Content-Driven Literacy: One Approach to Urban Secondary Teacher Education

Abstract

In an attempt to address perceived shortcomings in traditional content-area literacy preparation, an interdisciplinary group of teacher education faculty developed an approach called “content-driven literacy” (CDL), which was applied to the design of courses to prepare preservice secondary science and social studies teachers. This article describes the development and implementation of the CDL course work and its five elements: reading and writing embedded in subject matter, explicit instruction, planning and modification of literacy instruction, research-based instruction, and the use of diverse content-area texts. The types of knowledge the preservice teacher participants gained from this approach and implications for secondary content instruction are discussed.

Acknowledgments

The work reported in this article was funded by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. The National Academy for Excellent Teaching (NAfET) was a partner in the project. Some of the material was presented at the 2007 annual conference of the American Educational Research Association and the 2007 and 2008 annual conventions of the International Reading Association.