Research School Network: The challenge of Disciplinary Literacy ‘Where on earth do we start with Disciplinary Literacy?’ asks Johnny Richards, Greenshaw Research School’s Assistant Director

Upon first look, implementing Disciplinary Literacy seems obvious. To start with, it is recommendation one in the EEF’s Secondary Literacy Guidance Report. Since it focuses on the specialised ways of reading in specific disciplines, it is easy to assume that there will be more buy-in from staff when trying to implement strategies.

And as teachers, school leaders, educators, we surely believe in the idea of closing the disadvantaged gap. Disciplinary literacy strategies aim to improve students’ proficiency in academic reading. And ​‘proficiency with academic reading ensures access to the sorts of knowledge, value, and thinking that are privileged in school, workplace, and society’. (Fang, 2004)

However, as soon as you start trying to implement disciplinary literacy on a wide scale, even at a department level, its complexities arise very quickly.

Much of the literature and research around it is very much theoretical – and not easy to digest. There are few practical examples or evidence bases that exist, despite its importance being known for a while now. The term itself can also be off-putting for heavily burdened teachers – even saying it aloud when presenting poses problems.

Taking disciplinary literacy a step forward

At Greenshaw Research School, we started sharing information on Disciplinary Literacy around two years ago. Our first blog looked at embedding Disciplinary Literacy and how it can help build pupils’ knowledge, reading and thinking skills.

Moving forward we’ve now produced four guides on disciplinary literacy that aim to strip some of these complexities back for anyone wanting to consider implementing disciplinary literacy strategies, whether as an individual teacher, or as a school leader.

We have used our collective reading, discussions, along with a few trials in the classroom and some department developmental practices, and re-packaged them into our online resources.

We’ve tried to maintain the integrity of the complexity and purity that is disciplinary literacy, while presenting it in a more manageable package to absorb and use in schools to develop discussion, professional understanding, and strategies to improve pupils’ reading and understanding in the disciplines.

What does the resource look like

In keeping with the idea that Disciplinary Literacy recognises that literacy skills are ​‘general and subject specific’, our guides on Mathematics, History and poetry, share a similar format:

• What is the discipline?
• What does reading in the discipline look like?
• The challenges of reading in the discipline
• The strategies we might use to support pupils
• Worked examples

The variations in each guide reflect the idea that the disciplines have specialised ways in which texts are structured, and therefore the different ​‘habits of thinking’ required when reading in the disciplines.

Researchers into reading proficiency typically cite four factors in successful reading:

• background knowledge
• familiarity with language and structure of texts
• reading strategies, and
• motivation

(Fang 2008, Fang & Colisimo 2024, Kintsch, 1998).

Our guides focus on the specific reading strategies, but also consider how to help familiarise pupils with language and structure of texts. If this is done alongside a well-structured curriculum that considers the disciplinary knowledge required, then pupil motivation when reading hopefully improves.

Our guides therefore look to provide a potential framework for discussions around approaching disciplinary literacy in schools, and potential ideas for professional development. The solutions may not be clear – but we hope they help give a starting point.

You can find the guides in Our resources – Disciplinary Literacy:

• Understanding Disciplinary Literacy. An introduction
• Understanding the discipline of Mathematics. A guide to Disciplinary Literacy in the Mathematics classroom
• Understanding the Discipline of History. A guide to Disciplinary Literacy in the History classroom
• Understanding the Discipline of English Literature – Poetry edition. A guide to Disciplinary Literacy in the English Literature classroom – Poetry edition

Over the coming weeks we will be resharing blogs on Disciplinary Literacy and keep an eye out for our 2026 – 27 free webinars where we will also be covering Disciplinary Literacy.

Drop us a line if you’d like to be kept up-to-date on our Disciplinary Literacy webinars in 2026 – 27.