Strategies for Teaching Literacy and Disciplinary Learning

Introduction

The development of children as writers is properly improved during the learning process, which includes skills learning and other processes that occur while composing written texts. The teaching process involves imparting various writing skills, which provides for handwriting, spelling, phonetics, and other critical writing skills. However, to succeed, there is a need to adopt various strategies for teaching literacy and enhancing disciplinary learning. The educator must apply these strategies to be able to make an impact on the learning process. Different subject areas require different approaches to ensure the students can learn and understand what is being taught (Shanahan & Shanahan., 2017). An increase in literacy demands in recent years has necessitated the literary movement to explore new teaching strategies that can assist students and help them navigate the requirements of the learning process. Literacy abilities such as writing are, however, demanded across all subject areas. Writing classes focus mainly on the need to develop students that can read and comprehend written material. This study looks at the different strategies for teaching literacy and disciplinary learning and how such strategies can be applied in a writing class. Teaching literacy and disciplinary literacy are not always similar. The two approaches may be related, but they refer to two different concepts. However, when combined, they help bring about literacy success for literacy professionals and other policy stakeholders.

Significance of Research

Literacy and Disciplinary learning require students to be able to read and write in a way that matches their discipline. Students should be able to communicate clearly by applying various skills, tools, and knowledge to create and use information that is relevant to their chosen subject (International Literacy Association, 2017). Teachers also play a critical role in ensuring their students acquire these skills, tools, and knowledge and that they can easily apply them. Teachers, therefore, are required to train students through proper guidance and support to help these students gain the ability to read, understand, and use various disciplinary texts.

Content Area Literacy learning allows students to learn all the reading and learning processes that are uniform across all disciplines. This approach will enable teachers to model their methods of education by offering opportunities to students to collaborate with others during learning (Brozo, Moorman, Meyer, & Stewart, 2013). Content area literacy learning makes the assumptions that students have acquired enough reading and writing skills that they can easily apply to other disciplines and that they can easily create texts in different disciplines.

Giving much focus on elementary learning through foundational reading helps prepare for more rigorous education in later years. A focus on disciplinary learning at the elementary level allows students to engage their experiences by linking them to the texts they read or the vocabulary and writing skills they acquire (Goldman, et al., 2016). Such experiences help them build a foundation on specific disciplines that may be useful in their advanced learning in those disciplines. It not only increases their chances of success but also ensures they can apply such knowledge to the experiences they go through in life.

Teaching literacy and disciplinary learning are critical not just for learning purposes but for helping impart specific skills and knowledge that students can apply in life. The ability to comprehend and produce different kinds of texts for different disciplines is a critical skill, especially in the workforce (Holschuh, 2014). Students can gain various skills such as writing, reading, listening, speaking, and critical thinking, which they can easily integrate both in their advanced studies and in their careers.

Literature Review

Teaching literacy and disciplinary learning may not be similar approaches when it comes to literacy learning. However, the two can be used together to enhance literacy strategies. Combining these two approaches helps teachers to use more discipline-specific frameworks and practices, especially during reading and writing of texts. It also allows teachers to effectively connect various aspects of the students to what is being learned (International Literacy Association, 2017). For example, combining the two approaches allows teachers to connect student’s educational standards with their backgrounds or interests. Combining these two concepts during teaching helps students prepare well for further participation in other disciples. It also helps students create a connection between these disciplines and their lives based on their experiences.

Disciplinary learning plays a critical role in enhancing the problem-solving abilities of students who received disciplinary literacy instruction at an early age. Problem-solving is a skill that ranks higher when it comes to the ranking of intellectual skills. The problem-solving process requires adherence to specific rules and defined concepts. The method of problem-solving also involves two goals, that is the short-term goals and long-term goals. To improve problem-solving capacity, teachers use various learning strategies aimed at equipping the student with the necessary skills to enhance their problem-solving ability (Zulfah & Senam, 2018). Adaptation of a learning strategy with disciplinary literacy instruction has been found to help students improve their problem-solving skills when facing complex subjects like mathematics and science. Disciplinary literacy instruction helps in the improvement of student engagement with the course texts, helping them build on what has been taught to help them solve course problems.

One of the most transparent ways to differentiate college-ready students and those who are not ready yet is to look at their ability to read and comprehend complex texts. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) has always acted as the tool which is used to establish a set of standards required for students intending to enter college. The CCSS focuses mainly on language and mathematics tests. To make students succeed in these texts, teachers start preparing students as early as kindergarten by focusing on using literacy and disciplinary learning. Each level of education comes with different expectations which the student is required to pass before moving to the next step. With each step comes more challenging and more detailed texts aimed at addressing the students’ needs (Holschuh, 2014). For example, students in grades 11 and 12 studying humanity subjects like social studies or history are expected to be able to cite specific textual evidence and be able to analyse them critically. Those studying science subjects must also similarly cite and offer support evidence of the texts while ensuring proper explanation of the same. Different disciples have

Students who are college-ready or career-ready must have certain skills which includes the ability to analyze the relationship between primary and secondary sources. Different disciplines have different ways in which literacy is applied during reading and writing. Each discipline require different highly specialized skills that are unique for that discipline. For example, English language arts require different skills from all other arts. The rest can also be said of other subject areas such as science, history and maths. Disciplinary literacy helps students acquire such discipline-specific kills which they can apply both during school work and in their careers later on. Students need proper guidance on how literacy should be used in different fields (International Literacy Association, 2015). The CCSS standards have been developed to infuse more disciplinary literacy standards to help students acquire basic reading strategies and study skills. Teachers therefore play a role of creating a classroom with a culture geared towards enhanced academic literacy that encourages student success.

The benefits of disciplinary literacy have been identified mainly through two types of research, which are research on expert practices and linguistic investigations. Both experts and novices analyze and apply their knowledge differently. Experts can apply their knowledge in different scenarios that it may fit. Novices are, however, unable to apply their knowledge to solve real-life problems. Research focusing on both novices and experts has been useful in determining the benefits of disciplinary literacy. Linguistic studies, on the other hand, have been adopted through the application of language tools to find out the unique characteristics of the texts used to study at each level (Shanahan, 2019). Each discipline is intended to create a particular source of knowledge, and so each discipline must be communicated differently for students to enhance their experience on the subject. Having a solid disciplinary literacy background is critical towards educational success as the student moves from one level to another.

Disciplinary learning and literacy learning acts to help students understand language, its purposes, and emphasis on each discipline that they may be studying. The use of CCSS, however, focuses only on the student’s abilities to read and understand sophisticated tests in different subject areas and be able to critically analyze them in disciplinary style (Coburn, Hill, & Spillane., 2016). Teachers, therefore, have the opportunity to use literacy and disciplinary learning to teach their students the different ways in which they can understand such texts in disciplinary ways. Using literacy and disciplinary education also allows teachers to provide their students with skills that are not only useful in the subjects they are studying but also other subject areas.

One of the concerns most educators face is the underperformance that literacy students face. Most students face difficulties when trying to read and understand comprehensions in different academic areas. It is a trend that has continued to increase, which shows looming trouble. The desire to improve literacy levels has led to the adaptation of different strategies, including content literacy and disciplinary learning. Content literacy and disciplinary education have proven successful in fusing reading, writing, and reasoning, speaking, investigating, and researching to a specific discipline. Content learning and disciplinary learning have proven to be different from traditional content learning strategies because of their successes in linking the learning process to a particular subject (Spires, Kerkhoff, Abbey, Thompson, & Lee., 2018). Its emphasis on unique tools that are critical during the learning process has been able to enhance literacy levels and brought about progress for most students. It specifically helps students evolve from the decoding and fluency that is common with early education to the focus on specific disciplines through better reading, writing, and comprehension of complex texts.

Disciplinary literacy instruction has proven to be a critical element when it comes to the teaching of different subjects. One of the areas where it has proven to be efficient is the education process for multilingual learners. Multilingual learning requires the use of an instructional approach that supports meaningful pedagogy for students. Most multilingual learners usually have various skills that make them unique. Some of these skills include their ability to use language for different purposes and for different contexts. According to Hickey and Lewis (2015), disciplinary literacy and content area literacy helps teachers become aware of precise linguistic conventions of different subjects that they teach. These two approaches help teachers identify their unique areas of linguistic knowledge (Hickey & Lewis, 2015). Teachers gain the linguistic knowledge base of their chosen discipline or content area, making it easier for them to facilitate student learning and understanding of both oral and written discourse. These two approaches help teachers gain a command of their disciplines that helps them position multilingual learners to become both users and generators of disciplinary discourse in both written and oral language.

The disciplinary approach to learning is mainly preferred based on its ability to differentiate literacies by content domain. Disciplinary literacy and content learning literacy has been proven to enhance student engagement during the learning process. When students are presented with real-world problems that affect them, the answering proses involves more interaction with the information by being more inquisitive and curious. The answers provided are therefore more authentic. Disciplinary learning offers them the right skills to be able to inquisitively and curiously tackle these problems (Spires, Kerkhoff, & Graham, 2016). During the inquiry process, students who have been instructed through disciplinary literacy or content area literacy approaches are likely to be recursive by engaging other students or sources. It leads to students having more questions leading to further investigation. During the research process, students are likely to involve several sources, which help them create an interplay between these sources. They can then analyze and synthesize these sources, which helps promote more in-depth learning and sophisticated understanding. These two approaches, therefore, helps students acquire knowledge that they can use to construct new knowledge by employing the knowledge gained from practices in different subject areas.

Students require more than basic skills to graduate from college and transition into the workforce successfully. They must acquire specific skills in literacy that they can apply in different academic fields to help them succeed. However, most students’ still face the challenge of successfully comprehending most texts that are used in the classrooms. Teachers have also complained that the traditional approach of content-based literacy has proven ineffective when it comes to the proper preparation of students for the workforce. Adopting a more discipline-based literacy approach has proven to be able to help students acquire literacy skills and strategies that are unique to each disciplinary area. Disciplinary literacy applies strategies that include developing background knowledge on a particular discipline (Chauvin & Theodore, 2015). For example, disciplinary learning helps students learn specialized education that allows them to solve discipline-specific problems and offer evidence that supports and evaluates their answers. To amplify the learning process, it is recommended that these two approaches be applied together to enhance the student learning process that not only allows them to graduate from college but also transition well into the job market.

Discussion

Content-based literacy and disciplinary literacy learning play a critical role in ensuring students can read and write in a way that matches their discipline. It also helps students acquire various skills, tools, and knowledge that is relevant to their area of study. The application of these two literacy approaches requires proper training with the use of the right learning strategies focused on specific disciplinary areas (International Literacy Association, 2017). Both content area literacy and disciplinary literacy are critical towards developing a model of teaching, which allows students to fuse what they learn in class with what they experience in life. Learners acquire the necessary reading and writing skills that they can apply to other disciplines or in different scenarios.

Fusing these two strategies has also proven to be beneficial when it comes to enhancing problem-solving abilities for students. Such benefits are achieved, mainly when these two strategies are applied from early education (Shanahan & Shanahan., 2017). Research has proven the benefits of content area literacy and disciplinary literacy enhancement of problem-solving abilities, especially in subjects like math and science.

Disciplinary literacy also plays a critical role in preparing student transition to the workforce. It helps equip learners with essential skills that are necessary not only for higher learning but for workforce preparation. Students must acquire these skills to be able to pass through college and university education, which is essential for their careers. The CCSS is an example of one of the tools that apply the use of these two learning approaches to ensure the best students transition into college (Holschuh, 2014). It affects the use of content-based literacy and disciplinary literacy learning by focusing on testing specific skills that are required of any college-ready students.

The current teacher requires to adopt these two strategies if they are to help their students succeed in class and life. Students develop the ability to analyze and understand both written and oral texts critically. Students can quickly choose their chosen subject areas based on their background (Spires, Kerkhoff, & Graham, 2016). Teachers also train their students to be able to handle different problems they may experience in life and how they can use classwork to address such situations.

Content area literacy has, however, failed to address these literacy challenges on its own. The introduction of disciplinary literacy, therefore, offers an opportunity for both teachers and learners to learn and understand better the contents of different subject areas. Teachers not only enhance their teaching abilities by applying disciplinary literacy but also enhances teacher-student engagement during teaching. Students, on their part, can improve their engagement with texts being taught. They can also effectively apply what they learn in class to situations they may have experienced in real life.

References

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Shanahan, C., & Shanahan., T. (2017). Disciplinary literacy. In Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts. Routledge.

Shanahan, T. (2019). Disciplinary Literacy in the Primary School. National Council for Curriculum and Assesment.

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Spires, H. A., Kerkhoff, S. N., Abbey, C. G., Thompson’, I., & Lee., J. K. (2018). Operationalizing and validating disciplinary literacy in secondary education. Reading and writing.

Zulfah, M. P., & Senam, R. N. (2018). Problem-Solving Ability of Students with Disciplinary Literacy Instruction. International Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education.