ABSTRACT
Literacy as a concept is complex and dynamic. Currently, there is no agreement on the operational definition of literacy; that is, the following question remains: what are the particular knowledge and skills of which literacy is comprised, especially with regard to preparing our students for success in college, their careers, and our global society? Within the context of our schools, as our nation implements new, rigorous academic standards, and as educators consider what students need to meet the higher expectations associated with these standards, definitions of the domain and related constructs of academic literacies continue to emerge. It is becoming increasingly evident that the more typically used definition of literacy, the ability to read and write, is too narrow to fully prepare our students for success in our schools and participation in our global society. Instead, addressing academic literacies will greatly benefit our students, particularly given our significant number of diverse learners and the multicultural and multinational nature of our schools and workplaces. This chapter presents a framework and critical considerations for an approach to the development of content standards that can serve as a foundation for supporting the learning of academic literacies, as well as be relevant to supporting students’ learning of the rigorous next generation standards we are implementing in our schools to prepare them for college and careers. As addressed in this chapter, academic literacies refers generally to knowledge and skills needed to read and write, as well as competencies and understandings of language, its contexts, and its uses (Heritage, this volume; Langer, 2002; Molle, this volume). The intent of this chapter is to provide a means for organizing existing and emerging research and theory relevant to academic literacies, analyzing the relationships between/among the information available to us, and systematically articulating and validating academic literacies in terms of the domain, its related constructs, knowledge, and skills, and its manifestation in content standards that
can have profound implications for curriculum and instruction, assessment, and student learning outcomes relevant to our multicultural and multinational learning and work environments. As we prepare our new generation of learners for college and careers, and ultimately for success in our global society, the issue is not the degree to which we are addressing literacy as a means for facilitating achievement; rather, the issue is how we as educators understand, define, and implement practices related to the academic literacies needed in our 21st century.
