Professional Development: Disciplinary Literacy Instruction

Abstract

Despite the longstanding consensus among college faculty that academic literacy and critical thinking are essential to student success, the development of students’ disciplinary literacy has not been established across the curriculum. Very often, content area instructors consider literacy instruction as relevant only in English courses, and they perceive that student success in STEM and professional studies depends highly on quantitative reasoning and other professional skills. As a result, many of them tend to prioritize delivering content knowledge and skills over cultivating students’ capacity to think, read, and communicate in ways that are consistent with those practiced in the disciplines. Therefore, the initial focus of professional development in the Reading Effectively Across the Disciplines (READ) program is on redirecting content faculty’s teaching conceptions to afford a pedagogical space for teaching disciplinary literacy. In addition to the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of professional development in a disciplinary literacy context, this chapter covers practical issues that include identifying courses in the disciplines that require instructional interventions, faculty recruitment, the training cycle, general and specific strategies, the design of professional development activities, and assessment of their effectiveness.