Literacy and Language in East Asia: Shifting Meanings, Values and Approaches (Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, 24) - Hardcover

Kell, Marilyn; Kell, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9814451290 ISBN 13: 9789814451291

Publisher: Springer, 2013

Synopsis

This book critically explores why some Asian nations are on top of the world in students’ achievement tests in reading and literacy, yet governments and industry in these nations are anxious about a crisis in education.

Why are governments anxious about the capabilities and skills of school and university graduates in a global economy when there is a Asian economic boom?  The authors explore questions about how the Asian countries value test-based examination curriculum and its influence on the practices of teaching learning and the lives of young people in Asia. The authors describe the challenge of change for East Asian nations to develop more relevant approaches to literacy and language and more inclusive societies focussed on the needs of young people and not exam results.

About this title

About the Author:

Dr Marilyn Kell is a lecturer in the School of Academic languages and Learning at Charles Darwin University, Australia. Professor Peter Kell is Head of School and Professor of Education at Charles Darwin University, Australia.

Review:

"It is a fresh and original piece of work and particularly insightful in terms of regarding the approaches of literacy including policy in education as being connected in some ways as well as disconnected to a series of interrelated dynamics and perspectives that are located beyond the classroom, beyond schools and are wider than the school systems. These approaches and policies are about the reform of the social conditions and economic arrangements that characterise the experience of people in parts of East Asia. It is this challenge to create the conditions for wider changes at a societal level that comprises the discussion in the final chapter in this book. The problematisation of the autonomous model of literacy underpinning the dominant privileging of international type testing and comparision has been well deconstructed in relation to the East Asian context."
 - Yew Lie Koo, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia

About this edition

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 9814451290
• ISBN 13: 9789814451291
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 176