Introducing Professor Susan Sandretto’s ‘stretched’ view of literacy
Today, I would like to offer Professor Susan Sandretto’s inaugural professorial lecture (IPL) that she delivered in early September, 2024. I would like to thank Susan for her generosity (and bravery) in allowing me to share her work in the context of what has happened with the MAG. Susan says you should start watching from around the 20:30 mark.
But first, I’d like to touch on a couple of points made in her IPL to provide an insight for you about why I think it is so helpful.
If we are going to talk about the need to improve literacy outcomes, best we start with a definition of what literacy is. Here is how it’s defined in the rewritten English Learning Area (Years 0-6) curriculum:
“The ability to read, write, speak, and listen in a way that allows individuals to communicate effectively and understand the world around them. It encompasses a range of skills, including reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Beyond these basic skills, literacy also includes the ability to use language to solve problems, access information and engage in lifelong learning.” (Glossary, p. 4)
So, there are basic skills—reading, writing, speaking, and listening—and there are things beyond those basic skills, where we “use language” for particular purposes. As far as definitions go, it’s not too bad, and at first glance one might think, Yes, that’s what we’re trying to do in a classroom, there’s nothing much to worry about here.
But I think it’s worth paying attention to the narrowness of those purposes, their very strong materialist undertow, and the potential contradiction within them. It’s a definition that has me wondering about the world this group see as worthy of understanding when we consider this definition in the wider context of this government’s actions in relation to Māori, for example. It’s a definition that makes me wonder about the kinds of problems that can be solved when literacy is for accessing information, not creating it. And it’s a definition that, in the constraints it places on the usefulness of literacy, seems to cut against the growth of curiosity, which, as Emeritus Professor Guy Claxton so succinctly puts it, is the “engine of learning”.
This definition, which puts “basic skills” first, connects very strongly with the MAG’s report to the Minister and how that positioned children as “novice learners” vulnerable to cognitive overload. In my view, this is a deficit view of learners, and it alarms me it will be baked into the heart of our curriculum. There is an implicit sequence in this ordering that narrows the scope of what can done in the classroom, and easily leads to misconceptions like structured literacy being the English curriculum by default, when in actual fact it is a strategy one can use to develop one aspect of literacy.
Furthermore, as Sandretto points out, what is emphasised in the rewritten English Learning Area (Years 0-6) curriculum is knowledge—a term used 151 times in that document. The way knowledge is spoken of suggests the authors see knowledge as a noun—something to “build … acquire …apply”. This limits what can be learned to what is already known. Building a curriculum around the reproduction of knowledge from the past is unsuited to a world where the future is uncertain.
In her lecture, Sandretto references UNESCO’s argument for a “stretched version of literacy”:
“the future of literacy must go beyond reading and writing to reinforce the capacities of understanding and expression in all their forms – orally, textually, and through a widening diversity of media, including storytelling and the arts” (UNESCO, 2021, p. 69)
Similarly, in the enriched glossary offered by Emeritus Professor Terry Locke, he adds the following to the rewritten curriculum’s definition of literacy: “Literacy also extends to an enjoyment and appreciation of language as a means of aesthetic expression.” There is an expansion, a stretching, in these definitions that moves literacy beyond the functional, materialist view offered by the MAG’s five-strong curriculum writing team and into territory that is much more inclusive, agentic, creative, and multi-modal. This is a view of literacy where knowledge is important both as a noun and a verb.
This matters, because as Sandretto so eloquently argues in her lecture, whether we are aware of it or not, education shapes the future. We are not just passive drifters waiting for what is coming, hoping against hope that what has been written is enough. And so, we must, as educators, be aware of that. Our current curriculum is explicit in directing us to be future-focused; it is not clear, to date, whether this rewritten one has that awareness. Or, perhaps the writers do, but are not courageous enough to say what that future looks like to them.
There are two important questions Sandretto asks in her lecture:
“Will a literacy curriculum focusing on the ‘basics’ prepare today’s students for the challenges of tomorrow?”
“What should literacy education for the future entail? What should be the role of education in a world infused with uncertainty and complexity?”
As a sector we must ask ourselves what kind of future we want to help create, because the way we conceive of and thus develop literacy will, due to its privileged place when it comes to learning in schools, play a large role in creating it. Is a narrow, unbalanced and extreme view of literacy what our learners need? Or, is it a broad, balanced and stretched view? Is it one where the best a child can do is be effective, or one where expression counts as well. Is it one where a child is done when they’ve solved problems, accessed information and learned things, or one where appreciating language and beauty and storytelling and the arts matter too.
When we think of the future our children face, where the challenges are, as Sandretto says, glocal in nature—ie, “the local is interconnected with the global”—and thus diverse and complex, encompassing “economic, environmental, health, and fragile democracies”, surely the stretched view of literacy is the one we should be embracing. In my view, it is retrograde and foolish to think otherwise.
I encourage you to watch and share Sandretto’s inaugural professorial lecture. And it’s worth hanging around to the end, where she gives us the publication dates and number of citations referenced in the rewritten English Learning Area (Years 0-6) curriculum. Ironically, a curriculum that was developed by those who have argued loud and long for the necessity of an evidence-based education system.