Subject-specific Literacies and Transition in the Middle Years: Examples of Teacher Thinking, Research and Practice

Abstract

This paper describes the work of middle years teachers working with Design-Based Research (DBR) to target literacy interventions in their classrooms, employing a range of pedagogical foci. Two teachers' work, focused on science and English curricular literacies, is described. One of the teachers works in a secondary school, the other in a primary school. The primary level project involved a Tear 5 classroom teacher exploring explicit teaching of technical language in science, aimed at assisting learners to understand and have greater facility with the specific genres, texts and language elements required in science writing. The secondary teacher, working with a Tear 9 English class, focused on improving use of internet materials for research purposes. Both were concerned with the challenging demands and varied literacy needs of learners as they worked in different curriculum areas and progressed through the years of learning, with transition points from primary to secondary and middle years to senior secondary of particular concern. Their journeys and discoveries using this approach to inquiry provided them with deeper understanding of their own literacy teaching pedagogies, and showed how learners can be assisted to make successful transitions in the middle years.