Analysis of Expert Readers in Three Disciplines: History, mathematics, and chemistry

Analysis of Expert Readers in Three Disciplines: History, mathematics, and chemistry

Cynthia Shanahan, Timothy Shanahan and Cynthia Misischia

The purpose of this study is to describe educationally relevant differences in literacy use among three subject-matter disciplines—history, chemistry, and mathematics. These analyses were drawn from an investigation of the teaching of disciplinary literacy in high schools. The purpose of the overall project was to improve the literacy-teaching preparation in a secondary preservice teacher education program, but this study sought to identify specific features of literacy and literacy use only in the three disciplines. It is the first expert-reader study to consider the reading of mathematicians and chemists (though other kinds of scientists have been studied in this way). Disciplinary literacy.