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Since 1995, the Strategic Literacy Initiative has been engaged, together with diverse communities of secondary teachers, in creating research-based instructional solutions to the problem of low adolescent literacy.

Because adolescents are developing literacy proficiencies within social, academic, and cultural worlds, and because teachers interact with young people in varied instructional contexts and across content areas, the models SLI develops are designed to be flexible and context-sensitive.

Our research centers on one key question with several important conditions:

• How can we provide diverse adolescents with the means to participate successfully in the complex literacy practices they encounter in school and beyond
  • while maintaining (and increasing) students' access to a challenging academic curriculum,
  • while supporting a heterogeneous and diverse learning environment,
  • while building on teachers' existing knowledge and subject-area expertise, and
  • while building on students' diverse funds of knowledge and expertise.

From early student case studies and a pivotal study in a single high school, our research has now expanded to federally funded experimental research on a national scale.

SLI’s Research Base

The SLI program of research, under the direction of Cynthia Greenleaf, SLI's Co-Director and Director of Research, involves ongoing cycles of research, design, innovation, and study. Our work draws on and contributes to theories in three areas:

• literacy and learning,
• adolescent literacy development, and
• teacher learning and change to support effective literacy development in content area classes.

These theories have been developed over several decades of empirical research, both quantitative and qualitative.

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