Curriculum-Specific Literacy: Expanding The Repertoire

This chapter focuses on curriculum-specific literacies, the ways in which learners' reading and writing needs differ in different subject areas, in terms of vocabularies, grammar forms, genre or text modes. The need for control of curriculum-specific literacies escalates rapidly in the middle years, as learners must expand their literate repertoires to explore and create texts appropriate to subject area needs and conventions, which reflect the philosophical underpinning and historical circumstances of each academic discipline. University researchers Peter Freebody and Anne-Marie Morgan take up this discussion here, with reference to the changing curriculum-specific literacies of middle years learning, and in relation to the work of three teacher researchers involved in the project. Jason Dohse, of William Light School, worked with Year 9 students on developing and improving practical report writing skills for Science; Helen White, of Brighton Secondary School, surveyed Year 8 Mathematics students to understand better their language needs in Mathematics; and Jenny Burford, of Seaton High School, considered how to expand the literate repertoires of Year 9 students for writing in History and English. In reporting these teachers' research here, literacies of specific curriculum areas in the Australian Curriculum across the middle years are considered, together with the wider framing of literacy as a Cross-curriculum priority and as a General capability, necessary for all students across subject areas.