Disciplinary Literacy: Successes and Challenges of Professional Development

Literacy research has investigated disciplinary literacy for over a decade. The focus on disciplines as cultures of distinct literacy practice has been integrated into national standards and classroom implementation. Yet, research exploring the professional development in-service teachers receive specific to delivering disciplinary literacy instruction remains limited. This systematic literature review addresses this gap by analyzing 58 articles using the search terms professional development, disciplinary literacy, and content area literacy. The researchers discuss four focused themes that have emerged in disciplinary literacy research in relation to professional development (PD): disciplinary literacy as strategy instruction, differentiation and disciplinary literacy, measures of disciplinary literacy, and a PD model. The authors conclude discussing theoretical codes demonstrating both successes and challenges for PD in disciplinary literacy with implications for future PD

Addressing Disciplinary Literacy: An Examination of Teachers’ Instruction in First Grade

Disciplinary literacy instruction during kindergarten through second grade enables students to begin developing facility with consuming, producing, and learning from texts in academic disciplines across their school careers and for full civic participation. Extant intervention studies and descriptions of practice in the primary grades offer understanding of disciplinary literacy instruction when it is enacted with researchers’ help and/or by teachers with expertise in disciplinary literacy. To address disciplinary literacy in the primary grades, insight into what primary teachers focus on and how they support students’ disciplinary literacy learning during their naturally-occurring instruction is needed. This exploratory collective case study examined the disciplinary literacy learning opportunities available in first-grade teachers’ instruction. Participants included four teachers in four elementary schools situated in a large city in the Midwest. Audio records and field notes were collected over a period of five months during teachers’ literacy instruction. Open coding, progressive refinement of codes, and categorical analyses revealed limited instructional emphasis on disciplinary literacy. When learning opportunities were observed, teachers’ foci and support centered on the social foundations of disciplinary literacy and included sharing of information and student practice. Also, problematic disciplinary literacy learning opportunities were noted. This study underscores the urgent need for additional attention to disciplinary literacy as it is situated within the primary grades, with particular import for how first-grade teachers enact disciplinary literacy instruction

Using a Disciplinary Literacy Framework to Teach High School Physics: An Action Research Study

This action research study investigated the impact of teaching physics using a disciplinary literacy framework for instruction across all units in one academic year. Through a suite of vocabulary strategies and lessons that encourage students to write, speak, draw, mathematically translate, and design experiments, students learn to do physics by approximating problems and tasks like physicists. The data from this study suggests that students who exhibit these physicist-like disciplinary literacy behaviors may perform better on math-based assessments so long as they employ disciplinary literacy strategies while problem solving. By teaching via a disciplinary literacy framework, the classroom may become more student-driven where disciplinary literacy behaviors are observable which may result in higher scores on teacher evaluation instruments that favor student-driven instruction. While students that exhibit disciplinary literacy behaviors seem to perform better at math-based problem solving tasks, the relationship between phenomena visualization and corresponding mathematical fluency is less clear and requires further research

Professional development and disciplinary literacy: impacting secondary teachers' perceptions and practices

This mixed-methods study examined the ways secondary teachers’ participation in a year-long disciplinary literacy professional development impacted the ways teachers described and implemented disciplinary literacy instruction. Over the course of eight months, 31 teachers met for seven, three-hour sessions where they discussed literacy research, analyzed others’ instructional plans, and created disciplinary literacy activities and lessons. To examine changes in teachers’ descriptions of disciplinary literacy instruction, teachers’ self-reports of their disciplinary literacy were collected before and after the professional development and frequency counts of disciplinary literacy practices were taken and compared. To inspect potential changes in their disciplinary literacy instruction, a subgroup of participants were filmed three times (before the onset of professional development, at the midpoint of professional development, and following the conclusion of the professional development) and interviewed before and after the professional development. Two of these participants were also assigned control teachers (teaching the same discipline in the same school without participating in the professional development). These control teachers were also interviewed and filmed in the same windows. Through analysis of teachers’ written self-reports, video-recorded lessons, and interview transcripts, three key findings emerged. First, professional development had a substantial impact on the ways teachers described their disciplinary literacy instruction. Second, however, it had a smaller impact on their teaching. It is hypothesized that this may have been the relatively brief period for enactment of new knowledge. Third, participants reported that they identified and utilized available school-based supports to reflect on ideas presented in the professional development

Disciplinary Literacy and Content Area Reading Strategies: Intentionality and Collaboration

Due to stagnate or falling adolescent reading scores as shown on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (2007) and the inclusion of literacy standards as part of the Common Core standards titled “Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science & Technical Subjects,” (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010a) an interest in adolescent literacy, and what it means to teach literacy in a core subject area, has reemerged. Even prior to the literacy standards being released, studies re-exploring the topic of content area literacy through a new lens, disciplinary literacy, had been published. Since then, much has been written about teaching from a disciplinary literacy stance. This literature review explores the following research questions relating to disciplinary literacy: What is the relationship between disciplinary literacy and content area reading strategies/literacy and why might it matter? Why might content area reading strategies and disciplinary literacy be presented as an “either/or” proposition? In what ways, if at all, does a disciplinary literacy approach impact student learning in the academic core, grades 6-12 and what are the implications for teachers

Disciplinary Literacy: a Case Study on How Secondary Teachers Engage Students in Disciplinary Discourses

Secondary teachers are currently pressured to address low adolescent literacy rates by adopting disciplinary literacy approaches. While the pressure mounts, direction on how such approaches may be modified to meet the learning objectives of different subject areas is limited. Each subject area will have different Discourses or ways of speaking, writing, listening and thinking about its field, necessitating different literacy strategies for each subject’s curriculum. Successful disciplinary literacy entails learning which strategies and approaches to learning are most effective for student learning for each subject area. In this multi-case study, I observed two high school teachers in Chemistry and Psychology to witness how they modified content area strategies to meet disciplinary literacy demands, and interviewed them about their experiences of this process. Through observations and interviews with the teachers and the curriculum director, a picture emerged of a district that was relaxed in its approach to the challenges of disciplinary literacy reform. Teachers reported that they were not influenced by the district’s disciplinary literacy initiative, but had other sources that guided their best practices to get students actively learning during class. Classroom reform was largely left up to individual teachers. The district’s lack of a clear purpose in its disciplinary literacy initiative created the feeling among teachers that disciplinary literacy was an administrative fad that would pass in time. Recommendations include guidelines for improving students’ collaborative discourse during group activities and suggestions for literacy coaches working with teachers in multiple departments at the secondary level. The enduring question is raised regarding the role of professional organizations in the identification and dissemination of effective disciplinary literacy strategies

Integrating Disciplinary Literacy into Middle-School and Pre-Service Teacher Education

This case describes a summary of a formative experiment, a framework specific to educational design research, simultaneously conducted in a middle-school history classroom and a university social studies methods course. The purpose of the study was to refine an intervention to promote disciplinary literacy in history. The intervention provided middle-school students and pre-service teachers with explicit strategies to promote disciplinary literacy, while participating in a collaborative blog project engaging them in disciplinary literacy. Conclusions suggest practical consideration for implementation of disciplinary literacy into history. The case outlines the five phases of the formative experiment and briefly overviews modifications made during the intervention. Further, it offers suggestions and considerations for employing this approach to research

Addressing the ‘Shift’: Preparing Preservice Secondary Teachers for the Common Core

Common Core represents a shift in content-area literacy instruction, broadening from a narrow focus on generalizable skills to also include a disciplinary perspective of literacies specific to the specialized language and habits of thinking within particular subjects. This requires teachers to be knowledgeable in their content and possess competence in pedagogical practices that allow them to scaffold their students’ literacy development within these disciplines. We examined how the implementation of a Disciplinary Literacy Project into a content-area literacy course influenced preservice secondary teachers’ disciplinary literacy practice. The findings suggest structured inquiry into disciplinary communities enhances preservice teachers’ understanding of disciplinary literacy, but this knowledge is not easily transferred into classroom instruction. Implications for future research on disciplinary literacy models and preservice teacher preparation are discussed

Reading and Writing Like a Scientist: Implementation of Disciplinary Literacy Strategies in a Middle School Science Classroom

This study examined what happened when disciplinary literacy strategies were implemented in a middle school science class along with the students’ and teachers’ perceptions of these strategies. The researcher implemented disciplinary literacy strategies that went along with the scope and sequence for seventh-grade science at the time of implementation of the study. She collected data through surveys, observations, and interviews with students and teachers. Data were analyzed through the constant comparative method and coding. When disciplinary literacy strategies were implemented, students showed compartmentalization of reading and writing to their ELAR classes. Teachers showed negative perceptions of their students’ literacy abilities. The students overall had more negative perceptions of the strategies than positive while the teachers had overall positive perceptions of the strategies used. This led the teachers to come up with solutions for future use of disciplinary literacy in their science classrooms

Essential Practices for Disciplinary Literacy Instruction in Secondary Classrooms

In response to the call for increased literacy and more equitable learning opportunities across the state of Michigan, the 6-12 Disciplinary Literacy Task Force formed. The group’s first charge was to revise and publish the Essential Practices for Disciplinary Literacy Instruction in the Secondary Classroom: Grades 6 to 12, based on the work of lead researchers from the University of Michigan, Drs. Elizabeth Moje and Darin Stockdill. During the 2019-2020 school year, education consultants and educators from around Michigan participated in the Regional One-Day Institute, which served as an introduction to the Essential Practices for Disciplinary Literacy Instruction in the Secondary Classroom. To keep the conversation (and learning) moving forward among secondary English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Career Tech, Visual/Performing Arts, and World Languages teachers, the Disciplinary Literacy Task Force is excited to offer the Deeper Dive Institute during the 2020-2021 school year