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SLI Contact Information: Ruth Schoenbach Cyndy Greenleaf Jana Bouc
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Literacy Learning Cases as Catalyst for Secondary Content Teachers' Professional DevelopmentSubmitted for publication in "The Exchange" [SRIG/IRA Newsletter] April 17, 1998 Ruth
Schoenbach, Project Director, Strategic Literacy Initiative, WestEd
Background
| "Why Literacy Learning Cases"? | Theory
of Generative Professional Development |
The Strategic Literacy Initiative1 is a multi-year professional development effort initiated in 1995 by the HERALD Project of WestEd.2 Its goal is to support middle and high school subject-area teachers to help their students become successful readers of academic texts by building the confidence, motivation, knowledge, and strategies they need to do so. We work toward this goal by designing and studying the impact of literacy-focused professional development materials and processes. Based on prior work with high school teachers in the San Francisco Unified School District, the HERALD Project initiated the Strategic Literacy Network in Fall 1988 for secondary teachers who are concerned about their students' low levels of reading comprehension. Over thirty middle school and high school English and Social Studies teachers from site-based teams, representing five Bay Area school districts, currently participate in the Network. Network teachers receive stipends for their participation in monthly meetings over the course of the academic year. Teams have the option to continue with the Network in subsequent years, even as new teams of teachers join. Why "Literacy Learning Cases"? The center of professional development for the Strategic Literacy Network is a guided and carefully structured inquiry process, or "cycle of inquiry," built around what we call "literacy learning cases." These literacy learning cases--video and text-based "close-ups" of one or two ninth grade students struggling with and making sense of various texts--give teachers a chance to hear students talking about their reading histories and habits, and to see students reading and responding to an interviewer's questions about their reading. The literacy learning cases we are developing and field testing with the Strategic Literacy Network focus on students' performance rather than teachers' performance. The model for these cases is based on earlier work (Reilly, Hull, & Greenleaf, 1993) in developing multimedia and print-based "learning cases," collections of student work, excerpts from interviews, and classroom observations of students' problematic literacy performances. The literacy learning cases provide an in-depth perspective into student reading and reasoning that teachers are unlikely to otherwise have, given the high student-to-teacher ratios in most public secondary schools. These cases not only provide teachers with a window into students' reading "errors" and challenges, but also provide a closer look at the strengths and theories about reading which students use to make sense of school texts and reading practices. For example, in many of the cases, teachers see students read recreational expository texts, such as magazine articles about sports or music stars. By analyzing the reading strategies and strengths students bring to their recreational reading, teachers are able to generate ideas for building on these strengths to help students understand the expository texts assigned in school. Across the varied cases, teachers have the opportunity to see that students approach and read different texts quite differently, that reading is situational, and that students' reading of one text will not demonstrate the full range of reading strategies and skills they may actually have at their disposal. The Cycle of Inquiry: Enacting a Theory of Generative Professional Development Our professional development design for the Strategic Literacy Network draws on our experience since 1988 creating learning opportunities for teachers in which they find the intellectual and social resources needed to make deep changes in their knowledge, beliefs, and classroom practice. This approach, which we have come to call "generative professional development" is designed to:
We attempt to enact these principles in the way we design and facilitate the monthly sessions of the Strategic Literacy Network. Each time we introduce one of the literacy learning cases, we include several or all of the activities described briefly below. Our hope is that this combination of activities will meet our criteria for generative professional development by increasing teachers' awareness of the complexity of the reading processes of both adults and students, by increasing teachers' sensitivity to the particular and varied types of challenges different texts present, and by offering concrete possibilities of ways to address these complexities in their classrooms "on Monday morning." 1) Reading Process Analysis: Through a variety of activities, Strategic Literacy Network participants explore their own and each others' reading processes and strategies. In our experience to date, this has been the most powerful catalyst for developing teachers' deep understanding that reading is an active process of construction and interpretation based on prior knowledge and experiences in the world and with texts. 2) Task and Text Analysis: By analyzing the purpose, schematic structure, and language features of the various texts that students are reading in the literacy learning cases, as well as the background knowledge and discourse knowledge required to understand these texts, teachers develop increased awareness of problems students may encounter in texts. 3) Analysis of Student Reading: By looking closely at student reading in the video and text transcripts--with regard to reading processes as well as the way the students deal with the structures, language features, and knowledge demanded by the text--teachers develop increased ability to understand their own students' literacy performances. 4) Classroom Intervention Planning: Through a variety of means, including teacher-to-teacher exchange of teaching approaches, common lesson planning, experience and practice with promising interventions, and reading and discussion of research, teachers gain competence with a repertoire of approaches as well as confidence in their ability to draw from this repertoire in response to specific needs. We are currently finishing the first year of the Strategic Literacy Network, and are still constructing new literacy learning cases from our data on the reading performances of thirty ninth-grade students. We are learning a great deal about the powerful and problematic aspects of this approach to teachers' professional development. A research grant from the Spencer/MacArthur Foundations' Professional Development Research and Documentation Program provides support for us to study the ways in which teachers' knowledge, beliefs, and classroom practice are affected through their participation in this learning community. We look forward to learning from colleagues engaged in similar efforts. For further information contact: Ruth Schoenbach Cyndy Greenleaf The Strategic Literacy
Initiative, WestEd
Background
| "Why Literacy Learning Cases"? | Theory
of Generative Professional Development |
1 The Strategic Literacy Initiative is supported by The Stuart Foundations, The Spencer/MacArthur Professional Development Research and Documentation Program, The Gabilan Foundation, and The San Francisco Foundation, as well as by contracts with schools participating in the Strategic Literacy Network. 2 WestEd is an educational research, development and technical assistance agency which was created from the merger of two of the ten original regional education laboratories (Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development and Southwest Regional Laboratory). The HERALD (Humanities Education, Research, and Language Development) Project joined WestEd in 1994.
© 1998 WestEd. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Hard copies of this paper are available for $4 each at WestEd. Contact Tom Ross at (415) 565-3044 or e-mail tross@wested.org and ask for "Literacy Learning Cases as Catalyst for Secondary Content" published April 1998.
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