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Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda (1997)

Chapter: 3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING

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Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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3—
Cognitive Aspects of School Learning:
Literacy Development and
Content Learning

Language-minority children in the United States are overrepresented among those performing poorly in school. An understanding of the cognitive challenges posed by learning to read and by acquiring new content knowledge, whether in a first or a second language, is a prerequisite to designing better instruction for these and indeed all children. Whereas the previous chapter focused primarily on acquisition of oral language skills, the focus in this chapter is on reading, writing, and subject matter knowledge. The emphasis is on research carried out from a cognitive perspective on the nature of the challenges inherent in learning to read or learning subjects such as math or history, and on the factors that facilitate success in learning. Most of this research has been conducted with monolingual English-speaking subjects, but nonetheless casts light on the process for second-language speakers and learners as well. It should be noted that while this chapter includes some discussion of optimal instruction in the area of reading, most of the discussion regarding instruction is included in Chapter 7, on studies of school and classroom effectiveness.

State Of Knowledge

The following review of the state of knowledge in cognitive aspects of school learning first examines literacy development and then content learning.

Literacy Development

Like work on language acquisition, research on literacy forms a continuum whose endpoints represent quite different definitions of the phenomenon. At one

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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end of this continuum, literacy is defined as a psycholinguistic process involving component subprocesses such as letter recognition, phonological encoding, decoding of grapheme strings, word recognition, lexical access, computation of sentence meaning, and so on; at the other end, it is defined as a social practice of meaning construction with distinct characteristics among different groups. Of course, beliefs about effective literacy instruction correlate with these differing definitions. The psycholinguistic definition1 identifies crucial subprocesses in reading; thus in general it tends to support the utility of explicit instruction about these subprocesses (e.g., phoneme-grapheme mapping, word-recognition strategies, identification of derivational morphological relations among words), as well as practice to achieve automatic processing of them. The social practice view assumes that participation in a community that uses literacy communicatively is the crucial precondition for becoming literate; thus this view is associated with instructional practices such as encouraging children to write with invented spelling, exposing children to books by reading aloud, having tapes available, providing classroom libraries, and promoting authentic reading experiences through the use of trade books rather than basal readers. In addition, researchers in the psycholinguistic tradition tend to accept an epigenetic view of reading, in which it is assumed that the learner's (and thus the teacher's) task is different at different stages of development, whereas the social practice view, deemphasizing as it does the individual learner's role, defines no such developmental reorganization.

There has been a vast amount of research related to literacy and literacy instruction. Here we can only provide examples of what has been learned in the various domains of literacy development, focusing on concepts that are relatively well established for first-language reading and their potential relevance for understanding literacy development among bilinguals and second-language learners. We examine in turn prerequisites for the successful acquisition of reading ability, optimal early reading instruction, reading as a developmental process, and psycholinguistic processes of skilled readers.

Prerequisites for the Successful Acquisition of Reading

It is clear that future successful readers typically arrive at school with a set of prior experiences and well-established skills conducive to literacy. The findings in this area are fairly consistent, though explanations of how those prerequisites function to foster literacy development are not. The key prerequisites include an

1There is some confusion in terminology in the field of literacy acquisition. Smith (1983) and Goodman (1968) have called their view of literacy, which in fact lies firmly on the social practice end of the continuum, ''psycholinguistic" to emphasize their claim that literacy acquisition operates in the same way as language acquisition. We reserve the term "psycholonguistic" for views of reading that specify individual processes of graphological, phonological, lexical, or syntactic analysis.

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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understanding of literacy, abstract knowledge of the sound and structure of language, a certain level of vocabulary development, and oral connected discourse skills.

An Understanding of Literacy Young children who come from literate households, who have been read to, and whose parents are highly educated and/or use literacy regularly are most likely to become successful readers. These findings clearly fit well with the view of literacy as a social practice; more psycholinguistically oriented researchers point out that participation in literacy-related practices provides opportunities for children to acquire specific knowledge about letters, language, and symbolic systems that are prerequisites to full literacy.

Remarkably little work has been done to describe literate practices in the homes of language-minority children. The work that has been carried out describes considerable variability within ethnic or language groups, though typically the comparison groups are all low-income and of low parental education (Langer et al., 1990; Teale, 1986; Teale et al., 1981). The uses of literacy, and thus the cultural meanings of literacy to which children are socialized, are conceptualized in this work as social rather than autonomous, just as book reading with young children is basically a social interaction in which the adult and the child construct the text together through a combination of reading and discussion. These social practices may generate expectations that conflict with school literacy practices.

Abstract Knowledge of the Sound Structure of Language Alphabetic writing systems represent spoken words abstractly—the level of the phoneme, which is unpronounceable and thus accessible only at a relatively deep level of representation. Preschool children who have a sophisticated sense of phonemes—as demonstrated, for example, by the ability to rhyme, to name things that begin with a particular sound, to focus on similarities in sound rather than in meaning in grouping words, or to identify relations among words that differ by one phoneme—are likely to be successful at the early stages of reading. Moreover, while these skills clearly make reading acquisition easier, reading acquisition and the practice in phoneme analysis that comes with attempts at invented spelling in turn promote abstract knowledge about phoneme structure.

Evidence seems clear that some minimal ability to segment spoken language into phonemic units is a prerequisite to beginning to read in all alphabetic languages (Wagner and Torgeson, 1987) and that bilingualism promotes this ability (Bialystok, 1988, 1992, in press). No studies have been done that would clarify whether acquiring this ability in a first language is a sufficient basis for initial literacy instruction in a second language or whether the ability needs to be at least applied to the second language before literacy can be acquired—though evidence that phoneme segmentation transfers across languages under certain circumstances has been offered by Durgunoglu et al. (1993).

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Vocabulary At every stage of reading development, vocabulary is a highly reliable correlate of reading ability (e.g., Koda, 1989a; Nagy, 1988; Stanovich, 1986). This relationship is easy to understand at later stages: reading involves confronting many relatively rare and sophisticated words, which are easier to read if already known and are also more likely to be acquired by children who read a great deal. At the early stages of reading, the relation of reading success to vocabulary may reflect the status of a child's vocabulary as an index of parental social class or educational level.

A limited number of studies have sought relationships between vocabulary knowledge and reading for English-language learners (see Fitzgerald, 1995, for a review). These studies converge on the conclusion that English vocabulary is a primary determinant of reading comprehension for such readers, and that those whose first language has many cognates with English have an advantage in English vocabulary recognition, but often do not fully exploit cognate relationships to optimize English vocabulary comprehension without target instruction (Garcia and Nagy, 1993).

Oral Connected Discourse Skills Considerable evidence is now accumulating that good readers arrive at school with greater ability to use oral language in ways that are adapted to the needs of nonpresent listeners, that linguistically mark relations across utterances, and that honor genre-specific rules for organizing discourse.2 As the exact mechanism explaining the relationship of these studies to literacy is not known, there is as yet little basis for determining whether learners need to display these skills in the language in which they are learning to read, or whether possessing these skills in a first language is sufficient to support literacy acquisition in a second.

Learners show high correlations across these oral discourse skills between their two languages if both are used in educational settings (Velasco, 1989), but not if only the second language is used for schooling (Snow, 1990). For example, children in a bilingual program scored very similarly on a task of giving definitions in Spanish and English, even providing precisely the same information in many cases, whereas Spanish-speaking children being schooled only in English showed no correlation between their Spanish and English definitions. Presumably the second group had no chance at home to develop in Spanish the academic skills they were acquiring in English.

Effective use of comprehension strategies in reading both Spanish and English was found to be related to Spanish first-language oral proficiency in one

2Genre-specific rules include those defining the likely order of presentation of information in fictional stories (provision of background information, complicating events, a problem, a problem resolution, a conclusion) versus newspaper reports (the major event, then the complicating actions, then orienting information about place and characters involved).

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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study (Langer et al., 1990). High levels of skill in Spanish first-language reading facilitated English second-language reading (Moll and Diaz, 1985), and similarly, good writing in Spanish first language was found to be related to sophisticated writing in English second language (Lanauze and Snow, 1989), suggesting that second-language literacy may be able to build directly on high levels of oral language and literacy skills in the first language. A case study of an excellent Spanish-English bilingual reader (Jiménez et al., 1995) shows the use of similar strategies for identifying words and comprehending text in both languages, and the frequent use of information from the other language. A larger-scale study carried out by the same group (Jiménez et al., 1996) suggests that successful bilingual readers all used certain strategies for comprehending both Spanish and English tests: focusing on unknown words, using cognates as one source of knowledge, monitoring their comprehension, making inferences, and actively using prior knowledge. Unsuccessful readers focused much less on comprehension as their goal for reading.

There is considerable controversy about the level of second-language proficiency needed to support reading in that language. Wong Fillmore and Valadez (1986) argue that second-language reading for English-language learners should not be introduced until a fairly high level of second-language proficiency has been achieve. However, Anderson and Roit (1996), Gersten (1996), and others argue that instruction focused on second-language comprehension can be helpful to learners at all levels of second-language oral proficiency (even for those with learning disabilities [Klingner and Vaughn, 1996]), and in fact that support of second-language reading comprehension can generate gains in second-language oral skills (see also Elley, 1981).

In general, positive correlations have been found between English second-language oral proficiency and English second-language reading ability, particularly at higher grade levels, but not equally across all first-language groups (Devine, 1987; see Fitzgerald, 1995, for a review). The mixed findings may well reflect differences in oral language proficiency measures used across the various studies and in conditions for literacy acquisition. Oral language proficiency in face-to-face tasks may predict less well than performance in autonomous, connected discourse tasks, and older, already literate second-language learners acquiring English literacy through formal, foreign-language-type instruction may rely less on oral language as a route to literacy than those acquiring their initial literacy skills in the second language.

Optimal Early Reading Instruction

Perhaps the most controversial area in reading research is the question of how best to teach initial reading. The debate about the value of the whole-word method peaked with the publication of Why Johnny Can't Read (Flesch, 1955), and the controversy surrounding phonics/direct instruction methods versus whole-language

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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methods has been addressed in The Great Debate (Chall, 1967, 1983) and Beginning to Read (Adams, 1990).3 The controversy often extends beyond the interpretation of research results to the level of deeply personal conviction, a situation that persists in part because most children will learn to read under a wide variety of instructional procedures. In fact, a small percentage of children in literate societies learn to read with no instruction whatsoever—evidently seeking out for themselves information about how print represents sound and finding the task of applying that knowledge sufficiently easy and fun that they practice it extensively outside instructional contexts (Clark, 1976; Durkin, 1966).4

The spontaneous readers in the distribution are balanced by at least as many children who have persistent problems in learning to read, presumably because of some basic processing deficit in the identification of phoneme units, in the achievement of lexical access, or in some other area of symbolic processing. Of primary interest for present purposes, though, are the vast majority of children in the middle of the distribution, particularly the group of apparently normal children who nonetheless have problems learning to read and remain below grade level as readers throughout elementary school. This group of normal but at-risk children is composed overwhelmingly of children from low-income homes where the parents have relatively little education and of children who do not speak English as a first language. Hispanic children (a group that includes English monolinguals as well as Spanish-English bilinguals), for example, score well below their non-Hispanic peers in reading throughout the elementary school years and end up on average about 4 years behind in secondary school (Applebee et al., 1985, 1987, 1989). This is the group for which we are most interested in the effects of instruction.

The evidence is overwhelming that direct instruction in phoneme-grapheme mappings, word recognition strategies, and comprehension strategies is of value for this group of children (Adams, 1990). Many believe that such children are at considerable risk in classrooms that provide only a whole-language environment with no direct reading instruction, a conclusion supported by a meta-analysis conducted by Stahl and Miller (1989). They found that whole-language approaches

3The whole-word method involved teaching reading by having children acquire a large repertoire of sight words, without providing direct instruction in the regularities of English orthography. The phonics method focuses on teaching and providing practice in the orthographic system, i.e., sound-letter relationships, the rules governing the interpretation of orthographic cues such as the silent 'e', and the pronunciation of minor spelling patterns such as 'igh,' and 'ough.' The whole-language method emphasizes providing children with rich, authentic literacy experiences so they can discover the rules of English orthography themselves. Unlike the whole-word method, it does not involve teaching sight words.

4These claims that most children learn to read under any instructional regime and that 5-10 percent of children learn to read without formal instruction are based on studies of monolingual English speakers. We do not know whether similar claims can be made for bilinguals or for children learning to read in a second language in which they are not fully proficient.

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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worked better with advantaged populations, though there were generally better outcomes for approaches that incorporated basal readers in the instruction, particularly for first graders (as opposed to kindergartners, who benefited more from whole-language approaches). Freppon and Dahl (1991) document the success of a kindergarten teacher who in the context of whole-language instruction helps children understand sound-symbol relations. It should of course be noted that these findings relate to English-language speakers, not to English-language learners.

Though the hard evidence favors direct instruction, it is also clear that many instructional methods associated with phonics-based instruction are unnecessary, of little value, or less useful than alternatives that incorporate some principles introduced by whole-language methods. Worksheets on which children practice identifying long versus short vowels, rhyming versus nonrhyming words, and words beginning with 'b' versus words beginning with 'd' are much less productive than forms of skill practice embedded in meaningful contexts (Anderson et al., 1985). Authentic communication tasks, such as writing stories or journals, can serve as contexts for individualized phonics instruction that exploits the value of accurate representation of words for effective communication. The somewhat impoverished models of literature provided by many basal reading series can be supplemented or replaced by a judicious selection of trade books that provide engaging texts with literary value (see Elley and Mangubhai, 1983, for evidence of the value of high-interest reading in promoting second-language reading and language skills).

Instruction in small groups formed around children's reading levels has been shown to have a pernicious effect on some children's views of themselves as readers and on the quality of instruction available to the lower-level reading groups (Allington, 1978, 1980; Hoffman and Clements, 1984), though use of ability groups in the Success for All model has proven successful with both English and Spanish speakers (Slavin and Madden, 1994).

While one can cite research findings in support of the value of certain of these practices over others, only recently has anyone dared to express official sanction for the eclectic method of teaching reading—embedding direct instruction in component processes into meaningful, communicative, literate activities—that many experienced and successful teachers are in fact implementing in their classrooms (Adams and Bruck, 1995; Purcell-Gates, 1996).

With regard to reading instruction in a second language, there is remarkably little directly relevant research. Clearly one of the major intellectual stimuli to bilingual education programs has been the belief that initial reading instruction in a language not yet mastered orally to some reasonable level is too great a cognitive challenge for most learners. Studies of outcomes of bilingual programs, however, do not typically distinguish students who arrive at school already reading in their first language from those who learn to read only at school. The evidence that better academic outcomes characterize immigrant children who

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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have had 2 to 3 years of initial schooling (and presumably literacy instruction) in their native countries (Collier and Thomas, 1989; Skutnabb-Kangas, 1979) is consistent with the claim that children should first learn to read in a language they already speak. However, it is clear that many children first learn to read in a second language without serious negative consequences. These include children in early-immersion, two-way, and English as a second language (ESL)-based programs in North America, as well as those in formerly colonial countries that have maintained the official language as the medium of instruction, immigrant children in Israel, children whose parents opt for elite international schools, and many others (see Christian, 1996; Feitelson, 1988).

What we know about early literacy acquisition suggests it is more likely than not to be successful under a wide variety of circumstances, but is nonetheless impacted by a long list of risk factors, including lack of explicit instruction in the local orthography, absence of the sort of background knowledge and skills acquired in highly literate environments, and unavailability of semantic support for decoding that comes from familiarity with the words one reads. Exposure to any one of these and other risk factors may have no impact on literacy achievement, though the coincidence of several may ensure a high rate of failure. The high literacy achievement of Spanish-speaking children in English-medium Success for All schools (Slavin and Yampolsky, 1992) that feature carefully designed direct literacy instruction suggests that even children from low-literacy homes can learn to read in a second language if the risk associated with poor instruction is eliminated.

Reading as a Developmental Process

There are rather different tasks and skills involved in reading at various points in the acquisition of skilled reading. These differences are great enough that Chall (1983) has claimed reading develops through distinct stages. Clearly, a stage theory meshes well with a direct instructional model, in which it is assumed that skills should be taught in a specific sequence. Whether or not one accepts a strict sequential stage notion, it is clear that in general, children learning to read face different challenges at different points in the process: learning about print versus nonprint, typically accomplished in the preschool years; learning to recognize and write letters; learning to decode words, which involves synthesizing phonological from graphemic sequences; reading relatively simple texts fluently; reading texts that include new information and unknown lexical items for comprehension; reading strategically, for specific information or purposes such as relaxation; and reading critically, to examine and compare the claims and arguments of different authors. The essential idea here is that the nature of reading skill needs to be defined somewhat differently at different points in its development, and thus that acquisition of prior skills does not always predict

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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continued growth in reading ability; there are several points in development where novel skills need to be acquired.

The implications of this view for second-language learners are potentially enormous, as the task of learning to read in a second language is presumably quite different at different stages of first-language reading skill. Direct studies of the nature of what can be transferred from first- to second-language reading need to take into account not only the level of first-language reading, but also the level and content of the second-language material being read (as well as the nature of the orthographic [e.g., Koda, 1989b], linguistic, and rhetorical differences between the first and second languages).

Psycholinguistic Processes of Skilled Readers

Skilled readers are capable of reading with understanding in part because the component processes—letter recognition, word recognition, access to word meaning, syntactic parsing of the sentence—are fast and efficient (e.g., Adams, 1990). Efficiency is promoted in reading instruction by making provision for practice in reading to generate fluency or automatic processing of component processes (e.g., by introducing sustained silent reading periods in the classroom, or by providing opportunities for sufficient practice in oral reading). Even adult skilled readers process print in a largely bottom-up way, engaging in phonological encoding as part of the process of word recognition (Rayner and Pollatsek, 1989). Indeed, even readers of nonalphabetic languages such as Chinese seem to use phonological encoding for word recognition, suggesting that lexical storage is largely phonological in form (Hung and Tzeng, 1981; Perfetti and Zhang, 1991; Perfetti et al., 1992).

Thus the suggestion by Smith (1983), for example, that good reading involves top-down processing—in which understanding the smaller units is possible because the general message is accessible first—is a misrepresentation of normal skilled reading, though it comes closer to describing the process in which poor readers engage. Those whose skill with word recognition is limited can improve their comprehension by employing strategies such as reading the whole text for gist; self-monitoring for understanding; and using cues from titles, pictures, headings, and the like. Explicit instruction in comprehension strategies such as prediction, summarization, and questioning—for example, the widely used "reciprocal teaching" (Palincsar and Brown, 1984) or Bereiter and Bird's (1985) think-aloud method—has been shown to be useful with poor first-language readers, and some evidence suggests it would also be useful with second-language readers who have comprehension difficulties (e.g., Barnett, 1989; Casanave, 1988; Cohen, 1990). Studies of the metacognitive strategies used by second-language readers of English (reviewed in Fitzgerald, 1995) reveal that such strategies are widely used and that the repertoire of those strategies includes some that may be specific to the second-language situation (such as using translation

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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dictionaries or relying on information about cognates), but also many typical of first-language readers as well (asking questions, predicting, summarizing). Jiménez et al. (1996) found that good second-language readers focus much more on word meaning, presumably because this is a greater source of difficulty for them, than do good monolingual readers.

Some researchers studying instructional practices for reading have suggested that rather little attention is given to teaching or promoting comprehension strategies in classrooms with many language-minority students, even in the middle and later elementary grades when such instruction is important, because teachers tend to focus on word recognition and pronunciation (e.g., Gersten, 1996). On the other hand, literacy instruction for adult ESL learners focuses rather little on word recognition (Hilferty, 1996), despite the important role of word recognition skill in explaining variance in comprehension among this population (Carlo and Sylvester, 1996; Hilferty, 1996). A major obstacle to helpful research on reading instruction for language-minority children is the failure to recognize the existence of developmental changes in the reading process and in the speed and efficiency of second-language learning.

Skilled readers use syntactic information unconsciously to make the reading process more efficient, for example, by fixating on high-information items in the text (Rayner and Pollatsek, 1989). Since high-information items differ from language to language, this can lead to inefficient fixation patterns when reading in a second language (Bernhardt, 1987), thus perhaps disrupting the fluency that facilitates comprehension.

Skilled readers can tolerate a small proportion of unknown words in texts without disruption of comprehension and can even infer the meanings of those words from sufficiently rich contexts, but if the proportion of unknown words is too high, comprehension is disrupted. Word knowledge no doubt relates to reading comprehension both because encountering many unknown words slows processing and because lack of work knowledge indicates absence of the relevant background knowledge that is crucial in reading texts of any complexity. Educators who doubt the importance of relevant background knowledge to comprehension need only dip into the Journal of Solid State Physics for leisure reading to be convinced. Familiarity with content promotes reading comprehension when reading in either a second or a first language (Carrell, 1987; Johnson, 1981; see Fitzgerald, 1995, for a review), though knowledge of relevant background information may be less reliably indexed by second- than first-language vocabulary.

Comprehension is also supported by familiarity with macro structures present in texts. Knowing that paragraphs have topic sentences on which other sentences are meant to elaborate, being familiar with the basic principles of compare-and-contrast essays, and understanding the macro grammar of a typical story all aid the reader in integrating information across sentences. Of course, these macro structures are culturally determined, and knowing them is typically the product of a great deal of implicit learning, though direct instruction in these matters is

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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provided in some classrooms. The importance of these macro-structural principles in promoting or impeding reading comprehension is clear to anyone who has compared a novel by James Michener with one by Isabel Allende or Kenzaburo Oe. The notions of plot and temporal sequence, of how much orientation is needed, and of how much interpretation should be supplied vary widely across these three writers, who are all, however, relatively mainstream within their own cultural-linguistic tradition. In general, passages organized in a familiar structure are easier to comprehend and recall for second-language readers (see Fitzgerald, 1995, for a review) than those exemplifying a novel rhetorical structure. There are clear first-language effects on the types of structures second-language readers find easy, presumably related to preferred macro-structural organization in the first language (Carrell, 1984; Hinds, 1983). Studies that have manipulated familiarity of both content and structure find that unfamiliar content is more disruptive to comprehension than unfamiliar structure (Carrell, 1987).

Content Learning

This section examines what we know about content learning in general and in relationship to English-language learners. We consider lines of research that have addressed learning and thinking in subject matter domains and what this research suggests for the tasks faced by teachers of second-language learners and their students. Considerable progress has been made over the last two decades in understanding the nature and processes of learning and acquiring knowledge of specified content information. This research has, for the most part, not concerned itself with issues of language per se, nor has it been incorporated into discussion about English-language learners. There are some notable exceptions, however. For example, research reviewed in Cocking and Mestre (1988) and discussed later in this chapter examines linguistic and cultural influences on learning mathematics. Fuson and Secada's (1986) study of particular mathematical topics and student learning extends our sense of the complexity of mathematical thinking and helps us interpret the teaching task with greater awareness. Work by Rosebery et al. (1992) and Chamot et al. (1992) is discussed in Chapter 7, on studies of school and classroom effectiveness.

We refer to the body of research that we review as "primary-language content learning." While it is clear that learning and understanding new content material in a second language pose specific linguistic difficulties not present in primary-language content learning, awareness of this body of research might well inform research on content learning in a second language. Expanding the systematic study of some of these issues to include English-language learners will inform and expand the theory as well.

The general perspective here is that of cognitive psychology. Cognitive theory, borrowing from the pioneering work of Piaget, provides educators a way of combining constructivism with systematic deep analyses of subject matter

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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tasks. Cognitive analyses help reveal with special clarity a level of complexity in teaching and learning in subject areas. But cognitive psychology and cognitive science (cognitive psychology plus linguistics, philosophy, and artificial intelligence) also suggest a level of complexity in teaching and learning not anticipated by Piagetians, behaviorists, or even activity theorists (Cobb, 1994; Bruer, 1993; Resnick and Klopfer, 1989; Greeno and Simon, 1988; Simon and Kaplan, 1989; Wertsch, 1979).

Empirical research on teaching and learning has paralleled the evolution of educational theory (Bruer, 1993). As educational theory has expanded, so have the kinds of research questions posed. Most recently, research questions influenced by cognitive theory have focused on the relationship between structure of knowledge, meaning organization, and representations of tasks and resources: How does the structure of prior mathematical knowledge and representation influence student thinking about decimals (Heibert, 1986)? How do students juggle the multiple layers and constraints of geographical notation to reason with and from a map (Gregg, 1993)? How does self-explanation influence students' understanding and mental models of the circulatory system (Chi et al., 1994)? How do groups of students jointly construct effective explanations (Leinhardt, 1987)?

Seeking answers to these kinds of subject matter questions, as well to questions concerned with language acquisition and development, may generate important insights concerning the education of second-language students. Thus we suggest a program of research with second-language learners and their teachers that is extended to include cognitive approaches to subject matter learning, knowledge, and understanding. Because the ''problem" for the English-language learner has been considered as almost entirely language-based, much of the research has focused on language acquisition issues. But learning school subject matter and work skills involves building intricate networks of concept relations, structuring and restructuring understandings, connecting them to other understandings, and practicing multiple skills in multiple environments. Therefore, more complex questions might fruitfully be asked about the nature of second-language students' learning, knowledge, and understanding of complex subject matter domains.

Discussion of complex questions of subject matter learning for English-language learners needs to be grounded in some assumptions about learning in general. The remainder of this section describes three assumptions drawn from cognitive analyses about school subject matter learning for primary-language content learning. These assumptions are context for much of the current research on school learning and apply to most students and most subject matter domains. First, we assume that different subjects have different core structures or epistemologies, thus making different demands on the learner. Second, we assume that there are multiple forms or kinds of knowledge—knowledge of facts and ideas, as well as knowledge of how to do something, for example. Third, we assume that prior knowledge plays a significant role in learning, not only in terms of where to start, but also in terms of the actual meanings attached to new information. The

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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discussion of these assumptions offers some examples and considers what a program of cognitive research that considered subject matter learning for English-language learners might look like.

Subject Matter Specificity

Learning, knowledge, and understanding differ across subject matter. But these differences in subject matter are embedded in larger general similarities. Understanding, learning, and teaching earth science or social studies require the general ability to read English, to construct meaning, and to understand and follow spoken discussion. They also require general capabilities of inferencing, placing examples into overarching constructs, and building causal chains.5 Knowledge varies both across and within subject matter areas: it varies across because subjects have different epistemological underpinnings and thus different arrangements of facts, concepts, notations, and patterns of reasoning; it varies within because some academic subjects have elaborate and importantly constraining notational systems (for example, algebraic and graphic systems). We now review several examples from the primary subject matter domains of mathematics, science, and history.

Analyses of mathematical learning and teaching have covered a variety of topics, from the earliest studies of counting (Briars and Siegler, 1984; Gelman and Meck, 1986), to models of addition and subtraction (Carpenter and Moser, 1982; Fuson, 1992; Resnick, 1992; Riley et al., 1983), to buggy algorithms6 in subtraction (Brown and VanLehn, 1982), to descriptions of naive models of graphs (Leinhardt et al., 1990; Schoenfeld et al., 1993). These studies have extended our sense of the complexity of mathematical thinking and helped us interpret and undertake teaching tasks with greater awareness. Studies of counting (Briars and Seigler, 1984; Gelman and Gallistel, 1978; Gelman and Meck, 1986; Greeno et al., 1984) have focused on the inherent interaction between basic principled knowledge and procedural knowledge for specific mathematical tasks and operations. Research on buggy algorithms (Brown and VanLehn, 1982) shows that these errors are quite systematic and can be used generatively to understand the student's mental model that produces a procedural bug. In a very different kind of work, Lampert (1992) shows that to understand long-division problems, the student must grasp an underlying principle that includes fundamental multiplicative relationships.7 These relationships are quite implicit and

5Between these bottom-up skills (Kintsch and van Dijk, 1978) and top-down schemas (Anderson and Pearson, 1984) lies a rather large domain of highly differentiated systems of knowledge, for which expertise also tends to be differentiated (Chi et al., 1982; Schwab, 1978; Stodolsky, 1988).

6Procedures that produce predictable errors.

7In one example, she describes posing two fundamental classes of division questions. First, given a specific number of groups (or people), how many belong in each group for a fixed number of items? For example, with 6 people and 48 apples, how many apples go to each person? Second, given a specific number per group, how many groups can be formed for a fixed number of items? For example, with 8 people per minivan and 48 people, how many minivans are needed? In the first case, the divisor (6 people) is a quantity, while the quotient is an intensive quantity (8 apples per person). In the second case, the divisor is an intensive quantity (8 per van), while the quotient is a quantity (6 vans). Both questions make use of the same algorithmic system to solve the problem, namely division, and both are part of the system of multiplicative structures. This consistency characterizes the efficiency of the mathematical discipline.

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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heavily dependent on linguistic nuances. Therefore, the efficiency of the algorithmic system may not be visible to all students, and the means of making the distinction visible must be developed with consideration for both linguistic and cultural issues.

Parallel research in science education exemplifies the epistemological differences among disciplines. Theories are fundamental to science. The task of learning science is, in part, to understand those theories deeply enough to be able to map them to extant data in order to explain a particular phenomenon (Ohlsson, 1992). Because of the disciplinary significance of theory, considerable educational research has been devoted to issues surrounding scientific theories, such as the difference between cohesive and fragmented intuitive scientific theories (diSessa, 1988), systems of errors (McKlosky, 1983), models of expert scientific problem solving (Chi et al., 1982; Simon et al., 1980), models of scientific discovery (Qin and Simon, 1990), theory articulation (Ohlsson, 1992), and concept interpretation (Reif, 1987).

One aspect of the study of science that can be especially difficult for students is the deceptive simplicity of many of the theories. Take, for example, the principle of acceleration: acceleration is the change in velocity over time. The formula (and theory) seems simple at first glance. However, in detailing how one determines the acceleration of any particular object, Reif (1987) shows the solution path as a progression through five separate substeps8 and points out that "substantial complexities [are] hidden in the declarative specification of (the problem)…[and that] even some of the individual steps of the procedural specification involve complex sub-processes" (pp. 401-402). What might start out as a simple "plug the number into the formula" problem turns into a multilayered, means-end solution path, misleading students with its false impression of simplicity.

In the study of history, students must construct a coherent narrative or expository historical account that carries both multiple perspectives and a sense of layering—of event as it occurred, event as it was recorded, and event as it was interpreted (Leinhardt, 1994; Wineberg, 1994). History, as taught, usually lacks

8These steps include (1) find the velocity of the particle at time t, (2) find the velocity of the particle at a slightly later time t', (3) find the change in velocity, (4) find the ratio of velocity to time, and (5) repeat the calculations until the ratio approaches a limiting value that is constant.

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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this sense of coherence. When asked to recall salient information from such texts, students tend to construct erroneous connections among the facts presented in an effort to make them coherent. McKeown and Beck (1994) found that if the texts were revised so less was presumed about the students' knowledge of the material (i.e., so that the actual text was more coherent), the students were better able to construct an accurate representation of the historical event, reason about the multiple perspectives involved, and construct an historical argument from the layered interpretations of particular events.

The point of the above discussion has been to emphasize the fundamental epistemological differences among subject matters. These differences necessitate highly differentiated systems of complex knowledge for both students and their teachers. While it is clear that at some level of abstraction, generalities across subject areas do exist, we believe these generalities are not sufficient to leapfrog the middle ground of differentiated knowledge. Further, we suggest that a better understanding of this middle ground can enhance our understanding of the nature of both primary-language content learning and content learning in a second language.

In light of the epistemological distinctions among the various subjects, it may be that certain disciplines lend themselves more easily to the transfer of knowledge across languages, depending on the structure of knowledge within the domain, but the particular domains to which this would apply to are not readily apparent. For example, it would appear at first glance that mathematics knowledge should be readily transferable from language to language. However, in light of the long-division example cited above and research in this area (Cocking and Chipman, 1988; Myers and Milne, 1988), we can see that some of the deepest principles of a particular domain (e.g., its efficiency) may be highly implicit and heavily dependent on language, and thus less accessible to an English-language learner. Because sophisticated knowledge in a given domain not only uses the terminology of that domain, but also builds upon gradually developing concepts—such as dividing among a group or grouping by a factor to determine the number of groups—learning such strands of content knowledge in one language and then shifting to another may be especially problematic.

We have asserted that there are substantial differences among subject matter areas. For the most part, studies of English-language learners and their teachers seem to have ignored these distinctions, identifying a central problem facing these students as learning enough general language to enter mainstream classrooms. We do not know what the advantages or complications are for English-language learners trying to learn the various disciplines themselves. However, we do suggest that it would be useful to learn how general language proficiencies interact with specific academic language proficiencies and with specific subject matter content. For example, in a study of writing and discourse about history by young adolescents, we have seen that gaining command of connecting words and phrases (e.g., among, between, however, in spite of, in addition to) is a requirement

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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for building coherent arguments and a stumbling block if not mastered. This is not a vocabulary problem; it is a problem of logical relations that makes itself known through language (Young and Leinhardt, 1996). A study by Short (1994) indicates that integrating subject-specific terminology into language classes helps English-language learners better comprehend the subject matter (see Chapter 7).

Multiple Forms of Knowledge

Not only are there substantial differences among subject matter areas, but there are also different kinds of knowledge. One of the more common distinctions among types of knowledge is that between procedural knowledge (knowledge of actions and skills) and declarative knowledge (knowledge of concepts and principles) (Chi and Ceci, 1987; Heibert, 1986; Lampert, 1986; Scribner, 1984). One task facing the student is to integrate these two types of knowledge. This integration process will differ according to the generative power we expect students to develop from different subject matter information. Students of some disciplines, such as history, must develop arguments based on multiple forms of evidence, whereas students of other disciplines, such as science, are commonly asked to codify examples of complex phenomena. Thus, the underlying epistemologic foundation of the discipline dictates the nature of the required integration of procedural and declarative knowledge. Another distinction between types of knowledge is between knowledge of content and knowledge of that knowledge, referred to as metacognition. Brown (1980) discusses metacognition in terms of three features: knowing what you know and how well you know it, knowing what you need to know, and knowing the utility of active intervention. This self-awareness has been found to be a useful tool for learners across domains in that learners with such awareness are better able to organize the knowledge they have and identify that which they need to acquire.

We do not have much information about the English-language learner with respect to subject matter knowledge in these terms. (See Chapter 7 for a review of studies that examine the effect of instruction in metacognitive skills on subject matter learning of English-language learners.) However, issues of metacognition have been discussed for second-language learners in terms of the additive principle, which suggests these students have an advantage when learning new material.9 The argument that metacognitive abilities facilitate learning by primary-language

9It is striking how little research has been carried out on the metacognitive capacities of bilinguals, given the robust findings concerning their metalinguistic superiority. Bilinguals' abstract metalinguistic understanding of the structure of language may facilitate their learning of new material (Bialystok and Hakuta, 1994; Cummins, 1991; Diaz, 1986; Hakuta and Diaz, 1985; Peal and Lambert, 1962).

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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content learners lends support to the claim of the additive principle. Note, however, that in considering metacognition, the assumed advantage for second-language learners when learning new material has been focused strictly on linguistic awareness; the findings do not generalize to utility for particular subject matter knowledge.

Prior Knowledge

The types and amount of knowledge available before encountering a new topic within a particular discipline affect how meaning is constructed. Theories about the structure of knowledge and knowledge acquisition have used similar metaphors for describing the structure of knowledge and the way the acquisition of new knowledge affects that structure (Case, 1993; Newell and Simon, 1972; Miller, 1993). The knowledge structure can be thought of as nodes of information, such as concepts, that are linked to each other in particular ways depending on how and what information has been learned. Links between concepts can be acquired, reconstructed, or deconstructed, and particular learning outcomes are determined jointly by what was known before (the unique pattern of nodes and links) and the effects of instruction (additions to or rearrangements of that pattern).

The issue of prior knowledge can be considered one of depth, interconnectedness, and access. Depth of knowledge refers to the number of linked concepts a student has in a domain. In math, for example, students' depth of knowledge will influence their recognition of a problem, their sense of meaning associated with the problem, their ability to perform the appropriate mathematical operations, and their ability to recognize a reasonable answer. It is often the case that neither students nor teachers recognize salient background knowledge in a mathematical or scientific domain. The extent to which concepts are interconnected reveals the coherence of a student's understanding of a particular domain. Finally, the existence of different kinds of knowledge poses a problem for both teaching and learning in that if the different types of knowledge are disconnected, they will be inert and unusable (Bereiter, 1984; Brown et al., 1983). A student may know what a long-division problem is, but not know how to solve it. Or a student may know how to solve a particular problem, but not when to use division procedures. The development of deep, interconnected, generative knowledge instead of shallow, fragmented, inert knowledge needs to be a continuous process for both teachers and their students, with the interaction between the two forms of knowledge being taught explicitly.

Thus the depth, interconnectedness, and accessibility of prior knowledge all dramatically influence the processing of new information (Chi and Koeske, 1983; McKeown et al., 1992; Pearson et al., 1979). Knowledge is a complex integrated network of information of various types: ideas, facts, principles, actions, and scenes. Prior knowledge is thus more than another chunk of information. It

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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might facilitate, inhibit, or transform a new learning task. Students must connect their own prior knowledge with new information continuously, while teachers must understand how well students are making these connections (Lampert, 1992; Leinhardt, 1992).

With respect to second-language learners, then, a number of questions arise. Under what conditions is content learning affected by the fact that a superordinate category and its instantiation (e.g., commutivity and addition) are learned both tacitly and explicitly in one language, but are then to be used as a principle in a more complex instantiation in another language (e.g., addition of algebraic polynomials)? How are "errors" that have a language base handled in a second language (e.g., in English, the confusion of "north" with "up'' on a page versus in real space)? Naturally, the potential for interference in terms of access is also of concern—although this may be a vocabulary issue. A problem may arise if base examples are introduced at a young age in the child's first language (e.g., for social studies, notions of community, roles, freedom, and power) and are to be built upon in the second language at a later age (e.g., in learning about the French Revolution). Does this affect the second-language learner, and how?

These questions are related to concerns about how and when instruction should be handled over time. In part, they raise issues of individual development over time, and in part issues of subject matter coherence and meaning over time. At this point, we know next to nothing about these questions. Do those conditions change with varying subject matter? These questions are analogous to questions of how bilinguals represent two languages—as one system or two (Bialystok and Hakuta, 1994:110). For example, under what conditions is content learning affected by whether the languages are independent or interdependent? An enhanced understanding of the nature of language (i.e., knowing that words help to differentiate concepts), if made explicit, could alleviate some confusion about literal translations between languages for specific concepts. Thus it would be pertinent, as argued by Hakuta (1986), to determine the extent to which the distinctions within and among concepts learned in a second language are similar to or different from those originally learned in the first language for each particular subject matter. Results from studies of primary-language content learning have rarely been included in the debates about when and how to introduce education in various subject matters in English to language-minority students. We do not know, for example, whether (especially for the older new arrival) time should be taken to review existing knowledge that is available in the first language in a way that recontextualizes it in the second language, or whether the new knowledge (e.g., Algebra II) should simply be supported with back references to salient ideas known in the first language but now used in the second (e.g., Algebra I). Aspects such as procedures for factoring a polynomial may be available in one language, while conceptual supports for meaningful understanding may be being discussed in another. We do not know how this affects learning

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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and performance. The literature discussed here could be used to broaden the debate on content learning for English-language learners to address such issues.

Research Needs

Language-Literacy Relationships

3-1. Research is needed to answer the following questions: What is the nature of the relationship between language proficiency and literacy skill? Is that relationship the same across and within languages? Is there a level of oral language knowledge that is prerequisite to successful literacy acquisition? Is that level the same for learners of different first-language backgrounds, of different ages, of different levels of first-language literacy?

Questions about relationships between linguistic accomplishments and literacy achievement have long been a feature of work on literacy, but they have taken many different forms. Traditionally, work in this area has taken vocabulary or metalinguistic awareness to represent language. Some thinking has emerged from issues of dialect differences, questioning whether children are disadvantaged if the written code represents standard rather than vernacular oral forms. More recently, a number of studies have explored language ability defined more richly, attempting to use extended discourse skill as the language predictor.

Research in this area is particularly important because (1) teachers need guidance about the level of first- and of second-language proficiency at which literacy instruction in a second language can most efficiently be initiated; (2) if bilingual children are precocious in the metalinguistic skills that have been related to literacy, these skills should be built upon for successful literacy teaching; and (3) we need to understand the nature of the cognitive challenge faced by the many children in immersion or submersion situations for whom oral language and literacy skills are acquired in the second language simultaneously.

Relation of First- and Second-Language Literacy

3-2. Research is needed to examine the nature of the relationship between first- and second-language literacy skill. Is literacy knowledge represented the same way for monolingual and bilingual populations? Are literacy skills (and deficits) acquired in the first language directly transferred to the second, and if so, under what conditions? Is investment in first-language literacy training worthwhile for all combinations of first and second languages, for example, if orthographies differ radically or if the first language is a traditionally nonliterate one? Does phoneme awareness transfer from one language to another, and if so under what circumstances (i.e., do the languages involved make a difference)?

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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As noted above, questions about the nature of literacy skill are the source of considerable controversy. There is good reason to believe that literacy is acquired through accretions of knowledge and accumulation of skill through practice, but there is also evidence that it is acquired in stage-like shifts to quite different levels of understanding. Similarly, there are those who (citing those children who are early spontaneous readers) argue that literacy is the product of natural developmental processes and others who (citing the 20-30 percent of children reading seriously below grade level) focus on the need for instructional intervention. While some evidence suggests that initial reading instruction in a weak language can be disadvantageous to long-term academic outcomes, there are also cases of children who learn to read initially in a second language and do well academically. We need to understand what characteristics differentiate these two groups of children so we do not put children into programs that threaten their chances for successful literacy acquisition. Furthermore, many non-English-speaking children arrive in American schools after having experienced some schooling and some literacy instruction in a native language. However, an insufficient attempt has been made to understand the cognitive processes underlying successful transfer of first-language literacy skill to the second language, the limitations on that transfer, the conditions that optimize positive and minimize negative transfer, or the differences between children who manage learning to read in a second language well and those who do not. Such information would make English literacy training for both child and adult immigrants much more efficient and effective.

Optimal Literacy Instruction

3-3. Research needs to investigate the optimal English literacy instruction for children of different ages, those with different native languages, those whose native language is not written, and those whose parents are not literate in English. Is there a single best way for all children, and if not, is there some way to identify child aptitudes so as to define optimal individualized instruction? What should the role of writing be in reading instruction, particularly for second-language learners?

Basic questions about optimal instruction and about the universality of optimal instruction versus the need for individualized teaching arise for second- as for first-language readers. The questions become acute as innovative teaching methods are introduced into mainstream classrooms. For instance, many primary classrooms are now using writing as a route to reading instruction; writing itself is not considered an important domain for literacy assessment and is increasingly being incorporated into content area instruction. The impact of such innovations on second-language learners is unknown.

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Learning Language Through Literacy

3-4. An important question to be addressed is whether literacy can be used as a route to language learning, and if so, under what circumstances and with what consequences. Are there disadvantages with regard to language proficiency outcomes to acquiring a language with literate input from the very beginning? Is it possible for second-language learners to have highly developed literacy skills, but low or no oral language skills? If so, how do we incorporate these cases into our models of literacy acquisition and of language-literacy relationships? Are there consequences of second-language literacy acquisition for literacy and/or language functioning in the first language?

With young children, thinking has focused on issues such as how much oral language a child needs to know before literacy instruction should begin; with older second-language learners, it is possible that literacy can be a major source of language learning. It is unknown, though, how effective literacy is as a language-learning strategy, whether it has consequences for oral proficiency, or at what age or for what types of learners it works best. Since many English-language learners arrive in the United States after having acquired literacy in their first language, understanding how to use easily developed second-language literacy skills to promote oral proficiency safely and effectively is very important.

Learning Content with Limited English Proficiency

3-5. There are three key research questions that address how those with limited English proficiency learn content. First, what are the effects of limited English proficiency on the acquisition of content knowledge at a fine-grained level? Specifically, what are the consequences of acquiring beginning-level content knowledge in one language and then switching languages for higher levels of the content domain? Second, what levels of English proficiency are prerequisite to the capacity to profit from content area instruction in English? Third, are there modifications to the language used by teachers that can make complex subject matters accessible even to second-language beginners?

The research reviewed here makes clear that language interactions—questioning, expert explanations, discussions of alternative solutions, formulation of reasons for conclusions—contribute to the development of understanding of complex subject matter. Serious practical and ethical questions arise if these optimal methods for content area instruction are inaccessible to second-language speakers, who are thus excluded from participation in the best teaching practices. We need to know how early in the process of second-language acquisition speakers can profit from participation in challenging pedagogical conversations and whether simple modifications of the language used can speed that access. We

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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need guidelines on how to provide second-language learners the opportunity for age-appropriate acquisition of content area material. These guidelines should take into account epistemological differences among subject matter areas.

Effects of English-Language Learners on Content Area Teachers

3-6. Several important research questions relate to the effects of English-language learners on teachers of specific subjects and their classrooms. How does the presence of a second language in the classroom affect the cognitive load for the content area teacher? Does a high proportion of language-minority children in a classroom have a negative effect on the classroom as a learning environment for native speakers of English, and if so, under what circumstances? How does the presence of second-language speakers or the use of a second language in the classroom affect the necessary balance between clear didactic presentation and less orderly generative classroom activity, such as discussion?

Teachers bear much of the burden of delivering effective education to language-minority students, and often with little access to information or training in how to do it optimally. Clearly, teaching complex subject matter to students of limited proficiency in the instructional language can place extra strain on teachers and may lead them into undesirable pedagogical practices. A good theory of what it means to make "linguistic modifications" in assessments or use "simplified English" in instruction would be useful to teachers. Researchers who have been looking at greater inclusion of English-language learners in large-scale assessments have tinkered with meeting this need, but with difficulty and quite narrowly. (Abedi, for example, simplified items using syntactic structures only and was unsuccessful in increasing performance.) A broader framework taking into account semantic, communicative, and sociolinguistic factors could be more useful. Such a theory could also provide a foundation for ''sheltered instruction" programs.

Transfer of Content Knowledge from First to Second Language

3-7. Research is needed to identify the additive features of second-language knowledge/acquisition for cognition, for example, specific content area understanding, and to determine the extent to which learning complex material in a particular language requires having content-specific structures in that language. In other words, is content knowledge acquired in the first language automatically available to be built upon when learning in the second language?

It seems reasonable that content learners trying to construct powerful representations of their knowledge would find it advantageous to have access to two

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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symbolic systems with which to construct those representations; thus one might expect that bilingual learners would have an advantage over monolinguals in this regard. Furthermore, if content knowledge acquired in the first language is available for use in the second, there is every reason to expect that language-minority children who arrive in the United States after years of rigorous schooling in their country of origin will display high academic achievement as soon as they learn English. Although most of the work on the academic performance of language-minority children emphasizes the risks to high achievement, the excellent accomplishments of immigrant children in national assessments of math and science suggest they may have an advantage in certain domains of learning, perhaps because of easy transfer or because of the cognitive consequences of bilingualism.

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF SCHOOL LEARNING:
SUMMARY OF THE STATE OF KNOWLEDGE

Research based on the premise that schooling must be analyzed from social as well as cognitive perspectives has yielded a number of important insights:

In classroom learning situations, negotiation occurs within at least two domains: the rules for how to talk in the classroom and the construction of actual content knowledge through talk. The implications for English-language learners are that negotiating these matters is much more difficult in a second language, and negotiated rules are likely to be heavily influenced by culture.

Language-minority students may be treated differently from mainstream students as a result of forces both within and outside of school that implicitly and explicitly promote and sustain the perspectives and institutions of the majority.

While achievement motivation is an important factor in helping explain school success, it does not explain differences in success among language-minority groups or between immigrant and mainstream groups.

The dialects spoken by children influence teacher perceptions of their academic ability, the students' learning opportunities, evaluations of their contributions to class, and the way they are grouped for instruction. The languages students speak also influence perceptions of their academic ability and their learning opportunities.

Research on cooperative learning indicates that students of color and white students have a greater tendency to make cross-racial friendship choices after they have participated in interracial cooperative learning teams, and the academic achievement of students of color is increased when cooperative learning activities are used. Cooperative learning activities also increase student motivation and self-esteem and help students develop empathy.

Research indicates that curriculum interventions—multi-ethnic and -racial lessons and materials—have positive effects on the ethnic and racial attitudes of students.

Evidence suggests that like all students, immigrant and language-minority children benefit from actions taken in the home to promote child academic achievement. Such activities can be classified as monitoring, communication, motivational, and protective. However, these actions may not be visible to school personnel, who thus assume parents are uninvolved in their children's learning.

Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Page 79
Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Page 80
Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Page 81
Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Page 82
Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Page 83
Suggested Citation:"3 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LEARNING: LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT LEARNING." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5286.
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Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda Get This Book
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How do we effectively teach children from homes in which a language other than English is spoken?

In Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children, a committee of experts focuses on this central question, striving toward the construction of a strong and credible knowledge base to inform the activities of those who educate children as well as those who fund and conduct research.

The book reviews a broad range of studies—from basic ones on language, literacy, and learning to others in educational settings. The committee proposes a research agenda that responds to issues of policy and practice yet maintains scientific integrity.

This comprehensive volume provides perspective on the history of bilingual education in the United States; summarizes relevant research on development of a second language, literacy, and content knowledge; reviews past evaluation studies; explores what we know about effective schools and classrooms for these children; examines research on the education of teachers of culturally and linguistically diverse students; critically reviews the system for the collection of education statistics as it relates to this student population; and recommends changes in the infrastructure that supports research on these students.

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