Education Students on Disciplinary Literacy

Summary and review of:

Park. (2013). All the Ways of Reading Literature: Preservice English Teachers’ Perspectives on Disciplinary Literacy.

National Council of Teachers of English

English Education, V45 N4, July 2013

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9dce/c609583e471f25ee1e1338be722ba443cff7.pdf

Transcript:

Park’s goal was to explore and analyze the perspectives of preservice educators on the teaching of disciplinary literacy to adolescents. Over the course of two years, she collected projects from students in her teacher preparation program and conducted six interviews. She reviewed the interview transcripts and the projects extensively, eventually organizing her student’s works and remarks thematically.

Teaching disciplinary literacy invites students to become active participants in the particular discipline being studied. Historians and linguists are likely to have different approaches to, different ways of reading, the same texts. Disciplinary literacy instruction acknowledges this and asks that students exercise reading in a variety of mindsets and with an array of intentions, each correlating to the discipline being studied generally.

The primary goal of disciplinary literacy instruction is to increase student achievement across areas of content. A student with a passion for literature must learn how to read proofs analytically as a mathematician and to question validity of claims and context as a historian. Furthermore, this increased flexibility of perspective allows students to question the work of each discipline as a knowledge-generating researcher in that field would, rather than to accept as fact all information and interpretation presented in the classroom.

Park requires that her preservice teachers, in their reflections on disciplinary literacy instruction, try out a new medium or genre in order to ensure depth of learning and encourage creative reconstruction of their beliefs. This reminds me of Bentley’s Supernovas and Superheroes: Examining Unfamiliar Genres and Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge (2013), in which it is argued that exposure to unfamiliar genres improves student writing proficiency, and that ELA teachers should write in unfamiliar genres as a means of developing further pedagogical content knowledge. In fact, reading with the intent of increasing pedagogical content knowledge is one example of disciplinary literacy in action. Reader intent informs both navigation, retention, and interpretation when reading informative text.

While many of Park’s preservice teachers recognized the value of teaching disciplinary literacy, they expressed concerns about their abilities to actually instruct accordingly, given the diverse background knowledge of students in public schools. Perhaps predisposition outweighs one’s ability to take the role of an active member in each discipline studied, and to read relevant texts accordingly. It is also worth noting that a strong focus on disciplinary literacy may not be compatible with the cognitive flexibility expected of adolescent students. Students transition from one discipline to another throughout the day anywhere from four to eight times. It may not be appropriate to expect their methods as readers to switch so seamlessly.

Park closes by suggesting further research on the active use of disciplinary literacy instruction is necessary, focusing not only on “what students take away from disciplinary learning communities but also what they bring into them.” (Park, 380)