Disciplinary literacy is an approach to literacy in the content areas that helps students develop thinking and literacy skills that mimic experts in the field. The goal of this study was to explore the instructional practices of history teachers who have been nominated as exemplary and the role of disciplinary literacy in their instructional practices. Exemplary teachers were defined as those with strong content knowledge, experience teaching, and recognition for their teaching. This study used a qualitative multiple-case study research design. Data collection included interviews and classroom observations with nine participants across four school districts. Thematic data analysis was used as the method of analyzing data. In the cross-case synthesis portion of analysis, one of the strongest beliefs expressed by the participants was that teachers need to work to make history relevant for students. The observed teaching practices of exemplary teachers showed that exemplary teachers create strong classroom communities that focus on inquiry, discussion, and student-led learning opportunities. The findings from this study suggest that teachers need to have strong content knowledge (an in-depth knowledge of historical events) and discipline knowledge (understanding of how historians read, write, think, and discuss in their field) in order to build the pedagogical content knowledge (understanding of how to facilitate student growth in both content knowledge and discipline knowledge) needed to be able to facilitate a student-led classroom that engages in inquiry and disciplinary literacy skills.

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Recent data indicate that less than 50% of American secondary students are able to demonstrate grade-level proficiency in reading, writing, and science (National Center for Educational Statistics [NCES], 2007, 2011, 2012a, 2012b). Secondary students* are expected to develop advanced literacy skills, especially in writing, in order to be ready for college and careers. Students are expected to develop these advanced literacy skills, within all academic subjects. In other words, they are expected to develop disciplinary literacy skills. The statistics are alarming overall, but they are particularly alarming in the area of science. Students need strong literacy skills, including written expression, to be prepared for employment opportunities in science fields, which currently are being filled by graduates of other industrialized nations, who have a more advanced skill set. This loss of occupational opportunity poses a threat for the U.S. to remain globally competitive in science innovation and advancement, which ultimately secures economic prosperity. Despite these staggering concerns, there is little research conducted to evaluate effective instructional methods to develop complex writing skills in academic disciplines such as science. To address this critical issue, the present study examined the effects of a metalinguistic approach to the writing intervention of sentence combining with eighth-grade students who struggle with literacy. The researcher conducted the study in a typical science classroom in an urban American school setting. The focus of the intervention was to increase students* metalinguistic awareness of science text, to improve written sentence complexity in science, as well as the written expression and determination of comparison and contrast of science content. The study employed a quasi-experimental design. The participants consisted of an experimental group (two classes) who received the treatment during typical science instruction and a comparison group (three classes) who did not receive treatment, but participated in their typical science instruction. There were four participating teachers and 84 participating students. The researcher conducted the study over a period of seven weeks within regularly scheduled science classes. Twenty intervention sessions were conducted for a length of 20 minutes each, totaling 400 minutes or 6.6 hours. Hierarchical repeated measures ANOVA and hierarchical repeated measures MANOVA analyses revealed that the experimental group performed significantly better than the comparison group on their ability to determine similarities and differences (compare and contrast) related to science content, with a medium effect. The experimental group achieved a slightly higher marginal mean over the comparison group on their ability to combine sentences, with a small effect. Multiple statistical analyses revealed a trend of higher marginal means in favor of the experimental group over the comparison group on several measures of written sentence complexity on both the science compare and contrast writing prompt (small-medium effect) and the science expository essay (medium to large effect). One experimental class also demonstrated higher scores in their overall sentence correctness on science expository essay as compared to all the other classes. These findings suggest that sentence combining, utilizing a metalinguistic approach, may hold promise as an effective writing intervention in a content area classroom, for secondary students who struggle with literacy. Furthermore, the findings suggest that a metalinguistic approach to sentence combining can be successfully embedded within a content area class, which may result in increased concept knowledge and writing skills in that academic discipline. Implications for practice and future research directions are discussed.

Med utgångspunkt i att språket är en central del av inte bara skolan utan i hela livet går det att argumentera för att språkkunskap är något som behövs för att lära sig, samtidigt som det behövs för att visa att man har lärt sig. Att uttrycka, att argumentera och att reflektera är exempel på de krav som ställs på elever i den svenska skolan vilket ytterligare understryker språkets betydelse inom alla ämnen. Med grund i att språket är centralt i alla ämnen som elever undervisas inom saknas det idag konkreta arbetssätt för hur läraren kan stärka elevers disciplinary literacy.  Syftet med studien var att identifiera arbetssätt för hur lärare kan stärka elevers disciplinary literacy. Begreppet disciplinary literacy är relativt nytt och uppkom första gången på The Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh. Trots att definitionen av begreppet varierar går det att förklara som ämnesspecifik litteracitet och syftar till hur elever kan i kombination med ämneskunskaper stärka tillvägagångssättet för att uttrycka dessa kunskaper. För att uppnå studiens syfte utgick vi från åtta olika artiklar och avhandlingar vid konstruktionen av ett resultat. Resultatet visade på framför allt tre återkommande arbetssätt i form av scaffolding, multimodala arbetssätt och användandet av primära källor. Trots att flertalet av arbetssätten var förekommande i majoriteten av artiklarna uppkom det att konkretionen till lärarprofessionen var bristande och, i många fall, saknades helt beskrivningar av faktiska utförande.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore Grades 6-8 teachers knowledge and beliefs about science literacy and instruction that develops science literacy, in both the fundamental and derived senses. All Grade 6 elementary teachers and Grades 7-8 middle school science teachers from five school districts in the Mountain West region of the U.S. were invited to participate by responding to an online survey consisting of open response questions and critical instances. Data were analyzed using an immersion style of coding. Findings suggest a majority of teachers view literacy as reading and writing and text as something that is read or written. Teachers described science literacy as either the integration of science and literacy or as using basic literacy skills in science. When teachers were asked to identify quality instruction for developing science literacy via critical instances, a majority were successful when presented with examples that exemplify best practices in teaching science literacy but could not discriminate levels of quality when examples included minimal or no elements considered to be best practices. This suggests that teacher education programs and professional development should include opportunities that help preservice and practicing teachers better understand the importance of teaching both science subject matter knowledge as well as communicative practices used in science.

During the fall 2017 and spring 2018 semesters, I investigated what 3 6th grade social studies teachers knew and believed about disciplinary literacy and how that knowledge and belief shaped their instructional practice. Descriptive case study design allowed me to investigate the 3 participants in order to develop a descriptive understanding and interpretation of the group. I collected the following data sources from each participant: a concept map illustrating ideas of literacy and social studies, 3 interviews, 4 observations, and teacher lesson plans and texts. I chose descriptive coding for the within-case analysis and pattern coding for the cross-case analysis. Through cross-case analysis, five interconnecting themes arose. All 3 teachers 1) believed social studies teachers should be well-versed in the content of social studies and should be passionate about teaching social studies content, 2) believed the role of civics was the main reason for social studies instruction, 3) believed social studies instruction should require students to engage, read, and comprehend varying types of text, 4) believed social studies teachers should be teachers of reading because literacy and social studies were strongly connected within an intertwined relationship, and 5) believed vocabulary development in social studies was necessary. 3 differences emerged among the participants. All 3 teachers 1) gained varying educational experiences which influenced their pedagogical choices in the social studies classroom, 2) demonstrated varying instructional routines when structuring the instruction of social studies, and 3) demonstrated varying levels of efficacy in teaching writing in social studies. Recommendations for teacher education are 1) preservice teachers need exposure to the term disciplinary literacy and practice in using disciplinary literacy; 2) leaders, curriculum specialists, and reading coaches should receive professional development on the incorporation of both content-area literacy pedagogy and disciplinary literacy pedagogy; 3) teachers need to refine disciplinary literacy pedagogy through supportive work in a professional learning community. Recommendations for future research are to 1) describe how teachers implicitly and explicitly teach literacy strategies within the different disciplines, 2) describe how teachers instruct using literacy skills and what specific literacy strategies are used, and 3) explore how teachers teach students to transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.”

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The work of Humanities & Social Sciences students involves learning to express disciplinary content in essay assessment to disciplinary norms. Though tutors use a genre for professional writing, literacy is often not part of the classroom discussion. Therefore, many students have difficulty appropriating the communicative tools of that disciplinary genre. This may be solved by a turn in pedagogy towards tutors’ awareness of students’ processes (Hornsby & Osman, 2014) which may, in turn, improve tutors’ feedback. Ethnography has provided insights into students’ attitudes, their impressions of feedback and experiences, largely through interview methods, and classroom observation (Saville-Troike, 1989), but assessment writing does not typically occur in class. What was needed was a closer examination of students’ literacy processes. This study looked at literacy work through Activity Theory (Leont’ev, 1978) which represents human activity as a contextualised system where a group works together towards an object. Group collaboration allows for concepts to be negotiated and for interpretations to be shared, which can aid understanding (Mercer, 1995). This cross-sectional study examined three L2-English Business Studies student groups’ collaborative writing with observation of activity as its primary instrument for capturing student literacy work. Using an Educational Talk framework (Mercer, 1995) to examine the qualities of negotiation, this study offers a new understanding of students’ processes of literacy work and their possible effect on literacy appropriation. The results showed how the task and other structural tensions drive literacy work, and how the particular attributes of Educational Talk, in a tertiary context, contribute to the negotiation of meaning in the resolution of tensions. It also showed how literacy work involves the inter-mingling of textual work, subject content (Tardy, 2006, 2009) and contextual factors. These indicate the importance of group literacy activity for students, and the importance of understanding group discussions involving literacy work.