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Conley, Mark W.; Freidhoff, Joseph R. ; Sherry,
Michael B. & Tuckey, Steven F. (Eds) (2008)
Meeting the Challenge of Adolescent Literacy: Research We
Have, Research We Need. NY: The Guilford
Press
Pp. 162 ISBN 978-1593857028 |
Rui Niu, University of Scranton
April 15, 2009
This book synthesizes research in the area of secondary
literacy. This volume is more specifically focused on adolescents
and adolescent literacy’s. The book is composed of articles
from diverse disciplines and presents the authors’
perspectives on the research we have and the research we need
related to adolescent literacy. The book highlights 1) the
difference between elementary and secondary youth and their
literacy practices; 2) the difference in perspectives between
literacy researchers and researchers who study secondary content
areas like mathematics and science; and 3) differences between
expanding our conceptions of literacy and “text” and
still allowing for dialogue among researchers and educators about
successful instruction with disciplines.
There is an overarching tension between validating
adolescents’ identities, their prior knowledge, and their
out-of-school literacy’s and helping them to connect,
modify and expand these practices to align with the literacy
content, skills, and disciplinary practices of secondary content
areas. Researchers have claimed that adolescents who struggle
with reading are often disengaged from English while at the same
time desiring to be involved in content (Wolters & Pintrich,
1998). They suggest that “a student may be engaged in doing
labs in science, but not reading about science” (Guthrie
& Davis, 2003, p. 3). The authors of this text attempt to
explain how teachers might strengthen the literacy skills of
adolescents, and in turn, improve student performance in the
content areas.
In Chapter one, Rasinski and Fawcett explore two main theories
on reading fluency: Automaticity and prosody. Automaticity,
according to the authors, means “decoding and word
recognition allowing the reader to read fluently and thus
construct meaning from the text” (p. 3). Prosody (stress,
pitch, phrasing, pausing, expression) is the theory which some
suggest is the primary contributor to comprehension. The writers
argue that students face challenges when they transit from
primary grades to the secondary since there is an increased
demand on reading skills of adolescents. By integrating the
definitions of automaticity and prosody into their definition of
fluency and based on the research examined by the National
Reading Panel, Rasinski and Fawcett argues that “Fluency
instruction improves reading comprehension for adolescent
readers” (p. 8). This is a position shared by many current
researchers. For example, the National Institute for Literacy
(2001) states “Fluency provides a bridge between word
recognition and comprehension” (p. 22).
Chapter two is written by Kathleen Hinchman who argues that
“older youth who struggle with reading can benefit from
literacy instruction” (p. 11). Hinchman quantified the
struggles youths had with reading and further argues that
struggling adolescent readers “need empathy, knowledge,
perseverance, and instruction” (p. 11). Based on her
argument Hinchman suggests that appropriate interventions should
be given to the struggling young readers through acknowledging
their existing abilities and desires of their individual needs.
This coincides with earlier research which suggests that these
efforts also affect a student’s self-confidence in their
reading ability which leads to increased student achievement
(Ryan & Deci, 2000). Before the end of the chapter, Hinchman
suggests that research we need should 1) involve ongoing design
of assessments so that new pedagogy can be designed; 2) helps us
understand how and when to spend time on code- or
meaning-emphasis negotiated intervention; and 3) helps educators
to understand the strengths of struggling readers and how to
foster the applications of their strengths.
The third chapter questions why African American adolescent
males from poor communities continue to underperform in
standardized reading measurements. Alfred Tatum argues that the
research we have is not focused on the aspects of racialized and
gendered identities, but focused on comparing these young
males’ academic outcomes with those of others. Built on his
argument, Tatum, taking a cultural-ecological stance, further
articulates that youths need to be understood within “the
interactive nature of culture, context, and gender”
(Swanson, et al., 2003, p. 619). Tatum uses data from the
positive influence of the history on a 16-year-old boy of African
American from an inner city school in Chicago to indicate the
influences of out-of-school contexts on the identity construction
of African American adolescents. Other researchers suggest that
improving literacy skills -- vocabulary, grammatical structures,
discourse features, etc., of minority students promotes their
adaptation to the school environment (Kidd, 1996; Miller &
Endo, 2004) and increase their overall potential for academic
achievement. As a result, Tatum argues that a conceptual gap of
how the out-of-school environments shaping young man’s
identities contributes to the disconnections between school
pedagogy and those young men’s life experience. The
research we need must involve the voices of the African American
adolescents in literacy learning and pay attention to text types,
their characteristics and the role of texts in improving those
young people’s literacy growth.
Elizabeth Moje argues in chapter four that responsive literacy
teaching in secondary school content areas needs to be connected
or organized to the literacy’s of the disciplines as well
as to upper level youths’ everyday lives. The method that
Moje suggests is more than standardized tests, thick
descriptions, or pattern-based analyses. Based on her argument,
Moje points out that responsive literacy pedagogy should 1)
respond to youths’ experiences; 2) draw from and expand the
domains that youths have; 3) focus on literacy and language of
the disciplines. Moje further argues that in order to achieve
responsive literacy pedagogy, three forms of Knowledge are
demanded: 1) knowledge of youth; 2) knowledge of disciplines, and
3) knowledge of the texts and literacy practices that both youth
and the disciplines privilege. For each knowledge area, Moje
reviewed the research and critiques the value of what we have.
Moje recommends that the research we need is to 1) chart the
literacy and language practices of the disciplines in ways that
are useful and accessible to educators; 2) intervene young
people’s growth over time in terms of skills and attitudes,
and quantifiable effects of improvements to skill and attitude to
achieve further development on each area.
The next three chapters review the research on strategies
adolescents can use for comprehending content-area texts. The
author of chapter five suggests that the research we need
involves studies that “capture the comprehension strategies
school-successful students use as well as the strategies used by
students who are less successful by traditional school
measures” (p. 97). In chapter seven, Tuckey and Anderson
argue that focusing on “agency,”
“literacy” can be understood as “the
enhancement of agency with respect to texts” while
“scientific literacy involves agency with the world of
texts and information in connection to the material world”
(p. 115).
The final chapter provides a detailed account of what and how
literacy coaching is being researched and implemented. Roller
summarizes that most of the studies on literacy and reading
coaches that have been done so far are qualitative and highly
contextual, which is consistent with the findings of Guskey
(2000). Rooted from her thought that contextualized,
instructionally focused, ongoing professional development is more
effective than pull-out models focused on issues appear
school-wide or district-wide. Roller further argues that the
research we need is to “have clinical trials that focus on
using coaching to improve student achievement” (p. 149)
with a starting point of developing reliable assessment tools.
Reflecting on both the field of adolescent literacy and the
articles published in this volume, Conley comments that since the
field of adolescent literacy is still in its relative infancy,
what we need and should be doing is to have “effective
instructional strategies that produce strategic adolescent
learners” (p. 153). Beyond the connections between fluency
and comprehension, intervention and achievement, or the benefits
of additional knowledge and assistance through programs like
cognitive coaching, Conley, like the authors of the individual
chapters, argues that much more research is needed to connect
adolescent learning to meaningful future success.
This book makes a great addition to the national discussion
related to adolescent literacy and the need for more attention to
this issue. However, my biggest concern with the book is that
while it makes for a useful review on the literature related to
adolescent literacy, in the end, the authors simply offer the
suggestion that more research is needed. There were times while
reading through the book that one gets the feeling of
déjà vu. Each chapter was a little too reminiscent of
the chapters that came before, and those that came after. But, if
one wanted to see this as a collection of detailed arguments
aimed at the same hypothesis, it would serve well as a foundation
for constructive discourse on the topic of adolescent literature.
In addition, while the authors repeated the mantra that more
research was needed, they have also given us several critical
adolescent literacy issues to consider and prudent avenues to
pursue in future research.
References
Guthrie, J. T., & Davis, M. H. (2003). Motivating
struggling readers in middle school through an engagement model
of classroom practice. Reading & Writing Quarterly,
19, 59-85.
Kidd, R. (1996). Teaching Academic Language Functions at the
Secondary Level. Canadian Modern Language Review, 52,
285-307.
Miller, P. C., & Endo, H. (2004). English-language
Learners Understanding and Meeting The Needs of ESL Students.
Phi Delta Kappan.
National Institute for Literacy. (2001). Put
reading first: The research building blocks for teaching children
to read. P. 21
Ryan, R. M. & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic
motivations. Classic definitions and new directions.
Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 54-67.
Wolters, C. A., & Pintrich, P. R. (1998). Contextual
differences in student motivation and self-regulated learning in
mathematics, English, and social studies classrooms.
Instructional Science, 26,27-47.
About the Reviewers
Garth Cooper is nearing completion of his doctoral studies in
Educational Administration at Michigan State University. His
dissertation is focused on the effectiveness of professional
learning communities as a means for increasing teacher knowledge
related to co-teaching. Mr. Cooper, who is in his ninth year of
public school administration, is the principal of Bentley Middle
School in Burton, Michigan, working with students in grades
5-8.
Rui Niu is an assistant professor at the University of
Scranton in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Dr. Niu earned her doctorate
from Michigan State University and specializes in early
elementary literacy, as well as, instructional strategies for
educating English Language Learners (ELL’s). She has also
done extensive work with professional learning communities and
helping teachers engage diverse learners in mainstream
classrooms.
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