Toward a New Model for Disciplinary Literacy Instruction: Reuniting Reading and Writing as Co-equal Literacies with the WAC/WID Balanced Disciplinary Literacy Instruction Model

Christine Kervina

Advisor: E Shelley Reid, PhD, Department of English

Committee Members: Doug Eyman, Michelle LaFrance

Horizon Hall, #4225, https://vccs.zoom.us/j/83302973960?pwd=cjhwU0lZT2RRRVRhVDBGc2pHUUdSQT09
July 24, 2023, 10:00 AM to 01:00 PM

Abstract:

While Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC), Writing in the Disciplines (WID), and writing studies have spent a considerable time and effort on conceptualizing writing as a situated practice and improving writing instruction as curricular reform, scholarship and professional development have paid less attention has been paid to reading as part of disciplinary literacy over the last 50 years. This dissertation explores reading as a part of an integrated practice of disciplinary literacy instruction. It proposes a model to help instructors and faculty development leaders conceptualize aspects of reading literacy and of transparent reading instruction that have been elided in the field’s focus on the writing. 

The WAC/WID Balanced Literacy Instruction Model I introduce in this dissertation envisions reading and writing as literacies that are co-equal and are situated in and bounded by the epistemology of a disciplinary discourse community. It balances the already well-established Elements of Disciplinary Writing Literacy with Elements of Disciplinary Reading Literacy. The Model was grounded in a qualitative study of the practices of four instructors who taught writing-intensive (WI) courses within their disciplines and was influenced by the literature of discourse psychology, literacy studies, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and writing studies. A dialogic exploration of data from participants’ interviews and course documents and from scholarly literature illuminated the five Elements of Disciplinary Reading Literacy that I used to examine faculty practices.

The findings from the study reveal that reading is a complex literacy practice and that faculty literacy instruction varied. While many of the Elements of Writing Literacy were supported with explicit writing instruction, faculty’s integration of cognitive, affective, and metacognitive Elements of Reading Literacy fell along a continuum. Faculty who acknowledged and taught reading as a disciplinary practice seemed to design courses, develop assignments, and employ pedagogies that helped students more fully engage in both the reading and writing work of the discipline. Thus, this dissertation’s findings suggest that the Model could be used by faculty development leaders and WAC programs for professional development that 1) fosters a reclamation of reading as a literacy as important as writing in disciplinary discourse communities and 2) helps faculty develop transparent reading instruction practices to support disciplinary literacy acquisition. The Model provides a tool to reunite and balance reading and writing through a heuristic that honors both reading and writing as co-equal disciplinary literacies.