The Literacy Needs of Adolescents: What Do Content-Area Teachers Know?

Abstract

21^st-century adolescents face greater literacy demands than their predecessors. Consequently, many state and local school systems have initiated efforts to increase and improve literacy instruction for adolescent learners. Using survey research, this study strove to gauge middle and high school content-area teachers' foundational knowledge of adolescent literacy. The researcher used three policy documents published by the Carnegie Corporation as the foundation for the survey, which consisted of close-ended questions. The researcher utilized an online survey platform to locate and solicit potential participants. A total of 161 teachers participated. First, descriptive data were computed to determine participants' knowledge of adolescent literacy in general as well as subcomponents of the survey. Second, an ANOVA was computed to compare the performance of content-area subgroups. Results indicated that content-area teachers have limited declarative knowledge of adolescent literacy. Furthermore, data indicated that a significant difference did not exist among the content-area subgroups' performance.