Response to Elizabeth Birr Moje's "Foregrounding the Disciplines in Secondary Literacy Teaching and Learning: A Call for Change"

As I read through the article, I found myself nodding in agreement with a lot of what Moje had written.  I also found myself sympathizing with content area teachers who feel as though literary strategies "place an unfair burden of teaching reading on them when they should be teaching content" (98).  As I continued reading about how educators, researchers, and teacher educators need to re-conceptualize how they think of disciplinary learning and literacy instruction, I couldn't help but think (once again) about the Flipped Learning seminar I attended last November.  Although content area literacy was not specifically addressed, the idea of re-imagining secondary education was a central focus.  

Moje cites three key challenges in rethinking disciplinary learning and literacy instruction:  student knowledge, beliefs, and practices; teacher knowledge, belief, and practices; and school structures and subject matter dominance.  She asserts that students "bring ideas about what counts as learning to their disciplinary classrooms and teachers make decisions about classroom practices in interaction with students and in the context of the secondary school as an institution" (98).  Teachers also bring their own ideas about the appropriate practices within their disciplines.  Additionally, the very division of secondary school learning into subject areas and the organization and structure of the physical space of the classroom implies that knowledge is different in different disciplines.  This ultimately creates more of a disconnect within the mind of students; they don't see how the disciplines are interconnected.

So back to that Flipped Learning seminar that I mentioned earlier.  There was was school model that was presented that was quite revolutionary.  Although secondary students did have different subject areas to work through, their schedule was flexible and very student-centered.  Classes were not provided at set times with a group of students and a teacher at the front of the room, rather content was made available through different stations and students chose what they would work on at a given time on any given day (very similar to the Montessori method).  Teachers would roam around the different stations, offering guidance, answering questions on content, helping students to manage their time, etc...  The structure of the school itself also broke the secondary education mold.  The layout was a large room with individual desktop computer stations in one area, there was another area with comfortable seating for individual or group work, there was another station with table for group meetings or work, and yet another area with private study rooms.  Of course, there were several electrical outlets at all of the stations so that students could plug in their laptops or tablets as needed.  There was even another station that was a gym equipped with treadmills and elliptical machines that would allow students to exercise while reading a book (or read from a tablet).  In this kind of an environment, it is easy to see how "the knowledge, belief, and practices" (98) of teachers and students is completely turned on its head and re-imagining how the content areas teach literacy is facilitated by the physical learning space.

I believe Moje is right when she asserts that not only does literacy need to be taught in the content areas, but we also need to work to transform how we approach secondary education.  Our world is changing, our students are changing, and formal education needs to change along with them.