Developing disciplinary literacy is an emerging priority for secondary teachers as they prepare students for college, career, and civic life. One way to develop and assess disciplinary literacy in history is through source-based argument writing (SBAW) with multiple sources. SBAW requires students to synthesize information across texts and use…

Mathematical justifications offer an approach to which students deepen and extend their mathematical thinking. This process has the potential to enhance students' conceptual understanding. Mathematical practices and process standards ask students to use critical thinking skills to justify their reasoning, but this is usually seen as proofs in high…

The purpose of this study was to examine the writing skills of 7th- and 8th-grade students with a high proportion of migration background in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The study was part of the SchriFT project (2017-20), funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. A writing task was given on the topic: "Why can we only…

This case study describes how culturally relevant pedagogy can be used in disciplinary rigorous ways in an urban middle school history classroom. The focus is on a unit about the Johnstown Flood of 1889, which provided a setting for teaching about the event as well as the historical thinking practices of contextualizing, sourcing, and…

All mathematics is comprised of three elements: symbols, nominalizations, and images, and the combination of these three elements determine the mathematical meaning. However, adolescents may not be aware of these three elements. When asked to describe mathematical language, they will often name equations and images, two of the three elements. Over…

In the present study, we first examined the formality and use of academic language in students' scientific explanations in the form of written claim, written evidence, and written reasoning (CER). Middle school students constructed explanations within an intelligent tutoring system after completing a virtual science inquiry investigation. Results…

To assess text comprehension and concept mastery, standards-aligned measures have moved from using multiple-choice questions to using source-based writing tasks (sometimes referred to as Reading-to-Write tasks). For example, it is now common for students to be asked to read a text and then to produce a written response, often a summary or…

Using a national sample of students' writing from the National Study of Writing Instruction, this study examines the current state of writing in the mathematics classroom and the extent to which enactments align with the intentions established in the research base and curricula articulated by NCTM and the CCSS-M. Over 3,000 writing assignments…

In seeking a disciplinary literacy model that would enable students to express well-developed perspectives and argue contrasting views with the sound use of evidence, the authors developed a student-driven model that emphasized historical investigation, offered substance, and scaffolded reading and writing. To support their project, they created…

This study explored the extent to which an 18-day history and writing curriculum intervention, taught over the course of one year, helped culturally and academically diverse adolescents achieve important disciplinary literacy learning in history. Teachers used a cognitive apprenticeship form of instruction for the integration of historical reading…

Writing in mathematics is complex. The purpose of this article is to share how one teacher, Ms. Hill, used peer-review activities involving rubrics to explicitly communicate mathematical resources that students could draw from when justifying a claim. She found that helping students understand which type of statements could be used in…

Content area reading comprehension and writing have been a challenge for children in the U.S. schools for many years as evidenced by state and national assessments. One promising solution to the problem is text structure based instruction that promotes strategic selection, encoding, retrieval, and use of information for myriads of activities…

In recent years, educators in the USA have emphasized disciplinary literacy as an essential path forward in cultivating adolescents' understanding of subject matter in tandem with literacy practices. Yet, this agenda poses challenges to teachers who have been tasked with its implementation. Here, we examine two expert US history teachers' efforts…

In Florida, middle grades students take the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test 2.0 (FCAT 2.0) in reading and writing. In partnership with the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), Avalon Middle School implemented the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) framework beginning in the 2012-2013 school year to develop literacy skills across…

Kentucky has been a leader in the movement to more rigorous college and career ready standards to support their students' success in the 21st century. Kentucky was the first state to adopt new college and career ready standards (CCRS)--termed the Kentucky Core Academic Standards. Many of Kentucky's districts have moved proactively and…