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Literacies are social and cultural practices integral to life in the 21st century. Literacies are embedded in students’ daily activities and they form the basis for learning in all curriculum areas throughout schooling. This means that high quality literacy learning supported by parents/carers, families and the broader community. One of the principal tasks for all teachers is to develop the depth and breadth of their students’ literacies to enable them to be active citizens in an increasingly global, multi-mediated community as demonstrated through recent developments in key literacy policies e.g. OECD and Australia’s Mparntwe Declaration (AQF 9). It is therefore essential that teachers have extensive knowledge and skills relevant to the place of literacies in today’s world and can plan and implement effective literacy teaching to cater for all age groups (0-12 years), diverse groups of students including EAL/D learners and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and through the use of a diverse range of texts. To do this, teachers also need to have a good knowledge of contemporary issues including current education reforms and major contemporary drivers of change, thus considering evidence-based approaches in considering the implications for literacies education.

This course focuses on the integration of literacies learning into the planning and implementation of learning opportunities for students from diverse sociocultural contexts, including English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) learners and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Drawing on a range of literacies frameworks, including multiliteracies pedagogy, this course helps enable preservice teachers to design and plan integrated and inclusive learning opportunities and authentic assessment to ensure that the learning of literacies is embedded into learning across the curriculum. Specific attention will be paid to the planning of focused learning/teaching episodes about the language forms and features and textual structures of written, visual and multimodal texts. The course will also focus on contemporary issues and current reforms in literacies education, how to cater for diverse learners, including strategies for identification of and support for EAL/D students as well as students needing learning support. In addition the development of flexible repertoires of learning/teaching strategies for teaching reading and writing across a range of educational contexts and age groups (0-12 years).

On successful completion of this course preservice teachers should be able to:

1. demonstrate complex understandings of current education reforms and major contemporary drivers of change in the educational environment and implications for literacies education, through the development of research question/s and literature review (Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) 2.5);
2. demonstrate advanced understandings informed by research into how students learn and the implications for teaching, and of the place of literacies in learning across curriculum areas (Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.5);
3. demonstrate advanced understanding and use of appropriate and effective pedagogies when planning literacies learning for students from diverse backgrounds, including EAL/D, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students (APST 1.3, 1.5, 1.6, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.5, 3.2, 3.3);
4. demonstrate an ability to design a broad repertoire of flexible teaching/learning strategies suitable for the focused and explicit teaching of literacies and plan integrated and inclusive learning opportunities for literacies across curricular areas (APST 1.3, 1.5, 2.1, 2.3, 2.5, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4);
5. demonstrate the capacity to plan effective, focused learning experiences (especially in relation to language forms and features and textual structures of written, visual and multimodal texts) for individuals and groups and to select appropriate texts and resources. (APST 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.5, 2.6, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4);
6. demonstrate an ability to design and plan authentic assessment opportunities for literacies learning across the curriculum (APST 5.1, 5.2);
7. demonstrate expert cognitive, literacy and communication skills, including spelling, grammar, punctuation and bibliographic referencing.