The Value of Building Disciplinary Communities

By Laura Gabrion, Wayne RESA Literacy Consultant and Disciplinary Literacy Task Force Member

At the 67th Annual Michigan Reading Association Conference in March, three MAISA GELN 6-12 Disciplinary Literacy Task Force members came together to discuss School-wide Essential Practice #8 and Instructional Essential Practice #9. These practices can be found in our Essential School-Wide Practices in Disciplinary Literacy: Grades 6 to 12 and our Essential Instructional Practices for Disciplinary Literacy in the Secondary Classroom documents, respectively. 

While the conference theme amplified the importance of developing and sustaining communities within our various educational spaces, each conference presentation defined community in its own unique way. Since our focus as members of the Disciplinary Literacy Task Force was to explore ways to connect students to disciplinary communities within and beyond the classroom, we urged participants to consider how classroom activities, such as presentations, projects, field trips, and volunteerism, can broaden students’ understanding of the ways that disciplinary experts work. For example, by inviting an author into a classroom via Zoom, students can better perceive how writers move from idea to product. In essence, School-wide Essential Practice #8 encourages schools to develop “an intentional community networking strategy [that] is implemented to support disciplinary literacy practices and identities” while Instructional Essential Practice #9 encourages “community networking to tap into available funds of knowledge in support of developing students’ content knowledge and identities.” In both practices, student identity is lifted because through purposeful instruction, it is our hope that students will envision themselves as scientists, mathematicians, historians, literary critics, and more. We invited our conference participants to consider the benefits of inviting disciplinary experts into our classrooms. We also discussed activities that encourage students to broaden their communities; by cultivating a classroom blog or developing online resources for community members, they can reach a larger audience. In all of these ways, we can be intentional about apprenticing students into our disciplines and helping them understand the ways of thinking, knowing, and doing within that field. Dr. Elizabeth Moje, a key researcher and author of the documents linked above, explains that we must pay “attention to the social and cultural nature of disciplinary teaching and learning” (2015); to that end, we can connect our students to others engaged in these practices, whether peers or professionals, in an effort to advance their own disciplinary knowledge.

Our session was only an hour long, and we simply could not cover a comprehensive list of community networking ideas for the classroom, but we can take the space here to brainstorm a few others. For example, several schools throughout Michigan have developed writing centers where peer tutors work with classmates to improve their writing across disciplines. In addition, a tri-county initiative hosts an annual Meaningful Mathematics and STEM Showcase where students are “challeng[ed] to examine real situations--in their school, community, or the world at large--identify how mathematics is present in the issue, and demonstrate how mathematics can be used to find a solution” (“Tri-County Showcase Flyer, 2023). At a national level, the New York Times 1619 Project asks students to become critical readers of history through a wide variety of texts and use what they’ve learned to champion a realistic portrayal of our nation’s history that embodies the impact of slavery on past and current American life.

Vygotsky “believed that learning results as a function of interacting with others” (Tracey & Morrow, 2012, p. 129). Inherent in the learning process, then, are opportunities to work with others to solve problems, answer questions, and develop and enact new knowledge. As educators, we’ve often relied on our professional learning communities to improve our craft--our discipline. It makes sense, then, that we offer our students the same opportunities to work with others. As Dr. Moje (2015) articulates, “the process should progress not in rigid or linear ways but with the recognition that increasing facility with the tools of language and discourse will mediate and develop students' apprenticeship into the discipline over time, just as human cognition and social practice develop through tool use in communities of practice over time (Vygotsky, 1986).”

References

Moje, E. B. (2015). Doing and teaching disciplinary literacy with adolescent learners: A social and cultural enterprise. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 254-278,301. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/doing-teaching-

disciplinary-literacy-with/docview/1691427618/se-2

Tracey, D. H., & Morrow, L. M. (2012). Lenses on reading: An introduction to theories

and models. The Guilford Press.

Tri-county showcase flyer. (2023). https://drive.google.com/file/d/101Pg9aefwx

F4xsQTSk LE41YDaNvOY37n/view?usp=sharing