Turning a molehill into a mountain? How reading curricula are failing the poor worldwide

Abadzi, Helen

doi:10.1007/s11125-017-9394-9

“…Apart from being pedagogically sound, this is educational justice. We return to Abadzi (2017) to emphasize the point:…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neuroscience and Literacy: An Integrative View

Ellis

¹

,

Bloch

²

2020

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0

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Significant challenges exist globally regarding literacy teaching and learning, particularly in poor socio-economic settings in countries of the Global South. In this paper we argue that to address these challenges, major features of how the brain works that are currently ignored in the educational literature should be taken into account. First, perception is an active process based in detection of errors in hierarchical predictions of sensory data and action outcomes. Reading is a particular case. Second, emotions play a key role in underlying cognitive functioning. Innate affective systems underlie and shape all brain functioning, including oral and written forms of language and sign. Third, there is not the fundamental difference between listening/speaking and reading/writing often alleged on the basis of evolutionary arguments. Both are socio-cultural practices driven and learnt by the communication imperative of the social brain. Fourth, like listening, reading is not a linear, bottom-up process. Both are non-linear contextually shaped psycho-social processes of understanding, shaped by current knowledge and cultural contexts and practices. Reductionist neuroscience studies which focus on decontextualized parts of reading cannot access all the relevant processes. An integrated view of brain function reflecting this non-linear nature implies that an ongoing focus on personal meaning and understanding provides positive conditions for all aspects of literacy learning. Assessment of literacy teaching at all its stages should include indicators that take into account these foundational features relating reading and writing to neuroscience.

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“…To focus the discussion, we refer mainly to four bodies of work which encapsulate the reductionist neuroscience view: Shaywitz (2003) because her neuroscience research into dyslexic children's brains informs 'normal' reading. as do her views of natural and unnatural language; Dehaene (2010), as it is in many ways the ground work on reading and the brain that many others refer back to; Abadzi (2006Abadzi ( , 2008Abadzi ( , 2017, who has been immensely influential for development aid literacy programmes via her work at the 9 We use the term 'normal' here to include diverse SES, cultural and linguistic practices and contexts. 10 It is pertinent to consider how this might affect both the confidence of young beginning readers who live in poorly served communities and expectations of them as readers.…”

Section: Understanding Based In Reductive Neuroscience Viewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We need to pay much more attention to this as it is a potentially critical factor in literacy learning problems in classroom contexts Turner 2006, Immordino-Yang et al 2019). However emotional or affective systems are not mentioned by Shaywitz (2003), Dehaene (2010), Abadzi (2017), or Castles et al (2018), although the latter mentions the closely associated features of boredom (p.14) and motivation (p.26).…”

Section: Emotion Reading and Literacy Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To focus the discussion, we refer in particular to three works which encapsulate the reductionist neuroscience view: Dehaene (2010), as it is in many ways the ground work on reading and the brain that many others refer back to; Abadzi (2017), who has been immensely influential for development aid literacy programmes via her work at the World Bank and The Global Partnership for Education in the Global South (Klaas andTrudell 2010, Piper et al 2016) including South Africa (see for example Spaull & Pretorius 2016:9); and Castles et al (2018), as this summarises the SVR and is an up to date review of the "reading wars" between the two positions on literacy and how it should be taught. In what follows, Section 2 looks at the brain and the contextual nature of perception, Section 3 at how cognitive function is crucially shaped by affect (emotions), Section 4 looks at what is `natural': what are the innate brain systems?…”

Section: 3mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Neuroscience and Literacy: An Integrative View

Ellis

¹

,

Bloch

²

2021

Preprint

1

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Significant challenges exist globally regarding literacy teaching and learning, particularly in poor socio-economic settings in countries of the Global South. In this paper we argue that to address these challenges, major features of how the brain works that are currently ignored in the educational literature should be taken into account. First, perception is an active process based in detection of errors in hierarchical predictions of sensory data and action outcomes. Reading is a particular case. Second, emotions play a key role in underlying cognitive functioning. Innate affective systems underlie and shape all brain functioning, including oral and written forms of language and sign. Third, there is not the fundamental difference between listening/speaking and reading/writing often alleged on the basis of evolutionary arguments. Both are socio-cultural practices driven and learnt by the communication imperative of the social brain. Fourth, like listening, reading is not a linear, bottom-up process. Both are non-linear contextually shaped psycho-social processes of understanding, shaped by current knowledge and cultural contexts and practices. Reductionist neuroscience studies which focus on decontextualized parts of reading cannot access all the relevant processes. An integrated view of brain function reflecting this non-linear nature implies that an ongoing focus on personal meaning and understanding provides positive conditions for all aspects of literacy learning. Assessment of literacy teaching at all its stages should include indicators that take into account these foundational features relating reading and writing to neuroscience.

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“…Emerging readers benefit from direct, systematic instruction in the principles of sound–grapheme correspondence. A body of research indicates that the most powerful predictors of reading proficiency are oral language skills and emphasizes the benefit of rich and varied exposure to language and print in the mother tongue (Abadzi, ). For English speakers, exposure to rhyme increases phonological awareness, which increases decoding accuracy; for other languages, exposure to alliteration may be more beneficial.…”

Section: Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bringing the Bottom Billion into Basic Literacy: How We Can and Why We Must

Gottwald¹,

Morris

²

,

Wolf

³

et al. 2017

New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development

2

0

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Close to one billion people in the world do not have basic literacy skills. A key challenge is reaching children in the midst of circumstances that make a traditional school-based approach impractical. This chapter will describe a cross-disciplinary, mobile technology approach to literacy education. The Curious Learning approach distributes research-based, English literacy content on mobile devices to children without access to an adequate school. The software platform is equipped with data collection tools to measure usage patterns and literacy outcomes. Results indicate that regular access resulted in higher early literacy skills. Future efforts will focus on adapting this approach in the languages spoken in the homes of the children.

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Turning a molehill into a mountain? How reading curricula are failing the poor worldwide

Cited by 13 publications

References 45 publications

Neuroscience and Literacy: An Integrative View

Neuroscience and Literacy: An Integrative View

Neuroscience and Literacy: An Integrative View

Bringing the Bottom Billion into Basic Literacy: How We Can and Why We Must

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