EDUC3038, One of the many courses I am completing this semester as part of my B Teaching / B Arts degree at University of Newcastle. This course requires me to create a blog demonstrating my knowledge of the four resources model of literacy development and apply this information to an analysis a personal memory of my own literacy development, thus this blog was born. I guess that means I should start with what is my understanding of literacy.
From the research I have completed, I have found that the definition of literacy changes not only over time but also over geography. Different social and cultural groups place more emphasis on different types of literacy depending on their views and beliefs about it. The Australian Council of Adult Literacy defines literacy as “the ability to understand and employ printed information in daily activities, at home, at work and in the community -to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential”. As a student that has been educated in the NSW public school system my understanding of literacy is less about having perfect grammar but more focused on being able to engage in one’s surrounding environment by being able to access information, through either written of visual texts.
As teachers, it is suggested to educate our students under The Four Resources Model to help with their Literacy Development. The Four Resources Model of Literacy development details the four modes that students go through when dealing with new text. These are: Code breaker (Functional), Text Participant (Cultural), Text User (Personal) and Text Analyst (Critical). 
The first resource we, as teachers, are suggested to teach our students to become adept in is known as ‘Code breaker’.
I remember being in Primary School, and the teacher was teaching my class the alphabet. It was a bit frustrating for me, as I remember feeling like everyone else in the class was getting it but then one day it clicked with me. The critical point was when the teacher was reading a book out loud to the class and I remember it had a picture of a bat in it and she said clearly “B for Bat”.
It was at that point that I realised the connection between the letter “B”; the picture of the Bat and the sound of the letters “B-A-T”, from that point on, the other graphemes came to me particularly easy.
The second resource is known as Text Participant. This involves the student turning the decoded symbols into a meaningful message. Text Participants use their knowledge of the world, knowledge of vocabulary and knowledge of how language works, to comprehend and compose texts. This part of the Four Resources model was hard for me to relate to, but then I remembered a time during one of my prac's.
I was teaching a Year 8 class in the subject of Geography. This class in particular was described to me as being “low-ability” before I started teaching them. The topic was Human Rights, and I gave them written texts to read and majority were able to read and understand it, but it was not until I showed the class a video on youtube which showed the different lifestyles of young girls across the globe.
Once I got the students to compare and contrast their lifestyles with the lifestyles of the young girls in the videos did the students in the class understand the importance of Human Rights. Once the students began to compare their experiences to the experiences of the young girls in the youtube video, that is the point where the students in the class became text participants.
The third resource is known as Text User. This involves students asking themselves “What do I do with this text?”. Text users understand how language varies according to context, purpose, audience and content, and are able to apply this knowledge.
From this course I have realised that I am a text user all the time. In my daily life, my conversations change depending on the situation I am in. The way I interact with my partner, family and friends is different to the way I interact in my professional life. This video demonstrates basic social skills, which would be helpful for me to show to students who have trouble learning this important skill.
I learned during my schooling years to become a text user when I grasped the skill of recognising that each text type has a particular structure and is to be used in specific circumstances.
The fourth resource is known as Text Analyst. Text Analyst involves students asking themselves “What does this text do to me?”. Text Analysts are able to critically analyse and challenge the way texts are constructed to convey particular ideas and to influence people. When writing this blog, I was thinking about a time when I became a Text Analyst and then it hit me – the time when I first read the book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, by Phillip K. Dick.
This is my favourite book of all time, as it made me conceptualise my world in an entirely different manner. The premise of the book is focused on Decker, who is a Blade Runner who hunts down replicants (which are artificial beings designed to look like humans but created to work in inhospitable environments). Due to the fact that they Replicants look like humans, the only way to determine if they are replicants or humans is through the Voight-Kompft test, which measures the emotional reaction to stimuli. During the novel, Decker meets various replicants along the way who have beaten the test (as they have developed emotions) and therefore need to be terminated. Thus, as Decker goes through a moral debate, he begins to question his place in society and his role when he beings to ask himself “when do replicants become more than the sum of their parts?”.
This novel really opened up my eyes to see their world in a new perspective – that all people are created equally and it is only our inner ideas of how a person should look / feel / act / react which really determine the way we treat them. When I realised that this was the true purpose behind the novel, I became a text analyst.
I have learned that from an early age I have been educated under the Four Resources model of literacy development without ever knowing it. It has been thoroughly interesting to learn about how students learn to access information in their environments, and also to broaden by understanding of literacy to be more varied simply than only using written and visual texts but also a variety of texts such as websites and videos to help my students to become more literate in being able to engage in their environment.
