RM Winter 2016 FLIP

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Reading Matters
Teaching Matters
| 24| Reading Matters | Volume 16 • Winter 2016 |
Abstract —Content area literacy and disciplinary literacy are
terms that are used in the context of teaching content area literacy
courses. While these concepts refer to the use of literacy strategies
in the delivery of content area instruction, their purposes are very
different. Teacher educators must apply each of these concepts
appropriately as they prepare preservice and inservice teachers
to effectively teach in their various disciplines. In this article, the
authors distinguish between content area literacy and disciplinary
literacy, discuss a commonly used approach in the teaching of
content area literacy courses, and share five principles that teacher
educators can consider to help them strengthen the design and
delivery of content area instruction across a variety of disciplines.
Taking a Second Look at Our Practice
June 11, 2014 was a significant day in the lives of all educators
across the state of South Carolina. It was the day that the Read to
Succeed (R2S) Act was signed into law. For teacher educators, it
represented the beginning of an introspective analysis of what we
do to get preservice teachers ready for effectively teaching literacy in
the classroom and a thoughtful consideration about how we work
with inservice teachers to refine and improve their literacy instruction.
For P-12 teachers, it signified the start of a careful examination
of how their daily literacy practices are impacting students.
In preparation for implementing R2S at the higher education
level, institutions from across the state of South Carolina came
together for several curricular development and syllabi preparation
meetings. Numerous topics were discussed; however, one that
received particular attention pertained to the significance of
disciplinary literacy and how it is related to the teaching of content
area subjects. Do we need a separate content area literacy course
for each content area? If we offer courses where multiple content
area subjects are blended, are students truly benefitting? Is
disciplinary literacy and content area literacy interchangeable?
Can we consider one termwithout the other? These were questions
that we grappled with and for which we needed answers.
The authors of this article teach the content area literacy
course at our institution and needed to get to the bottom of
some of these questions as this knowledge would help us in
strengthening the design and delivery of our undergraduate
and graduate content area literacy courses. Therefore, we set
out to learn as much as we could about disciplinary literacy and
content area literacy and how teacher educators can connect
these two concepts as they teach across the disciplines.
Is Disciplinary Literacy the Same as
Content Area Literacy?
In order for adolescents to achieve the high levels
of literacy required to compete in today’s global workforce,
literacy teacher educators must rethink what it means to be
literate in the academic disciplines. While the idea of content
area literacy has been around for a century or more (Mraz,
Rickelman, & Vacca, 2009), disciplinary literacy is a rather new
concept in the field of literacy education (Moje, 2008). In
order to understand the relationship between content area
literacy and disciplinary literacy, especially in light of the Read
to Succeed (R2S) initiative in South Carolina, we needed to
explore the similarities and differences between the two.
After much reading and discussion, we discovered that the
terms content area literacy and disciplinary literacy are often used
interchangeably; however, they are far from the same thing. Bean,
Readence, and Baldwin (2011) define content area literacy as
focusing on “developing students’ ability to effectively use reading
and writing as generic tools for learning from content area texts”
(as cited in Fang & Coatman, 2013, p. 627). The term“generic,” as
it is used here, is the key to content area literacy. Snow and Moje
(2010) claim that the “comprehension skills taught in English class
are useful throughout the school day, but they aren’t sufficient
to help students study math, science, history ... Texts in these
content areas have different structures, language conventions,
vocabularies, and criteria for comprehension” (p. 67). While the
idea of generic strategies insinuates that adolescent readers
should be taught to use similar strategies for comprehending
various texts, it also espouses the need for more discipline specific
techniques for reading and writing. “There are differences in
how the disciplines create, disseminate, and evaluate knowledge,
and these differences are instantiated in their use of language”
(Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008, p. 48). This is the premise of
disciplinary literacy. Unlike content area literacy that focuses on
generic strategies that can be applied across all content areas,
disciplinary literacy refers to the application of literacy strategies
that are specifically tailored to the characteristics of each content
area. According to Gillis (2014), “Often, content area reading
seems to impose generic reading strategies on content-specific
text whereas disciplinary literacy considers content first and
asks, ‘how would a scientist (or historian, mathematician, or
writer) approach this task?’” (p.615). After attending a reading
workshop led by a reading supervisor, “I discovered the power
in appropriate disciplinary literacy practices …Content area
instruction integrated with discipline-appropriate literacy practices
was powerful, effective, and more efficient than instruction in my
classroom prior to my exposure to content area reading” (p. 614-
Five Principles to Consider When Teaching a
Content Area Literacy Course Across Disciplines
Kavin Ming, Winthrop University
Cheryl Mader,Winthrop University