Changing Teacher Candidates’ Perceptions of Literacy in Content Classes: The Role of Expert-Novice Dialogues

Abstract

This manuscript details an exploratory study of an assignment in a literacy across the curriculum course that assisted teacher candidates to recognize the distance between expert and novice readers in their content specific teaching. The study explores how teacher candidates discovered strategies necessary to build comprehension of disciplinebased texts, particularly for novice readers. Data collection included multiple entries from thirty teacher candidate journals that were generated during partnered dialogues. Journals were analyzed for clues as to how teachers can better approach helping students to read varied disciplines’ texts with greater comprehension. Findings suggest that by placing teacher candidates in the position of both novice and expert readers, 1) they gained insight into how to scaffold instruction so that students become more expert readers of their content; and 2) they exhibited a willingness to work with these strategies because they empathized with struggling readers.