2008 Adolescent Literacy Predoctoral Fellows

Chandra L. Alston
Amy Crosson
Ivan Alex Games
Jill Jeffery
Deborah Kozdras
Dot McElhone
Julie Park
Jennifer Drake Patrick
Enid M. Rosario-Ramos
Stephanie Anne Schmier

2008 Predoctoral Fellows, Affiliation and Project Abstracts at Time of Award

Chandra L. Alston, Stanford University
Helping African American Students Write Well: Examining Effective Teacher Practices

Writing research, primarily done in the 1980s, led to better understanding of writing as a recursive social process and affected change in many language arts classrooms. However, more research is needed to determine what instructional practices around writing are effective in supporting students who struggle with writing, particularly African American students. The achievement gap in American schools is widely documented; this gap is especially wide with regard the writing achievement of African American students. As a group, African Americans scored in the lowest percentile across all grades tested on the 2002 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) writing exam and the 2007 NAEP writing exam scores continue to show a drop in the percentage of African American students at proficient between eighth and twelfth grade. This study investigates what teacher practices during the writing process support African American students in developing their writing and building a stronger identity as writers. This study is a case study of four middle school English/Language Arts teachers chosen from a larger pool of effective teachers based on value-added measures, and observational data from a prior study. Data includes pre- and post- essays, classroom observations, student survey data concerning their engagement and perceived writing ability, interviews with teachers and focal students, and student work to identify key practices that support development of writing and a writer’s identity among African American students. I will document three writing instruction cycles for each class over the course of one academic year. Initial coding of instructional practices will begin with known effective practices such as explicit instruction, modeling, and guided and independent practice. Classroom observations will also be analyzed for student responses to this instruction, teacher feedback, and teacher-student and student-student interactions. The successful practices documented here will be compared to those of teachers deemed less effective using value added measures in order to specify the nature and nuance of supportive instructional practices for African American students. Student work will be analyzed for quality using a holistic scoring rubric and compared to the pre- and post-writing samples. In addition, student work will be used to consider teacher feedback and student response to that feedback. Student interviews and surveys will be used to better understand student response to the instruction, interactions, and feedback given during writing. In addition, these data sources will provide information on how students feel about their ability to write as a result of the instruction, interactions, and feedback given. This work will add to our understanding of what supports struggling students in improving their writing and their sense of themselves as writers. This work holds implications for how we conceptualize writing instruction and can inform better preparation for pre-service teachers for the classroom and support current teachers in their practice. Though the aim of this study is not to pinpoint one best way of teaching writing, it aims to develop a better understanding of the ways we can support struggling writers, particularly African American students, to develop their writing skills and a writer’s identity.

Amy Crosson, Harvard University
How Does Language Background Influence Understanding of Connectives?: A Comparison of English Learners from Spanish-speaking Backgrounds and Native English Speakers

The formidable achievement gap in reading between English learners (ELs) and monolingual, English-only (EO) students has been widely documented in a range of reports, such as those published by the National Research Council and the National Center for Education Statistics. Yet, surprisingly few studies have responded to this problem by analyzing its specific, linguistic dimensions. One variable rarely considered in the context of ELs is knowledge of connectives such as “in contrast” and “therefore” that link ideas across text. My dissertation will deepen our understanding of how ELs’ knowledge of connectives influences their reading comprehension and their ability to write proficiently in multiple genres in early adolescence. Because I do not assume that difficulties prevalent in this population are necessarily unique to ELs, I compare patterns observed among ELs to those of EOs in order to clarify the influence of language background. Previous research has demonstrated that students who know how to exploit connectives to link ideas in text may be more likely to read with understanding than their peers who are unaware of the meaning of these linguistic cues. While several studies have investigated the role of connectives in reading comprehension and writing, my dissertation project will expand the present state of knowledge in two ways: taking an ontogenetic perspective by examining the skills that contribute to understanding connectives, and a cross-linguistic perspective by comparing fifth grade ELs from Spanish-speaking homes (n=86) to monolingual English-only (EO) students (n=75). A cross-linguistic perspective is important because understanding of connectives relies heavily on linguistic knowledge; thus language background might influence both the underlying skills that contribute to understanding connectives and the ways that knowledge of connectives influences reading comprehension and writing proficiency. A researcher-designed connectives task, two essay-writing assessments, and standardized tests of vocabulary, listening comprehension, word reading, and reading comprehension were administered to fifth graders. I will employ hierarchical multiple regression to estimate the relative contribution of knowledge of connectives to reading comprehension performance while accounting for conceptually important predictors, including participants’ oral language, reading skills, and language background. I will use a similar technique to identify the specific attributes of connectives that make this aspect of academic English challenging. This research will help to pinpoint ELs’ sources of difficulty with processing and producing academic language in content area texts. Identifying the underlying skills that contribute to an understanding of connectives, the features of connectives that make them difficult to process, and the degree to which linguistic background influences students’ understanding and use of connectives, will contribute to the design of instructional practices that can meet the specific needs of students with different profiles. I intend for this research to serve as a springboard to classroom-based research that will identify instructional practices that are most effective at supporting ELs to develop a command of the meanings and functions of features of academic English, including but not limited to the role of connectives.

Ivan Alex Games, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Gamestar Mechanic: The Appropriation Through Play of a Game Designer Discourse, and its Role in the Development of Literacy and Innovation Skills in Middle School Students

This study will explore the language and literacy practices germane to the Discourse of game

design that underserved middle school children appropriate in the context of Gamestar Mechanic, an online multiplayer videogame designed to teach players key principles of game design. It will also explore their possible connections to Discourses valued in innovation and knowledge production communities such as academia and science. Discourse (or big “D” discourse, as James Paul Gee calls it) in this context, refers to Gee’s notion of an “identity kit” (2001, P.719) characterized by the ways of doing, being, speaking, and believing that socially define people as members of specific communities. In order to assess the appropriation of a game designer Discourse practices by players, I will rely on a Discourse Analysis methodology (Gee, 2005), which examines small “d” discourse - referring to specific instances of language-in-use (Gee, 2005, P.1) - plays a key role in the analysis of data within this method. Through language used in context, people construct an immediate reality for each other by situating the meaning of identities, activities, tools and institutions. I will also make use of ethnographic methods (observation, interviews) to document and obtain a thick description of the overall context in which these practices take place. In recent years, an increasing number of scholars have begun to spouse the belief that students can reap important learning benefits from the adoption a designer perspective with respect to knowledge. Recent research suggests that playing videogames can foster the adoption of such a perspective by facilitating the acquisition of, identities, practices and social affiliations required for participation in the work, civic and social life on the 21st century, which are seldom fostered in schools (Shaffer and Gee, 2003). One of the main claims of this research is that the complex meaning making practices that players engage in and around games define a form of literacy that, while as sophisticated as print literacy, is qualitatively different from it (Gee, 2003; Squire, 2005, 2008; Steinkuehler, 2006). While research on videogame play has provided some important insights in this area, very little is still known about the process of game design, which entails the construction, one’s own meaning using the specialist design grammar of games. If indeed game-based practices can be understood as a form of literacy, an argument could be made that designing them would be an extension of it, just like writing can be seen as an extension of reading. At this point however, most research in the area of games and literacy has focused on game play, while substantially less exists in the area of game design. In Gamestar Mechanic, players take on the role of game mechanics, who advance in points and experience by tackling a series of game design challenges, which highlight important game design principles. They do so by relying on a series of tools embedded into the mechanics of the game, including a game editor and a collection of game creatures designed with certain affordances and limitations. Games produced by players become public artifacts that can be played and commented on by other players through the use of an online rating system and discussion forum, with the intention of fostering meaningful discussions around specific games and design challenges. Consistent with this view, I have designed a documentation method that relies on a mixture of computer screen captures, audio and video of the participant during interactive think aloud interviews, to capture in as rich a way as possible their Discourse practices and thoughts on design over the twelve-week duration of a game design after school workshop. I will also collect samples of written data from participants game design discussions in the game’s online forums, field notes of workshop sessions and background interviews on gaming and game design practices, to provide a thick description of the context in which the students’ literacy practices take place.

Jill Jeffery, New York University
Exploring the Intersection Between Voice Criteria and Genre Demands in Direct Writing Assessments

“Voice” is inconsistently defined in theory, research, and practice. Nevertheless, it is generally considered a feature of effective writing—even by critics of its use as an assessment criterion. It’s no surprise, then, that voice criteria frequently appear on rubrics used to score student writing in “high-stakes” direct writing assessments. However, composition theorists hold widely divergent views on voice criteria and how they should be applied to writing assessment, if at all. This same inconsistency is reflected in direct writing assessment rubrics, which vary among states on whether voice is included, how much emphasis is put on voice, and how voice is defined. Though assessment research emphasizes the importance of using transparent performance criteria, clear voice descriptions are notoriously elusive. And little research has been directed at any individual criterion—including voice—applied to high-stakes direct writing assessments. Because high-stakes writing assessments strongly influence classroom instruction, the use of any especially controversial assessment criterion must be carefully examined. And few things are more controversial in the field of writing instruction than “voice.” Because voice definitions carry implications for the types of writing we assess, this study investigates the use of voice criteria as it relates to genre demands in exit level high-stakes direct writing assessments. The study addresses three questions: 1) In what ways are voice criteria associated with genre demands in exit-level state standardized direct writing assessments? 2) What language features do teachers associate with voice, and how do such identified features vary across genres as well as among teachers? 3) To what extent are voice features identified by teachers present in high scoring versus low scoring benchmark papers from state mandated writing assessments, and how does the prevalence of these features compare across genres? These questions are examined using three complimentary methods: 1) a content analysis of prompts and rubrics for U.S. exit-level direct writing assessments, 2) a grounded analysis of teacher interviews on the presence of voice in narrative and expository student writing, and 3) a quantitative text analysis of high and low scoring student “benchmark” papers.

Deborah Kozdras, University of South Florida
T(w)eenagers as Screenages: Investigating the Process and Product of Adolescent-Created Digital Movies for Traditional and "New" Literacy and Learning Potential

Screen activity is a central part of life for American children and teens (Rushkoff, 2006; Trier, 2007). According to a recent study by Pew Internet and American Life (Lendhardt & Madden, 2005) over fifty percent of teens have created media content. At least one third of those teens have shared their content online. While children engage with digital media in out of school contexts, educational institutions often fail to validate these authentic tasks and the powerful literacy learning enacted in these activities. Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Robison, & Weigel (2006) stated discussed that in order to fully engage in the participatory culture of digital media, individuals must develop a vast repertoire of literacy skills, which include both traditional textual literacy and new digital media literacies. In addition to the inclusion of traditional literacies (oral and print), and digital media literacies (visual, digital, media, moving image), Jenkins et al. discussed key socio-cultural skills and competencies children should acquire if they are to become full participants in the emerging participatory culture. The purpose of my dissertation study is to examine the multiple literacies adolescents and pre-adolescents use when they compose multimedia (in this case digital video). I also wish to examine the socio-cultural skills and competencies as they evolve in the composition process as supports to literacy and learning (as solutions to problems). In order to investigate the multiliteracies involved in digital video production as well as the socio-cultural skills and competencies that support the activity, I intend to participate in an ethnographic study of a movie-making camp for adolescents and pre-adolescents. This camp will take place summer 2008 at the Tampa Theatre. The Florida Center for Instructional Technology (FCIT) operates the camp and employs undergraduate teacher education students and graduate teachers from the University of South Florida College of Education as camp counselors. During camp, students attend five half-day sessions where they learn digital video techniques (see the Let’s Make Movies website http://fcit.usf.edu/lmm/). As a researcher, I will collect a variety of data, including: planning artifacts (planning sheets, scripts, storyboards); video data (process filming, informal interviews, making-the-movie interviews); researcher notes; and, discussions with participants (counselors, camp director, filmmakers, parents). Similar to the manner in which Dyson (2003) traced textual toys through the written composition process, I wish to trace familiar popular culture memes that children appropriate into their digital videos. I will trace students’ reappropriation into their own moving image compositions. Using rhizomatic analysis, I will identify the use of memes (i.e. familiar popular/film culture phrases, music, characters, shots, angles) during the process and follow these as they are translated from planning, to filming, to editing. Rhizomatic analysis, as used in literacy performance (Leander & Rowe, 2006), involves mapping literacy practices in terms of lines of articulation and lines of flight. Lines of flight include those spaces where articulation differs from the expected. As a researcher, I consider these to be special areas of investigation for new learning potential. After these memes are identified in student work, I will engage in further rhizomatic analysis that involves both product and process data. I will map the cultural relevance of these memes (what they mean in other movies/contexts) as well as the creative enactment of these memes by the children (what filmic and cinematic elements children used). During this process of analysis, I will investigate how students appropriated these memes as ideas and ask how these ideas were reappropriated through the composition process in terms of multiple literacies. I will attend to the lines of articulation and lines of flight and the social and cultural skills and competencies that supported learning. As a result of my study, I hope to create a model of digital video composition processes.

Dot McElhone, Stanford University
Conceptual Press Discourse in Reading Comprehension Instruction: Making Every Interaction Count

If teachers are to make the most of every interaction with students and thereby improve literacy outcomes, they need to know not only what kinds of initial questions to ask, but how best to follow up on student responses in order to activate student thinking about texts. The central focus of this study is conceptual press discourse, a pattern of teacher-student talk that challenges students to think beyond their initial responses in the analysis of texts and in the use of metacognitive comprehension strategies. In particular, the study considers the degree to which teachers optimally challenge students (Deci & Ryan, 1985) during reading comprehension instruction by “pressing” (Kazemi & Stipek, 2001) them for clarification, elaboration, evidence, or examples. High-press interchanges are likely to involve multiple turns during which the analysis of text grows progressively deeper and more sophisticated. The quantitative portion of the study examines relationships between discourse patterns and student outcomes across 21 classrooms, while the qualitative portion explores the nuances of instruction within four case study classrooms. Through multiple observations in each classroom and collection of student achievement and survey data, the quantitative portion of the study seeks to determine how conceptual press (or other patterns of teacher-student discourse also captured by the observation protocol) predicts students’ comprehension achievement, intrinsic motivation to read, use of strategies during reading, and choice to read frequently and broadly. I expect to find a positive correlation between conceptual press discourse and growth in student achievement and engagement. However, if conceptual press does not turn out to be a key predictor of student outcomes, the data collected will allow me to work backwards and uncover what patterns of teacher-student talk are, in fact, associated with positive student outcomes. The study will thus generate findings useful for improving literacy outcomes, regardless of whether the findings support the hypothesis. The qualitative portion of the study will draw on the findings of the quantitative study to select four teachers (two with strong growth on the outcome measures and two with moderate growth) and four students within each of their classrooms for more in-depth observations and interviews. By uncovering teacher-student patterns of talk associated with positive student reading outcomes, and further, by painting detailed pictures of what high-press discourse looks like “on the ground” for students and teachers, I hope to provide practitioners not only strong rationale for incorporating high-press discourse into their instruction, but also some vivid signposts to help them begin their journeys into new ways of teaching and talking with students.

Julie Park, Stanford University
The Effects of Reading Like Historians on Adolescent Reading Comprehension

The purpose of this study is to see what happens when we ask middle school students to read like historians.  When historians read, they consider each text in relation to the context in which it was written.  This includes taking into consideration the author’s identity, other texts about the same topic, and what was going on in the world at the time.  A text, by itself, holds limited information for a historian.  Only after corroborating that text with other sources does a historian venture an interpretation.  In contrast, adolescents typically demonstrate their reading comprehension by reading single passages and responding immediately to the text in front of them.  They do not generally corroborate information, evaluate the validity of one source over another, or analyze how a particular text helps them to complete a task.  When confronted with multiple sources about a topic--when writing a research report or reading about a controversial topic, for example--students may have little idea how to differentiate one source from another. Reading comprehension research has focused primarily on helping students establish a relationship between themselves and a single text.  Students identify personal purposes for reading, employ prior knowledge about a topic, and monitor their ongoing understanding of the text.  These strategies, however, do not specifically aid the student in placing the text in its larger context.  Historical reading strategies, developed from research with expert historians, are designed precisely for the purpose of helping readers ask critical questions about a text’s context. I hypothesize that asking students to read like historians will have a positive effect on their ability to read non-historical texts about complex topics.  These might include editorials, newspaper stories, letters, advertisements, speeches, blog posts, and textbooks.  This study will equip students with the questions with which to analyze sources as historians do:  “Who wrote this? What does the author have to gain? What else was going on in the world? How does this source differ from the other source?” By conducting this study, I hope to show that historical reading strategies have a place in general literacy instruction because they offer a structured way of teaching adolescents to evaluate multiple sources of information.  With an overabundance of information sources available to them today, students need more than ever to learn and practice using analytical tools for critical reading.

Jennifer Drake Patrick, University of Florida
Secondary Science Teachers Learning to Teach Science as Specialized Discourse: Three Case Studies

This study will explore how secondary science teachers learn about the distinct features of science language and apply it to their daily instructional routines. The purpose of this multi-case study is to understand how the learning process of secondary science teachers develops as they participate in professional development sessions about the specialized discourse of science. The overarching research question guiding this study is: How do secondary science teachers learn to teach science as a specialized discourse as they participate in reflective study about the topic? The following sub-questions are addressed in the study (a) what does “teaching reading in science” mean to these teachers? (b) what do they know about “science as specialized discourse”? (c) how do they integrate knowledge about science discourse with their science teaching practices? (d) what are the challenges that these science teachers face in teaching science as specialized discourse? (e) how do they cope with these challenges? Participants in this study include 3-5 secondary science teachers from a school in Northeast Florida. In this study, a variety of data sources will be used to gather information to help explain how secondary science teachers learn about the specialized discourse of science. The primary source of data will be transcripts from professional development sessions and individual interviews with participants. Secondary data sources will include informal observations and classroom artifacts. To study these questions, I will use within-case and cross-case analysis using the systematic processes of grounded theory to analyze the data sources. Applying the techniques of grounded theory analysis to the within- and cross-case analysis will allow me to build a theory of how the context of professional development can impact science teachers’ learning of the specialized language of science. This research is significant because it will assist science teachers to better promote science literacy for all students. If teachers understand how language works in science, they can better instruct their students in how to comprehend challenging science texts and use language effectively to communicate scientific principles and understanding. This research is also significant in that it addresses the concern of secondary teachers that professional development in secondary reading instruction is often too generalized and does not address the discipline-specific reading demands of their particular content areas.

Enid M. Rosario-Ramos, Northwestern University
Reading for the Community: An Examination of the Relationship Between Critical Literacy and Community Building

This research project will explore the relationships between adolescents’ participation in community building efforts and the development of critical literacy skills. It also examines how schools and other community organizations provide opportunities for the development of critical literacy skills of adolescents from non-dominant groups. I will look at what adolescent readers do to go beyond texts to understand how texts create representations of social structures and relationships that are shaped by authors’ goals and beliefs and that often embed unequal social relationships. The main research question for this project is: in what ways does participation in community building relate to critical literacy learning? In order to answer this question, two sets of related questions will be asked:

The research project is divided into two main stages. During the first stage, I will gather samples of the range of texts that are available for students in their community network. I will analyze these texts to document their readability levels, text structures, and the community issues they discuss to assess both the demands of such texts and what students must know and be able to do to comprehend them both generically and critically. Also, a survey of students’ literacy practices and participation in community building will be developed and administered to the entire population of students at an alternative high school. It will ask questions about the range of texts students read, the contexts where they read, the frequency with which they read different texts, and the topics they read about. It will also include questions about students’ participation in the community building efforts, including questions about the activities they participate in, the frequency of participation, and attitudes toward participation. Finally, I will develop and administer an assessment of critical literacy. Statistical analysis will be conducted to identify broad patterns of relationship between critically reading texts and participation in community building. The second stage of the research will include case studies with 8 students to take a closer look at how they interpret texts in multiple spaces where they participate and in situations with different social arrangements that provide different sources of support for critical reading. The case studies will provide rich information about the dynamic ways in which community building and critical literacy interact as adolescents move across different spaces. First, observing participants in both the school and community-based organizations will provide information about the different texts they read within these different settings, the functions these texts serve, how they make sense of texts and how the settings are organized to support comprehension. Second, unstructured interviews will be conducted throughout the study to focus on participants’ perspectives on their literacy engagement and their participation in community building activities. Finally, I will conduct think-aloud protocols with participants to document the sources of prior knowledge participants use when reading, the aspects of the text they attend to while reading, and the strategies they use to make sense of texts.

Stephanie Anne Schmier, Teachers College, Columbia University
Tracing Virtual Realities: An Ethnographic Journey with Urban youth across Online and Offline Spaces

This dissertation research is designed to investigate the digital literacy practices and performances of adolescents living in an under-resourced community. Grounded within an understanding of literacy as social practice, this qualitative ethnographic inquiry blends post-structural (Davies, 1994) and spatial (Soja, 1996) theories to provide insights into the multiple ways in which youth from traditionally marginalized backgrounds engage with digital media across in-school, online, and out-of-school spaces. Specifically, data gathered through participant observation, interviews, and text collection will be analyzed using multimodal (Kress, 2003) and spatial (Leander & Rowe, 2006) analytic tools, in order to shed light on adolescent’s meaning making in relation to the texts they construct across multiple social spaces. In so doing, this study seeks to problemitize current discourses around youth engagement with digital media online, and to uncover some of the important meanings and functions that designing and authoring text using digital media carry for adolescents both in- and out- of school settings. The findings from this research will have important implications for curriculum and pedagogy, as they may reveal ways in which educators can build upon their students’ digital literacy practices to support classroom literacy instruction.