Research on the Role of Disciplinary Literacy Instruction: Delivering and Expanding on the Common Core State Standards will be the topic of Elizabeth Birr Moje’s 2012 Research Address presentation at the IRA Annual Convention in Chicago. 

Based on her research work in disciplinary literacy teaching, Moje will help us to think about how current research provide a framework for disciplinary teaching including critical components of the Common Core State Standards.

Moje will review research on disciplinary literacy teaching to help teachers at all grade levels to deliver the promises of the Common Core State Standards. The review will draw on existing studies that exemplify how teachers can think about disciplinary literacy instruction. Moje will also share studies to illustrate key practices for teaching children, youth, and novice teachers how to navigate the demands of reading and writing challenging subject-area texts. In closing, she will lay out the challenges to integrating such instruction into elementary and secondary classrooms and offer suggestions for navigating those challenges. 

Elizabeth Birr Moje is Associate Dean for Research and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Moje also serves as a Faculty Associate in the University’s Institute for Social Research, Latino/a Studies, and the Joint Program in English & Education. She is a member of IRA’s Literacy Research Panel. Her research interests focus on the intersection between the literacies and texts youth are asked to learn in the disciplines and the literacies and texts they experience outside of school. In addition, Moje studies how youth make cultures and enact identities from their home and community literacies, and from ethnic cultures, popular cultures, and school cultures. These research interests stem from the start of her career when she taught history, biology, and drama at high schools in Colorado and Michigan. Her current research focuses on communities and schools in Detroit, Michigan. She also engages in literacy professional development with teachers in Detroit and around the world. 

Moje has authored or edited four books and numerous book chapters, as well as articles in journals such as the Harvard Educational Review, Review of Research in Education, Reading Research Quarterly, Teachers College Record, Phi Delta Kappan, Journal of Literacy Research, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Research in the Teaching of English, Urban Review, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Science Education, and Science.

Her research projects have been or are currently funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the International Reading Association, the National Academy of Education, the National Institutes of Health/Office of Vocational and Adult Education/Institute of Education Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the William T. Grant Foundation.