literacy instruction for adolescents

4
This article was downloaded by: [University of California, San Diego] On: 08 October 2014, At: 00:27 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Educational Review Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cedr20 Literacy instruction for adolescents Kay Fuller a a School of Education , University of Birmingham , Birmingham, UK Published online: 31 Aug 2011. To cite this article: Kay Fuller (2011) Literacy instruction for adolescents, Educational Review, 63:3, 382-384, DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2011.596014 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2011.596014 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions

Upload: kay

Post on 21-Feb-2017

212 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

This article was downloaded by: [University of California, San Diego]On: 08 October 2014, At: 00:27Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Educational ReviewPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cedr20

Literacy instruction for adolescentsKay Fuller aa School of Education , University of Birmingham , Birmingham,UKPublished online: 31 Aug 2011.

To cite this article: Kay Fuller (2011) Literacy instruction for adolescents, Educational Review,63:3, 382-384, DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2011.596014

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2011.596014

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Siegler and Lin, in their chapter entitled “Self-Explanations Promote Children’sLearning”, provide one of the strongest examples in the recent literature of thedevelopment of a new and powerful methodological approach. The microgeneticapproach, involving the close observation of children repeatedly undertaking thesame task over a short period of time, has provided extremely valuable insights intothe processes whereby learners develop new strategies. A finding of clear educa-tional significance, for example, is that asking children to explain their own and, inparticular, their teacher’s reasoning, in relation to tasks, has a significant impact ontheir understanding.

Finally, as an example of a chapter reviewing a particularly key study, I mustmention the chapter by Ornstein, Grammer and Coffman concerned with what theyterm teachers’ “Mnemonic Style”. Echoing other research on the impact of child–parent dialogue which involves “mentalising” words and reference to mental pro-cesses on children’s developing metacognitive abilities, Ornstein and colleagues’study of Year 1 teachers has shown that similar effects are at work in the educa-tional arena, and that the effect is still significant three years later when the childrenare in Year 4.

All in all, this book is a very fitting tribute to a remarkable man andresearcher, Michael Pressley, and one of which I would imagine he would be veryproud. The potential of work in this area to improve the quality of educationexperienced by our children is amply demonstrated and I would warmly recom-mend this book to anyone who is or would wish to be part of this most worth-while enterprise.

David WhitebreadFaculty of Education, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

[email protected]� 2011, David Whitebread

DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2011.596012

Literacy instruction for adolescents, edited by Karen D. Wood and William E.Blanton, New York, The Guilford Press, 2009, 526 pp., £25.95 (paperback), ISBN978-1-60623-118-0

Introducing an edited collection of essays, Literacy instruction for adolescents,Blanton and Wood highlight the importance of high levels of literacy in economicand health terms. They acknowledge multiple literacies and caution against anunquestioning adoption of reading programmes in attempts to improve the literacyof adolescents, or what they call commercial literacy. Contextualising a need to pro-mote literacy teaching in American schools, “disturbing” (2) test results are cited asindicators of a need for improvement. Unfortunately the editors fail to problematisemethods of testing or to critique a “high stakes” testing culture that has impactedon classroom learning in both the United States and England. Issues around socialjustice and teachers’ gradual acquisition of the “courage to reject rubrics” (412) intheir resistance against the “current test frenzy” (395) do, however, feature in indi-vidual chapters.

Whilst adolescents are represented as a homogeneous group in the introduction,Bean and Harper (43) are “troubled by notions of adolescents and their literacies

382 Book reviews

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

alif

orni

a, S

an D

iego

] at

00:

27 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014

fixed by age or grade-level”. They encourage teachers to consider gender, race,ethnicity and social class. Socio-cultural diversity is also explored by authors advo-cating the celebration of home languages in chapters 19 and 20, and the stark dif-ferences in teaching experienced by college-bound and non-college-bound students(406).

Divided into two parts, Part I “Literacy and the adolescent learner” focuses onthe needs of learners as boys (chapter 9), girls (chapter 10), youth (chapter 11) andlearners with English as an Additional Language (chapter 7). The various needs ofindividuals are considered in chapters highlighting the need for self-efficacy in thelearning process (chapter 3), parental involvement (chapter 5), literacy coaching(chapter 6) and differentiation (chapter 8). The context of content area learning orliteracy learning across the curriculum is considered in chapter 4. Part II “Teachingthe adolescent learner: research-based instructional practices” offers strategiesaround specific aspects of reading (chapters 14–18), writing (chapter 20) and speak-ing and listening (chapter 19). An argument for assessment as formative rather thansummative is made (chapter 13) and a case for using grouping strategies as opposedto whole class in chapter 21.

The need to incorporate children and young people’s out of school literacypractices into classroom learning, to value their wide ranging literacy experiencesas readers of multi-modal texts is emphasised in several chapters. Of particular noteis the consideration of a generation of young people dubbed “The Millennials”(47). I question any claim that digital media literacy might “universalise” adoles-cents “as the amazing ‘native’ users of technology” (48). There remain childrenand young people without access to new technologies making the negotiation ofmedia literacies an issue of equal opportunities. The need to support adolescents’online literacy development is identified in chapter 22. Further consideration ofyoung people’s interactions with various Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook,YouTube and Flickr, alongside ideas for their use in the classroom, is given inchapter 23.

For me, in an extremely useful chapter that reiterates the purpose of research to“disprove” and to probe rather than to find a “final, once-and-for-all answer to aresearch question” (235), the author takes us back to the philosophical questionsabout teaching practice that need to be asked in a critical appraisal of any systemthat makes claims about improving classroom practice such as “Who says a practiceis best? What is the philosophical orientation of the author?” (241) and practicalconsiderations such as “Do the students in the study resemble the students I teach?”(241). Thus critical thinking is fostered and the reflective processes wherein profes-sionals link knowledge to practice are nurtured. It is this chapter that provides atouchstone for reading the remaining chapters.

In the main, this book contains useful reminders of what many teachers ofEnglish might instinctively know. For me chapter 8 reiterated much that was famil-iar on differentiation and disappointingly referred to research as “thin” (161), or “inits adolescence, if not its infancy” (148). The term differentiation might not havebeen used but there is clearly a wealth of research into processes such as scaffold-ing.

The literacy teaching and learning approaches offered throughout this book aresupported by research-based evidence be it in the form of well-referenced (thoughnot always including international research) reviews of the literature or empiricalresearch in which the voices of real children and young people learning in real

Book reviews 383

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

alif

orni

a, S

an D

iego

] at

00:

27 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014

classrooms with real teachers are heard. For many practitioners and teachereducators there might also be some new research-based evidence for changingtheir current practice in the endeavour to improve the literacy competence of thenext generation. There is certainly much to recommend this book for subject orcontent-area teachers as they embrace their responsibilities as teachers also of lit-eracy.

Kay FullerSchool of Education, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

[email protected]� 2011, Kay Fuller

DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2011.596014

Attitudes to modern foreign language learning, by Brendan Bartram, London,Continuum, 2010, 208 pp., £75.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-8264-2384-9

With this book, we are in the realms of comparative education of the modern reflex-ive kind, seeking deep understanding of behaviours, attitudes and practices of rele-vant others that can enable us to better understand our own. There is a welcomecomparative focus on pupil attitude through the pupil voice, little researched asopposed to general language learning and teaching in different countries aboutwhich much has been written. The data and discussion are drawn from a tri-nationalcomparative survey of pupils in two comprehensive schools each in England,Holland and Germany that Bartram and colleagues selected on the basis of criteriathat would enable fair and valid comparison to be made. The introduction makesthese things clear.

Chapter two explores what the author calls the “comparative challenge” andconfronts the many challenges, practical, conceptual and linguistic. Context is alland so many concepts, words, policies simply do not travel across nations and cul-tures and thus need careful exploration. This chapter deals with these issues suc-cinctly and provides the contextual information.

The “sticky” and multidimensional concept of attitude is unpacked in chapterthree, with an effective literature review. In spite of the complexity and contestationassociated with the term, as the author concludes, attitude is something about whichwe can have a shared understanding and accessible as an every day familiar notion.

Chapter four looks at attitude in the context of language learning reviewing vari-ables such as school influences and classroom activities, text books, informationand communication technology (ICT) und so weiter. I would have liked more refer-ence to assessment given the amount of assessment pupils seemingly have toendure, especially to formative assessment, increasingly widespread in all threecountries if in slightly different cultural guises.

Socio-cultural attitudes and influences are the main focus of chapter five.Attitudes towards target language speakers and communities are often shockinglystereotypical and negative, and similarly towards the language itself (German forbusiness, French for holidays, etc.). The data from the research are presented inchapter six, a long and quite dense chapter, broken down into topics and eachexamined according to country. There are real gems from pupils who show a shareddisregard for niceties as in the following example: “The subjects we get, they’re just

384 Book reviews

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

alif

orni

a, S

an D

iego

] at

00:

27 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014