Literacy Skills Among Academically Underprepared Students

TLDR

The authors propose eight future research directions to better understand and support underprepared students' literacy skills. They reviewed studies from 2000–2012 to describe underprepared students’ literacy skills, identify teaching approaches, and explore embedding developmental instruction into college courses. The review revealed many weak literacy areas, overlooked reading and writing processes, and that most instructional studies were methodologically weak, indicating a need for more rigorous research to fully understand underprepared students’ literacy skills.

Abstract

A review of studies published from 2000 to 2012 was conducted to describe the literacy skills of underprepared postsecondary students, identify teaching approaches designed to bring their skills to the college level, and determine methods of embedding developmental instruction in college-level course work. The studies pinpointed numerous weak areas in students’ skills, but it was found that certain reading and writing processes have been overlooked in the literature. Thirteen studies of the effects of instruction were found, most of which focused on strategy instruction or “meaning-making.” The research tended to lack rigor, but five instructional studies reporting relatively robust data were identified. The main finding of the review is that, because of the lack of a sustained research agenda to date, as well as methodological flaws in existing studies, there is still much to be learned about the literacy skills of underprepared students. Eight areas for future investigation are suggested.