Given the prevalence of digital tools and platforms as the primary pedagogical means through which to organize and deliver content in schools, this study examined how history teachers instructed students in digital literacies to develop their disciplinary knowledge through project-based learning. Although several studies addressing new literacies…

In this review, the authors examined articles on collaboration within the context of disciplinary literacy that appeared in the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy between October 2008, when Moje published "Foregrounding the Disciplines in Secondary Literacy Teaching and Learning: A Call for Change," and December 2017. Findings…

In this study, the researchers explore how teacher candidates (TCs) across one content area literacies course and one bilingual education course engaged with their past linguistic experiences through two literacy autobiography assignments across the two separate classes. Borrowing from culturally sustaining, multiliteracies, and translanguaging…

The authors share design principles from a middle school social studies unit that explored questions of local history and engaged students in extended work with complex texts. The unit involved constructing a problem space for students to explore multiple historical texts. Within that problem space, students had opportunities to develop focal…

Science teachers are often charged with providing discipline-specific literacy instruction. However, little is known about the reading and writing genres, or text types, typically found in these classrooms. In particular, there is a lack of knowledge about what opportunities adolescents have to engage with the genres privileged in science to learn…

The transition from high school to college is challenging for many students, especially first-generation college students. College courses require disciplinary specific reading, writing, and thinking skills not often taught in high school, such as reading and analyzing complex texts and constructing original arguments in discipline-specific…

Disciplinary literacy is gaining momentum as an approach to adolescent literacy. Believing that a key aspect of disciplinary literacy is knowledge construction, the authors introduce a model for relating disciplinary literacy with project-based inquiry. Rather than merely exploring topics during inquiry, students use practices of a discipline to…

Career and Technical Education (CTE) centers offer an opportunity for students to engage in authentic reading and writing activities. In many states, "embedding" English and math credits (i.e., allowing students to earn traditional core subject credits in the context of their CTE programs) has become a popular trend. This article reports…

This article argues that every teacher is not a teacher of literacy, but instead posits that teachers in content areas must adapt literacy strategies to the content being taught and to the context in which that teaching occurs. Examples of adaptations of a literacy strategy for use in English/language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies…

Despite the emphasis on increasing the frequency with which students engage in analytic writing, we know very little about the "writing diet" of adolescents. Student notebooks, used as a daily record of in-class work, provide one source of evidence about the diversity of writing expectations that students face. Through careful…

During the past several years, middle schools and high schools have been shifting their attention to disciplinary literacy. The Common Core State Standards are explicit in requiring teachers to teach the literacy of science, literature, and history, and even states that are not part of Common Core (such as Texas) are making this shift as well.…

The recent call for a disciplinary perspective on literacy instruction in the content areas has generated considerable interest among literacy educators. This column addresses some of the questions that have been raised about disciplinary literacy. These questions concern the definition and assessment of disciplinary literacy, as well as the…

Academic writing is a mainstay of expression in secondary schools. However, many students think of academic writing in terms of local operations that include spelling, punctuation, use of third person, and so on. Teachers may expect mastery of local operations, but often they want students to navigate the terrain of the content area or discipline…

This mixed-methods study examines middle school students' academic language development in the context of a year-long professional development project titled, Developing Content Area Academic Language (DCAAL). The purpose of DCAAL was to partner middle school teachers (n = 8) with a team of university researchers to explore how to integrate…

National surveys reveal that graphic novels are perhaps the most popular recreational reading choice for adolescents--especially among boys. Graphic novels cover numerous topics, and this variety, along with their enormous popularity, makes them enticing and useful resources for teaching and learning in virtually any classroom. Since the…