Adolescent Literacy in Secondary Education: Challenges & Strategies

Introduction: Redefining Adolescent Literacy

Adolescent literacy has increasingly become a focus of reconsideration among teachers and researchers. This renewed attention can be explained in two ways.

First, both teachers and researchers have acknowledged the impact of culturally and linguistically diverse students on literacy. An example of this trend appears in Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents' Lives, in which Alvermann and her colleagues point to a broader view of adolescent literacies that encompasses gender, race, ethnicity, and social class (Alvermann, Hinchman, Moore, Phelps, & Waff, 1998).

Second, as we entered the 21st century, media and technology began to exert a powerful influence on literacy and on the academic curriculum for Arts and Language disciplines. Reinking (1998) stated that as "we are heading into a post-typographic world," printed text becomes less dominant. Media sources increasingly emphasize visual content, though text remains present. In order to engage effectively with these new modes of communication, students need to acquire a range of skills — including, for instance, the ability to critically interpret visual content. By high school, students are expected to integrate visual skills into both oral and written reports.

The specific meaning of media texts can be reached only by identifying and making use of the particular techniques employed in those texts, as Dana Grisham observes in her article "Technology and Media Literacy: What Do Teachers Need to Know?" Grisham also notes that learning to use these techniques in the creation of new texts requires learning to recognize and analyze them in the reading and interpretation of existing ones. The notion of literacy itself thus begins to change. Grisham cites Alvermann and Hagood (2000), who stated that literacy is "on the verge of reinventing itself" as many new forms of literacy emerge: visual literacy, technological literacy, critical literacy, media literacy, and others — all of which raise the question of what it ultimately means to be literate.

In this context — one of growing awareness of the sociocultural impact on literacy and of the influence of technological development — it becomes clear that students have different needs and opportunities, and that teachers must facilitate the learning of new skills. The works of Gina Cervetti, Michael Pardales, and James Damico, for example, examine the difference between critical literacy and critical reading: reading analytically involves asking "What does this text mean?", while critical literacy also asks "How does this text come to have a particular meaning (and not some other)?" and examines texts within particular sociocultural frameworks (Grisham, D.).

Similarly, Donna Alvermann (2001) asserts that literacy is more than school literacy. One form of literacy — academic literacy — should not be allowed to prevail over multiple other forms, such as computer, visual, graphic, and scientific literacies. This privileging of a single form of literacy has been criticized for ignoring the fact that different texts and social contexts (reading for whom, with what purpose) require different reading skills (Barton, Hamilton, & Ivanic, 2000; Gee, 1996; Street, 1995).

Multiple Literacies and 21st-Century Skills

As contemporary literacy has lost its conceptual unity, scholars have begun to refer to it as "multiple literacies." Media literacy, for instance, can include media production, information technology, critical media literacy, Web-based literacies, aesthetic literacies (such as dance, music, and theater), communications, and scientific literacy (Grisham, D.). The variety of literacies implies both the need and the opportunity to diversify the skills students develop: interdisciplinary knowledge, technical abilities, critical thinking, problem solving, the ability to interpret both printed and digital texts, and an understanding of different ways of organizing information.

Literacy can be defined on several levels. It is obviously concerned with the ability to read and write, but a fuller definition might be the capacity to recognize, reproduce, and manipulate the conventions of text shared by a given community. In relation to adolescent learners, Jetton and Dole (2004) define literacy as constructive, fluent, strategic, motivated, and a lifelong pursuit.