BUSCADOR RECOLECTA

This section of the report offers a national literacy profile for Spain during the period of the TeL4ELE Project, contextualising the literacy environment in which the key educators trialled the new approach to literacy education. The second part of the report, for year two, describes the implementation of training in the pedagogy, and offers sample of work by teachers and their pupils.

The aim of the Teacher Learning for European Literacy Education (TeL4ELE) project was to support literacy educators in five European countries to become experts in genre based literacy pedagogy and in turn support teachers to improve learning outcomes for all students especially those who are educationally disadvantaged. Based on the external evaluation of the project1 this aim was fulfilled. Survey and interview data showed high levels of engagement with the pedagogy on the part of both educators and classroom teachers. Ninety seven per cent2 stated that, in their view, the pedagogy offered a completely different approach to reading and writing compared to those that are generally used in school. Moreover almost all teachers perceived it had had an impact on their students’ understanding of how language operates in different texts to make meaning and on their students’ reading and writing. Ninety two per cent wished to continue with the approach citing the following reasons as motivation: improvement in student learning, empowering nature of pedagogy, enjoyed working with the approach. Most significantly students’ assessment scores based on their pre and post reading and writing scores showed that all students (drawn from the 97 participating classes) had improved by an average of 14.3 % on their writing and 9% on their reading (in almost half of all cases in less than 5 weeks).