Technology-supported literacy and numeracy enhancement workshops for trainee teachers

Abstract

The paper presents a group-based approach to literacy and numeracy support for trainee teachers who are at risk of not meeting prescribed literacy or numeracy targets. The aim is to develop a pedagogically efficient approach to maintaining and, where appropriate, raising the standard of literacy and numeracy. An audience response system (‘clickers’) is used to create a pedagogically productive and time-efficient activity workshop. This builds on an earlier project where we developed the respond-discuss-reveal (RDR) technique for increasing engagement in degree level mathematics classes. In this current project the technique is applied to the problem of enhancing literacy and numeracy. The project produces some important results for our approach and leads us to identify a new teaching method named Dialogical Assessment. The project is relevant to the renewed emphasis on literacy and numeracy in Welsh initial teacher training and which has created new statutory duties for teacher training providers. Keywords Technology enhanced teaching; literacy; numeracy; audience response systems; formative assessment; teacher education; questioning; dialogic assessment; RDR.