Balanced literacy and contextual teaching and learning: A marriage of methods to promote literacy among struggling, urban readers.

摘要

This is a single case study of a literacy class taught by teacher interns and run by a university through a Professional Development School partnership. The university developed a pilot curriculum to be implemented in the fall of 2003. This curriculum was aligned with current research on best practice for developing literacy among adolescents at risk of school failure; namely maintain high expectations through a challenging and relevant curriculum and provide opportunities for meaningful interaction within the learning environment. These efforts are shown to promote culturally responsive teaching---a practice that forges connections between students in and out of school lives.; The goals of the curriculum, entitled "The Third Eye", included independent reading, reading comprehension, writing, and vocabulary development. Additionally, critical literacy goals were incorporated to promote awareness of the media's power to influence how consumers interpret information, particularly news reports with its use of language, bias, and slant. This balanced approach to literacy was then framed within the Contextual Teaching and Learning Framework; to promote students' academic, social, and cultural assets.; Data collected included a pre- and posttest, field notes, audio and video recordings, class work, and student interviews. Authentic data, such as class work and discourse analysis, provided a more detailed profile of student development. Results showed that individual students benefited from each goal differently depending on their academic need and social propensity. These findings suggest components of balanced literacy appeared to provide a range of skills that accommodated the academic needs of the students and the CT&L framework was useful in designing instructional strategies that bridged the students' home and school cultures.