Pathways for Advancing Adolescent Literacy
Research Base and Inquiry Questions

NCTE believes in the value of investing in teacher knowledge in order to increase student achievement.  We will explore issues related to professional development with the following premises in mind:

Quality of teacher influences student achievement more than factors like class size and classroom peers, and effective teachers produce better achievement regardless of which curriculum materials or pedagogical approaches are used (Darling-Hammond & Youngs, 2002).

When professional development is tailored to classroom practice or content, it has the greatest impact on student achievement (Garet et al. 2001; Kelleher 2003).

A growing body of research documents the connection between systematic and sustained professional development and improved student achievement. Greenwald et al. (1996) found that moderate increases in professional development could lead to significant increases in student achievement. Estrada (2005) found that an extended program of professional development improved student achievement. She also observed that this can result when “all stakeholders, including teachers, researchers, and professional developers [are] willing to face the facts of student performance levels, take responsibility, and take the risks inherent in working toward improvement” (355). Langer (2000) studied the links between teachers’ professional development and student achievement over five years and found that students whose teachers participated in professional development improved significantly. She writes, “The teachers in schools that are beating the odds are in touch with their students, their profession, their colleagues, and society at large . . . The knowledge and experiences gained in their wide professional arena affect the classroom context, their students’ learning and achievement” (434).

Pathways for Advancing Adolescent Literacy

The content in the Pathways for Advancing Adolescent Literacy is structured around the NCTE Principles of Adolescent Literacy Reform.  According to the NCTE Principles, "Reforming programs of adolescent literacy demands strategies that target motivation, comprehension, and critical thinking." 
 
Teachers will explore ways to increase student motivation toward literacy:

• Strategy Instruction: Teaching students to monitor their own literacy practices, to look for information, to interpret literature, and to draw on their own prior knowledge enhances motivation (Guthrie et al., 1996).
• Diverse Texts: Sustained experience with diverse texts in a variety of genres that offer  multiple perspectives on life experiences can  enhance motivation, particularly if texts include  electronic and visual media (Greenleaf et al., 2001).
• Self-selection of Texts: Many texts must be  read in common by an entire class, as the curriculum  dictates, but allowing some discretion for students to choose their own texts  increases motivation, especially because these  selections can help students make connections between texts and their own worlds.  Of course, reading self-selected texts also increases reading fluency, or the ability to  read quickly and accurately (Alvermann, et  al., 2000; Moje et al., 2000).

Teachers will explore research-based strategies that support students in comprehending what they read:

• Vocabulary Development: Reading, writing,  speaking, and listening can all contribute to  vocabulary development. Since each discipline has its own vocabulary, students need  both direct and indirect instruction to actively  learn new words (Dole, Sloan, and Trathern,  1995.)
• Discussion-based Approaches: Making  meaning from texts is crucial to reading comprehension,  and focused discussions about  academic texts can help students learn to read  better at the same time that they learn more  about a specific field. (Applebee et al., 2003).  Strategies like reciprocal teaching, question  generating, and summarizing can foster discussions.

Teachers will explore how to support students in thinking deeply about texts and using them to generate ideas and knowledge:

• Self-monitoring: Focused instruction can teach students how to consider their own understandings of a text and learn how to proceed when their understanding fails (Bereiter and Bird, 1985).
• Interpretation and Analysis: A successful program of literacy education enables students to dissect, deconstruct, and re-construct texts as they engage in meaning making (Newmann, King, & Rigdon, 1997).
• Multi-disciplinary: Critical thinking takes slightly different form in each discipline, and effective instruction for adolescent literacy helps students develop capacities for critical thinking in each discipline (Greenleaf et al., 2001).
• Technology: Many adolescents are drawn to technology, and incorporating technology into instruction can increase motivation at the same time that it enhances adolescent literacy by fostering student engagement (Merchant, 2001).

Teachers will explore forms of assessment that can foster literacy development in adolescents:

• Ongoing Formative Assessment: Assessment that provides regular feedback about student  learning has benefits for students and teachers.  It can enhance motivation as well as achievement among students. Teachers who receive daily or weekly information about student development can intervene effectively (Biancarosa and Snow, 2004).
• Informal Assessment: Assessment need not be an onerous task for teachers since there are many ways to evaluate student achievement informally. Brief responses to a student journal, students’ written summaries of learning at the end of class, or a student-teacher conference are examples of informal assessment that does not require a grade but provides formative evaluation of student achievement. 
• Formal Assessment: The test at the end of a unit or the paper written in response to a multi-week assignment are examples of formal assessment that is usually graded and can be described as summative rather than formative. When prepared and graded by a teacher as part of ongoing instruction, formal assessment can provide useful insights into student learning (Darling-Hammond et al., 1995).

The Questions and Corresponding Research Statements

We have identified five questions that teachers face in their daily practice and that connect with the strategies that foster adolescent literacy that are recommended in the NCTE Principles.  Pathways participants will explore these questions deeply by engaging with resources connected to research-based statements related to each of the questions.  The readings and other resources that teachers will find are supportive of effective research-based strategies that promote and increase adolescent literacy.

1) How can I support my students as readers and writers while at the same time teaching content?

Related research-based statements:

1. Adolescents respond to the literacy demands of their subject area classes when they have appropriate background knowledge and strategies for reading a variety of texts. (Alvermann, 2001)

2. Vocabulary knowledge is highly correlated with background knowledge. (Nagy and Herman, 1984)

3. Effective teachers integrate reading and writing as often as possible because they know that each process reinforces the other, leads to improved comprehension and retention of subject area content, and contributes in powerful ways to thinking.  (Tierney & Shanahan, 1991)

4. Discussion-based approaches to academic literacy content are strongly linked to student achievement.  (Applebee, Langer, Nystrand, and Gamoran, 2003)

5. Assessment should focus on underlying knowledge in the larger curriculum and on strategies for thinking during literacy acts. (Darling-Hammond and Falk, 1997; Langer, 2000; Smith, 1991)

6. Effective teachers implement classroom instruction that combines multiple-level content texts and additional instructional support for struggling readers. (Allington, 2002; Allington & Johnston, 2002; Langer, 2001; Nystrand, 1997; Pressley, Allington, Wharton-McDonald, Block, & Morrow, 2001).

2) Many schools are trying to address issues around the achievement gap. We have identified particular segments of our population that are not achieving at the same levels. What do we do next?

Related research-based statements:

1. Students from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds are more likely to be low achievers, to be behind in school, or even to drop out. There is an urgent need to find ways to serve the educational needs of this sizeable student population. (Fu, 2004)

2. The persistent problem of a literacy achievement gap can be partially attributed to struggling readers’ insufficient background knowledge for comprehending school-assigned texts, aliteracy, and low self-efficacy and motivation for reading in general. (Alvermann, 2005)

3. Multimodal texts are often engaging to struggling readers in ways that traditional academic texts are not. Teachers must find ways to not only interact with students around print-based texts but also around multimodal texts (visual, digital, aural, etc.). (Luke & Elkins, 2000; Alvermann, 2005)

4. Schools must find ways to implement No Child Left Behind without allowing testing to get in the way of good instruction or students’ enthusiasm for learning and showing what they know and are able to do in a variety of ways. (From the Goals of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education)

3) We hear so much talk about students not being motivated. Is there really anything we can do about this?

Related research-based statements:

1. Teach students to monitor their own literacy practices, to look for information, to interpret literature, and to draw on their own prior knowledge to enhance motivation. (Guthrie et al., 1996)

2. Provide sustained experiences with diverse texts in a variety of genres that offer multiple perspectives on life experiences to enhance motivation, particularly texts that include electronic and visual media. (Greenleaf et al., 2001)

3. Allow some discretion for students to choose their own texts to increase motivation, especially because these selections can help students make connections between texts and their own worlds. (Alvermann, et al., 2000; Moje et al., 2000)

4. Use instructional strategies that promote social learning through dialogue, discussion, and inquiry. (Smith & Wilhelm, 2006)

4) With the current emphasis on testing, how do I support my students without compromising what I know constitutes good teaching?

Related research-based statements:

1. Integrating fundamental language skills (including higher order thinking skills) into the curriculum impacts students’ abilities to read, write, and use language well in a variety of situations, including testing. (Langer, 2001).

2. Used by knowledgeable teachers as data sources that articulate student growth and learning, alternative assessments such as portfolios, case studies, conferences, and student writing provide far richer data than do standardized tests. (Adkison & Tchudi, 2001)

3. Assessments that provide regular feedback about student learning have benefits for students and teachers. They can enhance motivation as well as achievement among students. (Biancarosa and Snow, 2004)

5) What does it mean to be literate in the 21st century and what are the implications for our teaching and professional development? 

Related research-based statements:

1. Students can learn "from" computers—where technology serves to increase their basic skills and knowledge; and can learn "with" computers—where technology serves as a resource to help develop higher order thinking, creativity and research skills.(Reeves, 1998; Ringstaff & Kelley, 2002)

2. Critical thinking takes slightly different form in each discipline, and effective instruction for adolescent literacy helps students develop capacities for critical thinking in each discipline.

3. Operating in a community offers students practice in socially constructing knowledge, behaving responsibly with group interests in mind, adapting to varied roles and responsibilities, and staying open and responsive to new and diverse perspectives.

4. Students need the ability to understand and interpret complex texts.

5. UNESCO stipulates information literacy as a basic human right. Analyzing, accessing, managing, integrating, evaluating, and creating information in a variety of forms and media are essential for students in a media-saturated global society.