Developing Readers in the Academic Disciplines —
Abstract of

Mentoring Students in Disciplinary Literacy

Doug Buehl

This chapter sets the stage for the book and begins with the essential question “Why is there a significant need for disciplinary literacy instruction?” The author first discusses identity and how various identities influence personal reader profiles, both in general and within specific disciplines. He then presents a model of disciplinary literacy; that is, what it means to be a reader in middle and high school content classrooms. The author concludes the chapter by arguing that a significant responsibility for middle and high school teachers is to invite their students to expand the identities they bring to school to include academic and specific disciplinary identities. Mentoring students as readers, writers, and thinkers is an integral component of instruction within a discipline, enabling students to become increasingly more independent in accessing the communications of different academic disciplines.

Buehl, D. (2011). Mentoring Students in Disciplinary Literacy. In Developing Readers in the Academic Disciplines (pp. 1-30). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.