Literacy models and the reconstruction of history education: a comparative discourse analysis of two lesson plans

Abstract

This article presents discourse analyses of two lesson plans designed for secondary school history classes. Although the plans focus on the same topic, they rely on different models of content area literacy: disciplinary literacy, or reading and writing like experts in a given domain, and critical literacy, or reading and writing to address injustice. The discourse analyses focus on how each plan (a) reimagines the field of secondary school history and (b) places students in reading and writing positions in the rebuilt field. Each plan, the article concludes, remakes secondary school history in relation to four other fields: the university, the professional workplace, everyday life and the public sphere. Secondary school history is reimagined as standing closer or farther away from each of these four fields. Moreover, each plan rebuilds secondary school history as a moral environment where certain kinds of moral knowledge, but not others, should be mobilized when reading, writing, speaking, thinking and listening.

Keywords:

• history education
• academic disciplines
• disciplinary literacy
• critical literacy
• discourse analysis
• moral education

Notes

1. Both plans analysed in this study misidentify Jackson’s annual message to Congress as a speech. This message, eventually called the State of the Union address, was delivered to Congress as a written text by all presidents from Jefferson through Taft. Lesson plans more attuned to practices of rhetoric might ask students to study the genre of the annual message and consider how, over the course of its historical evolution, it offered presidents different ways of communicating with Congress.

2. Both lessons are available in full online. See reference information for Reisman and Fogo (2009) (RLH plan), Bigelow (2009) (ZEP plan).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ross Collin

Ross Collin is an assistant professor of English education in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Virginia Commonwealth University, 3106a Oliver Hall, 1015 W. Main St., Richmond, VA 23284-2020, USA; e-mail: [email protected]. His interests centre on literacy, curriculum theory and socio-economic transformation.

Gabriel A. Reich

Gabriel A. Reich is an associate professor of secondary history/social studies education in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Virginia Commonwealth University, 3069 Oliver Hall, 1015 W. Main St., Richmond, VA 23284-2020; e-mail: [email protected]. His interests centre on collective memory, historical thinking and assessment.