Welcome to our latest newsletter for 2025. Please share this newsletter widely amongst your networks and suggest they become a Friend.  You will find past e-newsletters here. 

Advocacy activities

The twelve Touchstones clearly underpin the work of the Foundation for Learning and Literacy. When invited by KPMG to respond to the current review commissioned by the Commonwealth Education Department of the Australian Educational Research Organisation, AERO, our feedback was informed by Touchstone 6.
Touchstone 6 states:
Learners’ experiences are different, their environments are different, their ways of thinking are different. A ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to literacy learning does not work. Every learner is unique. Classroom teachers need to work skilfully and inclusively to identify where individual children and young people are in their literacy and language learning. They teach learners the skills and strategies they need in order to understand, construct, reconstruct, create and communicate meanings through oral language, reading and writing. They support them to extend their repertoire of strategies so that they apply these to texts of increasing complexity. The creative arts (dance, drama, literature, media arts, music and visual arts) are different ways of making meaning - different kinds of literacies - and all need to be embedded within the literacy program. Literacy development does not happen in a lock-step, linear sequence. All children are not the same and do not always follow the same developmental pathway.

New Website Resources
For school leaders, teachers and literacy coaches
Two excellent articles have been added to our Reading tab  :

• Loh C.E. et al. (2025) The decline in volitional reading. Evidence-Informed Ways Forward. When children and young people choose to read, research demonstrates there are many positive benefits including a greater sense of wellbeing, intellectual growth and better academic achievement. Yet there is evidence that volitional reading is declining amongst children and adults. This position paper first dispels some myths about volitional reading (e.g., ‘boys don’t read’; ‘reading is solitary’) before suggesting some principles and teaching strategies that teachers can embed within their curriculum to encourage a desire to read (e.g., book talks, literature circles, reading aloud). 
• Clarke, C. et al. (2025). Using Picture Books to Enhance Meaningful, Inclusive, and Socially Just Relationships. This article explores the positive impact of one secondary teacher’s journey using picture books in her classroom. The reading and creating of picture books using different artistic representations, encouraged learners to share their own stories and engage in substantive conversations about life issues.

For system leaders, school leaders and policy makers

There are several articles in our Literacy tab that analyse the work of Australian Educational Research Organisation AERO. Recent contributions include two by Dwyer, Humberstone & Fuller:

• AERO says educators can trust its evidence. Can they really? EduResearch Matters. In this, first of two articles by these authors, they ask if teachers can trust the ‘evidence’ that AERO provides. Rather than informing teachers about current research on ‘evidence-based practice’ these authors suggest that teachers are being positioned as technicians and having practice prescribed. They prompt further dialogue by asking the very relevant question: What if AERO treated teachers not as technicians, but as thinking professionals in relationship with their students?
  
•  Evidence is important, but what is the problem? EduResearch Matters. Building on the discussion from their first article, the authors discuss how teachers can be supported in ‘reframing teaching as a tradition of reflective practice’. They argue that teaching and learning are problem-solving practices and provide a professional framework for teachers in developing evidence-based practices in their individual educational contexts. They call for change and the recognition of ‘teachers, researchers and educational leaders’ as respected professionals.

 
Congratulations to FFLL Executive members who received ALEA Life Membership at the recent ALEA AATE conference, Wendy Bean and Robyn Ewing. In addition, we congratulate Friends Linda Willis, Margaret Luckman, Robyn Frencham and Mitchell Parker for their ALEA awards.

Yours in literacy,
The Executive and General Committees
Foundation for Learning and Literacy

We all like a good story-imagine the possibilities

FFLL partners with 16 other like-minded organisations. This year our message focuses on the amazing impact that joyful, imaginative storytelling and reading can create for individuals and our national and global communities.

Current research affirms a positive ‘reading-for-pleasure’ culture would:
• engender our sense of well-being
• strengthen our empathy and compassion towards each other
• foster confidence and creative, problem-solving skills
• nurture children’s imagination
• further develop social cohesion in our communities.
Find out more about the current research, our rationale for this focus and our Ambassador videos here.

 Partner Activity

• IBBY Australia has launched a YouTube Channel  Enjoy watching the videos: Silent Books; One Poem in a Picture Book; International Illustrators; Alphabet Books, Nursery Rhymes; plus our latest release celebrating the work of Australian organisations working to promote children's literature.
• Many FFLL Friends will have had a stimulating time at the recent ALEA AATE conference in Hobart. Another partner, PETAA is holding its conference on the Gold Coast 23-24 October with a focus on Writing. 
•  The CBCA Book Awards were announced on August 15th. In Paul Macdonald’s words in the latest CBCA NSW Branch newsletter: Good books are windows and mirrors, reflecting the age of their creation yet also shedding light on the reader’s own world. Each year in Australia, for the past eighty years, Australian books for children and teens have been nominated as The Children's Book Council of Australia ‘Book of the Year’ …. These prize-winning books highlight the shifting book landscape, offering windows and mirrors to a world which is perhaps very different to the world of young readers’ parents and grandparents….The CBCA Awards highlight that we should encourage young people to read widely, to read across genres, and to appreciate the reading smorgasbord which graphic novels and illustrated texts have become a firm part of.

Our FFLL Socials and News
Please join us on LinkedIn here .

Friends are also invited to join our private Facebook FFLL group .

There is a large range of current items related to all areas of literacy and learning in our NEWS area.

Two recent News pieces include:

• IBBY-UNESCO Collection of Remarkable Books in Indigenous and Endangered Languages
  
• The University of Wollongong is celebrating a decade of play 

Want to get in touch with us with your ideas? Write to
learningandliteracy2020@gmail.com

The members of the Foundation for Learning and Literacy acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional owners of the country that we call Australia.

We pay our respects to Elders past, present and future

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