_______________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________

Report Information from ProQuest

December 02 2012 23:34 _______________________________________________________________

Table of Contents
1. Adolescent literacy: current status................................................................................................................ 1

02 December 2012

ii

ProQuest

Document 1 of 1

Adolescent literacy: current status

Author: Lee, Elizabeth A Publication info: English Quarterly 34. 3/4 (2002): n/a. ProQuest document link Abstract: While teachers know that the newspaper headlines proclaiming poor literacy performance are overblown and do not reflect the complexities found in the classroom, we also know that a substantial number of our students have problems with literacy. A significant proportion of young Canadians lack the literacy skills necessary for today's society. Twenty percent of recent Canadian high school graduates have literacy skills too low for entry-level jobs. The 1997 Statistics Canada report Reading the Future: A Portrait of Literacy in Canada found that only 20% (national average) of the English first language population of 16-25 year olds could read at the two highest levels (4 &5). The high school graduation rate serves as a basic indicator of the outcomes of the secondary school system. Canada's high-school graduation rate is among the lowest in the industrialized world. In 1997, 80% of females and 70% of males of the appropriate age group (Canadian total) had completed high school (Statistics Canada, 1999). By 2002, this had increased to 88% of 18 to 21 year olds who graduated from high school (Statistics Canada, 2002). Currently, only 56% of aboriginal students graduate from high school (Canadian Centre for the Study of Justice, 2001). Until recently attention to the teaching of literacy at the secondary level was relegated to two areas, remedial education and content area reading. Remedial education by its nature was not seen as an integral part of the secondary program. While content area literacy was a lively area of research in the 1980s, the many worthwhile instructional applications that were developed were incorporated into classroom instruction in only a limited way. Students who lacked the requisite literacy skills were by and large considered someone else's problem. Content area teachers suggested that the English department should be dealing with those students, while English teachers felt their job was to teach literature, not basic skills which were perceived as the responsibility of remedial education. Unfortunately, research on remedial instruction has concluded that a typical pull-out remedial program has little long-term effect on improving reading comprehension (Johnston &Allington, 1991). A number of comprehensive commercial programs designed for the adolescent learner, such as, Soar to Success, and Read 180, have appeared on the market and are very useful for those students who are 3 or more years behind at high school entry since these students need focused intensive instruction in order to catch up. Many new titles on adolescent literacy have been published in the past four years. These titles range from a focus on adolescent boys, including Reading Don't Fix No Chevys (Smith &Wilhelm, 2002) and To Be a Boy, to Be a Reader (Brozo, 2002), to titles that deal with a broad array of topics on literacy and adolescents, such as, Reading for Meaning (Taylor, Graves, &van den Broek, 2000); and Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents' Lives ([Alvermann], Hinchman, Moore, Phelps, &Waff, 1998). Links: Where can I get this? Full Text: Adolescent literacy, for many years the ignored poor relation at the education banquet, has recently been invited to the table. Increasingly we encounter a focus on issues of adolescent literacy in newspaper headlines (Fraser Institute, 2002); commissions (International Reading Association Commission on Adolescent Literacy, 1997); and policy statements (Adolescent Literacy: A Position Statement, from the International Reading Association, 1999, and Effective Literacy Instruction for Adolescents, from the National Reading Conference, 2001). Research on adolescent literacy has surged (Anderson &Bereiter, 1996; Lee, 1998; Alvermann, Hagood, Heron, Hughes, Williams, &Jun, 2000). WHY THE INTEREST? While teachers know that the newspaper headlines proclaiming poor literacy performance are overblown and do not reflect the

02 December 2012

Page 1 of 7

ProQuest

complexities found in the classroom, we also know that a substantial number of our students have problems with literacy. A significant proportion of young Canadians lack the literacy skills necessary for today's society. Twenty percent of recent Canadian high school graduates have literacy skills too low for entry-level jobs. The 1997 Statistics Canada report Reading the Future: A Portrait of Literacy in Canada found that only 20% (national average) of the English first language population of 16-25 year olds could read at the two highest levels (4 &5). The high school graduation rate serves as a basic indicator of the outcomes of the secondary school system. Canada's high-school graduation rate is among the lowest in the industrialized world. In 1997, 80% of females and 70% of males of the appropriate age group (Canadian total) had completed high school (Statistics Canada, 1999). By 2002, this had increased to 88% of 18 to 21 year olds who graduated from high school (Statistics Canada, 2002). Currently, only 56% of aboriginal students graduate from high school (Canadian Centre for the Study of Justice, 2001). The achievement level of students currently in the school system is also a concern. For example, many children leave elementary school without the literacy skills required for successful learning in secondary school. Among BC grade 4 pupils, 19.6% of boys and 14% of girls in grade 4 are not reading adequately. This increases to 22.7% for boys and decreases to 12.4% for girls by grade 10 (Ministry of Education, BC, 1997). While the numbers vary somewhat across the country, the picture is much the same. There is a sizable proportion of secondary school students who have difficulty with literacy at a time when the real world demands for high levels of literacy are increasing. A RISING STANDARD The literacy bar has been raised over the past fifteen years and the essential skills of literacy are greater than in the past. The much-ballyhooed advent of the knowledge society has led to changes in the nature of employment. The minimum educational requirements for many jobs have risen. Those non-information industries that still produce tangible goods are now computerized and require a certain level of literacy to run the production lines. Anyone over forty has experienced these increased literacy demands in his or her daily life. You just have to consider the elaborate set of directions for programming your TV/VCR when thirty years ago you simply plugged in the TV and adjusted the antenna. The fastest growing job category in the near future is the service industry (Statistics Canada, 2002) which like other job categories has felt the impact of escalating literacy demands. The nature of these jobs has changed; they now require higher literacy skills than in the past. For example, with 'just in time' computerized delivery systems, warehouse jobs now require more brain power than muscle strength. Literacy attainment is the strongest determiner of economic security: 50% of adults with low level literacy skills live in low-income households compared to 8% with high level skills; the majority of adults with low level literacy skills are unemployed (64%); and individuals with marginal literacy skills are much less likely to participate in job-training or education (Shalla &Schellenberg, 1998). A BRIEF HISTORY OF LITERACY IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS Until recently attention to the teaching of literacy at the secondary level was relegated to two areas, remedial education and content area reading. Remedial education by its nature was not seen as an integral part of the secondary program. While content area literacy was a lively area of research in the 1980s, the many worthwhile instructional applications that were developed were incorporated into classroom instruction in only a limited way. Students who lacked the requisite literacy skills were by and large considered someone else's problem. Content area teachers suggested that the English department should be dealing with those students, while English teachers felt their job was to teach literature, not basic skills which were perceived as the responsibility of remedial education. Unfortunately, research on remedial instruction has concluded that a typical pull-out remedial program has little long-term effect on improving reading comprehension (Johnston &Allington, 1991). Until recently, a literary rather than literacy approach has been the main focus of English teaching in secondary schools, and in many cases, it is still the dominant approach. In general, literacy, understood as the acquisition and development of reading and writing skills, was assumed to have occurred before students entered secondary school. The old catch-phrase of 'learning to read and then reading to learn' (what is referred to in the research literature as the fourth grade shift) illustrates this view well. Students were expected to arrive at secondary school prepared to use reading as a tool for acquiring other areas of knowledge. This literary 02 December 2012 Page 2 of 7 ProQuest

approach, although it is an overly simplified view of the scope of the English classroom, does reflect much of what happens in secondary classrooms. For example, a textbook widely used by English teachers, In the Middle by Nancie Atwell (1987, 1998), focuses on creating a rich literary environment, encouraging a response to literature, and engaging students in authentic writing. Topics such as, instruction in reading strategies, metacognitive techniques, and graphic organizers, and issues of fluency or decoding are not discussed. To a certain extent the past lack of attention to literacy instruction in contrast to literary study at the secondary level was a reflection of reality. Students who did not do well in elementary school were streamed into vocational programs in early adolescence and many struggling adolescents self-selected out of secondary school. The inclusion of formally excluded groups and increased immigration, among other factors, has led to many more students at the secondary level who are struggling with literacy. Secondary schools now try to retain all students, knowing the life-long consequences for students who drop out. Those students who self-selected out of school in the past faced fewer real world penalties. Once it was possible to secure a bluecollar job with incomplete high school credentials. This is no longer possible. The level of literacy required for entry-level jobs has accelerated and will only continue to advance with technology. The long-term employment opportunities for students with low levels of literacy are bleak. In Canada between 1990 and 1995 the rate of employment for those without a high school diploma decreased by 30% for those under 25 (Globe &Mail, 6/11/95). Even skilled technical jobs vanish overnight, as in the recent closure of the forestry industry all over British Columbia. These jobs, unlike the forestry jobs of thirty years ago, were highly mechanized and required good literacy skills. Even so, they have vanished. The replacement jobs for these are either information technology jobs, requiring many years of advanced education, or service industry jobs. Lastly, these increasing literacy demands are occurring in a society that has shifted from obtaining most of its information and entertainment from reading to gaining it from TV and other electronic media, thus decreasing the amount of casual exposure to literacy. This combination of a shift in work-place demands, greater retention of students in school with a subsequent change in the overall level of literacy skills among secondary students, and changes in societal forces, has led to the current interest in adolescent literacy. This is indicated by the number of professional associations that have recently issued policy statements. Active for many years on behalf of pre-school and elementary school children they have turned their attention to the needs of adolescents. POLICY STATEMENTS Adolescent literacy: A position statement, commissioned by the International Reading Association (Moore, Bean, Birdyshaw, &Rycik, 1999), states that adolescent readers have a right to support in the following areas: 1. Access to a wide variety of reading material that appeals to their interests 2. Instruction that builds the skill and desire to read increasingly complex material 3. Assessment that shows their strengths as well as their needs 4. Expert teachers who model and provide explicit instruction across the curriculum 5. Reading specialists who assist students having difficulty learning how to read 6. Teachers who understand the complexities of individual adolescent readers 7. Homes and communities that support the needs of adolescent learners Effective Literacy Instruction for Adolescents, commissioned by the National Reading Conference (Alvermann, 2001), addresses the need to think broadly about adolescents and literacy. The executive summary states: [Symbol Not Transcribed] [open square] "Adolescents' perceptions of how competent they are as readers and writers... will affect how motivated they are to learn in their subject area classes.... Thus, if academic literacy instruction is to be effective, it must address issues of self-efficacy and engagement." [Symbol Not Transcribed] [open square] "Adolescents respond to the literacy demands of their subject area classes when they have appropriate background knowledge and strategies to read a variety of texts. Effective instruction develops students' abilities to comprehend, discuss, study, and write about multiple forms of text (print, visual, and oral) by taking into account what they are capable of doing as everyday users of language and literacy." [Symbol Not Transcribed] [open square] "Adolescents who struggle to read in subject area classrooms deserve instruction that is developmentally, culturally, and linguistically responsive to their needs. To be effective, such instruction must be embedded in the regular curriculum and address differences in their abilities to read, write, and communicate 02 December 2012 Page 3 of 7 ProQuest

orally as strengths, not as deficits." [Symbol Not Transcribed] [open square] "Adolescents' interest in the Internet, hypermedia, and various interactive communication technologies (e.g., chat rooms where people can take on various identities unbeknown to others) suggest the need to teach youth to read with a critical eye toward how writers, illustrators, and the like represent people and their ideas--in short, how individuals who create texts make those texts work. At the same time, it suggests teaching adolescents that all texts, including their textbooks, routinely promote or silence particular views." [Symbol Not Transcribed] [open square] "Adolescents' evolving expertise in navigating routine school literacy tasks suggests the need to involve them in higher level thinking about what they read and write than is currently possible within a transmission model of teaching, with its emphasis on skill and drill, teacher-centered instruction, and passive learning. Effective alternatives to this model include participatory approaches that actively engage students in their own learning (individually and in small groups) and that treat texts as tools for learning rather than as repositories of information to be memorized (and then too quickly forgotten)." These policy statements set out a very broad agenda. They are significant since adolescents and their literacy needs have made it onto the professional radar screen as an issue worthy of attention and research funding, but if they are to have an impact upon adolescents' literacy achievement, they need to be backed up with specific instructional initiatives. IN SCHOOLS Secondary teachers would agree that they face a number of distinct problems around literacy and adolescents. In any class there will be the otherwise-engaged student (who may have appropriate skills) but whose interest is focused on something other than academics, often his or her social life or athletics. There will be the disaffected student who lacks the necessary literacy skills to function adequately and who may be openly rebellious or passively resistant. Both groups of students go through the motions and do the minimum; their body language and general demeanor in class eloquently conveys the attitude that reading and school are boring. Faced by a class that either can't or doesn't do the reading, doesn't "get it" or isn't interested, teachers struggle to try and provide all students with the information needed in order to participate in class and learn the content of the subject area. Teachers read the novel or textbook aloud to the class, give time in class for reading, explain the novel by providing a synopsis, distribute notes summarizing the textbook content, or show the video. While these all address the issue of familiarity with the content, they don't address the issue of helping students acquire the attitudes, beliefs and skills needed to cope with the material independently. RESEARCH ANALYSIS There is converging evidence that effective programs for adolescents address both cognitive and motivational needs; in fact, they are interdependent. The executive summary from the National Reading Conference concludes: "Adolescents' perceptions of how competent they are as readers and writers... will affect how motivated they are to learn in their subject area classes.... Thus, if academic literacy instruction is to be effective, it must address issues of self-efficacy and engagement." Often in education we have confused the idea of self-concept with self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is task specific; it is a belief about the effectiveness of the skills and knowledge that you have in relation to a particular task. This will vary from task to task for an individual. Self-concept is a global concept that incorporates our assessment of our efficacy on different tasks among other aspects of the self. We can have a "good" self-concept while at the same time rating our efficacy as "poor" on a particular task. Unfortunately, poor performance on highly valued tasks can be over-generalized as an indication of the worth of the self. This leads to the well-known phenomenon of academically struggling adolescents describing themselves as "dumb" or "stupid." This poor self-concept is then frequently translated into the attitude that school is "stupid" and "a waste of time." According to Wigfield and Eccles (1994), students with reading difficulties are likely to suffer from anxiety, experience low motivation for learning, and lack a sense of self-efficacy. A difficult but key understanding we need to develop in students is that "poor performance" on a task is nothing more than "poor performance," usually attributable to not having the necessary skills. That is, it is something that can be changed. Belief in your self-efficacy in relation to a task will change when there is a clear connection between applying a specific skill or strategy and the effect it has on successful performance of the task. Work by Schunk and Rice (1993) reports that teaching adolescent struggling readers' comprehension 02 December 2012 Page 4 of 7 ProQuest

strategies for specific reading goals and providing feedback on their progress leads to an increase in selfefficacy and a greater use of comprehension strategies. For example, cooperative learning in small groups is one approach that acknowledges the importance of social interaction for adolescents and capitalizes upon it. The best known form of this is Reciprocal Teaching developed by Palinscar and Brown (1984) which utilizes social interaction with peers around texts to improve students' reading. INSTRUCTION As a consequence of the recent increased attention to adolescent literacy, many resources have become available for the classroom. There has been a flurry of research initiatives. Four examples include: 1. Deshler's Strategic Instruction Model (1989), a well established program developed originally for learning disabled students; 2. The Adolescent Literacy Project (Anderson &Bereiter, 1996; Lee, 1998), a Canadian initiative; 3. Research by Meltzer &her colleagues (2001) at the LAB at Brown University; and 4. An innovative approach using after-school media clubs for reluctant adolescent readers developed by Alvermann et al. (2000). A number of comprehensive commercial programs designed for the adolescent learner, such as, Soar to Success, and Read 180, have appeared on the market and are very useful for those students who are 3 or more years behind at high school entry since these students need focused intensive instruction in order to catch up. Many new titles on adolescent literacy have been published in the past four years. These titles range from a focus on adolescent boys, including Reading Don't Fix No Chevys (Smith &Wilhelm, 2002) and To Be a Boy, to Be a Reader (Brozo, 2002), to titles that deal with a broad array of topics on literacy and adolescents, such as, Reading for Meaning (Taylor, Graves, &van den Broek, 2000); and Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents' Lives (Alvermann, Hinchman, Moore, Phelps, &Waff, 1998). All of the successful instructional approaches include explicit instruction of reading strategies such as, self-monitoring, skimming, predicting, questioning, using prior knowledge, visualization and summarization. They often include the regular use of instructional supports, such as, graphic organizers, analysis of text structure, and planning sheets. Often cooperative learning techniques are part of the instructional plan. (These instructional techniques are clearly described in the many editions of Vacca &Vacca's (1996) classic text Content Area Reading.) As we can no longer assume that secondary students have the literacy skills needed for successful learning we need to systematically integrate instruction in reading strategies into all of our classes. CONCLUSION Finn (1999) argues that the beliefs held by teachers about their students' motivation for education affects how hard the teachers work, thereby, determining the quality and type of education they deliver. This sobering analysis suggests that if we aim to provide equitable education to all students we may need to reinterpret students' behaviour. Perhaps applying a framework that keeps in view the causal connection between students' lack of skills, their consequent low self-efficacy in terms of reading, and thus their disengaged or disaffected attitudes, will help us to see our students more truly. This re-framing of the meaning of student behaviour is difficult to maintain in the face of the often overt negative messages that we receive from students. However, this view coupled with the explicit teaching of strategies can begin to break the cycle of learned helplessness and disengagement from literacy that is all too prevalent among some adolescents and enable us to reach more students. REFERENCES Alvermann. D. (2001). Effective literacy instruction for adolescents. National Reading Conference. Alvermann, D. E., Hagood, M. C., Heron, A.H., Hughes, P., Williams, K. B. &Jun, Y. (2000). After-school media clubs for reluctant adolescent readers. Final report of grant #1999900278 submitted to the Spencer Foundation (http://www.spencer.org). Alvermann, D. E., Hinchman, K. A., Moore, D. W., Phelps, S. F., &Waff, D. R. (1998). Reconceptualizing the literacies in adolescents' lives. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Anderson, V. &Bereiter C. (1996). The development of teachers engaged in collaborativestrategy instruction with innercity delayed readers. Final report of grant # 9501059submitted to Spencer Foundation (http://www.spencer.org). Atwell, N. (1998, 1987). In the middle. Toronto, ON: Irwin Publishing. Brozo, W. G. (2002). To be a boy, to be a reader. Newark NJ: International ReadingAssociation Canadian Centre for Justice (2001). Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. Cowley, P &Easton, S. (2002, March). Studies in Education Policy. Report card on British Columbia's secondary schools. Vancouver, BC: The Fraser Institute. Deshler, D. D. &Lenz, B. K. (1989). The strategies 02 December 2012 Page 5 of 7 ProQuest

instructional approach. International Journal of Disability, Development &Education 36, (3) 203-224. Finn, P. J. (1999). Literacy with an attitude: Educating working-class children in their own self-interest. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Johnston, P. &Allington, R. (1991). Remediation. In R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, &P. D. Pearson (Eds.) Handbook of reading research, Vol. II 984-1012. Lee, E.A. (1998, Dec.). Adolescents' understanding of the reading-writing process in multi-ethnic classrooms. Paper presented at the 48th Annual Meeting of the National Reading Conference, Austin, TX. Little, B. (6/11/96) Dropping out to find a job? Dream on. Toronto, ON: Globe &Mail. Meltzer, J. &Okashiga, S. (2001). Supporting adolescent literacy across the content areas. Perspectives on policy &practice. Northeast &Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University. Providence, RI: Brown University. Moore, D. W., Bean, T.W., Birdyshaw, D., &Rycik, J. D. (1999). Adolescent literacy: A position statement. Newark NJ: International Reading Association. Ministry of Education, B.C. (1997). Foundation Skills Assessment. Victoria, BC: Ministry of Education. Palinscar, A. S.& Brown, A. L. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension fostering and monitoring activities. Cognition and Instruction, 1, 117-175. Read 180. (2002). New York. NY: Scholastic. Shalla, V. &Schellenberg (1998). The Value of Words: Literacy and Economic Security in Canada. Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada Schunk, D. H. &Rice, J. M. (1993). Strategy fading and progress feedback: Effects on self-efficacy and comprehension among students receiving remedial services. Journal of Special Education, 27, 257-276. Soar to Success. (2001). New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin. Smith, M. W. &Wilhelm, J. D (2002). Reading don't fix no Chevys. New York, NY: Heinemann. Statistics Canada. (1997). Reading the future: A portrait of literacy in Canada. Ottawa ON: Statistics Canada. Statistics Canada (2002). Perspectives on labour and income, Vol 3. Ottawa ON: Statistics Canada Taylor, B. M., Graves, M. F., &van den Broek, P. (2000). Reading for meaning. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Vacca, R. T., &Vacca, J. L. (1999). Content area reading: Literacy and learning across the curriculum. (6[Symbol Not Transcribed] Ed.). New York, NY: Longman. Wigfield, A. &Eccles, J. S. (1994). Children's competence beliefs, achievement values, and general self-esteem: Change across elementary and middle school. Journal of Early Adolescence, 14, (2) 107-138. Subject: Literacy; Secondary school students Location: Canada Classification: 9172: Canada Publication title: English Quarterly Volume: 34 Issue: 3/4 Pages: n/a Number of pages: 0 Publication year: 2002 Publication date: 2002 Year: 2002 Publisher: Canadian Council of Teachers of English Language Arts Place of publication: Toronto Country of publication: Canada Journal subject: Education--Teaching Methods And Curriculum, Education, Literature ISSN: 00138355

02 December 2012

Page 6 of 7

ProQuest

Source type: Scholarly Journals Language of publication: English Document type: PERIODICAL Document feature: References ProQuest document ID: 233295029 Document URL: http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.viu.ca/docview/233295029?accountid=12246 Copyright: Copyright Canadian Council of Teachers of English Language Arts 2002 Last updated: 2012-09-27 Database: CBCA Education

_______________________________________________________________
Contact ProQuest

Copyright 2012 ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. - Terms and Conditions

02 December 2012

Page 7 of 7

ProQuest