Overview:

Michigan State University associate professor of teacher education Mark Conley and doctoral candidates Joseph Freidhoff, Michael Sherry and Steven Tuckey are co-editors of a new book on the adolescent literacy challenge. In Meeting the Challenge of Adolescent Literacy: The Research We Have, the Research We Need, Conley and his colleagues have gathered perspectives from a dozen researchers in different disciplines. In a chapter co-authored with Freidhoff, MSU colleague Deborah Vriend Van Duinen and Kristine Gritter from Seattle Pacific University, Conley takes up the specific issue of what we know about strategies that improve adolescent performance with content-area texts.

The chapter:

Conley and his colleagues begin by making a distinction between instructional strategies that teachers use to facilitate understanding of content-area texts and comprehension strategies that students need to learn to make sense of those texts. The authors focus on comprehension strategies for the student in reviewing the current research base on effective interventions. In spite of high-level reports and a flurry of legislative activity, the authors note how little research has focused on the adolescent years as opposed to earlier stages of student development. Some promising interventions have been identified, but the research is not yet clear on whether they will close the achievement gap for underachieving students. Also unclear is the connection between generic learning strategies and the particulars of learning problems and opportunities in the content areas, or the value of early literacy strategies as adolescents encounter more challenging content-area materials. The authors conclude by noting that “future research needs to take into account that the literacy strategies students learn for the here and now of classrooms and state tests must develop into literacy that lasts a lifetime.”

What This Means for You:

Michigan and other states have set ambitious high school graduation standards that demand more from students – and educators – than ever before. Adolescent literacy is arguably the linchpin to student success across the high school curriculum, but how to improve and achieve it is far from clear. The only certainty is that literacy in the content areas can no longer be considered peripheral to the teaching of content; rather, it must become a central component of every high school teacher’s instructional practice.

For More Information:

Conley, M., Freidhoff, J., Gritter, K., & Vriend Van Duinen, D. (2008). Strategies that improve adolescents’ performance with content-area tests. In Conley, M., Freidhoff, J., Sherry, M., & Tuckey, S. (Eds.), Meeting the Challenge of Adolescent Literacy: Research We Have, Research We Need (pp. 88-103). New York: The Guilford Press.