Effective literacy instruction for adolescents

This article, written for a general audience, focuses on the importance of keeping adolescents' interests and needs foremost in mind when designing literacy instruction at the middle and high school level. It is a slightly revised version of a position paper that the Board of Directors of the National Reading Conference (NRC) commissioned this past year to underscore the need to continue literacy instruction beyond the elementary grades. Posted originally to NRC's web page (http://nrc.oakland.edu), the paper argues that adolescent literacy instruction, if it is to be effective, must address issues of self-efficacy and student engagement with a variety of texts (e.g., textbooks, hypermedia texts, digital texts) in diverse settings. It must also attend to the literacy demands of subject area classes, to struggling readers, to issues of critical literacy, and to participatory instructional approaches that actively engage adolescents in their own learning.