Academic Literacies and Adolescent Learners: English for Subject-Matter Secondary Classrooms KERRY ANNE ENRIGHT University of California, Davis Davis, California, United States of America doi: 10.5054/tq.2010.237336 & Comprehensive high schools are extremely complex sites for the teaching and learning of academic literacies However, current policy mandates emphasizing standards and accountability mask this complexity Legislation such as No Child Left Behind in the United States and similar initiatives in other countries narrow the curriculum (Afflerbach, 2005; McCarthey, 2008) through their emphasis on the teaching and assessment of discrete skills and features of language Even as K–12 teachers are encouraged to focus on preparation for standardized tests and formulaic essays, the literacies required for success beyond high school are expanding in remarkable ways in terms of the multimodal information-rich technologies that pervade many professions and informal contexts, as well as the disciplinary literacy skills needed in subject-matter classrooms and specialized fields Students in secondary schools represent another level of complexity, especially adolescents who are learning English as an additional language Because secondary school is compulsory in the United States, comprehensive high schools serve recent immigrants who are well-educated in their native tongues, immigrants and migrants with limited formal educations, and Generation 1.5 students (Harklau, Losey, & Siegal, 1999) who have been schooled mostly in the host country but are still behind native-born peers in terms of academic language and literacy skills in English High schools educate these young people under intense time constraints, with graduation (and in many states, prerequisite exit exams) looming as a fixed high-stakes deadline Many of these adolescents are still acquiring academic literacy in English when they enter U.S high schools, often in New Mainstream (Enright, 2010a) classrooms that enroll monolingual English speakers together with multilingual students of varying English proficiencies, with little specialized attention to their unique language backgrounds and needs The resulting dilemma is that many young people were not exposed to advanced academic literacies in their ESL classes and are unprepared for the academic literacy demands of New Mainstream subject-matter classrooms, where such skills are expected and required 804 TESOL QUARTERLY When skills-based perspectives on literacy dominate public discourse and pervade state-approved curricula, researchers of academic literacy often invest greater effort in examining the negative impact of such ideologies than in exploring how teachers can incorporate broader repertoires of literacy practices in their classrooms within the very real constraints of this policy context We often dismiss the current context entirely, engaging only in critique, rather than examining it carefully to find niches and practices that can advance the academic literacies of multilingual learners in such classrooms We are much more likely to influence the ideologies behind language and literacy policies if we focus on the level of praxis, where research and practice inform and respond to one another to advance the academic literacies of language learners in high school classrooms This article is one such attempt to examine issues of academic literacy for adolescent learners through a lens of research, grounded in practice ACADEMIC LITERACIES FOR HIGH SCHOOL SUBJECTMATTER LEARNING IN ENGLISH In the current accountability context, policymakers, assessment specialists, teacher educators, and researchers of language and literacy all influence the discourse on academic literacy, but with different priorities and perspectives In public discourse and policy arenas, widespread concern about the achievement gap between majority students (white native speakers of English) and minority subgroups (including English learners) has promoted an orientation toward literacy as a set of basic skills that students must develop for success on standardized tests In contrast, teacher educators, especially at the high school level, generally expand notions of academic literacy to consider the unique ‘‘differences in how the disciplines create, disseminate, and evaluate knowledge’’ and how ‘‘these differences are instantiated in their use of language’’ (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008, p 48) Consequently, their definitions of academic literacy focus on teaching learners content-specific strategies for understanding and creating texts according to discipline-specific norms and genres (for examples, see Draper, 2008; Fang & Schleppegrell, 2010; Fisher & Ivey, 2005; Kajder, 2007) Finally, many researchers of academic literacy examine the ways in which literacy is situated within particular interactions, local and institutional settings, and broader social and political contexts with their respective cultural influences, power dynamics, and inequities This approach to examining academic literacy is optimal for two reasons First, high schools are among the most complex sites for exploring TEACHING ISSUES 805 academic literacies, demanding broader notions of literacy to capture its nuances and complexity Also, social and critical perspectives on literacy encourage educators to consider the range of literacies that adolescents already have in their repertoires, ‘‘hidden literacies’’ (Villalva, 2006, p 91) that represent culturally and linguistically based skills developed outside of school which might otherwise go unexamined in a skillsoriented classroom For example, multilingual adolescents often interpret for family members (Valde´s, 2003) or develop sophisticated digital literacies (Yi, 2008) outside of school, skills that could inform instruction in traditional classrooms ACADEMIC LITERACIES IN PRACTICE: PROBLEMS AND POSSIBILITIES Often, students have little opportunity to develop academic literacies because their teachers are attending to their limited English proficiency In a study of a science class at Madera High School1 (Enright, 2010b; Enright & Gilliland, 2010), for example, Ms Martin adapted her instruction so that students with the most limited proficiency in English would have access to essential science concepts She included hands-on activities, used realia and diagrams, and supported writing with fill-inthe-blank worksheets and word banks These approaches ensured a minimal level of curricular engagement for students with the least English proficiency, but did little to advance students of varying English proficiencies in the academic literacies required for long-term independent success in science, such as being verbally explicit, using causal explanations rather than narrative accounts (Lemke, 1990), or using exploratory and explanatory talk to draw out new understandings (Ball & Wells, 2009) This was a case of focusing on access to basic concepts at the expense of developing academic literacies Alternatively, another teacher from the study focused on aspects of academic literacy that were emphasized in standardized tests or assignments In Mr Brindt’s ninth-grade English Language Arts class, the poetry unit culminated in a benchmark literary analysis essay with a districtwide standardized rubric Mr Brindt, concerned about his students’ success on the benchmark assignment, highlighted how each activity in the poetry unit would prepare students for aspects of the essay that were assessed on the rubric Whether they wrote poetry, read poetry, or analyzed canonical poems like Dickinson’s ‘‘Hope Is the Thing With 806 Names of people and places are pseudonyms, and represent data from the Diverse Adolescent Literacies (DAL) Project The DAL Project was funded by grants from the Spencer Foundation and the University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute TESOL QUARTERLY Feathers,’’ Mr Brindt focused on definitions and uses of literary devices, that being the focus of their benchmark assignment Unfortunately, this focus detracted from a focus on meaning, creativity, communication, or a poet’s purpose for writing poetry In other words, his narrow focus on the way in which academic literacy would be assessed neglected the overall communicative purpose behind this use of literacy The most promising approaches to preparing language learners with academic literacy in English incorporate some level of attention to the linguistic, social, political, and cultural aspects of language with regard to making meaning with texts for academic purposes Attending to all aspects of literacy at all times is unreasonable, but integrating these priorities over time is likely to provide the greatest access for the broadest range of student proficiencies and educational backgrounds Systemic functional linguistics (Christie, 1986; Fang & Schleppegrell, 2010; Gibbons, 2003; Schleppegrell, Greer, & Taylor, 2008) and other genre-based approaches to literacy (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995; Kelly & Bazerman, 2003) prioritize the linguistic aspects of literacy while accounting for social and contextual influences on texts (See also Gebhard’s article, this issue.) These approaches help students to distinguish, for instance, what makes a lab report a representative piece of science writing, or how particular uses of language come together to create an effective cause–effect essay in history class Teaching approaches that focus on social interactions among students and with texts build on young people’s current language proficiency while allowing meaningful engagement with curricular concepts For example, students in Bunch’s (2006) study of a middle school classroom learned social studies through scaffolded, linguistically rich imaginary scenarios about the Protestant Reformation Each student had a unique interdependent role, and they worked together with various textual resources to use oral and written language to represent their learning Community-based dilemmas that connect to students’ personal lives can also promote meaningful engagement and academic literacy development For example, in Moje, Ciechanowski, and Kramer (2004), adolescents in a science class examined issues related to local waterways via a curriculum designed to make linkages with their home lives and communities Flexible assignments that allow students to build on their home language and literacy repertoires facilitate connections between young people’s culturally based background knowledge or funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonza´lez, 1992) and school-based subject-matter concepts and skills (e.g., see Moje, Collazo, Carrillo, & Marx, 2001; Ve´lez-Iba´n ˜ ez & Greenberg, 1992; Villalva, 2006) Attending to issues of power and culture allows adolescents to make more informed choices about their uses of language and literacy, and enables them to consider the origins TEACHING ISSUES 807 and consequences of the academic norms they learn in the classroom For more examples, see Alford (2001), Gutie´rrez (2008), and Hammond and Macken-Horarik (1999) IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH AND PRACTICE The greatest contemporary challenge of academic literacy facing teachers and researchers of high school multilingual learners is the tension between the narrowing of literacy opportunities due to current policy mandates, and the broadening and deepening of literacy demands within, across, and beyond the subject-matter curriculum This tension cannot be resolved solely at the level of practice, however, because it ultimately reflects conflicting ideologies, not only about literacy (Ivanic, 2004; Street, 2008), but also about equity, access, and diversity (Luke, 2003, 2004a, 2004b; Skerrett & Hargreaves, 2008) In the midst of such policy climates, the schism between research and practice often expands Practitioners, overwhelmed by standardized tests and pacing guides, often become less thoughtful about the ways in which students’ language and literacy experiences in their classrooms encourage particular ways of thinking about language, literacy, the curriculum, and the world While the urgency to help students pass exit exams and standardized tests is real, the academic literacies required for success beyond these benchmarks are needed just as urgently Ultimately, an emphasis on academic literacies will support success on standardized measures if they are embedded in a linguistically rich, well-supported, academically rigorous curriculum THE AUTHOR Kerry Anne Enright is an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis Her research interests include multiple literacies of adolescent writers, language and academic development of Latino bilingual youth, and the language demands of mainstream classrooms REFERENCES Afflerbach, P (2005) National Reading Conference policy brief: High stakes testing and reading assessment Journal of Literacy Research, 37, 151–162 doi:10.1207/ s15548430jlr3702_2 Alford, J H (2001) Learning language and critical literacy: Adolescent ESL students Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 45(3), 238–242 Ball, T., & Wells, G (2009) Running cars down ramps: Learning about learning over time Language and Education, 23(4), 371–390 doi:10.1080/09500780902954281 Berkenkotter, C., & Huckin, T N (1995) Genre knowledge in disciplinary communication: Cognition/culture/power Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 808 TESOL QUARTERLY Bunch, G C (2006) ‘‘Academic English’’ in the 7th grade: Broadening the lens, expanding access Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 5(4), 284–301 doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2006.08.007 Christie, F (1986) Writing in schools: Generic structures as ways of meaning In B Couture (Ed.), Functional approaches to writing: Research perspectives (pp 221–239) London: Frances Pinter Draper, R J (2008) Redefining content-area literacy teacher education: Finding my voice through collaboration Harvard Educational Review, 78(1), 60–83 Enright, K A (2010a) Language and literacy for a New Mainstream American Educational Research Journal Advance online publication doi:10.3102/0002831210368989 Enright, K A (2010b) Writing in subject-matter classrooms: Content area literacy and the New Mainstream Manuscript submitted for publication Enright, K A., & Gilliland, B (2010) Multilingual writing in new mainstream classrooms: The influence of accountability and standards Manuscript submitted for publication Fang, Z., & Schleppegrell, M J (2010) Disciplinary literacies across content areas: Supporting secondary reading through functional language analysis Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53(7), 587–597 doi:10.1598/JAAL.53.7.6 Fisher, D., & Ivey, G (2005) Literacy and language as learning in content-area classes: A departure from ‘‘every teacher a teacher of reading.’’ [Feature] Action in Teacher Education, 27(2), 3–11 Gibbons, P F (2003) Mediating language learning: Teacher interactions with ESL students in a content-based classroom TESOL Quarterly, 37(2), 247–273 doi:10.2307/3588504 Gutie´rrez, K D (2008) Developing a sociocritical literacy in the Third Space Reading Research Quarterly, 43(2), 148–164 doi:10.1598/RRQ.43.2.3 Hammond, J., & Macken-Horarik, M (1999) Critical literacy: Challenges and questions for ESL classrooms TESOL Quarterly, 33(3), 528–544 doi:10.2307/ 3587678 Harklau, L., Losey, K M., & Siegal, M (Eds.) 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