Facilitating Student Learning Through Contextualization

Skills in reading, writing, and mathematics are key to academic learning but are conventionally taught separately from the discipline areas to which they must be applied. For example, students may be taught writing skills in the morning in an English course and then be expected to apply them to writing an essay in a history class in the afternoon. Several problems arise with this structure. First, students do not necessarily transfer their morning writing skills to the afternoon history assignment. Second, students may not be motivated to learn writing skills in the English class because they do not consider such skills to be relevant to their personal goals (Cavazos, Johnson, & Sparrow, 2010). Third, weaknesses in essaywriting skills may not be addressed by the afternoon content-area teacher, who aims to teach subject knowledge rather than basic skills (Fisher & Ivy, 2005). These problems have serious implications for the academic trajectory of the many underprepared students who enter postsecondary education. Despite the allocation of considerable resources to developmental education, many students in college-credit courses display continuing difficulties in applying these foundational skills to the learning of subject matter (Perin & Charron, 2006). One way to address this issue is through contextualization, or the teaching of basic skills in the context of disciplinary topic areas. The contextualization of basic skills is defined here as an instructional approach that creates explicit connections between the teaching of reading, writing, or math on the one hand and instruction in a discipline area on the other, as, for example, when writing skills are taught with direct reference to topics covered in a history class. Based on a longer review that considers the hypothesis that low-skilled students can learn more effectively and advance to college-level programs more readily through contextualization of basic skills instruction, this Brief presents two major forms of contextualization and explores possible mechanisms by which they may benefit students. Evidence for the effectiveness of contextualization is then summarized in order to determine what is known about possible advantages for low-skilled students. The Brief ends by discussing practical implications and future directions for research on the relation between contextualization and academic outcomes for low-skilled college students. Two Forms of Contextualization