Disciplinary Learning and Identity Development

• In Event: Literature and History as Pathways for Wrestling With Complexities

Abstract

While there are current efforts to address social-emotional well-being in schooling, moving beyond the traditional sole attention to cognitive skills, current research in the Science of Human Learning and Development demonstrate that these skills are inter-dependent and unfold in tandem. The challenge is to design instruction that integrates this development. This presentation reports on several longitudinal studies in literature and history that entail pedagogical practices that intentionally support co-development of social-emotional well-being and critical literacy skills in the disciplines of literature and history. The presentation includes both design principles for instruction as well as evaluation. Studies in both project include the development of a digital authoring tool – SenseMaking in the Disciplines – to support close reading and argumentation. The studies were funded by IES and rooted in the Cultural Modeling Framework.

In both disciplines, the design principles entail the following:

• Identification of topics and essential question that invite wrestling with identity challenges relevant to the student population
• In selecting text sets, identifying sources of text complexity and preparing instructional supports for tackling these technical problems in the texts
• Identifying cultural repertoires from students’ everyday experiences that entail knowledge, reasoning processes, language repertoires, epistemological orientations relevant to the essential questions and tasks
• Organizing daily instruction to build positive relationships, making thinking visible as objects of collaborative inquiry, build a sense of self-efficacy and relevance.

I offer exemplars from units in literature and history to illustrate these design principles. Study 1 takes place in an African centered high school and includes longitudinal data across years. Study 2 takes place in a suburban high school with a diverse population (largely Hispanic and low-income) of 10th and 11th graders.

The evaluation involved pre-post measures of comprehension – literary reasoning and historical reasoning – along with measures of racial identity, self-efficacy, theory of mind, coping, and students perceptions of instruction using the TRIPOD survey.

Findings:

Across both sets of studies, we found positive relationships among growth in critical disciplinary reasoning and psycho-social measures. Positive racial/ethnic identity, positive sense of self-efficacy, belief in a growth mindset, positive sense of ability to cope with challenge and positive perceptions of instruction are all correlated with growth in critical disciplinary reasoning; and are related to one another.

Significance:
These are unique studies and contributions for understanding on the ground the integrated scope of human learning and development. Both the design principles, especially as they are specific to academic content areas, and the methods of evaluation are unique. Consistent with the theme of the conference, if we are to positively impact opportunity to learn, our efforts must be rooted in wrestling with the complexities of learning and development, as truths of how people learn – through diverse pathways, through relationships and social and cultural interactions, within and across time (here our longitudinal study) .

Author

• Carol D. Lee, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author