Robert J. Tierney

Developing readers' knowledge through analogy*

UNFAMILIAR INFORMATION is often introduced to readers through analogy. The effect of this practice was investigated by examining three possible explanations of analogys function: to activate specific analogous knowledge, to activate generally related knowledge, or to supply information which readers use to fashion their own comparisons. American high school students attempted to learn about the game of cricket from prose materials which were variously augmented with analogies drawn from the game of baseball. The students subsequently read and recalled newspaper accounts of cricket matches and made predictions and discriminations about open-ended cricket match situations. Across seven different dependent measures subjected to regression analysis, the consistent finding was that two factors-student prior knowledge about sports and baseball, and the provision of instructional texts about either baseball or cricket-explained more variance than any other factor or combinations of factors. In some instances, the more specific provision of analogies proved beneficial, especially for groups with differing levels of prior knowledge, or in conjunction with an informational text about baseball. These data were interpreted as providing strong support for a general knowledge activation hypothesis and modest support for a specific knowledge activation hypothesis, both of which were interpreted as consistent with recently emerging schema theoretic notions.

Traversing the Topical Landscape: Reading and Writing as Ways of Knowing.

In light of recent theoretical and empirical developments in the areas of reading, writing, and learning, this article proposes a view of literacy learning in which various forms of reading and writing are conceptualized as unique ways of thinking about and exploring a topic of study en route to acquiring knowledge. Throughout this article, we take the theoretical position that a topic of study is analogous to a conceptual “landscape” about which knowledge is best acquired by “traversing” it from a variety of perspectives. In this system, different forms of reading and writing represent the “traversal routes” through which an individual can explore a given content domain. Specifically, we wish to argue that more complex or diverse combinations of different forms of reading and writing provide a learner with the means to conduct a more critical inquiry of a topic by virtue of the multiple perspectives or ways of “seeing” and thinking that these reading and writing exchanges permit. Finally, in light of this theoretical orientation, we contend that the ability to direct dynamically ones own reading and writing engagements en route to learning is central to conducting an inquiry of this nature. This perspective suggests a reexamination of a line of research that has pursued the question of how writing in combination with reading influences thinking and learning.

Examining Literate Lives as Students Engage with Multiple Literacies.

Our conception of the new literacies (those associated with digital technologies and multimodal representations) is grounded in an understanding of multiple literacies as social practices. Based on our observations of students in supportive classroom environments, individuals and groups afforded opportunity to engage as teams with digital literacies learn an array of new ways to explore and share ideas. These individuals are able to contribute together and separately to enhanced explorations of their worlds with new and dynamic genres that afford an image-enhanced, complex layering of concepts, as well as the means for rich explorations, exchanges of ideas, and problemsolving. Depending upon how these new literacies are introduced/situated, they can make a significant contribution to shifts in the lives of individuals and groups politically, economically, and socially. The paradox is that schools may not support the transition of these new literacies to school settings in ways consistent with their potential.

Global/Cultural Teachers Creating Possibilities: Reading Worlds, Reading Selves, and Learning to Teach

In this article I explore the notion of a global/cultural educator, especially how we as teacher educators prepare future educators for the global communities that they might serve. I argue that our challenge is to prepare educators to work on behalf of, from, alongside, and within communities. To work globally requires educators to bridge the gap between the privileged and the marginalised, between uniformity and diversity, between local and global, across gender and races, and between indigenous and immigrant. To achieve these goals, I posit that we need to go beyond an infusion of the knowledge of various cultures in our curriculum. I suggest that we need to find spaces where the global/cultural educator can have an identity that emerges not from theory alone but from a mix of scholarship, practice, global development, and cultural critique and proceeds in a manner that is responsive, supportive, diverse, and nonoppressive. It is a journey for which we lack a map and indeed may be blinded by our own vision.

How Will Literacy Be Assessed in the Next Millennium

In this “RRQ Snippet,” several researchers share their ideas about trends in literacy assessment, including high-stakes testing, the influence of technology, and assessment to inform instructional practice.

Evolving a Description of Text through Mapping

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the evolvement of a description of text through mapping. There are two major, independently useful products of relational mapping—the map and the list of relationship propositions. The map is a graphical representation of the concepts and relationships that text analysts identify as the intended message of the author. It is constructed by identifying the concepts in the text and then graphing (mapping) the relationships that hold the concepts together to form a coherent whole. Three major assumptions guide the mapping process. The first assumption is that the text forms a coherent discussion of the topic. The second assumption is that the concepts presented by the author are organized and are subsumed (embedded) by their relationship to the topic of the text. The third assumption is that a relatively limited set of relationship types will be adequate in representing all the ways in which two concepts can be related to each other in informative discourse.

Evaluation of the Learning to Teach for Social Justice-Beliefs Scale in an Australian Context.

A concern for social justice pervades the espoused curriculum of many pre-service teaching programmes, but the extent to which that curriculum influences the beliefs students hold is an open question. With the goal of developing an instrument suitable for evaluating such beliefs at the degree programme level, the present study analysed responses to the Learning to Teach for Social Justice–Beliefs (LTSJ–B) Scale (Enterline, S., Cochran-Smith, M., Ludlow, J.H., & Mitescu, E. (2008). Learning to teach for social justice: Measuring change in the beliefs of teacher candidates. The New Educator, 4, 267–290. doi:10.1080/15476880802430361) from 304 Australian pre-service teachers. Exploratory factor analysis and Rasch analysis both indicated a two-factor structure, driven by a methodological artefact of item valence. We conclude from these findings that a short, five-item version of the LTSJ–B Scale would suitably balance psychometric and pragmatic considerations, in the broader context of working within an institutionally aligned system of teaching evaluation with multiple levels.

Functional Literacy in School Settings.

Meaningfulness is an essential ingredient if literacy potentials are to be realized for an individual or a society. Literacy develops in conjunction with the extent to which a society or an individual within a society values literacy. Therefore, educators need to consider the nature of literacy and the extent to which it is both valued and meaningful if they are to remain sensitive to what students can accomplish with written language.

Moving Forward with Exceptional Literacy Research and Practice amidst Educational Policy Changes.

In this Insights column, four authors address the question: Given current and potential shifts in education policy, what should literacy educators keep in mind to move forward with exceptional literacy research and practices? Majors and Lewis urge white scholars to reach out to scholars of color in learning how to generate counter-arguments that speak back to alternative facts. Tierney encourages the field to learn from scholars who are engaged in community based participatory research and activism, especially those who are engaged as allies with groups of people who are indigenous, marginalized, transnational, and cross-cultural. Beach calls on the field to consider research that examines implementation of the Common Core State Standards, such as argumentative writing and translanguaging.

Process/Content/Design/Critique: Generative and Dynamic Evaluation in a Digital World

Our everyday lives have changed dramatically asdigital technologies alter how and with whom wespend our time and how we communicate in ourworkplaces, communities, homes, and schools. E-mail, Web searches, online conversations, blogsand e-diaries, digitally based media, online ex-changes (of finances, photographs, music, andvideo), and Web homepages influence our dailyinteraction. As a consequence, our notions of liter-acy and the range of literacy practices in our class-rooms are constantly expanding and transformingwith these new technologies. Advocates of “new literacies” and “multilitera-cies” call for pedagogies that account for and helpchildren become competent users of the burgeon-ing varieties of text forms associated with infor-mation and multimedia technologies (e.g., NewLondon Group, 1996). While schools may not yetbe as well equipped as some homes, a growingnumber of schools are beginning to support the in-tegration of these digital-based literacies in studentlearning and engagements. Emerging technologiesafford new linked, online, and multimedia-basedways to interact and explore the world. However,these new literacies also represent digital and on-line extensions of rich multimedia engagementsstudents have had for generations. For example,curriculum models that allow for collaborativelybased multimedia engagement, such as the ReggioEmilia, and other integrated curriculum initiativeshave offered nondigital variations of these samepossibilities (see Edwards, Gandini, & Forman,1998). Consider the following three vignettes ofclassroom literacy involving new technologies andcurricular goals.