literacies in school education in australia: disjunctions between policy and research

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Literacies in SchoolEducation in Australia:Disjunctions between Policyand ResearchJennifer HammondPublished online: 29 Mar 2010.

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Literacies in School Education in Australia:Disjunctions between Policy and Research

Jennifer HammondCentre for Language and Literacy, Faculty of Education, University ofTechnology, Sydney, Australia

This paper outlines the different priorities of current policy and research in literacyeducation in Australian schools. It suggests that a number of generic and specificfactors contribute to the extent of these differences: differences in perspective andresponsibility of policy-makers and researchers, different underlying theoreticalassumptions, and changes in the current ‘balance of power’ brought about by recentnational policy investment in school literacyeducation. It also argues that implicationsof these different priorities are being played out, most noticeably, in three major sites:different assumptions about the nature of literacy, different ways of recognising andvaluing diversity in school populations, and different emphases on, and support for,the actual teaching of literacy. The paper concludes by suggesting that the resilience ofthe Australian educational community offers some hope for resistance to the moreextreme elements of current policy priorities.

IntroductionLiteracy is currently a hot issue in schools in Australia. Major national and

state government policies that target and prioritise literacy are in place. There isfrequent discussion in the media about the importance of literacy in schooleducation, and additional funding has been allocated to literacy programmes.There is a general acceptance at community, educational and government levelsthat literacy is central to school success and to success in later life and that, there-fore, literacy needs to be accorded high priority, especially in primary schooleducation. With this kind of official recognition and support, and with a richtradition of research into theory and practice of literacy education, Australia maysound like an ideal educational context. However, while official recognition andsupport, including the additional funding it brings, has been welcomed, it comesat a price. Priorities identified at a policy level generally differ from those identi-fied in much recent Australian (and international) research into literacy and liter-acy education. The balance of those different priorities is currently impacting onAustralianschools – with the result that schools, teachers and students are forcedto negotiate their way in the midst of significantly competing views about liter-acy and about goals of literacy education.

In this paper I explore the disjunctions between the priorities of literacy policyand those of researchers, and the ways in which these disjunctions are beingplayed out in literacy education in Australian schools. In my discussion of policy,I will refer particularly to the Australian Commonwealth Policy Literacy for All:The Challenge for Australian Schools (Department of Employment, Education,Training and Youth Affairs (DEETYA), 1998). This national policy has had asignificant impact on Australian school literacy education since 1998, and it

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exemplifies the nature of current policy priorities. While the specifics of thispolicy are located in the Australian context, the tensions that have been gener-ated here, I believe, are in many ways parallel to those that are occurring in other,especially English-speaking countries (e.g. Bourne, 1999; Street, 1997; Wells,1999). Readers therefore may find the issues discussed here relevant to their owneducational contexts.

Priorities of Literacy Policy in AustraliaAlong with many other (at least English-speaking) countries, education in

Australia is immersed in a rhetoric of crisis, and this is especially the case withliteracy education (Comber et al., 1998; Freebody, 1997). As in other countries,there have been frequent media releases over the years in Australia claiming thatliteracy standards are falling; that students are unable to spell; that their gram-mar is unacceptable; and that they are unable to read and write adequately. Inrecent years, however, this rhetoric of crisis has intensified – fuelled, in particu-lar, by the Commonwealth Government’s ‘strategic’ use of literacy surveyresults.

In 1997, two major surveys of literacy abilities of school students werereleased. The first of these, Mapping Literacy Achievement (DEETYA, 1997a)reported on a comprehensive and carefully conducted survey that had beenundertaken with the support of teachers, unions and parents, and whichprovided extensive information about the literacy abilities of students in years 3and year 5. The second, Literacy Standards in Australia (DEETYA, 1997b), on theinsistence of the Commonwealth education minister, applied a set of (at thattime, unvalidated) benchmarks to the data provided in the first report. Thissecond report, released in sensational manner on national television, claimedthat approximately 30% of students in years 3 and 5 were performing at unac-ceptable levels, that we were in the midst of a literacy crisis and that schools werefailing our students. As Freebody (1997) has pointed out, the results from the1997 Mapping Literacy Achievement survey were, in fact, comparable with resultsof earlier surveys – results which had been used, then, as evidence that Austra-lian teachers were effectively meeting the challenges of teaching a diversestudent population. In addition, there were claims by many, including bothconservative and Labor state ministers of education, that the benchmarks artifi-cially inflated the numbers of students who were genuinely experiencing literacyproblems. However, the media furore that surrounded the release of the secondreport contributed to a general climate of concern about literacy standards, andto a broad community acceptance that we were, in fact, in the midst of a literacycrisis. It was in this context that the major national literacy policy, Literacy for All:The Challenge for Australian Schools (DEETYA, 1998) was released – a policydesigned to address the literacy crisis.

The Commonwealth Literacy for All Policy specifies the goal that all studentsleaving primary school should be able to read, write and spell at an appropriatelevel; and it claims to provide a coherent and integrated strategy for enhancingliteracy skills for all Australian children as a basis for progress in schooling andfor successful participation in post-school work and further study (p. 9). It uses adefinition of literacy, drawn from the 1991 Australian Language and Literacy Policy

Literacies in School Education in Australia 163

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(Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET, 1991)), which,while not universally accepted, is one that has been widely used in Australia inrecent years. The Policy includes sections that discuss appropriate approaches toliteracy teaching in early years, the need to acknowledge diversity in the teachingfor English as a second language (ESL) and indigenous students, home andschool partnerships, and the importance of literacy and technology. It alsoacknowledges the importance of research and professional development. ThePolicy is clearly set out and draws on national and international research tosupport the arguments it presents regarding the nature of literacy and and theteaching and learning of literacy.

As I have argued elsewhere (Hammond, 1999) the limitations of the Policy lienot in its goals, purposes or descriptions of literacy, but rather in the gap betweenits rhetoric and the actual strategies that it proposes in order to achieve its goalsand purposes. From the arguments outlined in the Policy we could expect to findsupport for rich literacy programmes that build on current research into thenature of literacy and that draw on best teaching practices. We could expect to seesupport for programmes that recognise, value and build on the strengths ofdiverse groups of students within the Australian school population in order toaddress their specific needs. Instead what we find is a series of strategies that aredesigned to assess students and monitor their progress. Of the six strategieslisted in the policy (p. 10) four refer specifically to assessment: assessment ofstudents as early as possible in their first years of schooling; development ofagreed benchmarks; students’ progress measured against these benchmarks;and progress towards national reporting. One strategy refers to the need forprofessional development for teachers to support the Policy (which of necessityfocuses on how to assess students). This leaves one strategy that addresses theteaching of literacy: early intervention for students identified as having difficultywith their literacy development. Thus, despite its rhetoric, what the Policy actu-ally proposes is an extensive assessment regime and remedial teaching for thosewho are identified as ‘failing’ in their early years of schooling. McKay (1999)makes the point that the Policy is also about imposing control on Australianschool systems.

The argument in support of the Policy from the government’s perspective(repeated in parliament, and in regular media interviews by the CommonwealthMinister of Education) is that the previous Labor Government’s attempts toaddress the needs of ‘disadvantaged’ students failed – the Minister regularlycites the evidence that 30% of Australian students were found to be unable toread and write at acceptable levels. The current Policy, he argues, is concernedwith results. He also argues that his government has put in place the means ofmonitoring the progress of all students’ literacy development and has providednecessary funding for the remedial programmes to ensure that any literacy prob-lems are addressed as early as possible.

It is difficult to separate what is a genuine concern about the education ofyoung students from what is a politically expedient move in such arguments.However, whatever the mix, the official priorities are those of measurement,assessment, benchmarks, national reporting systems and remediation. How dothese policy priorities and their associated discourses of failure, crisis (and theneed for control) sit in relation to the priorities generated by research?

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Priorities of Literacy Research in AustraliaMost influential Australian researchers and language educators, like those

elsewhere, draw on the theoretical assumptions that literacy consists of a vari-able set of social practices, rather than a unitary concept; that language and liter-acy practices vary accordingto socialcontexts and therefore need to be studied asthey occur in those different contexts; and that language and literacy constitutepowerful semiotic systems for the construction of meanings. They also draw onassumptions that literacy is a sociallyconstructed concept and that what it meansto be literate is relative to specific cultural and historical settings (e.g. Cope &Kalantzis,1993;Hasan& Williams,1996;Lankshear, 1997;Muspratt et al., 1998).

Examples of the ways in which these theoretical perspectives have shapedrecent reseach can be seen in work that is loosely categorised under the headingsof ‘multiliteracies’ and ‘multimodal literacies’. Those working in these broadareas draw on a variety of theoretical perspectives – critical social theory,post-structural theory, sociology of education as well as systemic functionallinguistics. They are concerned with ideology and power and the roles thatlanguage and literacy play in positioning various groups within society in termsof their access to power. Some focus specifically on raising awareness (of teachersand of students) of the ways in which power works, and of the ideologicalassumption inherent in all written texts. Their concern is to assist students todevelop abilities to read critically and analytically – to recognise the multiplevoices that are either present, or, more particularly, silenced in texts, and torecognise the legitimacy of the multiliteracies that are generated from thosevoices (Hasan & Williams, 1996;Muspratt et al., 1998;New London Group, 1996).

Others focus, more specifically, on the multimodal nature of literacies. Draw-ing on the work of Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) and others, they focus on theways in which different modes interact in the construction of texts – for example,ways in which written or spoken texts integrate with visual texts, and the role oftechnology in all of this (e.g. Lankshear et al., 1997; Snyder, 1997, 1999). Clearlythe work of such Australian researchers intersects with that of others internation-ally (e.g. Barton et al., 2000; Gee, 1990; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996; Maybin, 1994;Street, 1995).

A feature of much Australian literacy research in recent years has been itsconcern with the pedagogical implications of prevailing theories of languageand literacy. Such work has been based on a close relationship between research-ers and practising teachers. For example, work drawing on theories of genre andof scaffolding has been influential in the development of curriculum and peda-gogy that address the demands of language and literacy across the curriculum(e.g. Bull & Anstey, 1996; Christie, 1999; Derewianka, 1990; Gibbons, 1998; Gray,1992). Other work has focused on the implications of ‘critical literacy’ and thecompetencies required to undertake effective critical analysis of texts (e.g.Hammond & Macken-Horarik, 1999; Kamler, 1994; Knobel & Healy, 1998;Macken-Horarik, 1996).

Such work recognises that the traditional ‘basic skills’, such as word recogni-tion, spelling, comprehension and so on, are indeed crucial to successful literacydevelopment for each individual. However, it also suggests that such skills areonly part of any effective literacy programmes, and that to limit literacy peda-


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gogy to ‘the basics’ is to fail to provide support for the kind of literacy develop-ment that students need in order to meet the increasingly complex demands ofcommunication in the 21st century. In fact, explicit attempts to balance basic andmore advanced literacy competencies have been evident in some recent curricu-lum guidelines. Such guidelines have generally draw upon the frameworkprovided by Freebody and Luke’s (1990) argument that, in order to be consid-ered literate, an individual needs to be able to adopt (at least) four roles: those ofcode-breaker; text participant; text-user and text analyst. This frameworksuggests that, while individuals need control of basic competencies, in order tobe considered literate in modern technological societies, they need much morethan that.

There is evidence that much of this work has had a direct impact of literacypedagogy in schools. For example, outcomes from a recent research projectwhich investigated teachers’ views and practices in literacy education(Hammond & Macken-Horarik, 2001) indicate that, in Sydney schools at least,the take-up from work on genre theory, from Freebody and Luke’s ‘four roles’and from related notions of ‘explicit and systematic’ pedagogy have been partic-ularly strong. However, the project also found that notions of critical literacy andmultiliteracies, while being taken up enthusiastically in a number of specificsites, have had limited general impact. The project, overall, provides evidencethat teachers’ views and practices in language and literacy education intersect,but do not match exactly, those of current research. Perhaps more significantly, itprovides strong evidence that there are considerable differences between teach-ers’ priorities and those of current Commonwealth policy.

In sum, priorities that emerge from current literacy education research inAustralia are clearly different from those of national policy. Priorities ofresearchers include recognition of the theoretically complex nature of literacy: ofliteracy (or literacies) as social practices, literacy as multimodal, literacy asembedded in, and constructive of, power relations within specific culturalcontexts. This research provides ways of thinking about the complexities of liter-acy pedagogy that go far beyond notions of traditional basics, although they donot exclude such notions. It also includes an emphasis on the role of languageand literacy across all curriculum areas, and throughout all years of schooling(and beyond). There is evidence that these priorities, while not identical, inter-sect closely with those of teachers. It is also worth noting that Australianresearch, and work on the pedagogical programmes developed from suchresearch, has received considerable international recognition in recent years.

Why do policy and research generate such different priorities, and such differ-ent discourses about literacy? Are these differences new and are they unique toAustralia?

The Nature of Policy and Research RelationshipsThe differences in priorities that are evident in the Australian context are

clearly generated in part by the different perspectives and responsibilities thatpolicy-makers and researchers bring to literacy education. Policy-makers arenecessarily concerned with overall performance of educational systems, costeffectiveness, accountability to tax-payers, political manoeuvring and so on,


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while researchers are typically concerned with the complexities of theory and ofpractice, and with their pedagogical implications. While the major focus of thispaper lies in the context of Australian schools, such differences in priorities raiselarger questions about the nature of the relationship between researchers andpolicy-makers and about the role that educational research can and should playin informing both policy and practice.

Ongoing debates in both Britain and the United States indicate that the natureof the relationship between policy and research is of concern to educators acrossa number of countries and across a number of educational fields (see, for exam-ple, British Educational Research Journal, vols 25 and 26; and Educational Researcher,vols 25 and 26). A common lament is that researchers’ voices are too frequentlyignored in the development of policy and practice (Kennedy, 1997; Mortimore,2000). Some contributors to this debate (e.g. Lomax, 1999; Mortimore, 2000)while acknowledging the need for mutual cooperation and effort, have arguedthat researchers must take a pro-active and responsible stance in workingtowards a constructive and dialogic relationship with policy-makers.Specifically, they argue, researchers must assume responsibility for ensuringoverall quality and relevance of research, for making sense of diversity inoutcomes from educational research in ways that are accessible to policy-makersand practitioners and for ensuring accessibility of research outcomes forpolicy-makers and practitioners as well as for other researchers.

Most educators, I believe, would agree with Mortimore (2000) who arguesthat that one of the major purposes of educational research is to ‘further educa-tional improvement’. It is therefore incumbent on researchers to take suchresponsibilities seriously. However, a recent article by Wells (1999) implies that,even where there are good intentions, further inherent difficulties exist in therelationship between policy and research in education.

Wells (1999) argues that there are two distinct ‘languages’ for talking abouteducation. The first embodies the perspective of educational planning, adminis-tration and provision and is couched in terms of stages, assessment andoutcomes. The second represents the perspective of those involved in curriculumreform, research and teaching. These different languages, he suggests, reflectfundamental theoretical differences between the perspectives of policy-makersand researchers. He goes on to argue that theories of empiricism primarilyinform much policy development and administration of education systems,while a range of alternative theories, including sociocultural theories andVygotsky’s notions of learning and development, inform teaching and research.

He suggests that the different ways of speaking about education are character-ised not only by differences in theories of knowledge, but also by differences inthe role attributed to language in the activity of teaching and learning. In oneview, he says, language is treated simply as the carrier of thought – what Reddy(1979) referred to as the ‘conduit’ metaphor of communication. The alternativeview is that thinking is mediated by the semiotic medium in which it is realised.Wells points out that there is a considerable degree of congruence between theempiricist conception of knowledge and the conduit theory of communication,and that both are incompatible with the beliefs of sociocultural theorists aboutthe interdependence of knowing, communicating and meaning-making as medi-ators of activity (see articles by Bourne, Snyder and Street in this issue).


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Wells’ analysis raises questions about the extent to which constructive andpositive relations between researchers and policy-makers are ever possible –regardless of the effort made by researchers. However, as some previous exam-ples in Australia (and presumably in other countries) show, genuine efforts onboth sides to engage in ongoing and constructive dialogues can result in positiveand productive relationships and in the development of effective policy.

The Policy – Research Relationship in AustraliaIn the current Australian context, the different ‘languages’ that Wells refers to

are indeed evident. From policy we have ‘assessment’, ‘early intervention’, ‘liter-acy difficulties, ‘measurement’, ‘benchmarks’ and ‘national reporting’: verymuch a discourse of crisis, failure, assessment and control. From research wehave ‘literacy as social construct’, ‘social practices’, ‘multiliteracies’,‘multimodality’, pedagogical practices’ and ‘language and literacy across thecurriculum’: a discourse of rich theory and one which includes considerableemphasis on literacy pedagogy.

As Wells himself argues, however, these different languages are not new.They have long been evident in the (different) perspectives from which manypolicy-makers, teachers and researchers approach education and in the (differ-ent) ways in which they think about education. In Australia, these differenceshave not always been so evident or so significant. It is possible to identify anumber of previous and current examples where constructive relations betweenpolicy-makers, researchers and practitioners have contributed to the develop-ment of effective policy (e.g. Lo Bianco, 1987; Board of Studies, NSW, 1998; LoBianco & Freebody, 1997; Education Queensland, 2000). So why has thedisjunction between policy and research in school literacy education onlyrecently become so evident?

There are two factors, I believe, that are new in the Australian context. The firstis the recent intense intervention in school literacy education of a particular kindand at a national level. The second relates to changes in levels of consultation thathave marked the ways in which the current Commonwealth government hasdeveloped policy.

Prior to the introduction of the Commonwealth Literacy Policy in Australia,literacy education in Australian schools was guided more by state than nationalgovernments. Within a broad national framework, each state developed its owncurriculum guidelines, with varying levels of consultation with both practitio-ners and academics. The development of the Commonwealth Literacy for AllPolicy in school education, while according national priority to literacy educa-tion and bringing additional funding, now means that national policy has a moredirect impact on classroom practice in all states than had previously been thecase. In addition, the particular theoretical basis of the Literacy for All Policy hashad the effect of shifting the ‘balance of power’, so to speak, regarding thespecific theoretical perspective that has the most impact on the ‘literacy agenda’in Australian schools. The result is that in Australia at this point in time, literacyeducation is increasingly shaped by discourses of accountability, benchmarkingand national reporting systems. School systems, schools and teachers are underconsiderable pressure to respond to demands that are shaped primarily by a


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perspective that reflects management principles and concerns with cost effec-tiveness. The fact that funding for literacy programmes has been linked tomeasurable outcomes means that stateand schools systems, as well as individualteachers, are increasingly constrained by this agenda.

The second factor that is significant in the current policy – research relation-ship in Australian is that patterns and mechanisms for consultation havechanged. While consultations between policy-makers and researchers with stategovernments and the previous Labor Government were often robust and ener-getic, nevertheless they took place. A feature of the current CommonwealthGovernment has been its reluctance to engage in consultations. As indicatedearlier in this paper, the report Literacy Standards in Australia (DEETYA, 1997b)was released on national television at a time when even state ministers of educa-tion had not been consulted. Although various meetings with researchers wereestablished prior to, and after, the release of this document and the Literacy for AllPolicy, a common complaint from the researchers who attended these meetingswas that this was an exercise in being seen to consult and that their views weresimply ignored. Since then there have been few opportunities for any consulta-tion. Michell’s (1999) documentation of the fate of ESL education (nowsubsumed under the Literacy for All Policy) over the last decade further illus-trates changes in consultation processes.

The overall importance of the policy – research relationship can be seen in theway disjunctions get played out in schools. In Australia, current disjunctions areespecially evident in three sites: different views of the nature of literacy, differentways in which diversity is valued (or not) in schools and differences in emphasison, and support for, effective pedagogical practices. Implications of competingpriorities in these three sites are discussed further in the next section.

Sites of Contestation in School Literacies

Different assumptions about the nature of literacyDifferences in assumptions about the nature of literacy were addressed, to

some extent, in the earlier discussion of priorities of policy and research.However, because these theoretical assumptions are fundamental to the ways inwhich differences are played out in other sites, they are further elaborated here.

In its explanations and justification, the Literacy for All Policy acknowledges(at least to some extent) national and international debates about the complexnature of literacy, and about the impact of technology on what it means to beliterate. As indicated earlier, it draws on a definition of literacy that has beenwidely used in Australia in recent years (p. 7). This definition is:

Effective literacy is intrinsically purposeful, flexible and dynamic andinvolves the integration of speaking, listening and critical thinking withreading and writing. (DEET, 1991: 5)

The policy goes on to argue (p. 7, 8):

Reading and writing, when integrated with speaking, listening, viewingand critical thinking constitute valued aspects of literacy in modern life.


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This comprehensive view of literacy reflects current use of the term inprofessional literature.

However, in its proposed strategies for action (and in its allocation of fund-ing), the Policy take little account of such ‘current use of the term’, and insteadimposes on schools a very different notion of what literacy is. The strategies foraction in the Policy locate literacy essentially as a ‘problem’ which is to beaddressed first by:

assessment of all students by their teachers as early as possible in the firstyears of schooling (first strategy for action, p. 10); and then byearly intervention strategies for those identified as having difficulties(second strategy for action, p. 10).

The implication here is that literacy consists of a set of skills that need to belearned and that can then be measured. If these skills are not learned adequately,then this ‘problem’ can be addressed by re-teaching the skills that students havefailed to learn.

Despite references in the Policy to the inclusion of ‘viewing’ and the need forstudents to ‘interact with the growing variety of complex sources of informa-tion’, there is little opportunity for such multimodal interpretations of literacy(Snyder, 1999). The assumption implicit in the strategies for action is that literacyis essentially print-based. The emphasis here is on the basic skills (p. 7) andassessment of these skills via reading and writing; and on all students learningthe same skills and being tested by the same procedures (McKay, 1999).

Such a view of literacy is essentially a reductive one. As indicated earlier, it isone that fits Wells’ (1999) argument that there is a distinctive ‘language’ ofpolicy – one which is couched in terms of assessment and outcomes, and which isinformed by the theoretical perspective of language (and literacy) as a conduit ofinformation. To become literate, according to this view of literacy, requires anindividual learner to master necessary specific, ideologically neutral skills. Thistheoretical perspective also reflects what Street (1984, 1993) refers to as an auton-omous model of literacy.

Such a view of literacy differs significantly from that which informs mostcurrent research in the fields of language and literacy education in Australia (andelsewhere). As indicated earlier, most Australian researchers and educatorsdraw on notions of literacy as social construct: enacted in and through socialpractices, centrally located in the construction and mediation of meanings, andideologically loaded. Thus learning literacy, from this theoretical perspective,involves not only engaging with the technology of verbal and non-verbal texts,but also recognising the cultural and social significance of these texts and theways they realise ideological assumptions. It involves recognising the role ofliteracy in society, the role of literacy in constructing and maintaining differentialpower relations and the ways in which voices of different groups within societyare either represented or not in specific texts.

The kinds of literacy programmes proposed by such research can be seen inwork on critical literacy; on the intersection between critical literacy and genretheory; on pedagogical implications of genre theory; and in work that draws onthe notion of ‘scaffolding’ (e.g. Cope & Kalantzis, 1993; Derewianka, 1990;


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Gibbons, 1998; Gray, 1992; Hammond & Macken Horarik, 1999; Kamler, 1994;Knobel & Healy, 1998; Macken-Horarik, 1996). Clearly, from this perspective,becoming literate involves much more than learning to master a set of skills, andresults in very different kinds of literacy programmes from those promoted incurrent policy.

Differences in the value of diversityA further implication of the priorities identified in the Literacy for All Policy

lies in the way in which diversity is conceived and valued. If literacy is conceivedas a unitary set of skills to be acquired by all students and tested against specifiedstandards, then meeting the pedagogical needs of diverse groups of studentsrepresents no real challenge – it becomes possible to acknowledge the existenceof diverse groups of students, while implying that such diversity does notrequire any special understanding, or any special programmes. If literacyconsists of learning basic skills then the problems experienced by any studentscan all be addressed by similar remedial programmes. Thus the ‘broadbanding’or ‘mainstreaming’ of programmes designed to meet the needs of diverse groupsof students under the umbrella of ‘literacy’ becomes possible. And this is whathas happened in the Australian Literacy for All Policy.

The situation for English as a Second Language (ESL) students provides a casein point (Michell, 1999). Despite claiming to recognise diversity and to include astrong equity dimension (p. 43) the Literacy for All Policy, in fact, has very littlerecognition of diversity in its proposed strategies for action. Here, ESL studentsare located along with other students who are experiencing difficulties with theirliteracy development and who require ‘early intervention’. Not surprisingly, asthe 1997 school literacy surveys showed, many ESL students perform poorly onnational assessments that are designed for the majority English-speaking popu-lation. However, even a brief reflection on the needs of ESL students in Austra-lian schools suggests attempts to address the language and literacy needs of suchstudents by ‘early intervention’ programmes are unlikely to be particularly help-ful.

While ESL students represent a very diverse group with different abilities andneeds, many make spectacular progress at school. When we consider that manyyoung ESL students are in the process of successfully learning their second (orpossibly third or fourth languages) during their schooling in Australia, that theytypically develop a working oral fluency in English within a year or so of begin-ning school here, and that they usually make substantial progress in Englishliteracy development, then to characterise such development as ‘literacy failure’because students have not met specific benchmarks, is to miss completely theextent of their success as language learners and to misrepresent the nature oftheir needs.

There is a substantial literature on nature of the challenges faced by studentswho are learning English while at the same time learning through English atschool. Cummins’ work (e.g. Cummins & Swain, 1986; Cummins, 1996) isperhaps the best known, but others have written extensively on this issue and onthe complex relationship between learning a new language (and culture) while atthe same time learning English literacy (e.g. Gibbons, 1998; Hammond &Derewianka, 1999). In fact, it is ironic that while Australian work on education


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for a diverse student population has received international recognition over theyears (e.g. Department of Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs(DILGEA), 1989; Lo Bianco, 1987), Australian educators are once again forced toargue the case for ESL education and to articulate the (different) needs of ESLstudents. It is also ironic that a policy entitled Literacy for All should in fact makeso little real acknowledgement of diversity in the Australian school population,and instead propose only literacy for the mainstream.

Differences in emphasis on, and support for, teachingA third major implication of the Literacy for All Policy is that it provides very

little emphasis on, and support for, teaching. It recognises a ‘range of validapproaches’ (p. 10) in the teaching of literacy, and states:

there is no single commonly accepted approach to teaching literacy acrossschool systems in Australia: that is, no State or Territory specifies apreferred methodology for literacy instruction. (p. 31)

Apart from these statements, the Policy has little to say about teaching, focus-ing instead on results and outcomes. It thus leaves teachers (and state depart-ments of education) to work out their own preferred approaches to literacyteaching. Given my earlier comments on the model of literacy that informs thestrategies for action in the Policy, it could be argued that this is a good thing – thatteachers remain free to implement what, in their views, are effective literacyprogrammes designed to meet the (diverse) needs of their students (and indeedsome have argued that the emphasis on assessment forces school systems andteachers to re-examine pedagogical practices where they have been demonstra-bly ineffective). However, there are two points to be made here.

First, because funding in the Literacy for All Policy is tied to demonstratedoutcomes and recorded results, state departments of education, schools andindividual teachers are under considerable pressure to comply with the nationalassessment agenda. (It is worth noting that funding which was previously allo-cated to ESL education and to other programmes for ‘disadvantaged’ students isnow subsumed under the umbrella of the Literacy for All Policy.) Since assess-ment in this Policy is primarily directed to establishing whether or not studentscan demonstrate control of basic skills in reading and writing, teachers are pres-sured to teach to the tests, with the result that their literacy programmes arenecessarily constrained by the assessment agenda, and by the reductive notion ofliteracy that underpins this agenda. Schools that demonstrate improved resultsin ‘basic skills tests’ are rewarded with special prizes. Those that do not are pres-sured to demonstrate plans to address their ‘deficiencies’. Again, the issue here isnot that literacy programmes should ignore the ‘basic skills’, but rather thatbecause of the preoccupation with assessment, teachers are being pressured torestrict their literacy programmes to these basic skills in order to demonstrateperformance against specified benchmarks and standardised assessment proce-dures.

Second, the pressure on schools and teachers to conform to the nationalassess-ment agenda is exacerbated by the nature of current debates about literacy. Asindicated earlier, Australian literacy education is immersed in a rhetoric ofcrisis – a rhetoric which has been politically advantageous to the current


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Commonwealth Government. Thus, while there is broad community and mediasupport for literacy education, this support has been shaped by concerns about‘literacy failure’ and ‘falling standards’, with the result that community andmedia literacy debates are primarily about results of assessment procedures andvery rarely about teaching. A sample of recent media headlines demonstratesthis point:

Reading and righting literacy test ‘wrongs’ (Sun Herald, 3 November 1996,p. 39)1 in 5 pupils ‘can’t read’ (The Daily Telegraph, 8 May 1997, p. 7)Schools told to improve or else (The Sydney Morning Herald, 16 September1997, p. 1)Why teacher training fails the test (The Australian, 19 September 1997,p. 13)Historic Move as States adopt Nationally Comparable Literacy andNumeracy Tests (Joint statement from State and Territory EducationMinisters, 4 August 1999)

It is perhaps not surprising that media attention is directed to assessmentoutcomes – after all, results that ‘prove’ 30% of students are failing providesensational headlines and make good stories. However, the extent of nationalpolicy, general community and media preoccupation with assessment, and withsupposedly falling standards,has shifted the focus of debates within the fields oflanguage and literacy education – with the result that recent debates have beenmore about assessment and outcomes than about teaching. The prevailingdiscourses of literacy debates are now those of failure, assessment and basicskills.

The shift in the nature of educational debates around literacy, and in theprevailing discourses of these debates, is marked in the Australian context. Asindicated earlier, there has long been a close relationship between research andpedagogy with the result that debates about language and literacy educationover a number of years have been very much focused on effective teaching(rather than assessment). Debates between proponents of process approaches,genre-based approaches, critical literacy, for example, addressed questionsabout the nature of language and literacy, the value or otherwise of explicit peda-gogy, the ‘empowerment’ of ‘disadvantaged’ students (and what empowermentmeant) (e.g. Corcoran,1989; Luke, 1996). While at times the debates were acrimo-nious, they resulted in an educational environment which was productive andwhich created intense interest in literacy theory and pedagogy – an interest thatwas shared by many teacher educators, curriculum consultants, teachers and, tosome extent, policy-makers. It was an environment that fostered innovative andforward thinking work – much of which, as indicated earlier, has been recog-nised internationally.

This is not to say that all innovative work on language and literacy pedagogyin Australia has ceased. Examples of current research into theory and practice inliteracy pedagogy can be seen in some of the work mentioned earlier: work ongenre and scaffolding, work on multiliteracies and multimodality. In such work,questions about the nature of language and literacy, the value of explicit peda-gogy and the place of diversity remain central. The major difference is that, in thecurrent context, such concerns are not generally at the forefront of broader


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debates about literacy education. This shift in nature of educational debates andin the prevailing discourses is an indication of the impact of the current policyand the resulting level of disjunction between policy and research in Australia.

Conclusions: Consequences of the Policy – Research Disjunctionin Australia

What are the consequences of the current disjunction between policy andresearch? Whose perspectives are likely to prevail?

The existence of an ongoing international debate suggests that the perspec-tives of policy-makers and researchers will never be completely congruent. InAustralia, as elsewhere, it seems likely that the ‘balance of power’ and the differ-ent perspectives of policy and research will continue to be played out in varyingways over time. However, there are a number of factors that are relevant to theway in which the current policy – research disjunction is likely to unfold inAustralia.

Despite its geographical size, Australia is, in an important sense, a ‘smallworld’. The relatively small size of the population facilitates a professionaldialogue across disciplines. People across different states and across relatedfields talk to each other. Thus, those working in school education are generallyaware of developments in adult education and those working in the field ofmother tongue education are aware of developments in second language educa-tion. The result of this dialogue is that national and international research andtheoretical developments in one field are often taken up and productively devel-oped in other fields.

An additional factor is that the boundaries between teachers, educationalconsultants, academic researchers and, in some cases, policy-makers tend to beless clearly marked in Australia than in some other countries. Although the Liter-acy for All Policy was developed very much as a top down enterprise, as indicatedearlier, Australia has had a tradition of consultation across sectors in the devel-opment of school policy and curriculum. Researchers and practitioners resistbeing shut out of policy decisions. Action research has been popular in Australia,with research frequently involving combinations of teachers, consultants andacademics (e.g. Burns & Hood, 1998;Callaghan& Rothery, 1988;Hammond et al.,1992).

This ‘connectedness’ means that while those in the educational communityare generally prepared to take on and try new policy and pedagogical develop-ments if they appear to be of value, equally, they are prepared to argue in the faceof those with which they disagree – and can do so on a reasonably informed basis.In addition, there has long been a political edge in Australian education – aconcern for issue of equity and access and for providing opportunities for ‘disad-vantaged’ students. These features work together to create a community that isgenerally prepared to resist where that is seen to be necessary. (This is not to saythat researchers’ and educators’ views always prevail, but that the educationalcommunity as a whole is not one that is easy to manipulate.)

A related feature in the Australian educational context is its tradition of robustdebate about language and literacy education. This has been supported by thecontribution of applied linguistics over recent years. Perhaps the most obvious


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example of this can be seen in the influence of Halliday’s work in systemiclinguistics, and the subsequent impact of genre theory in literacy education overthe last 15 years or so. This impact has been evident in research, in pedagogogicalpractices and in development of curriculum (e.g. Halliday, 1978, 1994; Christie,1999; Christie & Martin, 1997; Derewianka, 1990; Martin, 1985, 1993).

Such work has generated intense debates about language and literacy theoriesand practices. The value of these debates is that they have contributed to partici-pants’ own knowledge about language, to their own understandings of the rela-tive advantages and disadvantages of various positions and to confidence in thevalidity of their own views.

It would be unwise to underestimate the power of the current policy perspec-tives, nor the extent of the current disjunction between policy and research. It isalso significant that similar trends are evident in other countries. However, theexistence of interdisciplinary dialogues and a tradition of debates aboutlanguage and literacy contribute to the resilience of the Australian educationcommunity. This resilience offers some hope for resistance to the more extremeimplications of the current policy, and for the possibility of maintaining a spacefor debates about rich language and literacy theory and the implications of suchtheory for effective pedagogical practices.

CorrespondenceAny correspondence should be directed to Dr Jennifer Hammond, Centre for

Language and Literacy, Faculty of Education, University of Technology, Sydney,PO Box 123, Broadway, 2007, NSW, Australia ([email protected]).

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literacies in school education in australia: disjunctions between policy and research

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