Teaching Students to Read in their Disciplines

2015 FHSS Spring Teaching ConferenceMay 21, 2015

Jeffery D Nokesjeff_nokes@byu.edu

Discussion Outline

1. Discourse Communities2. Epistemic Stance3. Disciplinary Texts4. Disciplinary Literacies5. Cognitive Apprenticeships6. Explicit Strategy Instruction

1. Discourse Community

Discourse Community

A grouping of people who share common language norms, values, patterns, beliefs or practices as a consequence of their ongoing communications and identification with each other.

James Gee

Discourse Community

A grouping of people who share common language norms, values, patterns, beliefs or practices as a consequence of their ongoing communications and identification with each other.

Discourse Community

A grouping of people who share common language norms, values, patterns, beliefs or practices as a consequence of their ongoing communications and identification with each other.

Discourse Community

A grouping of people who share common language norms, values, patterns, beliefs or practices as a consequence of their ongoing communications and identification with each other.

Reading within a Discourse Community

Reading within a Discourse Community

• Purpose• Texts (defined broadly)• Attention/significance• Strategies/heuristics• Communication

2. Epistemic Stance

Epistemic Culture

Different groups favor different methods of acquiring knowledge.

Epistemic Stance

An individual’s ideas about his/her role in building knowledge.

Student’s Epistemic Stance

Expert’s Epistemic Stance

Epistemic Stances in History

• Objectivist• Subjectivist• Criterialist

History is the past. It’s just what happened.

Quotes from Armesto Text Chapter 1• We are similarly uncertain about…• If these dates are correct…• As far as we know…• It is not easy to say…• We have no idea—beyond guesswork—of the actual …• This is an inexact science,…• We are still struggling to understand…• These are big perplexing problems because…• These facts have encouraged speculation that…• It is an intriguing speculation…• Most of the evidence has been lost, weathered away…or scattered by the

wind…• Although archeologists have excavated too few sites for a complete and

reliable picture to emerge…• The question…remains open

Epistemic Stances in History

• Objectivist• Subjectivist• Criterialist

Everyone is entitled to their opinion of what happened.

Where does historical knowledge come from?

Metaconcepts

• What is history?• What do historians do?• What is historical

evidence?• What roles do inference

and interpretation play?• What is historical

significance?

Where does historical knowledge come from?

Epistemic Stances in History

• Objectivist• Subjectivist• Criterialist

Evidence leads to defensible interpretations of what happened.

Archeological Evidence

Linguistic evidence

Anthropological Evidence

Scientific Evidence

Cultural Evidence

Written Evidence

Epistemic Stances in History

• Objectivist• Subjectivist• Criterialist

3. Disciplinary Texts

Disciplinary Texts

Evidence

“Of all the things perceptible to [a historian] there is not one which he might not conceivably use as evidence on some question, if he came to it with the right question in mind.”(Collingwood, 1936, 247)

4. Disciplinary Literacies

Our landings in the Cherbourg and Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.

July 5

Historian’s Reading Heuristics

• Sourcing– Who said it, why, to whom?

• Corroboration– How do other sources compare?

• Contextualization– Location, social values, linguistics, etc.

How do experts read?

5. Cognitive Apprenticeships

6. Explicit Strategy Instruction

Explicit Strategy Instruction

1. Direct instruction2. Modeling/externalization3. Guided Practice4. Independent Practice

Explicit Strategy Instruction

1. Direct instruction– What, why, when, how to do something (sourcing)

2. Modeling/externalization3. Guided Practice4. Independent Practice

Explicit Strategy Instruction

1. Direct instruction2. Modeling/externalization

– “Let’s analyze this first document together”– “How did you figure that out?”– Think aloud– Process, not just product

3. Guided Practice4. Independent Practice

Explicit Strategy Instruction

1. Direct instruction2. Modeling/externalization3. Guided Practice

– “Scaffolding”– Simplified tasks (group-work)– Partially completed tasks– Graphic organizers

4. Independent Practice

Explicit Strategy Instruction

1. Direct instruction2. Modeling/externalization3. Guided Practice4. Independent Practice

– Assessment (self and teacher)– Feedback

Historical Question:

• Why did freedmen continue to work and live as they had as slaves after they were free?

• What does it really mean to be free?

Three Theories

1. Slave owners had been good and fair to them in slavery and so they felt a loyalty to their former owners and chose to remain with them after they were free.

2. Slave owners found ways (legal and otherwise) to force or trick their former slaves to remain with them after they were free.

3. Slaves lacked the resources needed to move so had little choice but to remain on former owners’ plantations.

The white men read a paper to all of us colored people telling us that we were free and could go where we pleased and work for who we pleased. The man I belonged to told me it was best to stay with him. He said, "The bad white men was mad with the Negroes because they were free and they would kill you all for fun." He said, stay where we are living and we could get protection from our old masters.

Court testimony of former slave Henry Adams in 1879 describing conditions in 1865.

November 19, 1864Like demons the Yankee soldiers rush in! My yards are full. To my smoke-house, my dairy, pantry, kitchen, and cellar, like famished wolves they come, breaking locks and whatever is in their way. The thousand pounds of meat in my smoke-house is gone in a twinkling, my flour, my meat, my lard, butter, eggs, pickles of various kinds - both in vinegar and brine - wine, jars, and jugs are all gone. My eighteen fat turkeys, my hens, chickens, and fowls, my young pigs, are shot down in my yard and hunted as if they were rebels themselves. Utterly powerless I ran out and appealed to the guard. 'I cannot help you, Madam; it is orders.' ...Alas! little did I think while trying to save my house from plunder and fire that they were forcing my slaves from home at the point of the bayonet. One, Newton, jumped into bed in his cabin, and declared himself sick. Another crawled under the floor, … but they pulled him out, placed him on a horse, and drove him off. … Jack came crying to me, the big tears coursing down his cheeks, saying they were making him go. I said: 'Stay in my room.' But a man followed in, cursing him and threatening to shoot him if he did not go; so poor Jack had to yield…

Dolly Sumner Lunt was a plantation-owning widow in rural Georgia. Her eyewitness account appears in Lunt, Dolly Sumner, A Woman's Wartime Journal, An Account of the Passage Over a Georgia Plantation of Sherman's Army on the March to the Sea, as Recorded in the Diary of Dolly Sumner Lunt (1918); Found at http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/pfsherman.htm

During the same week the madame takin' a stick and beat one of the young colored girls, who was about fifteen years of age and who is my sister, and split her back. The boss came next day and take this same girl (my sister) and whipped her nearly to death, but in the contracts he was to hit no one any more. After the whipping a large number of young colored people taken a notion to leave. On the 18th of September I and eleven men and boys left that place and started for Shreveport. I had my horse along. My brother was riding him, and all of our things was packed on him. Out come about forty armed men (white) and shot at us and takin' my horse. Said they were going to kill ever' [racial slur] they found leaving their masters; and taking all of our clothes and bed-clothing and money. I had to work away to get a white man to get my horse.

Court testimony of former slave Henry Adams in 1879 describing conditions in 1865.

Why did most Freedmen continue to work and live as they had as slaves?

Loyalty Tricked/Forced

Lack of Resources

  Conventional Classrooms Reconceptualized Classroom

Nature of learning history The single narrative of what happened in the past, transmitted.

Evidence-based, constructed interpretations of the past open to criticism, alternative perspectives, and reinterpretation

Type of texts Textbook/expository texts Primary and secondary sources and artifacts representing multiple perspectives

Role of texts Convey information Evidence useful to answer historical questions.

Role of teacher Provide information, help students manage information, assess students’ recall of information

Model authentic questioning, provide background knowledge and evidence, nurture historical thinking skills, guide students’ research, assess students’ content knowledge and historical skills

Role of students Gather information through lectures or reading assignments, understand and manage information, recall information

Skillfully weigh evidence, develop interpretations, defend point of view, critique peers’ ideas

Purpose of writing/speaking Display historical content knowledge

Argue a claim based on the skillful use of evidence and content knowledge, review peers’ interpretations