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We came to the task of editing this book from different disciplines and back grounds but with a mutuality of interest in exploring the concept of literacy campaigns in historical and comparative perspective. One of us is a professor of comparative education who has participated in and written about literacy campaigns in Third World countries, notably Nicaragua; the other is a com parative social historian who has written on literacy campaigns in Western his tory. Both of us believed that literacy could only be understood in particular As Harvey Graff has noted, "to consider any of the ways in historical contexts. which literacy intersects 'with social, political, economic, cultural, or psychological life ... requires excursions into other records.") Thus, we have set out in this edited collection to explore some five hundred years of literacy campaigns in vastly different societies: Reformation Germany, early modern Sweden and Scotland, the nineteenth-century United States, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia and the Soviet Union, pre Revolutionary and Revolutionary China, and a variety of Third World countries in the post-World War II period (Tanzania, Cuba, Nicaragua, and India). In addition, we have included studies of the UNESCO-sponsored Experimental World Literacy Program and recent adult literacy efforts in three industrialized Western countries (the United Kingdom, France, and the United States).
Perspectives on Language Assessment Literacy describes how the elements of language assessment literacy can help teachers gather information about when and how to assess learners, and about using the appropriate assessment tools to interpret results in a fair way. It provides highlights from past and current research, descriptions of assessment processes that enhance LAL, case studies from classrooms, and suggestions for professional dialogue and collaboration. This book will help to foster continuous learning, empower learners and teachers and make them more confident in their assessment tasks, and reassure decision makers that what is going on in assessment meets international benchmarks and standards. It addresses issues like concepts and challenges of assessment, the impacts of reflective feedback on assessment, the ontogenetic nature of assessment literacy, the reliability of classroom-based assessment, and interfaces between teaching and assessment. It fills this gap in the literature by addressing the current status and future challenges of language assessment literacy. This book will be of great interest for academics, researchers, and post-graduate students in the fields of language assessment literacy and English language teaching.
This volume compiles a unique yet complementary collection of chapters that take a strategic comparative perspective on education systems, regions of the world, and/or ethnolinguistic communities with a focus on non-dominant languages and cultures in education. Comparison and contrast within each article and across articles illustrates the potential for using home languages – which in many cases are in non-dominant positions relative to other languages in society – in inclusive multilingual and multicultural forms of education. The 22 authors demonstrate how bringing non-dominant languages and cultures into schooling has liberatory, transformative potential for learners from ethnolinguistic communities that have previously been excluded from access to quality basic education. The authors deal not only with educational development in specific low-income and emerging countries in Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, the Philippines Thailand and Vietnam), Latin America (Guatemala and Mexico) and Africa (Mozambique, Senegal and Tanzania), but also with efforts to reach marginalized ethnolinguistic communities in high-income North American countries (Canada and the USA). In the introductory chapter the editors highlight common and cross-cutting themes and propose appropriate, sometimes new terminology for the discussion of linguistic and cultural issues in education, particularly in low-income multilingual countries. Likewise, using examples from additional countries and contexts, the three final chapters address cross-cutting issues related to language and culture in educational research and development. The authors and editors of this volume share a common commitment to comparativism in their methods and analysis, and aim to contribute to more inclusive and relevant education for all. “A richly textured collection which offers a powerful vision of the possible, now and in the future.” Alamin Mazrui, Rutgers State University of New Jersey, USA “This book takes the local perspective of non-dominant language communities in arguing for a multilingual habitus in educational development. Benson and Kosonen masterfully extend theories and clarify terminology that is inclusive of the non-dominant contexts described here.” Ofelia García, City University of New York, USA
Important aspects of the history of language in the United States remain shrouded in myth and legend. The notion of "one nation, one language" is part of the idealized history of the United States, although in its short history it has probably been host to more bilingual people than any other country in the world. Language is more than a means of communication. It brings into play an entire range of experiences and attitudes toward life. Furthermore, language is a potent symbolic issue because it links power and political claims of ownership with psychological demands for group worth. How people belonging to different language and cultural communities live together in the same political community and how political and structural tensions arise to divide them along language lines, are questions addressed in The Politics of Language. This book analyzes the historical background and recent controversy over language in the United States and compares it to two official multilingual societies: Canada and Switzerland. It's accessibility as a survey of this topic makes it ideal for courses in linguistics, political science, and sociology.
Major campaigns to raise levels of literacy have taken place for centuries and share many common elements. But despite literary campaigns spanning over five decades, 860 million adults still lack minimal ability to read, write, and calculate. Why is literacy of such great importance and why have so many years of campaigning for it not been successful in fully overcoming this obstacle? "National Literacy Campaigns and Movements" explores these questions by examining campaigns in vastly different societies from a historical and comparative perspective.The volume focuses on literacy movements from the past, including those of Reformation Germany, early modern Sweden and Scotland, nineteenth-century United States, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia and the Soviet Union, pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary China, and Tanzania, Cuba, Nicaragua, and India. Contributors analyze literacy goals and outcomes in specific contexts. The editors distinguish quantitative and qualitative dimensions of literacy activities, such as the difference between the spread of literacy and patterns of its use. The common enterprise of this book is to expand upon the contributors' previous research to include a comparative dimension.This book offers the first systematic attempt to examine, critically and comparatively, the concepts and facts of large-scale literacy campaigns in more than a dozen societies over nearly five-hundred years. It offers a valuable historical lesson not only for historians, but also for educators: that instead of concentrating only on the recent period, we should use the vast and complex history of literacy movements to shed understanding on the present and future of literacy. A major new introduction to this edition asserts recent literary campaigns and the lessons provided by their success and failures. It also describes how the focus of some movements has evolved.
This text critically examines changes in Ghanaian language and literacy policy following independence in 1957 to consider its impacts on early literacy teaching. By adopting a postcolonial theoretical perspective, the text interrogates the logic behind policy changes which have prioritised English, local language, or biliteracy. It draws on data from interviews with teachers and researcher observation to demonstrate how policies have influenced teaching and learning. Dr Osseo-Asare’s findings inform the development of a conceptual framework which highlights the socio-cultural factors that impact the literacy and biliteracy of young children in Ghana, offering solutions to help teachers combat the challenges of frequent policy changes. This timely monograph will prove to be an essential resource not only for researchers working on education policies, teacher education, and English-language learning in postcolonial Ghana but also for those looking to identify the thematic and methodological nuances of studying literacy and education in postcolonial contexts.
This publication reflects the outcomes of a project which brought together experts and practitioners in the field of linguistic diversity and literacy from European and African countries with a view to opening a dialogue, to taking a comparative perspective and defining possible areas of mutually enriching co-operation and exchange. The question of promoting low-status and non-dominant languages in education is the core concern of contributions in this volume which also encompasses topics such as language awareness, stimulating and encouraging a reading culture in low-status languages and developing criteria for teaching and learning materials that respect linguistic diversity and promote multilingualism. Examples of good practice in valuing African languages include an awareness raising campaign in Cameroon, NGO activities promoting literary production in Senegalese languages, the Stories Across Africa Project (StAAf) as well as initiatives of North-South cooperation in the fields of teacher training and materials development. This publication was conceptualised as a contribution to the African Union's Year of African Languages 2006/07.
Originally published in 1995, this collection of papers introduced a new dimension to the understanding of reading by focusing on the relation between spoken and written language processing. New perspectives on speech and reading are introduced by highlighting aspects of the two linguistic skills that had received little attention in the past. The comparative perspective adopted in this collection presents an innovative focus on speech and the acquisition of alphabetic reading skill. Major new sources of evidence are discussed, like reading in nonconventional input modalities, braille reading, and speech processing in lip-reading. Contributors also discuss the reading process in non-alphabetic orthographies and the specifics of the reading acquisition problem in logographic or mixed writing systems (like Chinese and Japanese) and their relations to underlying speech representations. A central concern of all chapters is the role of phonological processes in different modalities and writings systems, and at different stages in the reading acquisition process. Drawing on expertise of the contributors, the book presents a novel and varied view of the achievements, the promises and the challenges facing the researcher once the intimate link between speech and reading comes to the foreground.