The challenges of professional development in content area literacy
Date
2014
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Increasing the amount of quality interaction with texts is vital to the improvement of adolescents' literacy skills. This portfolio reports my investigation into the best strategies for high school teachers to utilize in improving adolescent literacy skills as well as the most effective ways to train content area teachers in these strategies. First, my review of the literature revealed that instructional strategies which supply students with background knowledge, set a purpose or focus for reading, and provide ample opportunity for interaction and discussion of the text are most beneficial for adolescent learners. One such method that met these criteria was the Listen-Read-Discuss heuristic, developed by Manzo and Casale (1985), coupled with Paired Reading as described by Rasinski and Hoffman (2003). Based on my findings, I designed a teacher training schedule and materials incorporating this approach in order to increase students' exposure to challenging texts in several content area classrooms. Through subsequent analysis of teachers' lessons, feedback from individual participants, surveys and a focus group discussion, I created a new training protocol based on online training modules. Three teachers (one science, one social studies and one English) in my high school volunteered to complete the modules, and implement lessons with their classes for one semester. My analysis of these results, and an additional review of the professional development literature, revealed that initial teacher buy-in seemed to have been achieved through the online training and professional development that I provided. However, even though the teaching strategies were carefully chosen and based on sound research, implementation with teachers did not result in a high level of fidelity because the online modules did not provide all the necessary facets of effective professional development. The lack of face-to-face interactions, and long-term, ongoing collaboration did have a negative impact on the fidelity of implementation of this strategic instruction. Based on these findings, I made recommendations for future professional development endeavors. My original intent for this project was to implement a strategy-based intervention with the goal of improving student literacy through increased quality and amount of text interaction. The final outcome was a better understanding of the complexities of implementing teacher training and change from a leadership perspective, and knowledge of what works--and what does not work--when training teachers.