 performance continuum and were sampled according to class average achievement aligned to the PIRLS international benchmarks and further South African benchmarks lower on the achievement scale. The findings juxtaposing teaching practices for reading comprehension development from case study schools with achievement profiles at the PIRLS international benchmarks against those of case study schools with less than optimal achievement at benchmarks lower on the achievement scale speak to key teaching and learning areas, which still need attention in terms of curriculum policy and teachers’ implementation thereof. Keywords : classroom practices, literacy, PIRLS, qualitative case studies, reading comprehension

Time to go back to the drawing board: organisation of primary school reading development in South Africa

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006 findings highlighted concerns about reading literacy teaching quality in South African primary schools (Howie et al., 2007). In response, the national Department of Education (DoE, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c, 2008d) has emphasised instructional practice improvement. However, little emphasis has been placed on the role of school organisation in learners’ reading success or failure. This article presents school organisation findings from a mixed methods study that explored South African Grade 4 teachers’ instruction practices and schooling conditions for reading literacy development. The analysis considered is based on the reclassification of the PIRLS 2006 sample according to class achievement levels on the PIRLS benchmarks and instructional language profiles. Findings from the PIRLS 2006 school questionnaire data are reported together with findings from case studies to illustrate differences and similarities in school organisation for reading literacy across a range of low- and high-performing schools.

Learning from the best: reading literacy development practices at a high-performing primary school

While it is of utmost importance to scrutinise reading literacy development practices at South African schools where learners are failing to progress in their reading development in the primary school years, it is also beneficial to explore the practices and processes in schools where learners successfully develop reading literacy in depth. In this paper, the processes and practices for reading literacy development in a school with a high Grade 4 class average performance from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006 are explored in detail. The school had the highest Grade 4 class average performance of six purposively selected case study schools with varying contexts and performance levels aligned to achievement benchmarks from the PIRLS 2006. Data were collected from multiple sources for this case study as part of a larger mixed methods study. In this article, however, only interviews with teachers and the Foundation and Intermediate Phase literacy leaders at the school are reported and reflected on. Specifically, school-level reading literacy development initiatives in the form of planning, monitoring and collaboration, across-grade and -phase reading literacy programme coordination, and parental involvement strategies are discussed. Socioeconomic realities and historical inequalities play a huge role in learner performance across schools in South Africa. Although this specific school, which features pre-primary, primary and high school grades, is highly privileged, which likely also plays a role in the learners’ achievement, the reading literacy development processes and practices implemented at the school can be learnt from and applied in less privileged contexts.

Evidence from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and How Teachers and Their Practice Can Benefit

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) is an international comparative evaluation of reading literacy of Grade 4 (9 year-old) learners.

MOVING FROM A DISCOURSE OF ACCESS TO READING INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS TO THE MANAGEMENT AND UTILISATION THEREOF: PROGRESS IN INTERNATIONAL READING LITERACY STUDY AT GRADE 4 IN SOUTH AFRICA

Two cycles of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) were completed in South Africa in 2006 and 2011. In this article, we investigate the qualities of high-performing reading literacy schools for optimal resource management and utilisation strategies for possible application to low-performing schools. We do this against the background of reports on reading resource shortages and inadequacies in the context of reading literacy learning from both of the PIRLS main studies. This is done by comparing six case study schools with varying contexts and performance levels. The findings from a secondary analysis using the PIRLS 2006 data together with six case studies using international reading benchmarks from PIRLS 2006 to depict performance levels, confirmed that learners in low-performing schools from the study had inadequate access to reading instruction resources. This appeared partly attributable to inadequate funding and government provisioning; ineffective resource management at school level and non-resourcefulness of teachers at classroom level exacerbating reading resource inadequacies; as well as ineffective utilisation of materials at these low-performing schools. The resource management and utilisation strategies of high-performing case study schools were found to be potential models for schools with inadequate strategies.Â