What Happens When Interdisciplinary Teams of Teachers Tackle "Disciplinary Literacy" Instruction?

• In Event: Poster Session 2
  In Poster Session: Multiple Dimensions of Teaching in the Content Area

Abstract

Scholars have spent the past ten years researching and advocating for disciplinary literacy instruction in secondary school settings (Moje, 2015; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). Interest in disciplinary literacy has prompted scholarship primarily focused on “discipline-specific teams.” Meanwhile, little attention has been paid to how “interdisciplinary teams” of content-area teachers take up and implement disciplinary literacy, a reality in many public secondary schools. This paper looks at data collected from four teams of middle school teachers (grades 6-8) collaborating within a disciplinary literacy professional learning initiative in a Northeastern urban school district. We describe tensions and opportunities during the first year-and-a-half of the initiative, as well as several similarities and differences between interdisciplinary teams’ experiences compared to discipline-specific teams previously studied.

Authors

• Jacy C. Ippolito, Salem State University

• Christina L. Dobbs, Boston University

• Megin Charner-Laird, Salem State University