Adolescent Readers’ Resiliency and Disciplinary Literacy

Inquiry-based collaborative professional learning has become a common practice in Ontario education. The project brought together multiple players for inquiry-based collaborations to achieve the following goals: 1) to help struggling adolescent readers to acquire strategies that will improve their ability to read; 2) to increase the knowledge and skill of educators to be able to respond to students’ literacy challenges; and 3) to systematically document effective pedagogical practices and strategies for supporting the development of reading resilience despite various challenges. Specifically, the project was guided by the following inquiry questions:

1. How do educators identify students with persistent reading challenges at the secondary level?
2. What is the nature of these students’ struggles and challenges with reading?
3. What strategies can educators use to respond to these students’ reading needs?
4. How does implementation of these strategies affect classroom practice and student learning?