Center for Research on Learning Researchers Promote Adolescent Literacy
Julie Tollefson
The University of Kansas
Center for Research on Learning
(This article appeared in the Winter 2002/2003 issue of the Jayhawk Educator.)
Each year, roughly 5 million high school students do not read well enough to understand their textbooks. A quarter of them can't read road signs or newspapers.
Researchers at the Center for Research on Learning are finding that solutions to this formidable problem are complex, requiring a mix of instruction and support services that involve more than just classroom teachers.
"Reading is a language process, and it does not exist by itself," said Barbara Ehren, a research associate at the Center for Research on Learning. "You cannot treat it as a single entity instructionally."
Literacy also encompasses listening, speaking, writing, viewing, and presenting.
"The connections among those processes are really what we have to pay attention to when we design instruction for students," she said. "When we want students to learn to read, we really need to pay attention to how they listen, how they speak, and how they write, as well.
"The reality is that if we really want to deal with reading, we have to deal with literacy."
Toward that end, CRL has developed the Content Literacy Continuum, a framework that describes five levels of literacy support that should be in place in every secondary school. It considers both student needs and the realities of secondary schools.
"The continuum emphasizes how important it is to infuse literacy instruction throughout the high school curriculum," said Mike Hock, CRL's associate director of administration. "It emphasizes that a host of high school teachers with different types of expertise will be required to meet the needs of these adolescents who have not developed the literacy skills they need to learn and succeed."
Deficits in literacy skills can be compounded by the fact that many content teachers--those who teach science or social studies, for example--at the high school level believe students should have been taught these skills in earlier grades. These teachers are not prepared to teach reading and writing and other literacy skills their students may need.
Unfortunately, even adolescents who were successful readers in elementary school may struggle in middle and high school because reading demands change.
"Their textbooks may have unfamiliar features and structures," Mike said. "Adolescent readers must be able to read narrative or informational texts, which they didn't encounter in elementary school. Adolescents are expected to comprehend increasingly difficult material and may lack knowledge of specific reading strategies for comprehension. Complex, subject-specific vocabulary can hinder reading fluency and comprehension."
Within the past year, CRL was invited to participate in a series of national workshops concentrating on the challenges of adolescent literacy. Its Strategic Instruction Model was chosen as an example of a research-validated literacy program that works.
"During the past decade, much of the literacy research has focused on preschool and primary grades," Mike said. "The lessons learned there may provide a viable blueprint for teaching adolescents how to improve their reading proficiency."
Mike and his colleagues would like research on adolescent literacy to be given as high a priority in this decade as early reading was during the 1990s.
"The reality is that 15-year-olds struggling with reading typically pose challenges that are different from those of 5-year-olds just beginning to read," Mike said.
Current legislation--such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 with its emphasis on reading instruction in the primary grades--holds promise for students of the future.
"We hope that over time, because of No Child Left Behind and other initiatives, no adolescents will arrive at high school ill prepared in foundational literacy skills," Mike said. "In the meantime, our work must respond to the unique needs of adolescent readers if we are to prepare them to successfully navigate the ever-increasing literacy demands of our information-driven society."
