Running Head: DISCPLINARY LITERACY PAPER 1

Disciplinary Literacy Paper

Steven Stapleton

Arizona State History

Nicole Trombley
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Importance of Adolescent Literacy

Adolescent literacy is defined as an adolescent’s capability to read and write in all subject

matters and is the foundation of an adolescent’s success in and outside the classroom. Without

sufficient adolescent literacy students would not be able to gather a deep understanding of a

variety of texts, students would lack principles of motivation and engagement and would be

unable to recognize and connect relevant pedagogy practices that would develop their reading

and writing capabilities ("Disciplinary Literacy: Helping Students Develop Insider Knowledge",

2019). It is of significant importance that educators help develop adolescents’ literacy in every

subject matter. In order to develop adolescent literacy, educators need to create an environment

that nurtures reading and writing skills that values student voices and identities in order to

support adolescent literacy development (“International Literacy Association”, 2019).

Disciplinary Literacy in Social Studies and History

Disciplinary literacy focuses on how reading and writing is used in a specific discipline

and emphasizes the tools required that experts utilize in the discipline. In order to effectively

understand disciplinary literacy, educators and students alike must understand required language

skills, strategies and tools that fixate on how to engage with texts and how to write from the

perspective of a specific discipline. Educators must ensure that students are capable of applying

discipline-based knowledge for reading and writing discipline-based texts for their content area.

“Historians require the lens of multiple perspectives, reading between the lines of several writers

to arrive at their conclusions” ("Disciplinary Literacy: Helping Students Develop Insider

Knowledge", 2019). In order for historians to understand and utilize a variety of sources and

perspectives to collaboratively draw their conclusion, they must first apply a number of tools that

are specific to the content area of social studies and history.

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The first step to disciplinary literacy in history is gathering primary and secondary

sources from a variety of perspectives. Historians and students need to understand the difference

between primary and secondary sources and what is deemed to be a credible source. Essential

elements to disciplinary literacy in social studies and history is to analyze and summarize

primary and secondary sources, understanding key terms and phrases, establishing relevant

background knowledge, being able to identify relevant information about the text and analyze the

author’s perspective as well as integrate multiple sources to establish and argue a claim

("Disciplinary Literacy: Helping Students Develop Insider Knowledge", 2019). Once students

are able to engage with a text from the perspective as a historian, then they will be able to create

a claim and then establish an effective argument for their claim.

Quantifying a claim from information researched is only step one of approaching social

studies and history from the perspective of a historian. Once a claim has been established,

students must then craft their argument in an effective manor demonstrating their claim either in

a written or verbal format. The process for this is introducing your claim(s) about the topic or

issue, be able to acknowledge relevant information for the argument created objectively as

possible and including information from both sides. Using well-chosen and relevant facts,

details, definitions, quotation, other relevant information and examples to create a structured

written argument utilizing the sources incorporated into your argument ("Disciplinary Literacy:

Helping Students Develop Insider Knowledge", 2019). Students that are able to engage with

history-based texts from the perspective of a historian, create a claim and then argue their claim

from the perspective of a historian will have successfully applied disciplinary literacy in social

studies and history. Social studies and history educators must ensure that their students are able

to read and write using strategies, tools and resources in the content field of social studies.
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Literacy Challenges in Social Studies and History

One of the challenges presented in social studies and history literacy is that educators fail

to establish relevant background knowledge of a topic before starting a unit or lesson.

Establishing relevant background knowledge and building off of prior knowledge is a key

element in social studies and history literacy. Each lesson should begin with a review of relevant

background knowledge that should be presented in a range of varying formats from lecture,

video and textbook questions. Information should be acquainted with students for the period

under investigation and in some cases refresh their memories of the historical context of the

information and historical documents that are going to be examined (Reisman, 2012, p. 240).

This method of establishing relevant background knowledge originates from the document-based

lesson plan format, however this method should be incorporated at the start into any type of

lesson or unit plan.

An example of establishing relevant background information for social studies and

history would be examining President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. Prior to

investigating the Gettysburg address, students must first understand, who is Lincoln, what is

Gettysburg, where is Gettysburg, when did Gettysburg address happen, why is Lincoln giving

the Gettysburg address? Providing questions such as these allows students to establish their prior

knowledge and develop relevant background information that will help them comprehend the

material being investigated. By providing relevant background information prior to investigating

a document, it accomplishes activating prior knowledge for students, provides an understanding

of the material for students who do not know anything about the subject at hand and establishes

what the focus of the lesson or unit is going to be about.

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Another literacy challenge in social studies and history that ties into relevant background

knowledge is relevant terminology that is going to be found throughout the lesson or unit.

Literacy in education is designed to be challenging and intricate through the texts and materials

that are being employed. Which ensures that difficult and unfamiliar terms and vocabulary are

going to be presented to students throughout each lesson and unit. Rather than stopping in the

middle of a lesson or unit, all of the relevant terminology should be presented prior to starting an

investigation. “Each form of knowledge has a distinctive set of “big ideas,” of warrants, and of

ways to represent ideas and evidence and thus requires students navigate different genres and

discourse communities. Comprehension of complex, disciplinary texts requires more than

recognizing and understanding the vocabulary, but also familiarity with the “rules” of the

disciplinary game that produced the text or the knowledge embedded in the texts” ("Disciplinary

Literacy: Helping Students Develop Insider Knowledge", 2019). It is unreasonable for social

studies and history educators to expect students to fully comprehend an unfamiliar word that they

would have never seen outside of a discipline based-text. To better ensure that students are

comprehending the material that is being investigated as well ensuring that the flow of lessons

and units are not disrupted, it is of extreme importance to ensure that students understand key

terms and phrases.

An example of addressing key terms and phrases prior to starting a lesson or unit would

be lecturing and providing examples of terminology related to the legislative branch of the

United States government. By providing a handout with all of the key terms and phrases such as

“term-limits,” “filibuster” and “reconciliation” for example; then explaining them in detail as

well as providing examples to the class would help students establish an understanding relevant

terms and vocabulary that will be presented to students throughout a lesson and unit. Providing
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relevant background information and presenting key terms and vocabulary will assist students

greatly in understanding disciplinary literacy in social studies and history.

An additional literacy challenge that will be difficult for literacy in social studies and

history is teaching how to approach the discipline of social studies and history, rather than just

teaching social studies and history. This is a major challenge for teachers and students alike, due

to the fact that teachers are going to have students who have different feelings about the subject

of social studies and students who’s reading and writing levels vary. In some instances, an

individual student’s reading and writing capability could be less than meets expectations. “Few

teachers have been asked to teach the reading skills that students need in each subject. They

consider themselves responsible for teaching their subjects only – not for teaching students

reading skills” (Buehl, 2017, p. 21). In order for a teacher to effectively teach students how to

approach the content area of social studies and history, but if a student struggles to perform basic

reading and writing then the teacher needs to ensure that they receive as much support as

possible. Regardless if a teacher’s content area is outside of English, they must assist students to

succeed in their classroom. A way to assist students that struggle with reading and writing as

well as help improve students who are above expectation for reading and writing is to structure

assignments emphasize reading and writing skills.

By creating challenging, but fair, short reading and writing assignments that emphasize

disciplinary literacy and collocation in social studies and history it will help assist students who

struggle to read and write. For example, have students work together in small groups reading an

article such as root causes of World War I. By outlining a series of questions to the class such as:

who participated in WWI, what is WWI, where did WWI take place, why did WWI start? By

working in small groups, students are able to collaboratively discover the answers together from
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the perspective of a historian as well as having students assist other students who may be

struggling with reading and writing.

Literacy challenges such as teaching relevant background information, relevant

terminology and vocabulary and teaching students how to approach social studies and history

from a historian’s perspective while also developing students’ reading and writing capabilities

are essential to any successful social studies classroom. Teacher’s “must develop practices to

help secondary students meet these literacy challenges, such as selecting and preparing diverse

texts; teaching secondary students how to read, use, or produce discipline-specific texts; and

assessing both their students’ progress and their own instruction” (Brian, August 2012, p. 520).

A teacher must reflect on their classroom practices and instruction and create a healthy

classroom environment that is centered around the development of adolescent and disciplinary

literacy; which will help guarantee that students understand the content area of history as well as

develop their reading and writing skills that students will utilize in other content areas as well as

the rest of their adult life.

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Reference

Brian, R. B. (august 2012). Using Disciplinary Literacy to Develop Coherence in History

Teacher Education: The Clinical Rounds Project. The History Teacher, 45(4), 513-532.

Buehl, D. (2017). Developing readers in the academic disciplines. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Disciplinary Literacy: Helping Students Develop Insider Knowledge. (2019, September 30).

Retrieved from https://www.discoveryeducation.com/details/disciplinary-literacy-

helping-students-develop-insider-knowledge/

International Literacy Association. (2019). Engagement and adolescent literacy. Newark, DE:

Author

Reisman, A. (2012). The ‘Document-Based Lesson’: Bringing disciplinary inquiry into high

school history classrooms with adolescent struggling readers. Journal of Curriculum

Studies, 44(2), 233-264. doi:10.1080/00220272.2011.591436