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Adolescent Literacy
VUE Number 3, Spring 2004
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EXCERPT:
Literacy in the Academic Disciplines and the Needs of Adolescent Struggling Readers
By Carol D. Lee
Carol D. Lee is Associate Professor, African American Studies, at Northwestern University.
> Complete Biography
> Full Article
"Disciplinary literacy" – the ability to understand, critique, and use knowledge from texts in content areas – is the primary conduit through which learning in the academic disciplines takes place. One way to develop this ability is to draw on the "cultural funds of knowledge" that youths already possess.
Iwish to focus here on the demands on adolescents to develop the ability to understand, critique, and use knowledge from texts in a number of different academic content areas. I refer to these abilities as disciplinary literacy and I submit that they are the primary conduits through which learning in the academic disciplines takes place.
The work of the discipline of history, for example, consists of reconstructing acts of the past into a narrative that people from different perspectives can debate about. This work requires the careful and principled examination of a variety of primary source documents, the ability to both understand and critique the unexamined assumptions found in historical summaries such as those found in history textbooks, and the ability to communicate both orally and in writing one's reconstruction of the past from such work (Wineburg 1991). Even in mathematics, not usually thought of as an arena in which reading and writing play key roles, research has described ways in which literacy serves important ends Ð such as allowing newspaper readers to understand the significance of statistics and numbers referred to in the news, rather than simply be dazzled by their presence (Paulos 1995; Borasi & Siegel 2000).
Despite the central role of literacy in learning all subjects, there is evidence that many high school students are struggling readers. Even students reading at grade level, on the whole, do not show proficiency in comprehending the complex texts they should be encountering in high school content area classes.
The Difficulty of Defining the Problem
Documenting and understanding the pervasive problem of high school students' lack of reading skills is tricky. The best source for national data is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). On the most rigorous reading tasks of NAEP, very few seventeen-year-olds score at a proficient level. In 1999, 8 percent of Whites, 2 percent of Latino/as, and 1 percent of Blacks scored at or above proficiency (Campbell, Hombo & Mazzeo 2000).
These findings have been critiqued, based on the claim that students have no vested interest in completing or doing well on NAEP exams, as there are no personal consequences for their levels of performance. Yet, there are no other standardized instruments used widely at the high school level that capture the demands of reading literary, historical, or scientific texts according to the distinctive norms of each discipline. This deficiency may be a testimony to the nation's fundamental lack of interest in or commitment to this level of literate competence among its citizens.
Archives
Adolescent Literacy
VUE Number 3, Spring 2004
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
EXCERPT:Literacy in the Academic Disciplines and the Needs of Adolescent Struggling Readers
By Carol D. Lee
Carol D. Lee is Associate Professor, African American Studies, at Northwestern University.
> Complete Biography
> Full Article
"Disciplinary literacy" – the ability to understand, critique, and use knowledge from texts in content areas – is the primary conduit through which learning in the academic disciplines takes place. One way to develop this ability is to draw on the "cultural funds of knowledge" that youths already possess.
Iwish to focus here on the demands on adolescents to develop the ability to understand, critique, and use knowledge from texts in a number of different academic content areas. I refer to these abilities as disciplinary literacy and I submit that they are the primary conduits through which learning in the academic disciplines takes place.
The work of the discipline of history, for example, consists of reconstructing acts of the past into a narrative that people from different perspectives can debate about. This work requires the careful and principled examination of a variety of primary source documents, the ability to both understand and critique the unexamined assumptions found in historical summaries such as those found in history textbooks, and the ability to communicate both orally and in writing one's reconstruction of the past from such work (Wineburg 1991). Even in mathematics, not usually thought of as an arena in which reading and writing play key roles, research has described ways in which literacy serves important ends Ð such as allowing newspaper readers to understand the significance of statistics and numbers referred to in the news, rather than simply be dazzled by their presence (Paulos 1995; Borasi & Siegel 2000).
Despite the central role of literacy in learning all subjects, there is evidence that many high school students are struggling readers. Even students reading at grade level, on the whole, do not show proficiency in comprehending the complex texts they should be encountering in high school content area classes.
The Difficulty of Defining the Problem
Documenting and understanding the pervasive problem of high school students' lack of reading skills is tricky. The best source for national data is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). On the most rigorous reading tasks of NAEP, very few seventeen-year-olds score at a proficient level. In 1999, 8 percent of Whites, 2 percent of Latino/as, and 1 percent of Blacks scored at or above proficiency (Campbell, Hombo & Mazzeo 2000).
These findings have been critiqued, based on the claim that students have no vested interest in completing or doing well on NAEP exams, as there are no personal consequences for their levels of performance. Yet, there are no other standardized instruments used widely at the high school level that capture the demands of reading literary, historical, or scientific texts according to the distinctive norms of each discipline. This deficiency may be a testimony to the nation's fundamental lack of interest in or commitment to this level of literate competence among its citizens.
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