Reading to Learn in an Argentine Context: Implementing the Pedagogy in Primary Schools

Reading to Learn, Reading the World - How Genre-based Literacy Pedagogy is Democratizing Education

Equinox Publishing

Año: 2023;

This contribution reports on the implementation of Reading to Learn (R2L) in primary schools in a Spanish-speaking, Latin American context, more precisely in Córdoba, Argentina. The focus of the first stage in this pilot project was to train in-service teachers in charge of teaching the disciplinary areas of the social and natural sciences in the application of the pedagogy. This process involved acquainting them with the most central notions about the theory of language underlying R2L. This chapter begins by describing a shift of attention from language-learning at the university level to learning the language of specific disciplines at the primary level, and the need to explore the earlier stages of schooling in terms of prevalent teaching practices, school curricula andeducational policies. The chapter also provides an account of teachers' background assumptions and practices and an overview of a teacher-training plan based on thegenres often featured in school textbooks to teach the disciplines. The final section covers aspects concerning the implementation of that plan.