Literacy models and the reconstruction of history education: a comparative discourse analysis of two lesson plans

Abstract

This article presents discourse analyses of two lesson plans designed for secondary school history classes. Although the plans focus on the same topic, they rely on different models of content area literacy: disciplinary literacy, or reading and writing like experts in a given domain, and critical literacy, or reading and writing to address injustice. The discourse analyses focus on how each plan (a) reimagines the field of secondary school history and (b) places students in reading and writing positions in the rebuilt field. Each plan, the article concludes, remakes secondary school history in relation to four other fields: the university, the professional workplace, everyday life and the public sphere. Secondary school history is reimagined as standing closer or farther away from each of these four fields. Moreover, each plan rebuilds secondary school history as a moral environment where certain kinds of moral knowledge, but not others, should be mobilized when reading, writing, speaking, thinking and listening.