Literacy Issues and their Solutions

Literacy Issues:

1. Psychological and Social problems.

2. Limited knowledge of English

3. western bias due to dominant culture privilege.


ICT solutions:

FIRST ISSUE:    Translation tools, Sporcle, drawmotion videos.

SECOND ISSUE:   Translation tools, Drawmotion videos.

THIRD ISSUE: Translation tools, Drawmotion videos, Sporcle.

Draw Motion Video of Literacy Issues

[Transcript] for literary Issues

Literary Issues in a multicultural school

This video will be addressing the literary issues faced by multicultural schools such as Arthur Phillip High School. It will focus on the contextual problems that rise with refugees (in APHS’s case these are mostly middle eastern or from other Islamic countries).

What are we dealing with when we have a high amount of refugees in our schools?

Lets take a look at the Yuogslavian breakup:

As the cold war ended, the states within Yugoslavia began to seek independence  which led to a major conflict that saw genocide, mass rape, bombings and total destruction of homelands. There were atrocities committed on every side. Deaths exceeded 140,000 people. In a study conducted by Lynne Jones (1998), research was done into adolescent Bosnian refugees and the resulting problems of the conflict. Amongst other findings it was seen that the atrocities had left psychological scarring with post traumatic stress disorder as well as subsequently findings a diminished ability to retain social ties.

     These findings are not seen just in Europe.

In Malawi, Conflict, crime and absolute poverty is a part of life. In a study of Malawian refugees conducted in 2000 by Gillespie, Peltzer and MacLachlan, it was found that the difficulties that refugees had included coming to terms with traumatic events, building self efficacy and overcoming mental health issues. Like in the Bosnian study, refugees in this case had severe psychological problems and social issues.

            Closer to the type of environment that many from Arthur Philip High School are coming from, in Afghanistan the conflicts and instabilities of government and life has shown similar problems again. The Taliban have been reported to have killed more than 30,000 people. Add to this the 15-20 thousand civilian deaths in the conflict that ousted them and it portrays a clear enough picture of the troubles that refugees are fleeing from.

One of the main findings of a study by Lipson (1991) was that Afghan refugees had difficulty in social support, language barriers and cultural conflicts. These have led to a higher instance of mental health problems and diminished sociability.

  Thus in the Australian context with refugees facing severe social and psychological problems from areas of conflict, poverty and instability, how can we improve modern Australian education to provide for the learning needs of these students?

         Here’s some quick stats on Arthur Phillip High:

-       In 2012 the school population had 90% of students who spoke a language other than English. 70% of students were from a refugee background.

-       67 languages were spoken in the school.

-       With the high proportion of refugee background students, the Refugee Transition program has become a major part of this school’s culture.

(New South Wales Department of Education, 2012).

With this context in mind, How can we be implementing lessons in stage four English that address both the curriculum and the literacy issues that follow?

        Literacy issues that follow from a multicultural school with a high proportion of refugee background children include the psychological and social problems that have been discussed. This can lead to a withdrawal from learning, reduced motivation, triggers of traumatic events.

With many students having a limited knowledge of English this makes communicating the content of stage four English quite difficult.

And also with Dominant Culture privilege as Peggy Mcintosh  (1987) identified, the Australian and western context bias will mean students unfamiliar with the language and culture of Australia will be less likely to understand cultural symbols and allusions.

Here’s an example of problem’s for students in a multicultural context:

The Hunger Games is a book that can be studied in stage 4 English. Like earlier this year when the “China Coin” was studied at APHS and a student broke down due to the themes triggering past traumatic events, The Hunger games could do the same and inhibit a students to be able to learn.

Or maybe the student doesn’t know English and cant read the book, how can they learn if they don’t understand what is going on in the lesson?

Even if the student learnt English and was able to read, they may miss the entrenched Roman Empire symbolism that is littered throughout the book and not understand that the reference of Katniss and Peta being star crossed lovers is from Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare.

         How can we, as teachers being helping students to learn in the modern Australian society that we educate in?

APHS is well known not just for its multicultural population but also for its integration of technology.

Could technology hold the key?

Arthur Phillip High School

From a Glance.....

•           90% speak another language other than English
• -       70% from refugee background
• -       67 languages spoken
• -       1500 students.
• -       1.2% Aboriginal
• -       1 to 1 Laptop : student ratio (Google Chrome books).

 (NSW Department of Education, 2012)

Translation Tools

As Kalantzis and Cope (2001) stated:

   “ ….the most important skill students need to learn is to negotiate dialect, register and semiotic differences, code switching, interlanguages and hybrid cross cultural discourses.”

ICT translation tools are an excellent way of achieving this.

   

    A positive environment in which students are treated with understanding in regards to their often-traumatic backgrounds is a beginning step. Inundating socially and psychologically removed individuals with western texts that they are unfamiliar with can lead to further isolation and loneliness at school which reduces their motivation to learn.

Many languages have translation tools available on the internet. Utilising literature of other cultures in lessons can be easily accessed by students and studied side-by-side English texts. This can help compromise (in a fair manner) the balance between teaching the curriculum and taking into account the background and needs of students.

Websites like “words without borders” can offer bilingual help in teaching curriculum.

http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/bilingual/i-am-a-refugee

It is also helpful for monolingual English speakers who are exposed to other cultures.

Sporcle

As Karen Dooley (2007) argued, the challenge to create an environment that addresses literacy problems and encourages belonging, “goes beyond simply including non-standard English forms spoken by the students.” You have to bring their culture to the classroom and not merely recognise its existence.

     Interactive quizzes based on topics of other cultures can be incorporated into lessons and provide an interactive way of addressing knowledge about other cultures.

http://www.sporcle.com/games/usa331/afghanistan-ethnic-groups

Blogs

Apart from utisling google’s chrome books, google also offers “blogspot” – a website via google that enables writing and maintaining blogs. As you can see from this blog, compiling a blog is utilising modern technology to create what is fast developing as a popular new form of text. No longer is literacy limited to poetry, fiction, non fiction, plays and film. This new form of text is seen as a “hypertext”. It involves multiple forms of texts displayed in one through using technology. Blogs are a great way of presenting this. In a blog you can incorporate quizzes, polls, writing, video’s and all this through another element of translation.

     Like A.P.H.S.’s school ethos of using modern technology and multiculturalism side by side, blogs as a part of lessons to answer, create, analyse and explain concepts is an excellent activity that can be utilised.

Draw Motion Videos

        These videos can be easily made (The one I made was using a mobile phone camera and a lamp) and offer learning that is not necessarily focused on writing but takes into account other cultures ways of learning. For the aboriginal student population, artwork and aural storytelling can be encouraged through modern technology and help keep motivation, interest and relevancy in education.

        As in the Papinmaru documentary, it shows how technology engages with students about what means the most to them – hence videomotion is not just a nice theory, it is seen to work in reality (Adams, 2007).

    This can be used to engage Aboriginal, Afghan, Indonesian and any culture that exists as an activity that encourages modern technology, creativity and inclusion of students’ cultures and languages.

    It can benefit social problems by being group work activities in pairs and help create a community within the classroom that learns and respects each others cultures.

   It also helps redirect misuse of mobile phones in classrooms, which has been seen as a major problem in recent years (Schüz, 2005).

Conclusions

Multicultural schools (including high refugee background populations) like Arthur Phillip High School have a range of complicated and difficult issues.

Technology doesn’t solve everything, but if used correctly it can be a great help in crashing through the barriers of literacy issues faced in multicultural schools.

• In terms of psychological and social problems, community and a sense of belonging can be built using appropriate techniques (e.g. group work on draw motion video's exploring different cultural perspectives).
• In terms of helping language barriers, bilingual tools through blogs and words without borders can provide a bilingual mode of learning.
• In terms of breaking down western bias, by incorporating other cultures via Sporcle, draw motion videos, bilingual translations of texts, and blog presented forms of modern texts, all can progress in the modern world equally. 

Every student has the right to knowledge.