Running head: LITERACY IN THE ENGLISH DISCIPLINE
Literacy as a Multidimensional Construct in the English Discipline
Eric Rackley
Brigham Young University-Hawaii
Taylor Moyes
Brigham Young University-Hawaii
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Literacy as a Multidimensional Construct in the English Discipline
The differences among disciplines contribute to their unique “conceptual contexts,”
which create disciplinary subcultures that have their own discourse patterns, norms of behavior
and interaction, as well as expectations for producing, acquiring, and using knowledge
(Grossman and Stodolsky, 1995). These disciplinary subcultures create disciplinary contexts that
frame the work and conceptions of disciplinary experts and influence what counts as literacy
(Shanahan and Shanahan, 2012). As the field attempts to develop a clearer understanding of
literacy from various disciplinary perspectives, we aim to contribute to this knowledge base with
insights into the nature of literacy from an English disciplinary perspective. The purpose of this
paper is to articulate English experts’ views of literacy and how these views get operationalized
in their instructional practice. This work can provide a clearer understanding about the way
English experts think about literacy and the role literacy plays in their disciplinary teaching and
students’ disciplinary learning. As such, this work may inform the preparation and development
of secondary teachers and potentially improve secondary students’ literacy learning.
Theoretical Framework and Relevant Literature
McKenna and Robinson (1990) defined content area literacy as “the ability to use reading
and writing for the acquisition of new content in a given discipline” (p.184). Disciplinary
literacy pushes this, emphasizing the development and use of strategic disciplinary approaches to
do the work of experts in the field to gain disciplinary knowledge (Moje, 2007; McConachie,
Hall, Resnick, Ravi, Bill, Bintz, and Taylor, 2006; Shanahan, Shanahan, and Misischia, 2011).
Disciplinary literacy is not only about learning disciplinary content, it is also about learning the
ways in which knowledge of the disciplines is produced through the use of disciplinary specific
habits, practices, processes, and ways of thinking and working. This body of research focuses on
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the importance of disciplinary literate practices with which, for example, mathematicians (Bass,
2006; Moses and Cobb, 2003), historians (Bain, 2005, 2006; Wineburg, 1991, 1998), scientists
(Hand, Wallace, and Yang, 2004; Shanahan et al., 2011), and literary scholars (Lee, 2001; Lee
and Spratley, 2010), approach the work of their disciplines. Lee (2004) argues that disciplinary
literacy “is the primary conduit through which learning in the academic disciplines takes place”
(p.14).
To engage in meaning making in the English discipline, learners must develop critical
prior knowledge and a repertoire of disciplinary literacy skills. These include knowing how
literary texts are structured, typical human motivations and practices, and the use of literary
devices such as symbolism, metaphor, simile, allusions, and satire. Moreover, learners in the
English discipline must be able to detect and interpret literary devices, understand what counts as
justifiable evidence and be able to use it to support their arguments, and be able to suspend their
disbelief and enter the imaginary worlds of fictional people and places (Lee & Sprately, 2010).
These examples demonstrate some of the disciplinary literacy knowledges and skills necessary
for learners to construct meaning in the English discipline; yet, we know much less empirically
about how English disciplinary experts actually view literacy in their field. What, for example,
do they believe counts as the production of knowledge? Given the critical nature of reading,
writing, and the construction of knowledge in English and other disciplines (Bain, 2005, 2006;
Bass, 2006; Hand, Wallace, and Yang, 2004; Lee, 2001; Lee and Spratley, 2010; Moses and
Cobb, 2003; Shanahan et al., 2011; Wineburg, 1991, 1998) and the importance of teaching
students to understand, use, and when appropriate, critique, these disciplinary specific practices
and processes (Moje, 2007; McConachie et al., 2006) it behooves literacy educators to have a
clearer, empirical understanding of what counts as literacy from an English expert’s perspective.
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Methods
This paper is part of a larger, four-stage disciplinary literacy initiative that seeks to (a)
identify disciplinary experts’ conceptions of literacy, (b) identify experts’ disciplinary literacy
practices, (c) develop literacy materials and tools for teaching secondary teacher candidates
enrolled in a disciplinary literacy course, and (d) continue to refine these materials and tools for
instructional use over time. We are in the first wave of the first stage of the initiative, focusing on
English experts’ views of literacy.
Site and Participants
We selected participants based on their disciplinary affiliation and level of expertise. All
of the participants are university English professors. They all teach at the same university and all
have doctoral degrees in the field of English. They have been teaching English between three and
40 years. Their specializations vary: American Literature, British Literature, Creative Writing,
and Critical Theory. They also teach a variety of university courses, including GE composition,
Pacific Literature, Shakespeare, Romantic Literature, and Victorian Literature.
Data Sources and Analytic Procedures
Current data consist of audio recorded interviews from seven English experts. Each
expert completed a 45-minute interview designed to explore his/her views of literacy, texts,
motivation for literacy, and literacy teaching and learning in the English discipline. This semistructured interview consisted of 22 questions with a number of follow-up questions as
appropriate. After the interviews were transcribed, we began analyzing the data.
Our analytic focus was to identify the nature of English disciplinary experts’ views of
literacy. Informed by methods of constant comparative analysis (Corbin and Strauss, 2008;
Strauss and Corbin, 1998), we read and reread the interviews, engaging in extended micro-
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analyses individually and as a research team. We also made theoretical comparisons and wrote
numerous relational statements to explore how the data fit together. Over time, through the
process of open, axial, and selective coding we identified larger themes within and across the
data that helped explain how English experts viewed literacy in their discipline. In practice, this
process was much more iterative than captured here. We settled disagreements through
discussion and continual analysis of the data, which served to refine the developing themes.
Results
The data suggest that to engage in meaning making in ways privileged by experts in the
English discipline readers had to develop a multidimensional relationship with disciplinary texts.
Moreover, English disciplinary experts conceptualized developing this reader-text relationship in
their students through a multidimensional approach to disciplinary literacy instruction.
A Multidimensional Reader-Text Relationship
The following three dimensions helped to explain the English experts’ understanding of
the disciplinary relationship with texts: heritage, cognitive, and edifying. We discuss each of
these dimensions separately to describe and clarify their characteristics, but we believe that they
are much more interconnected in the experts’ views and as manifest in practice. We, therefore,
conceptualize them as three interlocking spheres set within a larger sphere representing the
English discipline (Figure 1). This conception of literacy as a multidimensional reader-text
relationship was positioned by the experts as allowing readers to go beyond the much maligned
“shallow,” “surface” engagement with texts.
The heritage dimension focused on understanding of texts’ historical roots and the ability
to enter the larger disciplinary conversations about the text. Specifically, this means that reader
must be familiar with the contexts in which literary texts are written and understood, have an
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understanding of the cultural and historical influences upon the literary texts, and know and
attend to the legacy of the criticism surrounding the texts. Experts represented the heritage
dimension when they talked about readers needing to “understand the social and political
condition in which the text was created,” know the “background information of the text” and be
able to “look at the historical period out of which a text is born or created or written.” One expert
explained the heritage dimension of the reader-text relationship as knowing “the literary fathers
of the texts” one reads and then being able to use that knowledge to “see how that feeds some of
[the text’s] submerged material.” Knowing the historical legacy of literary texts, English experts
argued, allowed readers to make sense of important disciplinary texts. Without this knowledge
and the accompanying skills associated with the heritage dimension, readers of English texts
would read disciplinary texts in a literary and cultural vacuum, which could not only limit their
relationship with these texts, but by extension their ability to construct disciplinary appropriate
meaning from these texts. In short, failure to attend to the heritage dimension would mean that
readers were not engaging in a critical aspect of English disciplinary literacy.
Figure 1 English Disciplinary Literacy as a Multidimensional Relationship with Texts
Heritage
Dimension
Edifying
Dimension
Cognitive
Dimension
English Discipline
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Reading to construct disciplinary meaning, from an English expert perspective, was not
simply about understanding plot. Experts claimed that to construct knowledge, readers needed
“to process, think, and have a critical response to the text.” This meant, to borrow their language,
interpreting, analyzing, critiquing, and “going beyond the literal meaning” of a text. These
elements of the cognitive dimension focused on the mental aspects of the reader-text
relationship, or the mental work that it took to make sense of English disciplinary texts. As one
expert stated, constructing meaning meant that a reader needed to “engage in the contextual
meaning that is afforded by in-depth analysis and critical thinking.” Another argued that reading
in English demanded “a sharpened critical ability to read analytically, and to read thoughtfully,
and to be able to engage actively.” Active engagement included being able to “understand the
implications of what you read and then effectively analyze and respond to [and] make a
judgment or statement about what you read and then participate in the conversation about it.”
The cognitive dimension involved much of the intellectual work required to construct meaning
of English disciplinary texts. When students could do this well, one expert suggested that it could
create “better thinkers,” or perhaps, as we would argue, better disciplinary thinkers.
The third dimension of the reader-text relationship view of literacy attended to the
improvements that engaging with literary texts could make in a reader’s life. Therefore, we call
this the edifying dimension. Developing a strong, disciplinary relationship with these texts could
literally “create better humans,” and “give you a reason to live.” This relationship could also
make people “rethinking the way they live their lives,” help “you make decisions to live better,”
and help them “think about how they live their lives in ways that are going to make them happier
and to be able to serve others better, [and] to have their relationships go better.” One expert
claimed that literacy in English “is a highly spiritual pursuit.” Another stated that when
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approached in disciplinary ways, English texts could actually “make your life better and make
you make better decisions to live better.” The emphasis on the verb “make” suggests the power
this English expert believed appropriately negotiated texts could have over a reader to “ideally . .
. change their lives.” One English experts believed so much in the edifying quality of the texts in
her discipline, that she stated that even if a reader read disciplinary texts at a surface level he
“would still be better off” than if he never read them.
Taken together, the heritage, cognitive, and edifying dimensions of the reader-text
relationship suggest that the construction of meaning in the English discipline, from an English
experts’ perspective, is a multidimensional process that draws upon various elements valued in
the discipline. Having addressed these briefly, the next section explores how English experts go
about developing this multidimensional reader-text relationship in their students.
Developing the Reader-Text Relationship
In addition to identifying heritage, cognitive and edifying dimensions as part of the
reader-text relationship, experts also identified a multidimensional approach for developing
disciplinary readers’ relationships with texts by focusing on reading, writing, and talking about
the texts. As one expert stated, “I make them read. I make them write. I make them talk.” As
with the three dimensions of the reader-text relationship, reading, writing, and talking should not
be viewed as isolated practices used in service of developing students’ English disciplinary
literacy. The experts understood them as overlapping and dynamic ways to develop students’
literacy skills and practices.
First, reading consisted of careful analysis and interpretation; exploring, for example,
how the historical context in which a “text is born.” Experts stated that they taught their students
“what is literally happening in a text” and then taught “them the implications of what they read”
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in order to “understand the meaning” of the text. Experts felt that they had an obligation to
“encourage and challenge readers to encounter texts they wouldn’t normally seek out on their
own.” Moreover, English experts suggested that when reading texts within the English
discipline, readers must read “analytically” and “thoughtfully” as it is an essential step in
developing this reader-text relationship and then “put it in practice by writing to use those
disciplinary skills as well.”
Although limited in this round of data, experts viewed writing as a knowledge-production
tool that helped students develop a stronger relationship with disciplinary texts and deepen their
understanding of the texts. Referring to writing as a meaning making practice, one expert said
that readers understood disciplinary texts simply “through practicing [writing].” Writing was a
potentially powerful way to develop this reader-text relationship and gave the reader the
opportunity to construct disciplinary knowledge of literary texts. We anticipate writing playing a
more prominent role as a way to develop disciplinary literacy in English as we continue to
collect and analyze data.
Experts also claimed that they talked to their student about texts, taught them how to talk
to each other about texts, and taught them how to “ask the right questions” about texts. By
talking about the texts, experts claim the reader is able to “join a literacy community” and
“contribute to the larger disciplinary conversation about the text under investigation.” Literacy in
the English discipline is not just about reading the words, but about “conversing about ideas.”
Experts stated that disciplinary knowledge not only comes from the disciplinary text itself, but
also the readers’ own interpretations and readings of the text and the conversations they have to
construct meaning.
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Although separate practices, reading, writing, and talking were often discussed in
combination with one another because the experts viewed them as iterative processes in the
development of the reader-text relationship. Explaining how he helped his students engage with
texts, one expert said, “You have to process [the text] and communicate effectively. You have to
read and understand the implications of what you read and then effectively analyze and respond
to, make a judgment . . . about what you just read, and then participate in the conversation about
it.” For the English experts in this study, reading, writing, and talking worked together to
develop their students’ relationship with disciplinary texts.
Implications and Conclusion
Although research on teacher beliefs has been backgrounded in favor of research on the
effectiveness of practice, to improve the development of disciplinary literacy practices, literacy
researchers and educators must know more about the literacy beliefs of disciplinary experts. As a
field, when we have 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.
Moreover, future research could explore the multidimensional nature of literacy in
English. Clearly, literacy is not always and only one thing. By exploring the various dimensions
of literacy in English and other disciplines literacy research can provide a more robust view of
what it means to construct knowledge in English. Specifically, what dimensions are there, which
ones seem most promising for future study, and what is the nature of the relationships among the
various dimensions of the English discipline?
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In terms of practice, English educators can draw from the current paper to highlight the
various ways of developing a robust reader-text relationship for their students. This could spark
conversation about the students’ relationships with the discipline and disciplinary texts.
Furthermore, English educators could use this work as a way to begin or extend the discussion
about the value of a disciplinary relationships with texts and how students might develop them.
As we, as a field, move forward with disciplinary literacy research and practice, Carol
Lee’s words seem to echo. “Disciplinary literacy is the civil right of the twenty-first century,”
she argues. It ‘provides access to learning in all subject matters and, by so doing, opens up an
array of life opportunities for young people” (p.24).
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