Reading Nonfiction

Shanahan on Literacy

"One hears the term disciplinary literacy a lot these days. That’s because the Common Core standards (CCSS) address the teaching of disciplinary literacy (as do non-CCSS states like Texas and Indiana).

            Of course, the term is often misused. Disciplinary literacy is based upon the idea that literacy and text are specialized, and even unique, across the disciplines. Historians engage in very different approaches to reading than mathematicians do, for instance. Similarly, even those who know little about math or literature can easily distinguish as science text from a literary one.

            Fundamentally, because each field of study has its own purposes, its own kinds of evidence, and its own style of critique, each will produce different texts, and reading those different kinds of texts are going to require some different reading strategies. Scientists spend a lot of time comparing data presentation devices with each other and with prose, while literary types strive to make sense of theme, characterization, and style.

            The idea of teaching disciplinary literacy is quite different from the long promoted content area literacy teaching. The latter has often championed the disciplinary literacy notion, but the result has been an emphasis on general comprehension skills and study skills, rather than apprenticing young readers into reading like disciplinary experts. K-W-L, three-level guides, Frayer model, 4-squares, etc. are all great teaching tools—they can enhance kids learning from text, but you are unlikely to find chemists or historians who use those approaches in their work. Thus, content area reading aims to build better students, while disciplinary literacy tries to get them to grasp the ways literacy is used to create, disseminate, and critique information in the various disciplines.

Beers and Probst interview: Nonfiction vs Literature

What are Literacies within the Disciplines? ASCD Express article, 2017

What is Discipline Literacy?

Disciplinary Literacy from the Annenburg Foundation 
In contrast, disciplinary literacy focuses on teaching students the differences among the various texts used in different disciplines and the specialized reading practices required for comprehension and critical analysis of ideas within each. Some of these differences include specialized vocabulary, types of language used to communicate ideas, text structures, text features (e.g., boldface headings and vocabulary, diagrams, charts, photographs, captions), and sources of information within and across disciplines.

Disciplinary literacy teaches students to move beyond the use of general reading strategies toward the use of specialized reading practices for making sense of the unique texts found within each discipline. Each discipline represents knowledge and the ways of producing and communicating that knowledge differently, resulting in a different approach to reading. For example, when reading a literary text, there is a range of interpretations a reader can make based on background knowledge and experiences. When reading a history text or document, interpretations are made based on a consideration of the source and context for the information as well as a corroboration with other sources. Science and math texts present information with one “truth” or interpretation based on accepted methods for using evidence. In essence, the focus is on teaching students ways of thinking about texts by developing reader identities for each discipline—to become, for example, expert readers by reading like a historian, a scientist, a mathematician.