A leading international expert on Literacy says Jamaican education officials should consider new approaches to the teaching of literacy if there are to be dramatic improvements in literacy levels in Jamaican schools.
Jamaican born literacy researcher based in the United Kingdom, Dr. Paula Webster says the continued use of traditional methods of literacy development will not yield greater results.
Dr. Webster notes curricula and literacy planners need to explore new approaches to teaching literacy instead of using an abstract approach which is not beneficial to students.
“There is too much drills on A-T is AT and M-A-T is MAT. What we need to do is have a balanced approach to beginning teaching reading and writing. What we do is too much words in isolation, we use books for instance, if we are to teach kids or introduce young children to two letter words AT, ON, IN and AS we can at first read good stories to them then say ‘boys and girls in this story here are some two letter words’ instead of doing it in isolation,” Dr. Webster said.
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