Our highly technological and increasingly connected world needs more
people capable of creative, innovative, and imaginative thinking that
crosses disciplines. Why, then, are so many educators pressured to fall
back on a standardized, test-driven, single-subject approach to
instruction? How can secondary school educators across the disciplines
build teaching and learning practices that respond to the complex
literacy demands of the twenty-first century?
Heather Lattimer draws on Literacies of Disciplines: An NCTE Policy
Research Brief and stories from high school classrooms to illustrate
how we can learn to recognize the unique languages and literacy
structures represented by various disciplines and then help our students
both navigate within individual disciplines and travel among them.
Lattimer explores instructional practices grounded in real-world
contexts that provide students with opportunities to approximate the
kinds of reading, writing, listening, and speaking that occur in the
world beyond school.
Through a range of rich classroom examples, explanations of theory and
practice in teacher-friendly language, guiding questions to support
discussion and classroom application, and annotated lists of resources,
Lattimer reframes the conversation away from generalized strategy
instruction and toward true disciplinary literacy. This book proves that
"we can find opportunities to create meaningful learning experiences
that concurrently nurture content understanding, literacy skill
development, and twenty-first-century skills."
