As college readiness is continuously in decline (ACT, 2019), more first-year college students nationwide are underprepared for the academic tasks required in foundational courses across the curriculum. This can be attributed to their lack of academic skills, prior knowledge (Fisher, 2004; Hewson & Hewson, 1983), and active learning strategies to succeed in college (Freeman et al., 2014; Walczyk & Ramsey, 2003). Among others, “A major risk factor of academic preparedness is low reading ability” (Perin, 2018, p.183), and this deficit is compounded by the increasing reading requirements in higher education (Bowen & Berry, 2017), which makes learning in the disciplines challenging, especially in introductory college courses. First-year students often find college readings demanding, due to the use of specialized language, high readability levels (Armstrong, Stahl, & Kantner, 2015), complex concepts, a high density of technical vocabulary, and the requirements of prior knowledge in the subject areas. Students need more advanced thinking, reading, and literacy skills to navigate the texts, process the specialized language, and organize the discipline-based knowledge. They also have to redirect their focus from understanding surface features to mastering implicit conceptual discourses. This cannot be achieved without having a set of sound strategies. When approaching difficult texts, the difference between a novice and a content expert is that the latter can deploy a range of strategies to generate meaning, analyze and evaluate arguments, and make connections while reading. Students cannot develop these strategies if they are not given models to follow or opportunities to learn, apply, and practice.
Conventional teacher-centered instructional approaches that focus on delivering content knowledge and skills are insufficient to address students’ literacy needs in disciplinary learning. A study showed that the lack of appropriate active learning strategies is the main contributing factor to attrition in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) majors (Cannon, 1997). Among the active learning and instructional approaches that prepare students for academic success is an emphasis on literacy instruction in the content areas. Though STEM and literacy skills are often perceived as two different spheres of learning, they are intricately linked. As in the other content areas, literacy skills are essential to student success in the STEM disciplines, which “require the interpretation of technical texts, a vast knowledge of content specific vocabulary, critical thinking, and the ability to clearly communicate these complex concepts to others verbally and in writing” (Kaczmarek, 2016).
Historically, numerous studies showed the benefits of embedding literacy instruction in content area classes (Anders & Guizzetti, 1996; Bond, Bond, & Wagner, 1941; Herber, 1970; Huey, 1968; Moore, Readence, & Rickelman, 1983), with results warranting a call for all teachers to be reading teachers. These studies were based on the assumption that literacy skills are universally applicable to all content areas, and general reading and writing strategies can find expressions in a variety of content area classrooms (Herber, 1970).
While general literacy strategies are foundational to learning, they have limitations, mainly because the varying disciplinary literacy demands cannot be adequately met with general strategies. In some cases, the strategies students use may not be suitable or sufficient for the literacy and thinking tasks required by specific content areas. Overall, college-level texts are diverse in function and purpose, and “College academic discourse varies in terms of technical vocabulary, rhetorical structures, symbolic systems, and metadiscursive properties” (Bean, Gregory, & Dunkerly-Bean, 2018, p. 91).
In the past two decades, there has been a gradual shift in emphasis from general to discipline-specific instruction in content area learning. Expansive calls to engage students in disciplinary literate practices (Moje, 2008; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2012) are based on the observations that individual disciplines demand specific sets of goals and conventions in thinking, reasoning, and communication. These practices also require particular attention to the role of language in presenting knowledge, construing values, and creating discipline-specific texts (Fang, 2012). The design and implementation of disciplinary literacy approaches are therefore rooted in the specialized knowledge and cognitive processes. In order to develop deep conceptual knowledge in a discipline, students are required to adopt the habits of thinking and practices valued and used by the discipline (McConachie and Petrosky, 2009). With the help of literacy specialists, content area experts and instructors can effectively identify these tools and practices (Moje, 2008).
1.1 College-Level Learning and Disciplinary Literacy
Though disciplinary literacy practices are at the forefront of secondary education (grades 6 to 12) as they are necessitated by curricular reforms and education policies, they have not been widely adopted in college-level courses, where disciplinary literacy is critical to effective and lifelong learning. In addition to the literacy demands, cognitive processes and text materials in college content area courses are far more complex than that in high school courses (Conley, 2007, 2008). However, college content area instructors seldom actively engage students in discipline-specific literate practices (Armstrong et al., 2015) to encourage active reading and specialized habits of thinking. The deficit in literacy engagement in the disciplines can be attributed to:
- The lack of exposure to and utilization of disciplinary literacy practices among college instructorsThough college-level content area faculty are experts in their disciplines and have in-depth knowledge in research and scholarship, many of them have limited perception of their roles as literacy educator (Bean, Gregory, & Dunkerly-Bean, 2018) and are not equipped with pedagogical approaches to teach and model the thinking processes and strategies they use in ways that enable novices to participate in the disciplinary discourses and perform disciplinary tasks effectively.
- The lack of institutional support to offer incentives and train faculty to redesign courses and employ teaching practices to meet students’ literacy needs in individual disciplinesHigher educational institutions are often confronted with competing needs and priorities, such as student support, research, and infrastructure updates. When selecting to support various initiatives, college administrators do not always prioritize professional and curricular development, especially when there is no external funding to cover adjunct faculty compensation and course release time for point faculty to oversee training and strategy implementation. While there are other established pedagogical support programs such as Writing Across the Curriculum and Quantitative Reasoning that are enjoying central roles in higher education and institutionalized resources, disciplinary literacy programs that fortify these existing programs are not as widely supported (Armstrong & Stahl, 2017).
- Content area faculty members do not receive sufficient institutional rewards for their efforts in fostering teaching and learningWith increasing demands to engage in more research and scholarship, faculty members are left with devoting limited time and resources to develop teaching approaches, including disciplinary literacy practices, which often involve extra work in course redesign and efforts to experiment with strategies and evaluate their effectiveness. The perception of privileging the rewards of engaging in research over improving teaching practices adversely affects faculty involvement in pedagogical reforms (Fairweather, 2005). Without systematic policy changes and re-prioritization, institutions tend not to allocate resources to support disciplinary literacy training and practices, and, as a result, faculty members lack incentives for participating in pedagogical reforms that promote deeper learning and motivation among students.
- The lack of an efficient way to balance between the time allocated for content coverage and disciplinary literacy practicesOne way in which college courses differ from high school courses is that the instructional pacing for college courses is significantly accelerated (Conley, 2007). In STEM courses, instructors often express that the amount of material needed to be covered and the rapid pacing of classroom instruction often leave them with no time to assess if students can readily grasp the concepts and topics taught. Some instructors tend to feel that literacy activities infringe on subject matter time (McKenna & Robinson, 2014). Though embedding disciplinary literacy practices in the content area classroom can effectively foster and assess student learning, instructors are less likely to prepare and apply such practices.
- The importance of reading and writing are undermined in content area learningReading to learn is not commonly practiced in many content area courses for various reasons. Research indicates that many students do not complete assigned readings, and a significant number of them are neither buying nor reading textbooks (Sappington, Kinsey, & Munsayer, 2002). Some students simply lack the necessary reading skills and strategies to comprehend and navigate complex college texts (National Center on Education and the Economy [NCEE], 2013). Outside of English and some science courses, most reading assignments for lower-level content area courses are intended for straightforward knowledge retrieval, with little expectation of analysis of what was read (NCEE, 2013). In some cases, there are also discrepancies between student and faculty perceptions of whether completing the assigned readings is actually essential for success in a course, while students viewing course texts as less important t...