Abstract
In this essay, we described how we use mentor texts (MTs) to foster students’ disciplinary literacy—reading, writing, thinking, and performing abilities in an area related to their problem of practice. We did this by carefully creating scaffolded learning experiences affording them with multiple, situated learning opportunities over time that allow students to move to central roles as scholarly practitioners where they now contribute in meaningful ways to disciplinary-based literacy. In this process, students were transformed from being readers of MTs where they were consuming the MTs for content to being producers, writers, of MTs that influenced others. This transformation was couched in Wenger’s Community of Practice framework. We provided a detailed presentation of how we implement the MT process throughout the EdD program. We discussed challenges and next steps and concluded with questions readers might consider as they contemplate whether using MTs might be beneficial to students in their programs.
Highlights
In a relatively short amount of time, Education Doctorate (EdD) students must learn the disciplinary knowledge and literacies of the field to become scholarly practitioners
We organized this essay around four important topics including (a) describing disciplinary literacy and the Mentor Texts (MTs) strategy, (b) discussing a theoretical framework in which the MT strategy was situated, (c) illustrating how we implement a MT strategy to support students’ scholarly practitioner dissertation in practice (DiP) efforts in our EdD program, and (d) offering challenges and steps for using MTs to foster EdD students’ disciplinary literacy
Wenger’s (1998; Wenger et al, 2002) Communities of Practice (CoP) framework was valuable as we considered our approach for using MTs to aid students in developing disciplinary literacies appropriate for doctoral work and completion of the scholarly practitioner DiP proposal and final document
Summary
Wenger’s (1998; Wenger et al, 2002) Communities of Practice (CoP) framework was valuable as we considered our approach for using MTs to aid students in developing disciplinary literacies appropriate for doctoral work and completion of the scholarly practitioner DiP proposal and final document. Wenger et al (2002) suggested CoP were defined by three elements: “a domain of knowledge, which defines a set of issues; a community of people who care about this domain; and the shared practice that they are developing to be effective in the domain” (p. 27, italics in original). The domain included carrying out tasks related to navigating aspects of the program; connecting with other students and faculty members; and engaging with coursework It involved developing students’ literacies as scholarly practitioners such as thinking, reading, discussing, and writing about their research work including developing, drafting, sharing, and revising initial DiP drafts in courses, and later the DiP proposal, and the final DiP. Students engaged in carefully scaffolded reading and writing efforts, which were conscientiously overseen by faculty members As part of these experiences, students engaged with MTs to facilitate the learning process, initially to develop their content understanding of the discipline, and later, to support them in creating disciplinary texts. Reading to Learn: Guiding Questions for Developing Students Content Understanding of the Concepts included in Chapter 1 of the DiP
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