Disciplinary Literacies and Learning to Read for Understanding: A Conceptual Framework for Disciplinary Literacy

TLDR

The article proposes a framework and methodology for designing discipline‑specific learning goals that enable students to achieve high literacy and achievement in literature, science, and history. The framework was developed through interdisciplinary teams that performed conceptual meta‑analysis of expert reading, reasoning, and inquiry practices versus novices in each discipline. The analysis yielded discipline‑specific knowledge clusters organized into five core constructs—epistemology, inquiry practices, overarching concepts, information representation, and discourse structures—forming the basis for targeted reading, reasoning, and argumentation goals.

Abstract

This article presents a framework and methodology for designing learning goals targeted at what students need to know and be able to do in order to attain high levels of literacy and achievement in three disciplinary areas—literature, science, and history. For each discipline, a team of researchers, teachers, and specialists in that discipline engaged in conceptual meta-analysis of theory and research on the reading, reasoning, and inquiry practices exhibited by disciplinary experts as contrasted with novices. Each team identified discipline-specific clusters of types of knowledge. Across teams, the clusters for each discipline were grouped into 5 higher order categories of core constructs: (a) epistemology; (b) inquiry practices/strategies of reasoning; (c) overarching concepts, themes, and frameworks; (d) forms of information representation/types of texts; and (e) discourse and language structures. The substance of the clusters gave rise to discipline-specific goals and tasks involved in reading across multiple texts, as well as reading, reasoning, and argumentation practices tailored to discipline-specific criteria for evidence-based knowledge claims. The framework of constructs and processes provides a valuable tool for researchers and classroom teachers' (re)conceptualizations of literacy and argumentation learning goals in their specific disciplines.