Revisiting Literacy Instruction Through Artificial Intelligence

Literacy skills are all the skills needed for reading and writing. They include such things as awareness of the sounds of language, awareness of print and the relationship between letters and sounds. Other literacy skills include vocabulary, spelling, and comprehension (Bainbridge, 2015). Navigating and negotiating the educational space can be quite daunting for a student; more so for that student who has reading challenges. As human beings we are skilled in the art of manipulation and pretence. As a consequence more creative ways are required in addressing illiteracy. Undoubtedly, many of the disciplinary issues in our schools are as a result of those students who are challenged in literacy. Many such students, especially boys are embarrassed that they have not acquired the skills necessary to read. It is a complicated issue, as many of those same boys do not make themselves available to succeed. Herein is the problem of an educational system that lacks flexibility regarding how boys are engaged as opposed to the educational engagement of girls. It is obvious by now and supported by research that boys are predominantly tactile learners. Literacy as a tool of purposeful and sustained engagement of society is desirable. The ability to communicate and interact with those around us and even in faraway places become more important as the advances in technology remove the remaining barriers from the Global South and the Global North. Defining literacy is not simple. In fact, we cannot define literacy in a vacuum. Generally, literacy also encompasses numeracy, the ability to make simple arithmetic calculations. This again reinforces how challenging it is to define literacy. The searchlight needs to be turned on brightly to examine how effective our education system is in addressing the needs of those students who exhibit challenges in literacy. A high literacy rate suggests the capacity of an education system to provide a large population with opportunities to acquire literacy skills. The accumulated achievement of education is fundamental for further intellectual growth and social and economic development. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) addresses literacy in this way. Acquiring literacy is not a one-off act. Beyond its conventional concept as a set of reading, writing and counting skills, literacy is now understood as a means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich and fast-changing world. Literacy is a continuum of learning and proficiency in reading, writing and using numbers throughout life and is part of a larger set of skills, which include digital skills, media literacy, education for sustainable development and global citizenship as well as job-specific skills. Literacy skills themselves are expanding and evolving as people engage more and more with information and learning through digital technology. The issue of youth illiteracy was recently highlighted by the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) in Jamaica. The DCS stated that it is grappling with a high rate of illiteracy among juveniles housed at its facilities. DCS operates the Metcalfe Street Juvenile Remand Centre, South Camp Juvenile Centre for girls, Rio Cobre and Hill Top juvenile centres. Director of Juvenile Services at the Department of Correctional Services Claudette Hamilton said more than 83 per cent of the 204 wards are illiterate. "So we are talking about children at 17 [who are] reading at grade three and four [level]. So within the juvenile facilities, we do not place them in groups according to age, but according to academic levels. I mean, we have children, say 50% of the children at South Camp between the Correctional Order and Remand Centre has been expelled or suspended from school, has not been in a school environment for a year or two or three when they get to us." Developing Literacy. Reading is a complex and multifaceted process that involves learning a complicated and often confusing code of letters and sounds known as the alphabetic principle. Early literacy means helping children develop a rich vocabulary, self-expression, and reading comprehension tools they need to become successful readers and lifelong learners. Before children can learn to read and write, they need to develop the building blocks for literacy; this involves the ability to speak, listen, understand, watch and draw. Reading requires the mastery, integration and application of numerous skills and knowledge. There are five areas that are critical for effective reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Reading or learning how to read is a combination of all these skills. These skills are interconnected and interdependent on one another, which makes it difficult to teach them in isolation. Print awareness is an important part of knowing how to read and write. For pre and emergent readers the pictures in books is an important element for developing oral language and vocabulary during storybook reading and independent play. Although picture reading reflects a critical stage in literacy development, it is important for children to understand that print can be read and tells the story. In developing print awareness a child begins to understand what print looks like, how it works, and the fact that print carries meaning (Strickland & Schickedanz, 2009). Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize that words are made up of a variety of sound units. Phonological awareness is an umbrella term and encompasses a number of sound related skills necessary for reading development (Lane, 2007). As children develop phonological awareness they begin to learn that words can be segmented into syllables and each syllable begins with a sound (onset) and ends with another sound (rime). They also come to understand that words are made up of small sound units (phonemes) and that these units can be manipulated to form different words. By engaging in language and word play, children learn to recognize patterns among words and use this knowledge to read and build words. Phonemic Awareness . Reading is a complex and multifaceted process that involves learning a complicated and often confusing code of letters and sounds known as the alphabetic principle. Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to recognize, identify and manipulate phonemes in spoken words. Research has found that this element of reading is the single strongest indicator for a child’s success at learning to read (NICHD, 2000). Phonemic awareness is grounded in oral language and serves as the foundation for reading development. Children who cannot hear and work with the phonemes of spoken words will have a difficult time learning how to relate these phonemes to graphemes (a letter or a number of letters that represent a phoneme in a word) when they see them in written words. This pre-phonics problem interferes with the learning of letter and sound connections. Phonics and Word Recognition . Research has shown that phonics and word study are valuable strategies for improving children’s ability to recognize words and decode text (Ehri, 2005). The goals of phonics and word study instruction are to teach children that there are systematic relationships between letters and sounds, that written words are composed of letter patterns representing the sounds of spoken words, that recognizing words quickly and accurately is a way of obtaining meaning from them, and that they can blend sounds to read words and segment words into sounds to spell (NICHD, 2000). Knowing the relationships will help children recognize familiar words automatically and decode or sound out new words (Armbruster et al., 2003). Word recognition is the ability of a reader to recognize written words correctly and virtually effortlessly. Emergent readers need to learn to recognize high-frequency words instantly because many of them are not phonically regular. Children must learn to identify words quickly and fluently so that they can focus on the meaning of what they are reading (Stanovich, 1986) Fluency . Reading fluency is related to oral language proficiency (Rasinski, 2003). Children should be encouraged to use oral language for a variety of purposes, such as answering and asking questions as well as expressing their thoughts. In developing oral language skills, preschool children demonstrate a wide range of fluency. Oral language provides a foundation where children learn about the alphabetic principle and subsequently learn about the structure of spoken English words. Oral language development is a term used to describe the development of knowledge and skills that allow children to understand, speak, and use words to communicate. During the preschool years, children become fluent in the language spoken at home. Effects of Literacy. Literacy empowers and liberates people. Beyond its importance as part of the right to education, literacy improves lives by expanding capabilities which in turn reduces poverty, increases participation in the labour market and has positive effects on health and sustainable development. Women empowered by literacy have a positive ripple effect on all aspects of development. They have greater life choices for themselves and an immediate impact on the health and education of their families, and in particular, the education of girl children. Although literacy is viewed as a basic human right, millions of people globally have not yet achieved this human right. Alarmingly, despite the concerted efforts globally, an estimated 763 million youth and adults worldwide still lack basic literacy and numeracy skills two-thirds of whom are women. According to the 2015 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Country Profile of Jamaica, more than 161,000 males and close to 74,000 females who are over the age of 15 lack basic reading and writing skills. Jamaica’s adult literacy rate is 88.1 per cent. Yet, it appears there is a disconnect in the computation of the rate of literacy given that the report of the Jamaica Education Transformation Commission (JETC) chaired by Professor Orlando Patterson stated that most students at the primary level were barely literate. According to the JETC, the 2019 Primary Exit Profile (PEP) exam revealed that 33 per cent of students cannot read or can barely do so; 56 per cent of students cannot, or can barely, write; and 58 per cent of students cannot, or can barely, find information on a topic. According to the World Economic Forum, a 99 percent literacy rate has been reached in most developed countries, across Europe. However, developing countries, especially emerging markets, have been catching up. In 2018, Brazilian literacy stood at 93 percent, compared with 97 percent in China and 74 percent in India. Overall, South Asia was still lagging behind somewhat, also at an overall literacy rate of 74 percent, comparable to that of the Arab World at 73 percent or the Middle East and North Africa at 80 percent. East Asia and the Pacific as well as Latin America and the Caribbean (Barbados 99.9%, Dominica 94% and Cuba 99.6%) fared much better at literacy rates of 96 percent and 94 percent, respectively. Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa still had the worst literacy rates in the world. In some places, literacy even fell recently due to conflicts disrupting school education. In Mali, the literacy rate dropped to 31 percent in 2020 from 35 percent in 2018. This is one of the lowest rates in the world together with South Sudan (35 percent) and Afghanistan (37 percent). Interestingly, since the return of the Taliban in 2021 in Afghanistan, girls have been barred from receiving secondary education. Over the past 10 years the literacy rate increased from 32% in 2011 to 43% in 2018 (female 29.81 % and male: 55.48%), there is a long way to go to. Afghanistan`s illiterate population (age 15 and above) has been estimated at 12 million (7.2 million female, 4.8 million male) from a total population of 39.6 million people. The overall literacy rate of Sub-Saharan Africa stood at 66 percent in 2020. Re-imagining Literacy Intervention. It appears that the time has come for educators to be more targeted in their approach regarding addressing illiteracy. Too often our literacy programmes are gender-neutral and in so doing our boys are being left behind. This is especially problematic given the association between illiteracy and crime. A more balanced and gender-specific literacy programme is the missing element that needs to be remedied. A balanced and gender-specific literacy programme is one that uses a variety of teaching approaches strategies and materials that are age appropriate to teach children what is expected of them. It is also obvious that more funding is needed in the Early Childhood Education (ECE) which is considered the cradle of literacy development. Unfortunately, too many students arrive at the primary level without a passion for reading and or the desired skill sets necessary to navigate their educational journey. The society needs to encourage much more private/public partnerships in Early Childhood Education in order to finance more literacy programmes. We need to think outside of the proverbial box and infuse Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the curriculum, especially at the Early Childhood level. AI-powered toys and games are made to provide students with playful experiences to learn and interact with the robots as well as to teach coding skills. We should be exposing our students to coding skills much earlier than what currently exists. Today’s students are growing up with these AI applications, unfortunately, very little attention is paid to the importance of developing AI literacy and its related impacts among them. If ever there was a time for an educational revolution, especially regarding Early Childhood Education that time is now. Artificial intelligence leverages computers and machines to mimic the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind. There needs to be more AI designed toys in order for young children to develop their AI literacy even at a kindergarten level. The 21st century learner must be equipped with the skills of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in order to live and work in this digital age. We cannot underscore the point that much more attention and resources are needed at the Early Childhood level where literacy begins. Additionally, we need to have more trained teachers at the Early Childhood level. The time to re-imagine our education system with literacy as its core is now. As a society we have not done enough to foster and maintain a culture of reading. As a result a negative subculture has developed that must now be reversed in order for us to fully prepare our students for an exciting educational journey that will last a lifetime. In the words of Barack Obama, reading is the gateway skill that makes all other learning possible. Wayne Campbell is an educator and social commentator with an interest in development policies as they affect culture and or gender issues. waykam@yahoo.com @WayneCamo © #literacydevelopment #emergentliteracy #literacy #artificialintelligence #sdg4