This qualitative study used a theoretical framework grounded in the intersection of 21st century learning, critical literacy, and disciplinary literacy to examine how a high school science and math teacher selected and used texts in her classroom. Data from a semi-structured interview, instructional materials, and student work samples were analyzed. Inductive content analysis generated themes about discipline-specific practice and strategies that cut across both content areas. Results suggest that texts in content classrooms can be used to foster critical disciplinary literacy skills that build upon students' outside-of-school interests and their use of technology.
TopIntroduction
As citizens of the twenty-first century, we are inundated with digital texts daily. Technology has reframed access to information, ways of communicating, and redefined the roles of teachers and learners in the classroom. This proliferation of technology and multimodal texts raise considerations for students’ literacy and content instruction in secondary classrooms, specifically how students gain access to content and the ways they can demonstrate their learning. In this context, it is important to understand teachers’ instructional choices and the kinds of literacy strategies that can be enacted in content classrooms because our knowledge of theories and perspective of how frameworks can be employed in practice continues to evolve (Adams & Pegg, 2012).
Although many secondary content teachers do not perceive themselves as reading/literacy teachers (Hurst & Pearman, 2013) they perform a balancing act to support students’ multiple literacy skills and their content knowledge acquisition. O’Byrne et. al. (2021) points out that the recent increased focus on content area reading and disciplinary literacy indicates the need to better assess teachers’ knowledge and ability to foster literacy skills in the discipline to identify potential areas for professional development to better support middle and high school teachers. A teacher’s attitudes, beliefs, and self-efficacy can shape their instructional actions, which can have significant implications for students’ academic achievement (Gay, 2013; O’Byrne et. al., 2021). Therefore, educators should consider ways to support all students, so they reach their potential in mainstream classrooms by understanding how practices need to evolve to support twenty-first-century learners. Over the past two decades, discussions about secondary literacy instruction have transitioned from teaching content area reading to using discipline-specific lenses to foster close reading and analysis of complex texts and helping students use various sources for critical inquiry, text production, and arguments in content classrooms (Brozo, Moorman, Meyer, & Stewart, 2013; Fisher & Frey, 2014, 2015, 2016; Gutierrez de Blume, Katz, & Bass, 2021; Lawrence & Labissiere, 2017; Rainey, Maher, Coupland, Franchi, & Moje, 2017; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008, 2012). This increased focus on literacy practices within a discipline has signaled the need for more reports about how teachers embed this practice within a broader discussion about teaching for social justice. More research that examines how content teachers use disciplinary literacy to approach teaching can increase understanding of the ways teachers use students’ experiences to enhance the curriculum to address social issues, how teachers build relationships with students to support their academic achievement and empowerment, and how teachers facilitate ways for students to ask questions and engage in social action (Comber, 2015; Dover, 2009; Duncan-Andrade, 2005; Grysko, & Zygouris-Cor, 2019; Hawley, Crowe, & Mooney, 2016; Marciano & Warren, 2019; Williams, 2020; Woodrow, 2018; Yang, 2009).