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Browsing by Subject "Disciplinary Literacy"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    A Design-Based Research Intervention On Motivating Teachers To Feel Capable Of Designing And Implementing Effective Disciplinary Literacy Instruction
    (2018-05) McDonald Van Deventer, Megan
    Recently, educational reading research transitioned from studying general comprehension in secondary school settings to studying disciplinary literacy, foregrounding the reading, writing, speaking, thinking, and other discursive practices unique to each academic discipline (Moje, 2008; 2015; Moje et al., 2008; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008; 2012). During this transition, academic mantras like “reading like a historian” or “reading like a scientist” were coined to communicate that classroom literacy experiences should emulate the practices of disciplinary experts working in the field (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008; 2012). However, to be able to read like disciplinary experts effectively students must employ literacy strategies coupled with disciplinary thinking processes (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008, 2012), which is often at odds with how students read outside of academic settings (Alvermann, 2001; Hyland, 2012; Moje, 2006; 2015; Moje et al., 2008). Therefore, adolescent readers may struggle to comprehend academic texts without disciplinary literacy instruction that modifies and scaffolds expert disciplinary literacy practices so they are accessible to novice students as they develop literacy abilities and dispositions that emulate expert practices. Even though secondary teachers often assign reading to “cover” content (Alvermann & Moore, 1991; Calder, 2006), they do not explicitly teach comprehension or disciplinary reading strategies, instead prioritizing content (Greenleaf & Valencia, 2017; Lester, 2000; O’Brien, Stewart, & Moje, 1995, Yore, 1991). In this study, I designed an intervention to motivate three history teachers to feel capable of designing and implementing effective disciplinary literacy instruction. Prior to the intervention, I collected verbal protocol data from three Frederick Douglass teachers and 20 students in which they thought out loud while reading a primary source document. During the design-based research (DBR) intervention (Barab & Squire, 2004; McKenney & Reeves, 2012), the three teachers and I collaboratively analyzed the teachers and students’ verbal protocol transcripts to identify literacy abilities and dispositions. Together, we designed disciplinary literacy instruction for the primary source document, and one teacher participant, Jane, taught the text in class two weeks later. I observed Jane’s disciplinary literacy instruction when she taught the primary source document to evaluate the success of the intervention. Findings from this study demonstrated that the DBR intervention motivated the three teachers to design effective disciplinary literacy instruction that met their students’ literacy needs, and the teachers felt capable to implement effective disciplinary literacy instruction by witnessing their own more expert literacy abilities and dispositions. The larger implications of this study show the importance of positioning teachers as disciplinary experts who are ideal mentors to scaffold disciplinary reading for their students.
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    Exploring Reading Motivation and Engagement in Discipline-specific Classes
    (2020-12) Lee, Yongjun
    This three-paper dissertation was conducted to explore how motivation and engagement, in addition to cognitive aspects, should be considered in disciplinary literacy instruction and assessment in high school classrooms. The studies, which were based on a five-year collaborative school-university partnership, were conducted to explore the relation between literacy engagement and learning of high school students in social studies classes.In the first study, I explored the perspectives shared by social studies teachers in planning instruction and applying a disciplinary literacy approach in their classes. Specifically, I investigated how teachers’ discourse from collaborative planning sessions and interviews evidenced their understanding of and beliefs about the importance of teaching disciplinary literacy and engaging students in literacy and learning. From the analysis of the collaborative meeting conversation transcripts and interview data, three themes emerged: texts use, cognitive instructional practice, and motivation-enhancing practice. In the second study, I explored how one social studies teacher embodied motivation and engagement in her instructional practices in disciplinary literacy learning. Findings were gleaned through an in-depth analysis of field notes and classroom artifacts. The study clarified how the participating teacher incorporated cognitive and motivational aspects in literacy concurrently to engage students as part of disciplinary literacy instruction in an instructional unit. From the analysis, three main themes, teacher-led practice, multimodal text use, and student-centered activity, emerged. In the third study, I explored an approach to assessing students’ motivation and engagement related to reading in a discipline. Specifically, I studied how useful the SE components are in enhancing students’ reading engagement and achievement by analyzing students’ responses to SE components when reading a discipline-specific text and responding to open-ended and questionnaire items. The findings demonstrated that if these SE components are supported, enhanced, or taught by teachers, students’ reading engagement is improved. Overall, these studies demonstrate that teachers should make motivation and engagement more explicit in teaching disciplinary literacy in their classes. Future studies should augment and explore discipline-specific instructional practices to enhance student engagement in reading by considering a range of engagement dimensions that can supported with explicit instruction and guidance.