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This paper aims to examine the reading of a book-length fiction or non-fiction text in one disciplinary literacy (DL) teacher education course. This paper considers how the assignment may help pre- and in-service teachers understand literacy as multifaceted and connected within and beyond their content areas (Moje, 2015). The research explores how reading a book-length text may help support DL, equity-oriented curricula that consider literacy as empowerment and connected to lived and communal experiences (González et al., 2005; Muhammad, 2020).

This work is grounded in a qualitative, humanizing methodology and thematic analysis approach (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Paris and Winn, 2014). This approach examines student work in one DL course, considering how teachers within and beyond English language arts (ELA) respond to the task of reading a book-length text.

First, the assignment offered space for participants to redefine literacy as empowerment and enjoyment. Second, the assignment helped participants connect literacy within and beyond their content areas and to see literacy as active and interdisciplinary. Third, the assignment includes clear limitations for a DL approach, particularly when participants focus mainly on connections to their content area. This sometimes obfuscated participants’ enjoyment of reading.

The study offers a new perspective on a task that is often seen as specifically “ELA”: reading a book-length text. This project offers space for ELA educators to consider literacy from a DL, equity-oriented framework focused on enjoyment in literature within and beyond ELA classrooms.

This chapter documents a commitment to culturally responsive teaching through the implementation of multimodal text sets in English language arts teacher education. Using a communities of inquiry framework inspired by justice-driven approaches to literacy learning, preservice teachers at New Mexico State University designed curriculum and instruction that considered the importance of students' digital literacies to meaning-making and communication. Through the presentation of a course unit that explores how multimodal text sets inspire literacy learning that is culturally relevant for students whose racial, linguistic, and cultural identities are often absent in mainstream school curricula, this chapter highlights the notion that digital literacies are accessible to and supportive of the minority serving educational institutions of New Mexico. Preservice teachers first considered what topics sparked their curiosity or inspired them to step into learning before exploring topics to which their future students will be drawn to investigate in language arts. Integrating two frameworks for creating text sets, preservice teachers then selected a targeted, canonical text around which to build their sets and supported it with multimodal scaffolding texts. Following the work and reflections of one focal student, this chapter offers unit descriptions, snapshots, and implications of personalized literacy experiences with creating inquiry-based, multimodal text sets in a secondary methods course.