Diego Egizabal: “We studied how written language is taught until children are able to automatically perform the lower-order mental operations involved in reading and writing”
Diego Egizabal: “We studied how written language is taught until children are able to automatically perform the lower-order mental operations involved in reading and writing”
Diego Egizabal: “We studied how written language is taught until children are able to automatically perform the lower-order mental operations involved in reading and writing”
The dissertation entitled "Idatzizkoaren hasierako irakaskuntza dispositibo didaktikoen argitan. D ereduko ikastetxe baten kasu azterketa [“The initial teaching of writing in light of didactic mechanisms. A case study of a Model D school”] was defended by Diego Egizabal on the Eskoriatza campus in July and earned a rating of Outstanding. We spoke with the author about his research.
On July 4, Faculty of Humanities and Education Sciences researcher Diego Egizabal (Lasarte-Oria, 1974) defended his doctoral dissertation entitled Idatzizkoaren hasierako irakaskuntza dispositibo didaktikoen argitan. D ereduko ikastetxe baten kasu azterketa. The event took place on the Eskoriatza campus. We spoke with the author about his research, which earned a rating of Outstanding.
Your dissertation was a case study. What did you study?
The dissertation allowed us to learn how reading and writing are taught at the initial point of written language. For this, we identified and characterized the didactic engineering that supports the real work of three teachers with extensive experience in early literacy in Basque, teaching different classes (the 4-year-old classroom, the 5-year-old classroom, and the first year of Primary School). Our work made it possible to identify what aspects can be taught about written language and, at the same time, we were able to list and characterize the didactic mechanisms that the teachers implemented in each classroom to teach the written language.
What type of school did you choose for the study, and why?
The school we studied was a Basque public school that has been in existence for more than 50 years. It offers Early Childhood Education and Primary Education exclusively, under Model D, and is committed to early literacy. In general, Basque is a second language for a third of its students.
Why did you focus on the initial teaching of writing? Does that moment have special significance?
We need to keep in mind that during the 1st cycle of Primary Education, there is a milestone of sufficient importance to divide the literacy process into two phases. Based on this milestone, we distinguish between initial literacy and advanced literacy. This milestone is the automatization of the lower-order mental operations inolved in reading and writing words. Regarding word reading, we focus on (a) decoding, (b) word recognition, and (c) lexical access; and regarding the writing of words, the processes to highlight are (a) the enunciation of the word, (b) coding, and (c) writing each of the graphemes by hand.
Once these mental operations become automatic, the child can devote more cognitive resources to the higher-order mental operations that will allow them to understand and produce texts that are discursively more complex and longer.
What are the main conclusions that you reached with your dissertation? Did any of your conclusions in particular surprise you?
Through the observation of class sessions recorded on video, we were able to create an inventory of didactic mechanisms for the teaching of written language. An analysis of the content of the transcriptions of the interviews with the teachers also allowed us to learn about some of the didactic-pedagogical principles that guide those didactic mechanisms.
There are two conclusions to highlight. First, that the didactic mechanisms in the classroom are very diverse. There are many modalities of reading and writing, and each modality requires activating specific knowledge and mental operations. Copying, dictating, and reading aloud are not the same thing. As we said, each modality requires activating different mental operations. In any case, all of them can contribute to the literacy process. The second conclusion is that, in order to avoid risk situations that derive from early literacy, the teachers implement different strategies to safeguard student well-being and respond to diversity.
During the time that you were writing your dissertation, what was your most difficult moment? And the most beautiful?
There was a bit of everything. There were good times and bad times. But all were necessary, because each brought very diverse reflections, conversations and learning. In each of those moments, there were opportunities to build more and more complex knowledge about the initial teaching of written language as well as about the research process.
To give an example of a difficult time, I would say the final days before submitting the written report. The best times were those devoted to reading the academic literature and observing the teachers’ work in the classroom.