The effective, sustained implementation of literacy across the curriculum in secondary schools is still a relatively rare phenomenon. This is because such an approach to literacy requires secondary schools to undergo extensive and complex processes of school change, involving altering teachers' thinking, attitudes and behaviour in relation to literacy and pedagogy, and establishing and maintaining organisational processes that support teachers' change processes and their impact on student learning. Such changes take time, not least because they often run counter to traditional organisational and pedagogical approaches in secondary schools. Drawing on our research evaluation of the Secondary Schools' Literacy Initiative (SSLI) in New Zealand, this paper examines the medium to long term implications of school change processes for secondary schools undertaking a cross-curricular literacy focus. In so doing, it identifies three key phases that secondary schools may undergo in order to achieve and sustain effective literacy practices over time and suggests that these phases, and their characteristics, may well have wider applicability.
doi: 10.2167/le799.0Keywords: literacy, secondary schools, school organisation, school change, whole school, cross-curricular, effective schools, professional development
Introduction. . . we have a considerable body of research on what effective schools and teachers do to promote reading success in the elementary grades. We also possess a great deal of knowledge about successful school reform and the importance of professional development in that process. The missing piece for schools, however, seems to be the procedural knowledge about how to translate this research into school and classroom practices that lead to improved reading performance for their students. (Taylor et al., 2005: 40, 43) Taylor et al. make this observation in light of their excellent recent analysis of a research-based approach to literacy professional development (PD) in 'high poverty' elementary (primary) schools in the United States. The quote highlights clearly the key challenge that such schools face in implementing literacy across the curriculum effectively -that is, how to operationalise research-attested effective literacy practices in classrooms in order to improve student literacy outcomes (see May, 1997; Wright, in press Corson, 1999;Knott, 1985;Moje et al., 2000;O'Brien et al., 1995). Part of this may be because there are often far greater organisational and bureaucratic constraints in secondary schools to effecting such changes. Secondary schools are generally larger and more complex organisations than their primary counterparts and are also the least changed of any schooling structure since the advent of mass education, with the industrial management model (and its accompanying bureaucracy) adopted for secondary schools at the time a still-prominent feature (O'Brien et al., 1995). As David Corson observes of this: 'Present-day high schools are usually very large bureaucracies. They are multi-pur...