Savitz, R., Morrison, J.D., Brown, C., Aldrich, C., O’Byrne, W.I., Kane, B.D. (2023). Secondary teachers’ self-efficacy of adolescent literacy. Reading Research Quarterly. 59(1), 102-123. https://doi-org.ezproxy.shsu.edu/10.1002/rrq.521. Open access.
School requests for professional learning on adolescent literacy often stem from low or stagnant reading scores on state standardized assessments and legislative policies that require educators to complete literacy coursework. These decisions are often made without teachers’ voices, requiring teachers to take coursework they may not need or learn in ways that may not align with their content. To address this issue, we used our researcher-created and validated survey to ask middle and high school teachers about their self-efficacy toward adolescent literacy based on various professional characteristics, such as years of experience, teaching grade levels, content area, and taking the state-required literacy courses. Findings note that certain disciplines are more efficacious toward specific literacy practices, and taking state-required literacy courses is insignificant. Our implications are written for literacy scholars and teacher educators to revisit the premise and promise of the 2017 ILA Standards for K-12 literacy professionals, emphasizing the importance of being cognizant of our strengths and highlighting the need for collaborating and learning with and from teachers of all disciplines.
Kane, B., Morrison, J.D., Aldrich, C., Savitz, R., O’Byrne, I., Lilly, T., & Ming, K. (2021). Disentangling content-area and disciplinary literacy: Educators analyzing their own reading strategies as professional development. Literacy Matters. PSLA: https://user-23310503727.cld.bz/Literacy-Matters-Vol-21-Winter-2021/76/, 77-84.
Content-area and disciplinary literacy are increasingly influential topics of discussion in South Carolina’s secondary schools. Educators are often aware of content-area literacy, but less familiar with disciplinary literacy. In this article, we present a series of activities we have designed for use in university coursework and professional development. These activities are rooted in research, coming out of the learning sciences, on teachers’ professional learning. The goal of these activities is to help educators to become metacognitive about their own use of literacy strategies, to understand some of the ways that literacy differs within disciplines, and to open up discussions about the instructional implications of these new understandings. Throughout, we provide a discussion of how a similar set of activities might be used by others in differing contexts for teachers’ professional learning, so that preservice teachers, in-service teachers, coaches, and administrators might develop a strong grounding in content-area and disciplinary literacy and better understand how both might be used to support secondary students’ literacy and content-area learning.
O’Byrne, I., Savitz, R., Morrison, J.D., Kane, B., Lilly, T., Ming, K., & Aldrich, C. (2020). Literacy across the disciplines: Development and validation of an instrument to assess literacy instruction in middle and high school classrooms. The Clearing House: DOI: 10.1080/00098655.2020.1860874.
Nationally published research suggests middle and high school educators are often experts within their respective disciplines, but they may be unprepared to effectively consider literacy needs and ways to incorporate literacy within their discipline. To better understand teachers’ perceived capabilities in their ability to teach and incorporate components of literacy within their classroom, we developed a survey to measure teacher self-efficacy in teaching content-area and disciplinary literacy. We explain the four stages of validation and provide examples of needed revisions to our survey. The survey was designed for immediate use with middle and high school teachers in South Carolina, but it could be used by any school, district, or state.
