Inservice teachers' perception of a language-based approach to Content Area Reading.

Fang, Zhihui ; Sun, Yinghui ; Chiu, Chu-Chuan 等

Inservice teachers' perception of a language-based approach to content area reading

With the recent spotlight on adolescent literacy in the United States (CCAAL, 2010; Heller & Greenleaf, 2007; Jetton & Shanahan, 2012), content area reading has once again become a hot topic of discussion. A prominent theme in this discussion is that reading instruction in content areas should move away from the traditional emphasis on applying generic strategies and skills to a focus on building 'an understanding of how knowledge is produced in the disciplines' (Moje, 2008, p. 97). A key to building this understanding is to develop insights into how disciplinary experts use language to present information, develop arguments, infuse perspective, and create specialised texts (Fang, 2012a). One approach for developing such insights was recently described by Schleppegrell and her colleagues (Fang & Schleppegrell, 2008, 2010; Schleppegrell, Achugar & Oteiza, 2004). The approach, called functional language analysis (FLA), provides teachers with a set of practical tools for engaging students in systematically analysing the language patterns and discussing the meanings of these patterns in content area texts. These tools enable students to learn about how language is used as a creative resource for constructing different sorts of knowledge and value in different content areas at the same time they are learning disciplinary content and developing disciplinary habits of mind through language.

The purpose of our study is to explore teachers' perception of this language-based approach to content area reading, which is relatively new to the K-12 education context in the United States. The study is important because it can generate information that will help us better understand how FLA is received by teachers, who are typically used to the more traditional approach to content area reading that focuses on the development of basic skills (e.g., decoding, fluency, and vocabulary) and generic literacy strategies (e.g., predicting, inferring, monitoring, summarising, questioning, note taking, highlighting, and concept mapping). Understanding teachers' perspectives on FLA is also key to gauging its potential for success in promoting content area reading.

Paradigms of Content Area Reading instruction

Content area reading has a long and rich history, dating back to the early 1900s (Moore, Readence & Rickelman, 1983). Its traditions and practices were shaped by four major paradigms: the cognitive, the sociocultural, the critical, and the linguistic (Fang, 2012b). The cognitive paradigm focuses on the mental routines or procedures for accomplishing cognitive goals such as understanding a text, composing an essay, or solving a problem. It promotes explicit teaching of comprehension strategies (e.g., activating and applying prior knowledge, making inferences, clarifying, questioning, monitoring, summarising, and visualising) and study skills (e.g., graphic organisers, anticipation guides, SQ3R, and note taking) before, during, and after reading. Popular since the 1970s, the paradigm has been operationalised in practice in many ways, including collaborative strategic reading (Vaughn, Klingner & Bryant, 2001), peer-assisted learning strategies (Fuchs, Fuchs & Kazden, 1999), reciprocal teaching (Palincsar & Brown, 1984), transactional strategies instruction (Schuder, 1993), the self-regulated strategy development model (Graham & Harris, 1993), concept-oriented reading instruction (Guthrie, Wigfield & Perencevich, 2004), and the strategic instruction model (Deshler & Schumaker, 1988). Research shows that explicit instruction in comprehension strategies and study skills improves student reading, writing, and learning and that teaching a combination of strategies is more effective than teaching individual strategies in isolation from one another and from content (see Alvermann & Moore, 1991; Dole, Nokes & Drits, 2008; Gersten, Fuchs, Williams & Baker, 2001 for reviews). The evidence base for this paradigm is considered 'strong' according to the criteria established by the What Works Clearinghouse in the United States (Kamil, Borman, Dole, Kral, Salinger & Torgesen, 2008).

The sociocultural paradigm, on the other hand, focuses on the social and cultural aspects of content area reading. It recognises that reading is a multifaceted process influenced not only by background knowledge and strategy use but also by factors such as purpose, motivation, interest, and identity. A key tenet of this paradigm is that teachers should value the unofficial literacies that students bring to school and use students' everyday funds of knowledge and cultural practices as both a bridge to and a resource for promoting content area reading development. Prominent since the 1990s, the paradigm has informed many well-known literacy projects, including funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez, 1992), third space (Gutierrez, 2008; Moje, Ciechanowski, Kramer, Ellis, Carrilo & Collazo, 2004), youth media (Goodman, 2003; Sealey-Ruiz & Greene, 2011), and cultural modelling (Lee, 2001). These projects sought to build connections between home/community and school by exploring ways to meaningfully integrate students' funds of knowledge and out-of-school literacy practices with the academic practices of disciplinary learning in content area classrooms. Research involving these projects generally reported positive impacts on students' motivation, engagement, and learning (see Hull, 2012 for a brief review). However, due to a lack of large-scale quantitative evaluation data, the evidence base for the sociocultural paradigm is considered 'moderate' at best per the What Works Clearinghouse standards (Kamil et al, 2008).

The critical, or sociopolitical, paradigm considers knowledge as neither natural nor neutral. It views text, both print- and screen-based, as inherently ideological and foregrounds the situated, constructed, and contested nature of meaning. The paradigm aims to empower students to read both the 'word'/screen and the 'world' (Freire & Macedo, 1987) through analysing, evaluating, problematising, and transforming texts. It emphasises the development of critical consciousness about text and language/media use and promotes thoughtful critique and eventual disruption of social inequalities and hegemonic power structures. As such, the paradigm has a strong social justice agenda that goes beyond the government and business sanctioned goals of college/career readiness and workplace productivity (see, for example, the Common Core State Standards, http://www.corestandards.org/). Projects such as critical academic literacy (Morrell & Duncan-Andrade, 2002), critical language awareness (Janks, 1993), critical inquiry (Beach & Bruce, 2002), and media club (Alvermann et al, 2000) have helped popularise the paradigm since the 1990s. Because the critical paradigm does not endorse a canon of texts or a set of formulaic teaching procedures, its implementation can look quite different from one classroom to another. Moreover, there is little empirical research on the effectiveness of this paradigm (Alvermann, 2002), with only sporadic reports of case studies involving single classrooms or using non-mainstream measures of learning and literacy achievement. The evidence base for the paradigm is, therefore, considered 'low' by the standards of the What Works Clearinghouse (Kamil et al, 2008).

Finally, the linguistic paradigm highlights the importance of understanding text language in content area reading. It recognises that content area texts are often constructed in a language that is simultaneously technical, dense, abstract, and complex and that this language presents a significant challenge for reading and learning in content areas. Traditionally, vocabulary has been the linguistic focus in content area reading instruction. There has also been some attention to syntax (e.g., Fang, 2008; Fillmore & Fillmore, 2012; Scott & Koonce, 2014) and other systems of language such as phonology, orthography, morphology, and semantics (e.g., Moats, 2004). The evidence base for the linguistic paradigm is mixed. Kamil et al (2008) determined the level of evidence to be 'strong' for explicit vocabulary instruction. There is also some, albeit inconsistent, evidence suggesting that teaching sentence complexity, text structure, and grammar analysis can improve students' reading and writing (Graham & Perin, 2007; Locke, 2010; Schleppegrell, Greer & Taylor, 2008).

Functional language analysis

Scholars embracing a linguistic paradigm have recently described a more functional and comprehensive language-based approach to content area reading. The approach, called functional language analysis (Achugar, Schleppegrell & Oteiza, 2007; Fang & Schleppegrell, 2008, 2010; Schleppegrell, Achugar & Oteiza, 2004), draws on a functional model of language (i.e., systemic functional linguistics, or SFL) (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004), which views language as a creative resource for constructing meaning, rather than as a set of rigid rules for memorisation and regurgitation. It recognises that language use varies across content areas (e.g., the language of history is different from the language of science) and, therefore, students must become familiar with these specialised uses of language in order to learn effectively from content area texts and to develop disciplinary habits of mind (i.e., ways of reading, writing and thinking consistent with those practiced by disciplinary experts). The approach offers a metalanguage (grammatics), or a language for talking about language in text, that enables teachers to engage students in systematically analysing the grammatical patterns and discussing the meanings of these patterns in content area texts that are challenging but important for developing disciplinary understanding. The analysis and discussion focus on three key aspects of meaning that are important to both literary and informational reading: content (experiential meaning), organisation (textual and logical meanings), and style/voice (interpersonal meaning). Specifically, students learn what a text is about (i.e., who does what to whom, how, when, where, and why) by analysing and discussing the meaning of each clause constituent, such as participants (typically realised in nouns), processes (typically realised in verbs), attributes (typically realised in adjectives), and circumstances (typically realised in adverbs and prepositional phrases); they recognise how a text weaves meanings into a coherent message by analysing what begins each clause, how clauses are combined, and how cohesion is calibrated; and they uncover how the author positions and persuades readers in particular ways by analysing mood (declarative, imperative, interrogative) and modality (e.g., probability, frequency, obligation), as well as word choices (e.g., adjectives, verbs, nouns). These strategies, summarised in Table 1, make explicit the varied ways language choices construe knowledge and value in different content areas and across different contexts.

For example, in reading this dense passage from a 10th-grade (age 16) U.S. history textbook (Faragher, Buhle, Czitrom & Armitage, 2007, p. 513), students are expected to understand the causes and effects of the Panic of 1857. Functional language analysis can help students develop this understanding. Adding to the growing political tension was the short, but sharp, depression of 1857 and 1858. Technology played a part. In August 1857, the failure of an Ohio investment house--the kind of event that had formerly taken weeks to be widely known--was the subject of a news story flashed immediately over telegraph wires to Wall Street and other financial markets. A wave of panic selling ensued, leading to business failures and slowdowns that threw thousands out of work. The major cause of the panic was a sharp, but temporary, downturn in agricultural exports to Britain, and recovery was well under way by early 1859. Because it affected cotton exports less than northern exports, the Panic of 1857 was less harmful to the South than to the North. Southerners took this as proof of the superiority of their economic system to the free-labor system of the North, and some could not resist the chance to gloat. Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina drove home the point in his celebrated 'King Cotton' speech of March 1858.

Specifically, drawing on the strategies in Table 1, teachers can assist students to construct a visual, such as Table 2, by unpacking each clause into its constituent participant, process, attribute, and circumstance. This table shows that the text is mainly about the causes and effects of the Panic of 1857, as each clause either identifies the cause (e.g., adding to, played, leading to, was, affected) or attributes the effect (e.g., ensued, was less harmful) of the Panic of 1857. These causes and effects, constructed in abstract and dense noun groups (e.g., the short, but sharp, depression of 1857 and 1858; a wave of panic selling; business failures and slowdowns that threw thousands out of work), act as grammatical participants in the text. An inspection of what begins each clause suggests that the text is organised not in a chronological order but around a set of abstract causes and effects. An examination of word choices (e.g., could not resist, gloat, celebrated) reveals that the text portrays a negative view of the South and its economic system.

As students deconstruct each clause, they tackle the linguistic challenges of the text at the same time. For example, in constructing Table 2, students may engage in conversation about the meanings of not only specialised terminology (e.g., financial markets, free-labor system, King Cotton speech) but also commonplace words (e.g., sharp, threw, took, drove) that are used in atypical ways. They may track references for pronouns and demonstratives in the text, discovering, for example, that the pronoun 'it' in clause 8 refers not to 'recovery' in the immediate preceding sentence but to 'the Panic of 1857' later in the same sentence. They may also discuss the sequence of events presented in clauses 5 and 6, recognising that causation in historical texts is often conflated with time and that it is not always signalled explicitly through conjunctions (e.g., because), but sometimes more subtly through nouns (cause) and verbs of both relational and material processes (adding to, played, ensued, leading to, affected). Such discussions help students focus on meaning in the passage as well as learn how English language works to make meanings.

As a language-based approach, FLA is both similar to and different from other SFL-informed models of literacy instruction that have been in use in the Australian context (e.g., Rose & Martin, 2012). For example, FLA bears some resemblance to the Literacy Development Cycle (Unsworth, 2001) and Reading to Learn (Rose & Acevedo, 2006) in its emphasis on close reading and in its recognition of language as a significant source of reading/learning difficulties. However, unlike the two Australian models, which provide more general instructional frameworks around the notion of genre with a range of pre-, during-, and after-reading/ writing activities, FLA uses the notion of register as its organising principle to bring functional grammatics into the classroom, focusing on analysing how grammatical patterns in the text relate systematically to meaning.

Although the principles and strategies associated with FLA may not sound unfamiliar to Australian literacy educators, they are relatively new to American literacy educators, who have traditionally gained much greater exposure to, as well as support in, other approaches to content area reading instruction. Thus, it is important to investigate how a linguistically-informed approach like FLA is perceived by teachers. Findings from the study can provide useful information for assessing the likelihood that FLA will be embraced and used by teachers in the U.S. schools to effectively promote content learning and literacy development in their daily classroom practices.

Methods

Participants and Setting

Participants in the study were 39 inservice teachers (4 male, 35 female; 19 elementary (Grades K-5), 20 secondary (Grades 6-12)) who enrolled in a summer web-based graduate level content area reading course as part of their job-embedded master's degree program at a flagship state university in the United States. These teachers came from 10 different school districts (urban, rural, suburban) across the state and had varying years (2-20) of teaching experience. They had taught subjects as diverse as reading, language arts, science, history, and mathematics. The 10-week course focused on approaches, methods, and materials for supporting the development of proficient and critical adolescent readers in academic content areas such as science, mathematics, language arts, and social studies. Course participants were required to complete a series of assignments, including (a) written responses to course readings, (b) exploration of web resources (e.g., reading materials, lesson plans, teaching videos), (c) functional analysis of sample pedagogical texts (e.g., excerpts from textbooks or trade books, student writing), (d) a final exam, and (e) a unit plan that includes an annotated text set on a topic of study, analysis of 3 sample texts from the text set for potential reading challenges, and an integrated lesson plan that incorporates functional language analysis strategies. Students were also required to implement their lesson with a small group of children in either the summer school setting or an out-of-school context (e.g., home, youth club).

Core readings for the course included Content Area Literacy: An Integrated Approach (Bean, Readence & Baldwin, 2008) and Reading in Secondary Content Areas: A Language-Based Pedagogy (Fang & Schleppegrell, 2008), as well as a collection of journal articles on language and literacy across academic disciplines. The Bean et al (2008) textbook presents a generalised approach to content area reading, with description of a plethora of generic reading strategies and study skills for pre-, during-, and after reading that are applicable to all content areas (e.g., predicting, summarising, KWL, anticipation guide, graphic organiser, SQ3R, and two-column note taking). The Fang and Schleppegrell (2008) textbook, on the other hand, describes functional language analysis, which is a more discipline-specific approach to the teaching of content area reading. It contains 6 chapters, with each chapter offering a different set of linguistically-informed strategies for helping students recognise how different language choices enable the construction of knowledge and value in different academic disciplines (i.e., science, history, mathematics, and literature). The course was co-taught by one university professor and two doctoral students, both with expertise in content area literacy pedagogies and prior experience working with teachers in a variety of professional development contexts. The professor's research focuses on the language demands of disciplinary reading/writing and the use of evidence-based language and literacy practices to support teaching and learning in academic subject areas. The two teaching assistants were interested in adolescent literacy, focusing on effective ways to improve struggling adolescents' academic literacy.

Data sources and analysis

We focused our data analysis on the participants' weekly reading responses to the Fang and Schleppegrell (2008) textbook, using their end-of-course reflection to discover confirming or disconfirming evidence. Each week, course participants read one of the six chapters in the Fang and Schleppegrell textbook, wrote and posted a response (approximately 300 words) to the chapter on the discussion forum, and responded to each other's posts. They also completed a one-page (single space) reflection on FLA at the end of the course. These data sources were analysed anonymously using a constant comparative method of analysis that is inductive, data driven, and iterative (Creswell, 2007). First, each of us independently coded one participant's data set (i.e., reading responses for Chapters 1-6 and end-of-course reflection) at a time, searching for emerging patterns. In this 'open coding' stage (phase one), we first read through each response at least twice to gain an overall impression and then segmented it into meaningful units (e.g., phrases, sentences, paragraphs). Next, we identified specific topics/issues explicitly stated or implicated in each unit by writing concise summaries and analytical comments (i.e., preliminary codes) on the margins. We then transferred this information onto a coding sheet that listed the preliminary codes identified and supporting evidence from the data source. In phase two, we compared the results from our initial coding. Specifically, we reread the data set and discussed how our initial codes could be reconciled, enriched, expanded, contracted, clustered, or collapsed. Through this 'axial coding' process, we were able to develop more refined categories and subcategories that correspond to the data. The procedures used in phases one and two were repeated until all 39 data sets were coded. In phase three, we looked across all participants to identify recurring patterns and themes that described the participants' perception of FLA. Four major themes emerged from the analysis, which are reported in the next section.

Results

Before presenting the findings from our analysis, we would like to clarify several methodological issues and raise caution. First, we recognised the self-reported nature of our data sources. Participants' perception was gleaned primarily from their words (i.e., written responses to course readings) and not from their action (i.e., actual classroom practices). Despite the potential limitations of the self-reported data, they provide arguably the best window into teachers' thinking and cognition (Shavelson, Webb & Burstein, 1986). Second, the data used in the study were collected within the confines of a course, and so there is the potential for social bias effects. The effects were, however, minimised because participants were encouraged throughout the course to freely share their thoughts on the readings without the fear of being penalised for their views. Third, because no clear variability of perception was evident among individual participants and among subgroups of participants (e.g., novice teachers vs. experienced teachers, elementary teachers vs. secondary teachers, and science teachers vs. reading teachers), we decided not to focus on the issue of individual variability in this exploratory study. Instead, we only reported the more frequently recurring themes among all course participants.

Our analysis yielded four themes that capture the inservice teachers' perception of functional language analysis (FLA) as an approach to content area reading instruction. Each of these themes is presented below.

Theme 1: FLA is novel and interesting

This course was the first time that the participants were exposed to FLA. They had never heard of FLA as an approach to content area reading instruction before, but were very interested in learning about it. They were excited that FLA offers a different way of teaching reading in content areas than the ones they had been used to. One participant stated, 'I can honestly say that I have never heard of functional language analysis. I found this very interesting.' Another participant wrote, 'As a high school science teacher, I never thought guiding my students through their texts was so important. I have assumed they all have adequate reading and comprehension skills. I never thought about the lexical density, nominalisations, or Themes/ Rhemes of their science textbooks as being so different from their previous experience.' Other participants commented that they were tired of the generalised approach to content area reading (as presented in the Bean et al textbook) because they had been exposed to it numerous times, in either preservice coursework or professional development workshops, but still did not see its relevance to the specific subject they were teaching. Intrigued by the discipline-specific nature of FLA, its power in revealing how disciplinary knowledge and value are constructed in language choices, and its emphasis on the use of text-based evidence to support interpretation and argument, the participants suggested that more teachers need to read the Fang and Schleppegrell (2008) textbook to 'open their eyes' and to learn a new way of teaching content area reading.

Theme 2: FLA is challenging

As an approach grounded in functional linguistics, FLA was perceived to be 'somewhat intimidating' or even 'overwhelming' by the participants. The challenge of FLA arises primarily from its use of linguistic terminology, that is, metalanguage. The participants, regardless of the subjects they taught or years of teaching experience, expressed a sense of frustration when reading the chapters in the book. At least half indicated they needed several readings to fully grasp the ideas in the chapters. They attributed their 'ineptness' to a severe lack of grammatical knowledge about language. This sentiment is captured in this end-of-course reflection: 'I spent the most time reading and rereading the section about functional language analysis because this is a completely new term for me. I felt like one of my students without the background knowledge or adequate vocabulary knowledge to fully understand the text.' Several participants feared that teachers might veer away from using FLA due to 'poor grammar knowledge.' One of the participants indicated that she 'felt resistant' to FLA because of 'all the potential difficulties and problems' associated with the meta-language (e.g., clause, process, nominalisation, Theme, Rheme, lexical density, experiential meaning, logical meaning, interpersonal meaning, textual meaning). Other participants, however, expressed a willingness to try out FLA in their classrooms, as illustrated in the words of this middle school language arts teacher: 'I think implementing FLA can prove to be a bit difficult for me in my future classroom, but I am certainly willing to give it a whirl.'

Theme 3: FLA is enlightening and potentially useful and usable

Despite its challenges, FLA was embraced by the vast majority (>80%) of the participants regardless of content areas. They liked the fact that FLA gives them a set of tools to help their students break down confusing texts and deeply engage with what they are reading. They appreciated the examples in the textbook (and related articles) of how language works in different subjects. They were particularly enlightened by the insights that FLA offers regarding a text's content, organisation, and style. As one participant wrote: 'I had never thought about the fact that the language in each subject area differs so; yet, when pointed out in the chapter, it certainly does make sense.' After reading the chapter on applying FLA in the teaching of history, one participant commented: 'I like the activity of having students engage in rich discussions and debates by analysing the sections in the text. This way, not only are students learning the language structure used in their text, but also actively learning about history as they debate certain issues or events from the past.' A common sentiment among the participants is that if students, particularly struggling readers and English language learners, were made more aware of how the sentences and paragraphs in content area texts are constructed, they 'would have a better chance of being able to read the text independently.' Several elementary teachers opined that it is very important to teach younger students to use FLA so that they can better cope with the linguistic challenges of content area texts in middle and high schools.

Theme 4: Implementing FLA requires considerable support

While the participants regarded FLA as beneficial to both teachers and students, they were skeptical about their ability to implement the approach on their own. They needed much support in the development of knowledge about language (e.g., 'This chapter [on history] seemed very grammatical to me. I think that I would need much practice ... in order to be able to teach students how to do the same.'). They also needed guidance on how to integrate FLA with the existing curriculum (e.g., 'It will take a lot of time on the teacher's part to set it up properly. The teacher would really have to know the curriculum and set up what he or she is looking for beforehand.'). Wanting a quick fix, the participants were concerned about the time it would take to get students to learn to use FLA (e.g., 'The downfall to this approach would be the time that would have to be spent explicitly teaching the method and the terminology that goes with it ... I'm not sure how quickly my students would pick up on independently breaking math problems into clauses and analysing.'), particularly those with special needs (e.g., 'I feel like this would be a huge problem for ESE students or even students that are not strong in language period.'). They expressed a strong desire to see department-wide, grade-wide, or school-wide implementation of FLA so that they can support each other (e.g., 'I would really love to see my department and even the entire high school get trained in FLA. This way, we can bounce ideas around with colleagues in the same building.').

Discussion

The uptake and implementation of functional language analysis (FLA) depends, first and foremost, on teachers' perception of the approach. The results from our study indicate that the inservice teachers were both interested in and apprehensive about FLA. Their interest in FLA likely stemmed from the novelty and the potential they saw in the approach. They embraced FLA as a new and viable option that can complement the dominant models of content area reading instruction. They recognised that content area texts are often challenging to read and that students need new strategies for coping with the language demands of these texts. They believed that FLA can both support students' comprehension and develop their understanding of how the English language works to construct disciplinary knowledge and value.

Recently published national academic standards in the United States, such as the Common Core State Standards, require that students undertake close, analytical reading of increasingly demanding, complex, and rich texts to build knowledge and skills across the content areas. FLA was believed to enable teachers to help students develop this capacity by providing a meta-language and a set of analysis strategies that promote close reading and productive discussion about text. In this way, FLA allows teachers to explicitly address the linguistic challenges of learning, which is part of the 'hidden curriculum' of schooling.

At the same time, however, the teachers also showed a lack of confidence in successfully implementing FLA. They were apprehensive about the approach largely because they felt that they lacked basic knowledge about language and were unsure of how to effectively integrate FLA into the mandated curriculum that they were expected to teach. Related to this point, researchers from both the U.S. (e.g., Moats, 2009; Patrick, 2009) and other contexts (e.g., Harper & Rennie, 2009; Jeurissen, 2012; Myhill, 2005) have reported that many teachers lack deep knowledge about language and find grammar formidable. This deficiency presents a major obstacle to the implementation of linguistically-informed pedagogies (Hammond & Macken-Horarik, 2001; Jones & Chen, 2012; Stevens, Jefferies, Brisk & Kaczmarek, 2009). For example, Patrick (2009) engaged a small group of U.S. high school science teachers in learning to implement FLA to help their students unpack technical and dense science texts. She reported that while the teachers were excited about the approach and found it 'eminently useable,' their lack of basic knowledge about--and comfort with--English grammar severely undermined their efforts to learn and implement the approach in ways that promote content learning and literacy development at the same time.

Fortunately, research has shown that teachers can learn to successfully implement FLA at the same time they are developing explicit knowledge about language through either preservice coursework or inservice professional development programs. For example, Gebhard, Chen, Graham, and Gunawan (2013) from the University of Massachusetts (USA) reported that the teacher candidates in their TESOL master's degree program were able to attain, in the context of a 14-week course, a 'good enough grammatics' for the purposes of designing curriculum and instruction for diverse learners. Aguirre-Munoz, Amabisca, and Boscardin (2008) found evidence of effectiveness of a weeklong professional development program in California on increasing 21 middle school teachers' expertise in applying a functional metalanguage to evaluate student writing. Love (2010) reported that after a short but intense course of training (i.e., 18 hours in 6 weeks) at the University of Melbourne (Australia) that focused on the language and literacy demands of content area learning, one cohort of 300 prospective high school teachers from a variety of academic subjects with no prior knowledge of language succeeded in developing a capacity to plan content area instruction with an informed understanding of the role language and literacy play in disciplinary learning.

While these studies made a preliminary case for the feasibility and utility of language-based literacy pedagogies like FLA, the work was with small teacher cohorts. Longitudinal work with larger groups of teachers, although still rare, also yielded promising results. For example, Achugar, Schleppegrell, and Oteiza (2007) described a sustained professional development program in California (i.e., California History-Social Science Project, http://chssp.ucdavis.edu/) that provided teachers with functional language analysis strategies for unpacking dense text and for talking about how language works to construct knowledge and value in history. They reported that teachers bought into FLA because they experienced firsthand how the approach helped them achieve their curricular goals by addressing students' literacy needs and engendering more complex and in-depth class discussion of the historical content. They also reported that students of the teachers who had participated in the project, particularly the English language learners, made greater gains on a standardised measure of historical literacy (California History-Social Science Test) and wrote more effectively than students whose teachers had not participated in the project. The researchers suggested that it is the close reading and analysis of texts enabled by a functional grammatics that made these learning outcomes possible.

Learning to implement a language-based approach like FLA requires a major commitment from teachers (and the administrators who support them) because it is distinct from other presently popular approaches in the U.S.. It is not an easy accomplishment to take on a new approach, without support for underlying areas of professional or knowledge needs. In fact, there are immense difficulties in providing both quality and time rich programs of professional learning support to teachers taking on new pedagogical approaches in standards-driven, high stakes test oriented educational environment. In addition to the issue of financial resources, other factors may also be at work. For example, Gebhard et al (2013) found that while her teacher candidates were willing and able to learn a functional grammatics, their learning and desire to implement it were greatly influenced by their previous schooling experiences and the context in which they taught (e.g., assessment practices, mandated curriculum). Thus, successful, sustained implementation of FLA will depend on whether teachers can adapt it to their specific contexts and whether they have access to a supportive learning and teaching community in school. As Jones and Chen (2012) suggested in the Australian context, where similar issues with teacher knowledge and teacher development exist, 'There is an urgent need for comprehensive programs that extend teachers' existing linguistic knowledge, recognise and build on their pedagogic expertise and yet are nuanced enough for their diverse needs and teaching contexts' (p. 166).

Work by Schleppegrell (e.g., Schleppegrell, Greer & Taylor, 2008; Schleppegrell, 2010) and others (e.g., Fang & Wei, 2010; Gebhard, Harman & Seger, 2007) has demonstrated that it is indeed possible to infuse FLA into existing curriculum frameworks in ways that help teachers achieve the learning goals they need to achieve. For example, in the current curriculum context in the United States, teachers are often told to engage students in 'close reading' of and thoughtful discussion about text. FLA offers a metalanguage that enables teachers to do this in a more tangible and powerful way. In unpacking challenging texts, for instance, students engage in detailed analysis and rich discussion about the meaning-critical lexical, grammatical, and discursive elements in the text. The linguistic scaffolds provided through FLA give students something concrete to be thinking about and looking for as they read, respond to, and converse about text. As students make learning gains from using FLA strategies, teachers will find that the time spent on designing and implementing FLA lessons is worth it; furthermore, teachers may be spending less time on preparing FLA lessons as they gain more familiarity with FLA strategies and develop greater insights into the way texts in their discipline are typically constructed (Achugar, Schleppegrell & Oteiza, 2007).

Implications for future research

Our study focused on inservice teachers' perception of a language-based approach to content area reading called functional language analysis (FLA). It represents the first step in assessing FLA's potential for success in developing students' capacity to read content area texts closely, critically, and proficiently. The next logical step is to follow these teachers as they implement the approach in their own classroom and school contexts. Because 'the extent to which teachers absorb externally produced 'expert' knowledge depends on complex factors such as the context of the teaching, the opportunities for sustained professional development, and the presence or absence of a like-minded professional community' (Love, 2010, p. 351), FLA is not to be seen as, to borrow from Clandinin (2009), 'a commodity, something to be packaged in a standardised way and given to teachers through training or practice sessions' (p. 7). Rather, teachers should be provided with opportunities to draw on new knowledge as a resource in their daily teaching practices rather than as something to be force fed (Clandinin, 2009). Follow-up studies should, therefore, explore different ways FLA can be optimally operationalised in different learning contexts, identifying the specific challenges teachers in each content area and working environment encounter in, as well as the kinds of assistance that are most supportive of, their implementation. At the same time, it is also important to verify in these follow-up studies the initial indications of willingness to engage with FLA reported in the present study because seeing the actual impact of FLA on student learning can influence teachers' perception of the approach and their commitment to it (e.g., whether they abandon FLA as being 'too hard' or persevere with it, recognising its potential to transform their teaching of content area reading). The information gleaned from these studies can then inform the future design and delivery of content area reading courses that embrace a linguistic orientation.

References

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Zhihui Fang

University of Florida (USA)

Yinghui Sun

Beijing Normal University (China)

Chu-Chuan Chiu

University of Florida (USA)

Brian K. Trutschel

Orange County Public School, FL (USA)

Zhihui Fang is Professor of Literacy and Language Education in the School of Teaching and Learning at the University of Florida (USA), where he also coordinates the Language Arts, Reading, and Children's Literature (LARC) program. His research interests include disciplinary literacy, emergent literacy, teacher education, and functional linguistics. Email: [email protected].

Yinghui Sun is Professor, School of Foreign Languages and Literature, Beijing Normal University, China. Her main research areas include functional linguistics, literacy studies, English language teaching, and teacher education. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Florida in 2012. Email: [email protected].

Chu-Chuan Chiu is a doctoral candidate in the School of Teaching and Learning at the University of Florida. Her research interests are in the areas of reading education and bilingual education. She is currently working on her dissertation about the integration of language-based pedagogy to enhance subject area learning.

Email: [email protected].

Brian K. Trutschel (Ed.S.) is a Literacy Coach for Orange County Public Schools in Orange County, Florida. His chief duties are supporting teacher growth through deliberate practice, managing and supporting professional learning communities, and supporting disciplinary literacy instruction.

He can be contacted at [email protected]. Table 1. Functional Language Analysis Strategies Meaning Related Questions FLA Strategies Content (Experiential * What is the text * Analyse each Meaning) about? * What does clause, identifying the author tell us? the relationships constructed in the nouns, verbs, and other language choices. * Who does what to whom, when, where, how, and why? Organisation (Textual * How does the author * Analyse what begins & Logical Meanings) organise the text? each clause * By what logic is * Analyse clause the text produced? * types and clause- Is the text well combining strategies organised? * Analyse cohesive devices Style/Voice * How does the author * Analyse word (Interpersonal interact with the choices (e.g., nouns, Meaning) reader? verbs, adjectives, adverbs) * What is the * Analyse mood (e.g., author's perspective? declarative, * What is the tone of imperative, the text? interrogative) * Analyse modality (e.g., probability, frequency, obligation) Table 2. Analysis of Sample Text Clause Circumstance Participant Process 1 the short, but adding to sharp, depression (material) of 1857 and 1858 (actor) 2 Technology (token) played (relational: identifying) 3 In August 1857 the failure of an was (relational: Ohio investment identifying) house--the kind of event that had formerly taken weeks to be widely known (value) 4 A wave of panic ensued selling (token) (relational: identifying) 5 [A wave of panic leading to selling] (value) (relational: identifying) 6 The major cause of was (relational: the panic (value) identifying) 7 and recovery (carrier) was (relational: attributive) 8 Because it [=the Panic of affected 1857] (actor) (material) 9 the Panic of 1857 was (relational: (carrier) attributive) 10 Southerners took (mental) (senser) 11 and some (actor) could not resist (material) 12 Senator James drove home Henry Hammond of (verbal) South Carolina (sayer) Clause Participant Attribute Circumstance 1 the growing political tension (goal) 2 a part (value) 3 the subject of a news story flashed immediately over telegraph wires to Wall Street and other financial markets (token) 4 5 business failures and slowdowns that threw thousands out of work (token) 6 a sharp, but temporary, downturn in agricultural exports to Britain (token) 7 well under way by early 1859 8 cotton exports less than northern (goal) exports 9 less harmful to the South than to the North 10 this (phenomenon) as proof of the superiority of their economic system to the free-labor system of the North 11 the chance to gloat (goal) 12 the point in his celebrated (verbiage) 'King Cotton' speech of March 1858