2014-2015 Literacy Colloquy Presentation

Dr. Elizabeth Moje

Wednesday, April 29th
11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Erickson Room: 252

Doing and Teaching Disciplinary Literacy:

Supporting Youth and Teachers in Navigating the
Literacy Contexts of School and Life
In this presentation, Moje will present her developing conceptualization of disciplinary literacy teaching
for social justice as a matter of teaching youth to navigate the literacy contexts of school and life. To develop her
argument, Moje will focus on four critical aspects of her theory of disciplinary literacy teaching: (a) disciplinary
literacy teaching begins with youth knowledge and experience, (b) all literate practice is domain-specific; the
disciplines are simply highly specialized domains into which children and youth need to be apprenticed
throughout their school years, (c) starting with the big questions of a given discipline will imbue the reading and
writing practices of the classroom with purpose and meaning, (d) disciplinary literacy teaching must attend to
differences and similarities among the disciplines and among other life contexts as a way of helping youth learn
to navigate their current and future worlds. To help teachers and school leaders think about how to engage in
this kind of instruction, Moje will present a heuristic for disciplinary literacy teaching that revolves around
working with youth knowledge and practices and engaging young people in the practices of the
disciplines. Moje will conclude her discussion with a glimpse of how the secondary teacher education program
at Michigan is using the heuristic to guide the education of new middle and high school teachers.

Elizabeth Birr Moje is the associate dean for research and community engagement and an
Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. She
also serves as a faculty associate in the universitys Institute for Social Research, Latino/a
Studies, and in the Joint Program in English and Education.