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Building literacy communities of practice across subject disciplines in secondary schools

Abstract
This paper examines the relationship between communities of practice and literacy as a pedagogical focus in secondary schools in New Zealand in the light of Corson's arguments about critical conditions for effective language policy development in schools. It is also positioned within the current international emphasis (at least in English-speaking countries) on improving students' literacy in order to increase academic achievement. Part of this focus stems from an unbalanced relationship between learning mainly content (what) and learning processes (how and why) through content in secondary school classrooms. If teachers' work is centred on equipping students with the learning and thinking tools that allow them to navigate, make sense of and critically examine subject content, then literacy as a pedagogical focus can be seen as supporting that shift. However, shifting secondary teachers to a focus on learning and thinking processes can be difficult, because it implicates their pedagogical values, practices and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). How schools in New Zealand have developed this focus and made efforts to sustain it are examined through the concept of communities of practice.
Type
Journal Article
Type of thesis
Series
Citation
Wright, N. (2007). Agricultural intensification: Whither indigenous biodiversity? Language and Education, 21(5), 420-433.
Date
2007
Publisher
Multilingual Matters
Degree
Supervisors
Rights
This article has been published in the journal: Language and Education. ©2007 N. Wright.