Teaching Dilemmas and Solutions in Content-Area Literacy, Grades 6-12
About this ebook
Think literacy is just for English teachers? Not anymore. Nor should it be when you consider that each discipline has its own unique values and means of expression. These days, it’s up to all teachers to communicate what it means to be literate in their disciplines. Here, finally, is a book ambitious enough to tackle the topic across all major subject areas.
Engage in this cross-disciplinary conversation with seasoned teachers and university researchers, and learn how to develop curriculum and instruction that are responsive to students’ needs across English/language arts, science, social studies, mathematics, visual space, and music and drama. Peter Smagorinsky and his colleagues provide an insider’s lens on both the states of their fields and their specific literacy demands, including:
- Reviews of current issues and state-of-the-art research informing literacy education
- Scenario-based activities for reflection and discussion, typifying the dilemmas and challenges faced by practicing teachers.
- Considerations of the textual forms and conventions required in each discipline
- Specific policy recommendations
Read this book on your own for immediate suggestions on how to improve literacy instruction within your course of study. Better yet, share it with colleagues and participate in a larger conversation about how your literacy expectations influence the ways students read and produce texts in other disciplines.
About the author
Peter Smagorinsky is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at The University of Georgia, emeritus; and Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. From 2012-2020 he served as the faculty advisor to the student-edited Journal of Language and Literacy Education at UGA; and from 1996-2003 he coedited, with Michael W. Smith, Research in the Teaching of English. Recent awards include the 2020 Horace Mann League Outstanding Public Educator Award, 2018 International Federation for the Teaching of English Award, and 2018 Distinguished Scholar recognition by the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy. His research and teaching take a sociocultural approach to issues of literacy education, literacy teacher education, and related social concerns. These interests have produced two 2020 books from Bloomsbury: Learning to Teach English and Language Arts: A Vygotskian Perspective on Beginning Teachers’ Pedagogical Concept Development; and coedited with Yolanda Gayol and Patricia Rosas, Developing Culturally and Historical Sensitive Teacher Education: Global Lessons from a Literacy Education Program. His interest in neurodiversity has produced two recent edited collections: Creativity and Community among Autism-Spectrum Youth: Creating Positive Social Updrafts through Play and Performance from Palgrave Macmillan; and, coedited with Joe Tobin and Kyunghwa Lee, Dismantling the Disabling Environments of Education: Creating New Cultures and Contexts for Accommodating Difference from Peter Lang.
