Reconceptualizing Content Area Literacy

Adolescent Literacy in New(er) Times

Tom Bean◦University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Excerpt from Young Adult Novel, Teen Angst? Naah….◦“Stuyvesant (high school) had an interesting take

on education. The plan, it seemed, was to cram a student’s head full of information, test the student repeatedly, and then move on to an unrelated subject with frightening speed. It was a shock after studying digestion for a month, to hear your biology teacher announce: “Okay, this unit is over. Forget about the human digestive system. On to locomotion in the paramecium” (p. 43).

In Michael Rose’s (2009, p. 19) essay, Why School? He observes:

“There’s not much public discussion of achievement that includes curiosity, reflectiveness, uncertainty, or a willingness to take a chance to blunder…consider how little we hear about intellect, aesthetics, joy, courage, creativity, civility, understanding.”

So what is new and why reconceptualize long held efforts to teach students generic strategies?◦In New(er) times:

Traditional textbooks coexist with, or have been supplanted by electronic forms of text and media

Students may be more fluid users of these newer forms of text than their teachers

There is a clear recognition that disciplines and their discourse communites are unique (e.g. Bean, et al., 2011; Draper et al., 2010; Moje, 2008).

A few publications that are influencing our thinking….

Textbooks:◦“More staid and static classroom texts once

familiar to baby boomer students must now appear as curious historical artifacts to today’s adolescents” (Bean & Harper, 2006).

Reconceptualizing content area literacy requires:◦A focus on how knowledge is constructed in the

disciplines◦Being less enamored with generic strategies◦Working in concert with faculty in the

disciplines

Elizabeth Moje (2008) notes:◦“A reconceptualized view of secondary school

literacy suggests that a person who has learned deeply in a discipline can use a variety of representational forms—most notably reading and writing of written texts, but also oral language, visual images, music, or artistic representations—to communicate their learning, to sythesize ideas across texts and across groups of people, to express new ideas, and to question and challenge ideas held dear in the disciplines and broader spheres (p. 99)

Disciplinary Uniqueness:◦The particularities of the disciplines matter and

becoming an “insider” requires immersion in acting like a biologist, historian, mathematician, critical theorist, and so on (Draper et al., 2010).

At the same time:◦Students struggle with complex material (e.g. in

terms of technical and general vocabulary, visualization and comprehension)

◦Sophisticated reading and study strategies are needed (and guidance by experts in the disciplines in concert with literacy experts)

◦Viewing texts as non-neutral and in need of deconstruction and reconstruction is more important than ever before (Stevens & Bean, 2007)

For example, in a science class:◦Conduct a water quality study in your

community by sampling home water◦Analyzing this data for pollutants◦Writing an account that supports a claim of

clean or polluted water◦To be submitted as a concise but scientifically

verifiable report to the countyOr, in physics, constructing a roller coaster….

In Moje’s view of metadiscursive knowledge:◦“To be metadiscursive means that people not

only engage in many different discourse communities but also know….what those engagements mean for them and others in terms of social positioning and larger power relations” (p. 103)

◦In essence, the time is ripe for critical literacy in disciplinary practices

Critical literacy in action (deconstructing and reconstructing the Kenny Chesney tune: “The boys of fall.”

References◦Bean, T. W., Readence, J. E., & Baldwin, R. S.

(2011). Content area literacy: An integrated approach (10th ed.). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt.

◦Bean, T. W., & Harper, H. J. (2006).Content area reading: Current state of the art. In D. Lapp, & J. Flood (Eds.), Content area reading and learning (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

References cont’d:◦ Draper, R. J., et al. (2010). (Re) imagining content-area literacy

instruction. New York: Teachers College Press.◦ Moje, E. B. (2008). Foregrounding the disciplines in secondary literacy

teaching and learning: A call for change. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52, (2), 96-107.

◦ Rose, M. (2009). Why school? New York: The New Press.◦ Walker, N. T., Bean, T. W., & Dillard, B. R. (2010). When textbooks fall

short: New ways, new texts, new sources of information in the content areas. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

◦ Stevens, L. P., & Bean, T. W. (2007). Critical literacy: Context, research, and practice in the K-12 classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

◦ Vizzinni, N. (2000). Teen angst? Naaah. Minn. MN: Free Spirit Publishing.

Aloha….