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First-generation college students share what they wish they had learned in high school to be better prepared for the reading and writing encountered in their first semester of college.M ateo (all names are pseudonyms) graduated from high school as the valedictorian. Yet, even with his top grades, he found that the literacy demands of college were much more rigorous than those of his high school. "I didn't really learn how to write or read," he said. "I would do all the assignments and just get it over with 'cause they were just really easy."Despite ongoing calls to improve students' college readiness, when Mateo began college, he did not feel prepared. He was not alone. In this article, I highlight the perceptions of 18 first-generation college students as they reflected on their high school preparation for the literacy tasks of college. Overall, students reported feeling unprepared for what was expected of them. To begin, I provide an overview of research examining postsecondary literacy demands and contrast that to current research on secondary literacy instruction. I next introduce the context of the study, discuss the participant demographics, and review the data collection and analytic processes. Finally, I share the findings from interviews with the students and discuss these and their implications. Mismatch Between High School and College Literacy DemandsResearch that has highlighted the disconnect between literacy tasks that students engage in while in high school and in college provided the framing for this study. Making Sense of Texts in High School Versus in CollegeRegardless of their major, college students face numerous challenging literacy tasks. Right away, they are expected to read and comprehend complex texts from across disciplines (

Writing is central to academic development, permeates content area coursework and serves as both a vehicle for and a display of learning. For English learners (ELs), writing poses challenges, and teachers need preparation in how to understand and respond to these. This study reports 5 teacher inquiry processes that preservice teachers in one teacher education program used to learn more about their ELs and their writing performances, strengths, learning, preferences, and needs. The inquiry processes provided opportunities to develop knowledge of content and students (Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008), a key subdomain of the knowledge base of effective teaching.

Background/Context Learning to meet students’ needs challenges new teachers often focused on procedures, management, materials, and curriculum. To avoid this development pattern, student teachers (STs) need opportunities to concentrate especially on needs of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. Teacher inquiry (TI) holds promise as one such opportunity. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study We sought to understand how STs in a teacher credential program with a history of attention to diverse learners were learning about their CLD students through TI. Research Design We examined data collected from 80 STs over a 6-year period, including 80 TIs; STs’ data analysis field memos; questionnaires with reflections on TI processes and products; and taped ST peer discussions and conferences with instructor. Data also documented TI instruction, classroom culture, and opportunities to develop learning related to conducting TI. Drawing on research and theory, we developed, tested, and used a rubric of 17 indicators of attention to CLD learners as a means to examine the range of ways and the extent to which STs attended to CLD students through TI. Findings/Results STs took actions of various kinds to learn about diverse students: researching contexts and histories; examining student work and performance at full-class, subgroup, and individual levels; and asking and listening beneath the surface to students’ reasoning, attitudes, beliefs, and concerns about school learning and other issues. Various assessment and inquiry tools supported the process, helping STs develop data literacy to attend to CLD learners. However, TI elements were used to varying degrees, in various ways, and with varying levels of success. Two cases illustrate the range of TI tools that STs used to learn about their CLD learners, to generate data and evidence about learning, and to act in ways responsive to what they learned about students. Conclusions/Recommendations Those interested in studying multiple STs’ inquiries for attention to CLD learners may need to develop frames and analytic methods to examine a corpus of cases. This study was grounded in an assumption that such crosscutting analyses accumulate knowledge to disseminate to larger audiences, challenging conceptions that values of TI are purely local, serving only those directly involved. Teacher inquiry can help focus attention on individual student learners by allowing a teacher to compare data among individual students, giving a clearer, organized format in which they can observe growth and improvement or a decline in performance. In my own project, I observed lower performance among specific students concurrent with assignments in which instructions may have been difficult to decode for English learners or students with disabilities. (Tracey, preservice English language arts teacher)

Consensus exists that effective teaching includes capacity to adapt instruction to respond to student learning challenges as they arise. Adaptive teachers may keep pace with rapidly evolving youth literacies and students' increasing cultural and linguistic diversity. Teachers are challenged to critically examine pedagogy when some contexts expect compliance with scripts and testing regimens and impede innovation. Recent research is building cumulative knowledge on adaptive teaching in literacy-its forms, purposes, and values. For preservice teachers (PSTs) still developing curriculum and routines, developing adaptive expertise is particularly challenging. The present study examined how, if at all, a data-based model of teacher inquiry in one teacher education program fostered adaptive teaching in grades 7-12 English language arts placements in mostly high poverty, highly diverse schools. The study examined 96 inquiries collected over seven years, plus PST questionnaires, memos, and discussions. PSTs overall worked with classroom data in ways that discerned patterns in student work and used findings to change the means by which their objectives could be met, through adapting literacy routines, materials, strategies, and activities. Adaptations were complex, not always effective, often challenging as PSTs weighed alternatives, tried to align adaptations with data, and worked to develop data-based rationales for instructional adaptations. Inquiry processes that supported PSTs in adaptive teaching included close examination of data, discovery and reflection, alignment of adaptations with data, and critique of adaptations. A disposition of flexibility supported the work. Findings contribute to literatures on adaptive literacy teaching and preservice teacher inquiry in English language arts.