When content colleagues integrate literacy_KAMLE

Running head: WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY

When Content Colleagues Integrate Literacy: Benefits of Multiple Literacies Amanda D. Lickteig Kansas State University-Manhattan

Amanda Lickteig is a doctoral student in Curriculum and Instruction at Kansas State University.

Her research interests include interdisciplinary instruction, adolescent literacy, middle-level education, and teacher education. She currently teaches lab sections of Core Teaching skills and a section of Content Area Literacy and Diverse Learners. She previously supervised English, journalism, and speech/theatre methods students and interns in their field experience placements.

She is a former middle school English language arts teacher.

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U. S. Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the copyright law to the owner of copyright.

Unpublished work © 2014 Amanda D. Lickteig

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY Abstract In the past, non-ELA content teachers have cautiously received literacy integration for several reasons; content teachers do not see the connection between literacy and their discipline, they are afraid of implementing new methods, they assume they do not have adequate literacy knowledge, and they feel that it takes time away from their content instruction. However, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), a set of nation-wide K-12 educational standards, call for an integrated model of literacy that emphasize cross-disciplinary literacy expectations. Through a phenomenological theoretical lens, this qualitative study utilized in-depth and documentelicited interviews to examine how one secondary social studies teacher was negotiating his teaching in response to the CCSS literacy mandates. Results of the study found that, although he had largely ignored the CCSS, the participant utilized multiple literacies in his instruction and was meeting most of the eleventh-twelfth grade history/social studies literacy mandates. Further research should be conducted to determine the impact on other content-area teachers, including ELA teachers.

Keywords: Common Core State Standards, interdisciplinary literacy integration, multiple literacies, & qualitative research

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY Introduction Historically, literacy integration into the content areas has been a source of contention for most secondary non-English language arts (ELA) teachers (Lesley, 2005; Readence, Bean, & Baldwin, 2004). While there are several reasons content teachers find literacy education problematic, researchers point to a few dominant concerns. First, content area teachers find the “purposes and methods of content literacy instruction as ‘paradoxical’ (O’Brien, Stewart, & Moje, 1995, p. 446), meaning that teachers often do not see the connection between literacy skills and content information” (Fisher & Ivey, 2005, p. 5). Another reason content-area teachers may be hesitant to incorporate literacy instruction into their teaching is because they may be afraid of trying new methods (Cantrell, Burns, & Callaway, 2009). This feeling of fear is exasperated because content area teachers “often do not believe they have sufficient knowledge, abilities, or preparation for integrating literacy instruction into their content area” (p. 78). In addition, content teachers are resistant to incorporating literacy instruction because they feel teaching reading strategies takes time away from their content instruction (Readence, Bean, & Baldwin, 1989). Rather than feeling that literacy instruction supports their discipline, non-ELA teachers feel that they are instead responsible for teaching additional content. Essentially, content area teachers feel underprepared to incorporate and teach literacy skills in their classrooms.

Now, four years after the publication of the Common Core State Standards, a set of K-12 national educational standards currently implemented by 45 states which promote an integrated model of literacy that focus on “general, cross-disciplinary literacy expectations” (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010b, p. 4), there is a lack of research describing how content area teachers—especially social

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY studies teachers—have responded to the mandate. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore how one high school social studies teacher in the Midwest United States was negotiating his teaching within the literacy dictates of the Common Core State Standards. Research questions informing the study included: 1. How does the participant describe his emotional response to the Common Core State Standards’ mandates of literacy integration into his instruction?

2. How does the participant’s emotional responses to the Common Core State Standards inform his instruction?

Theoretical Framework Phenomenology Phenomenology, which is practiced across disciplines as both a theoretical and methodological framework (Gallagher, 2012; Silverman, 1980), is situated within the constructivist epistemology (Kuper, Reevers, & Levinson, 2008). As a theoretical lens, researchers use phenomenology—a return to ‘the things themselves’ (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, Taubman, 2008; Glendinning, 2004; Crotty, 2004)—to focus on “exploring how individuals make sense of the world and [aim] to provide insightful accounts into the subjective experience of these individuals” (Pinar et al., 2008, p. 405). For the phenomenologist, focusing on these individual experiences is more valuable than exploring how things actually are in reality (Gallagher, 2012; van Manen, 1990). Therefore, “phenomenological research is not interested in the frequency of events or their contiguity to other events; phenomenological research seeks instead the experience and meaning of events” (Pinar, et al., 2008, p. 407). For the phenomenological researcher, understanding an individual’s ‘lived experience’ is the primary goal.

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY Descriptive Phenomenology As phenomenology has evolved into what we know it as today, two primary schools of thought have emerged. The first approach, descriptive phenomenology, is attributed to German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). Considered the founder of the phenomenological movement (Gallagher, 2012), Husserl believed “that experience as perceived by human consciousness has value and should be an object of scientific study” (Lopez & Willis, 2004, p.

727). For Husserl, “phenomenology (literally, the ‘science of appearances’) was a method that attempted to give a description of the way things appear in our conscious experience” (Gallagher, 2012, p. 8). He used the term ‘lifeworld’ (lebenswelt) to describe the way individuals experience their everyday world in which they are already situated (Gallagher, 2012).

However, to study an individual’s lifeworld, Husserl believed that the researcher should “shed all prior personal knowledge to grasp the essential lived experience of those being studied” (Lopez & Willis, 2004, p. 727) and aim to achieve transcendental subjectivity. In order to obtain transcendental subjectivity, Husserl explained that phenomenologists must “suspend [their] natural attitude, to disengage from it” (Gallagher, 2012, p. 43). Gallagher synthesized Husserl’s method of phenomenological reduction (Levering, 2006), which encompasses the first steps in gaining a phenomenological perspective on the natural attitude: If we think of the natural attitude as a collection of beliefs, judgments, opinions, or theories about how things work—these could be scientific theories or folk (common sense) theories—then the first step into the phenomenological attitude is to bracket these beliefs, judgments, opinions, and theories. This means to suspend one’s beliefs and judgments, to put one’s opinions and theories out of effect. To suspend judgment does not mean to doubt, but simply to set the judgment aside […] Husserl refers to this first

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY step as the epoché (a Greek word for suspension of belief—putting things in parentheses or brackets). (p. 43) In order to bracket the natural attitude and “turn [attention] toward the phenomena as they appear” (Gallagher, 2012, p. 47), researchers should employ the Husserlian term ‘eidetic reduction’, which is a method for discerning essences (van Manen, 1984; Gallagher, 2012).

However, while phenomenologists such as Heidegger (1889-1976), Sartre (1905-1980), and Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) agreed with Husserl that eidetic reduction would allow researchers to grasp the essence of the phenomenon, they disagreed with the practice of transcendental reduction (Silverman, 1980).

Interpretive Phenomenology A second approach of phenomenology as a philosophical movement, interpretive (hermeneutical) phenomenology, focuses more on what humans experience rather than what they know and includes modifications by Husserl’s successors (Lopez & Willis, 2004). One scholar who “built on the work of Husserl was Heidegger, a student of Husserl who challenged some of his assumptions about how phenomenology could guide meaningful inquiry” (p. 728). Perhaps the most significant disagreement lies in the descriptive/interpretive dualism; Heidegger posited that any description without interpretation was impossible (Mackey, 2005). Existential phenomenologists such as Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, who dominated the third quarter of the 20th century as the leading names in phenomenology (Silverman, 1980), all believed that Husserl’s “transcendental perspective would create a distance from human experience rather than an orientation toward it” (Silverman, 1980, p. 705). Interpretive phenomenologists instead held the position that exposing subjectivities was beneficial.

Therefore, in contrast to Husserl’s method of bracketing, hermeneutical scholars such as

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY Gadamer (1900-2002) retained that personal knowledge was “both useful and necessary to phenomenological research” (Lopez & Willis, 2004, p. 730). Additionally, Heidegger (1962) “emphasized that it is impossible to rid the mind of the background of understandings that has led the researcher to consider a topic worthy of research in the first place” (Koch, 1995, as cited in Lopez & Willis, 2004, p. 729). He concluded that consciousness could not be separated from the world of human existence and thus researchers could not be separated from their reasons to conduct research. Agreeing with Heidegger that it was impossible for researchers to shed their prior experiences, Gadamer proposes a ‘fusion of horizons’—a form of intersubjectivity that changes based on interactions with others, as is the case between the researcher and the participant (Pinar et al., 2008; Lopez & Willis, 2004). A fusion of horizons allows the researcher to hold onto their ideas, while growing from those of their co-/participant.

Other influential phenomenologists include Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Max van Manen (1942- ). Along with Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, Sartre claimed that humans were constantly faced with choices in which one had to make decisions and act upon them. Sartre termed this situated freedom, which is the “existential reality of human beings from which all meaning arises” (Lopez & Willis, 2004, p. 729) and it stands in direct opposition to the Husserlian concept of radical autonomy, which is where an individual seeks absolute, rational grounds. One of Merleau-Ponty’s contributions to the field includes his book, Phenomenology of Perception (1945), which “stressed the vitality of human experience and particularly our embodied existences as lived” (Merleau-Ponty, 1954, as cited in Silverman, 1980, p. 707). In his text, Merleau-Ponty worked toward exploring our perceptions of the world in which we base our truths. A prominent contemporary phenomenologist, Canadian Max van Manen is credited with his four ‘procedural activities’ meant to guide phenomenological research. First, the

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY phenomenological investigator “chooses a phenomenon which interests him or her in a serious way and simultaneously pulls him or her into the world” (Pinar et al., 2008, p. 408). Similar to Heidegger’s claim that a researcher cannot rid themselves of the insights that led to their selection of a topic, van Manen encourages investigators to embrace their positions and select a topic of interest. Second, the researcher “investigates the identified phenomenon as it is lived, not merely as it is theorized” (p. 408). This involves researchers descending to the “swampy lowlands” (Schön, 1983, p. 43) and engaging in the experience as lived by their participant.

Next, the phenomenological researcher “reflects upon the essential themes or structures which characterize the phenomenon” (Pinar et al., 2008, p. 408). During this process, a researcher may ask questions such as: What aspects or qualities make a phenomenon what it is? and Does the theme belong to the phenomenon essentially or incidentally? (van Manen, 1990). Finally, “the researcher describes the phenomenon via the art of writing” (Pinar et al., 2008, p. 408), frequently in a narrative form. While not every phenomenological theorist uses these steps, they have proved helpful for those who wish to understand curriculum as a phenomenological text (Pinar et al., 2008).

Application to Study Phenomenological research, which is “expressly interested in people’s experiences and particularly the experiences of those people who are usually ignored” (Levering, 2006, p. 457), was appropriate as a theoretical framework for this study because it allowed me, the researcher, to explore the experiences of a group of teachers who have been left out of the curricular standards dialogue. Through the lens of phenomenology, I was able to explore the participant’s lived experiences of integrating literacy into his high school social studies curriculum and his experience with the Common Core State Standards. Phenomenology guided my understanding

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY of this social studies teacher’s lifeworld, with the aim of illustrating how literacy can be integrated into the content areas. Furthermore, by utilizing an interpretive phenomenological lens, I was able to retain and acknowledge my background as a former secondary ELA educator and interact as a colleague with my participant.

Literacy Although the term literacy may appear straightforward on the surface, it is an ambiguous word that implies a wide range of abilities (Kaestle, Damon-Moore, Stedman, Tinsley, & Trollinger, Jr., 1991) and can have a different meaning or significance depending on where in the world you are. While the most common definition of literacy refers to the functional skills of reading and writing, Pattison (1982) posited that “literacy is something bigger and better than mechanical skill in reading and writing” (p. x). Literacy in the twenty-first century United States is actually an interconnected and multi-faceted set of practices that must be varied based on the context of the participants and surroundings. According to a 2011 NCTE policy research brief: The plurality of literacy extends beyond the print-only world of reading and writing to new and developing technologies, along with visual, audio, gestural, spatial, or multimodal discourses. It is much more accurate, then, to adopt a perspective of plurality, to focus on literacies, recognizing the multiple values and meanings along with the ways literacies are inflected by different contexts. (p. 1) This plurality, and the fact that what it means to be literate is always changing and evolving based on our society (Pattison, 1982), could be reasons why there is dissention over the definition of literacy. Among literacy’s many facets are adolescent literacy, content area literacy, disciplinary literacy, visual literacy, critical literacy, and cultural literacy—forms of

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY literacy that are specific to various contexts, issues, and audiences. However, while these forms of literacy are discussed here, it should be strongly noted that this list is far from encompassing.

Adolescent Literacy Partially attributed to the perceived deficiencies of United States adolescents’ literacy skills on tests such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), along with the transition into the 21st century, adolescent literacy has recently become a more prominent topic in both professional and political circles (Allington, 2007). According to a revised 2012 position statement developed by the International Reading Association (IRA), adolescent literacy in the 21st century is understood as the ability of middle and high school learners to “read, write, understand and interpret, and discuss multiple texts across multiple contents” (p. 2). Unlike outdated definitions of literacy, adolescent literacy recognizes that adolescents in today’s society are required to do more than simply read and write. The addend adolescent to the term literacy acknowledges that “literacies are multiple and vary according to the social contexts in which they are enacted” (Alvermann, 2007, p. 23). This is an important acknowledgement because youth today are actually considered multiliterate as they navigate the varied literacy needs of their world. Currently, adolescent students “have many opportunities to work with print and nonprint materials to make meaning and build relationships in their academic and social worlds” (International Reading Association, 2012, p. 2). While many educators are familiar with most academic needs of their students, it is important to expand our familiarity to the social literacies of students who play video games, write text messages and blogs, use the Internet to look up information instantly, and read on a variety of platforms and forums. A literacy definition for this age of students should encompass a range of situations and refer to students’ ability to apply knowledge across

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY content areas as well as their capacity to analyze and interpret a variety of texts. Literacy expectations and demands on adolescents continue to expand as students are expected to apply strategies across platforms. Therefore, due to the diverse range of situations in which adolescent students must employ literacy skills, and because “literacy learning is recursive and requires continuing development and practice” (National Council for Teachers of English, 2007, p. 2), it is important for teachers in all subject areas to be teachers of literacy.

Content Area Literacy In this section, the phrases content area literacy, content literacy, and content reading are used interchangeably. Content literacy, as defined by Vacca and Vacca (2005), is “the ability to use reading, writing, talking, listening, and viewing processes to learn subject matter across the curriculum” (p. xvii). Essentially, competency in content literacy requires students to combine functional literacy skills with the addition of oral, auditory, and visual abilities to meet the demands of specific disciplinary content. However, the teaching and development of these skills is not a recent phenomenon. William S. Gray, former dean of the College of Education at the University of Chicago, is attributed with the first formal perspective on the relationship between reading and content area subjects (Olson & Dishner, 2004). In the mid-1920s, Gray determined that reading was an essential skill in every subject area and that student progress and improvement in that content class depended largely on the students’ abilities to read and comprehend the material in that discipline (Gray, 1925). Content reading then grew in prominence in the 1970s with Hal Herber’s seminal textbook, Teaching Reading in the Content Areas (1970), and the cognitive revolution in psychology (Moje, Young, Readence, & Moore, 2000). However, due to the weighty encumbrance of the slogan, “every teacher a teacher of reading,” a phrase coined by Gray in 1937, many content area teachers turned away from reading

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY instruction in their subjects because they preferred to be seen as disciplinary teachers, rather than reading teachers (Moje, Young, Readence, & Moore, 2000). Still today, English language arts teachers often bear the responsibility of students’ literacy “due to the close connection between language skills and literacy development” (Content area literacy standards: Part 2, 2005, p. 16).

However, literacy instruction is not the responsibility of the English teacher alone. In fact, Vacca and Vacca (2005) posit that all teachers have a crucial role in helping students with their comprehension and response to information and ideas in a text. Additionally, according to a 2007 policy research brief produced by the National Council of Teachers of English: Each academic content area poses its own literacy challenges in terms of vocabulary, concepts, and topics. Accordingly, adolescents in secondary school classes need explicit instruction in the literacies of each discipline as well as the actual content so they can become successful readers and writers in all subject areas. (p. 2) Due to the fact that each class in which secondary students enroll has specialized, content-area terminology, as well as materials and conversations specific to the topic, non-ELA teachers are called upon to instruct students in the literacy needs of their subject. Therefore, a definition of literacy must be conceptualized within the content area setting to address the demands of specific classes.

Disciplinary Literacy Unlike content area literacy, which focuses more on understanding how to apply general strategies across the contents, disciplinary literacy refers more to the academic disciplines’ different discourse conventions and teaches students to think like disciplinary experts (Warren, 2012). Essentially, according to Shanahan & Shanahan (2012),

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY The difference is that content literacy emphasizes techniques that a novice might use to make sense of a disciplinary text (such as how to study a history book for an examination), whereas disciplinary literacy emphasizes the unique tools that the experts in a discipline use to engage in the work of that discipline. (p. 8) Therefore, disciplinary literacy refers to the specific methods of communicating and interacting with information across academic fields and it encourages students to use the same approaches as a disciplinary expert when encountering information (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008).

Acknowledging that there are different approaches and methods for examining a text is important because, according to the disciplinary literacy framework, “each discipline has its own mode(s) of engaging with and interpreting texts as well as generating knowledge” (Park, 2013, p.

361). For example, while a scientist may read data to discover if results of an experiment are significant or if they could be reproduced, a historian would read a primary document to determine its purpose of production, its audience, and how it could relate to other documents (Stahl & Shanahan, 2004).

However, it should be noted that disciplinary literacy learning is often considered a form of critical literacy (Lee, 2007; Bain, 2006) because “it builds an understanding of how knowledge is produced in the disciplines, rather than just building knowledge in the disciplines” (Moje, 2008, p. 97). Students engaging in disciplinary literacy begin to understand and utilize the common practices of generating and transmitting knowledge in the disciplines. By learning the discourses and practices of a specific discipline, students become aware of “what the privileged discourses are, when and why such discourses are useful, and how these discourses and practices can be valued” (Moje, 2008, pp. 100-101). Understanding how knowledge is produced, gained, and transmitted within a discipline reveals the significance of these practices.

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY Critical Literacy As just mentioned, another key component of literacy is critical literacy. Critical literacy stems from Paulo Freire’s (1970) work with marginalized peasant communities in Brazil and refers to the use of “technologies of print and other media of communication to analyze, critique, and transform the norms, rule systems, and practices governing the social fields of everyday life” (Luke, 2012, p. 5). Essentially, critical literacy examines the dominant ideologies and systems presented in texts and media in order to achieve social justice and empowerment in disenfranchised communities. Similar to Luke (2012), Lewison, Seely Flint, and Van Sluys (2002) synthesized numerous other definitions of critical literacy from literacy educators, theorists, and linguists and identified four related components: (a) disrupting the commonplace, (b) interrogating multiple viewpoints, (c) focusing on sociopolitical issues, and (d) taking action and promoting social justice. Analogous to the multifacetedness of literacy, critical literacy also has multiple elements. When applied to curriculum, critical literacy “melds social, political, and cultural debate and discussion with the analysis of how texts and discourses work, where, with what consequences, and in whose interests” (Luke, 2012, p. 5). Critical literacy is an approach that provides a framework for learners, in the case of schooling, to become cognizant of the metanarrative communicated in texts; it allows students to become aware of messages of privilege within texts and to begin to understand the world in transformative ways (Hall & Piazza, 2010).

Cultural Literacy Cultural literacy is the mutual discourse that a group people have about their culture; it is a common body of cultural knowledge that allows members of a community to “participate in and communicate through a shared culture” (D’Aniello, 1989, p. 370). Essentially, cultural

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY literacy requires participants to be knowledgeable about a public body of contextual knowledge that is shared by other members of the same community, such as a nation. However, cultural literacy does not require specialized content knowledge or a thorough understanding of specific events. According to E. D. Hirsch, cultural literacy “lies above the everyday levels of knowledge that everyone possesses and below the expert level known only to specialists” (1987, p. 19). Rather, it is the considered the middle ground of knowledge obtained by the average, informed individual.

Furthermore, cultural literacy is more than having fact-based knowledge about a culture’s history. According to Clark and Flores (2007), “cultural literacy is vast; it includes knowledge one acquires through apprenticeship and everyday living” (p. 10). Therefore, cultural literacy necessitates an understanding of the nuances of daily interactions. This form of literacy requires that members draw on their personal funds of knowledge, which are “approaches [that] focus on the processes of everyday life in the form of daily activities as a frame of reference” (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005, p. 170). Therefore, those who are culturally literate can be viewed as having a grasp on a range of cultural, historical, and everyday topics, as well as functional literacy skills, which allows the participant to engage in a shared discourse.

Methods Selection For this study, I utilized purposeful, convenience sampling to choose a participant.

Selection of potential participants included five criteria. First, the participant chosen needed to be an experienced social studies teacher. Due to my interest in exploring the literacy mandates of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), I wanted to select a subject matter that was specifically included in the subsidiary standards provided by the Common Core. Second, the

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY participant needed to be currently teaching in a high school setting. Elementary teachers already frequently use integration of the contents and the middle school model is structured so that teachers have time in their schedules to collaborate and plan interdisciplinary units (Combs & White, 2000). However, in most high schools, there is subject area departmentalization where “teachers are physically segregated by department, making it unlikely that they will have the informal interactions that can lead to more formal planning” (Combs & White, 2000, p. 282). It was important to focus on high school to highlight a level where time spent in collaboration and interdisciplinary planning are low. Third, it was important for the teacher to be considered a teacher leader. Teacher leaders are individuals who “understand the three dimensions of learning in schools: student learning, the learning of colleagues, and learning of their own” (Lambert, 2003, p. 33). Additionally, teacher leaders are often involved with professional networks outside the school setting, such as a university program or educational initiative, and frequently take on committee roles within the school framework (Lambert, 2003). Fourth, the participant needed to be located within a thirty-mile radius of the research university where the study took place.

Finally, the participant chosen needed to have the time to participate in the study, which included an initial survey, multiple interviews, conversations in person and through email, observations of lessons, and member checks of the data.

Participant Dylan Scott (pseudonym), the participant chosen for the study, met all of the above criteria. Mr. Scott, a former counselor and psychology major, is currently in his nineteenth year in education and teaches advanced placement psychology, advanced placement European history, and multiple sections of H.E.L.P.—a tutorial class which focuses on study skills.

Although Dylan previously taught at the middle level, he has taught high school for the last

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY fifteen years and his experience spans multiple states across the country. The high school in which Dylan works is a semi-rural 4A school in the Midwest United States, fewer than seventeen miles from the research university. The estimated enrollment of the high school for the 20132014 school year is 438 students; 31% of students receive free or reduced lunches and 90% of the high school population is White. Scores on the 2013 spring state assessments revealed that all schools within the district have made adequate yearly progress (AYP) for the past nine years.

Mr. Scott is considered a teacher-leader in his building for multiple reasons: he gave up his planning periods four days a week to teach H.E.L.P., he has been a mentor to approximately six teachers from various content areas in his thirteen years at this school, he is currently seeking summer professional development opportunities through the National Endowment for the Humanities, and he serves on several school-wide committees. Dylan agreed to participate in this study even though he is currently taking classes towards his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction.

Data Collection The data collection methods for this study included an initial survey, in-depth and document elicitation participant interviews, classroom observations, researcher’s field notes, and analysis of documents such as the curricular materials, national, state, and district resources, teacher lesson plans, and student handouts. Each observation lasted approximately ninety minutes and each interview lasted approximately sixty minutes. Multiple forms of data collection were key in studying the phenomenon and achieving methodological triangulation (Guion, Diehl, & McDonald, 2011). The study was conducted over a period of approximately five months.

Approach to Data Analysis

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY I directed my analysis efforts on the two audio recordings of the in-depth and documentelicitation interviews, which were transcribed and coded using in vivo and inductive coding. In vivo coding is a form of data analysis where a label is assigned to a section of interview transcript. The aim of creating an in vivo code “is to ensure that concepts stay as close as possible to research participants’ own words or use their own terms because they capture a key element of what is being described” (King, 2008, p. 472). This goal of capturing the participant’s exact words aligned perfectly with my desire to understand Dylan’s experiences with literacy integration of the Common Core mandates, as he perceives them. However, inductive coding was also utilized in analyzing the transcripts. Inductive codes are developed by the researcher by thoroughly examining the data. One underlying assumption of this particular approach acknowledges that “the findings are shaped by the assumptions and experiences of the researchers conducting the research and carrying out the data analyses” (Thomas, 2006, p. 240).

Consistent with the interpretive phenomenology framework, inductive coding acknowledges that the researcher cannot suspend their previous knowledge; instead, the researcher is selective and makes decisions about what is more and less important in the data. Similar to in vivo coding, the outcome of inductive approach to data analysis is “the development of categories into a model or framework that summarizes the raw data and conveys key themes and processes” (Thomas, 2006, p. 240). Therefore, using the descriptive codes pulled from the interview transcripts, I next formed categories by grouping related codes.

With my coding scheme, I reread the interview transcripts. In this round of analysis, I focused on forming categories by grouping related codes. After grouping all the categories, I identified three themes: impact on non-English language arts teachers, strategies for reading and understanding texts, and interdisciplinary collaboration. These themes revealed not only how

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY Dylan perceived the Common Core State Standards, but also how he was implementing the literacy mandates in his instruction. Essentially, the themes illustrate how Mr. Scott was negotiating his teaching since the implementation of the CCSS. Findings Impact on Non-English Language Arts Teachers The Common Core State Standards, compiled by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers (2010c), is a set of nation-wide academic standards in mathematics and English language arts (ELA) and literacy.

Included in the ELA section of the standards is a subsidiary document for literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects at the secondary level (grades six through twelve). Regardless that standards for literacy implementation in non-ELA contents are addressed in this document, Mr. Scott felt that his instruction was unaffected by the implementation of the standards and that his teaching was actually driven more by state standards.

Unaffected by implementation.

As a veteran teacher who has had tremendous involvement in the development of policies across his district, and who continues to pursue formal learning himself, it surprised me to learn that Mr. Scott was largely unfamiliar with the CCSS’s literacy in history/social studies document. When presented with a printed copy of eleventh and twelfth grade standards during our first interview, Dylan read through each standard closely, as if seeing them for the first time in months. In fact, he admitted to mostly ignoring the Common Core’s policies as well as how his district planned to implement the new standards.

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY Dylan (Interview 1): We were talking in our department about the Common Core and looking at the consequences, and I pay about as little attention to it as I can, you know, because I teach electives. Not that that makes you exempt from it, but it allows you to kind of drift off into your own little world.

Dylan (Interview 1): It sounds horrible to say, but for me personally, [the CCSS] didn’t even really impact me one way or another. It really didn’t. And the shame of it is that social studies isn’t tested, you know?

Although Dylan teaches multiple advanced placement classes, his courses are also considered electives at the high school level, and because his classes were not tested, Dylan and his department were left to determine their own implementation plan. However, according to Dylan, the heavy focus on implementing the standards in the tested math and language arts classes actually reduced the amount of attention on executing the CCSS in the elective departments, consequently providing social studies teachers more freedom in their instruction.

Dylan (Interview 1): Of course, it gives us a sense of autonomy that we can do as we damn well please, you know?

Already feeling the pressure from parents and students to teach to the Educational Testing Service (ETS) advanced placement tests, Dylan viewed being excluded in the curriculum conversation in his building as relief from the burden of piles of work and lack of preparation time math and English teachers had to prepare for the CCSS (Interview 1). Instead of feeling removed from the curricular changes concurrent with the Common Core, Dylan and his content colleagues experienced a sense of independence. However, although Dylan’s response may sound slightly rebellious towards his school’s demanding teaching expectations, repeated

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY observations of Mr. Scott’s instruction showed that doing “as we damn well please” actually included rigorous, literacy-integrated content instruction and discussion.

Significance of state standards.

Adopted almost exactly two and a half years after their state’s adoption of the CCSS, the newly written state history, government, and social studies standards were intended simply as a guide for instruction and not as a state-mandated curriculum; they were designed to lead teachers in the implementation of best practices in history, government, and social studies content.

Decisions about how and when content is taught was left to the local districts in the state. It was these standards, rather than the CCSS on literacy in history/social studies, that Dylan and his content colleagues centered their instruction and departmental meetings. When presented with a hard copy of the state standards during our second interview, Dylan immediately recognized the document and began explaining his experience with the benchmarks.

Dylan (Interview 2): We have been talking about [the state standards document] more and more—I mean, every time we have a social studies meeting now, this [document] drives what we talk about. It really does.

Dylan’s demeanor when talking about the state standards versus the CCSS also revealed a much higher level of familiarity and experience. Instead of holding the set of standards closely as he carefully and slowly read each standard, as he did with the CCSS, Dylan quickly recited standards from memory as he flipped through the pages of the state standards document. The differences in levels of cognizance was especially significant since the CCSS had been implemented for more than three years and the new state standards had only been published for less than a year at the time of our interview. Regardless of the fact that Mr. Scott was mostly

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY inexperienced with the CCSS, he was still addressing many of the literacy mandates outlined in the eleventh through twelfth grade history/social studies document.

Strategies for Reading and Understanding Texts Without much knowledge of or experience with the CCSS, Dylan Scott was still addressing most of the literacy in history/social studies standards in his advanced placement classes. So what was he doing? Observations of Mr. Scott’s instruction revealed that he spent considerable class time supporting students’ learning by providing them with strategies for reading and understanding the texts used in his classes, making connections between topics and courses, and incorporating writing as a tool for understanding and explaining texts.

Critical thinking and interpretation.

A major emphasis in Mr. Scott’s classes (and others in his department) involved critical thinking and interpretation of multiple text forms—ranging from primary documents to historical novels to Impressionist artwork and musicals.

Dylan (Interview 2): We discuss [reading] in the department a lot—about how we’re interpreting things and trying to figure out meaning. [Critical reading] has been one of our social studies professional learning goals—to actually interpret what you’re reading—because that’s been one of the big points in language arts. Are they reading critically? Are they reading to understand the nuances of what they’re reading?

Along with his content colleagues, Mr. Scott understood that there was more to literacy than the functional abilities of reading and writing—and even beyond reading and comprehending (Interview 1). Rather, Dylan believed that in order for his students to leave his classroom as literate individuals, they needed to engage analytically with the various texts they encountered, so he devoted class time to exploring ways of reading for deeper meaning with his students.

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY One of the strategies Dylan used to teach students to think critically and analytically about a text was to conduct an analysis of the author. Spurred by a graduate course he took in fulfillment of his PhD coursework, Dylan discovered that he understood his course readings at a deeper level when he took the time to research the author first. Seeing the applicability of the strategy with the texts that he used in his history classes, Mr. Scott began asking his high school students to perform the same research task.

Dylan (Interview 2): [Students] had to explain what biases and what prejudices the author of the document brought into the document.

Dylan (Interview 2): Once you get into [a text], analyzing what [authors] say, what they do, or where they’re going is pretty darn important.

Dylan incorporated this practice frequently and effortlessly in his classes. During one observation of Mr. Scott’s classes, students were struggling with a text by nineteenth-century socialist writer and political activist Flora Tristan. Yet, because the class had explored Tristan’s background before reading, they were able to re-read and examine the difficult excerpt from the perspective of a French feminist woman in the 1840s. This practice gave the students an understanding of how the text fit into the events surrounding its publication and allowed the students to situate themselves as readers.

However, often students have to read between the lines to understand a text’s meaning and significance. That is why critical reading and interpretation are taught as interconnected concepts in Dylan’s classes.

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY Dylan (Interview 1): More than just purely reading something and seeing the words on the paper or hearing something and writing it down, you need to interpret what you’re thinking.

Dylan (Interview 2): To be a critical reader, you have to interpret—to pick up on bias.

To pick up on innuendo. To understand the audience of the writer at the time. And to even go back and understand the environment that the writer was in.

To illustrate the significance of milieu in a text, Dylan—a natural storyteller—frequently poses scenarios and examples to help his students understand why reading from the perspective of someone from that time period can help their understanding of a text. In one observation, Mr. Scott asked his students why a wealthy man in the 1800s would write an opinion piece stating that people in the mines and factories did not need worker’s rights. After some discussion, students were able to make cause and effect associations to determine that a wealthy man would not want to be responsible for paying workers more or losing work time to train them; for a wealthy individual who had everything he needed, things were fine the way they were.

Making connections.

Mr. Scott not only uses critical reading and interpretation strategies with traditional content-driven texts but also with art and music, “texts” which serve as bridges connecting time periods, historical figures, and major events. As a lover of art, Mr. Scott takes his classes on a field trip to a museum two hours away from the school each spring semester, after using prints of classics (which cover the walls of his classroom) to make associations between concepts taught in his classes throughout the year.

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY

Figure 1: Artwork on east wall of classroom

Figure 2: Pictures of past field trip groups

Dylan explains that he likes using visuals because he can link concepts together and then start making connections between people, places, and events.

Dylan (Interview 1): We try to interconnect things. We’ll look at a piece of artwork or watch a musical like Candide, which is Voltaire I think … and then it doesn’t take long before [students] start saying, “Well, you know, they’re doing this at a time when…” and then they apply [the text] towards society, and politics, and economics, and religion. And to me, that’s the type of literacy I’m trying to develop in my classes.

Crediting Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956) and higher order thinking skills, Mr. Scott believes that creating connections between concepts learned across the disciplines helps solidify the knowledge for the students and allows them to “talk” a topic—merging cultural and disciplinary literacy. Mr. Scott also believes that this allows him to “narrow” his curriculum; rather than teach as many concepts as possible before the end of the year, he focuses his instruction on what

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY he calls the important events. Dylan lingers, then, on these bigger events and pulls in multiple texts to illustrate perspective and reveal bias.

Dylan (Interview 2): I’ve narrowed what’s important. And I may linger on bigger themes. Take this European History class. Last week we were reading excerpts from nineteenth century philosophers, and excerpts from Karl Marx, and excerpts from Thomas Malthus and then we look at Impressionist paintings and tying them all together to the 1870s and the 1880s.

By focusing on a short time period in European history, Mr. Scott is able to draw from multiple texts written by authors with a range of backgrounds as well as artwork that was created during that time. Students then engage in discussions about why the author or artist depicted the world the way they did in their texts.

Writing.

Mr. Scott also incorporates frequent writing tasks to help students understand what they have read and to articulate a response. In fact, students compose so frequently in Mr. Scott’s class that writing becomes the thread that weaves together their critical reading and the connections made between concepts discussed in class.

Dylan (Interview 1): And literacy, I think, is reflected strongly in how much they write and reflect … We’re studying absolutionist leaders and, I keep telling [students], I want you to be able to connect that to what’s going on in D.C. now. Literacy is not only the ability to read and comprehend, but is actually to be a little bit analytical with [the text].

Dylan (Interview 1): We write constantly. Matter of fact, we joke with the English teachers that we write a lot more than they do. Of course, we’re writing for content.

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY Although Mr. Scott supports his English department’s writing goals of re-writing through revision and editing, he uses writing (mostly essays) to help students communicate their critical and analytical thinking about the concepts learned in class and then to connect those topics to other parts of history and culture.

Interdisciplinary Collaboration During our first interview, Mr. Scott revealed his belief that teaching students how to become critical readers was an essential interdisciplinary instructional strategy. Therefore, the critical reading and interpretation of texts, connections between topics, and writing practices that Dylan employs in his classes serve as a foundation for the collaboration and interdisciplinary instruction that occurs between Mr. Scott’s history courses and the other contents in the building—especially language arts. The primary ways Dylan demonstrates interdisciplinary instruction is through incorporating increased amounts of writing and rigorous texts as well as connecting topics covered in other content classes with background of the historical period.

Increased literacy integration.

Due to the focus of Dylan’s Professional Learning Community (PLC) group, the social studies department has made a concerted effort at increasing the amount of writing, reading, and interpretation in their classes during the 2013-2014 academic year. Admitting that literacy integration into non-ELA subjects is one of the more important things content teachers can do (Interview 1), Mr. Scott has been active in collaborating with his language arts department. At the evaluation level, Dylan made a huge shift in writing his assessments, which resulted in the tests and quizzes being composed of approximately 75% writing and interpretation-based questions and only 25% multiple choice, versus the opposite numbers the previous year.

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY In the past few years, in addition to the amount of writing and the expectation to write well, Mr. Scott has increased the amount of outside reading in his classes.

Dylan (Interview 1): To do some more [higher-level] thinking and pushing their reading skills even more, we’ve gotten further and further away from textbook reading and more and more content-specific and in-depth … The textbooks haven’t had any major alteration in the way they’ve been written in forever. We use them more for an outline source and then provide other external readings to it.

Utilizing supplemental texts with the outline of content provided in the textbook has allowed Dylan to select the materials appropriate for his students’ levels and interests and provide differentiated literacy and discipline learning. One of the most frequent forms of supplemental texts Mr. Scott incorporates into his classes is primary documents. Although the social studies department already used primary documents in their classes, Dylan and other history teachers began to adjust the way they examined the texts after a collaborative meeting with the language arts teachers. During that meeting, the language arts teachers asked for help focusing on the interpretation and analysis of primary documents, rather than just comprehension of the texts (Interview 1). Using primary documents as a major vehicle for increasing the amount of literacy integration in their courses, Dylan and his content colleagues were able to not only address their state content standards and the Common Core literacy mandates but were also creating a bridge between contents. Dylan and the other social studies teachers accomplished this by selecting texts to use with the students from the same time period that other departments, language arts especially, were discussing historical movements and individuals. For example, during one observation of Mr. Scott’s AP European History class, Dylan had the students read different excerpts of a Thomas Hobbes text. Due to the difficulty of the passages included, even his

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY advanced placement students needed support reading the texts. Therefore, Dylan built in some of the close reading, content clues, and vocabulary strategies utilized in the language arts classes at his school (in addition to his routine of researching information about the author beforehand) to help students move beyond comprehension of the text toward an evaluation mindset.

Linking contents.

Many aspects of interdisciplinary literacy instruction come easily to Mr. Scott, which is attributed both to his belief that literacy is used in all contents regardless of the prescribed standards and his previous experience co-teaching with a middle school language arts teacher when he began his career in Kentucky. It was in his co-teaching role that Dylan first began pairing fiction and non-fiction texts read in students’ language arts classes with the historical periods taught in his social studies classroom.

Dylan (Interview 1): When we taught Colonialism, they read The Scarlet Letter … When we taught the Civil War, they read The Red Badge of Courage … We linked novels with the historical era.

As a middle school teacher, Dylan Scott learned that pairing literature with historical content not only made the students’ learning relevant, but it helped reinforce the information taught and made their learning more meaningful. In fact, Dylan found the practice so beneficial that he has continued the interdisciplinary tactic in his current position at the high school level.

Dylan (Interview 1): We do try to connect with [the ELA teachers] so it’s a crosscurricular thing. So, while they’re reading To Kill a Mockingbird and explaining to the kids what everything means and how to interpret [symbolism], we are actually reading things in here that falls into their classes; we try and match the contents.

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY In this form of interdisciplinary instruction, while the English teachers teach students about the literary aspects of the story (and providing brief insight into the historical circumstances), Mr. Scott aligns his curriculum to provide the historical scaffolding students need to understand the nuances and milieu of the literature. However, Dylan does not only make connections to texts read in the students’ ELA classes, though; he also brings literature into his classes.

Dylan (Interview 1): We were reading excerpts from a number of Dickens’s stories to show the kids how he viewed early 1800s- mid 1800s England and what it was really like.

By incorporating literature into his social studies instruction, Dylan is not only illustrating that literature can be used as a tool for learning about real events and people, but also that students should draw on a variety of sources when recreating a picture of events from the past. However, it is important to note that Dylan recognizes that this type of interdisciplinary instruction does not just happen, but requires purposeful planning.

Dylan (Interview 2): I sat with the English teachers and said, “Where are you in senior English?” They were just now doing a whole thing on metaphor, similes, irony, and all this kind of stuff, so I tried to draw that in.

To be truly effective at interdisciplinary instruction at any level, teachers need time to sit together and simply explain the scope and sequence of their curriculum so that other teachers can make efforts to align curricula. In our conversations, Dylan also expressed his belief that “teachers will do what’s important, if they know it’s important” (Interview 1), including interdisciplinary literacy instruction. However, Mr. Scott explained that the teachers in his high school are not currently allotted enough time to work and collaborate.

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY Dylan (Interview 1): [Teachers need] days and days of freedom to work, develop, and plan—to get prepared to make changes.

Dylan (Interview 2): We don’t get to do enough [interdisciplinary collaboration], and boy we would love to!

The bottom line is that teachers need time within the school day to collaborate and plan in order to provide students with interdisciplinary instruction. While many teachers already see the benefits of cross-curricular planning, the lack of time offered for teachers to work prohibits them from making literacy integration a reality.

Discussion Dylan readily admits to not having a significant role in the implementation of the Common Core literacy mandates in his department (“for me personally, it didn’t even really impact me one way or another,” Interview 1). However, several observations of his lessons, conversations with him about his instruction, reviewing student assignments, and a “self-check” of the literacy in history/social studies CCSS document revealed that he was incorporating literacy skills and instruction alongside his disciplinary instruction. From this information, two questions emerge for further discussion: “What does it mean that Dylan addresses may of the standards while largely ignoring the mandates?” and “How do multiple literacies help Dylan address the Common Core literacy standards?”.

Addressing the Common Core During our first interview, I asked Mr. Scott to mark the specific standards on the eleventh and twelfth grade history/social studies CCSS document that he incorporated into his instruction. Over the course of a few minutes, Dylan checked all standards under the “key ideas

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY and details” strand, all standards under the “craft and structure” strand, and all standards on the “integration of knowledge and ideas” strand—only leaving the single standard under “range of reading and level of text complexity” unmarked (because he was not familiar with the titles in the text complexity band). Does that mean that all non-ELA teachers can largely ignore the CCSS’s literacy mandates and still meet the rigorous expectations? The short answer is no. I believe Dylan is able to remove himself from the CCSS discussion but still address nearly all the mandates because he utilizes best practices that are inherent in interdisciplinary literacy integration. While Mr. Scott employs general best practices, such as having a solid understanding of his content and students, addressing various learning styles, utilizing cooperative learning strategies, and others, he also recognizes that incorporating multiple literacies into his social studies strengthens content learning.

Multiple Literacies As educators, especially, we must acknowledge that there are a plurality of literacy definitions; literacy encompasses much more than the functional skills of reading and writing.

While many other forms of literacy exist, Dylan demonstrated that he consistently called upon at least five types of literacy in his advanced placement history classes during the five months of the study: adolescent literacy, content area literacy, disciplinary literacy, critical literacy, and cultural literacy.

Evidence of incorporating adolescent literacy skills into his classroom was visible during my time observing and speaking with Mr. Scott. Dylan’s acknowledgement of the multiliterate needs of the high school learners in his classroom allowed him to incorporate more opportunities for interpretation and discussion of “multiple texts across multiple contents” (International Reading Association, 2012, p. 2). Not only did Dylan utilize primary documents and passages

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY from the textbook, practices common to many social studies classrooms, but he also included short stories from Dickens and excerpts of various other texts to illustrate multiple perspectives from the interval of time under discussion. Dylan’s views on writing also reflect an understanding that literacy varies “according to social contexts in which they are enacted” (Alvermann, 2007, p. 23). While he indicated that students write more essays in his classes than they do in their English classes, Mr. Scott acknowledges that they are writing solely for content in his essays, while ELA teachers spend time teaching the craft of formal language, response to literature, and so on.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Scott also drew on content area literacy skills during my time in his class as a foundation to help students read history and demonstrate a grasp of the information.

According to Shanahan and Shanahan (2012), the “largely agreed-upon purpose of content area reading approaches is to provide students with a collection of generic reading strategies and study skills that will boost learning” (p. 12). These approaches can include previewing a text’s features, promoting predicting, questioning, and summary skills, and the use of study devices (note-taking, graphic organizers, etc.). For each instructional unit, Mr. Scott would provide his students with guided notes that served as both a tangible outline of the content and as manual for identifying key ideas and details. Small-group and whole-class discussions, interspersed between reading, also helped students develop higher-level questions and create accurate summaries of the text.

Once his class had an understanding of the texts read, Mr. Scott steered students a step further by helping them read and think like an historian (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2012)—a practice associated with disciplinary literacy. According to Rainey and Moje (2012), “historians consider authors and their biases” when examining a text (p. 74). Dylan’s regular exercise of

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY researching authors before reading a text teaches students to expose an author’s position so that readers can account for the writer’s point of view and inherent biases when analyzing a text.

Furthermore, Rainey and Moje argue that history is “something to be interpreted rather than observed” (2012, p. 75). Taking into consideration that history is composed of multiple viewpoints, Dylan demonstrates how using a range of texts (accounts from different authors, paintings, music, and literature) can help students not only gain information about an event but also synthesize the multiple voices and perspectives so that they are able to draw a variety of conclusions from the artifacts. This practice, especially, “raises students’ awareness of how academic knowledge gets made in the first place” (Warren, 2012, p. 392). These higher-order practices are abilities that Dylan purposefully incorporates into his instruction.

However, it is not enough for students to know the information and understand how to engage in “the shared ways of reading, writing, thinking, and reasoning” within the academic field (Rainey & Moje, 2012, p. 73). Rather, students must also demonstrate critical literacy by questioning the dominant ideologies presented in the texts they are reading. When used as an approach for learning, critical literacy supports students’ understanding of the metanarrative conveyed in texts. Furthermore, critical literacy reveals messages of privilege within texts and allows students to begin to understand the world in transformative ways (Hall & Piazza, 2010).

When students read a text written by a White coal mine owner who argues against workers’ rights, students understand that he is writing from a position of privilege and power over the workers in the mine.

Rather than succumbing to the pressure of teaching to the advanced placement exam, by incorporating multiple forms of literacy into his instruction, Dylan’s primary goal for the students leaving his classroom each May is to be culturally literate. He wants his students to

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY “talk” a subject—to participate in the communal discourse of the shared culture. When exiting Mr. Scott’s class, students should have arrived at “the middle ground of knowledge possessed by the ‘common reader’” (Hirsch, 1987, p. 19). Dylan wants his students to go back to the art museum he took them to as students and explain to their own children the significance of the paintings, to read a text and question the author’s intention based on their knowledge of past events, to have enough general knowledge to engage in discussions with references to religion, politics, economics, and so on. Perhaps most importantly, Dylan wants his students to demonstrate metacognition—an awareness of what they know and do not know—and to continually seek out additional funds of knowledge (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005).

The ability to draw upon various forms of literacy as the instructional situation called for allowed Dylan to provide his students with a deep understanding of the topics addressed while encouraging critical thinking and interpretation skills. Furthermore, because Dylan’s definition of literacy included—but was not limited to—the functional skills of reading and writing, Dylan retained his identity as a content specialist while still integrating literacy into his non-ELA classroom.

Further Study In this article, I shared how one high school social studies teacher was negotiating his teaching within the literacy dictates of the Common Core State Standards. While research revealed that the participant Mr. Scott had been generally ignoring the Common Core’s literacy mandates as outlined in the history/social studies document and was instead relying on his state’s content standards, he was still addressing nearly all of the eleventh and twelfth grade literacy mandates through the interdisciplinary integration of multiple literacies. However, there were

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY also limitations to this study, so I would like to conclude by articulating some areas for further research.

One limitation of this research is that this study only examines the attitudes of one veteran teacher in a traditionally non-tested content—specifically high school social studies— and therefore does not take into account the perceptions of other content or grade level teachers with varying years of teaching experience. Furthermore, an area of notable exclusion is that this study ignores the impact of the Common Core State Standard’s literacy mandates on the ELA teachers themselves. Additional research should be conducted to examine: 1. How, if at all, ELA teachers are responding to their colleagues’ approaches of implementing literacy skills.

2. If the role of the ELA teachers in the building has expanded by assisting their colleagues implement the new standards or reduced by sharing the literacy instruction with teachers throughout the building.

3. Which types of literacy (such as visual literacy, digital literacy, or multicultural literacy, for example) are common to and across various academic disciplines.

Closing Thoughts The call for integrated literacy instruction in the content areas is necessary, but deceiving.

In the current context, literacy’s definition is limited and is perceived only as reading and writing in a functional capacity. Many times subscribing to this restrictive definition, non-ELA teachers often feel that they are not qualified to teach literacy skills in their classes because they have not been trained in the foundational literacy skills of phonics and decoding—or even more advanced skills involving literature, such as identifying symbolism, for instance. However, as Mr. Scott demonstrates, it is not necessary for content area teachers to be fluent in those skills. Through

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WHEN CONTENT COLLEAGUES INTEGRATE LITERACY recognizing its plurality, content teachers can draw upon one of the many forms of literacy as a lens to view, learn about, and strengthen their discipline. Interdisciplinary literacy instruction not only exposes students to the everyday literacy demands of our society, but bolsters their disciplinary knowledge as well.

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