Developing Adolescent Literacy: Developmental Reading in the Secondary Schools
Posted: Sunday, November 27, 2011
by Michael Eza
This paper explores the difficulties adolescents face in learning due to their development, the advent of new technologies and the instructional environment they are put into. Then a brief review of some of the new technologies and methods that exist for educating students will be discussed. The instructors’ individual efficacy for teaching a subject will be directly attributed to content literacy success when used in combination with other instructional or developmental techniques and a brief conclusion will be drawn as to how teaching literacy in the content area can improve the students and the instructors’ motivation. Finally a connection will be made to the development of an adolescent students’ brain and the effect classroom management can have on learning.
Adolescent students in the middle and high schools systems of North America are now experiencing many new challenges and advantages in learning how to become more experienced and advanced readers and researchers. There are now a myriad of technologies available that were never easily accessible before, which any instructor or student can use to enhance the learning environment. Conversely there are also more distractions and less researched ways available (Slavin, Cheung, Groff & Lake 2008) to teach students using these new methods and technologies. The advent of these new technologies implies the instructors must now have an ability to use these new technologies and that they must possess a belief that these technologies will improve the students’ performance (Cantrell & Hughes, 2008). According to Ravitch and Finn “It takes more than a textbook and lecture to awaken their [the students’] interest and grab their [the students’] attention” (as cited in Considine, Horton & Moorman, 2009, p. 275). This precept has led to investigation as to whether the current methods of instruction are sufficient to teach the generation coined as the Millennial Generation or those born after the turn of the century (Considine et al., 2009). As more information is being gathered the majority of the evidence being published indicates that new and innovational teaching methods along with a positive efficacy for teaching provide a significant benefit to student learning.
Another factor involved in teaching literacy includes what is or can be considered the period of adolescence and how the brain develops during this period. The cognitive and psychosocial development of an adolescents’ brain in the areas for accepting rewards and negotiating consequences become greatly distorted and can in effect impair the ability of an adolescent to properly think through problems in order to achieve their higher functioning abilities known as formal thought (Steinberg,2009, p. 743). Additionally this distortion of the brain’s functioning tends to disconnect them from an ability to feel or express emotion (Steinberg, 2009). With this evidence in mind, it is not surprising to learn that many of the new and innovative teaching techniques being developed and researched include connecting content to the students’ prior knowledge often for the purpose of creating an emotional connection. Also the students are now often required to learn how to make proper decisions through the practice of critical thinking. By teaching students through decision making and connecting to prior knowledge the teachers are beginning to activate those higher planes of thoughts where the students’ abilities most need to be developed and as Steinberg suggests the process of mental development is a balance between external stimulus like a classroom and physical development (2009).
This paper explores the difficulties adolescents face in learning due to their development, the advent of new technologies and the instructional environment they are put into. Then a brief review of some of the new technologies and methods that exist for educating students will be discussed. The instructors’ individual efficacy for teaching a subject will be directly attributed to content literacy success when used in combination with other instructional or developmental techniques and a brief conclusion will be drawn as to how teaching literacy in the content area can improve the students and the instructors’ motivation. Finally a connection will be made to the development of an adolescent students’ brain and the effect classroom management can have on learning.
The Barriers Associated with The Teaching of an Adolescent
According to The American Psychological Association “the frontal lobes [of the brain] especially the prefrontal cortex, play a critical role in the executive or ‘CEO’ functions of the brain, which are considered the higher functions of the brain” (Steinberg, 2009). It is now being hypothesized that this development causes distortions in the risk taking functions of an adolescents’ brain and because of these distortions, adolescents often feel a greater benefit or reward (likely due to a reorganization of their dopamine receptors) for taking the same amount of risk as they had previously (Steinberg, 2009). This mental development is linked to impairment in an adolescents’ capability to express, contain or process emotions (Steinberg, 2009). Considering these factors alone logic would conclude that adolescents experience a greater desire to take risks during their development and realize less of the impact that taking those risks will have upon their environment or themselves. Therefore it is especially important that the instructors of the Millennial Generation are able to outline and express the consequences of a students’ negative performance and the benefits of understanding and properly expressing literature and works of art in their many forms.
Thankfully, the Millennial Generation is one of the most technologically adept cohorts with more technology available to them than ever before. This new technology has been found to improve the reading abilities of students specifically when there is a wide array of technologies available and when the methods are geared to the general population rather than those with specific needs (Moran, Ferdig, Pearson, Wardrop & Blomeyer, 2008). Teaching with these new technologies improves the students’ literacy abilities in understanding print based texts, as well as technologically based texts, such as online websites or blogs. Teaching students literacy across contents and technologies is important because as a study by The Joint Information Systems Committee found “while the ‘Google generation’ could access materials, their ability to process those texts was somewhat limited… They concluded that modern youth ‘have a poor understanding of their information needs’, ‘find it difficult to develop effective search strategies’, and spend little time ‘evaluating information either for relevance, accuracy or authority’” (Considine et al., 2009, p.246). Instructors must be well trained in using and teaching the use of these new and emerging technologies as well as their content area literacy strategies in order to achieve the maximum benefit of learning for their students.
To teach students literacy across contents and technologies the students need to be motivated to learn, the instructors have to be motivated to teach and there must be a give and take relationship which gradually releases scaffolds to a point where the students have learned to become responsible for their own learning and the instructors have merely become a critic of that learning. One further difficulty students often encounter when attempting to reach this level of responsible learning is that their instructor has a poor self-efficacy (Cantrell & Hughes, 2008). This efficacy has been linked by a study of Cantrell and Hughes to a feeling of students being unprepared for reading in their content area by their previous instructor, a lack of a capability to adapt a new teaching method due to a lack of resources and/or knowledge as well as a lack of the student body’s motivation to learn (2008). And although there is evidence, which suggest teaching subject matter and content area texts at the secondary level using content literacy improves a readers’ overall performance (Boyd & Ikpeze, 2007) the best method for doing so has not yet been found due to a lack of research performed at the secondary level on the teaching of formalized mass marketed content area literacy strategies (Slavin, et al., 2008). Due to these factors the belief a teacher holds as to whether a student can or cannot be taught has been found to affect a student’s overall performance (as a barrier when the efficacy is negative and a scaffold when it is positive). As an aside, improved performance has also been found to improve the instructors overall efficacy for teaching (Cantrell & Hughes, 2008).
Each of these difficulties can be directly attributed to the motivation present in the student body. An adolescents’ development causes them to favor risks, emerging technology gives them access to unlimited individualized information causing them to desire to seek out new information and the instructors’ belief in performance has been found to improve a students motivation if their efficacy is positive or deter it when it has been negative (Cantrell & Hughes, 2008). All of these difficulties in teaching students can be used as spring boards into new instruction if the goal is more than to instruct students what to learn, but also to motivate them to want to learn and become better readers and students.
Emerging Technologies and Methods for Improving The Instruction of Secondary Students
The past two decades have been awash with the emergence of many new technologies and instructional methods, which have been drawn into the classroom. Beginning in the 1980’s, specifically 1984 the first personal computer was released for sale in the United States and this new technology quickly moved from a commodity to a necessity in households, businesses and schools across the country. With this technology demand came two revolutionary and fundamental changes to society, 1) the way we communicate with the environment around us and 2) our preference as a country on the whole for specific types of media. These changes can now be seen in the school systems across the country. Most classrooms now have access to the internet and a computer, some even have fully digitalized smart boards, which can do everything a touch screen computer can in five foot by five foot dimensions or larger. Programs like Hyperstudio or PowerPoint as well as digitalized textbooks have been found to improve the students’ performance and help them gain deeper understanding into the subject matters they encounter (Moran, et al., 2008). According to Leu and Knizer Internet activities, inquiries, projects and workshops all lead to an improved ability in the students’ comprehension and overall literacy skills (as cited in Moran et al., 2008). Additionally, but less of an emerging technology, is the abundant amount of audio and visual media available for the instructors and students to access. Since these new technologies have emerged billions of the video and audio recordings that had previously been archived in personal or public collections have all been uploaded onto the Internet and are often free to access by any member of the world. Because of this students can now be taught poetry through readings of authors who had written it, or Shakespeare by real actors.
With the birth of the digital age has come the development of new teaching skills and strategies, which both incorporate and encourage the use of these technologies to create a productive learning environment. New teaching methods can involve using multiple texts from different genres (for example a court case combined with a novel combined with a tombstone…) (Boyd & Ikpeze, 2007) as well as “(a) using concept goals in a conceptual theme for reading instruction, (b) affording choices and control to students, (c) providing hands-on activities related to the content goals, (d) using interesting texts of diverse genre for instruction, and (e) organizing collaboration for learning from all texts” (Guthrie, 2009, p.11-12). With out the advent of the Internet these ideals may have seemed nice, but would have been unattainable. Now it is possible to engage students in all of these ideals by providing them with information they want to learn, which is gathered from sources around the world. Beyond these methods for teaching with technologies mass marketed programs like READ 180, Voyager Passport, LANGUAGE!, McDougal Little and many others all combine group activities with computer engagements and other facets to provide an instructional benefit (Slavin, et al., 2008). As earlier noted most of these new methods have not been properly studied (that is with normal scientific procedures such as using control groups or performing blind studies for randomization) in the secondary school systems (Slavin, et al., 2008), so while the research on students using new technologies has found it may be beneficial there is little conclusive evidence, which states that that is the case in secondary school systems. However even with very little evidence policies and programs have begun to form (like the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS)) in the interests of encouraging literacy in technology (Moran et al., 2008).
Due to these innovations instructors need to have not only the skills to motivate students, but the self-efficacy and motivation to do so. If an instructor believes their students cannot be taught because they are unprepared by their previous instruction or they can’t be motivated or environmental factors make it impossible to teach or reach them then is likely that they will be less prepared to teach the students then an instructor who believes their students can learn (Cantrell & Hughes, 2008). A students’ learning can be dependent upon their environment, their motivations or their current knowledge base, but their learning is also dependent upon an instructors’ efficacy for teaching (Cantrell & Hughes, 2008). This begs the question of how can the instructors be convinced that the student body can learn? Cantrell and Hughes have found that if classroom coaching follows a professional development workshop the instructor is more likely to believe they can teach the students and that the students have an ability learn (2008). Additionally the instructors were found to have an improved efficacy during the spring than in the fall and an improved efficacy when there was a group involvement in learning and teaching these methods within their schools (Cantrell & Hughes, 2008). Ultimately if a group of teachers form to learn new teaching techniques that include technology and they monitor and coach each other the improvement in instructional efficacy will greatly improve and the student body will experience improved literacy skills.
Achieving Content Literacy Success
While there are now many tools available to help conquer adolescent illiteracy, there are also, as mentioned, many deterrents to that success. Because of these deterrents two groups of students generally form, engaged readers and disengaged readers. Unfortunately the achievement gap between these two groups can often be so large that disengaged readers can feel they are falling behind and engaged readers may quickly get bored with the content. This could be attributed to the fact that “engaged readers spend 500% more time reading than disengaged readers,” (Guthrie, 2009, p. 1). Guthrie suggests that because of this an instructor should focus on improving a disengaged reader’s engagement by 200%-500% (2009). Many students feel school is merely tertiary to their learning next to television technology (Considine et al., 2009). Beyond this the instructors are beginning to think the students are impossible to teach (Cantrell & Hughes, 2008).
To maintain literacy in the classroom instructors must in addition to their other skills:
Possess a positive teacher efficacy (Cantrell & Hughes, 2008).
Integrate multiple texts into a collaborative lesson (Boyd & Ikpeze, 2007).
Use the Internet as a teaching tool (Moran, et al., 2008).
Use texts that are both interesting and diverse (Guthrie, 2009).
Maintain a motivated classroom environment and student body (Cantrell & Hughes, 2008).
The Millennial Generation is receiving more support, information and literacy techniques then ever before. They also have to read and comprehend more diversified material then ever before. Instructors can achieve content literacy, if they use technology, believe the students can learn and then motivate them to do so.
Teaching literacy in the 21st century is very different from the 20th, but the basics do remain the same. All of the research provided for this paper has subtly indicated that students learn through scaffolding information by finding out what students know, what they need to know and then by evaluating the learning process. While technology is constantly changing and new techniques for teaching are sure to constantly be emerging, teaching will always focus on the Zone of Proximal Development, but with technology and this knowledge everything becomes easier to pinpoint, develop and explain, and the students tend to learn more readily.
A Motivational Conclusion
This paper focused on two subjects: the instructor and the adolescent student. These two may be very different in age, knowledge bases and cultural background, but despite these differences both of them have been a student before. Both of them are learning which literacy techniques work best for them. Both are affected by the immediate geographic environment that they share and both of them will see each other perhaps hundreds of times over the course of a school year. Beyond this these two groups often experience a symbiotic relationship regarding motivation (Cantrell & Hughes, 2008).
The techniques described here are meant for any subject matter in secondary schools, but the focus was on Language Arts. By using technology in the classroom, maintaining a positive attitude about teaching (that includes having a positive teaching efficacy), engaging students in multiple genres of text and interacting with peers about teaching the students become better learners, the teacher gains confidence in the students abilities and a larger breadth of instruction and information is generally awarded to the student. Any instructor can incorporate these techniques into their own classroom in three simple ways.
Instructors in the same schooling environment must communicate and critique each other on a regular basis.
Instructors must use resources, such as current events, journal articles or artwork, which is beyond those found in the standardized curriculum.
Instructors must both be motivated to teach and motivate their students to learn.
If an educator is able to perform each of these objectives on a regular if not a daily basis their level of instruction will improve as well as the students’ efficacy for learning (Cantrell & Hughes, 2008).
Finally the mental development of the student must always be considered during any instruction and as Steinberg has found adolescents experience vast and significant changes in their brain throughout puberty and perhaps even a bit beyond (2009). Because of these mental changes a student is generally more likely to take more risks and ignore the emotional consequences of those risks (Steinberg, 2009) than an adult. This for an educator could mean missed homework, talking out in class, possibly even throwing things. For the adolescent student each one of these activities, if perceived as a risk, should produce an abnormal amount of joy or excitement (Steinberg, 2009). This skewed perspective could cause the adolescent student to believe that the taking of the risk is more beneficial than avoiding it if classroom consequences are not properly in place. These consequences should also add to the classroom motivation and be logical rather than punitive consequences. Further more these consequences should cause the students to further engage their learning. An example might include creating a daily classroom participation grade chart. In the chart there are four possible categories the student could fit into. In order they are, disrupting, listening, engaging and facilitating. Below each of the categories is a list of synonyms describing the category or in the case of disrupting the possible consequences the student(s) may face. Each student has a nametag or identifying marker to go along with the chart and everyday the students will have an opportunity to earn facilitation points by getting their name into the proper category. Activities that the entire class are engaged and motivated by like this one help the students learn and the teachers believe they can do so.
Edited by Dr. Kenneth Weiss
References
Boyd, F. B. & Ikpeze, C. H. (2007) Navigating a literacy landscape: Teaching conceptual understanding with multiple text types. Journal of Literacy Research,,39(2), 217-248
Considine, D., Horton J. & Moorman G. (2009). Teaching and reading the millennial generation through media literacy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(6) 471-481.
Cantrell, S. C. & Hughes, H. K. (2008). Teacher efficacy and content literacy implementation: An exploration of the effects of extended professional development with coaching. Journal of Literacy Research, 40,95–127.
Guthrie, J. T., (2009) Teaching for literacy engagement. Journal of Literacy Research, 36(1), 1 – 29.
Moran, J., Ferdig, R. E., Pearson, P. D., Wardrop, J. & Blomeyer Jr., R. L. (2008). Technology and reading performance in the middle-school grades: A meta-analysis with recommendations for policy and practice. Journal of Literacy Research, 40(1), 6-58.
Steinberg, L. (2009). Should the science of adolescent brain development inform public policy? American Psychologist, Nov. 739-750.
Slavin, R. E., Cheung, A., Groff, C. & Lake, C. (2008) Effective reading programs for middle and high schools: A best-evidence synthesis. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(3), 290-322.
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