Content Area Literacy Research Papers (original) (raw)

This course is designed to extend the literacy components introduced in Part I. Extended experiences will focus on maintaining a classroom structure that supports a reading-rich context in conjunction with writing-worthy opportunities for use in a variety of educational contexts. The course will feature strategies to teach habits of good readers, such as: activating schema, visualizing, questioning, determining importance, making inferences, monitoring for meaning, and synthesizing. In conjunction with explicit reading skills, methodologies of writing will also be taught, focusing on the process of writing through: art of individual conferencing with students, pre-writing, organization, writing a primary draft, multiple revisions, and final editing. The course will concentrate on using writing to support the development of reading skills and content area literacy.

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- Literacy, Teaching and Learning, Education, Teacher Education

. Creating hybrid spaces for engaging school science among urban middle school girls. American Educational Research Journal , 45(1), 68-103. The authors' posits that while girls drop less and receive higher grades than boys, they still seem to not identify with science. As they progress through high school, the interest level seems to diminish for girls, even more so for urban girls in high poverty areas. Girls in these poorer neighborhoods still outperform boys, and the authors seek to determine why this is the case. Taking a sociocultural theory approach, the authors indicate this conceptual framework by discussing the "socioeconomic contexts" that "frames girls' science experiences". The discussion of girls bringing discursive practices to the classroom from their social world based on out of school literacies allows the reader some insight on how the authors plan to design their research in the article. Substantive reference to Moje also lends evidence to the sociocultural perspective as Moje's writing deal with the very same subject as it related to literacies of young adolescents. Critical literacy and a focus on literacy studies seem to be the design of the study which is stated explicitly by the authors as they delve into how past research studies have not examined how identity construction is implemented by students in a community that creates new spaces for girls. Students are developing "identities in practice" as they engage in ways of learning and knowing in the science classroom. The authors have a collaborative relationship with the teachers at the school where the study takes placethey have previously been involved in teacher pre-service activities with some of the teachers; they all three are science educators; and they are middle class.

This book gives all teachers in grades 5-12 practical strategies for building the unique literacy skills that students need for success in their respective subject areas. Drawing from interviews with leading educators and professionals in science, mathematics, history, the arts, and other disciplines, the authors explain what disciplinary literacy is and discuss ways to teach close reading of complex texts, discipline-specific argumentation skills, academic vocabulary, the use of multimodal tools and graphic organizers, and more. User-friendly features include classroom materials, lesson plans, practice activities, and recommended online teaching videos. Purchasers get access to a Web page where they can download and print the book's 20 reproducible forms in a convenient 8 1/2" x 11" size.
NOTE: This book is currently be revised and a new second edition will be available in late 2023.

Scaffolding provides content-area teachers (CATs) with an effective means to integrate language instruction into content-area instruction for English language learners (ELLs). Data for this study were derived from 33 CAT discussions while they were pursuing professional development in an American university classroom over 32 weeks. The discussions yielded 408 scaffolding statements that were coded and analyzed. The findings identified linguistic, conceptual, social and cultural scaffolding as part of the CATs' personal practical knowledge. Also, the findings demonstrated that CATs' knowledge of cultural scaffolding is limited in comparison to other scaffolding strategies. The findings have an impact on the nature of ELL instruction and its effectiveness. r

This study examined the writing performance of 58 students with a history of specific language impairment, assessing them at ages 8, 11, 12, 14, and 16 to evaluate longitudinal tra- jectories of writing performance and relationships with oral language, reading, and handwriting fluency. At age 16, participants continued to experience problems with oral language and literacy:Their writing evidenced short texts, poor sentence structure, and difficulties with ideas and organi-zation. Concurrent measures of vocabulary and spelling were significant factors in explaining writ-ing performance. Handwriting fluency remained a particular difficulty for the current cohort and directly affected writing performance. Path analysis indicated that previous levels of literacy medi-ated the impact of oral language skills

- by Vince Connelly and +2
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- Discourse Analysis, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Literacy

A growing research base has examined the possibilities of makerspaces in education; however, there has been little exploration of how such innovations are folded into formal school structures, like English language arts classrooms. This article addresses this by following the formation of literacy classroom makerspaces in the Innovation School-an urban public high school organized around principles of making. Using ethnographic research conducted over the school's first two years, it traces how teachers integrated making into literacy instruction and how the contours of classrooms were reshaped by making's ideals and assumptions. In particular, it focuses on resulting shifts in the infrastructures of literacy education-the often-invisible mechanisms that support, sustain or undermine reading and writing in classrooms. Findings show how the interoperability of these literacy infrastructures with those of making produced frictions that had uneven consequences for students, at times reproducing forms of deficitization that making education is often purported to ameliorate. These outcomes elucidate possibilities and challenges for educational equity when literacy learning is refashioned in the image of innovations like making. They are also instructive for understanding how educators might imagine "innovation" otherwise, wresting it from experts and entrepreneurs and relocating it in the lived dynamics of classrooms.

- by T. Philip Nichols
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- Literacy, Educational Equity and Justice, Design thinking, STEM Education

As a result of looking specifically at the work of science teachers within two related studies, we have come to two important realizations that we explore in this article. First, we argue that disciplinary literacy instruction can (and likely should) have a place in elementary, middle, and high school settings, promoting early habits of mind and norms of practice that blossom into more specialized disciplinary skills in later grades. Second, we argue that it is in the layering and intermingling of basic, intermediate, and disciplinary literacy skills across K–12 grade levels that students build solid, sophisticated, and ultimately discipline-specific literacy skills.

- by Jacy Ippolito and +3
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- Literacy, Science Education, Professional Development, Teachers' professional development

This study investigated whether two groups of 6-year-old beginning readers taught to read by a phonics and by a “book experience” non-phonics approach would differ in reading
comprehension as well as the processes of word recognition. The two groups were matched for word recognition but despite this, the phonics taught children had higher reading comprehension.
Phonics taught children produced more contextually appropriate errors, and in both single word and text reading made more spoken attempts at reading unknown words. The non-phonics taught children had much faster reading reaction times to familiar words but they scored less in phoneme segmentation and nonword reading tasks. Compared with the nonphonics group, the phonics group spent more time in attempts at identifying unknown words
and this included using contextual information, which apparently resulted in more rehearsal of the meaning of the story text and hence better reading comprehension performance.

- by Vince Connelly
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- Cognitive Science, Literacy, Second Language Acquisition, Teacher Education

This piece discusses how to use the young adult novel The Hunger Games to plan literacy-based lessons that draw on a variety of core content (English, history, math, and science) and deepen students’ understandings of curricular content... more

This piece discusses how to use the young adult novel The Hunger Games to plan literacy-based lessons that draw on a variety of core content (English, history, math, and science) and
deepen students’ understandings of curricular content across
the school day.

- by Naomi Watkins and +1
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- Literacy, Content Area Literacy, English Language Learners

Background. While oral language seems crucial to written language development there has been relatively little research on explicit links between the two.
Aims. This paper reviews and explores the links between oral language skills and the development of writing with particular reference to children with specific language impairment (SLI).
Arguments. Children with SLI are poor at writing and we review evidence from our own and others work showing how oral language and oral vocabulary skills, in particular, are closely associated with written language production in this population. We detail a set of longitudinal analyses showing close relationships between oral language, writing, and other literacy related skills.
Conclusions. We conclude that oral language skill does constrain the development of writing. Children with SLI are very poor at writing. Whether this is due to their general language level or a problem in a specific area such as vocabulary, grammar, or spelling remains to be seen.
We discuss the implications for educational provision of this set of research findings.

- by Vince Connelly and +1
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- Discourse Analysis, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Developmental Psychology

The results of deciphering the middle text of the Rosetta Stone point to the fact that there are many details which cannot be found in the text written (inscribed) in ancient Greek alphabet. This conclusion proves the science awareness from the time of Thomas Young (1822) that the middle text was the original. On the basis of our research we can make this knowledge more precise with the conclusion that the pharaoh's decree from the middle text of the Rosetta Stone in original is written (inscribed) in the language of the ancient Macedonians with letters of the alive (living) masters of that time, i.e. with the official letters and language of the state that had been ruled by them for more than a century.

- by Basil Chulev
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- Philology, Languages, History, Ancient History
- by Eike Thuermann
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- Content Area Literacy

Literacy across the content areas has often signified a focus on helping future teachers navigate nonfiction texts and promote command of textual features and literary terms, yet these teachers also need to model critical insight that invites students to question information and purported facts that define their realities. Following a brief review of literature, we situate ourselves and our students. This article documents the pedagogical moves to introduce a graphic novel in a university Content Area Literacy course while also showcasing insightful responses from teacher candidates along the way. We argue that using a graphic novel and introducing it strategically to teacher candidates complicated their ideas about literacy engagement. Further, our work challenged teacher candidates to consider literacy practices, especially involving nonfiction texts, that are multidimensional and critical.

- by Rick Marlatt and +1
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- Critical Theory, Teacher Education, Comics Studies, Graphic Novels

It is commonly assumed that children with dyslexia are slower at
handwriting than other children. However, evidence of slow handwriting in children with dyslexia is very mixed. Thirty-one children with dyslexia, aged 9 years, were compared to both age-matched children and younger spelling-ability matched children. Participants completed an alphabet-writing task and a composition task on the surface of a digital writing tablet. Children with dyslexia wrote the same amount of letters per minute in the alphabet task but wrote fewer words per minute when composing their texts than children of the same age. Crucially, no differences were found between children with dyslexia and their same age peers for speed of handwriting execution, measured by the tablet, when writing the alphabet or composing their texts. However, children with dyslexia were found to pause within their compositions as often as the spelling ability matched group. Thus handwriting execution is not impaired in children with dyslexia. The slow writing that is typical of children with dyslexia is due to pausing more often when composing and is related to spelling ability. This may reflect processing problems in response to high
cognitive load through having to contend with spelling and composing concurrently.

- by Vince Connelly
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- Creative Writing, Discourse Analysis, Neuroscience, Psychology

A comparison was made of 10-year-old boys and girls who had learnt to read by analytic or synthetic phonics methods as part of their early literacy programmes. The boys taught by the synthetic phonics method had better word reading than the girls in their classes, and their spelling and reading comprehension was as good. In contrast, with analytic phonics teaching, although the boys performed as well as the girls in word reading, they had inferior spelling and reading comprehension. Overall, the group taught by synthetic phonics had better word reading, spelling, and reading comprehension. There was no evidence that the synthetic phonics approach, which early on teaches children to blend letter sounds in order to read unfamiliar words, led to any impairment in the reading of irregular words.

- by Rhona Johnston
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- Literacy, Education, Vocabulary, Reading

Man könnte das "Schreiben im Fach" -und was ist damit eigentlich konkret gemeint? -so begründen, dass Kinder und Jugendliche auf diesem Wege mehr Schreibgelegenheiten erhalten, um lebensbedeutsame Textkompetenzen zu erwerben. Gemäß dieser Perspektive würde das Schreiben im Fach dem Sprach-bzw. Deutschunterrichts zuarbeiten, dem im Sinne der arbeitsteiligen Schule in erster Linie die Verantwortung für die systematische Entwicklung literaler Kompetenzen zukommt. Diesen Effekt würde ich mehr als billigend in Kauf nehmen, aber in meiner Präsentation nicht weiter vertiefen. Mir geht es im Folgenden vielmehr darum, die Rechtfertigung des Schreibens aus den didaktischen Ansprüchen der sog. Sachfächer und den möglichen Auswirkungen auf Lernprozesse und -erfolge, d.h. auf den allgemeinen Schulerfolg herzuleiten und Strategien für erfolgreiches Schreiben im Fach zu skizzieren. Vielfach wird dem Schreiben eine grundsätzlich unter allen Bedingungen positive Wirkung auf Lernprozess und Lernerfolg zugeschrieben. Langer/Appleby (1987: 135) formulieren dies auf der Grundlage umfassender empirischer Studien so: Über alle Studien hinweg ergibt sich ein klarer Nachweis dafür, dass alle Unterrichtsaktivitäten, die mit Schreiben verbunden sind, (also jegliche der vielen Formen des Schreibens) zu erfolgreicherem Lernen führen als das Lesen oder andere Lernformen. Schreiben unterstützt das Lernen. Jenseits dieser Erkenntnis haben wir gelernt, dass Schreiben nicht Schreiben, nicht Schreiben ist. Unterschiedliche Schreibaktivitäten leiten Lernende zu unterschiedlichen Arten von Information, über die Information unterschiedlich zu denken und quantitativ und qualitativ unterschiedliches Wissen aus den Schreiberfahrungen mitzunehmen. (Übersetzung, E.T.) Dieses hier vorgetragene Charisma des Schreibens steht in scharfem Kontrast zur sachfachunterrichtlichen Wirklichkeit -ein Unterrichtsalltag, der dominant von Mündlichkeit (z.B. fragend-entwickelnde Methoden, Aushandeln von Arbeitsweisen und Bedeutungen in der Gruppenarbeit) geprägt ist und in dem Schreiben meist eine Hilfsfunktion für die Leistungsfeststellung und -bewertung sowie für die Organisation der Lehr-und Lernprozesse

A number of studies have shown, counter-intuitively, that skilled adult readers find it difficult to correctly relate phonemes to graphemes in written words. In most adults this is of little consequence. However, teachers are required to show children how to relate phonemes to graphemes when teaching reading. This study investigated whether a brief period of instruction would improve the ability of adults in this task. Results showed a general level of improvement relative to controls. Exposure alone to the task had no effect. Improvement for the instructed group was not very large and there was difficulty relating phonemes to graphemes which had more than one letter. It may be that trainee teachers need instruction to improve knowledge of grapheme phoneme correspondence so that they can pass such knowledge onto young readers.

- by Vince Connelly
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- Cognitive Psychology, Literacy, Teacher Education, Phonological Awareness
- by Karen Spector
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- Teacher Education, Adolescent Literacy, Embodiment, Content Area Literacy

Volume 5, Number 2 IJFLT: A free on-line, peer-reviewed quarterly journal dedicated to communicating research, articles and helpful information regarding language acquisition to support teachers as they endeavor to create fluent,... more

- by Cory Buxton
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- Science Education, Content Area Literacy, English Language Learners

In this research, we drew on a model of self-regulated learning (SRL) (Butler & Cartier, 2005; Cartier & Butler, 2004) to investigate student engagement in learning through reading (LTR) as situated in context. Our overarching goals were to enhance theoretical understanding about SRL as situated, identify patterns in self-regulated learning through reading (LTR) for secondary students within and across classrooms, and continue developing productive methodological strategies for investigating SRL and LTR. To those ends, we employed a mixed-methods design to find patterns within and across 31 classrooms at multiple levels of aggregation. Participants were 646 secondary students engaged in curriculum-based LTR activities. Findings were derived from two coupled assessments: A self-report questionnaire and a performance-based measure of LTR. We used frequency, factor analytic, and cluster analyses to create descriptive profiles of SRL (across emotion, motivation, cognition, and metacognition). Main findings were: (1) important mismatches between students’ self-reported LTR engagement and the demands of LTR activities; (2) four coherent profiles of LTR engagement (actively engaged; disengaged; high stress/actively inefficient; passive/inactively efficient), (3) moderate links between students’ self-reported LTR profiles and LTR performance; and (4) differences in SRL profiles that reflected individual-context interactions. We close by distilling implications for understanding, researching, and fostering SRL as situated within naturalistic settings.

- by Deborah Butler and +1
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- Literacy, Motivation (Psychology), Adolescent Literacy, Self-regulated Learning

We trace the differences in the historical development of content area reading and literature studies. This is an important first step because reading at the secondary level is heavily discipline-based, and the methods and activities associated with teaching literature vary considerably from those used to teach social studies, mathematics, and science. We also connect research and practice in content area reading and literature studies to principles of good teaching. Where useful, we qualify and elaborate on those principles that do not fit neatly into the overall scheme of instruction in content area reading and literature studies.

- by George G . Hruby and +1
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- Content Area Literacy, Literary studies, Reading Instruction in the Content Area, Disciplinary literacy practices
- by Gwynne Ellen Ash and +1
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- Science Education, Vocabulary, Vocabulary Learning Strategies, Vocabulary Learning

This article describes a recent practitioner-research study of secondary preservice teachers' development of literacy instruction in a content area literacy course at a large university in the Southwest United States. The study utilized a sociocultural approach that focused on discipline-specific literacy practices that define what it means to be literate within a content area. After sharing perceptions of their ability to use literacy practices to design effective literacy instruction in an open-ended survey, participants created a series of lesson plans by focusing on literacy practices they identified as vital to their disciplines in a text analysis assignment. Finally, participants completed a second survey following the unit and took part in semi-structured interviews. Qualitative content analysis was conducted on survey responses, essays, lesson plans, and transcribed texts. Findings conclude that a focus on disciplinary literacy practices invites social and cultural connections between the ways in which people make meaning and the contexts surrounding those operations, and that those practices inspire new kinds of instructional strategies designed to enhance literacy achievement.

- by Rick Marlatt
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- Literacy, Teacher Education, Content Area Literacy, Disciplinary Literacy

Using a national sample of students’ writing from the National Study of Writing Instruction, this study examines the current state of writing in the mathematics classroom and the extent to which enactments align with the intentions established in the research base and curricula articulated by NCTM and the CCSS–M. Over 3,000 writing assignments from 138 students in grades, 6, 8, 10, and 12 were analyzed for functions of writing and epistemic complexity—the degree to which they explained or justified mathematical understanding. Additionally, shortanswer assignments were analyzed qualitatively for patterns in teacher-assigned prompts and student responses. Analyses reveal enactments of writing in the mathematics classroom do not align with the intent articulated by the CCSS-M. Mirroring techniques from the literacy field, a method for scaffolding students’ improved ability to write about conceptual understanding in mathematics is discussed.

- by Yang Wang
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- Content Area Literacy, Disciplinary Literacy

1 Abstract: Literacy across the content areas has often signified a focus on helping future teachers navigate nonfiction texts and promote command of textual features and literary terms, yet these teachers also need to model critical insight that invites students to question information and purported facts that define their realities. Following a brief review of literature, we situate ourselves and our students. This article documents the pedagogical moves to introduce a graphic novel in a university Content Area Literacy course while also showcasing insightful responses from teacher candidates along the way. We argue that using a graphic novel and introducing it strategically to teacher candidates complicated their ideas about literacy engagement. Further, our work challenged teacher candidates to consider literacy practices, especially involving nonfiction texts, that are multidimensional and critical.

- by Rick Marlatt
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- Critical Theory, Sociology, Teacher Education, Comics Studies

Abstract This research examines phonics instruction on multi-touch display technology for collaborative learning. The paper provides a brief discussion of technology, collaborative learning and literacy instruction and then focuses on the design of a Phonics application using collaborative learning interactions. The paper discusses the methodology of a multi-phase evaluation of the usability and the instructional design of the application. A survey was used for the usability study and a focus group consisting of experts in the field of ...

- by Daniela McGivern
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- Literacy, Instructional Design, Educational Technology, Distance Education
- by MONICA KAECHELE and +1
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- Digital Literacy, Adolescent Literacy, Digital Media And New Literacies, Content Area Literacy

This article prompts ideas to support content-area teachers in their use of three types of web based learning environments - informational reading systems, interactive learning systems, and instructional reading systems - to engage... more

- by Julie Coiro
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- Digital Media, Adolescent Literacy, New Literacies, Content Area Literacy

The current study compares the responses and statements of English as a second language (ESL) and content area teachers in discussions about the instruction of English language learners (ELLs). A study on how these two sets of teachers understand the field is important because commonalities and differences in their opinions may have an impact on the effectiveness of their collaboration. Such collaboration has become essential given the increasing number of ELLs in U.S. public schools. The findings of the study highlight areas of commonalities that could serve as a foundation for ESL and content area teachers to initiate their collaboration. The findings also yield areas of differences in the teachers' responses, indicating clearly where support and bridge building are needed for collaboration to be sustained. Based on these results, recommendations are offered that aim to support ESL and content area teacher collaboration in ways that can help avoid problematic issues identified by teachers in the study. These include the relegation of ESL teachers to the personal assistant role, the sense of helplessness and isolation that content area teachers experience when working with ELLs in their classroom, and lack of advocacy efforts for ELLs.

- by Daniel Craig
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- Psychology, TESOL, Content Area Literacy, English language teaching

This conceptual review addresses the bifurcation of content area and disciplinary literacy by examining each as regimes of truth. We look specifically at the ways in which both approaches comprise, in Foucault's terms, " regimes of truth " within their respective epistemological domains. Following a brief history of adolescent literacy, extant research is considered. By employing a theoretical framework based on Foucault's notions of " connaissance " referring to a particular corpus of knowledge, and " savoir " or knowledge in general, research and discourse surrounding the current debate over content area literacy and disciplinary literacy are taken up to deconstruct stances within these domains with the aim of a reconstruction that captures the affordances of both. Suggestions for moving the field out of this binary through a collaborative focus on interdisciplinary approaches are discussed. Our purpose in this conceptual review is to address the bifurcation of content area and disciplinary literacy by examining each as regimes of truth (Foucault, 1978; Gore, 1993). To date, much of the discourse surrounding the contributions of content area and disciplinary literacy have conceptualized the domains as at odds with each other.

- by Judith M . Dunkerly
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- Michel Foucault, Content Area Literacy, Disciplinary Literacy

Situatedwithin the historical and current stateof writing and adolescent literacy research,
we conducted a systematic literature review in which we screened 2,871 articles to
determine the prevalent themes in current research on writing tasks in content-area
classrooms. Each of the 37 final studies was evaluated and coded using seven methodological
quality indicators. In this article, we further explore the quality analysis step of
the review. Specifically, we critique the relative strengths and weaknesses of the current
research in the area of content-area writing. Additionally, we identify exemplars for each
of our primary recommendations for rigorous literacy research.

- by Chyllis Scott, Ph.D. and +1
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- Writing, Content Area Literacy, Systematic Literature Review, Disciplinary Literacy

Does the type of reading instruction experienced during the initial years at school have any continuing effect on the ways in which adults read words? The question has arisen in current discussions about computational models of mature word-reading processes. We tested predicted continuing effects by comparing matched samples of skilled adult readers of English who had received explicit phonics instruction in childhood and those who had not. In responding to nonwords that can receive alternative legitimate pronunciations, those adults having childhood phonics instruction used more regular grapheme-phoneme correspondences that were context free and used fewer vocabulary-based contextually dependent correspondences than did adults who had no phonics instruction. These differences in regularization of naming responses also extended to some low-frequency words. This apparent cognitive footprint of childhood phonics instruction is a phenomenon requiring consideration when researchers attempt to model adult word reading and when they select participants to test the models.

- by Vince Connelly
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- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Developmental Psychology

The research aims to determine which alternative literacy types should be included in the Social Studies curriculum used in Turkey since 2018 The data sources of the research, in which the document analysis method from the qualitative research methods was used, are the 2018 Turkish Social Studies Curriculum (for primary school and middle school 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th grades), and the studies in the relevant literature. The curriculum was accessed from the official internet website of the Republic of Türkiye Ministry of National Education Board of Education and Discipline; literature studies were accessed through databases like WoS, SCOPUS, EBSCO, ERIC, ScienceDirect, Sage, Wiley, Google Scholar, and DergiPark. The data were analyzed with the content analysis. The research results concluded that competencies are mostly related to cultural literacy, scientific literacy, technology literacy, civic (citizenship) literacy, and global literacy skills. Additionally, when the attainments were evaluated separately for each class level (4th-7th grades), it was seen that mainly geographical literacy, historical literacy, scientific literacy, cultural literacy, civic (citizenship) literacy, and global literacy could be included. Based on the results, it is recommended to assess technology literacy, natural disaster literacy, critical literacy, and visual literacy as alternative literacy types.

- by Ilker Dere
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- Literacy, Social Studies Education, Visual Literacy, Media Literacy Education

Despite the growing body of literature emphasizing the specialized literacy practices within the disciplines, the literature concerning how to prepare preservice teachers for disciplinary literacy instruction is less clear. In this article, we present a mentorship model for content area teacher preparation that Steve (first author) developed and that we implemented in a university content literacy course. In this pedagogical framework, university faculty-i.e., historians, mathematicians, and scientists-mentor preservice teachers into modes of thinking, reading, and problem solving that are consistent with their disciplines. We focus here on presenting the model as a pedagogical innovation for literacy teacher educators, underscoring the need to build collaborative relationships across departments, colleges, and faculty to support preservice teacher literacy development.

- by Steven Kushner
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- Expertise, Adolescent Literacy, Communities of practice, Content Area Literacy
- by Dillon Crockett
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- Zoology, Science Education, Adolescent Literacy, Biology Education

We acknowledge the issue of demarcating literacies by presenting academic literacy instruction in a section that is separate from our presentation of adolescents’ informal learning around popular media texts in a digital world. We bridge these sections by reviewing research on adolescents’ identities, research that explicitly links in- and out-of-school experiences. In the final section of this chapter, we comment on the value of acknowledging in-school and out-of-school differences in adolescent literacies, while simultaneously pointing to why such categorizations can be deceptive and limiting for middle grades instruction.

- by Donna Alvermann
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- Literacy, Informal Learning, Adolescent Literacy, Middle School/Level Education
- by Julie Dockrell
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- Discourse Analysis, Cognitive Psychology, Literacy, Phonology

The dramatic and media arts afford opportunities for students to respond to children’s literature
in new and innovative ways, encouraging spaces of co-authorship and multimodality. Drawing
upon the fields of New Literacy Studies, multimodality and democratic authorship to enhance
children’s experience with literature, this paper compares two small studies—both of which used
arts and media-based resources. In this study we examined how grades four and five students
from two North American countries use the dramatic and media arts to co-author responses to
literature (fiction/nonfiction texts) and explored how these resources affected their content area
learning. Results revealed that the process of socially, modally and critically exploring literature
not only deepened students’ content area understandings, it gave these participants opportunities
to freely negotiate and voice their opinions, ultimately creating more equitable working spaces
for everyone involved.

- by Kari-Lynn Winters and +1
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- Drama In Education, Media Literacy, Multimodality, Content Area Literacy

This paper reports the results of a study of the relationship of robotics activity to the use of science literacy skills and the development of systems understanding in middle school students. Twenty-six 11-12-year-olds (22 males and 4 females) attending an intensive robotics course offered at a summer camp for academically advanced students participated in the research. This study analyzes how students utilized thinking skills and science process skills characteristic of scientifically literate individuals to solve a robotics challenge. In addition, a pre/post test revealed that course participants increased their systems understanding, t (21) ¼ 22.47, p < .05. It is argued that the affordances of the robotics environment coupled with a pedagogical approach emphasizing open-ended, extended inquiry prompts the utilization of science literacy-based thinking and science process skills and leads to increased systems understanding. ß

This study examined the writing performance of 58 students with a history of specific language impairment, assessing them at ages 8, 11, 12, 14, and 16 to evaluate longitudinal trajectories of writing performance and relationships with oral language, reading, and handwriting fluency. At age 16, participants continued to experience problems with oral language and literacy: Their writing evidenced short texts, poor sentence structure, and difficulties with ideas and organization. Concurrent measures of vocabulary and spelling were significant factors in explaining writing performance. Handwriting fluency remained a particular difficulty for the current cohort and directly affected writing performance. Path analysis indicated that previous levels of literacy mediated the impact of oral language skills.

- by Geoff Lindsay
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- Discourse Analysis, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Academic Writing

Basic reading skills need to be acquired early in a target language to allow students to make full use of the educational opportunities given to them in all their subjects. Children with low literacy skills entering the primary level at Grade 1 cannot assimilate as much knowledge at school as those who are already reading. Grade 1 to 3 is a critical time as those reading below the grade 4 level, internationally, are classified as non-readers, with Grade 1 being a crucial link. Phonetic skills are an important component of reading skills. This paper describes studies aimed at discovering how knowledgeable primary school students (Grades 1-3) were in their phonetic ability to 1) sound out the alphabet, 2) identify which letters were vowels, 3) sound the vowels correctly, and 4) spell simple three-letter words. Standardized (Mico Diagnostic Reading Test) and non-standardized (Alignment Test, Phonics Test) tests were used to determine the literacy and phonic levels of over 1,609 student...

- by Sylvia A Mitchell
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- Literacy, Vocabulary, Writing, Reading Comprehension

This practitioner article describes the recent implementation of critical media literacy (CML) activities in secondary teacher education at a large university in the Southwestern United States. Preservice teachers in a content area literacy course analyzed a variety of media coverage of events that occurred near their university. Using an analytical framework for approaching texts, images, and messages, preservice teachers practiced critical exploration of media sources and motivations while articulating hidden figures of power and authority behind the dissemination of content for public consumption. Highlighting the pursuit of independent media and the cultivation of intellectual self-defense, this "Voices from the Field" article shares curricular artifacts, along with student responses to media and reflections on their developing pedagogies, to show how future teachers developed CML skills in their preservice coursework.

As teachers tasked with educating our citizenry, we must be cognizant of our student's reading levels and cultural backgrounds and implement practices that scaffold and address the needs of every learner. To accomplish this it is... more

- by Todd Beach
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- History, Literacy, Information Literacy, Teacher Education