Overview
The
ESRC has recently established a research programme on teaching
and learning. Three institutions - Oxford Brookes University,
Oxford University, and The Institute of Education of the University
of London - are collaborating in a project included in this
programme: The Role of Awareness in the Teaching and Learning
of Literacy and Numeracy. The main researchers in the project
are Professors Terezinha Nunes and Peter Bryant and Drs Jane
Hurry and Ursula Pretzlik. The initial investigations have
allowed for the development of a CD that can be used to help
children understand the inverse relation between addition
and subtraction. A brief description is presented here. If
you wish to get a copy of the CD, contact Dr. Ursula Pretzlik
at upretzlik@brookes.ac.uk
Background
It is commonly recognised that mastery of literacy and numeracy
involves both implicit and explicit knowledge. For example,
we have only implicit knowledge of many spelling rules: we
write correctly many words whose orthography we could not
explain. You can probably spell 'stick' and 'steak' correctly.
Can you explain how you decide whether a word has CK or K
at the end? It is probably necessary for much of our knowledge
to be used implicitly: if we had to think about spelling rules
all the time when we write, we would probably have difficulty
in composing texts. What we do not know yet is how explicit
and implicit knowledge is created through teaching.
Aims
The project aims to clarify how different ways of teaching
lead to implicit and explicit knowledge. This three-year research
project investigates the connection between different ways
of teaching and the acquisition of implicit and explicit knowledge
of literacy and numeracy in primary school. Participants will
be students (from 6 to 9 years) and teachers. Working with
students in primary school, we will investigate how different
ways of organising teaching affects the acquisition of implicit
and explicit knowledge of some concepts and rules in literacy
and numeracy. Working with teachers, we will analyse the connection
between the explicitness of teachers' knowledge and the choices
they make when they design instruction in literacy and numeracy.
Teachers' ideas about task design will be used in the studies
of student learning to investigate whether different task
designs produce different types of learning outcomes.
Current status
The project started on 1st January 2001. The research team
is working on teaching experiences that can be accessed through
this page. You can find out more about the numeracy and literacy
experiences by exploring the relevant sections.
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