Disciplinary literacy is the literacy one uses when studying a particular discipline. For example, understanding the scientific process helps one read scientific study results. Each discipline asks its own sorts of questions. Dr. Shanahan explains.
Transcript
Dr. Cynthia Shanahan: In order for somebody to read, really read in a particular discipline like history or science, or any of the sciences are actually a little different, or literature, you should really know something about the discipline itself. Because every discipline has certain expectations. They have different ways of creating knowledge. Each discipline has a different way of sharing that knowledge with each other, and each discipline has a different way of evaluating that knowledge. So historians base their stories that they create on documents as evidence. Those documents are created in the past, so they can’t do experiments. Scientists do experiments, and they have particular kinds of questions they’re asking about the world that are different than the kinds of questions that historians are asking about the world. Those who study literature are in a totally different realm. So they have different ideas about what they expect in terms of a good historical narrative, a good science experiment, a good analysis of a piece of literature. They have different expectations because they started out with different questions. So these disciplines are really different, and if you know a little bit about what the expectations are and the discipline that can guide your reading, it can provide you with an approach to reading that’ll give you a more critical deep knowledge about what you’re reading. So disciplinary literacy is those, the literacy that you would use in studying a particular discipline.