Developing Literacy in the Secondary Classroom

Georgina Barton, Gary Woolley

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781526415387
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación secundaria

Today's secondary classrooms are increasingly diverse places and skilled English teachers need to be able to develop flexible teaching strategies that can be adapted to best serve diverse learners with divergent needs. This textbook for pre-service teachers givesthem pragmatic guidance on the major aspects of literacy teaching, and how to draw insight research and apply it in diverse classrooms.

Key coverage includes:

·The fundamental aspects of teaching reading and writing to adolescent learners.

·How to intelligently select and use literature with secondary students.

·Multi-literacies and the use of technology in English teaching.

·Assessment strategies for the classroom.

·Teaching techniques for developing reading comprehension.

This is essential reading for anyone training to teach English in secondary classrooms, and for recently qualified teachers looking to sharpen their practice.

Chapter 1 What Is Literacy for Today’s Young People?

Chapter objectives

• To understand what literacy is in the twenty-first century and beyond.
• To understand adolescent learners.
• To evaluate the complex nature of education and change.
• To develop an understanding of appropriate instructional approaches for adolescents in literacy learning.

Key questions

1. How does adolescence affect learning in general?
2. How do adolescent learners construct meaning through literate practices?
3. How can educators support adolescents’ literacy learning?

Key words:

Literacy, twenty-first century, adolescent, education and change, adolescents and literacy learning.

Introduction

Literacy is a dynamic phenomenon that impacts on people’s everyday lives. From waking up in the morning and communicating with families to how we commute to daily activities, we draw on literate practices to engage successfully in these day-to-day routines. In considering today’s young people, we are faced with an increasing level of diversity, whether cultural, social or economic, along with the complexities that come with adolescent development. What may be important for young people and adolescents in their daily work and personal lives may be quite different to that in school. Also while literacy is often defined in terms of all people, we believe it has unique attributes when considering adolescent engagement and learning.

Literacy within the secondary school context has been given considerable attention over the past few decades (Alvermann, 2001; Barton and McKay, 2016a; 2016b; Freebody, 2007; Moje, 2002; Moje et al., 2004; Moll et al., 1992). It is therefore important to continue solid dialogues between this research and practice. This book aims to provide a strong evidence-base for effective teaching strategies and approaches for teachers and educators to ensure literacy teaching and learning is appropriate and meaningful for adolescent students.

This chapter begins by asking what literacy means in the twenty-first century and beyond. The following conversation focuses on the complex and ever-changing nature of literacy and literate practice, particularly for young people. Rapid and frequent movement in the development of complex texts, modes and channels used for communication coupled with political, social, cultural, economic and technological changes affecting people worldwide has a significant impact on the ways in which we conceive literacy and therefore teach it. So what does literacy mean in the twenty-first century and beyond?

What is literacy in the twenty-first century?

In order to address this question we aim to define the term literacy in a way that can be applied effectively in the secondary school context including the quest to attend to adolescent literacy learning. A well-known literacy educator in Australia, Peter Freebody (2007), notes that literacy is essentially an ‘open-textured’ concept, meaning that the definition of literacy is constantly shifting depending on its purpose, the people who use it and in which context it is consumed. In some ways the inability to define literacy specifically can be challenging for educators. However, if we understand the features that impact on diverse literate practices more, then we are able to further strengthen students’ literacy learning in the secondary classroom context.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) regards literacy as: an attempt to recognise the diversity of definitions attributed to the term, as being beyond simply

the set of technical skills of reading, writing and calculating … to a plural notion encompassing the manifold of meanings and dimensions of these undeniably vital competencies. Such a view, responding to recent economic, political and social transformations, including globalization, and the advancement of information and communication technologies, recognizes that there are many practices of literacy embedded in different cultural processes, personal circumstances and collective structures. (UNESCO, 2012)

Acknowledging concepts such as globalisation, including the advancement of information and communication technologies as well as transnational movement of people, is important as they impact on what literacy means today and into the future. For instance, much research in the area of literacy education considers the ways in which young people communicate with each other through increasingly diverse methods (Jewitt, 2008) such as social media platforms including Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook (Barton, 2014). This clearly has implications for school teaching yet there appears to be a mismatch between the ways in which youth interact with each other and what is expected in formal institutional learning (Cremin et al., 2015). Further, the above definition of literacy recognises ‘different cultural processes, personal circumstances and collective structures’.

Understanding and recognising varied cultural practices and learning processes in education is vital to meet the needs of all students. Research in literacy education has for some time explored the concept of multiliteracies (see also Chapter 6) – including two aspects of language acquisition – the first concerns the ranges of meaning making in different social and cultural contexts and the second explores the diverse kinds of digital and technological mediums used to create meaning through communication (Kalantzis and Cope, 2012).

Aside from the complex environments and technologies available today, young people may also experience hardships that were uncommon even 20 years ago. It is therefore important to consider personal, social and cultural implications of learning literacy in this ever-changing complex world. Attempting to address all of these issues and considerations for teachers, as highlighted in the UNESCO definition above, is an ongoing challenge yet we aim, in this book, to provide some appropriate strategies that have been proven to make an impact on young people’s lives.

The implications of the above information mean that literacy cannot be measured as a set of narrow skills such as in high-stakes testing. Therefore, if we are to truly improve literacy standards and learning for young people, we need to take into account the multitude of elements ‘encompassing the manifold of meanings and dimensions’ (UNESCO, 2012) of reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing, acting; ultimately communicating via multiple modes of meaning making. This is particularly important in relation to considering learning and teaching for adolescents.

Adolescence – a time of great change

Young people aged 11 to 17 years are often referred to as young adolescents or adolescents. This stage of development is complex with many physiological changes, including puberty and hormone fluctuations; intellectual changes, such as brain development and growth; and behavioural changes occurring, particularly as they move from dependence to independence. These changes are often seen as challenges for educators and parents; however, with a thorough understanding of the how and why of adolescent development mutual benefit can be gained. The aim of this book is to assist leaders, teachers, pre-service teachers, teacher aides, parents and community members to have a better understanding of adolescent learners and what literacy means to them today.

As stated above there are many changes that young people experience throughout adolescence. Physical changes are perhaps the most noticeable and are a result of the onset of puberty. According to Pendergast and Bahr (2005) in this period of our lives we experience the most rapid stage of development, second to our early years of growth. During this time not only does the body change but the brain is constantly changing – and at different rates between boys and girls and of course this also varies between individuals (Nagel, 2005). It is therefore very important for teachers of early or young adolescents through to late adolescents to be aware of these changes and how they may impact on learning, communication and the ways in which young people react to certain situations.

Behaviourally, adolescents are commonly known to be building up their sense of self through a process of independence (Brinthaupt and Lipka, 2002). During this time it is also important to be mindful of supporting and guiding young people in the decisions that they make as well as embracing their strengths.

What’s important to young people?

This book takes the premise that all young people we are likely to teach have individual attributes towards learning that need to be met; however, the research also shows that adolescents have some common developmental features worth noting.

From the age of 11 there can be a distinct shift for young people to place more importance on their peers than adults in their lives (Barton and Bahr, 2013). Research across a number of cultural contexts confirms this observation, such as McCrae et al.’s (2002) work. Given that adolescence is a time of great change, feeling valued and understood is incredibly important. Of course this would be the case for any child but often adolescent student voice and choice are missing in teaching practice even though adults’ actions are well intended. Many key researchers who are interested in adolescents and literacy emphasise the necessity to consider issues pertaining to youth culture and the individual’s own ‘funds of knowledge’ (Moje, et al., 2004; Moll et al., 1992). This means when we plan and programme learning for young people we need to take into account the knowledge base they already have as well as making learning student-centred rather than teacher-directed.

When young people feel they have ownership over their own learning then more positive outcomes will result. Personal agency is also another aspect to consider. When students are self-directed and are able to make decisions about what they need to know and how, then a more positive learning experience occurs. On the other hand, when adolescents view themselves through a deficit lens, that is by what they cannot do, then motivation and engagement becomes limited (Barton and McKay, 2016a). It is therefore important for educators and other significant people in the students’ lives to support a positive outlook on students’ capacities to engage with and make meaning through literate practices.

Issues related to adolescents and literacy

In 2000, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) administered for the first time the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which resulted in showing ‘wide differences between countries in the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in reading literacy’ (OECD, 2003: 5). While the skills tested in such assessment programmes are important they often discount other rich literate practices present in communities and families. The results from tests such as PISA confirm that measures such as those used in high-stakes testing favour more advantaged communities than those from disadvantaged areas. Students from low socio-economic circumstances do less well than those more advantaged and this gap is widening (Freebody, 2015).

‘Closing the gap’ is essential if we are to address the concerns related to adolescent literacy learning. This will not be achievable if the focus is always on results fr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 What Is Literacy for Today’s Young People?
• Chapter 2 The Adolescent Learner and Language
• Chapter 3 Diverse Learners and Literacy
• Chapter 4 Collaboration and Peer Support
• Chapter 5 School, Family and Community Partnerships
• Chapter 6 Multiliteracies and Multimodalities
• Chapter 7 The Teaching of Reading
• Chapter 8 Reading Comprehension
• Chapter 9 The Teaching of Writing
• Chapter 10 Adolescent Literacy and Literature
• Chapter 11 Digital Literacies
• Chapter 12 Assessment
• References
• Index