Redefining Content-Area Literacy Teacher Education :

In this essay, Roni Jo Draper reflects upon her professional journey as a content-area literacy teacher educator, describing how she first became a literacy teacher educator and how she later came to collaborate with a group of teacher educators who specialize in disciplines such as music, theater, and mathematics. Drawing upon naturalistic data from the group’s participatory action research project, she explains how their collaboration shaped her understanding of her own professional role and expanded her definitions of texts, content-area literacy, and literacy itself. Informed by insights she gained through the project, Draper argues that content-area literacy instruction should promote mastery of the intellectual discourse within a particular discipline. She also suggests ways to increase collaboration between literacy and content-area specialists working in the field of teacher education.


Roni Jo Draper is an associate professor and graduate coordinator in the Department of Teacher Education at Brigham Young University’s David O. McKay School of Education. She researches literacy instruction in mathematics and science classrooms and how to prepare teachers to support student acquisition of both content-area knowledge and literacy skills. Her recent articles include “The Promise of Democratic Educational Research to Nurture Democratic Educators” in Action in Teacher Education (with K. Hall and L. Smith, 2006), and “Different Goals, Similar Practices: Making Sense of the Mathematics and Literacy Instruction in a Standards-based Mathematics Classroom” in the American Educational Research Journal (with D. Siebert, 2004).