Caryn M. King
Kathleen Jonson
David Whitehead
Barbara J. Reinken

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In the past two decades, New Zealand has achieved international renown for the high quality of its literacy education. Despite increased immigration and the numbers of families living in poverty, as well as relatively low teacher salaries, New Zealand has one the highest literacy rates in the industrialized world (see the summary of New Zealand’s results from the Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA], 2000). Its reputation as a nation of readers has intrigued researchers and classroom-based educators alike. Curiosity about how New Zealand has accomplished its success led a group of 50 U.S. educators, including the first, second, and fourth authors of this article, to visit the country during the summer of 2000 to observe firsthand the literacy practices used in primary classrooms. Our purpose was to learn as much as we could about New Zealand’s unique educational system.

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We were fortunate to meet a number of key players in literacy education as we toured around New Zealand. We began our journey by visiting the Auckland College of Education, where we met with professionals from the Centre for Literacy and Languages, Enterprise Development, and Research. Here we learned about teacher education in New Zealand, the New Zealand Curriculum Framework, the structure and governance of public schools, school funding, and the school calendar.

While in Auckland, we were delighted to have a meeting with Dame Marie Clay, the founder of the very successful Reading Recovery program. Dame Marie was very generous with her time, and told us everything we wanted to know about Reading Recovery. We also met with regional representatives from the Books in Homes program, which promotes family literacy. To complement what we had learned, we met with officials at the New Zealand Education Review Office, who explained the evaluation process all educational institutions that receive government funding must undergo.

Now we felt equipped and ready to visit classrooms and learn even more. What follows is a summary of what we saw and heard about literacy education in New Zealand.

The Literacy Framework

It was clear from the classrooms we visited that the most powerful component of literacy education in New Zealand is the daily literacy block of two hours each morning. We learned that the literacy block is a mandated, uninterrupted period of time in which students are focused on literacy development. No students are pulled out for any reason, and there are few specialist teachers in the classrooms. During the literacy block, students engage in guided reading, shared reading, independent silent reading, reading aloud, and writing. Figure 1 shows an example of the organization of a daily literacy block in one school. Students’ names are along the left side of the chart, and the tasks to be completed are located on the right. The 120-minute literacy block is divided into three segments, and the time allocated for each group to complete various tasks makes up the middle three columns of the chart. The letter T represents time the children spend with the teacher. Teachers told us that guided reading makes up their main instructional time. They aim to develop the children’s positive attitudes toward reading by helping them become successful. During guided reading, teachers teach word identification as well as comprehension strategies, doing so in a way that is brief and does not distract from the enjoyment of reading. In most instances, teachers and students read an entire book in one sitting, keeping the instructional focus on making meaning.

Figure 1 Organizational Chart of a Literacy Block

It was obvious to us that the teacher plays a central role in guided reading. First, the teacher introduces the text to be read to a small group of children, and sets a purpose for reading. Then, the children read a section of the text and discuss it with the teacher. This process is repeated until the entire text is read. By using this process, the teacher and the children think their way through the text, thereby enhancing both comprehension and enjoyment.

Shared reading was another teaching method we saw in action. The teachers explained that this technique, developed by Holdaway (1979), was designed to extend exposure to print in a nonthreatening way. Shared reading experiences extend throughout a typical instructional week. For instance, on Day 1, the teacher works with a small group of children and introduces a new book. The book is read using the guided reading procedure mentioned previously. On subsequent days, the children reread the book in small groups, alone, or in pairs. The opportunities for repeated reading of the book aids in children’s memorization of the high-frequency words, reading comprehension, and fluency.

We observed children reading independently in many of the classrooms that we visited. Teachers mentioned that during reading time, children read on their own or with a partner. This quiet, sustained reading gives children the chance to read from a wide variety of materials, applying reading strategies learned previously. Teachers pointed out that independent reading promotes fluency and builds confidence and enjoyment of reading.

Reading aloud is also a daily practice in New Zealand classrooms. In this activity, the teacher reads aloud to the whole class or small groups. The purpose is to model phrased, fluent reading, help children develop knowledge of text structures and vocabulary, expose them to a variety of genres, and involve them in reading for enjoyment. Favorite texts are often reread many times in primary school. Books that are read aloud are used as a springboard for writing and other activities.

Writing is a natural outgrowth of reading, and we saw many wonderful examples of student writing displayed in classrooms and in school hallways (Figure 2). Teachers engage children in writing because it is an obvious way for them to respond to their reading. We saw children use a variety of written texts to express their views, ideas, and knowledge. Some of the forms included language experience stories, written responses to what was read, stories, journals, and reports. Teachers encourage children to use the writing process so that they can experience being an author. The teachers go to great lengths to provide authentic purposes and audiences for the children’s writing. We learned that writing is shared with the class, with others in the school, and with those beyond the school.

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The Larger Context of the Classroom

We surmised the success of these instructional components in practice is determined by a number of factors. The teaching strategies we saw were obviously working, but we felt that factors beyond the instructional approaches also influenced the children’s literacy success.

In New Zealand, children enter school on their fifth birthday, regardless of the month in which the birthday occurs. In most cases, the children stay with the same teacher for an extended period -- often several years. This family-like grouping helps provide a support system as the children develop as readers and writers. In addition, teachers get to know their students’ abilities very well. When the teacher’s knowledge of the child and supportive test results indicate it is time for promotion, students begin working on the next year’s curriculum. Thus, promotion to the next grade level can occur at any time during the school year. A great deal of flexibility exists within a system such as this, which is important since the typical class size is 30 children.

In terms of instructional materials, we were surprised to learn that there are no textbooks used in New Zealand classrooms, and certainly no basal reading programs. Teachers, who are required to do a monthly running record on each student, determine students’ instructional levels. This information, coupled with teacher observation, helps to determine the reading level of the child, which changes frequently. Children read a variety of books at their level, most of which are color coded according to stage of development (i.e., emergent, early reader, fluent reader). The New Zealand Ministry of Education advocates this practice of book leveling and it is common across all schools.

From our perspective, a striking feature of literacy instruction in New Zealand is the close fit between the text and the reader in terms of the text’s level of difficulty, the child’s interests, and the child’s prior knowledge. Classrooms are truly print-rich, inviting places. New Zealand teachers, it seemed to us, assume that all children can learn to read, and they obviously expect this to happen. The typical classroom culture stresses continual development of a child’s abilities, rather than accommodating fixed abilities. Since all children are mainstreamed in New Zealand, this attitude is paramount.

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Reading Recovery

Despite the positive attitudes of teachers and high expectations placed on the children of New Zealand, not all students start out as successful readers. For these children, Reading Recovery is available.

From our meeting with Dame Marie Clay, we learned that Reading Recovery was developed in New Zealand after she conducted observational research in the mid-1960s that enabled her to design techniques for detecting early reading and writing difficulties. In the mid-1970s, she developed Reading Recovery procedures with teachers and tested the program in the Auckland area. The success of this pilot program led to the nationwide adoption of Reading Recovery in New Zealand in the early 1980s. It has since been adopted in other countries, including the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

Reading Recovery is an early intervention program developed to assist children who are having difficulty learning to read and write. In New Zealand, children eligible for this program are identified by their classroom teachers. The teachers told us that Reading Recovery is designed to move children in a short time from the bottom of their class to the average level, where they can profit from regular classroom instruction. The goal of Reading Recovery is to accelerate learning so that students succeed before they enter a cycle of failure.

Reading Recovery provides one-to-one tutoring every day, delivered by a specially trained teacher. The daily 30-minute lessons consist of a variety of reading and writing experiences that are designed to help children develop their own effective strategies for literacy acquisition. Instruction continues until children can read at or above the class average and can continue to learn without additional remedial help. Reading Recovery is supplemental to classroom instruction and lasts an average of 12 to 20 weeks, at the end of which it is hoped that children have developed a self-extending system that involves accessing a variety of strategies to read increasingly difficult text and to write independently.

We were fortunate to observe Reading Recovery lessons in action in New Zealand classrooms. We noticed the supportive conversations between teacher and child as the primary basis of instruction. This teacher-child talk appears to be an effective method for experts (teachers) to help novices (students) take on complex tasks, and is a particular need of children having difficulty in school. The Reading Recovery lesson follows a routine, predictable framework of activities that the teacher designs, based on a daily analysis of student progress. Each lesson has seven distinct parts:

1. The child rereads several familiar books. The stories represent a wide range of narrative and expository texts of varying difficulty levels.
2. The child rereads a book introduced in the preceding lesson, while the teacher observes and records the child’s reading behavior.
3. The child does some letter and word identification, and with the support of the teacher, learns how words work.
4. The child writes a story (usually a single sentence), and interacts with the teacher who provides opportunities for the child to hear and record sounds in words.
5. The child rearranges his or her story from cut-up sentence strips provided by the teacher.
6. The teacher introduces a new book, carefully selected for the learning opportunities it provides.
7. The child reads the new book, using his or her current problem-solving strategies.

We learned that the professional development of teachers is an integral part of Reading Recovery. The training is an intense, year-long course consisting of weekly classes at a regional training center. Reading Recovery uses a trainer-of-trainers model. University professors prepare local teacher leaders who, in turn, train other teachers in Reading Recovery techniques. As the teachers learn how to implement the program, they work simultaneously with children in their home schools. This model ensures that Reading Recovery has support at the site level, necessary for successful program implementation. It also sets the stage for systematic reform of how reading and writing are taught and how access to good initial teaching is provided for all children.

The year-long professional development curriculum integrates theory and practice and is characterized by intensive interaction with colleagues. Teachers-in-training conduct lessons while colleagues observe from behind one-way glass and then provide feedback. In addition, Reading Recovery teacher-leaders visit teachers-in-training at their schools and help them reflect on and improve their teaching and observing of children. The professional level of this Reading Recovery preparation has empowered teachers to make changes in their own teaching and systematically to affect the teaching in their schools.

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The Literacy and Numeracy Strategy

Although Reading Recovery is the largest and most well known of New Zealand’s literacy initiatives, it is not the only one. We learned of a number of other programs being implemented throughout the country.

Because the population of New Zealand is multicultural and multilingual, the country continues to make literacy a priority. In 1998, the New Zealand Government announced the goal that “by 2005, every child turning nine will be able to read, write, and do maths for success.” Soon after, a 20-person Literacy Taskforce was set up to identify how this goal should be defined, how progress toward it could be measured, and the ways in which literacy learning could best be supported.

As a direct result of the Report of the Literacy Taskforce (1999, online document), the New Zealand Literacy and Numeracy Strategy was established. Three themes form an organizing framework for the strategy: raising expectations for student progress and achievement, lifting professional capability throughout the system, and developing community capability. The literacy strategy recognizes that the most important factor in a student’s learning is the quality of the interaction between student and teacher. Thus, the dimensions of effective practice that underpin the strategy are the teacher’s knowledge of literacy learning, high expectations for students, sound instructional strategies, engaging learners with texts, and home-school partnerships.

The initial emphasis of the siteracy strategy has been on improving first practice in classrooms that purposefully integrates all aspects of literacy learning. The emphasis is now gradually extending to years 7 and 8 and into secondary schools. Within the context of the literacy strategy, language and literacy programs for non-English-speaking students are also being reviewed, refined, and expanded in order to meet student needs.

The strategy is further enhanced by involving established resources and agencies within the school system. These constituents include literacy resource teachers who work in school clusters and provide advice on interventions to meet student needs; literacy advisors based with School Support Services who run workshops on best practice for teachers; literacy leadership facilitators who are engaged to implement a national professional development program to help principals become literacy leaders; Reading Recovery tutors; learning and behavior resource teachers; and speech language therapists. By involving as many professionals as possible in the literacy strategy, the themes of raising student achievement and lifting professional capability throughout the system can be realized.

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Other Initiatives

In addition to the literacy strategy, other programs funded through the Reading, Writing, and Mathematics Proposals (RWMP) pool have also been established to assist schools. The RWMP is a contestable fund established to help schools with the set-up costs of programs for students in years 1 to 8 who are making slow progress in reading, writing, or mathematics. This fund gives schools an additional means to target specific needs. The diverse programs funded from this pool include

• Training of home-school liaison workers in the Pause-Prompt-Praise (PPP) procedure and in previewing and reviewing texts with children
• Establishing benchmarks, developing better assessment practices, and improving school reporting systems
• Establishing programs for parents whose children are due to start school
• Setting up mentoring programs in best literacy practice
• Recording texts for audiotape-assisted reading programs
• Establishing responsive writing programs, including the development of quality indicators, training volunteer parents as respondents, and designing monitoring systems and record sheets for tracking literacy progress

Finally, Home Partnership Programs can also be funded through the pool. In these programs, students hear a wide variety of storybooks selected to provide the context of connected, interesting narrative for promoting oral language development and phonological awareness. Parents acting as reading tutors help students probe the text and expand their ideas through oral responses. Oral language is integral to the reading, and lots of talking, exploration of sounds and word structures, and fun with rhyming and other activities takes place.

Another program, known as the Literacy Leadership Program for Primary Schools, has been developed by Learning Media, working with a team of recognized literacy experts and practitioners (including principals). This program aims to raise literacy achievement, especially among year 1 to 6 students who are not performing to their potential. It has four intended outcomes: first, to develop the knowledge and skills of principals and literacy leaders to help them enhance their literacy programs; second, to foster good quality teaching practice; third, to reinforce high-quality, school-wide policies and practices; and finally, to support effective communities of professionals.

The Literacy Leadership program supports principals as they lead their teachers through goal-related, classroom-based initiatives. Teachers first identify a target group of students and gather baseline data on literacy performance; they then focus on improving aspects of their teaching practice and collect comparative data to see whether they have met their goals. The program is delivered by 22 national facilitators and literacy leaders who mentor principals. Together, they develop shared understandings of effective literacy instruction with their teachers.

Feed the Mind is a multimedia campaign that offers the public ideas on how to help young children learn. The campaign has been running since May 1999, and consists of radio and television advertisements, billboards, bus shelter posters, household delivery of printed material containing tips on how to help children learn, and pamphlets for parents. The simple message of the campaign has been that there are lots of everyday things that parents and caregivers can do with children to make a very real difference in their learning.

Finally, to assist those for whom English is not a first language, the Pasifika initiatives were established. These programs have a strong focus on improving the achievement of Pasifika (Pacific Island) students, and aim at improving teachers’ qualifications to teach English language learners and at strengthening home-school partnerships through professional development programs.

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Assessment of Literacy

One purpose of assessment in New Zealand is to monitor the successes and challenges of the nationally mandated curriculum. Therefore, there are strong links between the New Zealand Literacy and Numeracy Strategy and the National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP), funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Education. The focus of NEMP is on the educational achievements and attitudes of New Zealand primary and intermediate school children. The project provides a snapshot of children’s knowledge, skills, and motivation nationwide, and a way to identify which aspects are improving, staying constant, or declining. The School Entry Assessment tool, which is part of NEMP, is designed to provide teachers with reliable diagnostic information about each new school entrant’s level of numeracy, oral language development, and emergent literacy. This information is valuable in helping teachers determine which types of instruction are best for individual students.

Evaluation occurs annually. The curriculum areas assessed in NEMP are distributed across a four-year assessment cycle, with about 25 percent of the curriculum being assessed each year. Year 2 students take the reading and speaking assessment, while Year 4 students take the assessments for writing, listening, and viewing. In addition, national exemplars, authentic examples of student work annotated to illustrate learning achievement and quality in relation to the levels described in the national curriculum, are currently being developed.

Three substantial reports are produced each year by NEMP, and we were informed that there is evidence that levels of literacy achievement are rising. For instance, we were informed that there were substantial gains from 1996 to 2000 in the oral reading achievement of eight-year-olds (Year 4 students): The percentage of students performing well above the expected level as determined by the NEMP assessors increased from 32 to 48 percent, while the percentage performing well below the expected level dropped from 11 to 6 percent. At Year 8 (12- and 13-year-olds), the students reading well above the expected level increased from 51 percent to 56 percent, while those reading well below the expected level declined from 8 percent to 5 percent. Similar results occurred in reading comprehension: Averaged across 34 task components, 11 percent more of the Year 4 students succeeded in 2000 than had succeeded in 1996; by comparison, the corresponding gain for Year 8 students was 3 percent. These results are impressive and suggest that the Literacy and Numeracy Strategy and the many other initiatives in place are having an impact.

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Future Challenges in New Zealand Literacy Education

Many of our observations and impressions were confirmed and expanded on during a meeting with David Whitehead, senior lecturer from the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand, and third author of this article. He commented that New Zealand shares challenges in literacy education common in most western countries. For instance, literacy achievement within race and language minority groups generally fails to meet the higher literacy standards found among majority students. The gap in reading achievement between non-Mäori and Mäori children is a current issue and a future challenge. In fact, the NEMP report for the year 2000 indicates that, at Year 4, non-Mäori children performed better than Mäori on 94 percent of the English language reading tasks.

The literacy strategy appears to be addressing this discrepancy, however. An analysis of the data for oral reading shows that there have been considerable gains at Year 4, with the percentage of Maori students performing well above the expected level increasing from 18 to 31, and the percentage performing well below the expected level declining from 19 to 12.

David suggested that a second challenge to literacy education exists within the alignment of theory and practice. Schema theory underpins current literacy practices. But, as dual coding theory suggests, language and literacy are not exclusively verbal; readers and writers also use image (Sadoski, 1998). Dual coding theory, a theory of cognition, suggests that we process verbal and nonverbal information in separate but connected systems. It suggests that referential and associative links occur within and between systems that make verbal representations more meaningful and that account for the phenomena of “concrete” words being easier to imagine. Schema theory, on the other hand, does not explain the role of verbal information or its influence in cognition (see, e.g., Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Paivio, 1986; Sadoski & Paivio, 2001). David indicated that even though the New Zealand curriculum document stresses visual language, it only refers to images “out there” (e.g., pictures, videos, film) -- not to internal, mental imagery. David also suggested that the place of dual coding theory as a model to underpin and justify policy, programs, and practice has yet to be fully debated. Furthermore, he argued that dual coding theory challenges schema theory and may result in the development of additional practices and resources consistent with its explanation of cognition.

As in many countries, practice and resources in New Zealand do reflect the application of current research-based findings about reading comprehension. Likewise, the current range of research projects signals a high degree of innovation in literacy practice. Much of this research is aimed at meeting the needs of a multicultural and multiliterate society, at redefining literacy as much as at meeting the needs of students with culturally appropriate practice. Although most New Zealand teachers have moved beyond the great debate between whole language and phonics, the research on phonemic and phonological awareness is reflected in the Ministry of Education’s decision to provide advice and support to schools in incorporating successful phonics programs and ensuring that future instructional reading materials incorporate text designed to allow for explicit word analysis strategies to enhance the teaching of phonics. At the same time, David claimed that there is a need to help the best readers read better.

Finally, David noted the all-too-familiar tension between government requirements for accountability and the professional role of practitioners. He explained that the full English in the New Zealand Curriculum document was seen by many as an agent of teacher accountability as much as an innovation for literacy education. Likewise, proposals to establish national testing of 9- and 14-year-olds, and the accountability requirements of the Education Review Office are areas of debate. It seems that striking a balance between time spent on assessment and accountability and time spent on teaching and developing programs is an ongoing issue in New Zealand, as it is in other countries. Related to this is the issue of maintaining professionalism and independence. David voiced concern that those who hold the power drive the research, that the implementation of prescribed standards and recommendations for effective practice by those in power may be undermining teachers’ professionalism and independence.

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Conclusion

New Zealand is a relatively small country with a national curriculum and assessment program run by its Ministry of Education. However, it seemed to the three U.S.-based authors of this article that the structures and policies in place in the country are achieving their goals. Teachers are involved in literacy initiatives that are working, especially for readers facing reading challenges or delays in literacy acquisition. But while exciting progress is being made, the full impact of current initiatives has yet to be realized and further improvements to literacy learning are still being sought. New Zealand teachers also have their eyes focused on how to address future challenges. The current initiatives of the Literacy and Numeracy Strategy and this acknowledgement of future challenges augurs well for New Zealand literacy education. We left New Zealand better informed about what we might be able to achieve in our schools and districts.

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References

Anderson, R.C., & Pearson, P.D. (1984). A schema-theoretic view of basic processes in reading comprehension. In P.D. Pearson (Ed.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 1, pp. 255-291). White Plains, NY: Longman.
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Holdaway, D. (1979). The foundations of literacy. Sydney: Ashton Scholastic. Abstract available (retrieved May 1, 2003): www.edrs.com/Webstore/Detail.asp?q1=@Meta_PubID%20288794&txtSort=Meta_DocID[D]&txtMaxdisplayed=10&txtDocType=ED
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Paivio, A. (1986). Mental representations: A dual coding approach. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Report of the Literacy Taskforce. (1999, March). Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education. Available (retrieved May 1, 2003): www.minedu.govt.nz/index.cfm?layout=document&documentid=3853&data=l
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Sadoski, M. (1998, December). Mental imagery in reading: A sampler of some significant studies. Reading Online, 2. Available: www.readingonline.org/past/past_index.asp?HREF=/research/Sadoski.html
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Sadoski, M., & Paivio, A. (2001). Imagery and text: A dual coding theory of reading and writing. Mahwah, NJ: Earlbaum.
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About the Authors

Caryn M. King is a professor in the reading/language arts program at Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan, USA. Her professional career includes working as a middle school English teacher, reading teacher, reading specialist, and university professor. Her interests include literacy in the content areas, international education, and comprehension. Her most recent book is Fusing Science with Literature (with Peg Sudol, Pippin Publishing). Contact Caryn at Grand Valley State University, Eberhard Center, 301 W. Fulton, Grand Rapids, MI 49504, USA, or by e-mail at kingc@gvsu.edu.

		Kathleen Feeney Jonson is an associate professor and coordinator of the Multiple Subject Teaching Credential program at the University of San Francisco, California, USA. Her professional career includes experience as an elementary and secondary reading specialist, teacher of the gifted, director of staff development, principal, and director of curriculum and instruction. Her recent publications include the books Being an Effective Mentor: How to Help Beginning Teachers Succeed and The New Elementary Teacher’s Handbook: Flourishing in Your First Year. Kathleen can be reached at jonsonk@usfca.edu.
		David Whitehead is senior lecturer in the Department of Arts and Language Education at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. He teaches language and literacy education courses to undergraduate students, learning through literacy courses to secondary graduates, and language and cognition courses to masters and doctoral students. He is editor of the resources prepared for the New Zealand Secondary Literacy Initiative and a member of the team assessing this initiative over three years. His most recent book is Top Tools for Literacy and Learning. David can be reached at davidw@waikato.ac.nz.
		Barbara J. Reinken is an associate professor in the Reading/Language Arts program at Grand Valley State University. Her professional career includes working as an elementary classroom teacher, reading teacher, reading specialist, and principal and as a university professor. Her interests include literacy education globally, literacy assessment and instruction of struggling learners, and material and methods of literacy education. Address correspondence to Grand Valley State University, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI 49401, USA, or contact Barb by e-mail at reinkenb@gvsu.edu.

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Citation: King, C.M., Jonson, K., Whitehead, D., & Reinken, B.J. (2003, May). Glimpses of literacy education in New Zealand. Reading Online, 6(9). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/international/inter_index.asp?HREF=king/

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Posted May 2003
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