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The Latest Research on Adolescent Literacy
 From the March 2002 Education newsletter.Most literacy research and national legislation focuses on young children, but educators know that children can slip through the cracks. As a result, middle and high school educators are often faced with students who struggle with comprehension and other reading skills and who require intervention. Earlier this month, a groundbreaking workshop on literacy skills in adolescents convened in Washington, D.C. Jointly sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Speech-Language Hearing Association, the International Reading Association, the National Education Association, the National Institute for Literacy, and various offices of the U.S. Department of Education, the workshop brought literacy researchers together to explore effective interventions for middle and high school students who struggle with reading. Topics discussed include instructional methods, motivation, biological factors, and content-area reading. Participants and presenters examined early childhood predictors of later reading success, better ways to identify struggling readers in elementary school, and the factors needed to encourage older students to engage in reading. In breakout discussion sessions, participants grappled with questions on how to improve vocabulary and decoding skills of adolescent readers, influence motivation, and characterize literacy development through the teenage years. They were asked to articulate research questions for the field to address. "The next step is to come up with a new research focus in [adolescent literacy]," says Peggy McCardle, the associate chief of the child development and behavior branch of NICHD. She notes that the areas that need more attention are the integration of the five major components of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) into content-area instruction, motivation for children who struggle, measuring student needs and progress, and identifying students who need intervention. Dr. McCardle also emphasizes the importance of gearing this intervention to older students, as well as students in middle school. "We need to make sure we keep focusing on reading to prevent future problems." According to Dr. McCardle, about 90 people attended the three-day event. She notes that everyone seemed to be pleased with the proceedings. "We brought together people with different philosophies who could have been critical of each other and weren't. It was an example of how people could cooperate despite philosophical differences. Conversations begun at the workshop are continuing." Plans for future meetings on the subject are in the works. A larger conference, for about 300 participants, is being planned for late May in the Washington area. This conference, unlike the first one, is designed for practitioners, such as teachers, reading specialists, and speech-language pathologists, with some researchers present. The goal, says Dr. McCardle, is to examine various methods of secondary school instruction and discuss them in response to the latest research. Research on adolescent literacy and information on registration for the May conference will soon be posted on the web sites of NIFL and NICHD. Dr. McCardle expects the web sites of the other sponsoring organizations to post links to the information.
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