Running head: SHARING OWNERSHIP OF SECONDARY LITERACY INSTRUCTION 1 Sharing Ownership of Secondary Literacy Instruction: An Action Research Study

By middle school, students are expected to read the majority of their content area texts silently and to demonstrate understanding gained from assigned readings in increasingly complex tasks (Lipson & Wixson, 2009). Without the ability to read competently at or near grade level, students will continually fail to make progress in their content area classes. Unfortunately, secondary educators are often undereducated in the area of literacy instruction. Until content area teachers are purposefully presented a rationale for why their participation in literacy instruction is critical to the success of their students, this essential element of learning will remain a subtext in our secondary schools. As a result, frustrated readers will fail. This action research, designed to raise awareness within my interdisciplinary teaching team of the needs of adolescent readers, was framed using the following research questions: • How are the ninth grade teachers on my interdisciplinary teaching team combining literacy and content instruction? • In what ways, if any, does team-based collaboration and inquiry guided by an English teaching peer affect the way they think about content area literacy instruction? • What facilitated or inhibited this collaborative learning process? What Do We Know about Building Capacity within Interdisciplinary Teams for Literacy Instruction? This study was framed by a wide body of literature from the fields of school leadership and literacy education. I relied upon researcher and practitioner sources to deepen my understanding of teacher leadership in creating collaborative inquiry groups, interdisciplinary teaming, and literacy in the content areas