Program requirements

Prerequisites (if any):

Catalog Description:

Practicum in assessment of literacy as a cultural practice. Students conduct activity systems assessments to understand reading, writing, speaking, and listening instruction and learning in a variety of grade 5-12 settings, attending especially to variability across classrooms and to demands such variability places on students as well as literacy specialists. (15 practicum hours)

Extended Description:

Middle schools and high schools -- broken as they are into small, insular, disciplinary chunks spread out across several teachers -- present considerable academic challenges for many students. They also present considerable challenges for the literacy specialists who work with these students. This course extends ERDG 505 by emphasizing the knowledge literacy specialists need to work with students and teachers in and across the wide range of classrooms that characterize middle and high schools. More specifically, the course will help students learn how to "read" a classroom and the larger social, cultural, and institutional forces that shape membership of and participation in a particular classroom or program, whether a science, language arts or other content area class, a resource room, or an AIS class.

Toward this end, we will view and analyze videotapes of middle and high school classroom practice. We will also engage in ongoing conversations (in person and/or online) with (most if not all of) the taped teachers whose classroom activities we analyze. Building out from this set of conversations around the video analysis, students will conduct interviews with focal students from the videotaped classrooms, as well as with these students’ parents or guardians and administrators from the videotaped schools. Students will also examine assessment practices and curricular mandates within these schools, and they will explore the community that the schools serve -- all this in an attempt to understand how a particular classrooms and a set of activities fit within a larger system of expectations and beliefs, constraints and possibilities.

Course activities push students to consider the following:
--What are the "navigational" opportunities, expectations and constraints associated with a particular class or program? That is, how are students placed into and how do they move about in or out of the particular class or program?
--What material and social resources are available for the student in this class or program, and what are the expectations for how a student is to make use of these resources?
--What kind of student participation in this classroom is enabled or constrained, and how? What do the available participation structures mean for what students can and do learn? What learning trajectories are intentionally or accidentally made possible, encouraged, or closed off in this classroom or program?
--More specifically, how does literacy get "constructed" in the class or program – what does it look and feel like, and what does it ask of students and teacher? How do the various literacy practices work to construct or constrain kinds of students (and kinds of teachers and teaching, for that matter)?
--How is literacy learning and development assessed, and how do these assessments align with state standards and assessments?
--What are the cultural, institutional, and contextual features of a particular classroom or program? What beliefs and expectations about literacy, learning and schooling frame activities within this classroom or program? How do these seem to fit with (or not) the beliefs and expectations within the school, and within the larger community that the school serves?
--What options exist for the ways literacy specialists might work with kids and teachers in this particular setting?

Program goals:

** major goal

Pedagogical Content Knowledge

language and literacy development: the nature, breadth, and depth of and the overt markers of that development

** individual and cultural differences: knowledge of economic, academic, social, and cultural diversity; use of this knowledge to inform instructional decisions

methods and materials: the range of techniques and materials appropriate for literacy instruction

** literacy in society: societal changes in literacy usage, and implications for teaching and learning both inside and outside the classroom

task difficulty: relation to student learning, independence, and development

** assessment of literacy: the value and properties of assessment methods and instruments

prevention and solution of literacy difficulties: management of the classroom context to prevent difficulties in the acquisition of literacy as well as to solve learning difficulties when they occur

technology: understand the nature and functions of information technologies in contemporary literacy practices; use relevant information technologies for teaching and assessment

organization of instruction: organization, regulation, and reform of literacy instruction

** NYSED standards and core curriculum: knowledge of English Language Arts, Social Studies, Mathematics, Science and Technology

self-extended learning: how to engage critically with professional text and research to extend learning, including success with their own professional reading and writing

Teaching Skills

children's literacy development: documenting and analyzing reading, writing, speaking and listening, both through observational practices and through more formal techniques such as the Early Literacy Profile and standardized tests

instructional decisions: matching learners with appropriate materials and creating independent learners; analyzing and solving instructional problems that arise in the regular or instructional support classroom, especially as they relate to learners who are struggling, or whose literacy abilities are so advanced that they need additional challenges

learning communities for teachers: generating productive contexts for independent and collaborative learning among educators.

Readings

(Note: these are suggested texts--actual readings in this course will be listed in the current course outline)

Literacy Learning & Instruction
With attention paid to:
--reading & writing development across contexts
--participants' roles and possibilities within particular literacy practices

Methods and Materials of Instruction
--varied uses of texts within and across classrooms
--means and rationale for selection and uses of these texts
--how multiple texts are used in accordance with curricular goals, including mandated state & district goals

Activity Systems Assessment
Analysis of literacy practices and beliefs within various classrooms, using the following as data:
--interviews
--field notes from observations
--audio & video tapes
--texts produced over time
--New York state standards & assessments
--local (district & classroom) assessments
--placement instruments & policies

Ashton, P. (1996). The concept of activity. In L. Dixon-Krauss (Ed.), Vygotsky in the classroom (pp. 111-124). White Plains, NY: Longman.

Engestrom, Y. (1999). Communication, discourse and activity. The Communication Review, 3(1-2): 165-185.

Heath, S.B. (1999). Dimensions of language development: Lessons from older children. In A.S. Masten (Ed.), Cultural processes in child development: The Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology, v. 29. (pp. 59-75). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Mehan, H. (1999). Beneath the skin and between the ears. In S. Chaiklin & J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding practice (pp. 241-267). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Moje, E. B.; Dillon, D. R.; O'Brien, D. (2000). Reexamining roles of learner, text, and context in secondary literacy. Journal of Educational Research, 93 (3), 165-181.

Monzo, L.D. & Rueda, R. (2003). Shaping education through diverse funds of knowledge: A look at one Latina paraeducator’s lived experiences, beliefs, and teaching. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 34(1): 72-95.

Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse Group. (1994). Constructing literacy in classrooms: Literate action as social accomplishment. In R. B. Ruddell, M. R. Ruddell, & H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (4th ed., pp. 124-154). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Wenger, E. (1998). Part II: Identity, Chapters 6-9. In Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity (pp. 145-221). New York: Cambridge University Press.