Is Reading in the Content Areas / Writing in the Content Areas a research-based idea? Of course. In fact, there is so much research that almost no one disputes the effectiveness of these concepts. The problem, though, with proving its worth is that very few content area teachers do it well and so the results are sometimes mixed. Among the many, many agencies and studies that support content literacy are:
The RAND Study Group. Its report emphasized the need for all teachers to “have a deep knowledge about reading process and reading comprehension” (2002).
The International Reading Association and the National Middle School Association. These two organizations issued a joint statement calling for greater professional development in content area literacy (2002).
The Alliance for Excellent Education. Its report entitled Adolescents and Literacy: Reading for the 21st Century calls for more “reading to learn” from content texts (2003).
The WestEd Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI). Its Reading Apprenticeship approach, outlined in its publication called Research for Understanding: A Guide to Improving Reading in Middle and High Schools, outlines the need for an aggressive reading the content areas approach.
And many, many others…
Content Reading / An Historical Perspective
Author: Grady, Karen Source: ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading English and Communication Bloomington IN., Family Learning Association Bloomington IN
For several decades educators have been concerned about literacy development beyond the early grades. As early as the 1930's there was an emphasis on the different reading demands of various subjects and on improving the reading abilities of high school students (Moore, Readence, & Rickelman, 1986). The term "content reading" became prominent in the 1970's with the publication of Herber's (1970) book, Teaching Reading in the Content Areas where Herber distinguished between literacy development as reading instruction and literacy development to support subject matter learning (Alvermann & Phelps, 1994; Ruddell, 2001). Much of the work in this area was based on developments in cognitive psychology in the 1970's and 1980's, which provided insight into the relationship between a reader's background knowledge (schema) of a topic and the reader's ability to make sense of a text addressing that topic. The term "schema" refers to a set of cognitive structures of interrelated ideas and concepts built from a person's experience (see the 1989 ERIC Digest "Schema Activation, Construction, and Application"). According to some views of schema theory, a reader's existing knowledge of the subject matter is the single most influential factor in what he or she will learn from reading a text about that subject matter (Anderson, 1984; Steffensen, Joag-Dev, & Anderson, 1979).
Thus, theorizing and research in cognitive psychology led to the development of many instructional strategies that secondary teachers could use to increase students' comprehension of course materials. For example, the use of a pre-reading strategy such as an anticipation guide can serve to activate students' prior knowledge to improve comprehension. It can also enable students to confront misconceptions about the topic at hand, or to arrive at new understandings by revising or constructing new schema (Dufflemeyer, 1994). Numerous content area vocabulary development strategies focus on activating students' existing word/concept knowledge so that they may build on the schemata they have, or develop new schemata for new concepts (Alvermann & Phelps, 1994; Lenski, Wham, M. A. & Johns, 1999; Ruddell, 2001). While the focus on the cognitive dimension of reading has helped some students become more proficient readers of content area texts (Ruddell, 2001), some assessment data indicates the need to reconsider adolescent literacy and content area learning. Greenleaf, Schoenbach, Cziko, and Mueller (2001) note that there are still persistent gaps in student achievement between students who are members of the dominant culture and those who are not.
They also draw on data from the 1998 National Assessment of Educational Progress Reading Report Card. It indicates that although the percentages of eighth and twelfth graders scoring above the proficient level have increased (33% and 40% respectively), these percentages still suggest that high levels of literacy are not being attained by most secondary students. Some research indicates that an emphasis on reading solely as a cognitive process has not adequately addressed the needs of adolescent readers as they face learning from texts in the various subject areas at the secondary level.
ADOLESCENT LITERACY AND CONTENT READING A number of reading researchers and theorists believe the reading process to be much more complex, including not only the cognitive dimension addressed by schema theory and many existing reading strategies, but including a social dimension as well (e.g., Bloome, 1986; Goodman, 1996; Greenleaf, et al., 2001; Harste, 1994). The extent to which readers are able to construct meaning with texts is also based on the personal, interpersonal, and institutional contexts in which reading events occur. The work of sociolinguists, cultural anthropologists, and critical theorists has shown that it is not possible to separate classroom practices such as strategies for activating background knowledge from the larger social and cultural contexts in which the practices are enacted (e.g., Heath, 1983; Gee, 1996). Drawing from some recent studies, Moje, Young, Readence, & Moore (2000) call for a conception of adolescent literacy that includes adolescents' literacy practices beyond the secondary classroom, their expanded notion of text (i.e., the Internet, television, and magazines), and the relationship between literacy and the development of identity. But they also caution that the issues of teaching and learning in the context of secondary school content areas are still critical areas for research. For example, what constitutes best practices depends on many factors: how students perceive themselves as readers, what their interests are at the time, the interactions of teacher and student, of student and student, the classroom environment in which the strategy is being used, and how institutional structures shape daily events that occur in classrooms and schools. This fertile ground of literacy as a complex process and research about adolescent literacy and learning in secondary classrooms is providing a means for reinventing ways to develop students' academic literacies (Brynildssen, 2001).
A Good Model to Consider One model developed from the reconceptualization of content reading is Reading Apprenticeship (Schoenbach, Greenleaf, Cziko, & Hurwitz, 1999). This instructional framework is based on the dual notions of literacy as a complex cognitive and social process and of teaching as cognitive apprenticeship. In order for adolescents to move from being novices to experts in specific content area practices, an expert practitioner (the subject matter teacher) guides, models, makes explicit, and supports the novice in his or her development. Indeed, because ways of thinking, speaking, reading, and writing vary from discipline to discipline, some believe the most appropriate place for students to learn these discipline-specific discourse practices is from teachers who are already experts in these fields. Briefly summarized, Reading Apprenticeship involves teachers and their students as partners in a collaborative inquiry into reading and reading processes as they engage in subject-area texts. This instructional framework explicitly draws on students' strengths and abilities to provide crucial resources for the inquiry partnership... how we read and why we read in the ways we do become part of the curriculum, accompanying what we read in subject-matter classes [emphasis in original] (Greenleaf, Schoenbach, Cziko, & Mueller, 2001, p. 89). *Note: Reading Apprenticeship is of the best models I have found. Still, I think it doesn’t go as far as Immersion Literacy in providing students full and lasting literacy experience (dje).
REFERENCES
Alvarez, Marino C. & Risko, Victoria J. (1989). Schema Activation, Construction, and Application. Bloomington, IN: ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading, English, and Communication. [ED 312 611]
Alvermann, D. & Phelps, S. (1998). Content reading and literacy. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Anderson, R. C. (1984). Role of the reader's schema in comprehension, learning, and memory. In R. C. Anderson, J. Osborn, & R. J. Tierney (Eds.), Learning to read in American schools: Basal readers and texts (pp. 243-257). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
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Gee, J. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses (2nd ed.). London: Falmer Press.
Goodman, K. (1996) On reading. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. [ED 394 134]
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Steffensen, M. S., Joag-Dev, C., & Anderson, R. C. (1979). A cross-cultural perspective on reading comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 15(1), 10-29.
