The Bamboo Blossom: Responding PIRLS with Hong Kong teachers’ professionalism

Centre for Advancement of Chinese Language Education & Research (CACLER) of the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong has hosted a series of knowledge exchange forums on PIRLS this October and November. The series commerce by Dr. Cheung Wai-ming, Associate Professor of Faculty of Education, and Mr. Cheng Man-pan, Vice-principal of North Point Methodist Primary School with the webinar titled “The Bamboo Blossom: Responding PIRLS with Hong Kong teachers’ professionalism”. We are glad to invite Mr. Hui Suen-on, an experienced language education worker, to be our moderator and discussant.

What is PIRLS?

PIRLS is the abbreviation of Progress in International Reading Literacy Study organised by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). PIRLS has been conducted every five years since 2001 to assess the reading ability of grade four students and investigate the trend and factors of reading achievement.

CACLER has been commissioned by the Education Bureau of the Government of Hong Kong SAR to conduct PIRLS research since 2001. Hong Kong students ranked 14, the second, the first and the third in 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016 respectively. The ranking propounded the below questions:

Why did Hong Kong students rank 14 among the countries in PIRLS 2001?
Why did Hong Kong students improve their ranking to the first in PIRLS 2011?
In 2016, Hong Kong students ranked third. Does it mean students’ reading attainment dropped?

CACLER’s first knowledge exchange forum on the PIRLS series focuses on the school factors of students’ reading literacy with both theory and practice approaches. Responding “reading to learn” is included as one of the Four Key Tasks of the Education Bureau’s curriculum development since the 2000s, Dr. Cheung raises a “Hong Kong-style reading education”.

Four Processes of Comprehension

PIRLS segregated reading into two purposes, which are (1) literary experience and (2) acquiring and using information. Both purposes require four processes of comprehension. They are (1) focusing on and retrieving explicitly stated information, (2) making straightforward inferences, (3) interpreting and integrating ideas and information, and (4) evaluating and criticising content and textual elements. The first two comprehension processes are regarded as low-level reading skills, whilst the latter two processes are high-level that require summarising and structuring with graphic organisers and schemas.

Issues on Reading Education in Hong Kong

Referring to PIRLS Assessment Framework, Dr. Cheung Wai-ming defines reading literacy as utilising and understanding language skills to construct meanings through articles, in which students shall participate in social activities and enjoy reading. This definition triggers teachers to reflect on whether their teaching satisfies the international standards on reading ability. Do teachers provide sufficient types of reading to students? Can students construct meaning and interact with the text? Do students enjoy reading?

With the Four Processes of Comprehension, Dr. Cheung and Mr. Cheng discovered some Hong Kong reading education issues. First, Hong Kong teachers accentuated vocabulary teaching instead of reading strategy. Thus, Hong Kong students resulted better among the low-level reading processes in PIRLS. Our teachers, at the same time, mainly teach with textbooks, limiting the students to be less exposed to reading both fiction and non-fiction materials. The textbook questions lack high-level reading skills ceasing students’ development on high-level reading processes. Students are trained to be passive readers without their own judgement, opinions and reading targets. Also with insufficient reading teaching time and strategy, students show their weakness in reading comprehension and are incompatible with the target of the four comprehension processes.

The factors leading to the result are more important. Dr Cheung pointed out the statistics that both Hong Kong students’ attitude towards reading (such as ‘confident in reading’ and ‘like reading’) is the lowest among the countries. After the second PIRLS in 2006, CACLER emphasises in the research on school factors related to students reading attainment, including resources, teaching strategies, activities, assessments, frequency of reading and pre-lesson preparations, etc.

Strategies and Suggestions

Dr. Cheung Wai-ming suggests, teachers can include reading strategies and activities once a week with extracurricular non-fiction readings. School curriculum plans stressing reading education could also help students attain their reading. Dr. Cheung also recommends collaborations between teachers in different learning areas with books and articles as teaching materials. Data shows that teachers have been participating in more professional development workshops and seminars and applying more reading-related pedagogies and activities.

Teachers could improve teaching effectiveness with their professional development. For example, tailor the reading and learning materials, including higher-level reading process, improving reading strategies and questioning skills, hosting creative reading activities, combining self-directed learning, STEAM education and reading, etc. School policies, including applying lessons studies and designing verticle and horizontal reading curriculum, could also benefit students’ reading attainment. Other than the school factors, family factors such as parents background, number of books at home, early home literacy activities, student reading attitude, etc also influence students’ reading attainment.

Dr. Cheung suggested that teachers read picture books, or even create their school-based picture books, which combined images and characters to arouse interest in reading. Picture books also help apply high-level reading processes with less complicated text to junior students. Besides, reading across text could assist students in learning to compare various texts, in order to think in different ways and perspectives.

Mr. Hui Suen-on also shares his experience in on-site professional support after PIRLS 2001. Studying PIRLS results and the research report, Mr. Hui reflects students' insufficiency and ways to improve their reading skills with front-line teachers. The significant improvement in PIRLS 2006 proves teachers’ hardworking and professional. More importantly, teachers’ professionals shall not focus only on ranking but also on understanding students’ weaknesses and needs for improvement.

Sharing of Dr. Cheung Wai-ming

Mr. Cheng Man-pan, vice-principal of North Point Methodist Primary School, has been implementing a school-based reading curriculum since 2002. We are so honoured to have Mr. Cheng sharing his practical experience in this knowledge exchange forum.

After understanding the framework and students’ performance of PIRLS, Mr. Cheng focuses more on whether students could interact with the reading text and elaborate their opinions. He aims at motivating students to think and understand the reading material further. Facing the problem of teachers focusing only on textbooks and low-level reading processes questions, the School has paid efforts on the comprehension questions.

Mr. Cheng takes the biographical text “Jeme Tien Yow” (《詹天佑》) for the senior students as an example. To improve the fact that most questions provided by the textbook are relatively straightforward, Mr. Cheng and his team delve into the improvement to include higher-level questions and squeeze the time on vocabulary to facilitate discussions. Graphic organisers, including mind-map, are applied to help students organise their thoughts.

Other biographies and texts with solid storylines, PIRLS also requires students to read informational articles. North Point Methodist Primary School includes expository essays in senior students’ reading comprehension. So do the handling mentioned above, the textbook questions are replaced with questions in different levels and formats. In recent years, the assessments also comprise technological extended learning, such as watching videos and answering questions with QR codes.

The curriculum also immerses with reading strategies, including concept maps, directed reading-thinking activities (DRTA), story grammar, KWL table (Know, Want to know, and Learnt), five-finger story sequencing. The above concepts can further be segregated into pre-reading, reading and post-reading strategies, aiming at facilitating students on commentation, comparison and summarization to entrench their thoughts during reading. The teaching shall be amended according to the assessments and performance. Mr. Cheng highlights that the assessments shall also target reading-writing connections. Students could reflect and write a short response after reading. The writing tasks could also be divided into parts and cut the word requirement of each subtopic.

Despite PIRLS focus on texts and articles, North Point Methodist Primary School still promotes picture book reading. Both reading materials and assessments would be changed and re-designed regularly. The School also encourages students to read more informative and scientific books with the design of the in-school reading scheme. With support from CACLER, the School develops its vertical and horizontal school-based reading curriculum. Mr. Cheng emphasises, reading education shall cooperate with curriculum development, library arrangements, school-home collaboration and social attitude. Teachers’ professionals shall expedite students’ attainment of reading for learning.

Sharing Mr. Cheng Man-pan

Dr. Cheung titles the knowledge exchange forum as “bamboo blossom”. Bamboo takes a long time to grow, but the seeds planted would blossom eventually.