Both the Common Core Standards for Literacy and the College, Career, and Civic Life Framework for Social Studies State Standards underscore the importance of classroom discussion for the development of high-level literacy and subject-matter knowledge. Yet, discussion remains stubbornly absent in social studies classrooms, which tend toward rote memorization and textbook work. In this article, we discuss our efforts to design practice-based methods instruction that prepares preservice teachers to facilitate text-based, whole-class discussion. We propose a framework for facilitating historical discussions and illustrate it with examples from videos of teacher candidates enacting the practice in K-12 classrooms. The framework assists not only in conceptualizing and naming the discrete components that constitute disciplinary discussion facilitation but also in highlighting where novices appear to struggle. Our analysis has implications for improving teacher education that seeks to prepare novices for ambitious instruction called for by the new literacy and social studies standards.

Background/Context The Common Core State Standards reveals how little we understand about the components of effective discussion-based instruction in disciplinary history. Although the case for classroom discussion as a core method for subject matter learning stands on stable theoretical and empirical ground, to date, none of the research on classroom discussion has examined whole-class text-based discussion in secondary history classrooms. Purpose This study explored how teachers and students in five 11th-grade classrooms participated in whole-class discussion, using intervention materials designed to promote text-based disciplinary discussion. Analysis of videotaped instruction sought to (a) determine the degree to which the instructional materials fostered disciplinary discussion about texts, and (b) analyze teacher talk moves that characterized effective facilitation of such discussions. Research Design This qualitative study was embedded in a larger quasi-experimental curricular intervention that found treatment effects on factual recall, historical thinking, and general reading comprehension. In this paper, we analyze classroom videos from five treatment classrooms taken over the course of the six-month intervention. Each teacher was videotaped once per week, for a total of 20 videotaped lessons per teacher. Findings/Results Analyses showed that disciplinary discussion was surprisingly rare, and discussion that promoted historical understanding even rarer. Discussions that were most successful in deepening students’ historical understanding were characterized by talk moves that drew students’ attention to the text, and that stabilized the historical content. Conclusions/Recommendations The study has implications for teacher preparation focused on implementation of Common Core State Standards as well as for teacher training in do-main-specific core practices.

In this article, we draw clear distinctions between generic reading comprehension and disciplinary literacy in history. We argue that disciplinary reading restores agency to the reader, changing the typical relationship between text and reader, in which knowledge flows down from one to the other. Sourcing, for example, enjoins readers to engage authors, querying them about their credentials, their interest in the story they are telling, their position vis‐à‐vis the event they narrate. Contextualization prompts the reader to question the social and political circumstances surrounding the text. In a digital age characterized by unfettered access to information, such skills become essential tools for an informed citizenry.

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