We are so pleased to announce the opening of the Center for Literacy Education and Research (CLEAR), developed from the former Purdue Literacy Network Project (PLNP), which had as its primary focus the professional development of teachers. CLEAR is broadening the focus to involve a more comprehensive and wide-ranging collaboration with schools and to develop a research agenda with affiliated faculty who are interested in scholarly pursuits such as evaluating methods, documenting effectiveness, and exploring the processes involved in literacy learning, development, and instruction.

The comprehensive nature of the center, which involves so many learning contexts, participants, and topics, affords new opportunities for a wide variety of comprehensive classroom and school-wide reforms to assist schools in their efforts to engage in the change process.  Administrators and teachers will receive assistance in developing collaborative leadership teams within schools to build capacity for instructional reform and systemic change fostered by university-school alliances grounded in research-based theories of literacy learning and school change.

In this exciting new center, other types of instructional interventions are being developed by center faculty members and Purdue colleagues to help teachers deal with struggling learners at new levels and with different formats. Learners who are struggling to keep up with their peers require specialized instruction to meet their unique needs. Teachers must acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to observe and assess current understandings, to plan and perform contingent instruction, and to conduct formative evaluation that leads to the recursive nature of the process; that is, to observe, teach, evaluate, observe, teach, evaluate, etc. Early intervention is critical to the prevention of difficulties and best serves as systemic change in how schools view their responsibility for dealing with struggling learners. As a Partnerships in Comprehensive Literacy (PCL) university training center, we work in collaboration with a cadre of universities commited to changing the futures of children and teachers.

Click below to view the CLEAR Model