CI 414/504: Disciplinary Literacies Fall 2026

 I have always been interested in the difference between knowing something and actually being able to do something. Think about how often we describe ourselves this way. I'm not a math person. I'm not a science person. I'm not athletic. I'm not a good reader. I have definitely heard students say things like this, and I think many adults have probably said something similar about themselves (including me and maybe you?). Buehl's discussion of disciplinary literacy made me think about why this happens. Reading is not exactly the same in every subject. A student needs to learn how to approach a text through the practices of a particular discipline. A historian, for example, might ask different questions of a text than a scientist would. and they emphasized on asking students to develop “habits of thinking” like an expert and instead propose “habits of practice.” If we tell a student to “think like a scientist,” we might accidentally make the student wonder whether they...

Video Games for Textual Analysis: A Genre for the 21st Century For our first blog post, I want to focus on this survey conducted by the Pew Research Center: Click the image to open the article Out of the 1,423 teens surveyed by the Pew Research Team, 85% say they play video games. Out of those, 41% say they play video games daily .  Researchers such as Dr. Gholdy Muhammad argue we should include meaningful, culturally relevant and sustaining texts in our lessons and curricula. They argue doing so increases motivation, engagement, a sense of belonging, and a preservation and extension of culture ( Muhammad, 2023 ). The beauty of the video game for textual analysis is multi-faceted. As the player, you can engage in self-insert roleplaying, or you can immerse yourself in someone else's story. You can test your skills, hone your problem solving, and practice thinking critically about a situation. Video games  for textual analysis  provide countless ways to engage in the reade...