Hi everyone. I've been working away on my Design proposal for class--doing a lot of reading at this point, not much writing. My proposal is on the topic of disciplinary literacy and social studies education. Disciplinary literacy, you say! Isn't that the same thing as content area reading? No! Disciplinary literacy is advanced literacy instruction in content-area classes such as math, science and social studies. It is going beyond generic reading strategies (not that there is anything wrong with those) in order to get students thinking about how to think and examine info like a historian, mathematician, scientist, etc.
I've been doing a lot of reading, as I mentioned and I'm struggling with a theoretical frame. I am leaning towards constructivism and discourse theory. Constructivism because I believe that learning occurs during interaction--knowledge and meaning are generated from an interaction between their experiences and ideas. Discourse theory because a large part of disciplinary literacy is focusing on specialized language of that particular content area.
Anyone have any good books out there on discourse theory?
