Bernstein, Disciplinary Literacy, and the Reconstruction of Secondary School History

• In Event: 35.082 - Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: 35.082-17 - Words, Images, and Historical Spaces

Abstract

This paper presents a constructive critique of disciplinary literacy. The latter is an increasingly popular approach to content area instruction in which secondary school students are prompted to read, write, speak, think, and listen like professional mathematicians, scientists, historians, and so forth. Disciplinary literacy, it is argued, works to rebuild content areas in the image of university disciplines and professional workplaces. At the same time, disciplinary literacy can weaken content areas’ connections to the public sphere and everyday life (e.g., students’ communities). To understand how the disciplinary approach can rework and reposition content areas, the authors take an empirical tack and offer a Bersteinian discourse analysis of one well-designed lesson in disciplinary literacy.

Authors

• Ross Emmerson Collin, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Gabriel Aaron Reich, Virginia Commonwealth University