Course Description

This course examines the vital role that language plays in learning, especially the kinds of knowledge that schooling and its various curriculum subjects aim to develop.  It is through language that curriculum subjects are taught and it is through language that students’ understanding of concepts and thinking processes is displayed and assessed in classrooms. Furthermore, in subject English Language, knowledge about language is itself an important aspect of the content of schooling. However, in subjects other than English, the focus is typically on the content of the texts students have to read and write, not on the ways language serves to express that content, leaving language as the ‘hidden curriculum’ of schooling.

Specific issues discussed are:  What characterizes the language of schooling and academic knowledge, and what distinguishes it from the language of informal interaction and everyday knowledge? What are the challenges students face in learning and using the language of schooling, and what pedagogical conditions foster and hinder its development, especially for students who are second-language learners?  How does the school context of language use differ from that of the home, and why are some children better prepared for the linguistic demands of school than others?  What role does classroom discourse, the nature of spoken interaction which teachers promote, play in helping children use concepts and texts to transform knowledge into understanding? How do the language demands change as students move from their early to late primary years and into secondary school as they have to engage in increasingly complex tasks and with increasingly complex texts? What are the specific language and literacy demands of such key curricular subjects as English, Science and Social Studies? Throughout, the course also looks at examples of primary and secondary classrooms which show how the complex demands of language and literacy of schooling in general and of particular curriculum subjects can be effectively and confidently addressed.