Copyright International Reading Association Jul-Sept 1997Latina/o students often experience difficulties with literacy in both English and Spanish because they must contend with less than optimal learning conditions, such as inadequately funded schools (Kozol, 1991), segregated schools (Valencia, 1991), and teachers without training in second-language acquisition or multicultural education (Berman et al., 1992; Nieto, 1992).
The fact that Latina/o students often are not able to benefit from instruction in either all-English general education classrooms or all-English special education classrooms is not conceptually difficult to understand (Cummins, 1980; Troike, 1984). Troike's (1981) straightforward rationale for native-language instruction was that "People are more likely to learn anything, including English, if they understand what they are being taught" (p. 498).
More problematic, however, is the question of how to meet the academic learning needs of Latina/o students with special needs who are learning English as a second language. Students who are recent immigrants from poor, rural backgrounds often fit this description (Hamayan, 1995). These students may not have had opportunities to complete in a sequential fashion, kindergarten through Grade 6. In fact, they may have missed entirely 2 or more years of schooling. As a result, they often exhibit extremely low levels of Spanish literacy development. Such a situation would obviously impede transfer of information to later English-language literacy learning, a key element of bilingual educational theory (Cummins, 1979).
Other Latina/o students are not recent immigrants, but their parents may be relatively recent arrivals to the U.S. These students have usually been raised entirely in the U.S., and they have attended school on a regular basis since their preschool or kindergarten days. However, many have not received quality instruction due to transience, difficulties, delays, outright misidentification as students with special needs, or, in some cases, placement in classrooms with teachers who were well meaning but uninformed on issues of second-language acquisition, literacy learning, and multicultural education (Figueroa, 1989; Rueda, 1991). These students are usually orally proficient in both English and Spanish but read at extremely depressed levels-far below expectations based on age and current grade-level placement.
In addition, these students are often identified as having some sort of learning disability. These disabilities are often not well specified, and referral for evaluation and placement in a program of special education is instigated and justified to a large extent on the basis of a failure to maintain expected grade-level achievement (Coles, 1987; McGill-Franzen, 1987). Low levels of literacy development characterize many students identified as having learning disabilities (McGill-Franzen, 1987, Ruiz, 1995).
Adding to the difficulties of these students, the knowledge base for teaching literacy to linguistically diverse students is, as yet, still in its formative stages (Bernhardt, 1991; Garcia, Pearson, & Jim&nez, 1994; Weber, 1991). Further exacerbating the problem, middle school teachers traditionally have not viewed literacy instruction as central to their mission (Garcia et al., 1995). As a consequence, many Latina/o students find that they do not possess the necessary literacy skills to succeed in Grades 6 through 8, or middle school (Smith, 1995; Williams, Reese, Campbell, Mazzeo, & Phillips, 1994).
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The dilemma of how to provide these students with the literacy experiences and tools necessary for academic success in middle school and beyond challenges even the most dedicated and experienced of educators. In this research project, I investigated various ways of meeting the needs of Latina/o readers who for reasons already discussed, or for others unknown, have not successfully acquired literacy in either Spanish or English.
Toward a research-based instructional program for low-literacy bilingual Latina/o students
While the knowledge base for what constitutes optimal literacy instruction for culturally and linguistically diverse students is incomplete, research is beginning to identify and explore the knowledge, abilities, and potential of bilingual students. For example, Jimenez, Garcia, and Pearson (1996) found that successful bilingual readers understand the relationship between the Spanishand English-language literacy systems. Of particular importance is these students, capability of transferring or applying their literacy knowledge and abilities from one language to the other. They strategically implement this knowledge in a timely manner while reading, and they have well-defined strategies for confronting unknown words or unfamiliar expressions in English.
Less successful bilingual readers view their two languages as separate and unrelated, and they often see their non-English language backgrounds as detrimental. Finding ways to help low-literacy Latina/o students think and behave more like successful bilingual readers, rather than pushing them to emulate monolingual Anglo students, seems to make sense. To accomplish this task, low-performing Latina/o readers may need to develop a bilingual literacy schema. Potential components and the means for acquiring this proposed schema are discussed in the following sections.
Metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. Many students, both mainstream and language minority, who are experiencing difficulties with reading comprehension have erroneous or naive conceptions concerning the purpose of reading. For example, low-achieving students from language-minority backgrounds often pursue finishing the task as their primary objective and believe that reading is synonymous with decoding and pronunciation of isolated words, regardless of whether they process text in an oral or silent modality (Jimenez, 1992; Jimenez, Garcia, & Pearson, 1995, 1996). The same misconception is typically observed in the reading behavior of low-performing or low-literacy students (Harris & Pressley, 1991).
Research on reading strategy instruction indicates that it can improve the reading performance of students with learning disabilities (Bos & Anders, 1990; Harris & Pressley, 1991; Palincsar & Klenk, 1992). Essentially, strategies used by successful readers are explicitly taught to students with learning disabilities. Explicit instruction of strategic reading processes, including how to access what bilingual students know in their primary language, appears to be a promising direction.
Strategies that successful bilingual readers share with successful monolingual readers include the making of inferences or drawing of conclusions; integrating prior knowledge, information, and experience into ongoing meaning construction; and asking questions when comprehension breaks down (Garner, 1987; Jimenez et al., 1995, 1996; Langer, Bartolome, Vasquez, & Lucas, 1990; Palincsar & Brown, 1984). In combination, these strategies appear to have great potential for promoting the reading comprehension of bilingual Latina/o students.
In addition, some strategies have been identified within the think-aloud protocols of proficient bilingual readers and may be indicative of an as yet unspecified bilingual schema for reading. For example, searching for cognate vocabulary is a reading strategy that draws on the native-language strength of Spanish-English bilingual students (Garcia & Nagy, 1993). In essence, when students are confronted with vocabulary items with which they are unfamiliar, they check to see whether they know a related word in their other language. If they think they have located a potential candidate, they quickly test the item to see if it makes sense. Student: Like carnivorous, carnivoro. OK, some words, like I know what they are in Spanish. Some words I go, what does that mean in Spanish? (Jimenez et al., 1995, p. 79).
Related bilingual reading strategies include translating, transferring information across languages, and reflecting on text in either Spanish or English. These strategies provide low-performing or low-literacy bilingual students with unique opportunities for improving their comprehension abilities. They also appear to be indicators of a fairly well-developed Spanish-English bilingual schema for reading (Jimenez et al., 1995, 1996). Instructional use of quality children's and young adult literature. To promote comprehension, a strategic approach may be enhanced when appealing children's or young adult literature is used to introduce it. Research, as well as the testimony of countless teachers and parents, suggests that children and young adults appreciate interesting reading material that makes sense to them (Au, 1993; Harris, 1993). Ideally, such material would provide students with multiple opportunities to create links between their prior knowledge and ideas and concepts found in stories. Garcia et al. (1994) noted that students who are not provided with familiar, predictable, and motivating materials may be denied equal opportunity for developing the metacognitive insights, understanding, and strategic approaches to text that are characteristic of successful and proficient readers.
Elley and Mangubhai (1983) demonstrated some positive effects of providing students learning English as a second language with an abundance of high-interest story books. Students' progress in reading and listening comprehension increased at almost twice the rate of students who received more traditional English as a second language (ESL) instruction. Recent research (Saunders, O'Brien, Lennon, & McLean, in press) has shown that the reading comprehension of Latina/o students making the transition to mostly English instruction can be improved through the use of high-quality children's literature. In addition, Goldstein (1995) showed how the use of children's literature can provide Latina/o students who have special needs with opportunities to make connections between their lived experiences and the classroom. Thus, there is theoretical and empirical support for providing students who are learning English as a second language with comprehensible, highly motivating books.
Role of word recognition and reading fluency. A thorny issue within the fields of both reading instruction and reading research is the relationship between quick and accurate word identification and overall reading fluency to reading comprehension. Some have claimed that these abilities are prerequisites to reading comprehension (Adams, 1990; Stanovich, 1980, 1986). Others view them as the outcome of reading large quantities of text, or at least the concomitant result of wide reading (Goodman, 1984; Smith, 1978).
Whichever view one adopts, it seems that all agree that quick and accurate word identification abilities and overall reading fluency almost always characterize successful and proficient readers, especially intermediate and middle school students (Golinkoff, 1975-1976; Kleiman, 1982). Perhaps most important, however, was the conclusion reached by Spiro and Myers (1984) that these abilities, while necessary for reading comprehension success, are not sufficient to ensure its occurrence.
But whether these abilities are a prerequisite, a symptom, or an outcome, intermediate level and middle school students who exhibit very low levels of word recognition and reading fluency are a concern to their teachers who are responsible for their overall academic achievement. These students often find themselves in special education programs or other at-risk types of situations (McGill-Franzen, 1987).
The possibility that word recognition and reading fluency can be improved within the context of a program that emphasizes reading comprehension and the use of strategic reading processes was pursued for this research project. In fact, it may be necessary, especially for older students, to discover, discuss, and thoroughly explore the overall purpose of reading while simultaneously developing their print-related abilities. Such activity would then form the basis for developing more sophisticated schemata for reading. These schemata might assist readers to attend more carefully to print in the quest for information. Creation of instructional contexts that promote the development of the schemata proposed in this research might in turn assist students to apply whatever print-related skills they possess.
Based on the preceding review of the literature, a research study was developed and refined, part of which was an instructional program that included the following components: (a) use of culturally relevant and familiar text, (b) a focus on comprehension that stressed key reading strategies, and (c) provision of opportunities to build reading fluency. The necessity of helping language minority students access their native-language strengths was emphasized during all phases of the research project
Framework for the study: Use of formative experiments
This study was conceptualized as a qualitative study of the literacy knowledge, abilities, and learning potential of low-performing or low-literacy Latina/o students. Thus, there was a desire to go beyond the typical qualitative research foci of observation, interviews, and document analysis. The use of formative experiments is an option available to qualitative researchers as a component of research design. Qualitative researchers can use formative experiments to become more actively involved with the participants and institutions involved in their research. Jacob (1992) described the use of formative experiments as follows:
[S]uch studies are explicitly concerned with improving instruction. To achieve their goals, researchers combine qualitative methods of investigation with interventions in learning situations. Traditional experiments lack ecological validity and descriptive/observational studies often tell readers about the way things are but fail to provide a vision of the way things could be. Researchers have a specific educational goal in mind and they modify materials or social organization to bring about a desired goal. (pp. 321-322)
The formative experiment designed for this research study consisted of a series of cognitive strategy lessons. The intent was to document the potential of low-literacy Latina/o students to benefit from comprehension-based instruction by systematically recording their responses to the cognitive strategy lessons. These responses were then used to shape and modify the experiment in various ways so as to best promote students' comprehension of text (D. Reinking, personal commmunication, October 21, 1996).
Research questions
This study was designed to address the needs of low-literacy Latina/o students, whether they were recent arrivals or long-term residents in the U.S. An important question that is frequently asked by teachers and other educators about these students is What can teachers do that will not stigmatize these students or deprive them of needed services but instead meet their multiple needs? Specific research questions include: What do lowliteracy Latina/o students in middle school know about reading? What strengths do they possess that might facilitate their literacy learning? How do they respond to instruction that employs culturally relevant text, emphasizes strategic processing, and acknowledges their duallanguage abilities or their second-language learning needs?
Method
Researchers' backgrounds
My role in the study was primarily that of as a university researcher. My training in the fields of bilingual education and cognitive approaches to understanding literacy provided the essential experiences and information that I used to conceptualize this study. In addition, I found that my experience as a bilingual teacher was valuable for working in the school, interacting with district administrators, and communicating with the participating teachers. However, my ethnolinguistic background, Latino and bilingual in Spanish and English, has also motivated me to seek solutions to the current overall low levels of academic achievement among Latina/o students (Smith, 1995; Waggoner, 1991). In essence, my background and experience led me to believe that well-designed instruction tailored to the specific literacy needs of the participants, and grounded in students' culture and language, could provide important information for the purpose of creating more effective instructional programs.
I was assisted during the cognitive strategy portion of the research study by a graduate student. He was finishing his master's degree in bilingual education and preparing to take his first teaching job as a high school teacher. He was also Latino and fluent in both Spanish and English. On occasion, he modeled the use of certain cognitive strategies for the student participants, particularly that of integrating prior knowledge with textual information.
Participants
This study focused on five Latina/o middle school students who were reading up to four grade levels below their current Grade 7 placement when the study began in November of 1994. Students' low levels of reading ability held true regardless of whether their dominant language was English or Spanish. The students were drawn from two classrooms, a self-contained special education classroom and a self-contained at-risk bilingual education classroom. Parent permission was obtained by describing the research project in a letter written in both Spanish and English. Parents were asked to accept or decline participation on the part of their children by signing the letter.
All of the students in this study attended a school with a predominantly minority student enrollment. Of 819 students, 533 were students of color, the majority of whom (407) were Latina/o. All of the students in the two classes who were included in this research project received free or reduced-price lunches.
Participating students from the special education classroom. Three students were identified as having learning disabilities and received instruction in a designated special education classroom. These students were chosen to participate after I described the proposed project to the building principal. The principal read the research proposal and suggested that I observe and speak with Molly Holden (all names are pseudonyms), a special education teacher.
All of the students in the special education classroom were Latina/o; they had all been born in the United States and had varying degrees of Spanish and English proficiency. These students received all of their academic instruction in English. A Spanish-speaking teacher aide was available in their classroom who could translate or respond to student comments in Spanish. I requested that the teacher identify those students who were experiencing the most difficulty with Englishlanguage literacy. She identified a group of students from which three were chosen. These three were agreed upon after I described the research project to the teacher. They became the focal students for classroom observations and interviews, and later participated in the cognitive strategy instruction.
All three of the participating students from the special education classroom had experienced multiple disruptions in their school histories. Although they had completed all of their primary schooling within one district, each of them had been placed in at least five different schools between kindergarten and Grade 7. These disruptions were caused by assessment and referral procedures to the various classroom settings of general education, special education, and bilingual education programs. This is a common problem for language-minority students with special needs (Gersten & Woodward, 1994).
The teacher in this classroom, Molly Holden, had accepted her position at the request of the school district. Her training was in the area of special education. Holden was a fluent speaker of English, but she did not speak Spanish. She believed that because the students in her classroom had been raised in the U.S., the use of Spanish for instructional purposes was not absolutely necessary.
Instruction in the special education classroom was, by and large, of a traditional nature. Both the teacher and students took turns reading orally during those periods designated as reading instruction. Discussions followed the familiar I-R-E pattern with the teacher initiating a prompt or question, a student responding, and the teacher evaluating the student response (Cazden, 1988). Students were also observed copying and then correcting grammatically incorrect sentences from the chalkboard. Students then discussed the reasons why the sentences were grammatically incorrect. These activities have been discussed and critiqued by special education teachers with respect to their effectiveness for students with special needs and/or learning disabilities (Bos & Vaughn, 1988; Gersten, Brengelman, & Jimenez, 1994).
Each of the three students from the special education classroom are described below. Their unique characteristics, along with some descriptive information, are included to provide the reader with a sense of how I saw these students, a bit of what their teachers thought of them, and, whenever possible, how they saw themselves.
Aden. Adan was an extremely quiet and selfeffacing person. He spoke so softly that it was often difficult to hear what he was saying. At the same time, he most often provided the impression of being cooperative. His teacher's statement that he always had the answers to her questions indicated that she appreciated his presence in the classroom.
Adan scored 77 out a possible 223 on the Total Reading Battery for the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT 6, Form L, 1986), a group-administered Englishlanguage test. Aden completed the test in February of 1994, approximately 7 months before this study began. He received a grade-equivalent score of 3.2 in Englishlanguage reading. Aden was also tested individually by a bilingual psychologist using the Woodcock Spanish Psycho-educational Battery (Form A, 1986) in September of 1995, about 4 months after data were collected for this study. He scored a grade equivalent of 4.6 on the Reading Achievement Cluster on this Spanish-language test.
Adan's language abilities in Spanish and English were tested using the Receptive and Expressive OneWord Picture Vocabulary Tests (ROWPVT, EOWPVT-R). He scored a language age of 7 years-8 months on the English version of ROWPVT (1985), while in Spanish (1987) his score was considerably higher at 11-2. His English expressive vocabulary was estimated at 8-2 English EOWPVT-R (1990), and his Spanish expressive vocabulary at 80 Spanish EOWPVT-R (1990). Acl,n's language proficiency scores exhibited depressed and uneven language development, a not uncommon occurrence for a language-minority student with a learning disability.
Adan began school in a bilingual general education preschool classroom and moved into a bilingual kindergarten class. After kindergarten, he was referred to what the district called a bilingual developmental first-grade classroom. Children referred to these classrooms are considered to be at risk for referral to special education. Adan then completed first grade in a bilingual classroom, and he was referred for a psychological evaluation while in second grade. He began to receive special education services toward the end of his Grade 2 year (March 1990). The psychologist determined that Adan suffered from significant weaknesses in oral-language ability. English-language reading was singled out as an area where Adan's performance was borderline. He has remained in a self-contained bilingual special education ever since.
Sara. Sara's teacher stated that Sara had a very difficult time with reading. Sara herself described reading as her least favorite subject. Sara's Total Reading Battery score on the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT) was 67 out a possible 223. Her grade-equivalent score was 3.0 (test date, February 1994). Sara also completed the Woodcock Psycho-educational Battery (Form A, 1986) in Spanish, and scored a grade equivalent of 2.4 on the Reading Achievement Cluster (test date, May 1994). The psychologist who administered this test concluded that Sara was 4 years below current grade placement.
Sara received a receptive English-language age score of 10-2 and an expressive English-language age of 9-. Her receptive Spanish language age was 11-8, and her expressive Spanish language age was 6-6 (test date, May 1994). In other words, Sara's oral-English and English-language comprehension skills were a bit lower than would be expected for students her age. Sara's Spanish-language proficiency was stronger in the area of listening comprehension than in speaking; not uncommon for students from language-minority communities living in the U.S.
Sara began school in an all-English, general education kindergarten class. Like Adan, after kindergarten she was referred to what the district called a bilingual developmental first-grade classroom. In fact, she was referred for a full evaluation while in this setting. Placement in special education was not recommended at that time. Sara continued in general bilingual classrooms during Grades 2 and 3, at which time she was referred for another evaluation. She was diagnosed as having a reading and writing learning disability while in Grade 3, and she was placed in a self-contained bilingual special education classroom the following year during Grade 4. She remained in a selfcontained bilingual special education classroom from Grade 4 until the completion of this study.
Victor. Victor was one of the more endearing students who participated in this project. He could be charming when he wanted to be. He could also be difficult to work with. His teacher described him as a perpetual motion machine. She went on to say that he had lots of energy that he did not use productively. I would concur, but I would also add that he responded well to instruction in a small-group setting when prompted to stay on task.
Victor was also probably the most voluble of any of the students. In some respects he demonstrated a willingness early on to think aloud that the other students did not. When we first met, for example, Victor provided a 138-word answer to my question as to how he learned to read when other students' answers ranged between 20 and 70 words.
Victor's reading test scores were at about the same level as those of the other two students, however. He received a score of 69 out of a possible 223 on the Total Reading Battery of the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT 6, Form L, 1986). His grade-equivalent score in English reading was 3.1 (test date, February 1994). Victor's parents did not respond to requests for release of his special education evaluation records. It was, therefore, not possible to report his test scores of expressive and receptive Spanish-English language abilities, nor was it possible to report his Spanish-language reading test scores.
Victor began school in a bilingual kindergarten. His teacher recommended that he repeat kindergarten, which he did in another bilingual kindergarten. He was referred for testing for possible placement in a special education classroom during his second year in kindergarten. He was then placed in a bilingual special education classroom for first grade, and he remained in a comparable setting during Grades 2-6 until the time of this study.
Participating students from the at-risk bilingual classroom. The remaining two students who participated in this research received their instruction in a selfcontained at-risk bilingual classroom. They had been identified by school personnel as at risk for referral to special education. The teacher and the Title VII director described them as having low levels of Spanish literacy. They also mentioned that they came from rural, low socioeconomic backgrounds in Mexico. Laura Estrada, the teacher of the bilingual classroom, believed that these two students were among those struggling the most with Spanish literacy. These students participated as the focal students during classroom observations, initial think-aloud data collection, and the cognitive strategy instruction. One of the students had been in the U.S. for approximately 6 months and the other for close to 10 months.
These two students received all of their academic instruction in Spanish because they were recent arrivals to the U.S. They also received ESL instruction for approximately 45 minutes to an hour a day. I originally worked with three students in this classroom, but one student moved as the instructional portion of the study was about to begin and was unable to continue.
Students in the at-risk bilingual classroom also had odd schooling histories. Because few school records accompanied these students to their new school in the U.S., it is not entirely clear what transpired while they attended school in Mexico, but there are indicationsbased on comments made by the parents during registration-that these students may have missed between 2 and 3 years of primary schooling.
Estrada was a fluent speaker of both English and Spanish. She had been raised in both the U.S. and Puerto Rico. She held a transitional bilingual teaching certificate. Her undergraduate university training was in the area of library science and, at the time of the study, she was completing coursework required by the state for approval of bilingual teachers.
Instruction in the bilingual at-risk classroom included some forms of more recent conceptualizations of literacy. For example, the teacher designed literacy lessons that emphasized story grammar and some cognitive strategy instruction. Students also worked in cooperative learning groups in which they jointly determined answers to questions about texts they had read. The teacher worked hard to collect Spanish-language texts of Mexican origin for her students. In addition, Estrada included some English-language literacy instruction during her ESL class. During these times she interacted intensively with her students while they worked to determine pronunciations and meanings of the English-language words.
For example, during one ESL lesson, students were called upon to orally read the English names of articles of clothing such as belt, blouse, jacket, and raincoat. This was a challenging activity for these students but one in which most of those chosen engaged enthusiastically, perhaps indicating a desire to learn the language. Gabi, however, responded by initially declining Estrada's invitation to orally read these words.
Gabi: No puedo. (I can't.)
Ms. Estrada: Yo le ayudo corazon, vengase Gabi y despues Felix. (I'll help you, sweetheart, come on over Gabi and then Felix.) [Gabi stood next to her teacher, who put her arm around her. Gabi then slowly worked her way through the 50 words. She smiled broadly when she finished.]
Estrada demonstrated patience and an expectation that Gabi could succeed. She physically approached Gabi and spoke kindly to her, even using a term of endearment. She aided Gabi, who surprisingly performed successfully-no small feat for a student who was just barely literate in Spanish.
The students from the bilingual at-risk classroom are described individually below. As with the students in the special education classroom, an attempt has been made to present the students from the perspectives of the researcher, teacher, and the students themselves.
Gabi. Gabi was quite reluctant initially to get actively involved in the research project. Upon reflection, though, this seeming recalcitrance may simply have been a desire to hide or deflect closer examination of her low level of literacy ability. Her teacher described her as a country girl who was very naive and incredibly shy. She stated that she had to work hard to instill confidence in Gabi. She also added that some teachers in the school thought Gabi might have cognitive disabilities. Although she disagreed with this assessment, she expressed frustration with Gabi's extremely depressed levels of academic achievement, especially her reading and writing abilities.
More than the other students, Gabi seemed to especially dislike involvement in the project. Her discomfort was most evident early in the project when I initially interviewed her and asked her to engage in the thinkaloud procedure. However, by the end of the project, she had warmed up and was willing to think aloud.
Gabi took the Spanish-language academic achievement test, La Prueba Riverside de Realizaci6n en Espanol, Form A, Level 12, in February 1994. She received a score of 7 out of a possible 30. This placed her at a national percentile of 3.
Felix. Felix, like Victor, was a talkative student. His teacher found him appealing and spoke to him in ways similar to those Latina mothers use with their children, including terms like carino, or sweetheart. She felt that his academic performance was like that of a child in first grade. Felix was not yet in the U.S. when the Spanishlanguage academic achievement test was administered.
Felix readily engaged in discussions in his classroom that called for independent thinking or the drawing of conclusions. Although his teacher believed that Felix had made progress in literacy during the past year, she still thought that he was experiencing more difficulties in this area than many of her other students, all of whom were performing below grade-level expectations.
Observations indicated that he was willing and capable of working on teacher-given assignments under certain conditions. When provided with structure and asked to produce a clearly defined product, Felix persevered in his work. He worked better when he was paired with his best friend, Javier, than with two of the girls in his classroom. Regardless, he was as content to look for answers in a text for the purpose of filling out a worksheet as he was to let others do the work for him. Occasionally, he tuned out of an assignment and simply daydreamed.
Procedure
The procedure followed for this research is listed in the order that items occurred. The teacher interviews were an exception in that they were conducted before, during, and after the other procedures.
Classroom observations. Data collection included four in-depth qualitative observations of participating students in their classroom environments. Handwritten field notes were used to record classroom activities. These observations were conducted over a period of 6 months, and each observation lasted between 1 1/2 to 2 hours. As much as possible, the observations were focused on the participating students, and an emphasis was placed on capturing their responses, both verbal and otherwise, to literacy learning events. Information was recorded that situated observed literacy events within specific contexts. In addition, the types of literacy tasks students were asked to engage in were recorded for evidence concerning the language or languages used by the students, the overall level of success and challenge students experienced, or the instructional support they received while engaging in these tasks.
The observations helped me to understand the character of the instruction provided to the students. These observations also gave me a sense of the ways that the focal students interacted during instruction, especially with their peers. In addition, they provided glimpses of the students' performance that would have been difficult to observe or learn about in small-group settings or individual interviews. Most specifically, these observations provided information useful for answering the major research question of how teachers attempt to teach reading and writing to low-literacy Latina/o students.
Think-alouds. Think-aloud data were collected prior to the instructional component of the study. The think-aloud procedure consists of presenting a text to a participant, asking the participant to read each line of the text silently, and, finally, asking the participant to describe and explain in as much detail as possible what she or he is thinking about during and after reading each line of text. My choice of language, as researcher, was predominantly Spanish during the initial phases of the project. I chose Spanish to develop rapport with the students. Students, however, were frequently encouraged to use whatever language they were most comfortable using. These sessions were taped, transcribed, and later analyzed for evidence of strategic reading processes.
I met once with all of the students in January as a group to explain the purpose of the investigation. Students were invited to ask questions, provided with a demonstration of the think-aloud procedure, and allowed to practice the technique with a partner. Later, I met with each student individually between February and the middle of March of 1995. These sessions lasted for about an hour. Students were asked to choose materials that they believed were easy to read. Surprisingly, only one of the five students was able to comply with this request. The other four could not successfully read the materials they brought to the sessions. To deal with this possibility, I made a variety of materials available to the students from which they could choose for reading and thinking aloud. These materials included trade books in Spanish or English, some bilingual trade books (text was in both Spanish and English), and excerpts from books that contained culturally familiar material.
The purpose of the think-alouds was to construct an impression of students, preintervention strategic reading competence. The think-aloud data provided a glimpse into the ways students approached text, the strategies they used for understanding text, and some information about their fluency and accuracy when reading. The think-aloud data provided information that was useful for beginning to consider answers to the research questions of what low-literacy Latina/o students know about reading, the potential literacy strengths that they might possess, and a sense of how they would respond to culturally relevant text. Because the think-aloud method of data collection is a type of interview technique, students also provided an early impression of their language preferences for thinking and reading.
Teacher interviews. Interviews of the two participating teachers were also conducted. The teachers were asked to share their approaches to designing instruction and rationales for choice of reading materials. One semistructured interview was conducted with each of the teachers during January, and informal interviewing occurred throughout the research project. These interviews also provided insight useful for the interpretation of the classroom observations and for determining teachers' understanding of participating students and their literacy abilities. In essence, the interview data provided some clues as to ways that these teachers approached literacy instruction for low-literacy Latina/o students. This information was useful for considering the main research question: What can teachers do that will not stigmatize these students or deprive them of needed services but instead meet their multiple needs?
Cognitive strategy instruction. The graduate assistant and I taught eight lessons designed to increase students' use of cognitive strategies to the five participating students. A total of eight lessons was chosen to provide sufficient interaction between the participating students and me for purposes of continuity. By meeting with the students over a period of 2 weeks, I was able to document student response to instruction in an ongoing fashion to a series of lessons. These lessons were taped and transcribed in their entirety, and the transcripts of these lessons formed the core of the data that were analyzed later.
The three students from the special education classroom met with my research assistant and me for approximately 1 hour during each session. We used mostly English while working with this group, but we also used Spanish. We especially made use of Spanish when demonstrating the strategy of searching for cognate vocabulary. Then we met with the students from the bilingual classroom for the same amount of time. We used mostly Spanish while working with this group.
An overall unit of instruction formed the basis for the formative experiment. Materials that were used included three children's books and a language experience text. The three books all fit into a Mexican cuisine theme. More specifically, they all dealt in some way or form with the Mexican staple food, corn. The books were The Day It Snowed Tortillas: Tales From Spanish New Mexico (Hayes, 1985), A Quetzalcoatl Tale of Corn (Parke & Panik, 1992), and Aztec, Inca and Maya (Baquedano, 1993).
Use of a language experience text was conceptualized as an important means for introducing cognitive strategy instruction. It was chosen to demonstrate to students how their prior knowledge and lived experience are not only important and necessary components of the comprehension process, but also can form the basis of a text. Because students themselves created the text, multiple opportunities were created for probing and eliciting more extended discourse from the students.
The actual language experience text was created as follows: I brought in two ears of com, some packages of tortillas, and a sack of corn flour. I engaged students in discussion of these items and then produced computergenerated copies of their oral texts.
The goal of the formative experiment was to help the students develop a strategic approach to interacting with text. Three key reading strategies were emphasized: how to approach unknown vocabulary, how to integrate prior knowledge with textual information, and how to formulate questions. All strategies were modeled or demonstrated within an overall context of language sensitivity; that is, students were encouraged to draw information from their two languages and to speak in Spanish, English, or both.
One day was devoted to instruction and demonstration of each strategy. In essence, students were taught how to engage in the think-aloud procedure. They were asked to read pertinent text one line at a time and then describe their thinking. They were encouraged to implement the focal strategy for the day. On subsequent days, strategies were reviewed and demonstrated yet again, and students were asked to practice thinking aloud while making use of the strategies. Instruction and student practice were iterative; that is, my assistant and I would model the strategies on a regular basis for the students. A metacognitive component accompanied most demonstrations of the three strategies, such as in the following excerpt:
[W]e asked lots of questions while we were reading. Questions really help you understand what you're reading. You ask them to yourself and then you find the answers.
Emphasis was also placed on building student reading fluency. Because the classroom observations, interviews with the teachers, and initial think-aloud data collection had indicated that students experienced significant problems in this area, they were always asked to first read portions of the texts silently before engaging in any other activities. To facilitate students' understanding of the relationship between attention to print and comprehension, on occasion students were asked to reread the same portions of the text orally, occasionally two or three times, before thinking aloud.
Qualitative analysis of data
Data were analyzed using qualitative analysis techniques described by Glesne and Peshkin (1992), Patton (1990), and Taylor and Bogdan (1984). The process of qualitative data analysis began during data collection itself, during which time I kept a reflective journal of my experiences in the field. During the next step, all observation, interview, and instructional data were transcribed.
I then put all data pertaining to each of the five focal students into a separate file, These data included school records and background information, classroom observations, teacher comments, initial think-alouds and student interviews, and all of the data specific to each student from the instructional component of the study. This initial cut of the data then served as the basis for continued analysis. All data were also maintained in their raw form for reference as necessary, and the raw data were frequently consulted.
Data were then examined for evidence of student strengths and weaknesses in the area of literacy. A preliminary framework for analyzing the data began to emerge. Some of the early categories used for coding were classroom context, student background information, reading fluency/word recognition, strategic reading processes, and students' understanding of literacy. At this stage of analysis, I read and reread the data, going back and forth between the original data transcriptions, and simultaneously examining them in the context of the emerging analytical framework. This stage of data analysis was best characterized by Glaser and Strauss's (1967) constant comparative method.
The next stage of analysis resulted in a refinement and narrowing of the lens through which data were viewed. The most salient, representative, and compelling examples were identified and used as the basis for writing detailed student profiles. These profiles were lengthy, analytical critiques and discussions (approximately 15 pages per student). In essence, these profiles were syntheses of all relevant data sources. Thematic trends and the major issues associated with each individual participant began to emerge and were tentatively identified at this point.
All of the completed student profiles were then read several times in an effort to identify the themes that best captured the knowledge, experiences, and literacylearning potential of all the students as a group. Information from the five student profiles was synthesized into an integrated account. Emerging themes were then refined by asking three outside readers for their comments and feedback. These outside readers were researchers in the fields of bilingual education, special education, and urban education. They had written on issues of assessment, instruction, and teacher training for working with students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Finally, after refining the thematic development of the research, I continued to consult the raw data as a check on the fit of the resultant framework and presentation.
These themes and emerging trends were summarized as propositional statements and used as descriptive headings in the results and discussion section. A more explicit statement of the theme follows the subhead and is italicized for emphasis. The format followed was to look for a statement made by one of the participants, either students or teachers, that captured the essence of the thematic findings. This statement, a reflection of an emic perspective or participant perspective, was then followed by analytical discussion accompanied by sufficient examples for purposes of explanation.
Results and discussion
Reading is something special: Student perceptions of literacy prior to cognitive strategy instruction
Surprisingly, these five students could think of little to say in response to questions designed to elicit their understanding of reading. Their overall perceptions of literacy were that reading is an almost complete mystery. Their initial comments seldom even described isolated facets of reading. Other researchers (McNeil, 1984; Myers & Paris, 1978; Paris & Myers, 1981) have reported that less successful or novice readers often describe reading in terms of its audible, visible characteristics and social manifestations. For example, younger, less experienced readers often describe classroom instructional procedures or decoding operations.
In contrast, the five readers included in this research project made the following statements concerning reading when interviewed in February and March of 1995:
Felix: Es algo muy especial para leer. (It is something very special to be able to read.)
Gabi: Que es interesante para poder ayudarse a leer? (That it is interesting to be able to help yourself to read?)
Adan: I don't know what reading is.
Sara: Reading is something you have to learn.
Victor: Reading is the sounds and the words they make, and that's all.
These statements capture well the essence of the students' thinking about reading prior to the instructional component of this research. The students did seem to understand that learning to read requires effort (Sara) and that the ability to read is a desirable goal (Gabi and Felix), but their comments also suggest that they viewed reading as a rather mysterious process. Perhaps Adan's statement that he really did not know what reading was best captured the generality, vagueness, and perhaps confusion about what appeared to be a genuine mystery to these middle school students. Only Sara and Victor seemed to have an understanding of reading that approached that of readers such as Catalina (Jimenez et al., 1995, 1996), an average bilingual Latina reader in Grade 6, who described a good reader as someone who paid careful attention to punctuation.
With some prompting, Adan and Gabi seemed to approximate Catalina's conceptualization of reading. Adan mentioned that reading to him meant doing homework, reading some books, and doing worksheets, while Gabi remembered that she had learned to read with the aid of the alphabet.
These statements differ substantially from comments made by successful bilingual Latina/o readers of English, who stated that reading was a means to leaming new information or a possible form of recreation (Jimenez et al., 1995, 1996). These more successful bilingual readers also described how Spanish and English reading were similar, and they could describe various strategies they implemented to construct meaning.
The vagueness and lack of awareness concerning the nature of reading seemed to carry over when these participating students were asked questions specifically dealing with Spanish-language reading. For example, Victor added that to be a good Spanish reader, one needed to know both the sounds and one needed "to do it fast," whereas Sara stated that knowledge of the Spanish alphabet was necessary. Adan believed that one needed to "read a lot" to become a good Spanish reader.
While Adan's answer seems reasonable, Victor's and Sara's answers implied radical differences between the Spanish and English orthographies. Their answers hint at the view of reading stated more explicitly by less proficient bilingual Latina/o readers who said that the Spanish and English written languages were more different than they were similar and that knowledge of one caused confusion when trying to gain competence in the other (Jimenez et al., 1996).
Reading is hard; it's something you have to learn: Potential literacy strengths
All of the students involved in this research project were selected because of the difficulties they were facing with respect to literacy. Although these students were clearly performing below grade-level expectations, I still knew little about what they could actually do. In this section, I will provide a discussion of selected potential literacy strengths of the participating students. In essence, these students provided numerous subtle indications of potential literacy ability.
Indications of students' literacy knowledge and abilities surfaced from the data collected during classroom observations, initial think-alouds, and interviews. Identifying what students can and cannot do, rather than simply comparing them to their peers on a rank-ordered basis, seems a reasonable approach for developing more accurate depictions of student literacy knowledge and potential.
Early in the project, before the cognitive strategy instructional component, several students indicated that culturally relevant and familiar texts provided opportunities for them to interact with text in more meaningful ways (February-March, 1995). For example, Gabi, one of the lowest performing participating students, provided intriguing commentary on the Spanish text "Making Tamales," found in the book, Family Pictures by Carmen Lomas Garza (1990).
The making of tamales is a well-known event for young people from traditional Mexican families. Gabi's comments about the text demonstrated familiarity with this somewhat ritualized procedure. The text is a highly abbreviated explanation of the artwork and, as such, text and art are tightly connected. As a result, the overall context is rich and supportive. Gabi seemed to be especially intrigued by male-female relationships and family relationships. These were topics she was willing to discuss.
Gabi: Que es muy bien los papas, los senores, ponerse a ayudar a las mamas a hacer los tamales. En mi casa no nos ayudan mi papa y mis hermanos. (That it is very good for the fathers, the gentlemen, to set about to help the mothers to make tamales. In my house, my father and brothers do not help us.)
Likewise, Sara chose a text to read that she found difficult but whose message she seemed to appreciate. This text, written by Cisneros (1983) and taken from her book The House on Mango Street, describes a Chicana girl living in the midwestern U.S. and her feelings toward her Spanish-language name. I believe particular aspects of this text resonated especially with Sara. For example, in the following interaction, she demonstrated her understanding of a line in the text that discussed Mexican music.
Researcher: What does it make you think about? Sara: About love. Makes you want to cry. Researcher: Why?
Sara: Because they talk about [a] love that would come back or something like that.
Victor's comments too hinted at the possibility that particular aspects of literacy were highly meaningful to him but, perhaps, that he was frustrated by his inability to read and comprehend to the degree necessary to succeed with these tasks. He responded with the following comment after being asked what one needs to do to be a good reader:
Victor: When somebody asks you to read a paper, to read it for him; or when they send some papers to you, you need to read them, `cause some papers are important and you don't even know. They're important and you don't know how to read.
Victor may have been discussing his role at home as translator of documents for his parents. It is easy to imagine him becoming very frustrated when asked to read and interpret documents of a technical nature such as rental agreements or income tax forms.
In summary, these students provided indications that in a supportive context, with culturally familiar text, they could discuss printed materials in ways similar to more successful readers. For example, they integrated their prior knowledge of topics with textual information, drew conclusions, and discussed literacy in terms of its real-world functions.
You can't approach their spirit if you don't know their background: The role of Spanish in the literacy learning of these students
The fact that the Spanish-dominant students, Gabi and Felix, appreciated the instructional use of Spanish would seem to be obvious. Both of these students were just beginning to learn English to the degree necessary to communicate basic ideas (Cummins, 1980). Felix, on one occasion, did mention, however, that he appreciated the fact that his teacher here in the U.S. could speak Spanish and that she used it to make sure he understood instruction. Estrada explained to us the calming and reassuring effect that speaking in Spanish had on recent arrivals to her classroom.
I was surprised, though, by the degree to which the students in the special education classroom appreciated the chance to use and hear Spanish. These students had been raised in the midwestern U.S. either from the time of their birth or shortly thereafter. Yet, all three of them provided indications not only that they appreciated Spanish, but also that it facilitated their comprehension and learnin.
Sara, for example, initially proved to be one of the more difficult students to engage in strategic thinking. She repeatedly refused invitations to think aloud. The first break came on the second day of the formative experiment after I gently pressured Sara by telling her I would not leave her alone until she got involved. My prompt was in Spanish, and it was interesting that Sara responded in English with what was for her substantial information. Sara's teacher said that she had been told that Sara was stronger academically in Spanish than in English. I found it interesting that when Sara did get involved in her learning, she most often used English but there were Spanish-language prompts or supports present in the immediate conversational environment.
Researcher:Te voy a seguir molestando hasta que me hables. (I'm going to keep bothering you until you talk to me.)
Sara: OK, I think of music and people are dancing around and they are eating, and that's it. (5/17/95)
Adan differed from Sara and Victor in that he used only a very few reading strategies during the course of this study. The use of these strategies did not come easily to Adan. He struggled with them. He required considerable prompting and instruction to implement them. In the following example, he used Spanish to answer a direct question I posed to the students in an attempt to prompt their prior knowledge of ants on the fifth day of the formative experiment. Ants were the antagonists in the book A Quetzalcoatl Tale of Corn (Parke & Panik, 1992). Notice that Adan provided one of his most extensive utterances entirely in Spanish.
Researcher: What would they do? Do they bite soft? Is it going to be nice?
Adan: Cuando pongo el dedo, me pican y cuando no sientes nada que ni pican, te muerden. (When I put my finger, they sting me and when you don't feel anything then they don't sting, they bite you. (5/23/95)
The following two examples deal with Adan's interaction with vocabulary items. His terse, taciturn nature is revealed somewhat in these exchanges. In the first example, which occurred on the eighth day of the experiment, Adan reacts to my question requesting more information by translating his thinking. Individuals learning a second language often expand on their thoughts by making use of their stronger language if such an option is available (Lee, 1986; Moll, Estrada, Diaz, & Lopes, 1980). Adan was reading the story The Day It Snowed Tortillas: Tales from Spanish New Mexico (Hayes, 1985). In this story, the protagonist, a poor and dull woodcutter, finds three leather bags full of gold, which prompts his wife to concoct an elaborate scheme to maintain possession of the newfound riches.
Researcher: What kind of bags are they?
Aden: Leather.
Researcher: Leather. What's leather? Adan: Como piel de animal. (05/26/95)
In the second example (seventh day), Adan correctly identified a Spanish-language cognate item for an unknown English word while reading the story A Quetzalcoatl Tale of Corn
Researcher: Yeah, how can we figure it out? OK, do we know a word in Spanish like supplemented?
Adan: Suplemento. (5/25/95)
Victor, too, appreciated and took advantage of opportunities to use both Spanish and English when discussing a portion of the language experience text he and the other students created (third day). Limiting Victor's choice of language for discussion may have served as an impediment to his motivation, and perhaps his ability to engage in higher level cognitive activities. The following is an example of his use of the two languages:
[Text] Estos dias comemos con tios, primos, hermanos y amigos, y comemos diferentes comidas. (These days we eat with uncles, cousins, brothers, and friends, and we eat different foods.)
Researcher: Que piensas? (What are you thinking?) Victor: Like when some of my families have come to visit us, acaba de llegar alguien como mi tio de nuestra familia y preparamos algo especial para que este feliz. (...when someone first arrives like my uncle in our family and we prepare something so that he will be happy.) (5/18/95)
Unhappily, the classroom where these students spent most of their time was characterized by contradictory views on the use of Spanish. For example, the teacher aide, who was both Latina and bilingual, insisted that all of the students in her classroom possessed low levels of both Spanish- and English-language proficiency. This was information she communicated freely to the teacher, perhaps influencing her views. The aide also claimed that one could not communicate with these students without using a combination of both English and Spanish. In an apparent contradiction, however, she believed that only English should be used "so as not to confuse the students." The teacher agreed by saying: "all of these students have been here since they were born so it is not necessary to be as close to the Spanish as it might be with another class." The students themselves, though, freely used both Spanish and English when talking among themselves.
Can we take this story home? Student response to cognitive strategy instruction
By and large, the students' response to the cognitive strategy instruction was positive, as demonstrated by their willingness to try out the various cognitive strategies. Some of the more exciting changes in the students' behavior were exemplified by Sara. Sara's willingness to engage in strategic reading processes such as asking questions and making inferences increased markedly during the final three sessions. On several occasions, she asked questions and made inferences that were relevant to the portion of the text she was reading. These questions and inferences, made in response to the instruction and overall learning environment created by the research project, strongly suggested that Sara was actively comprehending the text at hand. Sara asked a pertinent question in the first example (eighth day) while reading how the woodcutter's wife successfully duped her husband into believing that tortillas had snowed from the sky (Hayes,1985).
Researcher: So what do you think is going to happen? What are you thinking Sara?
Sara: What is she going to do with all that dough? (5/26/95)
In the second example (eighth day), she successfully inferred how the woodcutter would feel when made to attend first grade: Researcher: How does he feel, Sara? Sara: Weird.
Researcher: Why? You're right, why does he feel weird? Sara: Because he doesn't fit in the chair and the kids are gonna look at him. (5/26/95)
Victor also improved in his ability to discuss relevant prior knowledge rather than related but unhelpful information. During our initial interview, when Victor discussed the three brothers in the book The Invisible Hunters: Los cazadores invisibles (Rohmer, Chow, & Vidaure, 1987), it was difficult to see how his comments were relevant to information found in the text. This story is a Nicaraguan folk tale about the dangers that follow abandonment of traditional native values. In contrast, when reading the language experience text created by the Spanish-dominant students (third day) [Text: La familia platica de eso], he made the following statement. Victor: When my friend is talking about something important about a car, or they are going to bring someone from the family to the United States, they are in Mexico, or something else. And everybody has to give some money so they can bring him. (5/18/95)
With prompting and substantial instruction, Victor was able, on occasion, to implement the cognitive reading strategies of asking questions, resolving the meanings of unknown vocabulary items, invoking relevant prior knowledge and making inferences, and visualizing. In the following example, while reading The Day It Snowed Tortillas: Tales from Spanish New Mexico (Hayes, 1985), Victor's question indicated that he was monitoring his comprehension (eighth day). The resolution of his question would provide important information about the plot of the story because it probed the motives of the woodcutter s wife. The question signals that he was reading for meaning:
Researcher: All right. Now what are you guys thinking? Victor: What is she gonna throw the tortillas onto the ground for? (5/26/95)
Adan also indicated on four or five occasions that he could draw conclusions or make inferences from available information in a text and his prior knowledge. Again, he found this difficult to accomplish and at times he was unsuccessful. I think part of the difficulty was that Aden had a difficult time expressing himself in English or even in Spanish. He was simply not very verbal.
I sensed that Aden developed a fairly good grasp of The Day It Snowed Tortillas, judging from a statement he made, "so that he can't tell no one." His inference struck at the heart of this story involving an intelligent woman who was married to a rather slow-thinking man. He seemed to understand why the woodcutter's wife deceived her husband by making it appear as though tortillas had fallen from the sky. However, even though Adan was on track with his thinking, he had a difficult time verbalizing his understanding.
In contrast, Gabi could and often did connect textual information with her background knowledge. When she read the language experience text (second day), I appreciated her reminiscence of her father and brothers working the land in Mexico and the visual portrait this created:
Gabi: Que eso es muy bonito, cuando andan todos los hombres sembrando maiz, que se ven todos juntos, andan alegres sembrando maiz para comer. (That it is very beautiful, when all of the men are sowing corn, when you see all of them together, they go about happily sowing corn to eat. (5/17/95)
Gabi also seemed to have understood and implemented my instruction on self-questioning. Use of strategic reading processes appeared to be a new activity for Gabi; one which she approached cautiously, but which she slowly began to embrace. She began to succeed in asking herself questions (second day). One of these follows: [Text] Se preparan cuando no se come came, por eso la gente come chiles rellenos y tambien se comen pescados y pollos. (These are prepared when meat is not eaten, that is why people eat stuffed chili peppers and also why they eat fish and chicken.)
Gabi: [After the prompt "do you have any questions?" she asks herself] Yo me pregunto, *si todavia donde yo vivia, si siguen comiendo la misma comida? (I ask myself, if where I used to live, if they still keep on eating the same food?) (5/17/95)
A little of Gabi's thinking was made visible when she dealt with an unknown vocabulary item. Two of the students, including Gabi, mentioned use of the dictionary as an aid to dealing with unknown vocabulary. Gabi also indicated what I suspect might have been her preferred method for dealing with unknown vocabulary, that of simply skipping over the words. Such a strategy would seldom promote comprehension, even though, at times, it might be somewhat useful, especially if the reader kept in mind the word in question until further information was available. Again, though, the think-aloud data supported my suspicions that Gabi and some of her friends were content to simply move on through a text.
Felix was probably one of the most interesting students with respect to his ability to verbalize connections to prior knowledge. Felix was especially voluble when discussing the topics of religion and growing corn (second day). Felix's descriptions were rich with detail, and they were extensive. Felix could draw from an array of experiences gained while living in Mexico. For example, he appeared to describe a gila monster while reading the language experience text:
[Text Limpiabamos la milpa para que creciera el elote. (We would weed the cornfield so that the com would grow.)
Felix: Me hace pensar en un dia cuando limpiabamos la milpa y estaba un animal. Son como lagartos pues, pero son negras, pero son pintas, tienen la cabeza larga. Son muy malas, si una muerde a alguien muere en ese mismo rato. Tienen pintitos de colores, verdes, negros. (It makes me think of one day when we were weeding the cornfield and there was an animal. They are like lizards, well, but they are black, but they have colors, they have a big head. They are very bad; if one is bitten he will die right then. They have several colors, greens, blacks.) (5/17/95)
Reading was hard but now it makes a little more sense: Metacognitive development of low-literacy Latina/o students
Some of the most interesting data produced by the student participants during this project were their metacognitive comments. Although relatively few in number, the comments of a metacognitive nature made by the students indicate some rather important shifts in their thinking about reading and literacy. The very basic insight that reading requires thinking was verbalized by both Gabi and Sara. Gabi arrived at her understanding when asked what she would do if she came upon a word she did not know and a dictionary were not available. She was just beginning to consider the possibility that her mental efforts could aid her comprehension. Sara also understood that thinking could be useful (fifth day). Researcher: What do you do when you have a problem? Sara: You solve it.
Researcher: Yeah, and how do you solve a problem?
Sara: You think. (5/23/95)
Going one step further, students on occasion explicitly labeled their strategy use. Felix, for example, named the strategy of questioning, which he then implemented (fourth day). Naming of strategies may be an important preliminary stage for low-literacy students before they independently implement reading strategies without prompting.
Felix: Una pregunta. (A question.)
Researcher: Si, *cual? (Yes, which?)
Felix: Que, como fue que Quetzalcoatl se convirti6 en la serpiente emplumada? (That, how was it that Quetzalcoatl was able to change into a feathered serpent?) (5/19/95)
The naming of strategies, such as in Felix's example, was especially encouraging when students spontaneously named and described strategies for different purposes (seventh day). Victor and Sara named and described the strategies of approaching unknown vocabulary and asking questions.
Researcher: What else do you need to do when you're reading?
Sara: Picture things in your head. Researcher: Yeah, you get a picture in your head and you have to do what else?
Sara: Try and look for clues for words you don't know. Researcher: Look for clues.
Sara: Try the words out in Spanish. Researcher: Try it in Spanish, yeah, that's really smart. What else, Victor? What do you do to become a good reader?
Victor: Imagine it and ask yourself questions. Researcher: They ask questions, they make pictures in their head, and they do what... Victor: Mix what we know...[with what they're reading about...]. (5/24/95) I was especially impressed by Sara's seeming change of heart concerning reading itself (eighth day). Her comments on how she viewed reading as an activity were quite fascinating.
Researcher: Yesterday Sara was telling me that she used to think about reading like what? Sara: I didn't like it.
Researcher: What didn't you like about it? What was it that you didn't like? Because it was...
Sara: Hard.
Researcher: Hard, it was very hard for you to read, OK.
How about now?
Sara: I kind of like it. Researcher: How come?
Sara: Because it makes a little more sense, sort of, and I can read better. (5/26/95)
Limitations of the study
This study was designed to shed light on the major question of how teachers might profitably teach low-literacy Latina/o students. I specifically wanted to know more about how these students might respond to instruction that emphasized a strategic approach to interacting with text and that made use of culturally relevant children's literature. An exploratory in-depth approach to research design was adopted for this purpose. Such an approach did not provide information of a comparative nature-that is, between competing instructional approaches. In addition, sample sizes were purposefully small so as to be able to collect large amounts of data from each of the student participants. The findings of this study are suggestive, and I hope convincing, of some different possibilities for the instruction and learning of low-literacy Latina/o students.
Other limitations involve the think-aloud method, the materials presented to the students, and the instruction they were provided. The think-aloud method allows the researcher to make inferences about comprehension processes on the basis of comments made by the student participants. Low-performing students are known to have difficulty verbalizing their thoughts while engaged in cognitive activities such as reading (Garner, 1987). The possibility exists that students involved in this research underreported their thinking. In addition, the materials used for this research may not have provided students with sufficient opportunities for thinking aloud. While this research provided a starting point for considering the effects that culturally familiar text has on the cognitive processes of low-literacy Latina/o students, more work needs to be done to more completely determine the influence of a wide range of materials. Instruction, also, may not have provided students with optimal assistance for engaging in strategic behavior. Future inclusion of a broader array of instructional approaches should help sort out this issue.
Conclusions
An encouraging aspect of this research is that it has resulted in a more detailed, finely grained portrait of low-literacy Latina/o students in middle school. Both groups of students, those in the special education classroom and those in the bilingual at-risk classroom, provided indications that they wanted to improve their literacy abilities. They did so by trying out the reading strategies that were modeled for them. They demonstrated their desire by describing some of the reading strategies and by persistently staying with a task that some of them had described in interviews as their least favorite school subject. The primary research question for this study was "What can teachers do that will not stigmatize these students or deprive them of needed services but instead meet their multiple needs?" This question may be partially answered by the recommendation of an instructional approach that provides students with cognitive strategy instruction, interaction with culturally familiar text, and abundant opportunities to improve their reading fluency.
Described by one of their teachers as students other teachers did not want in their classrooms, the students in the bilingual at-risk classroom provided evidence that, under the right circumstances, they could be motivated to become better readers. In other words, the theme of student response to cognitive strategy instruction as expressed by one of the students, "Can we take this story home?" was essentially positive as judged by the amount of extended discourse they produced when interacting with text. Gabi and Felix also made multiple attempts to implement the cognitive strategies that had been modeled for them.
All five of the students, however, were cooperative, respectful, and willing to work hard to improve their literacy abilities. A few of them were shy and, especially when the project first began, a bit apprehensive about being involved. With instruction, encouragement, and patience, however, all five students began to implement strategies and verbalize understanding of reading that resembled that of more successful bilingual readers. The students provided indications of metacognitive development, one of the themes of this study. Sara expressed this best when she said that reading was hard but now it makes more sense. This statement stands in stark contrast to some of the initial perceptions of literacy made by the participating students. The view of reading as a mystery received support from statements made by each of the five participants.
These research findings support proposals for providing teachers with usable, specific, and concrete applications of multicultural education and second-language acquisition research findings (Berman et al., 1992; Gersten et al., 1994). This work expands the knowledge base on literacy instruction for low-literacy Latina/o students. The instructional approach adopted for this research emphasized comprehension; provided students with high-quality, culturally relevant children's literature; and was language sensitive. Some promising results were documented in terms of student production of discourse, encouraging levels of student involvement in learning, and student implementation of important reading strategies. It remains to be seen how and in what ways such an approach might translate into more traditional indicators of student learning, such as reading comprehension test scores.
It seems safe to conclude, though, that these students provided indications that they were able to profit from instruction, activities, and experiences with print that led to the development of more sophisticated conceptualizations concerning literacy. They were also able to begin implementation of particular strategic processes that resembled those used by successful bilingual readers (Jimenez et al., 1995, 1996).
Capitalizing on student strengths
Data collected before the instructional component of the study indicated that there were domains in which these students could and did perform in competent ways. This was encouraging because the early classroom observations had revealed that the students, both those in the special education classroom and those in the bilingual at-risk classroom, struggled whenever they were asked to read. Later, however, even though the students were incapable of describing literacy and reading in any depth, there were clear indications that when they found a story interesting because of the inclusion of certain elements such as family relationships, they could discuss that information in ways that approximated those of more successful readers. Contexts, tasks, and available instructional supports clearly influenced students' performance (Lipson & Wixson, 1986; Ruiz, 1995). Information provided by the student participants was useful for beginning to consider answers to the research questions of what low-literacy Latina/o students in middle school know about reading, and what strengths they possess that might facilitate their literacy learning. The use of quality children's literature also appeared to facilitate students' integration of prior knowledge with textual information. While debate rages on the implications of expanding the literary canon to include multicultural literature (Godina, 1996), this research provides suggestive illustrations of how students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds make connections between text and their own lives.
The links that students made between culturally relevant text and their own backgrounds created opportunities for making inferences and asking questions. These strategic activities, in turn, provided the participating students with further opportunities for developing their metacognitive awareness of reading. It appears that support exists for Garcia et al.'s (1994) claim that culturally relevant and understandable text may be an important component for providing an optimal environment for such development.
Views on the role of Spanish in learning
Teachers' views of Spanish, and its incorporation or banishment as a part of the curriculum, also emerged as an influential element in how instruction was designed and delivered. The comments of the teacher and the aide in the special education classroom suggested a lack of understanding concerning the role that the Spanish language can play in the literacy learning of Latina/o students.
There was no compelling reason, however, to ascribe students' difficulties with literacy to their ethnolinguistic background. A damaging understanding of Latina/o students that emerged could be summed up as a view of language-minority students as languageimpaired students. Such a view needs to be challenged with information, and through advocacy for students (Cummins, 1986). More specifically, teachers need training in second-language acquisition and multicultural education to work effectively with Latina/o students. A concrete instantiation of acknowledging students' Spanish-language abilities was to emphasize and work toward the development of bilingual Spanish-English reading schema. Those students with English- and Spanish-language proficiency appeared to appreciate and take advantage of opportunities to search for cognate vocabulary (Jimenez et al., 1995, 1996). They also reflected on and discussed English-language text in Spanish (Moll, 1988). The aforementioned strategic activities form the nucleus of an answer to the research question of how students respond to instruction designed to acknowledge their dual-language abilities or their second-language learning needs.
For those students beginning to learn English, a reasonable hypothesis is that a strategic approach to comprehension instruction could eventually result in more complete and thorough transfer of abilities to their second language when necessary. Transfer, in its most basic sense, refers to carrying something over from one person, place, or situation to another. This definition of transfer provides an apt metaphor for considering what successful bilingual readers do while reading. The bilingual strategies of translating, transferring, and reflecting on text in one's stronger language might be seen as the vehicles of that information. The combination of a strategic approach leading toward the development of a bilingual schemaspecifically strategies that combine declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge-might have potential for maximizing the effectiveness of native-language instruction (Paris, Lipson, & Wixson, 1983).
Benefits of including a formative experiment as a component in qualitative research
Finally, the instructional component of the study allowed me to view a variety of student responses to instruction that would have been impossible if the study had been limited entirely to a naturally occurring situation (Jacob, 1992). Adding the formative experiment component to the research design illustrated and illuminated student potential to learn important cognitive strategies in a more compelling manner.
Students demonstrated a willingness to work hard during this portion of the research. Their appreciation of goal-directed instruction undergirded by high expectations was evident when they were informed that the project was finished and they wanted to know when I would be coming back. Their response was gratifying and unusual given the fact that these students initially approached participation in the project with hesitation and skepticism. Again, this information was useful for answering the research question of how low-literacy Latina/o students respond to instruction that employs culturally relevant text and emphasizes strategic processing.
Yet to be explored is the question of how this approach to instruction for low-literacy Latina/o students in middle school might be used with entire classrooms. Such an approach will require the use of an expanded curriculum that, in all probability, will be best developed in a collaborative researcher-teacher relationship. Other important questions involve the following: What instructional methods most actively engage low-literacy Latina/o students when reading a wide variety of texts? What instructional methods best facilitate the transition from reading culturally familiar text to less culturally familiar text? And, finally, how can monolingual English speaking teachers most effectively promote the comprehension abilities of low-literacy Latina/o students? I hope to add to the discussion on these matters with information gained from current and future work.
AUTHOR NOTE
This work was supported in part by a grant from the Division of Innovation and Development, Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education, #H023A40035. Received June 17, 1996 Revision received October 25, 1996 Accepted October 29, 1996
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| [Author Affiliation] |
| University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA |
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