An Introduction to ‘Sydney School’ Literacy Programs

This chapter introduces ‘Sydney School’ genre-based literacy programs, which form the theoretical underpinning for the pedagogic interventions of the SLATE project. Sydney School literacy programs involve a model of literacy teaching that aims to maximise all students’ ability to read and write texts across a range of contexts by providing high levels of support. Based on sociocultural theories of learning (such as Vygotsky, 1978; Wood et al., 1976), language development (e.g. Halliday, 1975,2003; Painter, 1984, 1989, 1999), and language (as introduced in Chapters 2 and 3), the Sydney School model does not ask students to produce work independently until they have experienced at least one cycle of support and engagement with a target text, provided by a teacher or more knowledgeable other. This kind of approach can be informally characterised pedagogically as a ‘prepare’ model, and sits in contrast with ‘repair’ models, which give students little support prior to reading and writing, and which instead focus on providing feedback after students engage with or produce text. Sydney School genre pedagogy has two main foci — curriculum and pedagogy. In other words, the focus is on both what to teach and how to teach it.