Disciplinary literacy Summer webinar series
Join us as we explore how secondary schools can improve reading in all subject areas.

Share on:
by Greenshaw Research School
on the
How do scientists generate knowledge?
Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, encapsulated it in three stages (Lewens, 2015):
Humans have been following this method (or something similar, depending on whose account you believe) for around 500 years. Consequently, the scientific disciplines have become specialised to the point at which most people, even those with a high degree of education, would struggle to understand the vocabulary scientists employ.
This presents a problem for the teacher.
How can we support students in reading like a scientist when the majority of scientific papers are beyond the comprehension of most science undergraduates, let alone students at secondary school?
One solution to this problem, which will be discussed during our upcoming webinar on Disciplinary Literacy in Science, is to shift the emphasis.
Instead of seeing disciplinary literacy as a means of preparing students to read the specialist literature of the scientific disciplines, it can be understood as a means of helping students understand the scientific method outlined above.
How can we support students in reading like a scientist when the majority of scientific papers are beyond the comprehension of most science undergraduates, let alone students at secondary school?
This will help them frame science as one branch of human knowledge among others.
According to the curriculum theorist Michael Young, helping students understand the internal structures that define the disciplines, along with the boundaries that demarcate the disciplines, is an essential aspect of the role schools serve in society (Young, 2016).
To put Young’s point in simpler terms, students must leave school with more than the substantive knowledge the scientific disciplines have generated.
They must also acquire the disciplinary knowledge that informs them how the way scientists think is distinct from the way artists, economists or historians think, to give three examples.
This is disciplinary knowledge taken in its broadest sense. Often, disciplinary knowledge in science is seen as synonymous with the Working Scientifically skills outlined in GCSE specifications. I would argue that disciplinary knowledge is better conceived of as an understanding of the tenets and methods of the discipline in question (Bakhurst, 2020).
In science, this means disciplinary knowledge must encompass not only the practical skills of science but also a broader understanding of the relationship between models, hypotheses and experiments outlined above.
Disciplinary knowledge is better conceived of as an understanding of the tenets and methods of the discipline in question.
If disciplinary knowledge is understood in this broader sense, then disciplinary literacy in science can be reframed as the process by which students’ attention is drawn to the language a writer uses to embody the relationship between models, hypotheses and experiments.
During the webinar, a number of case studies will be examined. Each will be based on an episode from the history of science.
One example, which I read with a Year 9 class in February this year, is a short passage of text on Edward Jenner’s development of a vaccine for smallpox.
It is reprinted below:
This is not a specialist text. It is a text written for the general reader. Primarily, the text aims to give the reader an overview of the major achievements of science.
Implicitly, however, it gives the reader clues as to the process by which scientific knowledge develops, as summarised by Feynman above.
It is these clues that I will be focusing on during the webinar. For example:
There is more to be said about this text: both the possibilities and drawbacks inherent within it. These, along with the relative merits of other, similar texts, will be discussed during the webinar.
What I hope to have outlined in this blog is the way in which a seemingly simple text could be used to impart some important ideas around what makes science distinct from other disciplines. This, I believe, is a crucial aspect of disciplinary literacy.
If you would like to discuss this and similar case studies further, please join us on Thursday 16 May to give feedback and to share your thoughts.
School Improvement Lead – Science, Greenshaw Learning Trust
Asimov, I. (1975). Asimov’s Guide to Science 2: The Biological Sciences. Penguin.
Bakhurst, D. (2020). Teaching, Telling and Technology. Journal of Philosophy of Education, OUP.
Lewens, T. (2015). The Meaning of Science. Pelican.
Muller, J. and Young, M. (2016). Curriculum and the Specialization of Knowledge. Routledge.
Blog -
Dom Bell considers the fundamental difference in how pupils read history compared with other disciplines.
Blog -
Amarbeer Singh Gill considers Disciplinary Literacy in Maths and how teachers can help pupils process information.
Blog -
Amarbeer Singh Gill considers how teachers can support success by helping pupils reduce the load on working memory.
This website collects a number of cookies from its users for improving your overall experience of the site.Read more