Every teacher is a literacy teacher

I am sick about writing on policy so i have decided to change pace. I recently completed a paper on the role of a science teacher in literacy. I present to you my paper on why every science teacher NEEDS to be a literacy teacher.


A IS FOR ATOM, B IS FOR BACTERIA: LITERACY AND THE SCIENCE TEACHER

Abstract
It is said: “every teacher is a literacy teacher!” But what does that mean? How does this affect subject area teachers? This paper will address those questions as well as assessing: how does one define literacy? How does the science teacher define literacy? How does the science teacher fit into this equation? The growing emergence of new technology, the scientific research field, as well as the infusion of technology into school curriculums has led to the emergence of “techno-literacy” creating a new dimension of literacy instruction for science teachers. Not only is being a literacy instructor a component of being a science teacher, it is a requirement for science teachers in order for them to truly do their jobs.

Every teacher is a literacy teacher! Language Arts and Social Studies/History teachers are the most obvious to fall under this classification. The literacy coach, bilingual, special educations, and speech teachers, not surprisingly are automatically and subconsciously “folded in” with this group. Math and science teachers, though less obvious are also participants in the literacy education of our students.
How then can a science teacher be considered a literacy teacher? This brings us to the fundamental question, “what does this mean for the science teacher?” Rather, how should a science teacher define literacy? What should they be looking to accomplish in terms of literacy education? (What “type” of literacy should they concern themselves with?) And when this is all answered we are left with the functional question of importance: Surprisingly this is not “How is a science teacher a literacy teacher?” But rather: “Why is it necessary for the science teacher to be a literacy instructor, as well, in order to actually carry out their primary objective of being a content area teacher?”
Unfortunately, the situation is not so “cut and dry” as to simply ask how is a science teacher also a literacy teacher? There are many questions that can confound the answer. Literacy is not limited to content area specific literacy for the science teacher…more and more today, content area teachers are finding it necessary to supplement the general literacy instructor. This is for two major reasons, the first being a need to fill the requirements of a curriculum driven more and more towards math and literacy guarded by high stakes standardized testing. The second is a general deficiency in the required skills. More simply, students are not where they should be, or more importantly, where they need to be in order to function at a level where they are capable of learning grade appropriate content. So what “type” of literacy are we talking about? This question needs an answer before we can ask how a science teacher can best fill this role. There is no easy way to answer this, so researchers have come to lump the different types of literacy into an amalgam definition, termed “scientific literacy.” (Van Eijck & Roth, 2007 p.225) (Corder, 2007 p. 38)
At this point, we reach another stumbling block; how do you define literacy? Are we talking about functional literacy? Content area literacy? “High literacy? Without a good working definition of literacy, or better yet, a more focused “type” of literacy such as those listed above, defining the role of any teacher in educating others in it is troublesome at best.
DEFINING LITERACY
So what is literacy? Though there is a vast gradient of ways to define literacy, there will always be two overarching “camps” the “technocratic”, or specific and traditionalist, and the “progressive” or general and overarching. In other words, there are those who feel that being able to read and write constitutes literacy (this would be a technocratic approach) and those whom embrace a more comprehensive view of what literacy means. (De Castell, 1981) De Castell, et al. do, however state that the technocratic approach does tend to “…dominate current educational practice and research.” (De Castell, 1981 p.5)
Beers does a good job of explaining the point that literacy demands (even from the narrower traditionalist POV) have always changed to meet the needs of the times. From pre-WWI penmanship, to 20th century “recitational literacy” through the analysis phase of the 80’s and 90’s and today’s world where she, through Daniel Pink, explains that the focus of literacy will be on connectivity. (Beers, 2007 pp.7-8) She then goes on to tell a story about a boy she met who, while by his school’s traditional standards was not literate, was able to make not only intellectually well thought out arguments, but make them eloquent enough to carry on an academic conversation. (Beers, 2007)
‘TECHNO-LITERACY’
This brings up an interesting point as to why science is particularly suited to be an extension of the literacy classroom in today’s modern world of emerging technologies. Science classrooms are natural places for the instruction in IT or Information Technologies as they are integral in the study and research of many fields of science themselves. Thus, if we take a more progressive approach to defining literacy, specifically an approach in which the student above, who was able to clearly express his thoughts, is considered literate, we must inexorably come to the conclusion that true literacy in today’s world (whether or not it is mirrored in curriculum) includes the mastery of communications technology, information technology, and the like.
As technology continues to develop at an exponential rate, the significance and relative importance of technological literacy (over print literacy in some circumstances) increases with it. This can be seen in the fact that many a well educated, and largely accepted as literate adult will ask a child for help in using a computer program or sending an e-mail. Even in pop-culture advertising campaigns, images of adults befuddles by modern technology are prevalent. Thus we can see there is a need for literacy education in the classroom if not in the classical sense then in the new and emerging classification of technological literacy. While some school districts are trying to embrace a technological infusion into the curriculum, even going so far as to include high stakes testing in information technology , Beers paints the picture in the story of this boy that on the whole, schools are not doing enough to incorporate the technological aspects of literacy into our schools. This sentiment is echoed by Van Eijck and Roth who state that, “Given the central place IT-based research tools take in scientific research, the marginal role such tools currently play in science curricula is dissatisfying from the perspective of making students scientifically literate.” (Van Eijck & Roth, 2007 p.225) If we are supposed to be preparing our students for the next level, be it high school, college, graduate school, or the real world: as science teachers, to not prepare them with the skills to utilize the tools they will need to survive, we are being derelict in our duties.
ELL/LEP AND GENERAL LITERACY INSTRUCTION
Above, we discussed the importance of the role of the science teacher as a literacy teacher with respect to teaching technology literacy. Why though, is the role of the science teacher also so important? To simplify it we can break it down into: “vocabulary” “comprehension” and “literacy skills.” These three words represent three threads which are inter-woven in respect to how they apply to literacy.
As anyone who has taken a science class (especially a life science class such as biology) can tell you, vocabulary is an integral and large component of science teaching. Students are typically taught to use prefixes and suffixes to “decode” the meanings of words they may not know. Without the traditional literacy knowledge of not only learning such parts of speech, but the skill of being able to apply that knowledge to break up a word, student’s might face a brick wall in terms of understanding content.
This however does not have to be the case. Science classes need not be vocabulary driven. As Jay Lemke states in the forward of Language and Literacy in Science Education:
In fact it is possible to discuss a topic very scientifically without
use of technical vocabulary, if you can use the right kind of
language to scaffold deductive and inductive reasoning, formulate
hypotheses, make generalizations, identify exceptions, connect
evidence to theses, classify, relate,organize, plan and persuade. (Lemke, 2001)

In other words, if you teach students how to approach content text (whatever the form) the need for heavy dependence on vocabulary lessons. For example, teaching them how to ask the right questions from a text to extract meaning (QtA) or relating the text to themselves (QAR), et cetera. However, these tools are themselves literary/ literacy techniques which need to be taught to the students, thus reinforcing the necessity of the role of a science teacher including the “hat” of literacy instructor.
Textbooks in general, and science textbooks specifically, are notoriously hard to decode. Graphs, charts and pictures break up the main body of text, while “break out sections” which typically have nothing to do with the specific content being discussed, serve to further confuse the reader. Even some teachers rely on their teacher’s edition to decode and chunk science texts; this is what “literacy skills” refers to above. The need to teach students how to distinguish between caption and paragraph, between title and subject heading are necessary literacy skills that frequently need to be addressed if not completely taught in the science classroom. Again, the role of every science teacher as a literacy teacher is cemented.
The title of this section is ELL standing for English Language Learners. Typically, this term refers to a group of students who are learning English as a “second” language. However, if you look at the situation fundamentally, the term can really apply to any student who is “illiterate” in the traditional sense, or severely struggling with traditional literacy skills to the point where they are years behind where they should be.
The focus of this section is why the presence of this population necessitates the presence of a literacy teacher “within” each science teacher. Above, comprehension was listed. “The skill to read and understand science-oriented information is an important means by which students may enhance their ability to acquire scientific literacy.” (Corder, 2007, p. 38) While Corder’s research focuses on the fact that the lack of these skills is endemic to ELLs, it is relevant to all science teachers for three main reasons. Firstly, as described above, any student struggling severely with literacy can be considered an ELL. Secondly, Corder believes that developing the reading abilities of students can take place in the science classroom. And thirdly, between 1992 and 2003, the ELL population increased by approximately 85%. (Corder, 2007, p. 39) Hence, this is a problem (and a growing one at that) for all science teachers. The bottom line is that not only are science teachers needed to teach content area literacy, or “scientific literacy,” but they are required to teach basic reading and literacy skills, even in the most traditionalist sense, so that their students’ have the foundation for content area development.
FROM QUESTION TO HYPOTHESIS TO CONCLUSION
After each step navigating the minefield of determining what literacy “is” and how it “should” be defined for the science teacher, we have always come to the same conclusion that there is a place, a necessary place, for literacy education in the science classroom. Thus the science teacher is a de facto literacy instructor as well, not out of common practice, but out of necessity! The science teacher must be a literacy instructor as well to support his/her students both in and out of the classroom. As Amy Wilson states: “To help students meet these challenges, it will take the concerted efforts of teachers across the content areas to support their students in understanding, critiquing, and designing a variety of texts.” (Wilson, 2008, p. 156) Thus we return to the opening affirmation of this paper: every teacher is a literacy teacher! And for science teachers, not only due to the emergence of “techno-literacy” as termed above, or “scientific-literacy” as researchers refer to science content literacy, but to support our students completely, literacy is an integral facet of everyone’s education.
 
Bibliography
Beers, K. (2007). The Measure of Our Success. In K. Beers, R. E. Probst, & L. Rief, adolescent LITERACY: Turning Promise into Practice (pp. 1-14). Portsmouth: Heinemann.
Corder, G. (2007, September). Supporting English Language Learners' Reading in the Science Classroom. Science Scope , pp. 38-41.
De Castell, S. (1981). On Defining Literacy. Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l'éducation , 7-18.
Lemke, J. (2001). Foreword. In J. Osborne, & J. Wellington, Language and Literacy in Science Education (pp. iv-v). Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Van Eijck, M., & Roth, W.-M. (2007). Rethinking the Role of Information Technology-Based Research Tools in Students’ Development of Scientific Literacy. Journal of Science Education and Technology , 225-238.
Wilson, A. A. (2008). Moving Beyond the Page in Content Area Literacy: Comprehension Instruction for Multimodal Texts in Science. The Reading Teacher , 153-156.