Exploring Disciplinary Literacy

By Cherron Ramsey, Wayne RESA, and Dr. Kristi Hanby, Wayne RESA   It never fails; year after year secondary mathematics teachers hear the same questions from students: when am I ever going to use this and why do I need to know this?  When we hear this same refrain repeated annually, it’s possible we may come to think of it as commonplace and unavoidable.  But it may be worth asking ourselves what is behind that question. Let’s take this question at its face value and consider its foundations.  What are students experiencing in their own day-to-day lives and why does the mathematical work they are doing in classrooms feel so disconnected?  Perhaps this question continues to be at the forefront of students' minds because they truly don't see the connection or relevance to the mathematics content they are asked to complete.  As mathematics teachers, we may realize the importance of determining if something is proportional or of being able to interpret data in a graph, but our stud