Approaches to Developing Content Area

Literacies
A Synthesis and a Critique

ZHIHUI FANG

No
I am delighted to edit the Content Area Literacies de- to read and write proficiently in academic content kes,
partment for JAAL. Content area literacies is an excit- areas (National Center for Education Statistics, &
ing field with a long and rich history dating back to 2011; Salahu-Din, Persky, & Miller, 2008). An array Dri
the early 1900s. Its tradition and practices evolve in of national reports and other professional resources ts,
re- sponse to the changing landscape of language and has offered many pedagogical recommendations for 200
lit- eracy education. This department provides a addressing this concern. These recommendations 8).
forum for discussing trends and issues related to the reflect four distinct approaches—cognitive, The
tradition and practices of content area literacies and its sociocultural, linguistic, and critical—each with its y
new permuta- tion, disciplinary literacies. I welcome own epistemological assumptions, set of practices, incl
and evidence base. Existing literacy programs for ude
your feedback on this and future columns.
adolescents typically combine these approaches in stra
various ways, with some adopting a more cognitive tegi
or linguistic orientation and others placing a greater es

A
emphasis on the sociocultural or critical dimension. co
This column provides a brief synthesis and mm
dolescent literacy has emerged as a “very
critique of these four approaches, suggesting that onl
hot” topic in literacy education over the
efforts to develop adolescents’ content area literacies y
past few years (Cassidy, Valadez, Garrett,
must recognize the strengths and limitations of each use
& Barrera, 2010). Its ascendency to the national
approach, as well as their complementarities. d in
spot- light reflects the growing recognition among
con
policy- makers, researchers, and educators that
continuing emphasis on literacy and literacy The Cognitive Approach tent
area
instruction beyond the elementary grades is key to The cognitive approach derives its theoretical support
rea
ensuring that students are college and career ready by from cognitive psychology, a branch of psychology
din
the time they graduate from high school (Council on that studies how people perceive, understand, think,
g/w
Advancing Adolescent Literacy, 2010). reason, remember, and learn. It advocates
riti
A major concern in the United States is that systematic, explicit teaching of mental routines or
ng,
more than 70% of students in grades 4–12 lack the procedures for accomplishing cognitive goals, such
suc
skills as understanding a text, writing an essay, or solving
h as
a problem. These routines or procedures are
pre
elcomes reader comments. Zhihui Fang is a professor at the University of Florida, Gainesville, USA; e-mail zfang@ coe.ufl.edu.
dict
ing,
infe
ren
referred to, broadly, as cognitive strategies (Dole, cin
g,
CONTENT AREA LITERACIES

103

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 56 (2) October 2012 doi:10.1002 /JAAL.00110 © 2012 International Reading Association (pp. 103 –108 )
 CONTENT AREA LITERACIES
monitoring, summarizing, concept mapping, and
note taking. The approach assumes that the
cognitive requirements for reading/writing are
essentially the same regardless of content areas. It
promotes the use of generic cognitive strategies
before, during, and after reading/writing to help
students comprehend and compose texts across all
content areas.
Prominent since the 1970s, the cognitive approach
has been operationalized or packaged in many ways
for instructional purposes (see Table for examples).
These programs show that cognitive strategy
instruction improves student reading, writing, and
learning and that teaching a combination of strategies
is more effective than teaching individual strategies
in isolation from one another and from content (for
reviews, see Dole, Nokes, & Drits, 2008; and Gersten,
Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001). Using the evidence
standards established by the What Works
Clearinghouse, Kamil et al. (2008) concluded that the
evidence base for cognitive strategy instruction is
“strong.”
Despite the solid evidence base, there are still
questions regarding the nature and workings of
cognitive strategies. Conley (2008) spotlighted a lack
of understanding about how cognitive strategies can
be meaningfully integrated into our overall efforts
to improve adolescents’ content learning. Catts
(2009) questioned whether cognitive strategies are
indeed comprehension strategies. To him, cognitive
strategies such as summarizing are the product, rather
than the cause, of comprehension, because providing
56(2) OCTOBER 2012
a summary of a passage is possible only when the
reader has comprehended the passage. He noted
that it is possible that cognitive strategies “are not
essential skills necessary for reading comprehension
but rather activities that focus readers’ attention on
what is important in comprehension” (p. 180).
JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY
Hirsch (2005) argued against an overemphasis on
cognitive strategies in literacy instruction, suggesting
that few school-age children have trouble using
them in their daily listening comprehension. He
recommended that instructional efforts be channeled
instead to building students’ knowledge of “words and
the world.” Clearly, there are serious doubts regarding
whether implementing cognitive strategy instruction
for adolescents would in fact, as Conley (2008) has
claimed, “pay big dividends in learning” (p. 103).
The Sociocultural Approach
104
The sociocultural approach recognizes that literacy
is a complex process involving not just a cognitive
dimension but social and cultural dimensions as
well. The extent to which readers/writers are able
to construct meaning with texts is influenced not
only by background knowledge and strategy use but
also by such factors as purpose, interest, motivation,
and identity. This new understanding of literacy
led scholars to call for a reconceptualization of
what it means to be literate and what can be done
to promote academic literacy in the context of
secondary schooling (Bean, 2000; Elkins & Luke,
1999). A common thread in this line of scholarship is
that teachers should value the out-of-school literacies
that adolescents bring to the classroom and use their
everyday funds of knowledge and cultural practices
as both a bridge to and a resource for promoting the
development of content area literacies.
Adolescent literacy projects that draw on the
sociocultural approach (see Table for examples) not
only sought to build connections between home/
community and school but also explored ways to
meaningfully and strategically integrate the multiple
funds of knowledge and literacy practices that students
bring to school with the academic practices of
disciplinary learning in content area classrooms. They
reported positive impacts on adolescents’
motivation, engagement, and learning (see Hull,
2012, for a brief review). However, because research
involving these projects is primarily qualitative, the
evidence base for the sociocultural approach is
considered “moderate” at best by the What Works
Clearinghouse standards (Kamil et al., 2008).
In its efforts to leverage students’ knowledge,
language, and literacy practices for academic
learning, the sociocultural approach demystifies
academic language and academic literacy, blurring
the distinction between the academic and the
everyday. In so doing, however, it also tends to
downplay real and significant differences between
academic language and everyday language that
research (e.g., Fang, 2012; Schleppegrell, 2004) has
shown to exist and be a major cause of reading and
learning difficulties for many adolescents. According
to Halliday (2004), for example, “the discourses
of science gain their theoretical power precisely
because they are not translatable into commonsense
terms There is bound to be a certain disjunction
between the grammar of scientific writing and the
commonsense grammar of daily life” (p. 49).
Failure to take serious account of such
differences makes language the “hidden curriculum”
of schooling, further hindering the learning of
 TABLE Summary Features of Four Dominant Approaches to Content Area Literacies
Theoretical Research Key
Approaches grounding tradition assumptions
Cognitive Cognitive theories Primarily
The cognitive requirements of
quantitative (e.g.,
reading and learning from
experimental
texts are similar across all
studies)
content areas.
Cognitive strategies help with
the extraction of information
from texts as well as the
remembering and retention of
content in school subjects.
Sociocultural Sociocultural
Primarily Literacy is a complex process
theories
qualitative (e.g., involving both cognitive and
ethnographic sociocultural dimensions.
studies) Students’ out-of-school
literacies can be both a bridge
to and a resource for
promoting the development of
content area literacies.
Linguistic Linguistic theories Primarily
Content area texts are
quantitative (e.g.,
constructed in language
experimental
patterns that differ significantly
studies)
from those that construct
everyday texts.
Students must learn to cope
with the specialized language
that constructs the specialized
knowledge of content areas in
order to be successful in school
and workplace.
Critical Critical theories Primarily All texts are inherently
qualitative (e.g., ideological and value laden.
case studies)
Knowledge is neither natural
nor neutral.
Literacy should empower
people to challenge social
inequalities and promote social
justice.
Note: The rating was based on the evidence standards established by the What Works Clearinghouse (see Kamil et al., 2008), which privilege experimental studies with
randomized designs.
10
Approaches to Developing Content Area Literacies: A Synthesis and a Critique
5
Recommended
practices
Conduct systematic,
explicit teaching of a
combination of cognitive
strategies with content
area texts
Build connections
between home/
community and school by
strategically integrating
students’ prior knowledge
and cultural practices with
the academic practices of
content area learning.
Explicitly teach vocabulary
and other grammatical
and discursive patterns in
the context of challenging
but significant content
area texts.
Engage students in
critically analyzing,
interrogating, evaluating,
problematizing, and
transforming all forms
of text based on issues
of, for example, power,
gender, race, ethnicity,
class, sexuality, religion,
or political affiliation.
Example projects Evidence
or programs base*
Collaborative Strategy Strong
Reading (Vaughn,
Klingner, & Bryant, 2001)
Reciprocal Teaching
(Palincsar & Brown, 1984)
Strategic Instruction Model
(Deshler, Schumaker, &
Woodruff, 2004)
Funds of knowledge (Moll Moderate
et al., 1992)
Third space (Moje et
al., 2004)
Cultural modeling (Lee,
2001)
Word Generation (Snow, Moderate to
Lawrence, & White, 2009) Strong
LANGUAGE! (Greene,
1996)
Functional language
analysis (Fang &
Schleppegrell, 2010)
Critical academic literacy Low
(Morrell & Duncan-
Andrade, 2002)
Critical language
awareness (Janks, 1993)
Critical media literacy
(Alvermann, Moon, &
Hagood, 1999)
 CONTENT AREA LITERACIES
disciplinary knowledge and ways of using language,
a key goal of content area learning. Another concern
with the sociocultural approach is that it requires
reconceptualization of existing school structures as
integral to, rather than separate from, students’
home and community, a feat that may be
challenging, albeit not impossible, to accomplish in
the current sociopolitical climate.
The Linguistic Approach
The linguistic approach believes that students must
master the lexical and grammatical resources of
language that construct the knowledge and value
of content areas to be successful in school, college,
and workplace (Schleppegrell, 2004). It recognizes
that the texts students read and write in early grades
lack the richness, depth, and complexities found in
the texts that present the more specialized, abstract,
and advanced knowledge in later years of schooling
(Fillmore & Fillmore, 2012).
Traditional foci of the linguistic approach have
been on decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and text
structure. However, there have been calls for greater
attention to other grammatical elements in literacy
instruction. For example, Scott (2004, 2009) noted
that the syntactic properties of sentences can make a
text difficult to understand. She recommended
using strategies such as paraphrasing a difficult
sentence periodically while reading, having students
generate questions after reading a complex
sentence, manipulating the structure and meaning of
56(2) OCTOBER 2012
short sentences, and teaching students to write more
complex sentences as ways to help students cope
with syntactic complexity.
Fillmore and Fillmore (2012) proposed a short
daily instructional session in which teachers engage
students in analyzing the structure of a “juicy”
JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY
sentence from a content area text under study
and discussing the information presented in these
structural elements. The focal sentence is usually
grammatically complex but interesting and conveys
an important point in the text. Greene (1996) reported
on an individualized, structured language
curriculum that teaches the structure and use of
all language systems (e.g., phonology, orthography,
morphology, semantics, syntax) to poor adolescent
readers. Fang and Schleppegrell (2008, 2010)
described a more functional model that provides
teachers with a set of practical tools for engaging
students in systematically analyzing the language
106
patterns and discussing the meanings of these
patterns in a segment of text that is
challenging but important for developing disciplinary
understanding. These tools enable students to learn
about how language is used as a creative resource
for constructing different sorts of knowledge and value
in various disciplines at the same time they are
learning disciplinary content and developing
disciplinary habits of mind through language.
The evidence base for the linguistic approach
is mixed. Kamil et al. (2008) determined the level
of evidence to be “strong” for explicit vocabulary
instruction. There is also some, albeit inconsistent,
evidence that teaching sentence complexity, text
structure, and grammar analysis can improve
reading and writing (Graham & Perin, 2007;
Locke, 2010; Scott, 2004). A key issue in the
implementation of the linguistic approach is to
make sure that language is not taught as isolated
drill-like exercises devoid of functionalities and
content contexts. Another concern is that many
teachers lack deep knowledge about language to
make the linguistic expectations of content area
learning explicit to students (Schleppegrell, 2004).
A lack of linguistic know-how can prevent teachers
from effectively developing the language resources
students need for full participation in content area
learning and disciplinary socialization.
The Critical Approach
The critical, or sociopolitical, approach views all texts—
written, spoken, linguistic, visual, and multimedia—as
inherently ideological and value laden, suggesting
that text meaning is neither natural nor neutral and
must therefore be understood in relation to both
the intention of the writer/designer and the social-
historic-political contexts that govern its production.
From this perspective, then, content area texts are
both “positioned and positioning” (Janks, 2005, p.
97): They are positioned by the author’s values and
viewpoints, and the verbal and other semiotic
choices made by the author create effects that
position the reader in particular ways. The approach
foregrounds the situated, constructed, and contested
nature of meaning; emphasizes the development of
critical consciousness about texts and language
use; and promotes thoughtful critique and eventual
disruption of existing social relations and
hegemonic power structures (Cervetti, Pardales, &
Damico, 2001). As such, it has a strong social justice
agenda that goes beyond the government and
business sanctioned goals of college/career
readiness and workplace productivity.
 The critical approach has gained growing
recognition in literacy education since the 1990s as
critical consumption of texts becomes even more
important in an era of information explosion and
technological revolution. The approach engages
students in analyzing texts and interrogating the
values, prejudices, and ideologies underpinning
these texts, helping them better understand the
politics of representation and the constructedness of
knowledge. It encourages teachers and students to
collaboratively explore such questions as the
following: Who is and is not represented in the text,
and why? Whose interest is best served by the
message of the text? How are various people
positioned by the text? How do particular content,
discourse genres, and modes of inquiry become
privileged and acquire power in particular
disciplines? And how does such privileging affect
access, equity, and learning in the classroom?
Classroom practices that promote such a critical
orientation to texts include (a) reading supplementary
texts that cover social issues glossed over or avoided
by traditional or canonical texts, (b) reading multiple
texts on the same topic to gain insights into author
subjectivities, (c) reading the same text from a different
perspective based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality,
religion, or political affiliation, (d) producing texts
that counter the perspective of the author, and (e)
taking social action aimed at making a difference in
students’ or others’ lives (Behrman, 2006).
In essence, the critical approach aims to empower
students to read both “the word and the world” (Freire
& Macedo, 1987) through analyzing, evaluating,
problematizing, and transforming texts. However,
this agenda appears to be undermined by increased
standardized testing and government intrusion in
classroom instruction. Without a canon of texts or
formulaic teaching procedures, the approach does
not lend itself to standardization or commercial
prepackaging. The result is that ways of doing
critical literacies can look rather different from one
classroom to another (Luke, 2000). In part because
of this problem, the evidence base for the approach
is considered “low” per the What Works
Clearinghouse standards (Kamil et al., 2008). A
further challenge in implementing the approach is
that it requires both teachers and students to
develop an understanding of how lexical and
grammatical choices realize meaning in text. Absent
this knowledge, it is not possible to conduct text
analysis and see how texts mean what they mean;
and without text analysis, it is not possible to do
critical literacies (Janks, 2005).
Toward a Synergy of Approaches
Each of the four approaches—cognitive, sociocultural,
linguistic, and critical—draws on a different
theoretical and empirical tradition and privileges
a particular set of teaching practices (see Table
for a summary). They are not mutually exclusive,
however; they complement one another in ways that
allow teachers to tailor instruction to student needs,
curricular goals, and the specific tasks at hand.
Recent discussion about adolescent literacy
underscores the need for adolescents to develop
a repertoire of resources that enables them to
effectively process verbal and visual signs (code
breaker), participate in thoughtful conversation
with text (meaning maker), use a variety of genres
and registers for different purposes and contexts (text
user), and critically analyze, challenge, and
transform text (text critic) in a postmodern, text-
based culture (Luke & Freebody, 1999). The
discussion has been influential in reshaping the
current thinking about the goals and practices of
content area literacies. It also provides an impetus
for integrating and re- visioning the four
approaches described in this column. This synergy
must be harnessed and fully exploited if teachers are
to optimize instruction that maximizes the
development of content area literacies for all
adolescents.
Approaches to Developing Content Area Literacies: A Synthesis and a Critique
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