Learning out loud

Educational disadvantage arises when some students are less able than their peers to learn from the education they are offered.

In Australia this has been frequently analysed from the perspectives of the demographics of the students, the socio-economic status of their families and factors such as the comparative levels of participation and achievement in formal education provision. These perspectives are reflected in education policy and research focus.

These perspectives frequently ignore an alternative cause of educational disadvantage – the gap between the learning demands made by teaching and students’ capacity to learn.  My research shows how teaching oral language knowledge and skills in systematic and explicit ways significantly enhances at-risk students’ reading comprehension levels and capacity to learn.

Students are most often required to learn by listening and speaking. What they understand is in words and sentences. In addition, they think and learn in words and sentences. Children’s oral language determines how they develop social skills and friendships, how they communicate, how they learn about and with other people. It affects how they problem-solve, their self-confidence and, ultimately, who they are.

The curriculum of most schools around Australia neglects or ignores this critical foundation for successful learning. They do not teach oral language knowledge in a systematic and regular way.

Research from both within Australia and internationally shows how oral language ability distinguishes between the students who will be more successful and those who won’t. Recent studies suggest that between 20 and 25 per cent of students entering school have oral language difficulties. If a school does not have the means for dealing with these difficulties, this group will drop further behind, and the school will need to invest more of its resources in dealing with the problems that arise.

Because they hear the students talking, most schools and teachers assume they have the language competence for academic learning. Teachers lack the knowledge and tools needed to analyse the quality of their students’ oral language and how to teach it.

The quality of a student’s language use is shown in four key ways; the ideas they can talk about and understand, how they use language rules, how well they use language to communicate with others, and how they use language to think and learn.

We have developed an approach to oral language instruction that shows teachers and schools how each aspect operates, how to recognise each aspect in children and how to teach them. The approach provides schools and teachers with an explicit guide for teaching and monitoring oral language development.

Recent research has shown the approach is extremely successful in enhancing students’ literacy learning progress. Prep students whose teachers taught the oral language program showed an annual improvement in reading comprehension of more than two years’ growth. They exceeded by more than one year the growth made by a matched group whose teachers were not trained to use the program. Indigenous students and students from low socio-economic contexts made the greatest gains.

We are now seeking to identify more explicitly those aspects of oral language that impact most on educational disadvantage in the early primary years. These include students’ vocabulary enhancement skills and their ability to communicate in sentences.

We are also keen to communicate our work to educational providers across the nation. Educational disadvantage costs the nation millions of dollars. Our work can reduce this cost at both individual and at national levels.

jkmunro@unimelb.edu.au.