Teaching Disciplinary Literacy to Adolescents - Annotated Bibliography Example

BIBLIOGRAPHY ANNOTATED Name: Course: Tutor: Date: Bibliography Annotated Shanahan, T. & Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching Disciplinary Literacy to Adolescents: Rethinking Content- Area Literacy. Harvard Educational Review, 78(1), 40-59. Part 1 In this peer review, the authors argue that disciplinary literacy should be a focus of secondary and middle school settings. Disciplinary literacy, defined as advanced literacy instructions, found within the content area classes like social studies, math, and science has been identified to frustrate secondary content area teachers. The argument based upon a study on disciplinary literacy that revealed how secondary content area teachers together with content experts read disciplinary texts, use comprehension strategies and subsequently teach the strategies to adolescent readers. This provides an avenue where the teacher and student are able to understand each other and share information helpful in teaching adolescent groups. Results from the study indicated that disciplinary experts approached reading in extremely different ways consonant with the expectation and norms of their disciplines. Suggestions from the findings recommend the adoption of different comprehension strategies when dealing with adolescents as content area experts, secondary teachers and experts in math, history and chemistry read their texts differently. The article also analyses the continuum of literacy learning from basic reading skills to more advanced reading skills. This analysis which indicate that learning becomes less useful as one moves along the continuum of literacy learning, leads the authors into identifying the reasons for the need of advanced literacy instruction in today’s generation. Additionally, a model of literacy progression, which is a pyramid that illustrates how the development of literacy progresses, is presented in the article. Shanahan and Shanahan offer different methods of addressing adolescent needs regarding literacy. They also explain how levels of adolescent student’s literacy have languished in recent years despite the improvement in younger student’s reading performance. They further explain how this is unfortunate since social changes increases the need for advanced literacy in America’s social, economic, and civic life. Part 2 “Teaching Disciplinary Literacy to Adolescents: Rethinking Content- Area Literacy” article is a study of disciplinary literacy in the different levels of school settings. The article’s educational implications are to identify which comprehension strategy would best fit a particular disciplinary reading task. These implications suggest that the literacy curriculum to be adopted is that which guides students to meet the demands of reading and writing in various disciplines rather than, the provided traditional concepts of content area reading. Relevant arguments based on the study’s results indicate that disciplinary literacy should be focused more in secondary and middle school settings. This implies that the traditional educational system adopted by teachers should be changed. Some of the teachers in secondary content area, become frustrated when teaching advanced disciplinary literacy’s. Additionally, the article gives a clear guideline of how students may be best prepared for reading, thinking and writing required by the advanced disciplinary coursework. The significance of the arguments is to identify the appropriate curriculum for secondary teacher preparation that would improve literacy teaching for middle and high school students. Furthermore, the article identifies the gaps that originate from the need of advanced literacy instructions and provides the strategies to be used in filling the gaps. This aids teachers to implement the appropriate comprehension strategy when working with adolescent students. Snyder, I. (2009). The Stories That Divide Us: Media (Mis) representations of Literacy Education. English in Australia, 44(1), 23. Part 1 The article by Ilana Snyder is a critic of the media representation of literacy education in Australia. It identifies how stories regarding Australia’s inadequacies of literacy education are regularly published in print- media over the previous decade. The author, who is also a literacy teacher, illustrates how literacy teachers experience accusation of lowered standards through their implementation of child centered approaches, which according to the media does not provide a strong foundation in basic literacy for children. Additionally, by providing an account of the media dissenting stories, the article reveals how these teachers are accused of denying young individuals access to the depths of literature when they put too much attention to popular cultures. Snyder provides different views and opinions regarding the representation of literacy teachers by the media through a book called the literacy wars. Snyder claims that the print media does not play their serious role, of providing the public with information as well as commentary on various issues that range in perspective. Instead, literacy education stories are the most dominant stories in the media especially in recent years. Furthermore, Snyder emphasizes that newspapers and other print media use eye catching titles in their stories, which make individuals who are not involved in education be mystified by the accusations, terminology and the counter arguments. The article also criticizes the media for publishing stories about grammar, reading, culture, gender, testing and technology that are dismissed as ramblings of loonies who are subscribers of the arcane doctrines of critical literacy. In addition to this, Snyder accuses the print media of making individuals believe that they have a literacy crisis in Australian schools and make the public undermine their confidence in literacy teachers. Part 2 Just like a coin, which has two sides, the article is a reflection of the other side of the representation of teachers and professionals of literacy’s. Its arguments, which defend literacy teachers from the accusations, brought forward by the print media reveal why and how misrepresentation of literacy education occurs. The educational implicational of this article is to obtain the lost identities of literacy educators, as well as the public confidence in these educators. The author presents views that explain the nature of the debate regarding representation of the literacy education by giving attention to historical foundations and polarized perspective. These views enable those who are affected by the media misrepresentation, gain confidence in their profession, have a common ground which will enable them defend their teaching practice and voice their opinions regarding the media take on them. The significance of the arguments presented as a media critic is to scrutinize the ongoing campaign on literacy education giving the arguments from the teacher’s perspective. The authors aim at correcting the views of the media and educating the public that, they should not be easily gullible into believing all that they hear and read, as most of it is just an exaggeration of the actual events. Unswoth, L. (1999). Developing critical understanding of the specialized language of school science and history texts: A functional grammatical perspective. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 42(7), 508-521. The article provides a brief introduction of the methods in which functional, grammatical concepts could be used so as to understand a school’s distinctive literacy demands in history and science texts. It also distinguishes everyday language from this grammar, examines the discourse forms and characteristics of content area learning and analyses the developing functional, grammatical knowledge as a critical literacy tool. The main idea or view of the article is that of demonstrating the practicality of a language’s functional, grammatical description in understanding the various difficulties students face with school science and history texts specialized language. Unswoth explains and illustrates some of the functional, grammatical concepts based on how a functional description of language can reveal the ways in which grammatical choices influence how and what meanings are conveyed. Additionally, he samples some aspects of functional descriptions of language that continually influence professional development for teachers in Australia especially in the content area literacy development. Through the study, the author argues that although functional descriptors of language are not sufficient resources for improving content area learning and literacy, they yield a practical, productive impetus towards an improved teaching and learning practice. The writer argues that grammatical choices are made to position readers in situations, which they accept interpretations as indisputable and unproblematic after interpreting the article’s events and distinguishing deduction as facts. Part 2 Coming onto the second part of this annotated bibliography, the article “developing critical understanding of the specialized language of school science and history texts” contains arguments that are essential in the development of a better understanding regarding the specialized language used in school science and history texts. Through analyzing and demonstrating the practicality of functional, grammatical descriptions, Australian teachers, are prepared to address the interconnections of learning in content areas as well as controlling grammatical forms that communicate and construct knowledge in those content areas. The article demonstrates how students with experienced language use; tend to be more familiar with distinctive grammatical features that enable them to have a benefit in accessing specialized knowledge constructed in the written grammatical forms. The educational implication of the article’s key argument involves the development of literacy’s needed by students from different backgrounds, to negotiate effectively school learning. Additionally, the author provides the ways through which functional, grammatical concepts are used to understand distinctive literacy demands of school history and texts linked to science for practical application. These provisions enable teachers to adopt the most convenient method of teaching, which involves learning how to use description of languages based on systemic functional linguistics. For teachers this is beneficial since it enables them address the needs of their students in a manner that is conventional. This means that they use modern ways of approaching problems and solving them, which reduces teacher-student conflict from arising. Read More