Disciplinary Literacies and Learning to Read for Understanding: A Conceptual Framework for Disciplinary Literacy

This article presents a framework and methodology for designing learning goals targeted at what students need to know and be able to do in order to attain high levels of literacy and achievement in three disciplinary areas—literature, science, and history. For each discipline, a team of researchers, teachers, and specialists in that discipline engaged in conceptual meta-analysis of theory and research on the reading, reasoning, and inquiry practices exhibited by disciplinary experts as contrasted with novices. Each team identified discipline-specific clusters of types of knowledge. Across teams, the clusters for each discipline were grouped into 5 higher order categories of core constructs: (a) epistemology; (b) inquiry practices/strategies of reasoning; (c) overarching concepts, themes, and frameworks; (d) forms of information representation/types of texts; and (e) discourse and language structures. The substance of the clusters gave rise to discipline-specific goals and tasks involved in reading across multiple texts, as well as reading, reasoning, and argumentation practices tailored to discipline-specific criteria for evidence-based knowledge claims. The framework of constructs and processes provides a valuable tool for researchers and classroom teachers' (re)conceptualizations of literacy and argumentation learning goals in their specific disciplines.     

An Experimental Study of the Effect of Educational Guidance on a Selected Group of High School Sophomores

The question of an interaction over time between ability grouping and personality variables was the focus of the present study which examined pertinent data from 260 female high school students. Two standardized personality instruments, in addition to several scales designed by the E’s, were administered to students of the upper and lower ability tracks in a Catholic high school, grades 9 and 12. Ss in the lower track were found to have a lower need for achievement, a higher need to avoid failure, and a higher average score of test anxiety than Ss in the upper track. The effects of ability grouping did interact with grade level for a correlate of personality, level of aspiration. Relative to Ss in the upper track, the lower track Ss experienced a reduction in level of aspiration over time. Both future directions of associated research and educational practices were discussed within the context of the present findings.