Closing Canada’s Rural/Urban Literacy Gap

From NSEL Report Wiki

Summary

Strong literacy skills are critical to the economic success of Canada and of individual Canadians, and the need for these skills is growing. Further economic growth relies on the availability of those skills.

By various measures, Canada maintains a successful literacy record, but despite these successes there are notable gaps in Canada’s literacy achievements. There are age gaps, education gaps and regional gaps. This report focuses on a specific regionally based gap: the literacy gap between rural Canadians and their urban counterparts.

The available evidence uncovered in this report indicates that there is a significant literacy gap between rural and urban Canadians. Evidence from adult literacy assessments suggests that these rural/urban differences persist into adulthood.

Inspections of the data point to two conclusions regarding this rural/urban literacy gap:

Among adults, the gap is entirely mediated by educational attainment; educational attainment and literacy skill are tightly linked. When the effect of education attainment is controlled, the rural/urban literacy gap among adults disappears. This finding highlights the importance of attending to educational attainment in addressing the rural/urban literacy gap.
Among young Canadians, the gap shows substantial regional variation. Closer inspection of the data indicates that the rural/urban literacy gap is not the same across Canada. For example, there are particularly large rural/urban literacy gaps among adults in Atlantic Canada, a much smaller gap in Ontario, and a small rural advantage in Western Canada. These gaps between regions highlight an important point: the rural/urban gap is not universal. Rurality itself does not necessarily put students at risk for lower literacy achievement, rather rurality is associated and interacts with other literacy risk factors.

Key Findings - Literacy Risk Factors

Family-based Factors

In rural areas, a larger proportion of parents have weak literacy skills and will provide more limited foundational literacy experiences for their children. This means that intergenerational literacy is a greater risk in rural than in urban areas in Canada.

Parents and the home environment they provide make an important contribution to children’s literacy development. The lessons provided by way of introduction to narrative stories and literacy conventions along with exposing children to syntax and written language provide a valuable foundation on which literacy achievements rest. Parents whose own literacy skills are weak may inadvertently provide conditions that may hinder their children’s reading and writing development.

Community Economic Factors

Research suggests that community economic factors such as employment rates, average educational attainment among adults and average education and occupational status among parents play a role in a student’s literacy development. Of these factors, the most strongly linked to reading performance are all related to education requirements of the jobs available within students’ communities. In rural communities, the available jobs are less likely to require high levels of education than in urban communities. The students’ limited career options requiring more advanced education within their communities lessens their motivation to develop strong literacy skills in order to get a job. There are also fewer adult role models in rural settings. Overall, rural students are less likely to experience community economic pressures to extend their literacy achievements than urban students are.

School Conditions

Rural schools are often smaller, with smaller class sizes that offer more individual attention to students. This means that the teachers in rural settings often know their students better and are more effective in helping their students learn better, behave better and participate more in civic life.

There are challenges in rural schools that can lead to unfavourable educational outcomes. Multi-grade classes, inflexible curricula, teachers with less experience, fewer opportunities for professional development, more difficulty recruiting and retaining teachers, less support for special needs students and fewer options for courses are some of these challenges.

Gender

The gender gap shows that girls usually outperform boys in literacy. In rural settings that gap is greater than in urban settings. Boys in the rural setting are less likely to see themselves as competent in the literacy domain and are less likely to value literacy. This means that boys are more susceptible to other literacy risk factors and are particularly vulnerable to community economic pressures that work against motivation to high achievement in literacy.

Author Recommendations: Closing the Gap

Use of literacy interventions that involve parents
Application of literacy programs for parents
Parents with low literacy using other skills to assist with children’s literacy development (i.e. dialogic reading involves encouraging a child to lead a conversation around pictures in a book while a parent listens, asks questions and elaborates)
Parent’s use of oral language to foster literacy development
Positive male role models involved in reading and other literacy activities
Special efforts made by rural communities to demonstrate the long-tern value of literacy skills and education (i.e. apprenticeship programs in local businesses)
Development of school-to-careers approach connecting workplace experiences with education and classroom learning
Applying recruitment and retention strategies for rural school teachers
Professional development for new and more experienced teachers is a key component of literacy interventions in rural schools
Increase morale of teachers and school leaders.

Conclusions

In Canada there is a significant rural/urban gap in literacy achievement. Rurality on its own is not necessarily a risk factor. It is, however, associated with a number of significant literacy risk factors:

Rural families are more likely than urban families to face challenges in providing early literacy experiences and home environments with a strong orientation to literacy.
Rural students are more likely to be exposed to community and economic factors that discourage students from setting and pursuing literacy goals.
Rural schools face a number of challenges with respect to providing a full range of educational opportunities for their students.

Recommendations for Future Research

Research that explores the interaction between rurality and gender as it pertains to literacy achievement is warranted.

What Do You Think?

Do you agree or disagree strongly with any of the evidence presented in the paper?
Were you surprised to read about the gap between rural and urban literacy?
Prior to reading this paper, did you think a literacy gap existed between rural and urban settings?
Are the goals for rural students different than the goals of urban students?
What institutions should take responsibility for a) closing the gap and b) delivering those programs?
Should it be mandatory for rural schools to develop outreach programs that encourage literacy and higher educational attainment?
What are the barriers for overcoming low literacy in rural communities? What are practical solutions that can be introduced in addition to those presented in this paper?
With less opportunity in rural Canada, why aren’t rural students seeing increased literacy levels as a viable alternative to accessing new opportunities?
Is there any additional evidence to support or oppose the arguments made in this paper?
Are there key points in this research that you feel need to be taken into consideration when developing a national literacy strategy?