Teaching teachers reading

Few teachers trained in the UK enter the teaching profession with any great knowledge of children's books. Traditionally, they have learned on the job, sourcing information from colleagues, specialist bookshops and school library suppliers—a process that is time consuming and, without a knowledgeable source of information, unsatisfactory.

It had been hoped that the changes inspired by the Literacy Hour would lead to developments in teacher training. The new emphasis on text-based learning would, surely, encourage more debate on how to train teachers in what texts to use and how to get them: how to source materials efficiently and use the various bibliographical databases available; where to find independent comment on books in magazines such as Books for Keeps and Carousel; and how to locate the children's book professionals—Schools Library Services, school library suppliers, specialist children's bookshops and organisations such as Book Trust.

At the conference to launch the National Year of Reading, Elaine McQuade, marketing director of Penguin Children's Books, wanted to know what plans were being drawn up to teach teachers about children's literature. Her question was pushed aside.

Try to find out what the current guidelines are on teacher training in children's literature and one discovers just how little consideration is being given to the area. An hour's investigation on the telephone (being passed from the Teacher Training Agency (tta), to the Department for Education, back to the TTA, and on to the Literacy and Numeracy Operations Team) provided only the misinformation that local education authorities are responsible for choosing all reading books for schools. So teachers do not really need any training in literature, do they?

When schools were given the first £1,000 of government funding last year to spend on reading books, many simply did not know what to buy. Probably wisely, most opted for the packs put together by specialist children's book suppliers. One wonders how much of the £115m given by the government to schools over the past year and a half for literature and poetry has been spent appropriately.

At a recent series of seminars sponsored by Pearson, representatives of the publishing industry and teaching professions had an opportunity to discuss the difficulties faced by teachers and school librarians as a result of their lack of training in children's literature. The general opinion was that teachers were expected to arrive in the classroom with a sixth sense of exactly which of the 8,000 books published each year would best meet that day's exacting Literacy Hour requirements.

Anne Marley, principal children's and schools librarian at Hampshire School Library Service, feels that this is not good enough. "Student teachers need access to information about children's literature, to information books and how to use them themselves, and on how to teach information skills to children. This is not done by osmosis. It should be included as a compulsory part of their training course."

The experience of a friend's daughter, training to be a teacher, is typical of the kind of problems that occur, says Ms Marley. "She was in school on teaching practice and the classroom teacher wanted her to find a reader about the conflict in the Balkans to use with a Year Four group. She was given no advice, so she telephoned me."

The student teacher had had no formal lessons in children's literature and no instruction on how to find and use children's books. "I became her personal library adviser and sorted out the problem for her. I also said she should visit the public library and ask the teacher about Schools Library Services. The silly thing is that she isn't stupid, but her degree was in science, not arts, and she wasn't an automatic fiction reader."

Standards needed for training

Given that the government is setting standards and providing guidelines through the National Literacy Strategy, Ms Marley suggests it would also be appropriate to set standards for courses in literature for students during their teacher training. The National Literacy Strategy Framework for Teaching document is very specific about what it requires from pupils. In Year One, term two, the guidelines state,"children should build simple profiles of characters", while in Year Six, term two, they should be able to "identify the features of different types of literary text" and "parody a literary text". But, as Elaine McQuade at Penguin points out, "With notable exceptions, many teachers, while acknowledging that they should be introducing children to both classic and contemporary children's fiction, lack a strategy, a structure or indeed any preparation or knowledge for selecting appropriate books for the children they are teaching."

And she asks: "Would we send into secondary schools teachers of English who knew nothing about the great works and names of adult English literature? Why is this acceptable for primary aged children? Is it because we don't really take them, or children's literature, seriously?"

There are a number of reasons why, historically, teacher training colleges have not placed much emphasis on training teachers in children's literature. One is, quite simply, pressure of time—many students train in a single year's postgraduate certificate course. There is also a shortage in colleges of funds to devote to libraries and, in many colleges and universities, a lack of expertise on the subject. When Sally Champion, today deputy director of Reading Is Fundamental, completed her teacher training at Bristol three years ago, students were offered little more than a cursory glance at children's literature, even though she was training to be an English teacher.

The Roehampton Institute has its own children's literature department and is therefore in a position to teach students in its Education Department about children's literature. All its courses, from the postgraduate course for primary school teaching to the four-year Qualified Teacher Status programme, include training in children's literature. On the QTS programme, students are introduced to established authors and poets and are encouraged to write book reviews and to feed back recommendations to other students.

The Literacy Hour is also covered during their training, but the course on children's literature is not an application course; it does not deal with how to use texts to teach literacy; it is about children's literature. Fiona M Collins, co-ordinator of English literature and language in the Education Department of the Roehampton Institute, says: "We feel that training teachers in literature is central to reading to children and to children reading to themselves. Children need to experience a range of books in order to become serious, independent readers."

She adds: "The National Literacy Strategy takes that on board, but more needs to be done than just the Literacy Hour. Children need to be encouraged to read a range of books. Using extracts from books—which the Literacy Hour encourages—does not help. It has meant that teachers are looking to the commercial world and are picking up books of extracts that fit into the term's issues—for example, similes, or historical extracts. Teachers who do not have a background in children's literature will grasp at these compilations."

Nevertheless, she feels that the situation will improve. "It seems that other colleges are starting to put more emphasis on children's literature. People who join our MA course from other colleges have said as much."

Stephanie Hayward, a literacy co-ordinator for a primary school in Kent, has also noticed that the students now visiting her school as part of their teaching practice are more knowledgeable about children's literature than they have been in previous years.

In addition, after nearly a year of the scheme, there have finally been improvements in provision for the Literacy Hour. "A year ago," says Ms Hayward, "we were told to spend £1,000 on books without knowing what was going to be required in the Literacy Hour. There is much more information available today." She would have liked more guidance from the school's LEA about possible texts to choose for the Literacy Hour. To some degree this is now happening, with LEAs around the country offering courses for literacy co-ordinators and teachers.

There is still some way to go, however. "The Literacy Hour has very specific requirements, and it is tricky to resource literature further up the school," says Ms Hayward. "Take multicultural stories: I spent four hours in Waterstone's with my list, trying to match titles to the requirements. I found that one publisher had simply reproduced the story of the Gingerbread Man, who is brown. That really is a token gesture at multiculturalism. The title came as part of a collection to 'meet all the needs of Year Three'. Some teachers might decide to take a job lot like that, to show that they had the range they needed."

What teachers really need, she says, is an independent assessor's comments to help them wade through the enormous quantity of literature that has been produced by publishers for the Literacy Hour. "I want to know what other language co-ordinators around the country are using. For instance, when I was looking for skipping rhymes for Year Four, I searched the Internet. I came up with a huge list of books with skipping rhymes, but how would I know which are the best? Yes, given time and the opportunity to browse, I can find them. But it would be so much easier to have titles recommended by other people who have already discovered them."

National Literacy Website

There is, in fact, a National Literacy Website which is currently being developed by the Centre for Literacy and Numeracy in Reading. It will include some information on literature. John Stannard at the Centre agrees that there is a gap between how teachers are trained in literature and the demands of the Literacy Hour, but says that this is being tackled locally. "A good deal of training is going on at LEA level, but it is difficult to do this at national level. Today, almost every LEA literacy centre has piles of books for teachers to look at; there is a huge number of book lists available and masses of information on the Internet—there are lots of opportunities for teachers to get to know about texts."

Where the problem lies, he feels, is in putting teachers in contact with the appropriate people and resources. "That has always been a problem. We have not planned literature courses centrally because we do not want to be seen to be prescribing, to teachers or to LEAs."

For the same reason, the Centre has also resisted the demand for standard book lists, though the government-funded National Literacy Association has now produced publishers' recommendations in the 1999 Guide to Literacy Hour (published by Questions Publishing Company). Mr Stannard also feels that the Literacy Hour does not mean that teachers need to know a huge range of texts. Rather, they need to know fewer texts in greater depth. (Teachers in the classroom, however, take the opposite view.)

He admits that the national picture, in terms of quality of guidance, is mixed. "It depends on the level of expertise available in LEAs and the way that the expertise is made available." Nevertheless, he maintains that "there is a huge amount of activity going on that we need to keep promoting, and we need to build motivation.

"Lack of training is not something that we are not concerned about. We are. But we need to find out the best way to approach it." The Centre has some input into how teacher training colleges are implementing the Literacy Hour. But, while many agree that if a working knowledge of children's literature is to be developed by teachers, it is best done before teachers enter the profession. Mr Stannard points out that "a great majority of colleges are training teachers in how to work with the Literacy Hour, but the colleges will also need time to build up their courses to do so effectively."

At the Teachers Training Agency, senior team member John Carr admits that the agency could be accused of "taking it for granted" that teachers would have access to the tools that they need—texts and literature—when they are in training to teach reading. "The National Standards for Qualified Teacher Status comments on using appropriate literature and materials, and on how to teach children to read. But it does not go into detail about what literature might be appropriate for that purpose, or how teachers should familiarise themselves with it."

This may change, however, following a review of teacher training that is planned to begin this autumn. The TTA is open to suggestions. Mr Carr says: "I think training teachers in literature is an issue worth looking at, but we want to talk to teacher trainers and teachers themselves before making any decisions. Maybe people would like to contact us once the review is under way." The review should be finalised and put into practice in 2001. (The TTA can be contacted on 0171-925 3700.)

As Prue Goodwin, director of In-service at the Reading, Language and Information Centre at the University of Reading, points out, teaching children to read is not just about making them literate. "The idea is to make children readers, and you can only do that if the best books are used. All teachers should know about, and keep up to date with, children's books, and should be able to enthuse children to read." But, she adds, "giving out lists of books is only useful if you have a competent person to use them. It is not just about having a good book, it's also about motivation, guidance, inspiration." Teacher training, she feels, still has some way to go.