Last August, two researchers at the Australian National University released a report - How and Why Has Teacher Quality Changed In Australia? - which concluded that the “literacy and numeracy standards of those entering teacher education courses are significantly lower today than in the early 1980s”.

This followed the Federal Government’s controversial National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy, released in 2005. That report referred to recent Australian research that confirmed “. . . prospective teachers have a positive attitude towards, but poor knowledge of, language structures”, and that “beginning primary teachers are not confident about teaching specific aspects of literacy such as spelling, grammar and phonics”…

Dr Kerry Hempenstall, a senior lecturer and educational psychologist at RMIT, says that her “bright” postgraduate students are embarrassed that they lack the traditional grammar needed to write a competent essay or thesis.

“In discussion, they report that they were never formally taught these aspects of written language,” Dr Hempenstall says.

The big question is: who is ultimately responsible for those teachers and students who fail to grasp English language somewhere along the way? Is it the education system for not teaching the teachers; the teachers’ approach to teaching; an evolving English curriculum that never quite attains perfection; students’ own lack of aptitude; or their need for tailored teaching? …

“The real question is not whether standards have declined - I think they have. The real question is: could we improve them?” …

Underpinning the vast discussion of literacy are many more debates about how to teach it: the whole-of-language approach, the phonics approach, the naturalist theory of language learning, the functional grammar approach…

Source:The Age
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