Growing disconnect: literacy education is not evolving with kids’ changing needs

That’s according to Dr Natalie Thompson, who has just won the Australian Literacy Educators’ Association (ALEA) Doctoral Thesis Award for her compelling new research, titled Talking to children about literacies in and out of school in the 21st century.

A lecturer in education at Charles Sturt University, Thompson’s thesis provides significant new insights into how children experience literacy both in and out-of-school contexts, with a focus on the growing disconnect some experience between them.

Her research explored the literacy practices of 14 children, aged eight to nine in Years 3 and 4, from two regional schools in different states of Australia.

Using a range of participatory methods, including focus groups, individual interviews, drawing and photography, her study captured the children’s lived experiences of becoming literate.

The findings reveal that while traditional school literacies often rely on pen-and-paper tasks and follow teacher-led instruction, out-of-school literacies are much more diverse, embracing digital technologies, multimedia, creativity and independent exploration.

The idea for the research emerged, Thompson says, while she was working with a group of 14-year-old boys at an alternative education centre, who were completely disengaged from school, and she’d become disheartened by what she was being mandated to teach and how far away it was from the children’s lives.

“I realised that it wasn’t just a gimmick for engagement that I needed, we [in schools more broadly] needed to deeply think about what the role of school is, what the purpose of school is, and how school and lives and diverse lives outside of school should relate to each other,” she tells EducationHQ.

The boys used mobile phones for good and bad things, they came from homes where there were no books at home, there were no drawing implements but, Thompson explains, they all had a range of technologies that were windows into a world full of interesting texts and information, and opportunities to participate in a literate culture.

As a system, she says, “we are just denying that as a valuable thing”.

Thompson hopes her research might encourage educators to adopt broader, more flexible approaches to literacy education that reflect the realities of children’s lives beyond the classroom and the multifaceted ways they engage with literacy.

Dr Thompson’s work demonstrates how literacy research can actively shape new directions for teaching, offering pathways toward more meaningful engagement for all learners, especially those at risk of being marginalised within traditional educational settings.

“…children learn best when we start with what they already know and can do, so we need to broaden what we consider as a literate practice or a literacy so that we can reach children where they are and build on their funds of knowledge.

“Where they are is a bit more digital than what we imagine,” she argues.

In the study, the researcher spoke to children from different socioeconomic backgrounds, some who had several devices, many books and parents to sit down with them and read, and some whom only had digital devices, little or no parental interest in their literacy, and had switched off from school.

“They were completely disengaged,” Thompson says.

“They knew school wasn’t actually designed for them and so that was pretty problematic.”

Importantly, school was not giving them the skills and understandings required to thrive in that online world, she continues.

So while the children in the study demonstrated advanced skills in using digital technologies for literacy activities like speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and engaging with images and videos – skills that they learned outside the school context – there were critical gaps in their ability to navigate algorithms, marketing influences and effective search techniques. 

“They didn’t understand how algorithms work. They didn’t understand about authorship.They didn’t understand how to negotiate. So they were figuring it out on their own,” the academic says.

“Some of them were so good at figuring it out, but others were really floundering.”

Thompson, who spent 15 years teaching in primary schools, mainly in special educational settings, says it is clear there needs to be broad discussion about what the purpose of education as a public good is.

“We know that a focus on NAPLAN narrows understandings of what literacy is,” she argues.

“And we know because it is so high stakes that teachers teach what is on NAPLAN, so the discourse around it just being a little snapshot in time is pretty problematic because it’s not, it influences everything we do.”

She advocates that there be a push back against anything that is standardising.

“We need to reflect that classrooms are super diverse.

“And we need to prioritise responsive teaching, not programs that narrow what we’ve got at the moment. That’s not what I think we should be doing.

“We need to find ways that allow us to teach to diversity, understand learner variability as the norm – and part of that variability is variability in literacy practices, and that those literacy practices are sophisticated.”

Thompson says the reaction to the thesis has been very encouraging, and people are really interested in thinking laterally about literacy education.

“And I know it hasn’t got quite as many tangible things to do. Like, I can’t say, “all right, we need to do this”, but I’m not sure that’s the only role for research in education, [it’s also about] getting people thinking.

“I see teachers as intellectuals. I don’t think they need research to tell them what to do. I think they need research that opens possibilities for them to design learning and teaching in their context.”