Think about our "Reality Check"/Anticipation Guide in class & the Literacy Nation video we watched. So many powerful statistics, professional opinions, and research-based reports. Take into account the information we learned from reading the IRA Position Statement as well. We ask ourselves...
Is there an adolescent literacy crisis?
What impact, if any, does this have on me as a future adolescent educator?
I believe there is an adolescent literacy crisis and that the impact on future educators is massive (and growing). What are your thoughts? Why?
This is an essential topic as we all develop as educators.
ReplyDeleteI also believe there is an ongoing adolescent literacy crisis. While embedded literacy content strategies and access to literacy instructors has helped develop students' overall literacy, there's still much to improve. Some of the statistics in the video were startling. If literacy is not made a larger priority, our students will be less prepared to live in the world we've created.
As an educator, I have a responsibility to help my students achieve their full potential within the classroom and beyond. Obviously student achieve is huge. I will have to instruct students that may truly struggle with reading fluency. In order to tackle complex content materials, being able to read, interpret, and discuss a variety of texts is an essential skill. I expect that I will often have to help my students continue to develop basic reading fluency before we can delve deeper into content or more specific Social Studies lit strategies. This may require me to change my classroom structure in order to accommodate varying levels of fluency and English language comprehension. I hope through early interventions, continued focus in the primary levels, and additional school-wide literacy support, our students will develop stronger literacy skills from a younger age.
As a Social Studies instructor especially, I think it's important that my students can connect to current events. We live in an increasingly connected world. The ways we now communicate and share information requires a more defined technological/digital literacy. In order to truly participate in current events, students must be able to comprehend a stunning amount of information across multiple devices and formats. As an instructor, it's important than I can recognize and participate in established and newly emerging forms of literacy. Keeping current with technology is one way that I can help my students develop the essential skills they need to participate in 21st century society.
Without continuing to evolve our own practices, it will be difficult to adequately prepare our students for both specific content literacy and the world beyond our classrooms.
Brittany,you make a good point with your comment regarding the varying levels of fluency and English language comprehension. We've begun to discuss the definition of literacy and how it impacts each discipline, but the need to differentiate to meet ALL learners needs is yet another essential component to best practices.
DeleteI could not agree with you more Brittany and Mrs.Murray. There is an epic crisis at hand, and as a future educator, parent, and citizen I do feel it is our duty to help save our children from themselves. Meaning with the constant, instant access to media and different forms of literacy (especially forms that are not fact based and or educational) we need to help the future children learn to read with caution. It is our job to instill in them that what they read does not always bare truth, and to always question. As a human, and a future educator it is my duty to make sure that every child reaches their potential, but also fully knows what their full potential is-( like you said Brittany). I think that in todays age it is easy to let students access social media, texts, fb etc- in a way that is positive and productive. For example blogs :) They are a great way for students to be social, which is what they want. But to be social in a way that can be monitored. On my Wednesday class, my professor mentioned a school that placed full length mirrors everywhere(hallways, classrooms, bathrooms etc) and the discipline level dropped drastically. The idea behind the mirrors is that when you see yourself fully you change how want to display the best version of you. Blogs are a great way to recreate this- a blog- a digital selfie :)
ReplyDeleteI love your example of the full length mirror and the connection to made to literacy (digital) selfies! I am definitely bias when it comes to blogging. It is a great way to self-reflect and collaborate with peers outside of the classroom. It brings outside literacies into the classroom.
DeleteAlthough our focus in this class and the question at hand is in regards to adolescent literacy, I believe the crisis begins at the elementary level and stems from failures to address society's rapid technological advances. Our primary students show a lack of engagement in the tangible academic books they interact with in school. There exists a disconnect between what our youth find engaging and what is offered in the classroom. This combined with the psychological affects that new technology has had on children (ie. shorter attention spans) can have a negative impact on a child who may also be struggling with reading. This crisis has and will continue to carry over into adolescent education courses that require more concentration, academic fluency, and critical thinking skills. If educators and classrooms across America cannot maintain pace with fast-paced technological and social progression it would be unfair to expect students to revert back to methodical practices that are irrelevant. As teachers we must find ways to promote literacy within content-area courses in a way that is relevant to all of our 21st century learners. This means incorporating social media, blogs, webinars, podcasts, tablets, etc. I believe it is okay to 'think big' in terms of changes to the way we educate. These bigger advances can be accomplished through a series of smaller victories that begin with high-quality technology training for our teachers.
ReplyDeleteAlex, you make a great point at the end of your entry regarding "training for teachers". Ongoing professional development (combined with self-reflection and assessment) is key to incorporating best practices into instruction.
DeleteI guess it would be hard to say, “there is no literacy crisis.” But it might be even harder to say, “There is a single literacy crisis.” After all, literacy has been on the rise, both globally, and in this country, for a very long time. There are illiterate humans in the world still, sure, but the illiterate are a smaller proportion of the world population than they were before, so there’s that…I would say that there’s not one particular crisis—this thing involves a whole confluence of many intersecting factors, none of them wholly reducible to a single solution…Why should we expect the whole complex of intersecting and diverging literacy crises to all have a single unified solution? It would be pretty amazing if they did.
ReplyDeleteWe could probably assume that the potential utility of literacy is greater than it had been prior to what might be called “the internet age.” But this is simply because accessibility of information is so great. But we should note some areas of concern before we go ahead and get too giddy about just what it all means. Even for the more advanced nations, and particularly the superpowers (past, present, and aspiring) among us, greater access to information doesn’t equal higher quality information. The ability to find more is not equivalent to being predisposed to finding better information, or to even know good information when you see it. And that seems to me to be one of the real socio-political issues regarding literacy—it’s the issue of critical thinking.
Now, what does the crisis in literacy mean in terms of the academic disciplines? Well, the academic disciplines are extremely specialized, and this specialization has led to great advances in many fields. How much should we require students to be “jacks of all trades and masters of (n)one?” Do we really expect every student to leave high school equally capable of performing very well in any one of the huge set of possible career paths? And how well is well enough? Disciplinary literacy could reasonably be viewed as being essentially the same thing it has always been—with a few new technologies thrown in, sure—but it’s still just the capacity to develop, to hone a skill set…and you don’t do it in a vacuum—you’re presumably given both the necessary access to appropriate information, as well as the requisite guidance from “the initiated” in a given field—specialists who came before.
As long as you have basic literacy, you theoretically have the capacity to develop further skills, and become specialized in some field or other…We aren’t all being asked to become computer programmers, are we? Engineers? Accountants? Scientists? Neurosurgeons? The skill set that is needed to “be able” to pick something up is, at its core, rather basic. It’s the specialization that is often lacking when we talk about the “jobs of the future.” But of course, a kid who can’t read or write probably isn’t going to be writing computer code anytime soon, or coming up with new vaccines, or curing cancer. Are we surprised about that at all? First thing’s first: basic literacy is key…but beyond that, people still need to be critical thinkers, at the least for socio-political reasons…and they need to become somehow specialized in a field of interest that they could find professionally, if not personally, rewarding.
ReplyDeleteIn theory, access to information has skyrocketed, and in some senses we’re tempted to say we haven’t kept up. But this is a bit of an oversimplification. Technology has advanced rapidly, no denying that…yet we act surprised that the proportion of the population that has currently developed the capacity to actually benefit from that influx of accessible information has lagged behind the rate of the technological boom itself, and we might note, fearfully, that even amongst those who could benefit, not all necessarily do. This is also all presuming a lot about what it means to benefit, and what it means to be capable.
And aside from all that, we should bear in mind that technological advances do not follow the same dynamics as human society in general. Would we be especially surprised that the printing press did not immediately cause a perfectly correlated increase in literacy and education level? It shouldn’t be that surprising if these things advance at their own pace, for innumerable reasons, and some of these reasons are rather complex… These things just happen—new technology emerges, we play catch up, and repeat…Isn’t this how it goes? Is there a crisis? Of course—there’s always a crisis. That’s what keeps things interesting. In any case, there’s no way around it but through it.
Seamus, thank you for such a thought-provoking and well written reply. You make some powerful points and strong arguments. What one statement resonated with me?
Delete"In any case, there’s no way around it but through it."
Hopefully you'll be armed with effective tools that help you and your students navigate this "crisis".
There is an adolescent literacy crisis. In the past, literacy was limited to print. Educators were able to instruct and teach their students proper literacy in the classroom because the amount of literacy in the world was restricted. When the Internet came into existence and became global, the policing of literacy was eliminated. Currently, literacy is changing rapidly because of the digital age and new forms of literacy are constantly developing. Now that anyone can be “in print,” society must accept that print is no longer reserved for academically sound material. Educators need to move to educate adolescents on the various forms of literacy and show them how to recognize academically sound material outside of the classroom. As a future adolescent educator, I need to be aware of the various forms of literacy so that I can show my students how to successfully navigate the complex world of literacy.
ReplyDeleteJoe, I agree, determining the validity and reliability of sources is an essential 21st century literacy skill that needs to be modeled and explicitly taught.
DeleteThe idea that there is a crisis suggests something sudden or new. While it is true that the internet age has coming roaring at us in a very short period of time, education should always be evolving to meet the needs of society. Literacy is of particular importance because it represents how we communicate. This includes communication for exchange of ideas and information, needs, desires, concepts and strategies, ideas and innovations. Literacy is at the center of all education and should be actively targeted to ensure children are prepared to enter society as fully functioning adults.
ReplyDeleteThe specific focus on teaching specific literacy in a variety of academic disciplines represents a change in attitude towards teaching. Students are no longer considered strict consumers of education. It is not good enough to spoon feed them facts and have them regurgitate to demonstrate proficiency. There is so much information that not everyone can be expected to an expert across the board. But if children are taught to gather and process information on their own, the whole world of knowledge becomes open to them. I think this new approach to education with emphasis on multiple literacies represents a natural evolution in the keeping education responsive to cultural advancements.
Thank you for your thoughts, Myra. Your statement, "...if children are taught to gather and process information on their own, the whole world of knowledge becomes open to them," reminds me of the Chinese proverb, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." It is so important, as educators (& parents) to teach our students/children how to "fish". The result? Life-long learners & responsible, literate citizens.
ReplyDeleteI confess, prior to our first EDI 531 class, I had not given enough consideration to the word “literacy,” much less the condition of American literacy, and certainly not the more specific, current American adolescent literacy trends on academic performance and future global contributions. I was aware of certain elements, or perhaps better referred to as the “symptoms” of the problem. For example, students tend to struggle more with the reading section of the SAT than the math section, lengthily worded math problems tend to stump students who understand the necessary calculations, students read less for leisure today than in the past, and student verbal communication is not as vocabulary rich or grammatically sophisticated as in previous decades. I knew advances in technology (abbreviated, acronymic, grammatically incorrect text messaging), hectic national culture, and changing family dynamics were a part of the problem. Two working parent households unfortunately and unavoidably, in some cases, leads to less parental/guardian/mentor guidance and modeling, meaning less exposure to adult language use at dinner table conversations and fewer bed times stories. And I fear the nation is only going to become more overwhelming and demanding of everyone’s times, energy, and emotions.
ReplyDeleteBut, until this course, I had not yet connected all of my observations and analysis led understandings together under one categorical name, literacy. I now know that these trends are the result of a literacy crisis in America, that this crisis is not the sole responsibility or blame of early elementary grade level instruction (as I and other leaders of the country had previously believed), and that these typically permanent handicapped literacy patterns reduce student likelihood of achieving goals to their optimal potential, harming the future of the world.
The teaching of literacy techniques specific to all disciplines is necessary as all content areas have their own unique take on literacy. For example, the structure of writing math word problems and full-sentenced mathematical responses is different from the procedures and considerations involved in writing and analyzing a primary historical source. An understanding and ability to use these literacy skills is required to fully grasp and effectively execute within those subjects. Continued literacy instruction throughout all education grade levels is important not only to further literacy skills in general and within the specific disciplines, but to teach the fluid nature, variability, and cross-discipline similarities in applicability of these strategies to many contexts so that students may apply them effectively in all encounters throughout their lives.
Continued on next post because of maximum allotment of characters...
As a future high school biology teacher, I am now more aware of the importance of incorporating scientific literacy instruction into my curriculum. Science literacy has unique traits in terms of the condensed and fact-packed design of scientific sources, intended to provide the most detailed information as possible into the fewest number of pages of a scientific journal. Not to mention long, complex, Latin influenced words that many refer to as a foreign language. This makes the writing of scientific texts seem against proper English rules taught in student’s other classes. It also makes the comprehension of such texts difficult. I will need to spend a decent amount of time teaching students how to extract the necessary information from such compact, and often considered boring, forms of literacy. In order for students to understand the content of my biology class to the best of their ability and properly execute the elements of the subject in preparation for further education and a career in the subject, whether they intend to pursue that path or not I will have given the tools necessary for the consideration of that path, the teaching of scientific literacy will be essential throughout my curriculum. It is almost as important as the information itself, without the ability to comprehend and effectively utilize this information, what good is teaching it? Although, as literacy continues to decline in the United States, the more time and effort I need to spend on literacy instruction will likely increase. And time is the limited, short-supply currency of a teacher.
ReplyDeleteImproving the scientific literacy of my students could not only increase their affinity for the subject, but also improve their likelihood of pursuing a scientific career, prepare them for further education in scientific programs and possibly increase positive scientific contributions, improving the world. Although, I confess, I am being a little overly enthusiastic and optimistic. It may take these daily kinds of pep talks in order to overcome my frustrating future literary struggling classes.
Finally, I wanted to note that the literacy crisis will not only impact my life as an adolescent educator, but my life in general. How the world would change if American literacy continues to decline!? Signs and commercials may become simpler in their vocabulary choices and publicly intended writing may become dumb-down (for lack of a more appropriate phrase). Other countries will continue to surpass the United States in academic performance (although I take some of the current statistics on this topic with a grain of salt), further passing professions and advances to other nations. America will fall farther behind. Fewer scientific advances may be made as America contributes less to the profession. I’ll stop the horror there. You get the idea. In other words, the adolescent literacy crisis has and will continue to impact most aspects of my life.
Thanks for your comments, Lauren! Very thorough. You asked a great question and made an important point when you wrote, "...without the ability to comprehend and effectively utilize this information, what good is teaching it?" This is so spot on! Evidence of student learning is essential in every discipline. The only way this is possible is to embed literacy instruction into your content. Only then will students be able to understand and apply the content knowledge.
ReplyDelete