How Disciplinary Literacy Instruction Can Help Your Students

• Students were shown to spend significantly more time on important literacy activities that supported science inquiry, e.g. student discussion and writing.
• The PRO (Premise-Reasoning-Outcome) strategy was used to support three aspects of science learning:
  • • learning the specific content of the topic
    • phrasing answers for written examination questions
    • structuring the reasoning process
• Students who used the PRO structure in writing explanations for questions which asked for a scientific explanation:
  • scored significantly higher grades for the questions
  • reported that the PRO strategy provided them with a useful organisational structure for writing scientific explanations

Why Disciplinary Literacy?

Disciplinary literacy refers to specific ways of using and thinking with the language and representations of a discipline to learn and participate in the discipline. For science education, research has reiterated the central role of disciplinary literacy in helping students access scientific knowledge.

To investigate how teachers may nurture disciplinary literacy in learners, this three-year research involved Secondary Science teachers and students from two schools. Both schools participated in a Whole School Approach to Effective Communication in English (ELIS, 2011) programme which supports teachers’ and students’ effective communication.

The research built on the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) 5E Inquiry Model and integrated the PRO literacy strategy into classroom instruction. PRO strategy guides students in the construction of scientific explanations through identifying the premise/principle, reasoning and outcome. The project also helped students make meaningful connections across multiple modes of representation (e.g. annotations, diagrams), with attention to literacy demands.

How the Disciplinary Literacy Instruction Model Works

The disciplinary literacy instruction model that was developed was based on the BSCS 5E Inquiry Model with which many science teachers in Singapore are familiar. While keeping the essence of inquiry in the model, there is a focus on literacy, specifically on writing. This “integrated literacy inquiry” model is designed to support the development of both conceptual knowledge and disciplinary literacy skills.

While existing literacy strategies, such as Directed Activities Related to Text (DART), were used, the strategy that was most frequently used was the PRO strategy developed specifically for the project. The PRO strategy guides students in the construction of scientific explanations through identifying the following components of explanations:

• Premise/Principle: a general theory/accepted principle or rule that provides the basis for the explanation
• Reasoning: a chain of logical sequencing of consequences (using additive and consequential conjunctions such as and, first of all, so, because, in order to, et cetera.)
• Outcome: the phenomenon which is being explained

How Did Students Respond?

• There was a significant increase in the amount of time students spent on important literacy activities used to support science inquiry:
  1. framing driving questions;
  2. conducting experiments and collecting evidence;
  3. constructing explanations; and
  4. communicating and evaluating explanations.

• The PRO strategy was used by students to:
  1. learn the specific content of the topic;
  2. construct answers for written examination questions; and
  3. structure the reasoning process.

• Students who used the PRO structure in their written explanations for test/exam questions scored higher grades for these explanations.