Center of Excellence for the Advancement of New Literacies in Middle Grades

Program Goals

Center for the Advancement of New Literacies in Middle Grades’ has four goals. Goal One focuses on increasing teachers’ depth of knowledge and effectiveness in teaching New Literacies in Middle Grades. Goal Two focuses on developing literacy-focused middle schools by creating a New Literacies in Middle Grades model that can be disseminated across the state to schools and colleges. Goal Three centers around improving reading student achievement scores in targeted middle schools. Finally, Goal Four involves encouraging the sharing of relevant research and research-based instructional practices across South Carolina for the improvement of middle school literacies.The research and evaluation plans for New Literacies are described below.

Evaluation

In Years One, Two, Three, and Four the evaluation of New Literacies is focused on Goal One and Goal Three.
To assess Goal One, the following evaluation questions were developed:

• To what extent do middle school teachers participating in the New Literacies in Middle Grades process increase their use of research-based reading instructional strategies in their classrooms?
• To what extent do teachers perceive uses of New Literacies in their own lives?
• To what extent are teachers accepting various strategies introduced during New Literacies in Middle Grades Institutes?

To assess Goal Three, the following evaluation question was developed:

Research

Several overarching questions are addressed in Year 1:

(1) What are teachers' and students' perceptions and uses of new literacies in in-school and out-of-school contexts?

(2) What new literacies strategies have been implemented?

(3) What are the curricular and instructional outcomes for teachers and students and the end of Year 1?

Year 2 questions will address the above issues, along with other research questions that will be determined during Summer 2007.

Projects

Design & Methodology