Insert student here: Why content area constructions of literacy matter for pre-service teachers
Abstract
This article explores content area pre-service teacher beliefs about disciplinary knowledge, perceptions of effective content area teaching, and existing beliefs about how to integrate literacy into the content areas. Ten pre-service teachers across ten secondary content areas were asked to describe three important variables in secondary teaching: 1) the knowledge of their content area, 2) characteristics of a successful content area teacher, and 3) literacy activities that would optimally convey disciplinary knowledge to students. Content area responses to the first two prompts yielded comparatively static, teacher-centered notions of knowledge and teaching. However, responses to the third prompt indicated at least partial resistance to transmission-style teaching and more student-centered pedagogies. The author asserts that content area literacy courses can be a contact zone in which pre-service teachers consider and recon- sider how disciplinary epistemology maps onto effective content area literacy instruction.
Reference
Gritter, K. (2010). Insert student here: Why content area constructions of literacy matter for pre-service teachers. Reading Horizons 50 (3), 147–68.
Journal
Reading Horizons
Analysis
Is this article part of a larger project or series of studies?
no
Does this study draw on a large, preexisting data set?
no
Research Approach
Geographic Setting
Institutional Context
Certification Level
Programatic Focus
- interdisciplinary liteacy
Research Location Context
Preservice Participants
- Undergraduates (university based program)
Preservice Sample Size
10
Duration of Data Collection
Data Sources
- Interviews
- Transcriptions
Data Analysis Tools
- coding to a prior categories
Researcher Positionality
- inside (staying their own students)
Research Questions
"The purpose of this research was to probe attitudes of cross-disciplinary preservice teachers regarding beliefs about the interplay of disciplinary knowledge, good disciplinary teaching, and, ultimately, how to best teach literacy within the boundaries of disciplinary knowledge" (p. 150).
Is this research question explicit from the manuscript? Yes