The Impact on final year pre-service secondary teachers of a unit in teaching literacy and numeracy across the curriculum

Abstract

Addressing literacy and numeracy as social practices in different teaching content areas create challenges for teachers and teacher education. Literacy and numeracy skills and understandings are generally addressed incidentally in teacher education courses and often overlooked by teachers in secondary schools. This paper reports on a study which examined the impact of a unit called 'Curriculum Literacies' in the final year of a Secondary Bachelor of Teaching/Bachelor of Arts course. The unit developed students' personal skills and understanding of literacy and numeracy and their application to teaching in particular discipline areas. Findings show the unit had positive effects on most students' personal knowledge and pedagogy. However, these effects varied depending on content area and literacy was generally found to be more relevant and more easily integrated than numeracy. The results of this study confirm the value of such units in teaching degrees.