As a leader in reading research, Donna Alvermann continues the detailed work she began in "Effective Literacy Instruction for Adolescents" (2001), and asserts that if academic literacy instruction is to be effective, it must address issues of self-efficacy and engagement. Alvermann's earlier article is linked in its entirety from this site, and her extensive work here is readable both as an all-inclusive pdf file and as individual online chapters.

As a leader in reading research, Donna Alvermann continues the detailed work she began in "Effective Literacy Instruction for Adolescents" (2001), and asserts that if academic literacy instruction is to be effective, it must address issues of self-efficacy and engagement. Alvermann's earlier article is linked in its entirety from this site, and her extensive work here is readable both as an all-inclusive pdf file and as individual online chapters.

The author begins by briefly introducing the research on self-efficacy and engagement, then describes a group of students who could benefit from re/mediated instruction. She provides thorough and varied examples of re/mediated instruction, the research that supports it, and adolescents' views on what they find engaging about the kinds of texts that make them feel capable as readers. Her examples include adolescents' engagement with multiple kinds of print and nonprint texts, and she concludes with a set of practical educator guidelines that have their bases in this research.

Focusing on aliteracy, the capacity to read but electing not to do so and certainly one of the most vexing problems facing secondary educators today, Alvermann devotes the crux of her article to well-supported research that concentrates on engaging youth in school-related literacy tasks that capture not only their attention but also their belief in their capability to perform such tasks successfully. She deliniates the difference between remedial and re/mediated instruction, and discusses in depth the implications of this difference for those assisting in the literacy education of all adolescents ("at-risk," struggling readers, and academically capable readers). Throughout the article, though, Alvermann's emphasis remains particularly on those adolescents who are aliterate, her goal being to get these adolescents seeing themselves as capable and engaged readers.

Because research shows that it is evident that students with high self-efficacy, the confidence that they have the capacity to produce a desired effect, are more likely to engage in school-related reading than students with low self-efficacy, perceptions of self-efficacy are central to most theories of motivation. Alvermann argues that as educators we must resist the temptation to rely on an outdated notion that we can metaphorically "fix" learners. Instead, she advocates that we should be in the business of "fixing" or "re/mediating" the instructional conditions in which they learn. Admittedly, this change in focus calls for moving beyond what traditionally has been an endless search for some method that promises to "fix" or "remediate" secondary school students' so-called deficits in reading or motivation to read, and moving in to educational practices that support self-efficacy and explicit strategies for content reading instruction. (author/bcbrown)

This website presents various excellent links and examples of how to get students more actively engaged in reading, whether it be a textbook or a novel. The lesson ideas are aimed towards getting students involved and participating instead of just responding to what is being given to them.

This website presents various excellent links and examples of how to get students more actively engaged in reading, whether it be a textbook or a novel. The lesson ideas are aimed towards getting students involved and participating instead of just responding to what is being given to them. They are adaptable across career-technical fields.