Disciplinary Literacy: Exemplary Processes and Promising Practices

Abstract

Purpose: To present small cases of teachers who undertook inquiry-based collaborative work to implement and refine disciplinary literacy instruction in various content areas.

Design: Disciplinary literacy is explored alongside best practices in teacher professional learning, since disciplinary literacy is an instructional shift. This chapter addresses the question of how teachers might use an exemplary collaboration process to identify and test promising disciplinary literacy instructional practices.

Findings: Findings from various research projects point toward inquiry and collaboration as promising mechanisms for refining instruction to make it more disciplinary in purpose and implementation.

Practical Implications: The authors argue that disciplinary literacy is a relatively new conception of literacy skills in various content areas, and therefore jumping immediately to exemplary practices is unwise. Instead the authors recommend collaboration and inquiry as tools to generate and refine practices thoughtfully over time.

Citation

Dobbs, C.L., Ippolito, J. and Charner-Laird, M. (2020), "Disciplinary Literacy: Exemplary Processes and Promising Practices", Ortlieb, E., Grote-Garcia, S., Cassidy, J. and Cheek, E.H. (Ed.) What’s Hot in Literacy: Exemplar Models of Effective Practice (Literacy Research, Practice and Evaluation, Vol. 11), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 17-31. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2048-045820200000011005