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Disciplinary Literacy for History

Brian Lee
ASU
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Importance of Adolescent Literacy Instruction

Literacy is foundational to accessing information necessary to learn. Such an important

concept requires a delineation between the types of pursuable literacies as well as an

examination to how each can be achieved. According to the International Literacy

Association (2017, p.1), “Content area literacy and disciplinary literacy are umbrella terms

that describe two approaches to literacy instruction embedded within different subject areas

or disciplines.” These two approaches of literacy (content area literacy and disciplinary

literacy) are necessary to promote understanding within a specific content area and require

careful consideration by educators when planning lessons.

Content area literacy is an approach that can be carried with students through various

subject areas to gain an understanding of a given text and make sense of it in a chosen

medium. Some of the skills that might be utilized to gain fluency and comprehension might

include, “…‘reading for the main idea’, ‘predicting word meaning from context’,

summarizing, backtracking, or any host of generic reading strategies” (Reisman &

Wineburg, 2015, p.636). In other words, content area literacy is the preliminary

understanding that is achieved by reading sources, such as a textbook. This is an important

concept as it allows students to engage in a wider selection of sources to build upon their

disciplinary literacy.

Disciplinary literacy requires a deeper understanding of the material presented to a learner.

It is defined as “an approach that advocates attention to discipline-specific ways of

thinking, reading, and writing” (Girard & Harris, 2012, p.230). By giving learners the tools
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to approach a subject like an expert might approach it, the learner can gain “agency” in his

or her education (Reisman & Wineburg, 2015, p. 636). However, this approach requires a

significant amount of effort to reframe information as an expert of a specific field would

understand it. In order to have disciplinary literacy in the classroom for history and social

studies, standards highlight, “the importance of teachers’ understanding of the central

concepts, debates, tools or inquiry, ways of thinking, and the structures of their discipline”

(Reisman & Wineburg, 2015, p.637). Despite the increased effort required to teach

disciplinary literacy, there is a clear recognition of its importance.

The aim of achieving disciplinary literacy is a laudable goal for secondary education, but

the reality of underperforming content area literacy demonstrates how these approaches are

interdependent. Robert Bain (2012, p.516) points out that adolescent literacy has stagnated

at an abysmal level “for the last forty years”. Bain (2012, p.516) further points out that

expectations on students increase as they age despite the chance that there is a lack of

foundational skills that students were intended to attain in previous years. This makes

teaching disciplinary literacy, more difficult, though not impossible.

Explanation of Disciplinary Literacy in History

In order to teach disciplinary literacy in history, an educator needs to understand what

history is. In it’s most rudimentary form, “History is an interpretive discipline grounded in

evidence-based argument”(De La Paz et. al, 2014, p.229). This process, while seemingly

simple, requires a number of skills used in conjunction in order to provide a well-

formulated argument. This idea stands in stark contrast to what students may experience
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where history is often taught as a set of facts that are intended to be memorized. Despite the

overwhelming importance of history, its constant relegation to antiquated practices has left

many disenchanted with the discipline while atrophying the ability to adequately assay

facts.

It is incumbent upon educators to provide students with the appropriate skill sets that a

historian might implement to construct an argument and validate its importance with real-

life experience. For instance, sourcing is often cited as a critical skill of a historian, but

some would argue that it is “an entire way of apprehending the world” (Reisman &

Wineburg, 2015, p.636). By allowing the reader to not just interpret the text, but to

undertake the task of verifying the credibility of the source, the reader has agency over his

or her own understanding of the information presented. Furthermore, the expanses of

historical evidence can be argued as “the whole perceptible world” which extends beyond

primary and secondary print sources, but includes “artifacts, objects, and data, each

demanding comprehension analysis, and evaluation” (Bain, 2012, p. 518). Skills such as

“sourcing, contextualizing, and corroborating” help the learner form an interpretation of

events, building on their understanding of the world (Wineburg, 1991).

Communicating these arguments and interpretations is one interrelated goal for students

once research has been completed. Providing a cogent, evidence-based argument under

disciplinary literacy requires a historical approach “since history rests on analysis of

sources and sharing conclusions in writing” (De La Paz et al., 2014, p.230). The writing

process relies on organizing and reconciling evidence gleaned from the sources used to
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research a topic. The depth of the communication can be limited by underdeveloped content

area literacy by providing “trouble making inferences, or recognizing subtext when reading

historical artifacts, and less likely to then evaluate documents as evidence” (De La Paz et

al., 2014, p.231 ). So the entire historical process is somewhat an interrelated process of

continuous learning that is built by interpreting evidence that may not have all the answers.

Supporting Students in the Discipline

Lemke (1991) pointed out one of the obstacles of teaching disciplinary literacy in science

stating, “It can be difficult or impossible to teach a thematic pattern one piece at a time

because it often takes a master of the whole pattern before any of its parts seem to make

sense.” This challenge of trying to teach students how experts might approach information

in each discipline despite students not having a background in the knowledge extends to all

subject areas. Much of a historian’s process is interrelated, so the risk of a student being

overly invested in one aspect of the historical inquiry rather than utilizing a “big-picture

representation of the process” can undermine the disciplinary literacy process (De La Paz et

al., 2014, p.231).

One way that teachers can help students is using scaffolding to build upon students’ efforts

to form a written historical response. In a case study, Girard and Harris (2012, p.231)

examine a “teacher-designed scaffolding tool (the GUS),” which prompted students to

document evidence related to key concepts within the lesson unit so that they could

formulate an evidence-based essay during exams. The study ultimately concludes that there

were various ways to have made the GUS more affective, but the scaffolding technique was
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in line with disciplinary literacy. (Girard & Harris, 2012, p.251-253) The study

demonstrates the numerous issues that may arise in attempting to implement scaffolding

techniques that give students agency to invest in their learning. It takes reflection on the

part of the teacher to see if the program that is attempting to teach disciplinary literacy is

working and how to improve upon it.

Another issue with disciplinary literacy is balancing education on disciplinary literacy with

individual needs for reading and writing. Educators attempt to teach disciplinary literacy

without taking into consideration how well a student is comprehending the material. Rather

than address the issue of underdeveloped reading and writing skills, history teachers may be

tempted to “‘off-load’ responsibility to earlier grades or to English language arts

departments” (Bain, 2012, p.517). Disciplinary literacy can and should be taught alongside

with reading and writing, especially in a discipline such as history. Developing a plan to

meet individual needs can be a daunting task and not always achievable, but if educators

are asking students to think critically, educators must be willing to assess and address needs

critically (Bain, 2012, p.521).

A major component of teaching disciplinary literacy is the competency of teachers to teach

from an expert’s point of view. Bain (2012, p.514) argues that the major weakness in

teacher preparation is the lack of cohesion in the experiences that are accumulated during

teacher preparation programs. By combining these experiences the idea of disciplinary

literacy becomes more ingrained in a educator’s approach.

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Reference List

Bain, R. (2012). Using Disciplinary Literacy to Develop Coherence in History Teacher

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

Retrieved January 25, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23265943

Girard B. & Harris, L.M. (2012). Striving for Disciplinary Literacy Instruction:

Cognitive Tools in a World History Course, Theory & Research in Social

Education, 40:3, 230-259, DOI: 10.1080/00933104.2012.705183

De La Paz, S., Felton, M., Monte-Sano, C., Croninger, R., Jackson, C., Deogracias, J. S.,

& Hoffman, B. P. (2014). Developing Historical Reading and Writing With

Adolescent Readers: Effects on Student Learning. Theory & Research in Social

Education, 42(2), 228–274. https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2014.908754

International Literary Association. (2017). Content Area and Disciplinary Literacy:

Strategies and Frameworks. [Literacy leadership brief]: Newark, DE: Author.

Lemke, J. L. (1991). Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. Norwood, NJ:

Ablex.

Reisman, A. & Wineburg, S. (2015). Disciplinary Literacy in History: A Toolkit for Digital

Citizenship. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 58(8), 636-639.

Wineburg, S. (1991). On the reading of historical texts: Notes on the breach

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between -school and the academy. American Educational Research Journal,

28, 495-519.