Preparing Pre-Service Secondary Teachers for Coping With the Reading Related Problems That Affect Learning in the Content Areas

Abstract

Given that secondary school students in the Caribbean and other countries accomplish much of their learning through interaction with textbooks and content area teacher exposition, this article argues that instructional strategies in these schools should be tailored to address and redress the reading related problems affecting teaching and learning in such settings. It is suggested that this can be done by the adoption of content area reading instruction in the secondary school classroom. The related research literature dealing with teachers' negative attitude to, and lack of teacher preparation in, content reading instruction is reviewed. The literature reviewed implicitly suggests some relationship between teachers' negative attitude and the lack of training they receive. Although much of the literature reviewed emanates from outside of the Caribbean, their relevance to the region is recognized. The article finally reports on a training programme in Jamaica designed to prepare secondary pre-service teachers to cope with the reading related problems affecting teaching and learning in content area classrooms.