On Wednesday, May 30, from 9:00 a.m. to noon (Eastern Time), the National Academy of Science hosts a free webcast of a public discussion meeting about the recent National Research Council (NRC) report entitled Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Options for Practice and Research. 

During the webcast, members of the committee that wrote the report will present the report’s key findings and messages, and invited experts will examine opportunities for acting on the report recommendations and related challenges. Invited speakers and audience members will include policymakers, business leaders, administrators of adult literacy programs offered in adult education programs and community colleges, public and private funders of research and development for literacy, and developers of curricula and education technologies. The discussion is designed to establish some common understandings about the report and to consider how the report may be used to shape and support activities at federal, state, and local levels for improving adult literacy instruction.

Find information about signing on to the webcast at www.nationalacademies.org/adultliteracy. This webcast will be free and open to the public.

Register for the webcast at http://www8.nationalacademies.org/EventRegistration/public/Register.aspx?event=97BF95BD. Registration for the webcast closes on Tuesday, May 29. 

Improving Adult Literacy Instruction recommends a program of research and innovation to gain a better understanding of adult literacy learners, improve instruction, and create the supports adults need for learning and achievement. A high level of literacy in both print and digital media is required for negotiating most aspects of 21st century life: succeeding in a competitive job market, supporting a family, navigating health information, and participating in civic activities. According to a recent survey, more than 90 million adults in the United States lack the literacy skills needed to have fully productive and secure lives. Focusing on individuals ages 16 and older who are not in K‐12 education, the report identifies factors that affect literacy development in adolescence and adulthood and examines their implications for strengthening literacy instruction for this population. It also discusses technologies that show promise for supporting adult literacy learners. The report is a valuable resource for curriculum developers, federal agencies, literacy program administrators, educators, and funding agencies.

by Jen Donovan

The National Center for Education Statistics recently released the issue brief entitled Reading, Mathematics, and Science Achievement of Language-Minority Students in Grade 8. This study considered students that were tracked with the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–99 (ECLS-K) which focused on examining the achievement of a nationally representative group of children who were in Kindergarten in 1998-99. 

The analysis of this study considered students’ scores on standardized tests that were administered at the end of their 8th grade year. The students were classified into four groups according to language background and English efficiency. From this the assessment, scores were grouped into three characteristics: 

• Student’s race or ethnicity
• Poverty status 
• Mother’s education level

Significant findings of the study include: 

• Students who entered kindergarten as proficient in English, regardless of their home language, scored higher on the ECLS-K eighth-grade reading, math, and science assessments than language minority students who became proficient in English after starting kindergarten. 
• Non-Hispanic language-minority students who were English proficient either when they started or when they completed kindergarten scored higher than their Hispanic peers in reading, math, and science in grade 8. 
• Regardless of home language or English proficiency, those students with the most highly educated mothers generally had the highest scores in all three subjects, while those students with the least educated mothers generally had the lowest scores. 

Jen Donovan is the strategic communications intern at the International Reading Association. 

by Jen Donovan

The meaning of literacy has changed tremendously in the last century, especially for adolescents. Because of the variety of platforms like social media, texting, e-mails, and instant messaging, adolescents must be prepared to work with traditional print materials as well as virtual forms communication in order to become productive citizens. The International Reading Association believes it is important for adolescents to be able to comprehend and construct information using both print and non-print materials. The Adolescent Literacy Committee and Adolescent Literacy Taskforce at the IRA have developed a new position statement as a guide for supporting adolescents’ ongoing literacy development. 

• Content area teachers who provide instruction in the multiple literacy strategies needed to meet the demands of the specific discipline
• A culture of literacy in their schools with a systematic and comprehensive programmatic approach to increasing literacy achievement for all
• Access to and instruction with multimodal, multiple texts
• Differentiated literacy instruction specific to their individual needs
• Opportunities to participate in oral communication when they engage in literacy activities
• Opportunities to use literacy in the pursuit of civic engagement
• Assessments that highlight their strengths and challenges
• Access to a wide variety of print and non-print materials

The IRA website includes a printer-friendly, full-text PDF of the position statement as well as more information about it.

Jen Donovan is the strategic communications intern at the International Reading Association. 

The presentation by IRA’s new Literacy Research Panel during the Association’s Chicago convention on Monday morning, April 30, drew such huge interest that the meeting room could not accommodate all of the attendees who wanted to get in. Indeed, the convention center fire marshals had to appear on site to close off further access.

IRA President Victoria Risko opened the event by introducing the attending panelists, and then thanking them and the panel chair, P. David Pearson for all of the work they invested in making this extraordinary presentation possible. Risko then turned the mike over to Pearson who gave a brief history of the Panel’s formation and described the work of its four committees, which were charged with a vision statement, a convention event, a quick policy response capacity, and professional resources. The latter two projects will require additional review by the IRA Board of Directors.

A copy of the panel’s vision statement was reprinted in the program booklet that was prepared for this event. To make sure the statement received the broadest possible exposure, another copy of it was posted to Reading Today Online. Comments on the statement are welcome and should be forwarded to research@reading.org.

When the introduction was finished, Pearson passed the microphone on to Peter Afflerbach, who emceed the “town hall” portion of the program. Afflerback read four prepared questions dealing with common core and related subjects, including engagement, and directed them to groups of two or three panelists who were preselected to give short answers. The result was a highly informative and wide ranging discussion by the panelists, who included some of the top researchers in the literacy field today. Once the prepared questions were finished another series of questions was put to the panelists, this time from members of the audience, who were asked to submit their queries on index cards.

The attending panelists, in addition to Pearson and Afflerbach, included Peter Johnston, Peter Freebody, Nell Duke, Tim Shanahan, Amy Correa, Annemarie Palincsar, Elizabeth Moje, Kris Gutierrez, and John Guthrie. Linda Phillips, a new panel member for Alberta, Canada, participated via a pre-taped video which was aired during the session. Virginia Goatley, IRA’s research director, an ex officio member of the panel, also provided comments.

Hearing the panelists score certain impractical aspects of the Common Core State Standards and set research based frames for responding to other vial policy issues proved to be quite a tonic for massed audience. Rounds of applause broke out several times during the presentation.

P. David Pearson greets attendees

Peter Afflerbach, IRA Research Director Virginia Goatley, Nell Duke, and Tim Shanahan

John Guthrie, Peter Freebody, Peter Johnston, Annemarie Palincsar, Elizabeth Moje, and Amy Correa

Peter Johnston, Annemarie Palincsar, Elizabeth Moje, Amy Correa, and Kris Gutierrez

Nell Duke and Tim Shanahan

Victoria Risko and Peter Freebody 

IRA Strategic Communications Director Dan Mangan and P. David Pearson at the conclusion of the session 

Overflow crowd in the session room

Three New Members to Panel

Program Grid with Details about Speakers and Sessions

Program Grid Event Search Tool

Itinerary Planner Tool

Interactive Digital Version of the Program

Annual Convention Guide to the Stars Book Signing Schedule

List of Author Sessions PDF from Engage

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The Literacy Research Panel presentation at the IRA Annual Convention on Monday, April 30, included a discussion of the Panel's history, goals, and challenges with panel members Peter Afflerbach, Amy Correa, Nell Duke, Peter Freebody, Virginia Goatley, John Guthrie, Kris Gutierrez, Kenji Hakuta, Peter Johnston, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Nonie Leseaux, Elizabeth Moje, Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar, P. David Pearson (Chair), Linda Phillips, Timothy Shanahan, Catherine Snow, Karen Wixson, and Victoria Risko (ex officio). Below is the Vision Statement that was shared at that event: 

"Students in kindergarten today will live with a level of complexity that those of us who are adults now can barely imagine. They are destined to live in a globalized society, facing literacy demands that are increasingly varied and consequential, and that change rapidly. Active, successful participation in personal, civic, academic and work life will demand that all young people master complex individual and collaborative literate practices and develop dispositions that ensure continued learning beyond the school years. Yet, educational policies and practices have produced broad disengagement among our youth and have become a major obstacle to achieving this goal. Inequities in educational attainment, including high dropout rates for some groups and income-related achievement gaps, in many ways reflect insufficient opportunities to pursue personally and socially meaningful questions in school. These inequities, which particularly beset poor youth, deprive them of access not only to further education, rewarding careers, and other societal opportunities, but also to fulfilling lives in school. 

"IRA’s goal is to ensure that the next generation is prepared for fulfilling personal, civic, academic and work lives. IRA’s vision for achieving this goal is that schools must be transformed into places where students at all levels of schooling are actively engaged in personally and socially meaningful learning and inquiry. If students are to acquire the knowledge and tools that allow full participation in society, they must have opportunities to be both cognitively and affectively engaged in learning. It is through asking and answering personally and socially relevant questions that students learn content, practice skills, and learn to act strategically to accomplish goals. Engagement and initiative are natural consequences of such practices. So too, are critical thinking, argumentation, weighing multiple sources of evidence, managing productive discussions, and other competencies including those advocated in the Common Core Standards.

"IRA’s vision can be accomplished by focusing on practices and contexts that foster engagement such as: (a) involving students in recognizing and responding to actual problems in their lives or in society, (b) teaching reading and writing as integrated tools for learning and for crafting solutions to important, meaningful problems, (c) helping students to take individual and collaborative control of, and responsibility for, their learning, (d) recognizing that cognitive challenge, in the context of engagement, is a source of motivation, and (e) making engagement, relevance, and initiative central pillars of teaching and learning. A shift in assessment is also necessary to capitalize on and enhance engagement. Classroom assessment should provide instructionally useful indicators of extended engagements with literacy and learning. Because assessments are always limited reflections of learning, if they are used in ways that make them the goal of instruction, they will undermine student learning.

"Creating the contexts necessary for realizing IRA’s vision requires preparing highly skilled teachers who know how to generate active student engagement, redesigning curricula and content standards to focus on big, relevant ideas, and reallocating school time so that pacing guides, ‘coverage,’ test preparation, and assessment do not interfere with learning. This in turn demands extensive, evidence-based professional development for district and school leaders as well as teachers, based on the same principles as those for student learning."

Three New Members of the Literacy Research Panel

Literacy Research Panel Formation Announcement

International Reading Association Research Resources

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