Learning Through Literacy

This unit considers how language and literacy are learned and taught in a range of educational and cultural settings. The unit is informed by diverse theoretical perspectives in order to consider and interrogate the development of language and literacy in childhood across different social and cultural contexts. This unit articulates the intrinsic relationship between social context, meaning, and language and literacy development. Students will examine how children and adults, as readers and writers, speakers and listeners, use and modify language and literacy for different purposes in a range of contexts.

The unit embeds the development of students’ personal literacies, and addresses skills, knowledge and understandings of the concepts, substance and structure of English. In this unit students will develop knowledge of the language and literacy continuum in Early Childhood and Primary years, and more generally, to adulthood. They will learn about the pedagogies, practices and principles for teaching speaking and listening, reading, writing across print and multimodal texts. The unit links with the course intentions of strengthening the connection between theory and practice and guaranteeing deep and connected understandings of professional content knowledge and pedagogical approaches for implementing curriculum. Through the unit students will demonstrate an understanding of a broad and coherent body of knowledge of content connected to pedagogy, curriculum and assessment in relation to the changing nature of language and literacy education.