The Center on English
Learning & Achievement (CELA) specializes in research,
development, and services to improve literacy teaching
and learning across the grades and subjects. Two
major projects, the Partnership
for Literacy and the National
Study of Writing Instruction, address the issues
LITERACY AND LEARNING
Reading, writing, discussing, listening, and thinking
are related, all members of the literacy family.
Each assists in the development of the others. When
used supportively in classroom instruction toward
the development of new concepts and understandings,
become more knowledgeable and more highly literate.
Literacy, then, is both a desired end – we want
students (indeed our population) to be able to read,
write, listen, reason, and speak well – and a means
through which students are able to become more knowledgeable,
skilled, and literate in a
variety of subjects and topics, both those in
the required curriculum and those of personal interest.
These are higher-order thinking skills that require
a different kind of teaching than that that prevailed
for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Fortunately, we know a good deal about curricula
and instruction that develop these abilities, as
well as about how to support teachers to be more
effective literacy teachers, no matter who their
students are or what subjects they teach. We share
this information on this website in the form of
that draw on a broad base of research conducted
over decades by school- and university-based researchers
within CELA as well as across the U.S. and the world
Teachers at all levels who enrich student understanding
of what they read through classroom discussion and
a range of informal
as well as formal writing assignments produce
students who have stronger literacy skills than
their peers who experience less effective classroom
practices. It is also important that the curriculum
be coherent and that it include topics worth
thinking, talking, and writing about. These practices
matter across the grades and subjects, from the
years of learning through middle
and high school and beyond.
For more information, follow the links above, the navigation bar to the left, or contact Janet Angelis, CELA Associate Director.