Embedding the literacy strategy: snapshots of change

Abstract

This paper considers the government's initiative to change the teaching of literacy in primary schools in England. It draws on evidence from a one-year ESRC-funded project that observed teaching in the first year of the NLS and a two-year follow-up study that revisited and re-interviewed several of the teachers from the original study. It proposes that, although substantial changes have been made to the organisation and procedures of literacy teaching, deeper pedagogical change is less obvious in some classrooms. It further argues that for teachers to have the freedom to develop their pedagogy, the climate of coercion and outcome-led education must change.