Adolescent Literacy—Research Informing Practice: A Series of Workshops

Overview of the Workshops

Despite the significant advances that have been made in our understanding of the abilities children must acquire to develop beginning reading skills and the conditions under which they are most effectively taught, very little converging evidence bears on whether and how these abilities are best acquired and taught during adolescence. Specifically, it is well known that in learning to read, kindergarten-  and elementary school-age children must develop adequate phonological processing skills; phonics abilities; the ability to apply these word-reading skills fluently to both decoding and text-reading activities; and background knowledge, vocabulary, and reading comprehension strategies to facilitate understanding of what is read. But there are obvious critical influences that age and experience bring to the reading acquisition process, particularly if basic reading abilities are not developed prior to the third grade. We need to better understand the extent to which what we know about beginning reading instruction for students up through grade three is also true for older students who fail to acquire the building blocks of reading.

It appears that learning to read may be more difficult after 9 years of age, but the factors that might explain this decreased learning ability are not well understood. We need to understand under what conditions and with what specific types of instruction or intervention students in middle and high school can succeed in developing reading and writing abilities. What is the developmental progression of learning to read and write at more complex levels? What factors enhance or impede this learning? How can we use this information to design better instructional programs and effective interventions? Which specific reading and writing abilities are most predictive of difficulties? Do the relationships among phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension that predict age-appropriate reading development from kindergarten through the third grade apply to older students manifesting difficulties acquiring reading skills? How can adolescents be motivated to learn to read, particularly when they have endured many years of failure in doing so? How can teachers best present reading concepts and have students practice them in the typical environments that characterize classrooms at these levels? And how can we best integrate reading and writing instruction with content area instruction?

To examine the state of the science and identify research needs related to these important questions, a series of workshops has been planned. These workshops were designed to (1) review and summarize the critical issues relevant to adolescent literacy and develop a research agenda and (2) gather practitioner input into that research agenda with a focus on contextual issues that research must consider at multiple levels (classroom, community, school, and home) and promising practices that have some evidence of effectiveness and can be implemented or that require additional research to demonstrate effectiveness. On the basis of the products of these two workshops, staff members at the Federal agencies involved will develop specific recommendations for the focused development of a program of research on adolescent literacy that will help us advance the state of knowledge in this important area.

Adolescent Resources