Dr. Pamela Beach, Associate Professor of Language and Literacy, joins us for a wide-scoping discussion about literacy. Listen to learn about multi-literacies, early literacies, the differences between learning languages, how to help with literacy learning in your classroom - and so much more!
Pamela's book, Promoting Language and Early Literacy Development: Practical Insights from a Parent Researcher is available now!
Pamela Beach is currently the Associate Dean, Research at the Faculty of Education and an Associate Professor in Language and Literacy at the Faculty of Education, Queen’s University. Pamela completed her MA in Child Study and Education at the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto and her PhD in Developmental Psychology and Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.
Pamela has a decade of elementary classroom experience, teaching a range of grades and subject areas from junior kindergarten to seventh grade. Her background as an elementary teacher has influenced her research which centres on the dissemination of research-informed literacy practices. Pamela’s work explores how online and multimedia resources can be used in teacher education and professional development. Pamela uses web analytics, screen-capture technology, the virtual revisit think aloud, and eye-tracking technology to study teacher cognition and learning.
Transcript
Music: Talking about innovation, in-teaching and education, popular podagogy. Discussions that are topical and something philosophical, popular podagogy. Popular podagogy.
CC: Hi there. Thanks for joining us and welcome to another episode of Popular Potagogy, where we try to bring big ideas in teaching and education to life. I'm your host, Chris Carlton, and this podcast is being brought to you by the Faculty of Education at Queen's University.
CC: Welcome to our podcast. In this episode, I am excited to be speaking with Pamela Beach, who is currently the Interim Associate Dean of Research at the Faculty of Education and also an Associate Professor in Language and Literacy here at Queen's University. Pamela also has a new book titled Promoting Language and Early Literacy Development, Practical Insights from a Parent Researcher, and the topic of early literacy development is going to be the focus of our conversation today. Pamela has a decade of elementary classroom experience teaching a range of grades and subject areas from junior kindergarten to seventh grade. Her background as a parent and elementary teacher has influenced her research interests, which focus on the dissemination of research-informed literacy practices. Pamela, welcome to our podcast.
PB: Thank you very much.
CC: Pamela, when we first started talking about this podcast conversation, we had a lot of ideas of where we could go with it based on your expertise and passions in literacy. There has been a lot of changes in the last few years in Ontario's education system with regards to literacy. In 2022, we had the right to read Public Inquiry, which was a significant step. In 2023, Ontario revised the Grade 1-9 Language Curriculum and Instructional Guide to reflect the recommendations from this inquiry. And then this year, 2024, the two-year update to the right-to-read report was released, which highlighted important changes to the education system. So this leads me to the question, why so much change in interest in Ontario regarding literacy over the past several years? But I'm going to break it down into two questions. We'll start with what is literacy to start with, and then why has there been so much change in the last few years?
PB: Great way to start. Right with the politics of every piece. No, but this is certainly an important topic. I think that literacy and then literacy broadly reading specifically have always been on the radar of teacher educators, of classroom teachers, of parents. I don't know if there's ever been a time in the period of reading research and education where, you know, reading has not been a hot topic. I think, you know, as the pendulum swings in different directions, with different governments and priorities, the important piece that everyone agrees on, no matter where they're coming from, whatever philosophy it is, is that every child has the right to learn to read. And that was part of the, I guess, initial component or initial spark that the Ontario Human Rights Commission brought forward based on, you know, lots of conversations and research that they had been doing about the right to read inquiry. And so that that inquiry started in 2018, 2019, where the Ontario Human Rights Commission talked to all of the different stakeholders, especially families and individuals who had been directly affected by, you know, the system, the school system, not necessarily supporting them with their reading development. And they were especially targeting individuals with dyslexia and reading disabilities. And so when that report came out, there were 157 recommendations from the right to read report. And they were categorized under different areas, so school boards were one area of different things that they should be doing.
The government was another. And so that's why we see as a result the updated curriculum. And then teacher education programs is another area among a few other different stakeholders who were mentioned as part of these recommendations. And so I think that, you know, as I mentioned, literacy and reading has always been kind of this topic of conversation of interest. And over the last few years, we've seen it more in the media because of the right to read report.
CC: I think that has had not just a huge influence on what's going on in Ontario, but also across Canada and even in the United States, too. There's been some components of those come up in different discussions, for example. And there's been a question about the science of reading, too, and what that encompasses and what literacy is. How do we actually define literacy?
PB: Like what you just asked me. And, you know, it depends on literacy can be defined in different ways. I think we're also understanding the importance of multi-literacies and thinking about how digital literacies, information literacy, multiple ways of thinking about how we actually read the world and take in information is also part of the conversation. So literacy can be defined quite broadly. And in some cases, people might say it's literacies - it is plural because, again, we take into consideration all of these different aspects of information that are being, that we're confronting with on a regular basis. And I think reading is one part of literacy. Literacy at one point would have been thought of as, you know, more traditionally reading and writing.
And certainly reading and writing are always going to be hand in hand. But then we have that more specific area of reading. Reading is complex, literacy is complex. Reading is a complex behavior that we need to teach explicitly and systematically. And I think, you know, when we start to narrow down the different components of reading, we see it's complex but not necessarily complicated.
And we could talk more about those two terms and what that means as well. And so it's, you know, I don't think it's an easy thing to define, but probably the way that we can construct meaning, the way that we extract meaning, whether that's through text or through an information page or an infographic, it's the way to kind of take in information and construct meaning from that and what meaning we can actually gain using the information that we already know, plus, you know, what is there in the text or media that we're confronted with. So that's probably one way to view what literacy is. And then again, almost thinking like, you know, literacy is one piece and reading is part of that. If we want to think about, and I know there's, you know, definitely talk around the multi-literacy piece and what that means and ensuring that that's part of the curriculum as well.
CC: I know that was a big question and that was a wonderful answer. You did say when you were trying to put sort of a definition around it, you said how we read and interact with the world, which I think is a brilliant way to explain literacies, because we've got, like you said, all these new ones are relatively new digital literacy, financial literacy, all these different ones where we traditionally think of reading and writing, but there's so many different literacies and the development into those has some similarities, which is exciting. Your book, Promoting Language and Early Literacy Development, Practical Insights from a Parent Research, and I just love that parent researcher because it highlights your journey with your son Eli a lot and his early literacy development, as well as your extensive research, which includes many conversations with educators. Can you give us, I'm all about definitions today, I guess, but can you give us a definition of, we talked about literacy, but what is early literacy?
PB: When we think of early literacy, we're thinking about how all of the aspects about print and language that surround a child at a really young age are setting a foundation for them to learn later literacies. And again, we can think of the literacy piece in a broader sense. So even if they're setting a foundation with and relating to aspects of print in the environment, all of these different components really set up a foundation for literacy, regardless of what that looks like, whether it's text or media. But especially when children are being introduced to reading, you know, the strong foundation of early literacy absolutely leads to reading success at later grades.
There's lots of research behind that. And so we can look at different skills that might happen before a child enters kindergarten or after a child is just starting kindergarten in the earlier grades. And all of those components help to really foster what that can set them up for for later reading success and literacy success.
CC: And I like the way you talk about foundations and everything that surrounds a child, because they're constantly being inundated by the world around them. And how do they interpret that? In your book, you talk about the fact that from birth to age seven, there's a critical period for learning a language, a time which learning a language is especially susceptible to and even requires specific environmental influence, which you talked about surrounding the child. So can you elaborate on what early literacy looks like before school starts?
Pamela Beach: Yes, absolutely. And it's really important to even kind of take a step back further and think about language and language development and how important language is and oral language, especially in relation to later literacy achievements and reading outcomes. And, you know, if we step back and think about language development, we know that if a child is set up in an environment where language is happening around them, they will learn that language. What's so fascinating is that, you know, infants, when they're born, they're actually born ready to take up any language. They can hear sounds in languages that as adults, we cannot hear if we don't know that language or haven't been around that language.
So it's super interesting, you know, that there's this researcher, her name is Patricia Cole, and she talks about infants coming to the world as citizens of the world. And, you know, a lot of that has to do with this ability for them to really take in the statistics of language that surrounds them the most. So whatever those languages are at around, yeah, six to eight months or so, that starts to become narrower.
So the language that is around them most often or languages, those are the ones that are going to become dominant. So it's that early that a child or an infant is actually learning their language and that we have this as humans, you know, this natural ability as long as the environment is there to support it. We have this natural ability to learn language. And that is in contrast with reading. So if we think about, you know, the relationship between language and we can talk more about language related components that are absolutely important and significant for reading to actually develop. We can also think about how reading develops on its own as well, and that reading is not a natural process. So where language is naturally something that we as humans can do, reading is not. And so that's where, especially in the last several years where we've talked about how there's this emphasis on, you know, how do we best teach reading? What are the best instructional approaches with research based with evidence to inform? And we can use that information to then ensure that every child has the opportunity to learn to read. And it makes sense too. I mean, reading, if you think of the existence of the human brain, reading is something that is relatively new.
It's an invention. Every language has a very particular set of symbols associated with their language that then provides that meaning to the text. And so it's through learning that particular set of symbols, you know, decoding or breaking the code of that text that's related to that language that allows a child to actually or an individual to read a specific language.
So it's important to have that distinction. And then, as you mentioned, that critical period that some researchers suggest, you know, zero to age seven or eight, where learning that language and all of those components of language learning, phonology, morphology, syntax, et cetera, that are really developing implicitly through everyday conversations, through interactions with the environment, but then, you know, through explicit instruction as well that we can consider, you know, in the classroom and how that can support children in their language learning. Again, that then directly relates to later reading outcomes.
CC: And you mentioned that infants are born ready to take up any language, which is such a cool thought in terms of young children being able to do that versus in contrast to reading where it's more of a development. You mentioned to me in conversation a couple times ago that you've referred to the English language as opaque, which I'd never heard that expression before, and that some other languages are transparent. Could you just explain the word opaque in reference to the English language a little bit?
PB: Yeah, this is an interesting point and an important one to consider, you know, how English is, you know, as an alphabetic language can be, again, not complicated, but complex. I think it's very layered. And opaque is a word or a term that can be used to describe the fact that in English, you know, we have forty-four sounds. and then we've got 26 symbols. And that sometimes those sounds can be represented or a lot of times, you know, the sounds can be represented in different ways. So we have different spellings for different sounds. So there isn't always this one to one correspondence. There is for a lot of the sounds, you know, the sound as in cat is represented by the letter C. But we could also hear that in the letter K too, right?
So, you know, there can be a one to one representation, but it's more complex than that. Versus a language like Finnish where it's more transparent. So there's more of a one to one relationship between the letter sound and the symbol that represents it. And so, you know, this is kind of an important point to think about when we're thinking about exposing children to print, introducing letter sound relationships, playing with sounds and words. All of these foundational components that are part of an early literacy program or even before a child gets to kindergarten, you know, they might be playing with the sounds and words or starting to understand that these different sounds they hear can be represented by letters and knowing the letters of the alphabet. So that alphabetic knowledge as well or alphabet knowledge as well really can play a part into those early foundations and sort of getting to that next level of reading.
CC: I like the idea of playing with sounds and words. It's something that I'm familiar with in science where we play with a concept to understand it better. You mentioned that supporting children's language and early literacy skills starts with these type of oral games, singing songs, reading poems and books aloud long before children enter school. And that their language skills go through major milestones, building foundations for learning to read. And we've talked about foundations several times in our conversation here. So with those foundations built, so what should literacy look like once the students are in the classroom?
PB: So building children's foundations as they enter kindergarten, as they enter the classroom, you know, there's so much that they come with. There's so much that has been going on even if a parent is not aware of what they're doing. The parent's not necessarily explicitly thinking, oh, I better teach this concept.
But they're engaging with their children through conversations, through interacting, through again, all of the different print that is there in the environment, reading something on a cereal box, pointing out the stop sign that we see everywhere on the way to daycare or wherever we're going. And so all of those foundational pieces continue on in some ways as a child enters kindergarten and just going back to the idea that English is an opaque language. And so when we start to play with sounds and words and children are starting to really kind of manipulate individual sounds and words, so a kindergarten teacher would be exposing a child to different sounds that they hear in words that's the phonemic awareness piece. So phonemic awareness being the idea of that and the concept that each word has individual sounds in that word and we can really isolate those sounds. And when a child can do that, if they can isolate the initial sound, if they can isolate the end sound, even before they start to read that, that type of skill, that type of awareness can help promote that next step in a way where a child is starting to look at the word cat, for example, and know that, yes, they hear three sounds in that word and then they see the symbol, the corresponding grapheme that we can call it, that is related to that sound and isolate those sounds as they start to make those connections. I think a really important piece and one that I know teachers are often thinking about is that as they're giving children in kindergarten and grade one opportunities to develop their phonemic awareness skills and phonological awareness skills on a broader kind of concept, they're doing it in a way that, they might teach letter sounds in relation to the symbol that it's connected to and then start to apply it to reading and spelling words right away. So it's important, I think, and a lot of teachers do this, to know that you don't need to teach all the letter sound relationships. You don't need to teach all of the ways that we might represent the long A sound before you can get kids to start reading and writing, for example. And so in a lot of programs that are happening in schools, in our community in Kingston and across Ontario and Canada, they're using some very specific phonics programs that take the phonemic awareness skills and allow children to be able to apply those skills in a systematic way. So as sounds are introduced, so one program might introduce the six sounds and then actually say, oh, what words can we make with this?
What words can we actually read with this? So again, knowing that you don't have to teach all of them before a child can actually start to read and write, it helps the child also to feel empowered. And so once they start to make those connections and decode words and blend sounds together to make and read words, they're feeling engaged with the text too, right?
They're feeling excited about the skills that they're developing in a lot of ways. In a lot of ways, we talk a lot about motivation for literacy and motivation for reading. And there's a lot of literature and research out there to support how we can do that through providing choice and interest and giving kids time, for example.
But it's almost like learning to decode and actually breaking that code is motivating in itself for a lot of children, right? And so, yeah, so that's an important piece that I notice on a lot of teachers' minds when they're starting out with their classroom and their students in September.
CC: And I really enjoyed that you mentioned several times, motivate and engage your kids. And we know the importance of that in every subject, but to motivate and engage them in writing and reading and empowering. You mentioned the word empowering, empowering our students is so important. I mean, you also said giving our students time. And we both know that time is one of those things that teachers constantly struggle with, but allowing them to have time to play in words, to have time to explore in reading and writing is such an important thing. And we need to really try to achieve that through our time schedules. Now, we tr