Chapter 38

Summary of Beating the Odds: Teaching Middle and High School Students to Read and Write Well
By Judith Langer
For Michael Cameron and the class by Susan Conklin
RDG 461
Simmons College/The Reading Institute

This was a five-year study on characteristics of educational practice regarding student achievement in reading, writing, and English. The study included middle and high schools from New York, Florida, Texas, and California. The researcher was interested in students gaining high literacy rather than just enough to get by. Basic reading and writing considered together with the ability to use language, content and reasoning approaches to be commensurate with “educated” persons. Students need the ability to read social meanings, rules, structures and linguistic and cognitive routines to solve problems in their world. Students capacity to understand how reading, writing, language, content and social appropriateness work together and how they might be thoughtful in reading, writing, and discussion to put knowledge and skills to use in new situations is the goal of high literacy.

This research is rooted in a sociocognitive perspective, i.e. learning influenced by values, experiences, and actions that exist within the larger environment. Student voices would contribute to experiences in the classroom, how it is learned, what counts as appropriate and meaningful.

Vygotsky’s sociocultural framework (1987) suggested that teacher-student learning occurs in an environment where both can participate in thoughtful examination and discourse about language and content. The learning of skill is dependent on the environment in which the students are learning.

Related Research by Applebee and Squire (1968) contrasted “award winning” with “recommended” programs with a focus on professionalism of teachers, availability of resources for instruction, emphasis on the teaching of literature but a lack of attention to the needs of lower-track students. Applebee (1993) studies teachers in successful programs also as highly professionalized, more resources available, and more community support for their efforts. Additionally, they emphasized more process-oriented writing instruction, active involvement of students in discussion, and reader-response approaches to literature resulting from better funding rather than difference approaches to curriculum and instruction. Consequently, there was no way to track differences in instruction to student achievement. Wharton-McDonald, Pressley, and Hampston (1998) found that the most effective teachers characterized by high academic engagement in challenging literacy tasks, explicit teaching of skills, interconnections among activities, and careful matching of tasks and instruction to student competence levels. Research by Taylor, Pearson, Clark and Walpole (1999) found that the important factors in teacher effectiveness were parental support, systematic assessment of student progress, good communication among staff within the building, and a collaborative model for the delivery of reading instruction.

This researcher noted that there were no studies regarding the features of instruction that differentiate the higher from the lower performing middle and high school programs. Langer (2000) reported that the professional lives of teachers supported students.

There are six issues at the center of the literacy debate:
1. Approaches to skills instruction
2. Approaches to test preparation
3. Connected Learning
4. Enabling Strategies
5. Conceptions of Learning
6. Classroom Organization

1. There is an ongoing debate about the manner of instruction delivery: some like Dewey (1938) feel that experience-based instruction is important while others stress the mastery of concepts and skills through decontextualizing practice (Bloom 1971). Hirsch (1996) calls for students to remember culturally potent facts and genre theorists call for the teaching of organization of written forms. Goodman and Wilde (1992) seek skills and knowledge of authentic literacy activity while teacher tend to blur distinctions and blend theorists with dissimilar approaches. The danger here is that watered-down form eliminates the teaching of some significant aspects of best practices.

2. An aspect of systemic reform requires that there be alignment between curriculum and assessment with a focus on achievement scores. How this is done is controversial. Some educators simple practice sample test items and teach test-taking skills, i.e. how to choose the best answer or how to write the best response. Others advocate the teaching of needed literacy abilities throughout the year also with test results as the focus. The latter focuses on test scores and learning through improving curriculum while the former focuses only on test scores.

3. Student learning is enhanced when connections can be made to prior knowledge gained from in and out-of-school experiences rather than treating material as though it is entirely new. These connections must be explicit.

4. Student strategic awareness to learning and performance together with the teaching of strategies for reading, writing, and thinking tasks are as important. Students should learn intentional ways of thinking and doing along with process of content. Student awareness of strategy is important.

5. Some teachers focus on facts and concepts while others focus on student abilities to think about and use new knowledge. Earlier, giving definitions, selecting right answers, and filling in information into sentences and charts was evidence and learning. Recently two bodies of research changed that: one focused on disciplinary initiation, helping students learn better similar to expert thinkers (verbal protocol analysis research) and the other on critical thinking with higher levels of cognitive manipulation of the material. Currently however, the name of the game is engagement: beyond time on task to student engagement with the material. Students should deal analytically with challenging material on a grade-appropriate level with challenging subject mater and apply this knowledge to real-world situations.

6. Finally, students learn with substantive interactions with one another as well as with the teacher. Collaborative approaches with groups and clubs for literature, writing, and envisionment-building thought processes are a response to research and theory. The idea is to create supportive environments to bring personal, cultural, and academic knowledge to the interaction as students play multiple roles of learners, teachers, and inquirers. Students can become problem solvers and problem generators.

Langer’s study focused on the workings of schools, teachers, and classrooms that strive to increase student performance and despite obstacles and difficulties of serving the poor beat the odds on standardized tests in reading and writing and gained higher literacy.

The method of the study was a five-year period with observations and interviews as well as identification and testing of patterns to take place over time. Researchers studied each school extensively for two years in patterns of curriculum and instruction. They selected the states mentioned above to include diversity in student population, educational problems and approaches to improvement. They identified schools that were performing better than the typical school with similar demographics for the study. Many schools were recommended and the final selections was based on a combination of test scores, diversity of population, problems, locations, and teachers’ and administrators’ willingness to work with them over a two-year period.

Teachers within schools included English teachers in the context of their teams, departments, districts, and those who achieved with unusually good results in spite of the context in which they worked. Teachers had three distinct patterns:
1. Exemplary teachers in supportive environments with strong curriculum and supports provided to everyone,
2. Teachers who achieved due to professionalism unrelated to the school and without support to student achievement beyond school,
3. Those dedicated to their students and working in a system of traditions with expectations, lacking support for their growth, minus consensus for instruction, and did not go beyond the accomplishments of comparable schools.

The design of the study considered program, teacher, and student. The team of researchers studied one or more programs for two years including instructional concerns, plans and enactments over time with two sets of students. All teachers and schools were considered good. Fourteen of the twenty-five schools were out performing demographically similar schools.

The researchers’ procedures included five weeks a year at each site: interviewing district personnel, teachers, and students about goals, plans, and perceptions. Researchers gathered initial observations of the classes and plans for the year ahead. They also used informal interviews with teachers and students, shadowing teachers, and using email accounts or phone conversations for weekly contacts with teachers and students to discuss ongoing classroom activities.

Parallel data from each site included field notes, school and professional experience artifacts, tape recordings and transcripts of all interviews and observed class sessions, and case reports by field researchers. Data was collected by full-team, collaborative dyads, and case-study sessions.

All data coded for the type of community and participants. Data analyzed a system of constant comparison patterns identified within and across cases for two years regarding the six features of instruction mentioned earlier.

The results: active and engaged students and teachers in academically rich classroom marked all. The teachers had a sense of professionalism, dedication and knowledge as well as collaborative participation with students. Students learned the functions and uses of language, how it works in context, how to use language for specific purposes and had a great deal of high literacy. They learned grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and organizational structure with carefully planned activities that focused directly on structure and use of the English language. Students explored their understanding, prepared presentations, and polished final products.

Three distinct approaches: separated, simulated, and integrated characterized the approaches to skill instruction. Separated is direct instruction of isolated skills and knowledge outside of context and through introduction, practice, or review. Teacher tells the facts and focuses on lists of vocabulary, spelling and rules. Separated activity highlights particular skills, items, or rules. Simulated instruction is the application of those concepts and rules within a targeted unit of reading, writing, or oral language. Students are expected to read or write short units of text with purpose of practicing skill or concept. Students find examples of that skill or concept. Teachers develop tasks for the purpose of practice. Integrated instructions expect students to use their skills and knowledge as writing a letter, report, poem, or play for a particular goal such as class newspaper. Successful teachers were more likely to use the above three approaches. Literature circles provided students with an opportunity for the use of skills and knowledge in roles that changed weekly: discussion director, literary luminary, vocabulary enricher, summarizer, and connector.

Approaches to test preparation revealed two approaches: separated activities, test practice and test-taking hints while a second approach integrated test preparation with the regular curriculum by analyzing test demands and reformulating curriculum to help students develop the necessary skills to perform. Most successful teachers integrated the skills and knowledge that was to be tested as their dominant approach to test preparation. Tests were opportunities to revise curriculum. Students actively learned to be reflective in their reading and writing and sometimes included rubrics. Connections between curriculum and real life experiences enhanced learning. Teachers developed instructional strategies that crated yearlong experiences in different types of wring including organization, elaboration, and polishing. Sometimes students developed multiple-choice questions of their own for others to answer. Student work discussed in class connected to how it might be useful in life. Work reviewed later in the week, day, or year reinforced learning and memory. Teachers selectively used materials and created activities because they knew that their students needed to practice skills and knowledge.

In typically performing schools, teachers regarded test preparation as an additional hurdle separated from literacy curriculum. Practice was in old editions of the test, teacher-made tests, and practice materials using similar formats and questions to the test. They were taught how to take a test rather than how to gain and use the skills and knowledge tested. Teachers tended to blame the students rather than themselves and believed that the students were not capable of scoring. In contrast, high performing schools focused on students overall learning with improved language arts learning.

Teachers overtly pointed out connections among three different kinds of student learning: concepts and experiences within lessons, across lessons, classes, and even grades as well as connections between in-school and out-of-school knowledge and experiences. One example includes students who interact with seniors and interact with them to write a character sketch. Another teacher wanted her students to connect across the curriculum and with life to learn to read the text and the world. In the typical schools, little interweaving was done. Typical teachers treated class lessons as separate wholes. Lack of connectedness across curriculum reflected in the larger curriculum revealed lack of integration of materials.

The more successful teachers taught their students strategies for organizing their thoughts and completing tasks. This guided the students in how to do well. Sometimes the students were provided models, lists, and evaluation rubrics. High achieving teachers taught students to think about writing, speaking, thinking, reviewing, revising, reflecting and editing. Teachers shared and discussed these rubrics with students and helped them to develop relevant strategies to reading. Students led into deep and substantive discussions for critical thinking. Literature circle time with her students’ went beyond the texts.

Classroom organization focused on instruction as a social activity with depth and complexity of understanding. Students engaged in teamwork to test ideas and arguments. Students are taught to work together, discuss issues, and react to each other with the idea that individuals learn best from each other. Additionally, teacher expectations explicitly stated provided clear guidance for the development of perspicacious students. Teachers treated students as members of a dynamic learning culture necessary to support learning. Students were more actively engaged in school when literacy was treated as a social activity.

In summary, higher literacy is based on the belief that all students can learn and can integrate knowledge in broader activities with continued practice over time.

The implications of cohesive underlying approaches to instruction are clear and present. Studying these features and placing them in schools will affect student performance.