Heard the term Emergent literacy yesterday from my Muse and liked it! The term sounds so progressive. I searched the web to learn more about the concept.
http://www.eduplace.com/rdg/res/literacy/em_lit0.html
The research and theoretical developments of the last decade have dramatically altered how we view young children's movement into literacy (Teale & Sulzby, 1986).
Literacy development is seen as emerging from children's oral language development and their initial, often unconventional attempts at reading (usually based on pictures) and writing (at first, scribbling) -- hence the term emergent literacy. Within an emergent literacy framework, children's early unconventional attempts at reading and writing are respected as legitimate beginnings of literacy.
Novel concept in education, where actions and behaviors are measured as a proxy to learning... but sounds rather familiar for the corporate world. To the best of my knowledge all the people I ever evaluated in the corporate world were evaluated against the various elements of their personality - can-do attitude, creativity, passion/drive, leadership, communication, etc. These characteristics as a measure of their maturity to manage and develop into a corporate role.
It would be great if some of these skills are quantified to represent the gap from perfection...
Interesting links:
http://www.bankstreet.edu/literacyguide/early.html
http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/Research/earlyindex.html
