Content Area Literacy by Mark Conley, one of today’s top literacy researchers, brings educators a wealth of hands-on, ready-to-use ideas, strategies and techniques for helping today’s diverse secondary school students develop the literacy skills they need to be successful in all content areas. The first section of the book helps teachers confront the need to fully understand today’s educational landscape, while the second section focuses on the specifics of how to go about planning and teaching, using principles of content area literacy. A unique final chapter pulls it all together by showing educators how to enlist students’ cooperation while reaching out to parents and the community to support teaching and learning.
Mark W. Conley, a professor in the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Memphis, is a highly regarded academician, researcher, and author in the field of literacy. His cutting edge research efforts focus on the relationships between adolescent literacy and new demands for accountability, developing learning strategies in content area classrooms, and teaching beginning and practicing teachers how to implement learning strategies within their curricula. As an accomplished author, Dr. Conley has published several books and numerous articles on literacy assessment, content area literacy, and literacy policy, including
Connecting Standards and Assessment through Literacy. With this publication of
Content Area Literacy: Learners in Context, Dr. Conley connects content area literacy teaching and assessment practices to research-based learning strategies within the context of today’s challenges of assessment and accountability combined with new insights about adolescents and literacy.
Dr. Conley previously served as the coordinator of the doctoral program within the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. Currently, Dr. Conley maintains a close connection with the practices and practitioners in today’s schools as the curriculum developer and planner for the Memphis Literacy Corps, a literacy-tutoring program in Memphis City Schools involving 900 college age tutors and 3000 children. Dr. Conley has served on the Board of Directors for the National Reading Conference, 2006—2008. He continues to serve on the Quality Undergraduate Elementary and Secondary Teacher Education in Reading Task Force and Literacy Coach Task Force for the International Reading Association.
