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Historical Literacy for Adolescents

Laura Barajas Pineda

Arizona State University

Importance of Literacy

Adolescents engage in literacy in and outside of the classroom walls. As educators we

must find ways to effectively engage our students “to use literacy in meaningful ways, interact

with a variety of texts, participate in assessment for and as learning, and experience a community

of learners in and out of school (International Literacy Association, 2019, 1).” The resources and

texts we use in the classroom play a major role on literacy learning. We as educators hold the

responsibility in creating a classroom environment where “students must feel a sense of

collective and individual belonging (Comber, Woods, & Grant, 2017), have opportunities to

contribute to and negotiate the literacy culture, and feel safe to take risks (McKay & Dean,

2017).” Literacy in the classroom guides our students to make odd inferences, ask risky

questions, and evaluate and revise their writing. As we support our students to understand the

importance of literacy in each content-area, it “will help prepare them for citizenship, encourage

personal growth and life-satisfaction on many levels, and open up opportunities for future

education and employment (Lee, 2010).”

Literacy at the Secondary Level

In the classroom, students often have difficulties when understanding the meaning and

value behind literacy. To many student’s literacy is just being able to understand a text,

summarize, and write about it, that’s it. “This approach is based on the assumption that when

students apply strategies for reading and writing challenging texts, they can more fully learn

from and create texts in each discipline.” (International Literacy Association, 2017, 2). Although,

this approach can be effective, discipline specific literacy can help our students think in the shoes

of the people who created it or study it and guide our students to rethink their approach.

“Disciplinary literacy is a way of approaching text with the reading strategies employed by
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experts in a given field — experts have specialized ways of thinking, talking, and writing

(Beerer, 2019).” So as educators at the secondary level, it is our responsibility to teach our

students how to navigate our thinking process in our specific discipline. For example, each

discipline is going to have a different set of questions being asked when going through that

thinking process. The way teachers can facilitate this type of learning in the classroom is by,

“coaching the process, [providing] feedback, scaffolding when students support, and clarifying

roles in groups (Chauvin, 2015, 6).”

Historical Literacy

Often times when students describe their high school history classes, they all mention

how it was boring and full of information. “Despite a century of efforts to infuse the history

classroom with relevance, problem-solving, active learning, and engaging resources, the same

forms of instruction have persisted, unfazed (Reisman, 2012, 234)”. As historical educators,

disciplinary literacy plays a huge responsibility in the way are students will interpret the

information we are giving them. “Engaging in literacy starts with an active stance; in other

words, students must be positioned to understand the larger context of how and why classroom

activities matter (Schaefer, 2017).” Just like other disciplines, history has a unique set of

practices when it comes to strategies and presenting of information. “Historians require the lens

of multiple perspectives (Beerer, 2019)” and with the use of strategies we can help our students

look through these lenses and see the many perspectives. It seems that although students are

receiving valuable information, they often miss the point of seeing it as a historian would. With

disciplinary literacy learning in history, instead of just analyzing a primary source document text,

we want the student to be able to ask questions like, “why was this written and by who?”, “What

was the author’s role during the time period?”, “Who is the audience, does it have a bias?”, etc.
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“Historians view primary source documents about events of the past as partial, representing

particular points of view and positioning, and as rhetorical constructions (Wineburg, 2001).”

The goal of teaching in history is also for our students to develop a social and cultural

understanding of the information provided. With the practice of analyzing information and

making these connections, we are helping our students become better citizens. For example, in

the classroom if students are able to determine the audience of a primary source, they can

recognize biases in the future when given information. “The use and framing of evidence in

historical writing indicate key aspects of disciplinary reasoning including recognizing biases in

sources, comparing evidence, situating evidence in its context and taking into account different

perspectives and multiple causes (Coffin, 2006; Monte-Sano, 2010).” By teaching our students to

“read like a historian”, they are learning that thinking about a document is more important than

memorizing the document. Disciplinary literacy in history teaches students many ways to

analyze evidence to agree or disagree.

Challenges of Adolescent Literacy

As educators, we must be prepared for the challenges our students will face when being

expected to practice disciplinary literacy across all content areas. In a history classroom, students

are often presented with information through a textbook or primary source. These textbooks are

not at many students reading levels and can make comprehension difficult. “Often these texts

will not use relational words between clauses, sentences and paragraphs that would make explicit

the logical relationships among ideas. Novice readers who do not have sufficient background

knowledge to construct the unstated relationships then must infer such relationships. (Lee, 2010,

8)”. As educators, we can assist in problems like these, by providing rewritten text or clauses to

those students. For support with vocabulary, teachers can provide students with vocabulary
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words for each text and influence students to highlight unfamiliar words to discuss as a class.

Historical literacy can also be difficult for students to because when analyzing documents,

students need to activate their prior knowledge and make those connections. Strategies like KWL

charts, graphic organizers, annotating and analyzing, can help support students who may struggle

in historical literacy, by providing a guide on how to interpret a text (Lee, 2010, 8). As an

educator, it also important the way we first present the information to our students. We cannot

expect prior knowledge to be activated by reading a text or looking at an image, but with opening

strategies into lessons it can help our students activate their thinking for the information that is

going to be delivered.

Disciplinary historical literacy helps our students “see behind the curtain” or “think like a

historian”. As educators, it our responsibility to ensure our students can rethink their approaches

and explore and engage critically outside of the classroom. With the use of disciplinary literacy

in the classroom we help develop our students cultural and social understanding of life beyond

the primary source document or textbook.

References

Avishag, Reisman (2012) The ‘Document-Based Lesson’: Bringing disciplinary inquiry into

high school history classrooms with adolescent struggling readers, Journal of Curriculum

Studies

Beerer, K. (2019, September 30). Disciplinary Literacy: Helping Students Develop Insider

Knowledge. Retrieved September 07, 2020, from

https://www.discoveryeducation.com/details/disciplinary-literacy-helping-students

develop-insider-knowledge/

Chauvin, R., PhD Theodore, & Theodore, K., MA. (2015). Teaching Content-Area Literacy and

Disciplinary Literacy. Retrieved from

https://sedl.org/insights/31/teaching_content_area_literacy_and_disciplinary_literacy.pdf

International Literacy Association. (2017). Content area and disciplinary literacy: Strategies

and frameworks [Literacy leadership brief]. Newark, DE: Author.

International Literacy Association. (2019). Engagement and adolescent literacy [Position

statement and research brief]. Newark, DE: Author.

Lee, C.D., Spratley, A. (2010). Reading in the disciplines: The challenges of adolescent literacy.

New York, NY: Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Wineburg, S., & Reisman, A. (2015). Disciplinary literacy in history: A toolkit for digital

citizenship. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 58(8), 636–639.