Disciplinary Text-Dependent Questions: Questioning for Learning in the Disciplines. The Challenge of Literacy in the Disciplines

The challenge of reading across disciplines is often not a matter of word recognition or general comprehension instruction; it is a matter of understanding how ideas are represented in the language and conventions of that discipline. In this article we describe a strategy for foregrounding the disciplines in the design and implementation of text-dependent questions in content area courses in order to accomplish a dual focus on content and discourse when using discipline-specific texts.