Supporting older students' in- and out-of-school literacies

Kathleen A Hinchman Donna E Alvermann Fenice B Boyd William G Brozo Richard T Vacca

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy December 2003/January 2004 Volume 47, Issue 4

•In what ways can teachers, parents, and others help young people develop literacy practices for success in school and life beyond school?

•How should we plan instruction that appreciates their growing expertise and invites them to develop academic literacy?

Young people benefit when they see themselves as capable-as having something of substance to contribute to conversations about content to be learned.

Bandura 1993, Pajares 1996 Phelps & Hanley-Maxwell 1997 Alvermann, 2002; Bean, 2000

Perceptions of competence

As educators, our task is to help students recognize this competence and see how it can be transferred to academic contexts .

We can learn from and capitalize on students' expertise when wetake an interest in our students' out-of-school activities, including their hobbies and work experiences. Brozo & Simpson, 2003 Hull & Schultz, 2001

•Conversing with students•Listening •Holding homework sessions•Coaching•Attending sports events•Chaperoning dances

Showing respect for students' decisions, lives, and relationships is key, even if these diverge from what we might wish for them.

Personal connections

• Older readers may struggle because they have difficulty grasping the importance of school literacy and subject matter learning.

Certain subject areas may even create cultural dissonance that may remain unaddressed in unresponsive classrooms.

Orchestrating subject-area instruction that is responsive to student’s personal Interests can maximize opportunities for engaged reading and learning. Myers 1992Rojewski, 1996

Students develop as engaged and independent knowledge seekers when they perceive what they are learning to be personally meaningful and relevant to who they want to be. Banks 1991 Langer 1984 Phelps & Hanley-Maxwell 1997

Community volunteering

malnutrition

poverty

reading local newspapers

                                 

                                 

                                 

                                 

                                 

                                 

Panel discussions

Discussions with experts

Learning aboutAids, hepatitis, and

Other viral illness

•These approaches ground curriculum directly in students’ lives.

•All students, even those who are struggling, are invited to participate in meaningful work.

•Teachers who plan such instruction find personal connections to class topics.

Participatory approaches

Bringing students out of hiding and into the flow of instruction requires a classroom orchestrated for experiential and participatory learning.

Alvermann, et.al. 1996Wade & Moke 2000

Knowing how to find information

Too often our students see only a single required text in their academic study.

Traditional print focused instruction risks “disenfranchising” large groups of students for whom print texts are not paramount because they hold different social or cultural values.

Wade & Moje 2000

Viewing printed text as the only legitimate sources of information in a classroom limits what students who are less print oriented will be able to demonstrate in the way of learning.

Hinchman & Young 2001

• Students need strategies for finding information in varieties of sources, and then for separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

• They need to learn that information that is readily available is not necessarily the most reliable.

Moje et al. 2000

Embedded Strategies

Improved comprehension results when

students are taught:

• To monitor their own comprehension as they read

• To engage in cooperative learning• Use graphic organizers• Generate questions• Use text structure to aid comprehension

&• To summarize what they have read

Best practices are only worthwhile

• If they are meaningful, not rote activities• When they are viewed in context

&

• When they are embedded in information sources that are familiar or interesting to students

Providing opportunities for all students to experiment with these strategies will increase motivation for learning

Competence for the 21st century

Students need multiple literacies, suitable for varieties of texts, settings, and purposes if they are to function in the 21st century.

Literacy research suggests that effective instruction will attend to older students' perceptions of competence, their ability to make personal connections, their participation, and their development of search and comprehension strategies that are embedded in context.

Effective teachers focus on strengths, especially of marginalized students, using alternative pedagogical practices that offer adolescents opportunities to draw from multiple forms of texts to develop understanding and points of view.

Alvermann, Hinchman, Moore, Phelps, & Waff 1998Moje et al. 2000

As educators, we must acknowledge what our students are already capable of doing in the name of literacy.

Most students already engage in significant Out-of-school literacy activities in their everyday lives.

Forming bridges that connect school-based literacies with students' out-of-school literacies can support more nuanced thinking in both worlds.

Supporting students' development of strategic approaches suitable for both contexts will enable them to be more successful in our increasingly complex society.

Hinchman, Alvermann, Boyd, Brozo & Vacca

Anna Safi for EDRD 831 With Dr. Bill Brozo October 3, 2005

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