Experts' Understanding of Literacy in the English Discipline

• In Event: 65.079 - Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: 65.079-2 - Reconstructing Disciplinary Literacy From the View of Multimodal Literacy

Abstract

In response to the need to develop a richer body of empirical knowledge about what counts as literacy in various disciplines (Moje, 2008), we undertook to explore English experts’ conceptions of literacy. Set within the framework of disciplinary literacy, which emphasize the development and use of strategic disciplinary approaches to develop disciplinary knowledge (Moje, 2007; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008), this study assumes important differences among the disciplines in terms of what counts as evidence, the ways in which knowledge is produced, how one should engage with texts, and so forth.

Seven university English professors were selected to participate in this study because of their disciplinary affiliation and level of expertise. Currently, data consist of one round of semi-structured interviews that explored the participants’ disciplinary views of literacy. Through the process of open, axial, and selective coding (Corbin and Strauss, 2008), the research team engaged in extended micro-analyses, made theoretical comparisons, and wrote numerous relational statements to explore how the data fit together to address our purpose.

Importantly, two modes dominated the English experts’ notions of literacy: print and oral. Data suggest that to read in ways privileged by the English discipline readers had to develop a multidimensional relationship with disciplinary texts that included cognitive, edifying, and heritage domains. The cognitive domain focused on the challenging mental aspects of the reader-text relationship, specifically attending to interpretation, analysis, critique, and “going beyond the literal meaning” of the print texts. Reading in English was not simply understanding plot: Experts claimed that readers needed “to process, think, and have a critical response to the text” in order to be doing the work of the discipline.

The edifying domain focused on the ways English print texts could improve readers’ lives by giving “you a reason to live,” creating “better humans,” and moving “people to change their lives in some way.” Explicitly understood as adding value to people’s lives, knowing and engaging in a relationship with English texts could edify readers and create better people.

The heritage domain attended to knowing texts’ historical roots and developing the readers’ ability to enter the larger conversation about the texts. By knowing “the literary fathers of the text I’m reading” and being “acquainted with core texts . . . that people in the discipline can all refer to,” readers of English texts were able to “participate in the conversation” about the texts and become “part of the history of criticism of that work.”

Viewed primarily as readers’ language-based relationships with texts through reading and speaking, multiple modalities of literacy did not weigh heavily in these English experts’ notions of literacy. With a clearer view of how English experts view literacy and develop their students’ literacy practices, literacy educators can then make more informed decisions about how to prepare secondary teacher candidates to develop (and problematize) the frames of mind and approaches that will allow them to help their own students develop a more robust set of English disciplinary literacy practices.

Author

• Eric Dale Rackley, Brigham Young University - Hawaii