{"id":6536,"date":"2007-03-01T01:11:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-01T01:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/citejournal.org\/\/\/"},"modified":"2016-06-04T01:41:54","modified_gmt":"2016-06-04T01:41:54","slug":"bringing-new-literacies-into-the-content-area-literacy-methods-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citejournal.org\/volume-7\/issue-2-07\/general\/bringing-new-literacies-into-the-content-area-literacy-methods-course","title":{"rendered":"Bringing New Literacies into the Content Area Literacy Methods Course"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Content Area Reading and Writing Course<\/p>\n
Multiple states set coursework in content area literacy as a requirement for secondary teacher licensure (Romine, McKenna, & Robinson, 1996; Sheridan-Thomas, 2007). This paper discusses my Content Area Reading and Writing course designed for secondary preservice teachers who are in a range of disciplines: secondary English, science, mathematics, foreign language, social studies, art, music, and physical education.<\/p>\n
Students enrolled in this required methods course are typically in their fourth or fifth year of study within a five year MAT program or, as in the case of the summer sections, are students who have completed 1 of 2 years in an alternative certification program. All are studying to become secondary teachers in either science, mathematics, social studies, foreign language, English, or art. Up until this point in their studies, they have not completed a methods course modeling integration of technology that demonstrates possibilities for their own classroom teaching. Unless they are working with methods faculty members who have a research interest or a scholarly interest in technology, it is highly unlikely that this modeling will occur in any other course offered at the university.<\/p>\n
The course is designed around multiple objectives, all countering the notion that content area reading is a general task that lacks specific, integral ties to the specific subject taught. My beliefs about literacy\u2014that literacies are varied, situated, and socially constructed (Barton & Hamilton, 2000; Gee, 1996)\u2014invariably shape the course design. Further, my experiences as a classroom teacher are imprinted deeply onto my current instructional practice, leading my to design the course around the idea that content area teachers, as experts in their fields, are best positioned to lead students to unpack and unlock the unique demands that content area texts present readers.<\/p>\n
Though students are all provided with multiple opportunities to define what literacy will mean in their own practice, the course begins by presenting the claim that \u201cthe changes of a new world in new times require that we not only teach reading and writing of print, but that we teach youth how to use reading and writing in conjunction with many other forms of representation to construct a socially just and democratic society\u201d (Moje & Sutherland, 2003). Our field placements are largely in urban, diverse settings, presenting preservice teachers with the opportunity to engage pupils who bring a rich range of practices, values, and means of communicating meaning to the classroom.<\/p>\n
Though our course texts emphasize that \u201ccontent literacy has the potential to maximize content acquisition\u201d (McKenna & Robinson, 2006, p. 12) and that \u201cthe disciplines are constituted by discourses\u201d (Luke, 2001, p. xii), the reality is that many of the students enter the course with a different set of values, both in terms of their pedagogy and in terms of their schema of what it means to teach in their content area.<\/p>\n
Most feel pressure to teach content and believe that language instruction is the domain of the English\/language arts teacher. This course is designed to create some dissonance around those beliefs, challenging students to espouse and teach from a more expanded understanding of content literacy and content learning. To that end, as much as we explore ways in which the content areas differ and how knowledge is constructed (and communicated) within those disciplines, we also consider ways of using digital tools to talk across communities and represent knowledge in a range of ways.<\/p>\n
Multiliteracies Approach<\/p>\n
School is largely built around the literacy practices of the 20th century. Here, literacy was print-based, and literacy learning was centered on understanding and producing written texts. However, 21st-century literacy has expanded beyond learning to read a print text format (Rafferty, 1990) and moved to encompass multiple literacies in multiple modes (New London Group, 1996). These multimodal practices are \u201cblurring the distinction between writer and reader, producer and consumer, and require a complex range of skills, knowledge, and understanding\u201d (Carrington & Marsh, 2005).<\/p>\n
When we \u201cmultimediate,\u201d we use media, produce media, and engage in literate practices as a way of engaging in the world (Lankshear & Knobel, 2003). New digital tools require and make possible new ways of constructing and communicating meaning, leading multiple forms of media (not just print text) to have authority for representation. Teaching through a multiliteracy or multimodal approach is a very different kind of teaching, one in which language and other modes of meaning are dynamic, opening up what counts as valued communication within the classroom and inviting new voices into the classroom interpretive community.<\/p>\n
It is critical to understand that multimodal does not simply mean that more than one mode of representation is used within a text. Instead, a multimodal text uses multiple ways of signing (i.e., image, voice, motion, song, print) to animate social life and social action (Enciso, Katz, Kiefer, Price-Dennis, & Wilson, 2006). As Hull & Nelson (2005) explained,<\/p>\n
A multimodal text can create a different system of signification, one that transcends the collective contribution of its constituent parts. More simply put, multimodality can afford, not just a new way to make meaning, but a different kind of meaning. (p. 225)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It is no longer enough for students graduating high school to read and write at a 12th-grade level (Kajder, 2003; Sturtevant, et. al., 2007). As argued by the National Center on Education and the Economy (2006), content preparation is critical:<\/p>\n
This is a world in which a very high level of preparation in reading, writing, speaking mathematics, science, literature, history and the arts will be an indispensable foundation for everything that comes after for most members of the workforce. (p. xii).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
However, students will also need to be able work across multiple tools, multiple forms of text, and multiple literacies (New London Group, 1996; Sturtevant et al., 2007), skills which may be key to bridging pupils\u2019 rich, out-of-school literacy practices to academic content (Kajder, 2006; Sheridan-Thomas, 2007). The content literacy course addresses both the role of motivation in engaging adolescent learners and the understanding that literacy is about becoming fluent in the practice of a discipline (Bain, 2000) rather than merely knowing how to use a set of strategies or tools.<\/p>\n
Instructional Methods Integrating Digital Technologies<\/p>\n
Just as content literacy instruction is woven into the traditional curriculum, technology (both tools and texts) is woven throughout this course. In terms of the particular uses of technology in the course, the learning experiences and activities are designed to run counter to the reductive, packaged, \u201cdrill and skill\u201d literacy programs that fill many of the urban, low-performing classrooms in which these students might be placed for student teaching. Instead, the goal is to model relevant learning, deep inquiry, knowledge production, and the use of the most powerful cultural tools available for communicating those ideas. As the course instructor, I want students to think about integrating technology into their teaching in the same ways I want them to think about breathing \u2013 automatically and without either effort or pause.<\/p>\n
Technology is modeled through instructor use during class (as with the use of tools like wikis or Skype, which are used to amplify instruction around class discussion) and through the expectations embedded in assignments conducted within and outside of class. The expectation is that students work through activities as learners and, subsequently, taking a critical stance in which they question the instructional value added to the task through the use of technology and work to design their own instructional models utilizing similar tasks and tools.<\/p>\n
The technology is woven transparently into the curriculum, as the point of the class is to focus around multiple strategies and learning experiences that will allow them to be more effective in teaching their particular content to a wide range of student readers and writers. As integral as these emergent technologies are becoming to the field of literacy, it is still new to think about using new tools for new purposes. The purpose is not to do familiar things in the same familiar ways, like moving an essay to PowerPoint. Instead, it is about doing new things with new tools alongside our students \u2013 and valuing the multimodal knowledge they already are bringing into our classroom.<\/p>\n
Four activities throughout the 14-session course demonstrate the ways in which technologies are used to amplify not only students\u2019 work in lesson planning and curriculum development but their reflection and identity development as secondary teachers.<\/p>\n
Digital Storytelling Through the Construction of a Literacy Narrative<\/p>\n
At the beginning of the course, students create a digital story in which they offer either a personal literacy narrative or address those key ideas they find intriguing about using literacy to support the learning of content material and what deep and real concerns students have about doing so. From some extensive prewriting, students script, storyboard, and develop a 3-5 minute digital story bringing together narration, image, print text, motion, and color in a richly layered multimodal composition. The goal here is to expand the definition of what counts as valued communication while also challenging students to work with multiple modes and media to communicate intended meaning.<\/p>\n
Moje (1996) emphasized that content literacy courses must provide preservice teachers with authentic opportunities for reflection, holding that coursework should ask students to \u201cexamine their beliefs and evaluate whether their commitment is one based in subject matter or in students\u201d (p. 192). Recognizing that students were entering the course with specific values and beliefs, this assignment was designed to begin to challenge those ideas (Lasley, 1980) in an attempt to begin the process of change and growth. (For examples, see Video 1<\/a> and Video 2<\/a>.)<\/p>\n