Where else but the World Congress?
Where else could you hear keynote speakers from three different nations, including noted researchers and a world-renowned children’s book author? Where else could you attend concurrent poster sessions depicting perspectives on comprehension ranging from a classroom-based strategy in the United States to a five-country survey by a Japanese researcher, from a strategy for improving reading comprehension on the Internet by a New Zealand researcher to a three-language study spanning Iran, Kuwait, and New Zealand? Where else could you exchange ideas over lunch with colleagues from several different continents all at once?
IRA’s 23rd World Congress on Reading offered attendees the opportunity to do all this and more. Hosted by the New Zealand Reading Association at the SKYCITY Convention Centre in Auckland, New Zealand, the conference offered a wide range of professional development opportunities to more than 800 educators representing approximately 35 countries. These pages provide a snapshot overview in words and pictures.
Handouts from a number of conference sessions are available in the Meetings & Events, World Congress section of the IRA website at www.reading.org. Even if you couldn’t attend the World Congress in person, these resources allow you to access the knowledge shared at the event.
And sharing the knowledge was a key point throughout the World Congress.
As IRA President Patricia A. Edwards noted at the closing session, “My hope is that you will leave this IRA World Congress on Reading committed to taking what you have learned back to your schools and universities so that all readers and writers will become more literate.”
Thanks to sponsors
IRA would like to extend special thanks to the gold sponsors of the 23rd World Congress on Reading: Learning Media, Pearson, and Scholastic.
Additional sponsors included Air New Zealand, Mainfreight NZ Ltd., Rosebank School, and School Support Services, University of Waikato, New Zealand.
Young teachers get valuable professional development
One striking thing about the 23rd World Congress on Reading was the number of young teachers who attended. For instance, a delegation of more than 30 students from Angelo State University in Texas took part, as did a group from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). Meanwhile, the New Zealand Reading Association (NZRA) and the Dame Marie Clay Literacy Trust sponsored 16 young teachers to attend the World Congress, one for each of NZRA’s councils.
Michelle Ferris, a year 1 and 2 teacher at Whau Valley School in Whangarei, New Zealand, was one of the NZRA delegates. “It’s really nice to have the opportunity to meet people from all over the world and find out what is happening in other cultures and other places,” Ferris said. “I’ve learned so many things I don’t know where to start. It’s given us an opportunity to talk with other teachers who have more experience and learn from them. They have lots of different ideas to share and strategies to use.”
Nicole Caracciolo, a graduate student in elementary education at VCU, said that she was choosing workshops to find ideas to implement in her future classroom.
“These are the newest trends and ideas, and hearing the big names talk about them is really amazing,” Caracciolo said.
“It’s endless learning.”
Speakers who sparkled
The World Congress included four top keynote speakers representing a variety of nations, backgrounds, and viewpoints. Topics ranged from literacy challenges today to changing assessments, from the evolving world of grammar to the “secret of writing an effective early reading book.”
Stuart McNaughton of the University of Auckland delivered a presentation titled “Cautious Optimism: Can Pressing Literacy Challenges Be Solved?” He used a variety of data to show cause for both pessimism and optimism but ended on an upbeat note. While acknowledging that there are many factors affecting student achievement that are beyond the control of schools, he noted that there are many areas in which schools and teachers can have a positive influence, especially if we focus on becoming better informed, creating better processes, and caring about the inequalities that constrain us, acting where we can to relieve those inequalities.
Nearly 25 years after coauthoring an article with Sheila Valencia titled “Reading Assessment: Time for a Change” (
The Reading Teacher, April 1987), P. David Pearson of the University of California, Berkeley, discussed where we have come since then. In a lively and informative presentation titled “Reading Assessment: Still Time for a Change,” he outlined Pearson’s Laws of Assessment. (Slides from his presentation are available on the IRA website, www.reading.org, where you can also access other handouts from the World Congress.) Pearson closed his speech with what he called his key idea worth remembering: “Never send a test out to do a curriculum’s job.” He then added another suggestion as well, which is to use tests “in support of teaching and learning.”
Beverly Derewianka of Wollongong University in Australia talked about the evolving role of grammar in today’s world. She discussed the difference between traditional grammar instruction, which focuses on rules and correct form, and functional grammar instruction, which looks at language learning as an ongoing process that focuses on meaning making. New Zealand Reading Association President Rex Morris summed up the importance of the topic by quoting philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.”
World-renowned children’s book author Joy Cowley of New Zealand closed the World Congress with a captivating talk about her craft. The author of approximately 600 books (she’s lost track of exactly how many), Cowley humbly said, “There’s no mystery, no magic, and no great talent. The secret of writing an effective early reading book is to write for the child’s learning needs rather than for any adult considerations.” Cowley went on to outline some of the specific reasons why early reading books succeed or fail, and she took questions from the audience as well.
Books for Oceania benefits kids
Children in Samoa and the Cook Islands will receive $16,500 in books through the generosity of attendees of the 23rd World Congress on Reading and Scholastic New Zealand, which matched each purchase made at the Books for Oceania booth during the conference in July. In Samoa, books are going to a new community library, said Robyn Southam, sales manager for Scholastic New Zealand. The Cook Islands will distribute books to various schools that need them.
The New Zealand Reading Association (NZRA) and Scholastic have collaborated on the Books for Oceania program for about five years at the NZRA annual conference, with schools and libraries in several places throughout Oceania receiving books. “It’s so fabulous for the program to be opened up to this world audience,” Southam said.
“What we are doing here really underpins what IRA and NZRA are all about,” Southam concluded. “Kids everywhere deserve access to books. It’s not enough to know how to read. We need to get kids to love to read.”
Warm, hospitable hosts
Through the hard work and organizational efforts of the Local Arrangements Committee, chaired by Heather Bell, attendees at the World Congress experienced a warm welcome and smooth sailing throughout the conference. Bell noted that many members of the organizing team also worked on the 2000 World Congress in Auckland, which helped the team in reaching its goal of providing “a very successful and very pleasant educational time for attendees, engaging them in high-quality professional development in an international environment.”
“There’s something really magical about people from other countries coming here for the same reasons we go to a national meeting,” said Rex Morris, president of the New Zealand Reading Association (NZRA), the host affiliate for the conference.
With 16 local councils and nearly 1,000 members, NZRA is active even when not hosting a major international meeting. Councils engage in a range of activities, including Mystery Bus Tours in which teachers visit other schools, dinners with New Zealand authors, seminars, and Books for Babies (a program providing books for newborns). NZRA also sponsors a highly successful annual conference.
NZRA works with the Dame Marie Clay Literacy Trust to provide support to allow one teacher with six or fewer years of teaching experience from each council to attend conferences. The trust provides the bulk of the funding, with the teacher’s council or school providing the rest. Sixteen young teachers attended the World Congress this way, and the Auckland Council sponsored several additional young teachers as well.
Where else but the World Congress? (August 2010).
Reading Today, 28(1), pp. 6-7.