National Report of “Deutsche Gesellschaft für Lesen und Schreiben. E.V.“ 2008

Report für die International Reading Association.
National Report of “Deutsche Gesellschaft für Lesen und Schreiben. E.V.“ 2008 (German Society for Reading and Writing – Section of IRA)
Submitted by: Renate Valtin, IDEC member and president of DGLS

About the DGLS
The German Society for Reading and Writing was founded in 1968 and recently was commended by IRA for 35 years’ contribution toward promotion of reading instruction. It has about 500 members. Current board members are: Renate Valtin (president), Monika Dräger (vice-president), Bernhard Hofmann (treasurer), Erika Huth (secretary), Norbert Kruse, Ada Sasse and Andreas Schroeder.
The organization can be reached via the website www.dgls.de.

Major activities in the time period of report: January 2008 to July 2008

Publications:
Volumes 7/8 of the series „Beiträge der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Lesen und Schreiben“ with the title „Checkpoint Literacy. Der 15. Europäische Lesekongress“ are published, edited by Bernhard Hofmann and Renate Valtin. The two volumes contain contributions to the European Reading Congress in German language (ISBN 978-3-9809663-7-5/6).
The power point presentations of the three main speakers of this conference, Andreas Schleicher, OECD, Pirjo Linnakylä, University of Jyväskylä, Finland and Allan Luke, University of Queensland, Australia participants can be seen in the net on the IDEC website (http://www.literacyeurope.org/IDEC). In addition some other papers in English and French have been published in the net. The publication of these articles has been made possible by financial support of the Ministry of Education and Research of Germany. We appreciate the technical help of Jeroen Clemens and Pieter Depessemier.

Congresses:
Together with the University of Munich DGLS run a conference in Munich April 11/12. 2008: „Wie aus Erfahrung Sprache wird“ - Schriftspracherwerb braucht die Welt, die Schrift, die Anderen und viele Sprachen.

Forthcoming: “The DGLS celebrates the 40th anniversary”, congress in Berlin, November 21/22. 2008.

International projects run by our DGLS members:

Renate Valtin is member of the German team of PIRLS 2001 and PIRLS 2006 (the team published four books up to now about the results) and of the Reading Expert Group of PIRLS 2006. She also participated in the data analysis and publication of PIRLS 2006 in Luxembourg.

Participation in IRA activities:

Renate Valtin presently serves as member of the IRA Executive Director Search Committee and as member of the Citation of Merit Award Committee. She participated in the Annual Convention of IRA in Atlanta, May 2008, as featured speaker. Her presentation with the title “Children's rights to literacy: How well are they realized in the United States?” can be found on the website of IRA under http://www.reading.org/resources/issues/reports/pisa.html.